4A
Opinion
Friday, September 24, 1999
Editorial
Society can't ignore 'small-time' shootings
We are in danger of becoming desensitized to violence
The vicious massacre at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Texas exposes a threat this country is facing. The threat is apathy in the news media and
in our own lives. We cannot give in to apathy even in the face of confounding violence. If we do, the problem will get worse.
worse. The weariness that Americans feel towards senseless acts of violence is almost the mood of every news broadcast. In Littleton, the news media fed us human misery morning, noon and night. The shooting at the North Valley Jewish Community Center drew serious attention.
Now, in the aftermath of the Wedgwood shooting, there seems to be a cynicism in the national news that dismisses these tragedies if they can't measure up to the summer blockbuster of violent sprees. Or
of humanity.
But now is not the time for resignation. We cannot grow weary in the face of these disasters and simply accept them as random acts of violence that affect other people in other places. Larry Gene Ashbrook in Texas was not extraordinary; he could have been a thousand different people anywhere in this country. In cases like Littleton, North Valley and now Wedgwood, the killers were paranoid and alienated.
perhaps it is simple resignation on the part of the journalists who, no doubt, must tire of constantly reporting the dark side of humanity.
areneated.
When we see the aftermath on television, we wonder why senseless violence happens. Children are being murdered around the country and perhaps we would prefer to not hear about it night after night. That apathetic resignation
dooms us to see these events as distant, therefore not something we can solve in our own daily lives. But we can, by simply not isolating the people around us and by not creating a class of outcasts who exist in pain, loathing society.
society.
When Texas Gov. George W. Bush hit the Wedgwood scene, he said there was no law he could pass that would make everyone love one another. Our nation is pretty far gone if we need a law to enforce common human decency and respect for life. If we do, it means greater trouble than these shootings describe. We simply need not blind ourselves to the nature of the problem and the plight of those around us.
Brett Watson for the editorial board
Kyle Ramsey / KANSAN
Competition makes drives lose blood
Competition is not a word generally associated with a blood drive. But because of poor scheduling, competition has resulted between the University of Kansas Athletic Corporation and the University Red Cross blood drives.
The KUAC blood drive, which wraps up today, is exactly two weeks before the general University blood drive. Anyone who has donated blood can tell you that one has to wait about eight weeks before donating blood again. Thus, what results is two worthy organizations having to split the possible donors.
spit the possible corner.
The blood drive this week is held by KUAC and run by Kansas Blood Services, which provides blood to area hospitals. Chris Beurman, manager of donor recruitment for Kansas Blood Services, said the organization worked
Blood drive timing makes giving twice impossible
with the Athletics Department to find a suitable date in the fall for a blood drive. The specific week, he said, depended on when Allen Fieldhouse was available.
While we acknowledge that scheduling major events like blood drives can be difficult, better communication between the two groups might avoid such close timing of the two drives. If a blood drive had been scheduled in early September and the other in November, students potentially could donate twice as much blood.
Both blood drives are for great causes, and we encourage students to take advantage of the opportunities to donate blood. At the same time, everyone would have better results if students weren't forced to choose between two equally important opportunities.
The University Red Cross blood drive, which is sponsored by the All Scholarship Hall Council, Association of University Residence Halls, Panhellenic Association and Interfraternity Council, had similar restrictions with scheduling. The blood drive must be scheduled far in advance in order to reserve space in the Kansas Union, said Bob Arpke, chairman of the All Scholarship Hall Council blood drive.
Kursten Phelps for the editorial board
Perspective
Preventing college drop-outs
Early this week, I received a copy of the U.S. News & World Report college ratings issue in a manila envelope. Attached was a yellow Post-it note that said, "Thought this might be good column material. —Dad."
So in an effort to keep more columns my father would like to read in the Kansan, I offer the following.
Krissner, Pamela I paged through the magazine, searching for the University of Kansas' rank and found us in a tie at number 38 in a listing of the top 50 public universities in the nation.
What did U.S. News look at to formulate its rankings? Did our drop off the party school list hurt us? Did a few missed turnaround jump shots in the NCAA tourney last year hurt our national reputation?
The good news was that we were ahead of Missouri; the bad news is that we were behind the Colorado School of Mines. That gave my heart a jump because I misread it at first and saw Colorado School of Mines.
Looking at the vital stats that the magazine provided to help justify their decisions, I think I figured it out. The retention rate at the University of Kansas is a seriously low 77 percent. Compared with the other second-tier schools, only the University of Kentucky was lower.
For years, the retention rate has been a cause for concern for KU administrators. There are retention task forces and committees and offices whose mission is to work to improve it. But more needs to be done. Some options are:
needs to be taken. Some of the
Require a freshman seminar -
Many universities require new students to take a class that specifically helps students adjust to their new school. This class would force students to learn academic requirements, give them a faculty mentor immediately upon arrival at the University, and create an instant support network for students.
Even distribution of scholarship dollars. Leffen wonder, of all stu
dollars that do drop out, how many do it for economic reasons? For some reason, rather than try to help these students that really do need the money, the Office of Admissions and Scholarships literally throws more than a million dollars at about a hundred National Merit
Scholars. The justification for these scholarships is the prestige the scholars add to the University. Obviously, U.S. News doesn't think so. A higher retention rate would be a far better use of our scholarship dollars.
More emphasis on student organization involvement — Research has shown that students who are involved in campus organizations are more successful in the classroom. By getting involved on campus, students not only learn how to better interact with other
Seth Hoffman associate opinion editor opinion@anssan.com
students and learn important communication skills, they also learn time-management skills that no class can teach.
A better emphasis on involvement can be accomplished in a couple of ways. First, the University can help support student organizations by increasing their office spaces in the Kansas Union. The upcoming renovation is a start, but more can be done. Second, give more support to organizations such as Student Union Activities and others that provide alcohol-free programming to students. It seems that too often, the administration is trying to hold programming organizations back rather than assist in the good work they do.
goob work they don't Easier classes? According to U.S. News, some schools have classes in which students can learn about soap operas, jugging and Star Trek. Unfortunately, I don't think adding more blow-off classes to the timetable would improve our academic ranking. But if students could take an occasional hacky-sack class or something practical like tattoo artistry, it couldn't hurt enrollment, could it?
Sure, there are easy answers to our retention problems, but most involve a troublesome, University-wide move to a warm beach, and more pina colada mix than we can afford. For some students, no solution will keep them at the University, but it should do whatever it can to keep them here. It sure beats the alternative — Mime School.
Hoffman is a Lenexa senior in journalism.
Perspective
Happiness should be path of students' ambitions
Many students at the University of Kansas have high aspirations to some day have all the money and power they've been taught is the key to happiness. Social mobility is integral to our democracy.
But the sticky business of moving up in the world often is dispirited with a sacrifice of personal happiness made for the name of a school or the title of a job position.
In my political science class, we recently read a book that changed my life. It's so nice to read books like that. Who's Running America by Thomas Dye details the theory that a relatively small group of about 7,000
big shots — the elite — essentially own and operate our democracy. More intriguing was the book's description of how the elites come to such power.
Here's one popular formula for getting to the top of the top: Be born into money, attend a prestigious prep school, get a degree from an Ivy League college, go to law school at an Ivy League college and tap some connections to secure a job at
Sarah
Smarsh
columnist
opinion@kansan.com
sections to secure a job at a high-powered Washington law firm
a high-powered. Much of my class was startled to realize they were already more than a couple steps behind in the race for major status in this country. In fact, Professor Allan Cigler admitted that the book of which I speak once caused one of his students to transfer to a different school. The young man probably thought he'd have a better chance at glory if a Harvard Ph.D. hung on his wall
According to the book, in our country 54 percent of corporate leaders and 42 percent of governmental leaders are graduates of only twelve "name" schools — Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Stanford, Columbia, MIT, Cornell, Northwestern, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania, and Dartmouth. With figures like these, it's easy to understand the student's concern.
But is the concern well-founded? That depends on what sort of life one hopes to live. With my social background in mind, I most likely never will be a chairwoman of the Republican Party or a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. My latest revelation is this; maybe I don't care.
As far back as I can remember, I wanted to go to Yale. I thought it was really my dream. But after choosing the University of Kansas instead because of financial and personal issues, my happiness here makes me realize it was not a dream that pushed me toward the Northeast, but rather an illusion; a misconception that the name of the school would give me what I wanted out of life. Not many people really know what they want out of life — just what they're expected to want.
My mind returns to high school, where a costly cycle often begins: work hard, so you can attend a good college where you can work hard, so you can attend a good graduate school where you can work hard, so you can get a good job where you can work hard so you can make money.
The American dream forgets to remind us of what we might lose along the way. Is it a sin to hope to have time to raise a family, write the great American novel, or plant a garden? I want to be successful as much as the next person, but only recently began to ponder what that success would actually mean in terms of my own happiness.
Maybe success can be making a decent living at a job you like and having time to enjoy a decent life. This appears more desirable than to wake up one morning old and unhappy after, as Cigler suggested, working sixteen hours a day for fifteen years to make partner status in a prestigious law firm. He himself turned down a job offer at a well-thought-of northeastern school partially because he "didn't like the feel of the place." What's wrong with that? Surely it's possible to change the world without leaving yourself behind.
Maybe grad school will take me to Columbia, but I have no qualms about my current place of enrollment. And yeah, my name probably won't make the list of elites in Who's Running America 15 or 20 editions down the road. The trade-off wouldn't be worth it to me anyway.
In the United States power and money are the cultural craving, and higher learning is usually the first step in that direction. It's just that most ambitious minds pursuing college degrees do not weigh the costs of the unhappy places their ambition could possibly take them until, well, they are there. The key, it seems, is to make sure those ambitions stem from all the right reasons
Smarsh is a Kingman sophomore in English.
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Are football fans responsible for those deaths? Football even requires extensive protective gear, clearly it is too dangerous and must be outlawed.
As for the assertion that boxing lures poor, poverty stricken youth into its corrupt world with the promise of quick
I'm afraid I must take issue with Jeff Engstrom's implication that boxing is an outdated and barbaric sport. It is far from the most violent; 25 to 30 people die each year as a result of playing football, according to Arnold Goldstein's Violence in America.
Feedback
Jarrod Fobes Lincoln, Kan., senior
Boxing not so bad
While the boxing world is in need of some serious reforms, it remains "the manly art" or the "sweet science" that attracted Lord Byron, Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Rosevelt and countless other people.
That being said, Randie Carver's death was tragic. The fight should have been stopped, the towel thrown in
wealth, well, that is equally ridiculous. A person has about an equal chance of becoming a professional musician as becoming a professional boxer.
Countless boxers train and compete without ever intending to become professionals. And those who do often make multi-millions of dollars for a single fight. Do they continue to fight because they need an additional $5 million to keep them out of the slums? No, they love the sport.
his opponent disqualified whatever was necessary to insure his safety. However, a boxer knows and accepts the risks when he steps in the ring. To attack his or her right to participate in the sport is an attack on personal freedom and choice.
Broaden your mind: Today's quote
"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions. It only guarantees equality of opportunity."
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—Irving Kristol
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