opinion
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KANSAN.COM | THURSDAY, OCT. 27, 2016
When an important person calls you in the middle of class and all you can do is stare at your blinking phone and dread the moment they find out you have a Lionel Richie voicemail
Who titles a song "Broccoli"?
Woke up after 11 hours of sleep and still felt tired. Is it time to graduate yet?
The Greeks have Homecoming, I have Halloween
Hey, editor. If you're going to rerun FFAs two print editions in a row, can you at least rerun the good ones!
Editor's note: It's an eternal truth
imagine if you had nails as nails
When u pack for a trip and think u have everything but u also think u forgot everything
Yesterday we got a guy handing out basketball schedules, today the dudes with Bibles are back. What have we done to deserve this?
There are days when I wish KU was a smoke-free campus. And those days are Every. Single. Day.
Things aren't going well in this class.
Rigged! The whole thing is one big fix!
Nothing else can explain my impending defeat. Certainly not my own incompetence
I'm going to need to extend thanksgiving break so I can take in all things Gilmore Girls.
how are attendance grades still legal
"Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" (1997) is the greatest horror film of all time.
still shook from Harry Styles' run at the end of Drag Me Down
I wonder what's waiting on the other side of college. Am I living my glory days now, or are things just getting started? I guess we'll all just have to wait and see
KU vs UT volleyball.
Good luck ladies!
wait and see.
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Foster: 'Slacktivism' fails to create change
@UNIVERSITY
DAILYKANSAN
▶ KAITLYN FOSTER @areacity
n any given day, my Facebook feed will show me several change.org petitions. Save the coral reefs! Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline! Lower the price of a life-saving drug!
Each of these petitions voice legitimate concerns. However, they also allow people to feel like they've done something to relieve the injustices of humanity when all they've achieved is sending out a message saying "this thing is bad" into the vast apathy of the Internet.
Change.org has a handy page detailing successful campaigns, like one for establishing a federal Survivor's Bill of Rights Act for those who have been sexually assaulted. The petition earned over 140,000 signatures, and the bill became law. The people that signed it care about this issue, but the real work to make the campaign a success came from Rise, an advocacy organization founded by the petition's author, Amber Nguyen. Rise held events and raised money to fight for this bill. They didn't rely on a random collective of clicks to ensure they reached their goal.
Illustration by Jacob Benson
As a society, we have to become more involved in our communities and our politics."
Consumer Research, people who offer token support like signing a petition are no more likely to engage in more meaningful support like donating time or money than someone who didn't do so.
Petitions like these, and other forms of passive activism, or "slacktivism," let people feel they've been a part of something bigger than themselves. The benefits stop at the individual level, though. According to a study published in the Journal of
The most resounding example of passive activism for our age is probably the 2012 Stop Kony movement. A 30-minute documentary asked people to gather and "Cover the Night" with posters to raise awareness. Instead of plastering their cities with Kony posters, thousands changed their profile pictures, perhaps
attached a sentence or two condemning him, and called it good. Needless to say, the campaign failed amid controversy and Stop Kony became a meme.
than collaborative. While each type demonstrated a decline over a two decade span beginning in 1973, active, collaborative participation declined at a greater rate, some at quadruple the rate of certain expressive ones.
Increasing community involvement means facing numerous challenges. We now work nearly 150 more hours per year than we did in 1979 according to the Economic Policy Institute. Passive activism, like signing a petition or changing your profile picture, are modern equivalents of what Robert Putnam outlines in Bowling Alone as expressive involvement rather
As a society, we have to become more involved in our communities and our politics. When we don't, we lose our accountability in ensuring our democracy functions well, and people like Donald Trump try to undermine it.
Despite the challenges we face, students need to become the model for a more active
citizenry. At the University, students have been registering people to vote around campus and participating in protests for Black Lives and Trans Lives Matter. These two examples demonstrate what our activism should be not a passive declaration, but an active, collective effort to enact tangible change for the betterment of society and students should be the driving force behind this transformation.
Kaitlyn Foster is a sophomore from Lawrence studying political science and sociology
Letter to the Editor: Speak out against injustice
- GRADUATE STUDENTS AND INSTRUCTORS IN THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
As graduate students and instructors in the English department, we directly address the mandate we were charged with by our dean, Carl Lejuez, to speak out against injustice. Considering the recent troubling events on campus, as well as national and international events, we affirm that Trans Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter, and we fully support safe spaces at the University of Kansas. Safe spaces provide an area or forum for marginalized groups to find solace away from the damaging impacts of marginalization. When safe spaces are under attack, our mission as a university is under attack; when
diversity and inclusion are threatened, so is free and open intellectual discourse.
We affirm that Trans Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter, and we fully support safe spaces at the University of Kansas."
Safe spaces are an essential marker of an inclusive campus and therefore, should be protected at all costs. We recognize and agree that safe spaces are critical and necessary components of university culture that support intellectual and academic freedom. We
need mutual respect in order to engage in effective dialogue inside and outside of the classroom. Safe spaces are necessary for the university to be a productive learning space and that is compromised when individuals fear for their well-being - we cannot do our jobs effectively when our students, staff or faculty feel unsafe.
Authentic support requires action. In addition to this letter, we are encouraging all faculty, staff and graduate students in the English department to become Safe Zone members. As one of the largest departments serving undergraduate students, we believe it's vital to provide several safe spaces within our department and to foster an environment in which our students are comfortable
expressing themselves. Once Safe Zone training is completed, we will compile and post a list of certified English Department Safe Zone members so students can have easier access to this information. We recognize that this is merely the beginning of a conversation and not the solution, but we are committed to this ongoing work. We charge other departments with doing the same.
Signed,
Martha Baldwin, Nick Banach, Alyse Bensel, Divya Bhalla, Brianna Blackwell, Anthony Boynton, Rachel Brown, Matthew Broussard, Danny Caine, Jimin Choi, Nino Cipri, Kris Coffey, Dana Comi, Megan Dennis, Leighann Dicks, Maria Dones, Susan
Lee Duba, Katie DuBois,
Claire Echterling, Meghara
Eichhorn-Hicks, Gibette
Encarnación, Jeff Griffin,
Chris Hall, Renee Harris,
Jacob Herrmann, Marcus
Höhne, Mark Jaskowski,
Megan Jones, Casey
Keel, Wil Kenney, Melissa
Kleinschmidt, Robert
Knapp, Sarah Kugler,
Mercedes Lucero, Sandya
Maulana, Morgan McComb,
Dee McElhattan, Charlesia
McKinney, Hui Meng, David
Miller, Adam Mills, Angela
Murphy, Sarah Ngoh, Kate
Nygren, Sarah E. Polo, Jason
Poole, Kate Russell Charron,
Simone Savannah, Hannah
Scupham, Amanda Sladek,
David Snyder, Rebekah
Taussig, Kyle Teller,
Stefanie Torres, Mikaela
Warner, Hannah Warren,
Jessica Weatherford, Lesley
Wheeler, Candice Wuehle
and Meagen Youngdahl
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