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opinion
Those days you are on campus so long that you have no chance of remembering where you parked.
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351
FREE FOR ALL
I don't always go to the events on campus. But when I do, it's for the free food.
When your ex gets cuter by the day, you question why you ended it. Oh yeah, to be with McLemore!
You know you've made it in life when you have your own Wikipedia page.
So what if I like mushrooms on my pizza? Is that such a crime?
To the person who said they stole their shoeelaces from the president, I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT
This girl is telling a story about how she tore her ACL at the Hawk... How does that even happen?
Ask not what you can do for the FFA,
but what the FFA can do for you.
One does not simply "get over" Dan the bus driver.
You know I don't speak Spanish.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2013
Admit it. Every time someone unfollows you on Twitter, you kind of wonder who the little backstabber is.
Spiders on LSD actually make measured and accurate webs, on par with a sober spider.
Schools can't ban junk food. I was raised on Snickers and McDoubles and I turned out alright.
Fall Out Boy may be back, but they should be called "Sell Out Boy." Long-time Fall Out Boy fan has lost all hope.
You don't need to know Spanish as long as you're fluent in Harry Potter. Es la verdad, no?
Who else didn't realize that FFA was in Spanish until they read it again?
Brunettes just do it better. And by it, I mean sex.
Loving the banter between hisppers and the polo patrol. Makes me giggle a little.
Feel free to wear what you want as pants, unless you have a hole on the butt of your leggings. I don't want to see cheek.
UNIVERSITY
That awkward moment when you F-
acebook stalk someone two tables away.
Sorry not sorry, he's a cutie!
To the Fall Out Boy enthusiast, no one cares that they're touring again.
(*sneakily ravages Ticketmaster and StubHub for non-inflated prices)
Dear math student, grammar follows logical rules and should be trivial. - A mathematics grad student.
My girlfriend is getting so tired of my Linkin Park references. But in the end it doesn't even matter.
You know Spring is in the air when people in the dorms start yelling at people from their windows.
Mission statement lacks equality
It's gender equity something we can safely assume exists? Or is it something we must vigilantly seek until reached?
If you're the University, the former seems to be the modus operandi. Why? Because despite an underrepresented faculty in terms of gender, the University is silent on gender equity in its mission statement.
As the University seeks to transform itself through "Bold Aspirations," I suggest a more mild transformation: a commitment to gender equality and racial equality.
Albeit a token action, I would like to see the University first make a declarative commitment in addressing these issues in its mission statement.
Last week, I happened to read the statement, which articulates the University's commitment to instruction, research, service, international dimension and values.
The first sentence of the mission statement reads "The university is committed to offering the highest quality undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs, comparable to the best obtainable anywhere in the nation."
And under the headline of "service", it declares, "The University first serves Kansas, then the nation and the world through research, teaching, and the preservation and dissemination of knowledge."
Throughout the document, there is no explicit or implicit commitment to gender equity. The closest the document comes to equity is a reference to equality that reads, "The University is committed to excellence. It fosters a multicultural environment in which the dignity and rights of the individual are respected." The words "foster" and "respect" don't equate to "promote" or "insure". These words merely maintain the status quo, rather than transform it. If instruction and commitment
to the state (which, oh by the way,
is 50 percent female) are priori-
ties, why is this not reflected by
the University's faculty?
We all know the University is a research I institution. That's why some on faculty can mail it in when it comes to lecturing and teaching; they're here for research.
According to the Office of Institutional Research and Planning, nearly 60 percent of the faculty on the Lawrence campus is male. This is by no means equal, but it probably doesn't raise too many alarms. In comparison to students, the incoming
freshmen in 2011 consisted of 47 percent males.
The issues of equity arise in the upper echelons of faculty: Females account for 22 percent of full-professor positions, 39 percent of associate-professor position, 42 percent of assistant-professor positions and 57 percent of lecturers.
Equity is inversely related to the level of faculty position: the higher the position, the lower the equity; the lower the position; the higher the equity.
Is the University actively pursuing a more equitable and equal faculty? I don't know. It would help if such a commitment was expressed in the University's mission.
Racial equality, an idea ambiguously articulated in the University's mission, fares even worse than gender equity. Eighty-one percent of the University's faculty is white, 3.2 percent is black, 3.2 percent is Hispanic and 7.6 percent is Asian.
I'm not here, nor educated enough, to say we have a problem, but it's safe to say we have more work to do. While we seek "bold aspirations" to make our University better academically, why not also seek rather basic aspirations: gender equity and racial equality?
I convey no alarmist tone, just the fact that we can't walk around campus and think we have achieved gender equity and racial equality. These are goals we must actively pursue.
I think the first step would be to articulate commitment from the University's where it matters most: its mission statement.
Scott is a graduate student majoring in American studies from Overland Park. Follow him on Twitter @dscott2.
TECHNOLOGY
Federal government finding new ways to spy on everyone
Attention governments everywhere: Please stop using technology to spy on us. Seriously, get your dirty hands off of my phone. Just back off.
I'm OK with the federal government wretaking—with a warrant—a known criminal to stop a crime spree, but the government's been pushing things way too far, with technology at least. As my prime example, I'd like to introduce the Department of Defense's shiny new toy: the Hummingbird.
The Hummingbird is a new Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) about to join the military's fleet. While UAVs are nothing new—I'll get to it in a minute—the Hummingbird has a very special camera that comes in it. The camera, named Argus, can shoot 1.8 gigapixels (1.8 billion pixels) of continuous footage.
For perspective's sake, from 20,000 feet in the air, Argus can zoom in for you to spot the color of a 6-inch long object. What scares me the most is how it's actually a video camera. Combined with some clever program. Argus automatically registers and categorizes every moving object in a 25-square mile area.
The government says the Hummingbird and Argus are
going to be used in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I believe them. But it only took six years for the first generation of military UAVs to be used domestically, by private companies and the military, smack dab in the middle of the good old U.S. According to the Department of Defense, there are drones flying as close to us as Kansas State University.
Most people could argue that the drones don't pose any major threats to citizens, or they'd help catch criminals. But even the U.S. Congress is afraid of the potential these drones have to become: not just eyes in the sky, but even militarized vehicles watching from above. If the same people who let the FBI collect 100 billion of citizen's private emails a day are afraid, then you should be, too.
Speaking of FBI collecting private emails, William Binney, a former coder for the National Security Agency, decided that he wanted to talk about how several government entities are violating
vour electronic privacy.
According to Binney, the FBI has been recording emails, searches, and phone calls, and has been generating a giant social network map of every person living in the U.S., seeing which people communicate with each other. They have around 10 trillion files of personal data in store.
If you haven't committed any crime, the feds don't trash your data, they just dump it in a giant storage facility in case you ever do. They've almost run out of room apparently, because they're building a new facility that can hold 5 zettabytes of data, about 5 billion terabytes, which is quite a few terabytes.
I haven't told you all of this to make you scared or paranoid. I told you so you would get angry at the fact other people are looking at your personal lives so you're angry enough to go protest in front of the U.S. Capitol or at least angry enough to email a senator, or even Governor Brownback. Just do something about it, OK?
Simpson is a freshman majoring in chemical engineering from Fairway.
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
MUMBLECORE
Sound comes first in musical value
A bandon all hope ye who enter here, you may find this column offensive. Just kidding. You probably won't. Unless you take music too seriously, which seems to happen more often than not.
Recently, my friend asked me to listen to her new favorite band. I told her I didn't like it, and her response was "but the lyrics are so good!"
Well, lyrics don't mean anything if the sound they are attached to totally sucks.
When it comes to music, people seem to put a lot of stock into how meaningful the lyrics are. That makes sense; music is the most common use of poetry in today's culture. But it's also obvious that a lot of artists aren't really trying when it comes to lyrics (see: pop music). So when I see people get angry if a friend thinks a particular song is good because the lyrics lack depth, I'm not surprised.
But I disagree with that sentiment. Music isn't about lyrics. It's all about sound.
In the moneymaking world, music's true role in society is to entertain at all costs, and to create as much revenue as possible. But today, music doesn't make as much money as it used to because of the Internet and downloading. Thus we have many pop artists creating music that focuses on sounds that sell (see: dubstep) instead of pushing the artistic limits and risking the chances of failure. So lyrics take a hit. They just aren't as important.
Music allows the listener to disappear. If you see me on campus, you'll notice I have my headphones in at all times to let the music wash over my life like a tsunami in attempt to rid myself from the monotonous grind of my last semester of college. I truly do "disappear here" when I press play.
Don't believe me? Take Nirvana for instance. The Godfather of Grunge, Kurt
Cobain, sang lyrics many listeners could not understand—so much so that music comedian Weir Al Yankovic made fun of him for it in his parody of "Smells Like Teens Spirit." The point is, Cobain sang his lyrics to sound its best with the music, rather than making sure the listener actually understood what he was saying. The meaning came after the sound. It was left to the listener to decipher.
So when I ask someone, "Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?" I don't expect said person to tell me the lyrics to "Hip to be Square" are a reference the massive conformity movement of the '80s that Huey Lewis seems to believe existed. Instead I expect them to say, "Yeah, it's pretty catchy!"
Don't get me wrong, I respect and love songs with lyrics that have meaning, depth and a true message. But you would never listen to a song that had all those things in its lyrics but then didn't sound attractive to your ear. You only notice the lyrics after you've already decided the song sounds good.
Lyrics are important, but they come second to sound. And that will always be true.
You may disagree with that, but if you ask my punk-rock side, I'd tell you to deal with it. Rock and roll.
Lysen is a senior majoring in journalism from Andover.
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