4A
Wednesday, October 2, 1996
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Sorority's fund-raiser is volunteerism at its best
The spirit of volunteerism is active at the University of Kansas.
Gamma Phi Beta is sponsoring a golf tournament to benefit abused and disadvantaged girls in Vancouver, British Columbia.
The Gamma Phi Beta sorority's Eileen Teahan Memorial Golf Tournament is an outstanding example of charitable activity sponsored by the greek community.
In particular, Amanda Landes, Los Angeles senior, should be congratulated for the long hours of hard work she has invested in this year's tournament as philanthropy chairwoman.
Landes began work on the tournament last summer. She expects 144 participants at Sunday's event to be held at the Alvamar Golf & Country Club.
"We expect to raise between $8,000 and $10,000. The money will go to Camp Sechelp, a camp for abused and disadvantaged young girls in Vancouver.British Columbia," she said.
Landes was a volunteer at the camp in the summer of 1995, which the Gamma Phi Beta international foundation administers.
Landes has found 26 sponsors, who should be congratulated. The sponsors demonstrate the strong, private-sector support that exists for philanthropic activity.
Generation X often is criticized as being apathetic and uninvolved. But initiatives like Gamma Phi Beta's golf tournament contradict all these stereotypes. It is an excellent program created by hard work and people who care.
TOM MOORE FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Reaching out to new students is new orientation plan's goal
The Office of New Student Orientation will call first-year students to find out how they are adjusting to their new lives at the University.
College life truly can be frightening to students who are unfamiliar with the University. In an institution of about 28,000 students, it is easy to be lost in a crowd of KUID numbers.
The Office of New Student Orientation is implementing the New Student Outreach Calling Program to ease the transition for first-year students at the University. Faculty, administration and student volunteers will call new students in the next few weeks to answer their questions.
Kristin Adkinson, assistant director of the office, said that because of the sheer number of students, academic departments were too taxed to implement a similar program.
She hopes the new program will help make students feel more at home at the University, she said.
The program is a step in the right direction to help lessen the impersonal nature that a large University can have and to make students feel that the University is concerned with their success.
PHONG HU FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
AMANDA TRAUGHBER
Editor
CRAIG LANG
Managing editor
MATT HOOD
Associate managing editor for design
KIMBERLY CRABTREE
CHARITY JEFFRIES
News editors
DARCI L. McLAIN
SARA ROSE
Public relations directors
Editors
Campus ... Suzanne Ló́f
Journal ... Jason Strait
... Amy McVeY
Editorial ... John Collar
Nicole Kennedy
Features ... Adam Ward
Bills ... Bill Petulla
Associate sports ... Carlyn Foster
Online editor ... David L. Teskia
Photo ... Rich Devkinn
Graphics ... Joseph Mussel
Andy Rohrback
Special auctions ... Amy McVeY
Wire ... Debbie Stalme
KAREN GERSCH
Business manager
HEALY SMART
Retail sales manager
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
JAY STEINER
Sales and marketing adviser
JUSTIN KNUPP
Technology coordinator
Business Staff
Campus mgr...Mark Oxidnok
Regional mgr...Denna Haupt
Assistant Retail mgr...Dana Contento
National mgr...
Management mgr...Heather Vailer
Production mgrs...Dan Kopec
Lisa Quebbaman
Marketing g director
Marketing manager
Dessmond Lavelle
Classified mgr...Shelly Wachter
Seeking answers to unrest
John Fisher/Special to the KANSAN
Values vs. Violence
Our problems will consume us unless we articulate a vision
By John Hart
I recently saw my first gunshot victim after hearing speeches from Vice President Gore and Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry.
I was in the capital of the free world Sept. 19-22 for the annual National Student Leadership Forum on Faith and Values, when national and student leaders discuss how their faith and values make an impact on the decisions they make as leaders. The style of leadership upheld at the forum was servant leadership, as exemplified by the life of Jesus Christ. Other speakers included Rep. Steve Largent, R-Okla., and Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo.
The most eventful day of the forum began with a speech from Barry, who openly spoke about his struggle with cocaine addiction and his subsequent spiritual renewal. He then offered a simple challenge to the audience of 450 student leaders from the United States and 14 countries; just care.
A victim seeks help
It didn't take long to see the effects of not caring.
After Gore spoke, we dispersed into the city to perform various work projects to attempt to put the principles of servant leadership into practice. While I waited in line to buy a drink at a convenience store with others from our group, a man walked into the store, cut in line and asked the woman behind the counter for help because he had been shot.
"Go call 911. There's a pay phone outside," she responded, as if he had asked for something no more dramatic than a sandwich.
I assumed that what I had heard was a misunderstanding until I walked outside and saw a member of our group on the phone talking to the police. The wounded man paced outside the store. He said he had been in an argument with a friend about money. He said his friend had been drunk, and he fired three shots. One bullet hit him in the leg, where blood stained his denim shorts.
The man then explained that he had run a mile to reach the 7-11 because he didn't have a phone. He left out the part about having a bullet in his leg. He should have been on the ground writhing in pain. I wondered if he was insane, on drugs or in shock.
Suddenly, I noticed another man heading
toward us waving his arms and shouting, trying to get our attention. Was this the guy who shot him? I looked for cover. I didn't need it, but I will never forget the feeling that I might have needed it.
During the ride back to the hotel, I began trying to make sense of what I had witnessed. I felt troubled when I realized that our generation tends to talk about freedom not as the ability to walk down the street without fear of getting shot but by, for example, how much pornography should be allowed on the Internet.
The limits of freedom
Any limitation of individual rights restrains freedom, we are told. Yet, true freedom flows from individual rights restrained by the exercise of self-control.
The forum ended with a walk through the Mall's monuments led by Ashcroft. Our first stop was the Jefferson Memorial. We read a quote from Jefferson etched in granite: "Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed the conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?"
We then walked to the Washington Monument and the Vietnam Memorial, where several veterans of that war shared their experiences. One veteran took almost five minutes to say 50 words, weeping while he remembered his friends who had died in Vietnam. Some of the vets searched for words to give their comrades' deaths meaning, only to find such words elusive. For me, this underscored the dark tragedy of that war.
Our generation tends to believe that freedom equals individual rights — the more rights, the more freedom. Any limitation of individual rights restrains freedom, we are told. Yet, true freedom flows from individual rights restrained by the exercise of self-control. In our lust for freedom, we are like Pilgrims at the Thanksgiving feast claiming we will starve if we don't get seconds of dessert.
Our walk continued to the Lincoln Memorial. As the 450 students read aloud and in unison Lincoln's second inaugural address given during the Civil War, I realized that today we are in a paradoxical bondage. We are slaves to a mistaken notion of liberty that desires freedom without responsibility.
A random shooting. The Vietnam War. The Civil War. Each event represents the chaos that ensues when evil bursts through the veneer of civilization. When Barry asked the group to just care, he was offering more than feel-good sentiments. The greatest threat to freedom is not difference, but indifference. Diversity of opinion is freedom flourishing, while indifference, which many in our generation practice, erodes the foundation of freedom, even the freedom to choose not to care.
Looking for a vision
At the forum's closing dinner, Ashcroft said that true leaders look beyond current possibilities. While our generation has the dubious honor of being the only generation named after the universal algebraic symbol, X, we also have the freedom to define X in any manner we wish. With growing disillusionment comes a stronger yearning for ideas that work. I believe our generation will find those ideas because we must.
It was inspiring to be among a group of my peers who at least cared. Many attending the forum expressed their caring as a desire to love God and others. Perhaps this basic caring will lead to a vision, and that vision will lead to innovative policies to combat the evils poised to consume us.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that we are in a cultural nose dive. We will either hit bottom and rebuild, or see the potential horror of hitting bottom and pull up. As King Solomon said in the Old Testament, "Without a vision, the people perish."
When Ashcroft finished his speech, a friend walked up behind me during an extended standing ovation.
"Maybe there is hope for our country," he said. Maybe he's right.
John Hart is a Shawnee graduate student in Journalism
HUBIE
WAL-MART WON'T STOCK
SHERYL CROW'S NEW ALBUM
BECAUSE IN ONE OF HER SONGS
IT SAYS, "WATCH OUR CHILDREN
WHILE THEY KILL OTHER,
WITH A GUN THEY BOUGHT AT
WAL-MART DISCOUNT STORES,"
EVEN THOUGH WAL-MART DOES
By Greg Hardin
I will just provide the text content.