Opinion
Kansan
Published daily since 1912
Jodie Chester, Editor Marc Harrell, Business manager
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Thursday, August 27, 1998
Editorials
Students should make good use of new, additional recycling bins
At the University of Kansas, many students realize the importance of recycling. They have been educated about it since they stepped into a classroom. Some push for more recycling efforts at KU Environns meetings and on political platforms for Student Senate. Most students see that they generate many waste products that could become useful if they would take the time to throw it into the proper receptacle.
However, many students have problems with time management. Every moment is precious and overscheduled, and spending a few extra locating a recycling bin does not equal the consequences of being tardy for a class or missing a bus.
This year, there is no excuse for ignoring recycling. The University has placed bins in more buildings
It is important to dispose of waste material in its proper place.
on campus and for all different types of materials. In one stop, a student can drop off empty soda bottles, aluminum, extra paper, and perused University Daily Kansans.
Unfortunately, this does not stop some students from using the new bins for a much more base purpose, trash. Instead of using the bins on which the University has spent sufficient quantities of money, some students use them as the nearest dumpster. This abuse of the new bins will make it difficult for those who take the materials to the recycling plant. It could even endanger the possibility of the materials being recycled if the materials are not sorted correctly.
It also could cause the administration to think that attempts to promote recycling are not worthwhile or cost-effective.
The students of the University have heard the mantra of recycling for many years now: One person can make a difference. This should be kept in mind the next time there is something to pitch. Throwing the recyclable material into the proper container allows it to be rendered into something new.
Throwing trash into a recycling bin makes for a nuisance. Students should save the Earth and beautify their campus by putting everything into its proper place.
Kathryn Jensen for the editorial board
Saferide provides valuable resource
While students are planning their evenings out this semester, they need to realize that Saferide offers a free ride home. Whether students are avoiding driving drunk or a late-night walk along through a poorly lighted area of Lawrence, Saferide will provide transportation for them.
From past experience, we know that other alternatives may be stupid, costly, dangerous and fatal.
Saferide, a program of KU on Wheels financed by fees students pay each semester, offers all students, at no additional cost, direct transportation to their Lawrence homes from anywhere in Lawrence.
Students can contact Saferide at 864-SAFE for a free ride home.
The free service runs between 11:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. every night during the semester. Plus, Saferide adds two cars to the regular five on weekend nights because of the higher demand. On some nights, incessant busy tones may require persistent re-dialing and patience, but a safe ride is well worth the wait.
mings: where they are and where they're going. A marked Saferide car picks students up and, after a KUID check, the driver takes students to their destination.
Students already know that driving after drinking is neither safe nor reliable. But knowing and acting on that knowledge are two different things.
When students call Saferide, they need to inform the dispatcher of two
Drunk driving fatality and arrest rates probably would fall if the drinking members of a community were responsible by not driving at all or by appointing a designated driver.
Students can reach Saferide at 864 SAFE (7233).
Kris Olson for the editorial board
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Broaden your mind: Today's quote
“Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.” —Tacitus
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.
Guest columners Should be double-spaced typed with fewer than 700 words. The writer must be willing to be photographed for the column to run.
All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stufer-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.
Perspective
Thinking with heart puts students ahead
The other day, I discovered a copy of a Larousse French Dictionary, published in Paris in 1903. The following entry disturbed me: "Nègre. Nègresse (Nig-
early disturbed me. Reger): a man or woman of black skin. It is the name given particularly to the inhabitants of certain parts of Africa, Guinea, Senegambia, etc., who form a race of black people, inferior in intelligence to the white race, called the Caucasian race. In niggers, the color of the skin seems to be caused by the climate. It is an acquired characteristic which becomes
Donato
Fhunsu
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transmissible and hereditary; but it is common knowledge today that a nigger family, transplanted into our climates, would acquire the white color after a few generations and without race mixing."
I sighed as I studied the dictionary's first pages. "To the Reader: Despite the imitations, the Larousse Dictionary remains the most complete, best informed and most interesting of all the compact dictionaries."
I sighed even more deeply as I thought about what the best informed people of our own times, many of them professors at respected universities, still are saying about black people. Just a few years ago, the author of The Bell Curve, using statistical data and scientific reasoning, "demonstrated" that black students are intellectually inferior to white students and recommended that programs such as Head Start be discontinued because these programs are a waste of taxpayers' money.
Last year, after President Clinton called for a dialogue on race relations, a group of people calling itself "Americans for Self-Determination" responded by organizing a lecture series to propose a solution to the race problem. One of the speakers, a professor who was introduced as a social scientist, cited a litany of statistical data, which he said "proved" that white people are more intelligent than black people. He recommended that affirmative action programs be eliminated immediately and to solve the race problem, the United States be divided into white states and black states to preserve cultural purity.
When I heard this, I thought I was dreaming.
This man was recommending a system
We might even become more dangerous, armed with the power of our academic positions. We then may dedicate our lives to perpetuating the existing stereotypes about the people of other races, religions and nations to conserve and increase the power of our own group. To make our work seem legitimate, we may shower it with phrases such as scientific method or accurate data, and we may portray ourselves as accomplished scholars.
After serious consideration, however, my disappointment turned into understanding. It occurred to me that colleges and universities are a microcosm of society. If we have inherited the prejudices of our society, these feelings do not disappear when we join a university. Higher education, as it exists today, may help us become brilliant, but it does not necessarily help us become good. And this does not change when we become professors.
of apartheid at the eve of the 21st century, using so-called scientific facts. I was disappointed. What happened to the criterion of intellectual honesty that professors insist students should demonstrate at all times?
This is unfortunate because higher education is such a vital part of our society and our times. Now, more than ever before, we need to assimilate knowledge, understanding and wisdom. This is the business of professors and students. What I deplore about the present state of higher education is that there is a gap between the head and the heart. With few exceptions, universities train exclusively the mind and neglect the heart.
To remedy the situation, we need to redesign the curriculum to give equal weight to training the mind and the heart. Before that is done, though, those of us already in higher education have to take things into our own hands. Our education need not be limited to the classroom. Through curricular and extracurricular activities, we have to cultivate not only our minds but also our hearts. We have to learn to listen beyond the words, read between the lines, think, feel and, most important of all, identify ourselves with our fellow human beings.
We already agree that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Can we also afford to waste our heart?
Fhunsu is a Lawrence graduate student in journalism.
Clinton debacle leaves little room for real heroes
As a bouncer checked my age like some sort of Neo-Gestapo storm trooper (Is this really Lawrence—no teenagers in bars?) a slurring old wine
teenagers in bars?) a sl glanced up from his frosty yellow schooner.
"Mr. Clinton, how are ya' doing these days?" he said. "Too bad about ol' Monica."
Ouch. Not that William Jefferson Clinton is a bad-looking man, but I don't especially enjoy being compared in any way to a 52-year-old politician. Friends have
John Wilson
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mockingly compared my appearance to the president a few times, but this complete stranger scared and scarred me.
I walked over and shook the man's hand
"That's not exactly a compliment, man," I said. "He's not somebody anyone looks up to these daws."
The man dove back into his beer, and I walked away a bit shaken.
I wondered about the idea of an American hero in 1998. I wondered if men were worth looking up to these days.
As a teenager, Michael Jordan gave us a man to emulate. American capitalism (Nike) builds heroes (Jordan) to hock athletic goods. Even so, these heroes taught me lessons about athletic success.
Only a handful (maybe 10) on this campus of more than 25,000 will become rich on the athletic field — and I certainly won't be one of them. These stars don't apply much to the adult world which I intend to live.
I'm looking for men — real men, good men. Men who make this world a better place in which to live.
Men like Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy. History holds up dead men to greatness without remembering criticism, but these men did great things and lived
important lives. They fought against racism and bigotry, and they fought for good things. I just don't see these men anymore or these inherently good battles to fight.
What does it say about our country and times that I can't look up to the president? Maybe I'm being idealistic, but there should be men who act the way society preaches its youth should act.
If our politicians, the leaders of our country, can't give us a model of how to act, it is hard to decide who can. Some may suggest that it's the businessman, but any capitalistic billionaire leaves an immoral, soulless material distaste in my mouth.
Our society just isn't set up to tell these stories. Stories of political power and greedy wealth have been programmed into our hearts but hopefully not our souls. We don't listen to stories about good men.
The capitalist system doesn't put ethical restraints on society — which is the key to our vision of freedom. I want to find men who live moral, loving, giving lives.
I've torn down the athletes, the politicians and the rich men — the masters of America. As our generation prepares to perpetuate this cycle, this plea will probably fall on deaf ears, and I am left with little.
It's not much — just a wish, a wish for a man. A wish for a real world leader of men who has a vision for the future of our country and world.
I can't give up hope for a real hero.
I can’t give up hope for a real here.
If Original Sin is one of the building blocks of Western Society, then perhaps this Bill Clinton mess and the greater problems it has heaped upon my back had their beginnings in the Garden of Eden. We're all sinners under God, so maybe every man has his cracks that will show at some point.
But I just can't allow myself to give up hope in humanity.
Wilson is a Lenexa senior majoring in journalism.
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