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
Thursday, October 14, 1999
Jamie Patterson / KANSAN
Editorials
Regents system needs to protect rights of homosexuals in policy
Last year Emporia State University officials removed sexual orientation from the university's anti-discrimination policy. Not long after that, the University of Kansas Student Senate passed a resolution condemning the action. Senate members are taking this a step further by petitioning the Board of Regents to draft a policy for all Regents schools that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The editorial board agrees with this wholeheartedly.
Emporia State's current policy simply is wrong. To deny individuals academic and employment opportunities because they are gay is the definition of discrimination. Regardless of one's personal feelings about homosexuality, the argument
Emporia's removal of sexual orientation from discrimination policy could cause problems
that sexual orientation would preclude anyone from being a good student or employee is absurd.
Senate members who are working to correct this situation are acting within their roles and are taking a very important step. Emporia State is one of our sister schools, a school that is expected to have the same quality of education as the University. To ignore the potential plight of our fellow Kansas students would be tremendously undesirable. Not only could they suffer simply for attending school in another part of
Whether we like to admit it, we live in a society with vocal sects of people who are hateful toward gays. To give these groups any loopholes to potentially target gays must be avoided.
the state, but they would be living under a precedent that could eventually spread.
We encourage the KU student body to make it known that they agree with Senate's action. Students can do this by writing the Regents or by contacting student body President Korb Maxwell or senators Partha Mazumdar, Erin Simpson, Lisa Braun or Christa Madrigal to find out how they can best help.
High school athlete knew the rules
Erik Goodman for the editorial board
Rules are not made to be broken, and unfortunately, some people must learn this lesson the hard way. This is what happened to Ryan Lilja, a 17-year-old Shawnee Mission Northwest senior football player, who was dismissed from the team after he broke the school's alcohol policy.
Athletes in the Shawnee Mission School District sign a pledge that says they will not drink and that the punishment, should they drink and get caught, is a year-long suspension. Lilja knew this when he attended a party where alcohol was served, and he knew what would happen if he were caught drinking. But maybe, like any kid, he did not expect to get caught.
According to police, Lilja was drinking.
Lilja signed a contract stating that he wouldn't drink; now he must face the consequences
and now he must face the consequences. For him, the stakes were high. He was a senior and will miss his final season. He was a prospect for a Division I football scholarship, and that is in jeopardy.
alter someone's future to this extent. It is especially unfortunate for Lilja because this is the first year that the school district lengthened the suspension to one year, instead of the 23 days it had been in the past. This punishment might be too harsh, as many zero-tolerance policies are. But there is no doubt that Lilja knew what the consequences would be if he were caught drinking, and he is paying the price.
It is unfortunate that one mistake could
The other thing to remember is that he was not suspended from school or put in jail, even though he did break the law. He merely had a privilege, the privilege to play sports, stripped away. Playing football is a privilege, not a right. When one breaks a known rule, privileges should be revoked.
Emily Haverkamp for the editorial board
Kansan staff
Chad Bettes ... Editorial
Seth Hoffman ... Associate editorial
Carl Kaminski ... News
Juan H. Heath ... Online
Chris Fickett ... Sports
Brad Hallier ... Associate sports
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Broaden your mind: Today's quote
"The word 'genius' isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Ulster."<sup>27</sup> Thomas.
How to submit letters and guest columns
Letters: Should be double-spaced typec 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.
Einstein."—Joe Thelsman
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.
Guest columns: Should be double-
spaced typed with fewer than 700 words.
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If you have general questions or comments, e-mail the page staff (opinion@kansan.com) or call 864-4924
Perspective
W welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Today, we are fortunate to feature the British exhibit "Sensation." Before we go further, let me reiterate the health warning printed on the show's advertisement: "The contents of the exhibition may cause shock, vomiting, confusion, panic, euphoria and anxiety."
First Amendment protects, but it's not a dung deal
details. But do fund details, such as elephant dung and dead animals, deserve public funding? New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani doesn't think so.
Katrina
Hull
guest columnist
opinion@ksan.com
Giuliani, who referred to the exhibit as "sick stuff," pulled $7.2 million in city funds from the museum and has filed with the court to terminate the museum's lease.
The exhibit "Sensation," by definition of its title, causes heightened public interest through
Oh good, I see you've all received barf bags from the protesters outside. Let's move along. Here, on the left, is
Marc Quinn's "Self," a man's bust carved in nine pints of the artist's frozen blood.
On to the next room, where Jake and Dinos Chapman's fused figures of young children in sexual poses are displayed. But first, we must stop to admire Ofilli's "Holy Virgin Mary," an acrylic, oil, paper collage with elephant dung on linen. Please note the clump of elephant dung that garnishes Mary's left breast and how the artist has scattered and pasted genitals and buttocks clipped from porn magazines.
Disgust may turn heads, but not for long. The disgusted reader trashes the Kansan and doesn't bother to pick it up the next day. The disgusted parade attendee comments, "How moronic to dress as a bong and flip off the student body." Is negative attention better than no attention at all?
The Brooklyn Museum of Art thinks so, and it's paying off with record turnouts at the exhibit. Which leads to another question: Did this notorious of an event need public funding? The same distasteful statement originally could have been made with private funds.
I applaud Giuliani canceling public funds in response to the museum's decision to display the exhibit in its entirety. At the soul of the controversy is Chris Offili's "Holy Virgin Mary," which uses elephant dung and pornographic magazine cutouts to embellish Mary. Catholic groups are enraged, despite Offili's claim that dung represents fertility.
Public money can't support religion, and if shouldn't be used to attack it either. What if Martin Luther King Jr. and not the Virgin Mary was dung covered? This isn't about the First Amendment or the free expression that "Sensation" makes. This is about public money going towards something that's distasteful at the least.
Little precedent exists for New York courts to decide whether Giuliani overstepped his mayoral bounds, creating potential for the Supreme Court to answer the question of whether distastefulness deserves your money.
Facing us, in the formaldehyde tank, is a cross-sectioned pig by Damien Hirst, entitled "This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home." Later, we'll see another work by Hirst.
Sensational art (or journalism) functions through its shock value — the extreme. Lately, local sensations boil down to the same issue of taste. Strippers adorned the front page of the Oct. 1 Kansan. Creators of Stephenon Scholarship Hall's middle-finger float cry First Amendment after being told their float could not enter the homecoming parade with the third finger erect.
Wait, we're not through. You paid $5.50 to get in.
Don't you want to see the artificial cow's head
swarming with live maggots? This is art. This is
freedom of speech.
Maybe Stephenson had a right to be in the parade, but what about taste? What statement is being made? And, more importantly, is disgust the desired sentiment?
wherein he uses a shark suspended in the same medium of formaldehyde.
This is freedom of speech, but I don't want to pay for dung.
Hull is an Inman junior in journalism and a member of the Kansan editorial board.
There are better causes to fight than the Lazer
It's really nice to see all of the energy that many students on this campus are putting forth to try and actively change something about the world around them. It's unfortunate, however, that all of this energy has to be wasted on such a meaningless concern as the new Lazer
for that instead of focusing it on real issues such as student rights or social justice. Do you remember two summers ago when the University signed a contract with Coke and the students got really upset and sent around petitions, made T-shirts, and planned benefit concerts? Of course you don't because it never happened.
Aaron
Major
columnist
opinion at kansas can
When commercialization was a hot topic on campus the most that people did was complain about it. but no
Any group that jumps on the 'save the Lazer' bandwagon should be ashamed to call themselves any sort of 'activist group.' What injustice are they fighting against? Whose life are they trying to improve? People are suffering and dying from social injustice and the most important thing that they can see fighting against is a commercial radio station's programming? They have become so well indoctrinated into the role of the consumer that it seems like the only thing
real action was taken. So what this means is that a commercial radio station switching from one brand of corporate rock to another brand of corporate rock is more important than the privatization of the campus — and the consequences that this has for higher education? I certainly hope that's not the case.
As students we all have limited time and other resources that we can spend fighting for not only our rights, but the rights of others. So while some groups are spending their time and resources fighting for their right to hear their favorite corporate rock star played six times a day, real issues that affect the quality of life and the well-being of millions of people — from this campus to around the world — are being forgotten and ignored.
that they are willing to fight for are their consumption rights.
Although the old Lazer has been romanticized lately as the paragon of independent radio broadcasting, the fact of the matter is that it was nothing more than a commercial rock station that played all of the same music that I heard on the commercial rock stations all summer in New Hampshire. The KAW or Pacific are independent radio stations, not the Lazer.
It is plain that as students we are capable of coming together and actively working toward a common goal. At the very least the recent efforts to change the Lazer format are a testament to that. What needs to be done now, however, is for us to decide where we are going to direct that energy. It is my hope that the students on this campus will redirect their energy into something far more substantial than the Lazer's programming.
Major is a Deerfield, N.H., senior in sociology and American studies.
There has been some discussion — most of it contained in the world of listservs — that this quest to revert the Lazer to its previous programming is not a worthy endeavor. This discussion needs to be made public because there has been little inspection of this apparently unified front against the Lazer.
Feedback
Retake policy OK
After reading the editorial "Retaking courses for better grades fails to be fair to diligent students," I wish to comment on the "disadvantages" enumerated by the UDK.
The first disadvantage argues that poorer students will not be able to afford to retake classes. However, a KU student can always retake the class at a less costly, nearby community college. The policy in question simply makes it easier if students DO want to retake the class at KU. Besides, if it is important to the student to delay his or her graduation in order to retake a class, then finding the money to pay for the class seems to be a minor issue at best.
The third argument that the
The second disadvantage argues that students who are taking the class for the first time are put at a disadvantage. But disadvantages already exist. Some students, even those taking the class for the first time, have access to old tests, labs and/or notes. Some students seems to have a special understanding of foreign languages, math or English. Some had better instructors in high school. How does the UDK propose to deal with the various advantages or disadvantages students bring to the classroom? At least with this policy, if a first-time student doesn't do as well in a course as desired, then he or she would always have a chance to retake it.
UDK makes against the policy is that first-time students may not be able to get in a class that is full. If a student pays to retake a class, then he or she has as much right to be in there as any other student. We live in a very unfair world and even at KU, it is first come, first served.
Finally, the policy of retakes acknowledges that students grow and mature. Many of us don't have what it takes the first time around — whether that's discipline or drive or an adequate understanding of the subject — and we need a second chance. The UDK would take that away.
A
Brooke Reinhart
Topeka sophomore