Opinion
Kansan
Published daily since 1912
Julie Wood, Editor Brandi Byram, Business manager Laura Roddy, Managing editor Shauntae Blue, Retail sales manager Cory Graham, Managing editor Dan Simon, Sales and marketing adviser Tom Eblen, General manager, news adviser Scott Valler, Technology coordinator
Wednesday, October 20, 1999
Tribune Media Services
Editorials
Kansan report card
PASS
- Timetables — For the first time in a long time, timetables are available at locations other than the bookstores. Finally.
Late Night Food Drive — The Dillons-sponsored food drive brought thousands of people to Allen Fieldhouse to watch pick-up basketball and amateur musicians in the middle of the night. Way to go Dillons and students.
The Community Mercantile — The Merc celebrates its 25th anniversary as an independent alternative. Thanks to the Merc, searching all around town for bulk lentils isn't even an issue.
■ Audio-Reader Garden — Audio Reader plants a garden for sight-impaired people. Audio Reader continues to expand its commendable mission.
FAIL
Wilt Resolution — Student Senate drafts a resolution to let students know that Wilt Chamberlain was a great man. Student Senate: If you're looking for something productive to do, maybe you could organize a midnight food drive.
Disappearing TA — Alleged sex-offending graduate student flees the University, possibly to India.
U. S. News and World Report — The magazine gives KU's School of Engineering a misinformed, sub-par ranking. After our drop out of the Princeton party school ranking, the rest of the students feel engineering's pain.
Welcome Toni-Marie Montgomery
Last week, Toni-Marie Montgomery, former director of the School of Music at Arizona State University, was named dean of fine arts at the University of Kansas. The editorial board gives a nod of approval and thanks to Chancellor Hemenway for this outstanding decision.
Montgomery's credentials are impressive. She holds a doctor of musical arts and master of music degrees in piano chamber music and accompanying from the University of Michigan. She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of music degree in piano performance from the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts.
since 1995, Montgomery has presented workshops at the National
The University of Kansas will benefit from the skills of this renowned musician
Association of Schools of Music and International Council of Fine Arts Deans annual conferences. This January, she will serve on a panel at the International Association of Jazz Educators conference.
The list goes on, and it's clear that her appointment as dean of fine arts here at KU will greatly benefit the School of Fine Arts and resonate throughout the University. Her goals are high, as she wants to see KU's fine arts program considered among the top five nationwide.
The hiring of Montgomery, an African-American woman, not only speaks well for the School of Fine Arts, but for the chancellor as well.
When Chancellor Hemenway came to the University of Kansas in 1996, he set a bald agenda. An important part of his goals dealt with improving and increasing minority recruitment at the University, including students and faculty. In fact, Chancellor Hemenway went as far as to say that it was his goal to have 100 minority faculty members by 2000.
He hasn't attained that goal, and it's doubtful that it will be realized by the new year. Dean Montgomery's appointment, however, is another important step in the right direction.
1
Kansan staff
Matt Dunehoo for the editorial board
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Chad Bettes . . . Editorial
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Broaden your mind: Today's quote
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"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." — Berthold Auerbach
How to submit letters and guest columns
Letters: Should be double-spaced typed and fewer than 200 words. Letters must include the author's signature, name, address and telephone number plus class and hometown if a University student. Faculty or staff must identify their positions.
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spaced type with fewer than 700 words.
The writer must be willing to be photo-
captured for the column to run.
All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stuffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Chad Bettel, or Seth Hoffman at 864-4924.
if you have general questions or comments, e-mail the page staff (opinion@kansan.com) or call 864-4924.
Perspective
The right to be offensive What is freedom for all?
let us now speak of freedom. It rears its head every day. Locally, with the University seal. Nationally, with the elephant-dung Virgin of New York.
We deal with it whenever we discuss such matters. But, there's been a trap of late. A lot of peo
ters. But, there been a trap
fall into it. They mistake
it for freedom and mask it in
liberty's clothing.
They wish to remove offensive things. Things that are filth. Things that are insensitive to other cultures and religions.
This is not freedom. You do not have the natural right to live your life without being offended by something. Offensive things do no harm to our innate rights; they merely upset us,
Loader columnist
opinion@kansan.com
But we stamp it out, and call it freedom anyway. Because it's easier.
It is easy to rally behind it because it sincerely seeks to wipe out genuinely disgusting things. "Don't you want to see the artificial cow's head swarming with live maggotss?" wrote a recent guest columnist, speaking against the New York exhibit. "This is art. This is freedom of speech."
The right calls it morality. The left calls it sensitivity.
Yeah. It is. Did you expect it
adom isn't always pretty
Freedom is the men in white robes and pointy hoods marching down the street shouting hate. Freedom is the pervert in the dim, shoddy room looking at obscene pictures.
room looking at obese men. Freedom is the crackhead burning the American flag, right next to a monument in honor of the veterans who died for their nation.
Freedom is Fred Phelps screaming about how a slain young man is going to burn in hell for eternity.
Freedom is the wild-eyed man whispering about how the government should be overthrown.
Freedom is the cuttist in the airport, chanting,
staring, pushing pamphlets.
But it's often beautiful, too. And sometimes the ugliness that most of us see is the birth of a new form of beauty.
Freedom is being able to talk to God however you like. (Not that long ago, being Catholic in America meant looking over your shoulder. "There oughta be a law." In the 1860s, we tried to expel Jews from the central U.S. We liked the idea, but Lincoln concluded that the order violated the Constitution and reversed it.)
Freedom is being assured, by law, that your race doesn't make you a second class citizen. (1942. "Everyone knows those Jaws are all spies. I mean, they're citizens, but they're Japs. There oughta be a law. Off to the camps. Off to the horse-stalls-turned-barracks. Sell everything. This is for freedom. There oughta be a law.")
Freedom is being able to speak your mind with out fear that the men in sunglasses and suits will take you away. (1950. "He's a commie. I mean, he knew that pinko lawyer, so he's obviously a commie. There oughta be a law. Better tap his phone. Better bug his room. Better slap him around a bit, get him fired, execute him on a charge of whatever. This is for freedom. This is for God and country, because, you know, he's one of them. And they shouldn't have rights. None at all. There oughta be a law.")
Freedom is the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. telling us about his dream. ("There oughta be a law," someone in the crowd mutters. "Negro. Why do they let him talk his poison?" Much of the nation silently agrees and wishes they'd arrest King.)
Freedom is often ugly. But you have to take the good with the bad, the offensive with the inoffensive. Because no-one ever died from being offended. No great catastrophe has ever fallen upon people who have had their morals bruised. The Bill of Rights was not written to protect popular things; popular needs need no protection. We cannot make exceptions, because the only time that freedom becomes important is when everyone is shouting that, just this once, there oughta be a law.
Filth is just as deserving of protection as beauty. A university does not lose its right to portray its mission in an emblem merely because someone might find that emblem to be offensive or exclusionary.
Stamping the bad things out is easy. Freedom is hard.
Let us not shirk from hard tasks.
Loader is a Henderson, Nev., junior in journalism.
Graduating in December may not be best option
If you are thinking about graduating in December, you may have discovered that there are some pitfalls. Being a December graduate myself. I have several arguments to convince you that it is better to wait until May.
Let's start with commencement and the celebrations that happen at the end of the academic year. If you don't care about the whole walking-down-the-Hill tradition, December graduation may not be a problem. But I do love these kind of festivities. Since my freshman year, I have looked forward to the oop-
many yella I have unity to wear my cap and gown with thousands of other KU students as they walk through the Campanile.
Because I don't know where I'm going to be in May 2000, I walked the Hill with the class of 1999 this past May. Although I loved the ceremony, something was missing. Maybe it was the ones who had come with me but weren't graduating yet. And because it wasn't my "real" graduation, my parents decided
Mariana
Paiva
guest columnist
opinion@kansas.com
Besides the complications with commencement, there is a strange feeling that hits you after you come back from an internship that might become your real job. If I had a full year to go, I would have a better attitude towards my classes. But because I am probably the only senior taking Biology 100 to complete a second major, I started to have serious thoughts about dropping that class and graduating with only one major. I feel that it isn't right for me to be in school anymore, and I should be working to pay my own bills. What can I possibly learn in this last semester that
mat only my mom should come to do the usual things: take pictures, videotape and remember everything to tell our relatives.
Of course there are advantages to staying an extra six months in Kansas to graduate in December. Unfortunately, besides being able to hang out with the friends that I made during these years, I haven't seen many yet.
Paiva is a Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, senior in Latin American studies and journalism.
If there had been another option when we saw the way this apartment looked, we would probably have given up and tried to find a new one. But because there were no other places that could offer us a lease contract for only six months we decided to get used to our colorful carpet and enjoy our home sweet home.
Guns and toys a bad comparison
I haven't learned already? I'm trying to be patient and look for the bright side of this story. Maybe something will happen this semester that will change my future and show that I was deeply wrong.
My last argument to convince you that it is better to graduate in May is the serious problem Lawrence has with housing. It is almost impossible to find a nice apartment for six months at a price that you would regularly pay in a one-year contract. My boyfriend and I started looking for six-month lease apartments last March, and finally in the middle of July he found an ad in the Kansan announcing the apartment we now have.
Feedback
Before, all the apartments we found that rented for only six months were studios and cost more than $400. Although we found this apartment at a relatively normal cost, we soon found out that not everything was so perfect. The apartment the manager showed to my boyfriend was brand new, and of course looked really nice. On the other hand, ours has dirty stains on the wall and at the main door, and red and yellow stains cover the carpet. I even brought a nice rug from Brazil, but the stains are so spread out that they are impossible to cover.
Sigh. Another editorial calling for further restrictions to be placed on firearms. Ostensibly, to "heal the wounds ... across the nation."
In reading your article, I wonder if the author has any experience with firearms. His use of the phrase "weapon of terror" leads me to believe not. The TEC-DC9 is chambered in 9 mm parabellum, a round that would have great difficulty penetrating body armor. However, even the most common deer-hunting rifle in .30-06 will penetrate most soft body armor.
To compare toys and guns is a stretch. The 2nd Amendment protects the individual's rights to keep and bear arms. Any small arms. To determine the meaning of a "well-regulated militia," and whether only "sporting" arms should be owned, I suggest the author read the Federalist Papers.
But hey, why not sacrifice
Nate Wilke
freedom for safety? To heal wounds, of course.
I think that people should have to undergo a background check, get a license, and pay a special tax before they exercise other rights, like freedom of speech, or to assemble, or to practice whatever religion they want to. We don't want irresponsible people to have those freedoms, do we?
Ann Arbor graduate student