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ERICKSON: As the Nov. 7 election nears and you look to make an informed decision, don't listen to the candidates, unless you want to hear some lies See kansan.com for more opinions and Free for All comments
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2006 WWW.KANSAN.COM
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
PAGE 5A
OUR VIEW
Why pay Mangino to lose?
KU football coach Mark Mangino recently signed a new five-year contract that vaulted him into the upper echelon of Big 12 salaries. This new $1.5 million contract, which contains a base salary of just $220,000 a year, is laden with $650,000 in bonus incentives.
Mangino, who entered the contract with a KU record of 1929, has gone on to oversee three victories over mediocre teams and four disappointing losses to three very beatable opponents. Is this what the University had in mind when it drew up the new contract?
On Jan. 25, aging baseball star Frank Thomas signed a one-year contract with the Oakland Athletics for $500,000. However, Thomas will receive a total of $2.6 million for his excellent and unexpected work in Oakland this season.
How is this possible? The Athletics loaded the contract of the notoriously frail Thomas with performance incentives and qualifying benchmarks, the newest and most popular element of athletics contracts. These incentives allow a franchise to take a risk on a player while encouraging a higher performance level from an athlete.
But incentives are not limited to the sports realm. Hedge funds, the marquee superstars of the financial world, also operate on incentives. Hedge fund managers typically take the entire return on their equity stake, along with a percentage of the returns for
the fund's other investors. This system, which links the manager's income directly to his performance, is an ideal market incentive to increase both effort and performance.
There are also a number of corporate executives who draw a minimal salary, thus making them dependent upon their stock options for income earnings and forcing them to generate income for themselves and for investors.
It is accepted that increased competition in college and professional sports means paying larger amounts to attract and retain coaches and talent, but Mangino's performance under the new contract is unacceptable.
Market incentives in contracts should work both ways. If Mangino can earn an extra $650,000 by hitting certain performance benchmarks, perhaps the University should be able to reduce his salary for certain failures, such as consistently losing conference road games.
FREE FOR ALL
Call 864-0500
In 2003, Bob Knight returned his base salary to Texas Tech University because he disappointed himself, an outright admission of failure and a unique display of honor. The University wants to see Mangino's football program succeed, but does not want to overpay for underachievement. It's time for Mangino to win, or to take a page from Bob Knight and return his salary.
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
McKay Stangler for the editorial board
To the pompous hippies outside
of Budig: Why don't you get off your middle-class, parental-funded soap boxes and ask the million starving children around the world what they think about animal results?
Dear KU football: Please don't listen to the article saying you will lose. I think you will kick Baylor's
cruelty?
I was just at the intersection of Mass. and it turned and saw a 7 year old driving a car and smoking.
ass. Sincerely, Your Fan.
Let's build a community of gender equality
COMMENTARY
The word community is thrown around so frequently that it has lost its power and meaning. Being part of a community can mean resources, friendship, mutual action, legitimacy and, most importantly, support.
For those KU students who are aware of the gender equality problem, it is time to reclaim the word, along with its implications, and use its power to our advantage. There are some simple steps we can take to build a strong community of students who work toward gender equality. With a focused effort toward communication and participation we can work to make our campus and our city a better place for everyone.
Generally speaking, a community is a unified group of individuals. In this case we are talking about a community of people unified by the idea of gender equality. But what exactly does the vague, often overused phrase "gender equality" mean?
In a nut shell, it means that the expectations for behavior, success and participation are the same for both genders. It means when two interns show up for a new job, the boss doesn't automatically send the woman to make coffee and the man
BY LIZ STUEWE
KANSAN COLUMNIST
OPINION@KANSAN.COM
to lift boxes. Each is capable of both tasks. And in a world where gender parity has been reached, the decision of who lifts the boxes and who makes the coffee would be based on other factors, such as motivation, convenience and skill.
Now that we have the unifying idea of our community — gender equality — it is time to talk about the structure of our new community. It will not be similar to a club, with regular meetings and officers, but more of a way to link different interests all working toward the same goal.
But in order to be an effective community, we must communicate with all the different interests (clubs, organizations, individuals, classes, causes, problems, activities) and not only communicate, we must coordinate. We must let social progress groups such as Delta Force know about activities and actions being taken by other groups, such as The Commission on the Status
of Women and so on. We all must work together.
The greatest resource we have as students looking to promote gender equality and build a community of support at the University of Kansas is the Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center, on the 4th floor of the Kansas Union. The mission of the center is to "enhance the academic success and personal growth of women students and support women and men working together to end gender inequity so all students may achieve their full potential." This resource can be used to connect and participate in the movement toward gender equality.
Everyone benefits from gender equality, and by building a community, a network, a coalition of students working toward this common goal, we can make our community a better place. So next time you find yourself in a position fighting for gender equality, look around campus and include other groups that you would not have even thought of before in your activities. Communicate your way to a better society and a stronger community.
Stuewe is a Lawrence junior in political science and American studies.
COMMENTARY
Don't listen to candidates' lies when you decide who gets your vote
Did you hear? Paul Morrison, candidate for Kansas attorney general, released thousands upon thousands of violent criminals from Kansas prisons so they could roam the streets and abduct our children. That's what Phill Kline, the current attorney general who's running for re-election, says.
It's true: Morrison, though he has been the top law enforcement official in Johnson County since 1989, doesn't care about enforcing the law. He loves convicted felons. They're his favorite people. He has weekly poker nights with them.
OK, so perhaps Kline has not gone quite that far in his accusations against his opponent Morrison. But he's made some claims that are pretty dubious.
If elected, Morrison has a secret plan to burn down all prisons in the state and let every felon run free. Then he plans to appoint the BTK killer as his top assistant.
For instance, according to The Kansas City Star, Kline said, Morrison reducing the
Kline is referring to Senate Bill 323, a measure passed six years ago that Morrison supported. The Star article, however, reported that the bill did not reduce the sentences of anyone behind bars. It limited the amount of time that criminals were supervised after their release from prison.
sentences of thousands of convicted felons." This accusation is misleading at best, and absolutely false at worst.
According to the Star, however, the release of this man was due to a clerical error by the state corrections department. Officials from the department said the error had nothing to do with Senate Bill 323.
Kline also has suggested that the bill released a man from prison who went on to murder five people in Wichita.
Kline has spent his campaign time trying to spread an image of murders fleeing through open cell doors, ready to wreak havoc on innocent citizens. But here in the world of reality, voters must wonder
BY MATT ERICKSON
KANSAN COLUMNIST
OPINION@KANSAN.COM
But Kline is just a part of a campaign culture that looks more to point fingers and make questionable claims than to articulate positions on the issues. It's a culture that views the past as a lump of clay that can be molded to fit a candidate's best interests and views the future as a trifling matter that does not need to be addressed until later.
what Kline's policies even are.
This truth-molding culture afflicts members of both major parties. Kline, a republican, is hardly the only candidate to warp the facts in this election.
The campaign of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a democrat running for re-election, has aired a couple of questionable ads that exaggerate
sebelius' role in producing a new school funding plan for the state
One ad (available on YouTube), which features Sebelius driving a school bus full of elementary-age children who are remarkably well-informed about the workings of state government, seems to suggest that Sebelius single-handedly convinced the state legislature to adopt a new school funding plan. One little girl in the ad says Sebelius "made them strengthen our schools."
This discounts one minor detail: The Kansas Supreme Court forced the Legislature to create a new funding plan by declaring the old one unconstitutional.
The Court's ruling was a far bigger factor in the creation of the new funding plan than anything Sebelius could have done. Sebelius' ads, though, suggest that she was the main driving force.
At least Sebelius isn't throwing phony dirt on her opponent as Kline is, but her education ads still mislead.
the goal of most political campaigns today: to mislead. They try to find the best way to convince voters that Candidate A will save the entire world while Candidate B will drop murderers off on the front porch of your child's elementary school
I hope most people realize that politics can never come down to such extremes. If only the candidates and their campaigns could come to this realization.
Read newspapers and news Web sites to see where candidates stand on the issues. Look up the candidates' records online to see what they've done in the past.
You can even listen to your Uncle Larry's armring armchair rants.
Just don't get your election information from the least credible sources of all: the candidates themselves.
Erickson is an Olathe sophomore in journalism and political science.
COMMENTARY
Freshmen don't start thinking everything has changed
And it seems as though this is
EXTER GUIDELINES
BY BEN ALEXANDER
KANSAN COLUMNIST
OPINION@KANSAN.COM
Jonathan Kealing, editor
864-4854 or jkaleing@kansan.com
TALK TO US
Dave Ruigh, associate opinion editor
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It's too easy to forget that life is continuous, that Wescoe Beach and the Crossing and parties are all part of the same life as awkward visits home and parents and summer jobs. And old friends. Too many students, especially freshmen, lose sight of that. I did for a little while, and it took Three Happiness to make me realize the truth.
Things like saying the same thing at the same time. Like glances that last a fraction of a second but mean "that dude talking to the train was really weird and he only looked about 19."
684-4554 lappengkasan.kasan.com
Erich B. Isenlein, managing editor
684-4554 or schilldorn.kasan.com
Gabrielle Souza, managing editor
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Frank Taskard opinion editor
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Without the reality check of friends, it would be all too easy to get caught up in looking obsessively for the same feeling of belonging in what is enthusiastically called "the college experience." I'm sure I missed some great parties last weekend, but I don't really care. Some things are more important.
I didn't stay in Lawrence during fall break. I went to Chicago to spend the time with my girlfriend and my best friend. Sitting in a Chinese restaurant called Three Happiness, I finally stopped trying to figure out what it meant to be "in college now." It was funny. Chicago felt more like home than home in Kansas City or home in Lawrence.
Alexander is a Lenexa freshman in Journalism.
It was bitter cold outside (of course) and so instead of going anywhere, we just sat around long after the food was gone, talking. Loitering, if you're the restaurant owner.
Kyle Heedl, business manager
864-4014 or kneedl@kansan.com
It didn't take long to realize that I didn't actually want a fresh slate. It's not some new life, and I'm not a new person. I'm the same person I was two months ago. I like having people around who know me, and no one can go through their daily life without someone around who cares about them. I like having people around who think of me as who I was last year and the year before and not just as I am now.
We didn't sit around and "catch up" or talk about how our different school were. We just sat around and were friends. In the madness of senior year, it was really easy to talk about going out of state as if it were some magic key to a better "college experience." I didn't go out of state. My house is thirty-five miles from my dorm, close enough that I can ride my bike home. They did, but that didn't change anything. We are close, and we will be close.
Lindsay Shirack, sales manager
864-4462 or lshirack@kansan.com
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Melanim Gibson, general manager, news adviser
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When I decided to come to the University of Kansas, I was deadset on avoiding friends from high school. I would see them over winter break and the summer, but my life was starting anew. I was going to make new friends and live a new life. A fresh slate.
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Jonathan Keeling, Erick R. Schmidt, Gabrielle Souza, Frank Tankard, Dave Raigh, Steve Lynn, McKay Stangler and Lola Mora
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