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University Daily Kansan/Tuesday, October 15, 1991
OPINION
Student yearbook
About 14,000 students live off campus. Unfortunately, where those students live may determine where their pictures will be placed in the Jayhawker Yearbook.
Proposed format disregards memories
According to Brett Zinger, editor of the Jayhawker, the different format in placement of student photographs was suggested because he wanted to include more students in the yearbook. In addition, more student photos would provide more revenue and allow the yearbook staff to produce a bigger book with more features. The change also would generate greater sales among undergraduate
students who usually are not pictured in the yearbook.
Organizing students in the yearbook by where they live instead of by schools and degrees they received trivializes their hard work and diligence, in addition to their pride in their schools. Part of the memories of graduating is seeing your picture among friends who endured the same classes and requirements you did, the friends you cried with after a hard test, the friends you laughed with over a teacher's funny antics, the friends you celebrated with when you received summer internships or jobs,
and the friends who walked down the Hill with you after the banner of your school or college. Not the neighbors from whom you borrowed a cup of sugar or with whom you rode the same bus home.
While we commend the yearbook staff for their efforts to include more students in the yearbook, the new format they have suggested is insensitive. In an effort to make more money, the yearbook staff has hurt, and perhaps lost, their most dependable buyers — the senior class of 1992.
Clanissa Jackson for the editorial board
Improving fee payment
Mail-in system would benefit all involved
Long lines, frustration and confusion. sound like the way you'd like to spend your first day back at KU?
But University officials are trying to change the fee payment system this fall through a coordinated effort between offices in educational services, areas in student affairs and academic units. They are working in concert to try to improve the system.
Officials are trying to implement fee payment by mail and replace the existing, outdated system as early as Fall 1992. If the plan were implemented, students would request which classes and extra fees they desired (such as a bus pass or sports card) in July. Students
would then be instructed to pay their fees in early August.
Students and faculty alike would benefit in many ways from the proposed fee payment plan. First, the system is more convenient. Students would be able to pay their fees without actually coming to KU. For the price of a postage stamp, students would be given the opportunity to continue to work an extra week, spend more time with family and friends or use the time to become adjusted to college life.
Moreover, fee payment by mail would help students get the classes they want. By having students mail in their fees in early August, enrollment officials
would know much earlier how many students have decided not to return to campus.
It is exciting as well as refreshing to see offices of educational services, offices of student affairs and academic units working together to try to improve the quality of college life for students. There are kinks in the proposed system that still need to be ironed out. Yet it is clear that fee payment by mail would improve the existing system by making students' lives easier and giving them access to available class spaces earlier.
Editorials reflect the opinion of the University Daily Kansan editorial board. Editorials reflect the majority opinion of the board.
Opinions expressed in guest and staff columns and cartoons are solely those of the author or artist. Views expressed in columns and cartoons are not necessarily shared by the Kansan.
Anita Bajaj for the editorial board
Editorial board members are: Benjamin Allen, Anita Bajaj, Kevin Bartles, James Baucom, Michael Dick, Amy Francis, Clarissa Jackson, Dan Janousek, Ellen Kuwana, Holly Lawton, Holly Neuman, John Noltensmeyer, Karen Park, Jennifer Reynolds, Jennifer Tanous, Jose Vasquez, Julie Wasson and Frank Williams.
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Group ignores foolish ridicule
As I was walking by National Coming Out Day activities on Wescoe Beach on Friday, I heard a man yelling something obscure about the group of people participating in the event. "Look at the faggots," was what he yelled. He was with several of his friends and was obviously made very uncomfortable by their openness. I wasn't surprised by his foolishness
homophobic acts are a common sight.
The jeering and elbowing of his friends
wasn't impressive; it's just too easy to
laugh like an idiot at a situation like
this.
I was impressed, however, with the contrast between that pathetic man and the group on Wescoe Beach. There be sat at the top of the steps, laughing like a moron with his friends, while the group stood below, calmly ignoring his childishness in strong solidarity. It is a refreshing thing indeed to witness a group of people doing something just and brave in the face of the public ridicule that their friends gave him, serving as a dark background to frame the honor of the group. I respect those folks participating in Coming Out Day. I think that their bravery and self-respect should be a model for us all.
Dan McCloskey Iowa City, Iowa, senior
Possible payoff policy unfair to poor nations
In a world of ever-increasing poverty, hunger and political oppression, there has been a dramatic shift away from the open arms policies of wealthy, industrialized nations to accept refugees who wish to leave their distressed homelands for asylum and a chance for a better life.
Amidst the worldwide problems involving the Vietnamese boat people who are fleeing to China, Africans from various countries escaping war and famine and, closer to home, Haitians, who are trying to leave their political upheaval by plane or boat, Congress is examining legislation that would allow businesses from wealthy nations to pay a fee for their employees to enter the United States and gain citizenship. The price tag is $1 million.
Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Three decades of dictatorship and military rule have left the people severely disillusioned. The recent overthrow of the pseudo-left wing democratic government is sure to make things worse.
In 1982, the Reagan administration reached an agreement with Haiti to permit U.S. Coast Guard ships to stop and seize any Haitian boat filled with refugees that was headed for the Unit.
Daniel
Janousek
Staff
columnist
ed States. Since 1982, more than 20,000 Haitians have been stopped and sent back. Only six have been brought to shore to pursue their asylum claims.
The past few years have not been good for refugees such as the Haitians. Budget deficits have persuaded many wealthy nations to believe that their economies cannot handle the influx of newcomers. They also content that the never ending flow can be stopped.
While only six Haitians have been allowed to pursue their asylum, 420 Cubans have entered.
Now we reconsidering a payoff policy for the right to enter. This clearly is discrimination against politically and socially determined poor people.
Our Congress should consider a camping trip and take along this legislation as fuel for the fire.
- Daniel Janousek is a Dodge City junior majoring in journalism.
Use of Yew tree needs to be carefully planned
Our wild frontier, the West, has a great tradition: unattended land, adventure, cowboys and Indians. But now the picture is less romanticized. A recent Newsweek article focuses on the heated political debate concerning the use of federal lands in the West. Unfortunately, the popular perception is that the West's resources are endangered with an emotional debate about the Pacific Yew tree and its use for an anti-cancer drug.
Ellen
Kuwana
Staff
columnist
The controversy is that the tree
The Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management oversees 270 million acres of federal land in the 11 Western states. It must enforce a "multiple use" approach, meaning that industrial and recreational uses must be balanced with conservation efforts. This means that environmentalists vying for rights to the land, all with legitimate claims.
There is no easy solution to this problem, and there will be no clear winner in this battle, but a recent scientific discovery gives the conservatists added ammunition. The Yew tree grows in the Western United States, and Canada, but is most prevalent on federal lands in Oregon and Washington. It is the source of a potent anticancer drug, taxol. Early studies have proven that it is effective on advanced cases of cancer, especially of the ovaries and breasts, that were previously unresponsive to treatment.
must be killed in order to harvest the bark, which provides thenatural product for the drug. So then the question arises: How can one consider a tree more valuable than a human life? I would like to suggest that this is not a productive approach, as value judgments are not necessary. The real problem is how to use the trees while ensuring their future survival.
Some of the main problems faced are that the Pacific Yew tree is slow-growing and the extraction process has both a low-yield and is expensive. It now takes three Yew trees to provide enough drug for one patient. However, research indicates that in the future the Yew's 100 needles, not the bark, may be used as raw material for the drug. Then the rest of the drug will be synthetically approved will make using the tree unnecessary. The bottom line is that the West's resources are finite and if they are not preserved, the possibility of discovering other valuable drugs is lost. Conservation must be a priority.
Ellen Kuwana is a Lawrence senior majoring in organismal biology.
Loco Locals
by Tom Michaud