OPINION
MONDAY, AUGUST 30, 2004
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
www.kansan.com
EDITORIAL
Entrance barriers hinder international students
Heavy-handed security and a new, inhospitable American image are complicating the flow of foreign students into U.S. higher education. As the semester begins, attention should be paid to those students who, despite their best efforts, have not made it onto campus: international students who bring sizable amounts of out-of-state tuition, diversity and expertise, among other things.
According to National Public Radio commentary on Aug. 15, applications from foreign students to U.S. universities have declined by nearly one-third. Joe Potts, director of international student and scholar services, said the University of Kansas is no exception and is experiencing decreased numbers in international applications and orientation.
Of course, security concerns may be expected to trump this sacrifice and justify the bureaucracy that keeps out "dangerous" students simply hoping to acquire a chance at success. The same hyper-nationalist politicians who fancy the United States as the city upon a hill — a beacon of knowledge, freedom and success — have ironically decided to score points by turning the hill into a fortress.
U. S. officials must not understand the value of educational exchange. Other targets for international terrorism: Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom have well-coordinated national efforts to recruit top foreign students. Institutions in the United States are left to fend for themselves in increasingly competitive recruitment efforts.
Paranoia, not prudence, is what characterizes the current level of alert. It is true that three Sept. 11 hijackers violated their student visa terms. Completely open borders would clearly be a bad idea. But the senators from both parties who
proposed a six-month moratorium on the issuance of student visas have mistakenly categorized all foreign students as enemies, taking a truly and ironically dangerous position given what these students bring to universities across the country.
Foreign students are, quite literally, assets rather than enemies, and the United States should rally organized support to bring more. Always paying out-of-state tuition, these international students subsidize education for Americans. They make up approximately one-fifth of nonresident students enrolled fulltime at the University. They fill University coffers that, in turn, hire talented professors and fund important research and scholarships.
Culturally, foreign students are valuable. Campususes lacking diversity, especially those in white-bred states such as Kansas, may have few other options when it comes to including students with experiences representative of a world in which more than 95 percent of people are not Americans.
Indeed, Americans accrue much knowledge from these international students. Students learn from their experience and University research staffs profit from their expertise. Many graduate programs simply could not operate without foreign students filling classrooms, assisting with research and teaching undergraduates.
Ambitious politicians and bureaucrats could be content with new tracking and profiling systems already in place; no need to squander the benefits of educational exchange. Their fear of all things foreign ought not take security too far, forcing innocent foreign students to give up their American dream and academic opportunity. In the process that dream may very well be sacrificed for Americans.
Free for All
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
length, or reject all submissions. Letters to the editor should be no longer than 200 words and guest columns should not exceed 650 words. To submit a letter to the editor or a column, e-mail the document to opinion@kansas.com with your name, hometown, year in school or position and phone number.
For more comments, go to www.kansan.com.
length, or reject all submissions. Letters to the editor should be no longer than 200 words and guest columns should not exceed 650 words. To submit a letter to the editor or a column, e-mail the document to opinion@kansas.com with your name, hometown, year in school or position and phone number.
I just wanna say that I think it's awesome that Lil' Flip is rocking the Jayhawk hat in his "Sunshine" video. Way to go, Rock Chalk Jayhawk!
This is ridiculous! Have you seen all the traffic on campus? Please, if you live on campus, do us all a favor and walk. It'll cut down on the traffic and maybe you won't get hit. Thanks.
Who is this mysterious Snake Man everyone keeps talking about?
I just wanna say I have a friend who's a midget and I bet she could whip Arrah Nielsen at basketball.
Bob Billings played basketball at Kansas in the 1950s and also got to receive his undergrad degree from here.
I was just wondering if everybody kept their Sharpie next to their bed?
TALK TO US
Henry C. Jackson
editor
64-4810 or hjackson@kansan.com
Donovan Attkinson and Andrew Vaupel
managing editors
864-4810 or datkinson@kansen.com and
avaupel@kansen.com
Anna Clovis and Samia Khan
 opinion editors
 864-4924 or opinion@kansan.com
STINSON'S VIEW
Justin Roberts business manager 864-4358 or advertising@kansan.com
Stephanie Graham
retail sales manager
864-4358 or advancing@tansan.com
Malcolm Gibson
general manager and news adviser
864.7867 or mgibson@kanasan.com
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
The Kansan welcomes letters to the editors and guest column, submitted by students, faculty and alumni.
The Kansun reserves the right to edit, cut to
Laura rose Barr, Ty Baaver, Ryan Good, Anna Gregory, Jack Henry-Rhoads, Kelly Hollowell, Nate Kairlin, Jay Kimmel, Stephanie Lovett, Taylor Price, Noel Rasor, Ryan Scarrow, John Tann, Anne Wetmar and Michael Wood
For any questions, call Anna Clovis or Samia Khan at 864-4294 or e-mail at opinion@kansan.com. General questions should be directed to the editor at editor@kansan.com
GUEST COLUMN GUIDELINES
LETTER GUIDELINES
Maximum Length:
200 word limit
**Maximum Length:**
650 word limit
***ude:*
Author's name
Class, hometown (student)
Position (faculty member)
**Also:**
The Kansan will not print guest columns that attack another columnist.
Include:
instruct
Author's name and telephone number
Class, hometown (student)
Position (faculty member)
SUBMIT TO
E-mail:
opinion@kansan.com
Hurd copy:
Kansan newsroom
111 Stuafft-Flint
Kline's concerns hit wrong note
Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline is walking a fine line between censor and control freak.
GUEST COLUMN
Kline pulled albums from 33 musical artists, including Lou Reed, OutKast, Stone Temple Pilots and Wyclef Jean, out of CDs intended for Kansas public libraries. Kline said he exercised discernment and didn't promote violence and racism and misogyny in rejecting the album titles, which were provided to Kansas in a consumer protection lawsuit. Kline's censorship of songs that include violence, sexism and racism may find approval from Kansans who hate rap, but how would they feel if Kline had chucked tunes that were anti-Bush or pro-choice?
The real issue is free expression, and whether Kline can decide what messages are appropriate for citizens to get from their public libraries. The CDs won in the lawsuit against the recording industry are the property of Kansans. They were not meant to join the squeaky-clean Partridge Family, Tom Jones and Kathie Lee Gifford albums that could be in Phill Kline's personal collection.
If libraries want to buy and lend out albums he removed from the shipments, such as Cypress Hill's "Live at the Fillmore," they can do so, Kline says, but they'll have to pay for the album on their own. The scariest part of this is that some public library employees approve of Kline's censorship.
An official of the Kansas Library Association, which advocates for public libraries, was quoted in an Associated Press story as saying it didn't have a problem with Kline's actions. If the people who are supposed to protect the public's free-speech rights don't, who will?
LOUISE STAUFFER
opinion@kansan.com
When Kline became attorney general, he swore to defend the state and U.S. constitutions, which both state government can't abridge freedom of expression. Whether a song is singing about blue skies or killing a cop, it doesn't matter, it's expression. He was elected to be the state's lawyer, not to impose his morals and tastes on the public's libraries.
Just think about how much time Kline's office wasted rejecting these albums. Out of 51,000 CDs, 1,600 by 26 musicians were trashed. A Kline spokesman was quoted saying that the attorney general and staff looked at Internet databases of lyrics to determine which albums to pull. Some were rejected because of the staff's prior knowledge of their content.
anything else that needs to be done around there? Are songs about bitches and hoes more dangerous to the public than consumer fraud and crime?
This isn't an afternoon project, this stuff takes time. I wonder if there was
In announcing that certain messages are unacceptable for public libraries, what kind of message is Kline sending to public librarians? In five minutes at the Lawrence Public Library, I found copies of Meinkampf, A Clockwork Orange, Helter Skelter, Madame Bovary and many works by William S. Burroughs. These books including everything Kline says do not mesh with the values of Kansans. They talk about genocide, murder, drug use and violence against law enforcement or have sexual content. They take readers to places that are sometimes dangerous and disturbing. But they are reflections of the world, perceptions of reality.
How long is it before they, too, are pulled from the shelves? A librarian was quoted as saying he didn't mind Kline pulling the albums because rap wasn't popular west of Salina. Well, neither is the Manson family, but their story still got into the library.
If the attorney general is looking for some useful late summer reading from his local library, here's one suggestion: He should check out a copy of the U.S. Constitution, put on his favorite Raffi CD, kick back and read what the First Amendment says. Then maybe he'll start singing a new tune.
Staffer is a Holland, Mich., senior in journalism and English.
Cast vote on issues not images
The more baseless political rhetoric I hear in this presidential campaign, the more I think I'll move to Mexico.
If you've been paying attention, the most recent attacks on John Kerry attempt to undermine his multi-medal military record; the typical attacks on George W. Bush — that he's just a blockheaded puppet — remain steady.
POLITICS
The problem with these attacks, from both campaigns, is that they attempt to win your vote by stooping down to playground insults about the goodness or badness of each man and not his plan to make America more prosperous and secure. As a voter, it's insulting.
Americans won't debate issues anymore.
SEAN PAUZAUSKIE opinion@kansan.com
I have an example: our healthcare system. It's in trouble. Premiums are soaring. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that in the last calendar year 43 million Americans had no health insurance. When you turn 23, if you're on your parents' insurance, you won't have any either.
Believe it or not, both candidates have opinions on fixing this problem. Kerry thinks his administration could cut health insurance premiums for businesses, making it cheaper for them to hire employees and expand coverage to
include every child; Bush thinks personal untaxed health savings accounts will help solve the problem, giving each American a choice of how much to save based on how sick they think they might get.
Whether these ideas can fix an undeniably breaking healthcare system really isn't the point. Other issues are floating around out there in the ether of hallway teasing about the candidates' hair and I.Q.: the Iraq war, outsourcing of American jobs, the abortion debate, the environment, homeland security and education. Where Kerry and Bush stand on these issues form their vision for the future of our country.
To the credit of some scathing pundits, politics is an undeniably dirty and deceitful game. I worked for a congressional committee this summer on
MON
Capitol Hill, and I saw a good share of slimy, crooked and simply bizarre events. For instance, during Reagan's procession to the Capitol, I heard a protester yell that the man, who many credit with ending the Cold War, was also "dumber than a hot dog."
I don't know about you, but I have yet to figure out what that means. Should Jimmy Carter have trumped Reagan in the 1980 election with bratwurst-level intelligence? With polish-sausage savvy?
The point is moot. This lowest-common-denominator approach to political discourse might be more fun than fuller cognizance, but it further polarizes the electorate and threatens to dumb down the upcoming generation of voters. This debt will cost more than money.
So as the Republican National Convention begins Monday and the attacks from both sides flare, remember to cast your vote for something concrete. Saying that Kerry "looks French" or that "Curious George should stop the monkey business" accomplishes little. Help give hot dogs back their good name and prevent a mass migration south.
Pauzauskie is a Topela senior in English and cell biology.
I
---