Opinion
Kansan
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August 20,1999
Seth Jones/ KANSAN
Editorials
University should have foreseen problems at Memorial Stadium
The road to a new and improved Memorial Stadium often has not been smooth. Inclement weather, worker shortages and other problems associated with major construction projects pushed the completion date to Oct. 4. Because the University of Kansas Athletics Department underestimated the necessary time for the project, it paid Kansas City, Mo.-based Walton Construction Co. a $300,000 incentive to finish the project by Aug. 31, so that the stadium would be ready for the Sept. 11 home opener.
It is difficult to miss the changes made to the stadium since the end of the 1998 football season. A new, larger press box with new scholarship suits is nearly complete, and a Mega Vision board has been installed as "phase two" of a $26
Lack of planning and time have cost S300,000
million renovation plan. These changes will benefit the football program and the University. To build a strong program, there must be investment in the facilities as well as the players and coaches.
Since the Oct. 4 completion date would have been after three home games, the incentive was a necessity. It would be ridiculous to open the season with a stadium unfit to play in. At the same time, perhaps the headaches of this project could have been avoided with better planning and foresight. The new press box and Mega Vision board were each major additions. Was there really a
rush to install both at once?
The University seems to have underestimated the amount of time projects such as this really take. Obviously one can't predict what Mother Nature will do when signing construction contracts months in advance, but there wasn't enough cushion time allowed for the problems that arose.
It's not that the improvements weren't wanted or necessary, but a lot of trouble and money could have been saved if the University had not tried to cram both projects into one short time frame.
We urge the University to take this frustrating experience and learn from it. This lack of foresight and misjudgment cannot be tolerated in the future. There must be better planning and less risk-taking in future construction projects.
Kursten Phelps for the editorial board
New-look Regents must work as one
As students begin another semester in the revamped Kansas higher educational system this fall, the bureaucracy that oversees higher education may need a quick lesson in teamwork.
Earlier this summer, Gov. Bill Graves and the Legislature passed a bill to vastly enlarge the Kansas Board of Regents' scope of governance to include 19 community colleges and 11 vocational-technical schools. The board previously governed only the six state universities.
The new Board of Regents, which includes five Republicans and four Democrats, has a wide variety of experience in all aspects of Kansas higher education. And Kim Wilcox, a former chairman of the University of Kansas speech-language-hearing department, will be the Regents' first executive
Regents must place students, universities before politics
director who will lead the group onto some unchartered ground.
The philosophy and goal of the larger board will be to improve communication with the Legislature on issues such as faculty salary, degree coordination and budget issues. But the manner in which the board was set up could turn out to be a hindrance to these goals.
The bill states that three separate commissions will be created to supervise different areas. One commission will govern the six state universities, while another will govern the community colleges and tech schools. The final
commission will be in charge of coordinating the other groups' work and dealing with the Legislature.
This structure could become troublesome if the board members don't work for the common goal of an improved overall system.
The board must look well into the future and provide the state universities, community colleges and tech schools with the means to create a unified system that can implement new degree tracks quickly, improve communication and efficiently lobby the Legislature. It also will need to look at ways to standardize classes at all institutions and make credit transfer rules more uniform.
It will only happen with the simple, but hard to implement, notion of teamwork.
Jason Pearce for the editorial board
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Broaden your mind: Today's quote
“it think it would be a good idea.” — Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization.
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A lot of people are out for the blood of six members of the Kansas Board of Education. The board members are the targets of a near nationwide louch
mob for voting to adopt new science standards for Kansas public schools that leave the teaching of evolution to the discretion of individual school districts.
If you have general questions or comments, e-mail the page staff (opinion@kansan.com) or call 864-4924.
Jeremy Johnson guest columnist opinion at karsan.com
You've probably read about these supposed religious-minded conservatives motivated to
Media pigeonholes board into stereotype
radically change science education by obliterating neo-Darwinian evolution from public classrooms. According to most of the news stories I've read, the board is on an underhanded mission to bring God into the classroom. The media has painted a pretty grim picture of these people, and it's no accident.
Perspective
Things may not be quite what they seem, though.
The standards adopted by the board were the amended form of an original document drawn up by a 27-member committee of science educators. Linda Holloway, board chairwoman and one of the six to vote for the new standards, said the original document was aimed at making evolution the major theme for all of science education. This would have radically changed the way evolution is taught in public schools, Holloway said. As things stand now, the adopted modified version simply gives the individual school districts the freedom to teach evolution as they see fit.
Bring along the support of a media that will pounce on even a whiff of a breach in the separation of church and state and you have yourself a winning strategy. The public doesn't really give a rip about whether or not your ancestors were hairy primates with a banana fetish. They do, however, care about religion being imposed on their kids. So, scream religion and you have yourself a media feeding frenzy to recruit fresh blood out to get the State Board of Education.
Holloway said she only asked the committee for evidence of macro-evolution and basically got in reply, "We're the experts, and that will have to do." Because of the committee's reluctance to defend its position and existing controversy over the theory, the board didn't think evolution as objective reality should be forced down kids' throats. Thus, it made its decision to leave the subject up to the individual districts.
Ah, but bringing religion into the schools certainly is. So, the best way to rally a public against an entity that doubts the proof for macro-evolution as waterproof, irrefutable reality isn't to present the lacking evidence. No, the best way is to discredit these people as backwards, unqualified, religious-minded conservatives whose only aim is to bring God into schools and to scare the public with doomsday prophesy that evolution removed from the classroom will be the end of educated children in Kansas.
It banned nothing. It censored nothing. It changed only the people who make the decisions. More than likely, the teaching of evolution won't change. But, the sin of the board is that it made change a possibility. It makes possible a challenge to neo-Darwinian authority.
Since the board's decision, I've heard a lot of name-calling and have seen the use of fear tactics to discredit the six members who approved the new standards. What I haven't heard is whether the board has a point. That never seems to come up. Since the decision on the new standards, the board's critics have called it names, tried to discredit it, threatened lawsuits and made veiled threats that its decision could spell the death of Western civilization as we know it. All the while, the board sees a reluctance to give what should be easily offered, airtight evidence for the critics' case.
Still, the orthodox scientific answer of our ancestry isn't orthodox at all if you ask the average American. Gallup polls show that nine out of 10 Americans don't believe we evolved from less advanced forms of life in which an intelligent creator had no part, and nearly seven out of 10 think creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the
The board's decision was to encourage intellectual honesty. Religious prejudice wasn't the motive, although critics would like everyone to think so. It just makes me wonder, if the board's opponents have to resort to this type of behavior, and if truth can withstand scrutiny, what is its motive?
I thought in this day and age that was a good thing. We're taught in school to think for ourselves. We're taught to question expert opinions and orthodox views to the big cultural questions, except for the question of how we all got here in the first place, I guess.
classroom. The polls show that this isn't a big issue in the lives of most people.
Johnson is a Wichita graduate student in journalism and has a master's degree in microbiology, cell and molecular biology.
Creationism has no place in school science lessons
I patiently explain that Kansas, contrary to what they may have heard, has electricity and indoor plumbing. Chewing tobacco is not mandatory. Folks of religions and races other than white Protestantism are not, as a rule, lynched on sight.
W when I tell the folks back home that I go to college up in Kansas, they generally look puzzled. Then they ask me why I'd want to go get an education in hayseed country.
Any place that developed Kansas City barbecue, I conclude, should be recognized as
Last Wednesday, the school board of the great state of Kansas made my job a whole lot harder. It decided that one of the fundamental principles of biology (and related sciences) should not be taught — because it con-
Loader columnist
opinion@kansan.com
practiced, in their eyes, a strict interpretation of the Bible. In other words, no evolution.
As someone who was outside the state at the time, I can tell you what the reaction was. "Yup. Hicks."
one of the great centers of world culture.
Sometimes I even manage to convince other people that Kansas is not dominated by hicks who still view the automobile as a newfangled contraption.
Sigh. Still, the opinion of the rest of the nation isn't something we should base public policy on. Let's examine the school board's case, shall we?
"Kids should be studying science, basic facts that can be measured and observed," said Steve Abrams, a member of the board. One of his main arguments is that evolution cannot be witnessed in action, or recreated in a lab.
Very true. Then again, neither can atoms or electrons. Should we omit the mention of them as well? The whole notion of "It can't be seen; therefore, it is irrelevant" wipes whole volumes of science from our libraries.
The school board holds that evolution is "unproven," that it has a competing theory — creationism. Why, they argued, should the latter be censored while the former is taught?
Quite simply, because the only people who hold to the opinion that creationism is a science are Christian Fundamentalists. A science that is only believed by a certain religious denomination is not a science. It is a tenet of faith.
Go to the departments of biology and paleontology here at the University of Kansas. Ask the professionals in the relevant fields what they think of the scientific validity of both evolution and creationism. You will find that the former is held as a basic lynch pin of the entire field, while the latter is held as an article of religious faith.
Does this mean that creationists are wrong in their belief? No. Christ rising from the dead is not scientific either, yet many people, this columnist included, believe it happened. It is an article of faith, one which defies logic, one that requires belief in a divine power capable of bending or altering natural law.
Modern science holds that evolution is true. The Kansas school board may deny that if it wishes, but it cannot change it.
In short, a biology classroom is not the proper place to deny a concept which is a keystone of modern biology. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto science that which is science's.
Another argument commonly offered holds that the very notion of evolution is offensive to those who hold a strict interpretation of the Bible, and therefore should not be offered.
And if we merely adjust science to fit the Bible, why, that's religious discrimination. We must apply the law fairly, and ban all science that does not fit all religions. No more teaching that cows are non-divine animals. No more teaching the basics of a modern economy; a Cargo cultist would regard it as heresy.
If one takes it literally, the Bible denies the Copernican model of the planets, around which modern astronomy is based. We should be consistent, if not wise, and ban it along with evolution, and go back to teaching that the sun rotates round the earth. Nor should we teach that slavery was wrong, for in the book of Leviticus it states that: "Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession."
The decision made by the state board was based on religious belief, not science. Separation of church and state has fallen by the wayside in Kansas. Maybe we should pick it up again before it expires completely.
Loader is a Las Vegas, Nevada, junior in journalism.