4A
Friday, October 27, 1995
OPINION UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
THE ISSUE: ADVISING REFORM
CLAS needs to change advising
Advising for freshmen in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas can be difficult, and the administration needs to reform the system in order to bolster the freshmen retention rate.
The first step in improving freshmen and sophomore advising is to set guidelines for faculty advisers to follow. Professors are busy with grading papers, writing lectures and research and simply cannot be expected to be great advisers instinctively. Guidelines would give busy professors something to go on.
Also, making sure students are teamed up with advisers in their area of interest will enable advisers to give guidance on subjects they are familiar with. Most freshmen and sophomores may not have declared majors yet, but they do know what they are at least interested in. Assigning a student to an adviser in a random school leads to frustrated faculty advisers and misled students.
CLAS should look to successful advising programs and imitate them in order to promote freshman retention.
Also, if a professor simply has no interest in advising, he or she should not be required to do so. If an adviser isn't putting anything into a job, then the student will not get anything out of it.
A strong advising program is needed to help students set goals and establish academic priorities. Without that guidance, underclassmen cannot navigate through the sea of confusion that is enrollment at KU. Students can become daunted by the large University and give up on pursuing a degree at KU. And that hurts everyone.
SARAH MORRISON FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD.
THE ISSUE: OFFICE OF ADMISSIONS
Recruiting needs personal touch
U's office of admissions is doing a commendable job of recruiting new students.The idea of communicating with the students on a more personal level is an excellent one.
Competition among universities is high, and KU needs to stand out in some way to compete with other colleges. The only way to do so is by recruiting in a more personalized way.
High school and transfer students need that personal touch in their letters, pamphlets and other information that they receive. Through personalized recruitment, prospective students will get the message that KU can provide the best higher education in the state.
Although KU enrollment has dropped in recent years, the office is trying its best to recruit new students. The office strongly emphasizes minority recruitment as well.
Deborah Boulware director of admissions.
The office of admissions does a good job of reaching out to minorities and personalizing recruitment.
said that the office also had a new marketing plan with activities that focus on the recruitment of minority students.
The office has recreated its recruitment video, and it has hired new staff members with a more diverse background. In addition, the information package was redesigned.
The KU ambassadors team also aids in the recruiting process. The volunteer team gives tours on campus and answers individual questions that parents and students may have.
The office also has a telemarketing team composed of KU students who call prospective students and communicate with them on a one-to-one level. All of these personalized recruiting techniques should continue, as they will pay important dividends in the future.
LUBY MONTANO- LAUREL FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
COLLEEN MCCAIN
Editor
DAVID WILSON
Managing editor, news
ASHLEY MILLER
Managing editor, planning & design
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
Editors
News & Special Sections...Deedra Allison
Editorial...Heather Lawranz
Associate Editorial...Sarah Morrison
Campus...Virginia Mergheim
Associate Campus...Teresa Vaezay
Associate Campus...Paul Todd
Sports...Jenni Carlson
Chocolate Sports...Tom Erickson
Photo Katz
Wire...Robert Allen
On-line coordinator...Tina Fassett
STEPHANIE I TLEY
Business manager
MATT SHAW
Retail sales manager
JAY STEINER
Sales and marketing adviser
Shawn Trimble / KANSAN
Business Plan
Campus mgr ... Meredith Hensing
Regional mgr ... Tom Dale
National mgr ... Heather Berman
Special Sections mgr ... Heather Niahoua
Production mgr ... Nancy Euston
... Krista Nye
Marketing director ... Konan Hauser
Creative director ... Bob Cahill
Creative director ... Brian Gell
Classified mgr ... Heather Vailer
"termship/oo-ap mgr" ... Kelly Connelly
March leader offers us hate instead of hope
Take your pick. The enormous gathering of Black men in Washington was moving and inspiring. Or it was depressing. It provided hope for the future. Or pessimism and worry.
Or maybe all of the above.
The sight of hundreds of thousands of men getting together to pledge themselves to fatherhood, marriage, family life, hard work and other virtues should be inspirational, whatever color they might be.
However, there is a slight problem. It's not easy to be a dutiful family man when there's no paycheck because you can't find a decent job or even a crummy one.
But it means even more when Black men express devotion to these values because serious domestic problems begin with the no-father Black family. When daddy is a no-show, it leads to illegitimacy, chronic welfare, child neglect, drug use, Black crime and so many other social migraines.
But maybe Newt or Bill will think of something.
With businesses possessed by the downsizing spirit — the 1990s' cool way of saying "take a walk, you're fired" — it's hard to see where these jobs are going to come from. Especially for the young African Americans who are coming out of the big-city human warehouses that we call schools.
I have to admit that I enjoy a Farrakhan speech. It has rhythm, style, pacing, graceful transitions, soft phrases rising
Fine. Wonderful. But the most gripping, eloquent speaker of them all was Louis Farrakhan, one of the few men in America who can talk for two hours without putting anyone to sleep.
Many of the speeches at the great rally were truly eloquent. There was emotional talk about shunning guns and drugs, treating each other with respect, pooling resources, starting businesses, rebuilding neighborhoods and other good works
COLUMNIST
to thunderous crescendo. It's very much like a fine musical composition, which isn't surprising, because Farrakhan used to be a professional calypso singer.
Unfortunately,
it's not music.
It's words. And
no matter what
kind of soft-
spoken job can
he tries to feed Larry King, when he has a live and receptive audience, Farrakhan just can't resist playing to the Jew-baiting, honkie-hating, history-twisting demagogue.
So there we had hundreds of thousands of Black men, pouring into Washington in a show of solidarity, brotherhood and praiseworthy expectations. They were joined by some of Black America's most respected leaders.
But who got them together? Who was the big drawing card? Who got the biggest cheers and most adulation?
Which was inspiring and should be a cause for hope.
Farrakhan even had the gall to speak fondly of Malcolm X while reciting a list of outstanding Black men who have been victimized by white America.
Louis Farrakhan, Black America's most influential hatemonger.
Apparently he thinks we've all forgotten that Malcolm X was murdered in public, not by white racists, but by Black hit men from the very same Black Muslim organization in which Farrakhan was a rising star.
If that's not depressing, you'll never need Prozac.
Yet the big Washington rally provided hope that was so obvious that most of us couldn't have overlooked it.
The speakers included Black men who hold high political and
governmental positions and wield considerable political power. The audience included Black men who work are professionals, run their own businesses, live in solid middle-class communities and attend fine universities.
Just think back only 30 years about the way things were.
I was in Alabama where Martin Luther King was leading marches so Blacks could be allowed to vote. Redneck thugs with badges were riding them down with horses, crushing their skulls with clubs and shooting them dead from ambush.
In other parts of the South, Black homes were being burned, civil rights workers — Black and white — were being murdered. White politicians were bellowing about how Blacks would be kept in their place and would be wise not to get uppity. Black students needed military bodyguards to enter some universities.
If anyone had told me the following: Within a few generations, the biggest cities in America would elect Black mayors, major corporations would have Black executives, the finest universities would be chasing after Black students, the Black middle class would dramatically expand and laws would have outlawed just about all forms of housing, political and educational discrimination.
And that the polls would show the leading potential candidate for president would be a distinguished retired Army general who happens to be a black man from New York.
If anyone had promised those things when I was dodging Klansmen in Alabama, I would have said that I hoped to live long enough to be part of that utopian society.
And I've made it.
And I've made it.
So how come I'm depressed?
Mike Royko is a syndicated columnist with the Chicago Tribune.
Campus life is improved by freaks, off-beat characters
Those annoying anti-divorce rants chalked on the sidewalks at KU are getting weier. In recent months, the mad chalker has been trying to tie his obsession in with whatever event or holiday is coming up. When Chancellor
STAFF COLUMNIST
Hemenway first came to KU and the chalker made the oh-so-shocking revelation that Hemenway is in his third marriage, sidewalks everywhere declared that the beautiful chancellor's residence was now —gasp! —a brothel.
Homecoming week earned
the dubious honor of being renamed Brothel-Coming (and with a name like that, the parade should have been far more interesting than it was). And now that Halloween is upon us, the chalker has been so kind as to point out to us that the real haunted houses are the brothels created by the evils of divorce. Boy, that ex-wife must have really been a doozy.
But as bizarre and irritating as these messages are, I can't deny that they add a nice bit of weirdness to our campus. Every college campus has an oddball or two to make it interesting. Back at my undergraduate institution, we had Scary Larry, a guy who walked around campus every Halloween wearing a big black cloak and carrying a scythe. Just a couple of years ago, Cal-Berkeley had the Naked Guy.
The sidewalk chalker may be unbelievably single-minded and strange, but he adds to the flavor of KU that gives our campus some individuality. In addition, I doubt that the messages do any actual harm to anyone. I'm divorced myself, but I'm not going to get my nose out of joint because some eccentric thinks less of me for it. Why, then, does the department of Facilities Operations go to the trouble and expense of washing these and all other chalked messages off the side-walks?
Chancellor Hemenway has a big task force working to come up with ways to cut spending at KU. According to the director of Facilities Operations in a recent Kansas article, KU has to spend $5,000 to $7,000 each year washing chalk off the sidewalks, even though the elements do this for free every time we have some rain. However, Mother Nature apparently isn't fast enough in getting the job done to suit the administration. But if we're so interested in saving money, maybe a little patience is in order. Besides, he's always back the next day with more chalk, so it's not like washing the messages away does any good. The other argument — that the chalkings are too ugly to wait for a rainstorm — is also flimsy. If KU really wants to eliminate ugliness from the campus, I have a suggestion: Tear down Wescoe Hall.
Ending this ridiculous expense is a no-brainer. Let's try instead to take these peculiar scribblings less seriously and embrace them for their sheer weirdness. It makes our campus a bit more interesting and gives us something to talk about when we go to our brothels at the end of the day.
Chris Hampton is a Lawrence graduate student in higher education.
THE COMPLETELY POINTLESS ADVENTURES OF BRIGG AND FRO
HALLOWEEN FOR THE KIDS
TODAY IS SO DIFFERENT FROM
WHEN WE WERE YOUNG.