TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2013
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opinion
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BEYONCÉ WON THE SUPERBOWL!!!
It's a known fact that if you change the channel away from the Super Bowl, the universe ends.
If any of these FFAs aren't about Beyoncé, something is wrong.
Go home, Superdome. You're drunk.
If you're going to mock the Greek system, be a little more original, please.
To the guy walking up 14 drinking out of a red solo cup at 8 a.m. on a Monday.. It's a little early, don't you think?
To the person who used "like" nine times trying to try the frat guys, not funny. Just plain unintelligent.
You know you play too much Xbox when you make it to class barely on time and hear the "achievement unlocked" noise sound off in your head.
Can I please go back to math classes that actually have numbers? I miss numbers.
For those of you that don't know; the Blackboard app works terribly.
Really miss Tamagotchis sometimes, ya know?
I wonder who writes the calendar for the Kansan. They must be really cool and clever.
To the person who questioned why we freak out when seeing someone like Kevin Young. You disgrace Jayhawk nation... smh.
In other news, at least our football team has never lost in Allen Fieldhouse.
EDUCATION
Guys, Beyoncé did have a wardrobe malfunction. It was subtle and quick, but it happened. Kudos to those who caught it.
Hey girl, I like your shoelaces
Instead of freaking out about athletes, you should be worried about how unathletic you are.
I LET THE DOGS OUT.
The exact words in a text to my mother this morning; "I sold my soul for a calculator."
Dear hipsters: I like "vintage" style as much as the next person. But I think trying to bring back fur-lined denim jackets may be a step too far. Sincerely, normal people.
Evidently, one of your 99 problems is grammar.
This girl just walked through the Fieldhouse with a K-STATE sweatshirt on. Uhhh… What are you doing here?
To whoever saw Tyler Self and didn't freak out. Thank you, I'm not alone.
From the restroom: Texting = OK,
Facebook = OK, Snapchat = Awkward,
Instagram = *Test in Progress*
Dear Squirrels of KU Guy, how can I find you?
Are public schools teaching enough?
I am encouraging a discussion on education, right here, right now.
Over winter break, I spent a week in Chicago visiting schools as a member of KU Alternative Breaks' Teach For America group. Teach For America sent most of us to charter schools created in response to the lack of confidence and ability of the Chicago Public School system to teach students the necessary material for them to succeed in education. I visited UNO Soccer Academy, one of the newest additions to the UNO Charter School Network. To be honest, I was surprised to find it similar to my own public elementary school.
UNO Soccer Academy named its classrooms after countries that have hosted, or will host, the World Cup. The classroom assigned to my partner and I was the 8th grade mathematics, science and social studies room. I expected to meet students who misbehaved, did not listen in class and caused trouble with others. However, the school was extremely structured and was not much different from my own public school experience in the Shawnee Mission School District.
The school has only been open for two years, and many of the students are catching up to the required benchmarks necessary for them to hit before moving on to high school next year. The main difference I found from my experience was the requirement for the students to apply to five high schools, including public schools, instead of simply matriculating to the next level in the network.
I could not stop questioning whether charter schools were that much better than public schools. I understand my experience in the suburban area of Kansas City was more affluent than the southside Chicago neighborhood I was visiting, but how could public schools be so terrible to warrant parents putting their children in charter schools. Is the public education system that bad?
For decades, presidential candidates mention the need to reform or enhance the education system in the United States, yet it seems very little has been done. In May of 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced a program to serve low-income children to help then succeed in school known as Project Head
Start. In addition, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act first passed during the Johnson administration and later developed into the legislation known as "No Child Left Behind" in 2001 under President George W. Bush.
Recently, President Obama campaigned on the platform that education is necessary for the recovery process of the United States. President Obama's "Plan For A 2nd Term" states his first agenda is to "Make education & training a national priority," according to his website.
The issue I have found in researching this topic and the actions taken toward American education is the lack of funding and implementation. The concept for "No Child Left Behind" was brilliant: make schools responsible for the students. Obama changed the focus to making educators responsible for student success, and I back it up whole-heartedly. However, when participating in some of the testing required for the legislation, all I wanted to do was scream, I disliked standardized testing because I was in certain advanced courses that caused me to step back from material I was learning so I could pass the same exam given to me the previous year.
I am fortunate to have grown up in a loving family who liked to read books, talk about issues and learn about interesting subjects. According to education, com, research by two University of Kansas professors found that children possibly heard and recognized about 30,000 words by the time they were 3-years-old, and that may have helped them in school. This research may have helped my personal education.
In kindergarten, I remember my teacher offering the first competition to us asking us to read as many books as possible by the end of the year. I won the competition with 444 books read, but many of them were repeat bedtime stories. By the time my
sister went to school, she won her competition with more than 800 books read.
My education experience is different from the students I worked with in Chicago. There, students want to learn and be better than the stereotypes placed on them by society. It was an enlightening experience that I brought back to school here in Lawrence.
On Jan. 11, a three-judge panel ruled that due to negation of a 2005 state Supreme Court ruling promising to increase funding, the Kansas Legislature should raise funding for public schools to $4,492 per student. In response to this ruling, Kansas legislators are proposing a change of power for the state judicial branch in mandating the amount of money allocated to education.
This raises the question: Do government officials want to help education, or do they say they want to help and then not follow through? Is Kansas education in trouble? What could help? I'm all ears, and hopefully, so are the politicians.
Warren is a junior majoring in journalism from Overland Park.
RELATIONSHIPS
Be careful when you live together before marriage
Now that it's February, the search for next year's apartment has begun for several students. But if you're looking for an apartment with your significant other, be careful.
For years, research has suggested that premarital cohabitation increases the odds of divorce for couples who want to tie the knot, leaving partners searching for different living spaces year after year. However, newer research out of Bowling Green State University has debunked it. The study was co-written by National Center for Family and Marriage Research co-founder Wendy Manning.
The study found that in contrast to others who have suggested throughout the years that premarital cohabitation can be detrimental, 82 percent of women who lived with their future spouses were still married by their five-year anniversary, which is also true of women who chose not to live before saving. "I do."
Leslie Mann (no, not Judd Apatow's wife, a different Leslie) of the Chicago Tribune said the study also revealed that those numbers for men were nearly identical, coming in at a close 83 percent. Participants in the study live nationwide, totaling 2,003 women and 1,483 men.
In the wake of older studies warning us that shacking up with our significant others before
exchanging vows can cause harm, this study is important because it offers some peace of mind for those of us who wish to share an address before we share a last name.
Yale University sociologist Neil Bennett disagrees with Manning and says that if they live with their partners before tying the knot, women were 80 percent more likely to separate and eventually divorce. Also, according to William Axinn of the University of Chicago, people who live together before marriage are more accepting of divorce.
However, if I were taking a gamble as large as living with someone and being married — quite possibly the biggest one many of us will ever take — I'd like to make sure I know how the game works before going all in. Signing a lease together is a steep bet in and of itself, but if things go south, at least it's easier — and not to mention cheaper — to get out of a lease than a marriage
After all, we're consistently advised to look before we leap. So now, why stop at living together before marriage?
With that said, though, at risk of sounding like a cliché counselor, couples should not rush into a living situation together. There is no magic number of months or years that a couple should date exclusively before living together, but if the idea of sharing a space together doesn't feel right, that's because it's not.
But some of us can meet halfway if we want to test the waters but aren't willing to commit to an official living situation. When I was "homeless" for two weeks in between leases last summer, I lived with my boyfriend, which served as a test round for our moving in together for real in August.
It was weird in the beginning because my things were all over his apartment, and I was still happy to have my own space again in the end, but it gave us some sort of an idea of what to expect when we really do move in together.
In the end, moving in with your partner before tying the knot (or even just living together without marriage) is your own preregative.
However, it's important to keep in mind that being best friends with your significant other is one thing. Being roommates is quite another.
Keith is a graduate student in education from Wichita. Follow her on Twitter @Rachel UDKeith.
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
Was Beyoncé's performance a good halftime show?
Follow us on Twitter @JDK_Opinion.
Tweet us your opinions, and we just
might publish them.
@kaaails
@Kaailaals
@UDK Opinion Was Beyonce's performance good?... Does Mizzou suck? Do frat guys wear pastel?
queenBey
@PantyyDroppaaa
@UDK Answer Yes! She had a baby and was still FIERCE.
@hawkman021
POLITICS
SHAWKITAN021
@UOK. Opinion it was terrible Bruce in 09 and U2 in 02 were the best in my opinion
Conspiracy theories are dead and gone
Somewhere at Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies in North Korea, a precocious student is questioning whether his late-great leader, Kim Jong-Il, actually scored 11 "hole-in-ones" in his first ever round of golf. What if he wasn't so great after all, but was actually a manipulative dictator who controlled every word in the newspapers? What if it's all a conspiracy?
And somewhere, talking a bit too loud on the stoop of Hashinger Hall, or mumbling between muffled bits of freshly-defrosted Mrs. E's pizza, there's a college student wondering if the President staged a fake mass murder in a Connecticut elementary school in an effort to take away our guns and leave us defenseless for a government takeover. He almost fell for the whole dead child, sobbing parent trap that the media tried to pull, but with the help of his own intellect and prophetic insight delivered in the form of a cruely-made WordPress blog by a reliable source (i.e. someone who can use the Internet) he knows the truth. It's all a conspiracy.
You guys are gonna make me sound like the worst liberal and worst journalist ever, but chill out on the whole "freedom of speech" thing and trust the system every once in awake. We don't live in North Korea. This is America in 2013. No fact is too small to escape the persnickety clutches of the media. For God's sake, Mitt Romney was heavily scrutinized for putting his dog on the roof of his car; we have a seven-year timeline documenting Obama's fondness for Nicorette. And it's not just politicians – ask Deadspin what it thinks about Manti Teo's girlfriend. So if someone important – like, I don't know, the leader of the free world – ordered a kidnapping of 20 children and six adults from an elementary school, you better believe there would be an onslaught of user-submitted YouTube videos and sepia-filtered Instagrams of kids climbing into tinted vans plastering the screens of America's news networks.
The age of the conspiracy theory is over. Make no mistake, they've played an important role in history; we can forever speculate on Jesus' marital status or the possible economic motives of a war or, more recently, whether more than one man was involved in the assassination of JFK. Many
of these theories have merit but lack evidence because people of the past were too busy figuring out how to keep the house warm and not die of cholera. They didn't have the resources, the time or the freedom to record every single event. But we do now. So why do people still believe that the world is out to get them? Because it's easier than confronting the real problem.
Pay attention to the peddlers of conspiracy theories. They're mostly college students struggling in class and chained to their student loans, or down-on-their-luck, low-wage workers. They don't trust the government because it's not working for them, so it's obviously working against them.
While the number is significantly lower than 47 percent, there is undoubtedly a portion of the population that just wants to be the victim and will find an enemy wherever they can. It's a matter of bipartisan idiocy. Some Conservatives want to believe Obama is a Kenyan socialist with his sights set on dismantling the GOP and freedom in general. Some Liberals believe that wealthy businessmen rig every single election and the American Idol voting polls in favor of Republicans. And KU fans blame each loss on the refs' undying hatred for the lavhawks.
The truth is out there, and denying it is not a victimless crime. There are still Holocaust survivors who are told that they are lying about watching their family go to the ovens. Parents in Newtown who refuse to talk to reporters, not because they're hiding anything, but because they can't bear to address a world that doesn't have their child in it. So amidst all this debate over the Second Amendment, try and use your First Amendment rights a little more responsibly as well.
Webber is a freshman majoring in journalism and political science from Prairie Village. Follow him on Twitter @wmwebber
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