Opinion
Kansan
Published daily since 1912
Jodie Chester, Editor
Gerry Doyle, Managing editor
Ryan Koerner, Managing editor
Tom Eblen.General manager, news advise
Marc Harrell, Business manager
Jamie Holm, Retail sales manager
Dan Simon, Sales and marketing adviser
Justn Knapp, Technology coordinator
Friday, September 4,1998
Editorials
Smarter is not better for bus passes
Despite a substantial improvement in the KU on Wheels program, buses on the University of Kansas campus still are behind.
KU on Wheels deserves applause for the new Park-and-Ride program, which may finally relieve some of the stress student commuters experience as they attempt to find a parking space on campus
Students are responding to this overdue idea. Nicole Skalla, transportation coordinator for Student Senate, said that about 170 passes had been sold and that the number probably would reach 200. KU on Wheels, however, will limit the number of passes sold to 300.
Another new feature of the busing program, though, has become a thorn in the sides of both students
Microchips in bus passes prove that technology is not always an improvement.
and bus drivers. This summer, microchip pass readers for the new KUIDs replaced the sticker system.
This new system poses two significant problems. First, lines to board the bus are considerably longer. It takes more time to stick the card in the reader and wait for the green light to signify that it is valid. Second, this new system lends itself to fraud more easily. The emphasis now rests on the green light, not on whether the student using the pass is the same as the one photographed
on the KUID.
on the road.
Furthermore, aside from making riders late, the delays make the system unfair. Bus drivers are experiencing increased pressure to complete their routes on time and have to compensate for the ridiculous amount of time it takes to load a bus. So, many times they don't even check students IDs to make sure that they have a valid bus pass.
Because the University owns the KUIDs, KU on Wheels is powerless to bring back the sticker system without consent.
It is obvious that University officials need to realize that technology doesn't always equal improvement. In this case, technology actually has become a serious hindrance. The green lights must go.
Chris Borniger for the editorial board
AC outages cause suffering in housing
As many students know all to well, extreme weather can make for an irrational mind. Minor problems take on the status of crises, and optimism drops with every degree the temperature rises.
Under the blazing sun, walking up the hill to attend class can be an Everest-size challenge. However, when students are in the residence halls they shouldn't have to deal with sweltering heat. Studying is nearly impossible without the benefit of air conditioning or at least a fan during the summer months.
This is why it is especially traumatic when the air conditioning in student housing fails. Within the first week of school, the system malfunctioned in residence halls.
Students have been left miserable with rising temperatures outside and inside.
scholarship halls, and Jayhawker Towers.
When it was not fixed for a significant amount of time — as long as two days at Jayhawker Tower C — students complained to the housing department. After phone calls from the parents of students, the air conditioning was fixed by the University.
It is understandable that the powers of the air conditioning units can be sapped in hot weather. However, it should be the top priority
of the Department of Student Housing and Maintenance to repair the systems.
Campus housing, especially in Jayhawker Towers, has very little circulation. Some students rented rooms at local hotels, and Tower C residents resorted to putting a wading pool in the hallway to beat the heat.
it is of the utmost importance that students have a cool and comfortable place to study and live, or else the quality of these students' school work could suffer.
The Student Housing Department should work quickly to fix the air conditioning as soon as possible and to maintain the units' general upkeep so they don't fail again.
Ann Premer ... Editorial
Tim Harrington ... Associate Editorial
Aaron Marvin ... News
Gwen Olson ... News
Aaron Knopf ... Online
Matt Friedrichs ... Sports
Kevin Wilson ... Associate sports
Marc Sheforgen ... Campus
Laura Roddy ... Campus
Lindsey Henry ... Features
Bryan Volk ... Associate features
Roger Nomer ... Photo
Corie Waters ... Photo
Angie Kuhn ... Design, graphics
Mellissa Ngo ... Wire
Sara Anderson ... Special sections
Laura Veazy ... news clerk
Kansan staff
Kathryn Jensen for the editorial board
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Broaden your mind: Today's quote
"I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education." — Wilson Migner
How to submit letters and guest columns
Letters: Should be double-spaced typed and fewer than 200 words. Letters must include the author's signature, name, address and telephone number plus class and home-town if a University student. Faculty or staff must identify their positions.
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All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Ann Premer (premer@kansan.com) or Tim Harrington (tharrington@kansan.com) at 864-4810. If you have general questions or comments, email the page staff (opinion@kansan.com) or call 864-4810.
Feminists had scandalous response to Clinton affair
America's state of sleepy contentment has largely blunted the impact of the scandal plaguing our current Chief Executive. Its effects will undoubt-
Perspective
Andrew Marino opinion@kansan.com
early be seen in election. 2000. The most significant impact President Clinton's sex scandal may have on our society is the unveiling of the traditional feminist movement as political, partisan, and void of principle.
Intrigued by the numbers and in search of some perspective, I decided to have a chat with a few female acquaintances. My ears perked as I listened to one explain why she was not a feminist. "I don't consider myself a feminist," she said. "I consider myself an individual."
Watching the leading feminists of our day during the ordeal was an enlightening experience. Nina Burleigh, who once covered the White House for Time magazine said
And therein lies the true flaw behind feminism or, for that matter, any movement claiming to represent people based on gender, color or age. The assumption behind such claims is that all or even most people in such classifications should or do think alike and have the same interests in mind. This is clearly not the case.
of that group were familiar with one of the movement's most important leaders, Gloria Steinem. Questions involving the defining issue of abortion also were informative. The opinion was split — 45 percent anti-abortion to 44 percent abortion-rights — among all women and nearly a third of "feminists" described themselves as anti-abortion. All of these figures suggest that feminist orthodoxy has lost touch with the vast majority of women.
she would be happy to service him just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. The New York Observer contained a discussion in which 10 feminists seemed pleased that the President was "alive from the waist down."
These are shameful quotes indeed and are admittedly the worst I've come across. But perhaps even more telling is the deafening silence of many prominent feminists. Those who called for the head of Clarence Thomas and believed Anita Hill on her word alone have seen their courage shrivel when the irrefutable facts of the Lewinsky case and the comparatively more credible Paula Jones suit are mentioned. The threshold is clearly higher — or perhaps nonexistent — when a Democratic president cheats on his wife with an intern nearly as young as his own daughter.
For instance, one friend said she thought feminism was even "counterproductive" because she felt it damaged relations between the sexes. Yet another woman student I talked to thought that partisan politics and governmental action were exhausted as means to improve the position of women and said more focus should be placed on the "everyday mentality" of people.
own daughter:
The spectacle surrounding Bill Clinton's trysts, however, did not harm feminism. It merely served as the machinery used to detect the movement's blatant hypocrisy and isolation from the hearts and minds of most women. An opinion poll conducted for Time and CNN found that just 26 percent of women considered themselves feminists. Only half
Many men will find it comforting to hear that the man-hating literature of the feminist elite does not seem to resonate with the many women. Most women would, I presume, agree with Women's Quarterly editor Danielle Crittenden who, when commenting on the recent silliness of feminist leaders, said "I'd rather be barefoot at home than on my knees in the office."
Marino is a Prairie Village sophomore majoring in Political Science.
University's buildings alleviate heat, boredom
These are the times when we all feel like bugs trapped under a giant magnifying glass and the days seem longer than any Western Civilization lecture even could hope to be.
This time of year, every guy senses that loss of "cool" that comes from seeing the reflection of his forehead glistening like a newly, dewed leaf in some high-school biology video. Oftentimes, this reflection is seen in the glass of a door that has been opened in hopes that the ladies passing through aren't die-hard feminists.
While the benefits of warmer weather may seem enticing - most notably, the small amounts of clothing
H.G.
Miller
opinion@kansan.com
wore by some of the university's more attractive inhabitants - one shouldn't lose 10 pounds just from enjoying the scenery.
just on enjoying the outdoors.
On days like these, students should take advantage of one of the campus' most outstanding features: Air conditioning!
However, one cannot just enjoy the freon-charged air, standing around and admiring the spongy texture of off-white cinder blocks.
The fact is, not only are the buildings on campus air-conditioned, but quite a few of them are rather interesting, as well.
There's an art to avoiding heat. A certain technique must be used that cannot be achieved by simply wandering aimlessly. A search that goes beyond finding the nearest restroom for paper towels with which to swab the sweat off one's face must be undertaken.
Finding the various nooks and crannies of interest around campus is an accomplishment that cannot be attained simply within leisure time. No, you've got to skip some class. So, for the public good, I have sacrificed valuable hours of educational lecture time in order to explore this great campus.
Searching out the faculty offices may also prove interesting. Examine the various newspaper clippings, magazine articles and comic strips that adorn the office doors. See how your teachers fight for individuality amongst the rigid sameness of the Wescoe corridors. If the word math is used in a Ziggy cartoon, you'll probably find it somewhere in Snow Hall.
Additionally, the cases often will contain student projects, or whatever else the faculty finds interesting. Awards, pictures from botany trip trips and faded construction paper are all popular.
Although the University's hodgepodge assortment of architectural styles may have the appearance of being planned by someone smoking crack, each building has a reason for its existence.
Sometimes I find it enlightening to just walk the halls of buildings that house classes I'll never take. Being an English major, just about anything associated with science is foreign and entertaining to me.
Stop by Lindley Hall and check out the "rock of the week." Not only do they give a little biography of sorts about the rock, but they display it on a spinning plate.
For a simple way to kill time, most buildings offer glass cases with photographs or artistic renderings of distinguished professors, politicians or anybody else that might have a building named after them.
Finally, if you see one thing while attending the University of Kansas, make it the falling cow display in the basement of the Natural History Museum of Dyche Hall. I kid you not, a giant hole referred to as the "Natural Trap" has been excavated by some university researchers. The hole, until covered, was big enough for a car to almost fall through. The fate of a few cows wandering nearby has been forever preserved by plastic, plaster and glass for all to see. Do check it out.
"This building was erected in 1950-something and dedicated in the memory of whomever, noted teacher, author, philanthropist, closet cross-dresser and blood donor."
Miller is a Hutchinson senior majoring in English.
Feedback
Columnist ideas for Saferide explored
Rodger Woods, in his column about Saferide, makes some valuable and salient points. Yes, Saferide's hours could be seen as inconvenient for those not using it to get home from bars. Also, it would be nice if local alcohol distributors and bars would sponsor ads on the sides of Saferide cars. The trouble is, both of these options were explored by Student Senate last year, and both are highly unworkable. Saferide's hours have been out
because the cost of operation has gone up. This is why the night bus routes were made free of charge. Further, Senators Whitney Black and Molly McNearney worked to get local bars and distributors to put ads on the sides of the cars. None of them were willing — not because they were opposed to the idea, but because there was no good way to avoid theft.
The cars are leased, not owned, which precludes painting, and one can imagine how long a Johnny's Tavern or Budweiser magnetic sign would last on cars that are left unattended
at the Union between runs.
Obviously, Saferide and the student body as a whole would benefit from an alternative source of funding. I, for one, feel that a voluntary donation box with a lock would provide a significant amount of extra operating funds. That's just one thought, of course, anybody with other ideas should feel free to drop by the Student Senate office and discuss it with Transportation coordinator Nicole Skalla or anybody else that happens to be there. We're always on the lookout for new ideas.
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Sam Pierron Olathe senior