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University Daily Kansan/Monday, November 18, 1991
OPINION
Animal cruelty
Animals should be treated with respect
A goat was taken from its home and brought to a KU fraternity recently. Several dogs were shot a couple weeks ago in the Kansas City area. A woman recently was videotaped beating a dog.
Every day, animals are abandoned by people who no longer want them or who find them too much trouble to keep. All of these incidents show a disregard for animals.
Animals provide companionship and love. An animal is not supposed to be a release for human frustrations or anger
or something to be thrown away when no longer convenient.
Animals may lack the thought processes that humans have, but they are just as capable of feeling pain and fear, as well as pleasure and happiness.
When a person abuses an animal, he shows a lack of self-restraint and responsibility along with a lack of ability to cope with one's emotions.
mal when it has done something wrong. But making that animal's life a punishment falls under the category of cruel and unusual punishment.
Animals have rights, just like people do, and they should be treated with care and love. It is not wrong to punish an ani-
Those who abuse an animal are underserving of the privilege of owning one. The animal should be taken away and given to those who would appreciate it.
Amy Francis for the editorial board
Access to advice
Students need expansion of Legal Services
One problem with the legal services available to KU students is that sometimes Student Legal Services cannot give students advice, even though student fees pay for the services.
Student Legal Services cannot advise students when they have a problem with a member of the University of Kansas. This strict guideline is intended to avoid any conflicts of interest Student Legal Services might encounter.
However, the guideline sometimes makes students' access to legal advice difficult. Students are often overwhelmed with the variety of grievance procedures at the University.
Student grievance procedures exist in a variety of different offices. The Office of Academic Affairs, the Office of Affirmative Action, the Department of Student Life and the Judicial Board are only a few. Each of these offices does deal with different aspects of student grievances and for the most part do not duplicate each others' services, but the bureaucracy often intimidates students
and makes them seek a private attorney.
To solve this problem, the Legal Services Student Advisory Board is investigating a proposal that would expand the legal services available to KU students.
The proposal being considered would allow Student Legal Services to advise students who have legal problems with the University of Kansas. The board would propose the changes to Student Senate who would then need to approve the changes.
Exploring areas in which Student Legal Services could provide more help to students is an excellent idea. But to simply assign Student Legal Services responsibilities that make them an advocate of one part of the University against another, without considering the potential conflicts of interest, would be naive.
It may be difficult, but it should not be impossible, to establish new guidelines that allow Student Legal Services to provide these additional services to students without producing a conflict of interest.
Examples of a similar setup can be seen in a public defender's office which is financed by the state yet opposes the state in court.
The proposal being investigated would not go so far as to allow Student Legal Services to actually represent students in court cases involving the University, but would only allow them to give legal advice to students. Student Legal Services still would not be able to settle disputes between two students.
Expanding services in this manner for students is a step toward establishing due process for students who are overwhelmed by the steps they must take or who cannot afford the services of a private attorney. However, thorough research and careful planning should come before any changes are made.
Benjamin Alien for the editorial board
LETTERS to the EDITOR
School fees are not necessary
Now that the engineering fee is in place and students have paid the first couple of hundred dollars each, I suppose we should be happy that it all went through so painlessly. After all, the engineering departments, including my own, desperately need more money to support laboratories, right?
Unfortunately, it now appears that our University leaders were not quite open in their pleas of poverty and lack of means. You remember the earnest cries of "We have tried every thing, we just don't have the money, we don't like having to charge this fee, but we have no alternative..." But it now turns out that things were not that way.
During the years 1986-1990 inclusive (five years) the Department of Mechanical Engineering alone collected no less than $307,005 in undesignated funds in support of its programs. Wow, that is $60,000 every year for five years, you say. Why did nobody tell us? Well, the reason for that is that in this department at least, the existence of these funds was a very tightly kept secret. Certainly not all the faculty knew about it — even the faculty member who served as acting chairperson for the fall semester of 1990 was unaware of all this money. OK, but what was it spent on — upgraded facilities for the fee-paying students, right? Well, no one is admitting the answer to that. For almost one year faculty have been asking for a report on how the money was spent, but we have been told nothing.
If faculty are not told what is going on, how can students be expected to be informed — even on the topic of their
own money? Of course, students need to get these figures into proportion. This year, this department will collect about $36,000 from student engineering fees. Half of that will be used by the dean of engineering for upgrading computer facilities, leaving $18,000 for the undergraduate students, or about ½ of the total that has come into the department every year for the last five years.
It is starting to look like the Great Engineering Cover-Up and the Great Engineering Rip-Off. You might choose those words, but I am not quite sure I would.
Hector Clark Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Cover all sports equally, Kansan
I would like to call attention to the discriminating sportswriters at the Kansan. Recently, the men's golf team won a tournament at Louisiana, and the women's golf team won early this season at Alabama. I failed to notice any article whatsoever printed in the Kansan about the golf teams' achievements. I feel that the revenue sports such as basketball and football are monopolizing the sports page of the Kansan.
In the past, the only stories I have read are about when the golf teams have not performed "up to par." In the case of the women's golf team's victory, absolutely nothing was printed acknowledging the team's win and Shelly Triplett's individual victory.
I would like to see more articles coveting all non-revenue sports with the equality of basketball and football. I realize that football and basketball are the only sports to bring in money to the University; however, there are other sports that should be acknowledged.
K. D. Smith Leavenworth senior
Equality for the sexes still has long way to go
OK, I admit it. I have no idea what people expect from today's women. One television news station is having a series on "super moms" trying to show women that they don't have to be everything to everybody.
Another television show is going to have a program telling women how they can jazz up their marital sex lives.
I have never heard of anything like this for men. Is there some secret place where men go to share their knowledge of how to cope with the expectations that they should be "everything to everybody" or how they need them to their sex lives or men need this kind of societal approval?
Then came the release of a study by the government saying that women with college degrees are making the same amount of money as men with high school degrees. Why?
I'm not a radical feminist, I won't be buming my bra and shouting "Down the wall."
I know that men are trying to treat women as equals, but I am still finding it funny.
I have a friend who recently told me he could not believe that I love watching football and hockey, or that I did not know what confection sugar was until this year. I admit it, I'm missing the infamous Bettrocker gene.
Amy Francis Staff columnist
I tried to find enlightenment by taking advantage of the opportunity t Halloween offered and dressed a man.
The dark lighting of the establishment I was at helped my costume, but not many people were deceived.
I tried to see if wearing a mustache would change my outlook on life. It didn't. I was still a woman. The only difference was that my lip was itchy.
But in all fairness, it seems men are going through the same confusion. They have been told since the dawn of time that they were to bring home the money, never show any sign of weakness and always know everything there was to know.
So I'm still confused.
This is ridiculous. To expect a whole gender to be the rock of stability and pay for everything at the same time seems unfair. Men have the same feelings women do, but they have been told they shouldn't show them.
People's hobbies, interests and feelings shouldn't be restricted by what they are she. If a man wants to cook or to cry at a sad movie, that's great. If a woman wants to watch a football game and yell at the referee, that's great too.
KANSAN STAFF
Amy Francis is a Kansas City, Mo. senior majoring in journalism.
HOLLY LAWTON
Editor
JENNIFER REYNOLDS Managing editor
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
Editors
Editors
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Editorial ... Karan Park
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Fastests .. Tiffany Harness
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