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Wednesday, June 19, 1991 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Hoch's demise
University must look to future and seize chance to make positive changes in spite of painful loss
As weary firefighters lay down their hoses and as lingering smoke and curious crowds drift away, only two things remain of a once stately and historical building: the limestone exterior of Hoch Auditorium and the question of what will happen next.
Over the next several weeks, administrators will begin to explore possible options. Although all plans are rooted in tragedy, this is a time to make positive changes.
For example, although it will be almost impossible to relocate many of the larger classes traditionally taught in Hoch, relocation will be for the best. No excuse sufficed for conducting classes in a room with poor acoustics and the distraction of 900 other students. It is not unreasonable for students to expect classrooms that are conducive to learning.
And Hoch's usefulness as the largest audi-
torum on campus was nearing its end. Now KU officials, instead of pondering the problems of renovation, can concentrate on a new building that will better serve KU's needs.
Patience is needed. Many have suffered extensive losses. Students and faculty alike will be inconvenienced by the missing structure in ways not yet realized. In addition, KU officials are faced with the monumental task of reorganizing University schedules along with raising money to replace and rebuild. However, this is not a time to complain, rather it is a time to adapt.
A part of KU's history is gone forever. And although it is hard to keep one's perspective as a $12.8 million natural disaster smolders in the middle of campus, it is important to recognize that this is not the end, but the beginning.
Jennifer Schultz for the editorial board
Freedom of speech
Even vicious expression is entitled to protection
A burning cross is one of the most frightening symbols of racism in the United States.
But if the Supreme Court does its duty, it will ensure that people can display freely this vicious symbol of ignorant prejudice.
The court is reviewing the case of a teenager who, after burning a cross at a neighbor's house in St. Paul, Minn., was charged with violating an ordinance that prohibits symbols that arouse anger, alarm or resentment on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or sex.
The Minnesota Supreme Court noted that the ordinance easily could violate the First Amendment, but it concluded that symbols such as swastikas or burning crosses should be outlawed because they symbolized violence.
The Minnesota Supreme Court failed to distinguish between a symbol of violence and
an act of violence, and, at the same time, it unjustly ascribed motives for the teen-ager's act.
To the teen-age, a burning cross may be a symbol of hatred, not necessarily of violence.
However grotesque, the teen-ager's act was merely a symbolic expression of his thoughts.
The Supreme Court last year reaffirmed the right to symbolic action when it overturned laws against burning the U.S. flag.
The charge against the teen-ager based on the ordinance should be dropped, and he should be found guilty of violating trespass, vandalism and other general criminal laws.
Such convictions would be valid constitutionally because, broadly speaking, laws that do not differentiate among the motives behind criminal acts do not endanger the First Amendment as do repressive thought-specific laws.
The editorial board
Court revises search rule
Other Voices
The Supreme Court last week tried to straighten out the rules police must follow when searching cars. The effort should help police in Oregon as well as elsewhere.
Every citizen's protection against unreasonable search and seizure is guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Similar
protection is provided by the Oregon Constitution.
The dissatisfaction with the federal rules, which had been enunciated in 1979, should be eased by the new law. The Federal Reserve, which overturned the 1979 precedent.
hand, police were allowed to open any container or search anything else inside as long they had cause to conduct a general search of a car. But on the other hand, police could not go after anything in a car that they did not know about other reasons and that they had no cause to search until stopbing it.
As Justice Harry Blackmun explained in last week's majority opinion, the 1979 decision created confusion and anomaly. On the one
From The Eugene, Ore., Register Guard
Hoch must be reconstructed to save part of KU's history
got my first real taste of college in Hoch Auditorium.
On a stifling afternoon in late August (never mind what year it was), I was introduced to Chemistry 184.
Sitting in one of Hoch's aging, reddish-brown, pseudo-velvet seats, a stared at the 800 other students in his room and wondered whether I really could cut it here.
Hoch didn't have desks; we used lapboards instead. Over years of use, the boards had been scrawled with random obscenities, rock anthems, the names of Greek houses and, of course, chemistry equations.
Mike Brassfield
I liked the graffiti. It conveyed a strange sense of history, and I felt better thinking that countless student projects have created the same challenges that I now faced.
Although many of my Hoch memories center on paying parking fines and enduring grueling exams, the building means different things to
Now Hoch is in ruins, and KU faces the collapse of restoring it to its former form.
Editor
This won't be easy. The building was gutted by Saturday's disaster, and it is uncertain how much of its limestone exterior can be saved. But房山老城的建筑 or remodeling, it must be done. Hoe is a cornerstone of KU history.
different people. It has for 64 years.
Generations of students have attended performances, lectures, basketball games and classes in Hoch. The class of 1952 cheered on the Jayhawks as they won a national basketball championship. The Rock Chalk Revue and Christmas Vespers shown in the auditorium for years.
For me, personally, the building always will invoke memories of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Graham Chapman and the Ku Klux Klan. And in just the second year of his life Angela Davis, Timothy Leary and Gordy Liddon have appeared there.
Exposure to such speakers has contributed to my education as much as the classes I have attended in the same building. Hoch was an embodiment of KU in its ability to deliver experiences far-ranging and memorable.
It's all gone now. Hoch is an empty shell containing only charred, twisted bits of metal.
Those who watched the fire Saturday displayed the entire human range of emotion
Some were having a pretty good time. They seemed ready to break out marshmallows and weenies and haul a keg up the Hill.
But most seemed to display an odd mix of fascination, sadness and awe at the scale of the fire's destructive ability that if really could happen.
Eventually, I think, they felt a kind of numbness as, again and again, they realized that there was nothing, absolutely nothing they could do except stand there and watch a piece of history disintegrate.
or music that tasks.
Now, all that left to do is pick up the pieces and try to put them back together again.
After all, it's only the building that has disappeared. The memories are still there. And new memories are waiting to be created.
even before Saturday's disaster,
there were plans to break up Hoch's
cavernous auditorium into library
space and classrooms. Times
change, and the University's needs
change with each generation that
passes through it. Hoch will never be
the same, but it will be back.
Mike Brassfield is a Shawnee senior majoring in journalism and English.
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Foor-length sweeps of satin and silk crowded the lobby at Oliver Hall last weekend at the former to the close of Sunflower Girls State.
Girls' Staters' conduct and leadership skills lack maturity
But for Girls' State, do they need
Spangles and sparkles and lace and glitter adorned the more than 500 high school girls attending.
Sure, these girls look great, but a question arises: Are we sure that these are the leaders of tomorrow?
Before I am attacked for calling these individuals the slightly demeaning term "girls," let me assure you — that is what they are. Most of these people, earnest and sweet and intelligent though they are, do not have the maturity the title "woan man" connotes. They are not "boys" or "boy soldiers" but very boy and barely able to keep upright in high-leed shoes.
Liz Kennedy
Staff columnist
this maturity? According to the Girl's State brochure, the purpose of the assembly is "to provide citizenship training for girls of high school age . . . to help them grasp the meaning of responsibilities which they must assume when they become adults." Like training wheels on the bicycle of government involvement, I guess.
So the girls play government and elect people. They listen to speeches and go on tours. But they also scream "No!" or "Please." Maturity sure doesn't seem like a
needed commodity
But don't let me give the impression that these girls don't take Girls' State seriously. They are very, very serious. They are there for a "purpose." They were chosen to represent their high schools, which is an honor that is not shrugged off. And if they complain a little about the strictness of the rules, well, they are just letting off steam.
And the rules are strict. No telephone, no elevator use (and this is in 10-story Oliver), and no free time except for a 45-minute period each afternoon. Girls must sleep with their door open and, because one no slums around the Statehouse in Topeka wearing shorts, they must dress up every day. And absolutely no talking to boys.
As much as I would like to say that these rules are not needed, that
maybe they're a little excessive, I can't. These girls needed more than a little guidance. I think maybe sleeping with the door shut would have been nice, but the other rules seemed necessary to maintain order.
And the girls admitted that the rules had a "purpose" (is there nothing at Girls' State that didn't?) After all, if there were boys around, no one could be serious about what they were there for.
I hope for their sake that this feeling rubs off soon. Few college classes and not many workplaces are divided by sex, as far as I know.
One girl went on to explain that whenever they saw a man during the week, they sang a Girl's State song, such as "Man Without a Girl's State." She added that they hadn't seen men for so long that they even sang it to the janitor.
"And he was Black!" she said.
"And he was Black!" she said.
Ouch. These are our future lead
ers?
These individuals are not children. Most will be attending college in a year. They are supposedly the best of all school teachers, high schools, the hope for the future.
Some individuals I spoke to were mature and made good points about the uselessness of Girls' State. I was not a fan of intelligence some of the girls exhibited.
But the rest scared the hell out of me. If these girls are going to make it in the expanded world of college, somebody better hire a full-time
It is true that I only talked to one group of about 20 girls. Maybe they aren't repressed because they're not around, are it. It is also true that I am stereotyping all these girls
by the impression I got from one group. Maybe that's wrong as well, but what a strong negative impression to give.
Girls' State is not a bad thing. Everyone should get an idea of government's inner workings. But I don't think girls can get them than impressed by the program.
Maybe it is society's fault that these girls feel that they can't be serious around men. Perhaps these future women have been reared so that they need strict rules to function in a group.
Well then, maybe society should have to spend a week with no telephone, no elevators and sleeping with the door open.
Liz Kennedy is a Dublin, Ohio, senior majoring in journalism.
KANSANSTAFF
MIKE BRASSFIELD Editor
JENNIFER SCHULTZ
Managing editor
Editors
TOM EBLEN General manager,news adviser
Campus/Sports Chris Oster
Associate Campus. Amy Zameriowicz
Photo Editor Timothy Tinker
Honors Economics Katie Stadler
Copy Chief. Chris Siron
CHRISTINE MUSSER Business manager
JENNIFER CLAXTON Director of Client Services
Dir. or Special Projects...Lisa Kaefer
Production Manager ...Leigh Taylor
Classified Manager ...Jenny Burkert
Regional Zone Manager ..Kim Wallace
Retail Zone Managers ..Colin Costello
JEANNE HINES Sales and marketing adviser
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