OPINION
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2008
7A
THE INVESTIGATORY & DANISH ACADEMY
COMMENTARY
Final thoughts from this graduating senior
In a couple of weeks, I leave this school for good. Although my cubicle-driven malaise will likely create a grand romanticization of my college years, this place ain't perfect. Here are my suggestions for how KU can change, grow and redefine what a university can be.
1. Student Senate — Let's face it, people. Democracy, even though it sounds nice, doesn't work. The whole process gets mucked up in bureaucracy, a slowdown of all processes that finds committees taking years to decide whether KU should get Gmail or not. My solution? A Student Dictator.
I know, I know. The term "dictator" has been associated with some pretty negative things during the past century. But you know what dictators do? They get stuff done.
Want Gmail? Presto! You got it. More books in the library? As long as they are propaganda, sure! The filling up of Clinton Lake in order to erect a child-labor driven textile factory? Now we're talking.
2. Progressive Schools — KU has a medical school, a law school and an undergraduate business school. Pretty good. However, institutions nationwide are ignoring the single greatest threat to mankind, a threat greater than cancer, global warming or snakes on a plane — time.
Anyone who was in my physical science class in ninth grade knows that time can flat out stop. I hope this University will be the first institution to create a unique school that can capture this phenomenon, enabling lengthy naps, Zach Morse style "time-outs" and solutions to those situations where you need to be two places at once, which happens in every teenage sitcom ever created.
3. Free Beer —'Nuff said.
4. More Fireworks — If cou-
plied with No. 3 on my list, KU will see an enormous rise in enrollment.
8. More publicity for my solo project — Given time and a lot of patience, I really think Corby and the Funkbots are gonna be huge.
5. Bitter Relationships with the Dean — Now here is something I've always wanted to harp on. From my viewings of all the classic college films, I was led to think that my time at university would be plagued by a series of battles with the dean. The dean, attempting to look good and maybe land a better dean job or impress a local business (you pick the plot, I don't care) would naturally bristle with the party-loving coeds at the school, resulting in an endless number of pranks and "double-secret" probations. However, every dean that I have interacted with has been caring, modest and interested in what I had to say. That needs to change, as I think I'm missing out on an essential college experience here
7. Gondolas for the Hill to avoid that horrible steep climb from the Student Ghetto area — The student dictator would most likely get these puppies rolling.
I'd like to think that all of these suggestions are feasible, and when I return to the school in a decade, students will be whizzing by on Segways drinking complimentary Red Bulls and properly fixing buckets of glue above the deans slightly cracked doorway. Heck, my potential donation to the school is riding on the possibility of these changes.
6. More Parades for the Basketball Team — Is one really enough?
All said and done, KU is pretty great. Asking for improvement is like asking Gilbert Arenas to say crazier stuff.
Let's not get spoiled here.
However, let us take the opportunity to improve ourselves, improve our school and download Corby and the Funkbots' mp3s until your hard drive is full.
Goble is a Mission Hills senior in English.
Wheels of Justice
BLOGS@KANSAN.COM
SINCE freedom of speech,
PARTICULARLY involving neocolonialIST situations (see: Pales tine, Iraq, Tibet, etc.) is SUCH a hot topic on Kansan.com - and not a bad hot topic to have, if you ask me- I thought I would mention a couple of speakers that are going to be at the Ecumenical Campus Ministries today.
Two speakers from the Wheels of Justice tour will be presenting on Iraq and Palestine starting at 4 p.m. Discussion will be at 6 p.m. and go until about 8 p.m.The ECM is located at 1204 Oread. Go there. There will also be food.
Kathy Kelly (Iraq speaker) is the co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Non-Violence. She helped initiate Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the UN/US Iraq sanctions in 1996 and she has been to Iraq 24 times since January 1996, most recently in May 2006. She was also in Beirut, Lebanon during the final days of the Israeli war in the summer of 2006.
By Joshua Anderson April 16
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» FROM THE DRAWING BOARD
Guns don't kill people; crazed citizens do
COMMENTARY
Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC) protested the Kansas Board of Regents decision to continue to ban weapons on all of its campuses last week by wearing empty gun holsters to class.
People say they want to defend themselves. People say they want to defend others. I'd politely ask them to leave the rest of us out of it, because I don't want anyone defending me with a gun other then someone who my taxes pay to do so.
I'm sorry, wait—no I'm not sorry. I don't want you defending me. I understand that you have to go through an eight-hour training course to get the permit. I understand that you have to have a background check.
That doesn't matter to me.
People with concealed carry licenses are not police officers.
Receiving a license is not training for combat.
I hear proponents for conceal carry on campus say that school shootings, like the most recent at Virginia Tech, could have been cut short or prevented almost entirely if concealed carry would've been allowed on campus.
It's ridiculous for anyone to suggest such a thing and then proceed to present it as factual.
I could say the exact opposite; maybe with concealed carry more people would've died and the shootings would've gone on longer.
I could assume there would've been confusion as to who was the bad guy. Concealed carriers could've been confused with the killer and shot down by the police. Concealed carriers could've accidentally shot other concealed carriers or civilians.
To back up these arguments in this manner is speculation, which makes them worthless. Both sides can conjure up ideas as to what could've happened in such an event if more guns were in the picture but no one will ever know. Using
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these speculations aids nothing.
Citizens have the right to own a gun. The government has the right to tell them not to come on its property with it. KU is government property. So keep off the grass and leave your gats at home.
I'm not going to say whether or not more guns would help in a school shooting because no one knows. I just don't trust another individual who's not in the army or a police officer to defend me with a gun.
If you've gone hunting, Whooepedy-doo—I don't care. Deer don't shoot back. And a forest is not a classroom of students.
Stewart is a Wichita junior in journalism.
》 LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Roberts' court unfairly rules on Indian Tribes, their land
John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States, is planning to visit the KU Campus today. It truly bothers me when the victims of rulings that were influenced or made by Roberts aren't allowed access to him. The same access denial has also occurred with previous visits by Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Roberts was involved in the Wagnon v. Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation gas tax ruling reversal in 2005. This Kansas tribe won the right to be excluded from state taxes on its gas sales to non-Indians in a lower federal court. In a move based more on the leaning of state's rights interpretation than the law itself, Robert's court reversed this ruling, sending reverberations throughout Indian Country.
Roberts had represented the state in the 1997 Alaska v. Native Village of Venetia Tribal Government case, citing the Tee-Hee-Ton Band of Tlingit Indians land case of 1955, which denied aboriginal title to lands in Alaska that were purchased by the United States in 1867.
Furthermore, Roberts wrongly educated his colleagues about the concept of aboriginal title of lands in the lower 48 states vs. the title of native lands in Alaska.
Roberts wrongly assumed that the concept of aboriginal land title in the lower 48 states was the same as Alaska. He told Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to set aside 200 years of land claim cases in the Sherill v. Oneida Indian Tribe case that arose out of the violation of the Indian Non-Intercourse Act of 1790, when the 13 colonies made treaties for lands from tribes without an act of Congress, which was given this power from the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to regulate Indian affairs.
Roberts should be held accountable for crippling the rightful land claims of the Haudenosaunee
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Confederacy of Nations, for whom Benjamin Franklin coined some of his ideas from the Constitution in the 1740s and 1750s.
I expect more from KU, especially since there is an Indian Law Program at this school.
Mike Ford, Baldwin City
FREE FOR ALL
To contribute to Free For All, visit Kansan.com or call 785-864-0500. Free For All callers have 20 seconds to talk about anything they choose.
Yo Eaton hall! It's freaking spring! Time to turn the heat off in the computer labs!
Thanks!
Thank God for Adderall. I don't know how I can get all this studying done and pass without it. Now excuse me Free For All, I've got to focus I'm on a roll.
--in there, so suck it!
I hate going to the Library in Murphy Hall because there are always beautiful women there and I know that I have no chance with any of them.
If someone has my black clutch purse I lost on Saturday, please return it to the Hawk or Wheel. I really need stuff in it! Plus there's pretty much nothing you can steal
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I get to go see Radiohead!
To the person going to see Radiohead, save your money for tickets, gas and hotel and use it to go see Wilco here in Lawrence on the same night.
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Girlfriends are like Mizzou Fans: All they do is bitch.
I be worried?
The other day my roommate informed me that he learned your mortality rate goes up as you sleep. Every time I've come home from class today he has been sleeping. Should
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Happy Birthday.
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Hmm, I think this time around I won't be back at all.
To the person whose birthday is tomorrow: Happy Birthday! I hope you have an awesome day!
My birthday is tomorrow.
To that person who wants to quit life, don't. Funerals are expensive and ultimately get you no where.
Who stole my iPod shuffle? It has my name behind, silver, and if anyone found it, please give it back to me!
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My roommate had sex in the bunk below me. So I screamed earthquake.
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To a certain boy,you make me smile.
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Thank you for the girls in Psych 333 for giving me a reason to go to class.
Want more? Check out Free For All online.
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