OPINION
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
PUBLISHED DAILY SINCE 1912
CRAIG LANG, Editor
SUSANNA LOOF, Managing editor
KIMBERLY CABRTEE, Editorial editor
TOM EBILEN, General manager, news adviser
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Wednesday, April 2, 1997
Jeff MacNelly / CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Editorials
New admission requirements are a good start but not enough
Finally, it takes more than a Kansas birth certificate and a pulse to be admitted to Kansas universities. The slight raising of admissions standards is a good first step toward improving kansas' educational system.
Unfortunately, it is not enough. It is time for state officials to realize that if state universities are to achieve excellence, they must be selective and admit students who are committed to excellence.
High school freshmen who plan to attend a Kansas university now must take a few specific courses. Students must have transcripts that meet the state's minimum standards for high school diplomas and also must take an extra year of math, computer science and science, including physics.
However, students failing to meet
Kansas universities must continue to upgrade their admission requirements.
these standards still will be admitted to a state university if they have a decent ACT score or a ranking in the top third of their graduating class.
Adding these exceptions seems to take a bite out of the new requirements, which still fail to meet the standards recommended by the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Even with the new additions, Kansas' admissions standards are among the weakest in the nation.
It is almost as if state officials are scared of raising the standards to where they would provide a challenge
to high school students. Perhaps it is time for Kansas to realize that it has a large tool that it is not using to its fullest extent — the community college system.
Raising freshman admissions standards certainly would leave some students out. However, these students probably are not ready for a full-time college commitment. State officials deserve credit for these improvements. But it would be even better if officials would recognize that these improvements are just a first step.
Hopefully, the state of Kansas soon will have universities that can compete with other top state universities. To do this, the state must become more protective about the students it allows to enter its schools. Kudos to education officials, but do not stop now.
CODY SIMMS FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Advisers can help with enrollment
It's time to choose your courses for next fall. You know the game. You pick up a timetable, review the list of requirements you still need to fill. You write out your schedule on scraps of paper and consider different options.
Finally, you come to a decision. These are the classes you want to take next fall. You fill out the enrollment forms, find out what day you enroll, and then you wait.
Finally, the day comes. You go to Strong Hall, stand in line. At last the clerk enters your schedule into the computer, and you are finished.
It would be nice if the enrollment process went this smoothly for every student, but the truth, is that it doesn't. Often classes close quickly and unexpectedly. And many students don't spend enough time thinking about their enrollment options.
One of the greatest aids to students going through enrollment is an adviser.
When students fail to spend the time and thought necessary to set up a schedule that is beneficial, it causes a great deal of unnecessary strife for everyone involved in enrollment.
One of the greatest aids to every student in this situation is an adviser. Within every department in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, as well as within the professional schools, there are professors and advisers who are willing to help students choose the right courses and make the best decisions for the remaining years of the college career.
professor you know and like in the area of your major. Chances are that they will be happy to help you with your schedule.
If you haven't decided on a major, find a professor within an appropriate school to advise you. Professors whom you have had for former courses, regardless of your area of concentration, are often happy to help you in the enrollment process.
If every student would go to an adviser and spend more time considering their enrollment decisions, the enrollment process would become less painful an more effective.
If you don't have an adviser, talk to a
Finally, ask your adviser to help you choose courses that will be open, and be sure to fill out your list of alternate courses no matter what.
BEN SHOCKEY FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
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Column
Spring break trip should be planned
Spring break 1997 provided more work and hassles than I think it ever intended. After several humbling experiences, I've decided to plan next year's break.
For those of you who are just as ambitious, I'd like to offer some advice on what to and not to do for next year.
First, don't make travel arrangements with a company whose name has the word "student" in it. These people are not very interested in getting you to the white beach that they advertise in posters that litter the campus. And they are just mean people.
After being routed, rerouted, upgraded and down-graded, we were finally pulled from our trip altogether, a polite expression for losing one's vacation. Fortunately, we were able to salvage our money thanks to phone calls from four students, several irate mothers and one lawyer.
If you should find yourself in a similar situation a few days before your next break begins, try not to live out your high-school vacation fantasy on South Padre Island.
However, if you, like us, had to vacation somewhere, anywhere, for spring break, South Padre Island offers very few redeeming activities. If you decide to experience Coca-Cola's Spring Break Jam Fest, I suggest you not represent your school by entering in any dance competitions. These "booty shaking" crowd pleasers leave the stage not only with an assortment of Coca-Cola parting gifts but also completely humiliated. Needless to say, Kansas did not qualify in any of the dance finals.
Do enter yourself in a TV-tune trivia contest offered by one of the many not so luxurious hotels dotting the beach front. Here you can capitalize on your knowledge of obscure television-
theme songs. This is the one event you can win T-shirts and koozies without being knocked unconscious by someone trying to wrestle you to the ground for them. After an embarrassing loss in the second round to someone, who guessed the theme to *Three's Company* correctly, I managed my comeback victory with the theme to *Dynasty*.
When in Padre, a trip to Matamoros, Mexico is obligatory. You can see the other dozens of spring breakers hoofing it across the border to buy up cheap hard-liquor and prescription dietpills. While in Mexico, I recommend not wearing nor wearing a sombrero with "Mexico" embroidered around the brim. The locals do not wear them and neither should you. This also is not the opportunity to wear one of your new free T-shirts, particularly one from Barracuda's night-club that has "Show me your' Cuda" pointed on its back.
Speaking of Barracuda's, every bar on t.l.s island has one or more drink specials for around $10, not very special if you ask me. Ten bucks buys yourself a quart of various hard liquors blended together with a splash of fruit juice. This concoction hits you harder than a "rooftie" thrown into a cup of bad beer.
Don't be deceived by the distance from Lawrence to South Padre Island. The 18-hour car ride in the back-seat of a Ford Probe was a constant reminder of just how long the state of Texas is.
Now that I have come back from spring break as a poster boy for melanoma, I'm thinking that next year I should think about traveling to somewhere a little shadier, perhaps Fantastic Caverners.
As I finish the next few weeks of the semester, reminders of my spring break will winger on as I continue to shed layers upon layers of burnt, blistered, peeling skin.
Ah, the memories
Mike Cole is a Mission Hills Junior in Journalism
Guest column
Apprenticeship sounds like offer GTA can't refuse
A few weeks ago in an interview on KANU radio, Provost David Shulenburger characterized KU's graduate teaching assistants as "apprentices." Some GTAs bristled at this description. I welcomed it. I hadn't heard such good news since Jacque Vaughn announced he that would spend his senior year in Lawrence.
Being an apprentice, it turns out, is a better deal than the current union proposal.
For those who don't know, the GTA union, GTAC, has been trying for two years to get the administration to agree to a contract. GTAC hasn't asked for much—just a reasonable health insurance package and annual cost-off-living raises. Given that GTAS contribute more than 20,000
contribute more than 24,000 hours a week to high-quality education at the University of Kansas, such benefits seem fair. I was content with GTAC's proposal and was willing to continue living on an $8,000-a-year stipend if I could be assured an affordable health plan and adjustments for inflation.
But apparently Shulenburger isn't satisfied with this bare-bones approach. Instead, he wants to make me a member of the most respected group within the working class.
Among workers, apprentices receive some of the best benefits and work conditions. I couldn't be happier. As an apprentice, I won't be paid much when I begin, perhaps one quarter of the entry-level professional's salary, or about $6,000 a year. But that's OK. I will qualify for the University health plan and be given a pension fund, unemployment insurance, vacation pay and life insurance. Best of all, as an apprentice, I will receive annual salary increases until the fourth year, at which time I will receive the full entry-level salary of $24,000.
Let's face it: Shulenburger has outdone the union. He has offered an employment plan that will equitably compensate me for the 40-plus hours a week I spend teaching. It is an employment plan that allows me to plan for the future, protects me in the event of an emergency and recognizes my skills and contributions to education at the University. It is a plan full of integrity and
goodwill.
Part of me is surprised that Shulenburger has extended this generous offer. Until this point, I have had the impression that the administration was stonewalling. Last year when they answered GTAC's contract proposal by denying GTAs a raise granted to the rest of University's employees, I had them figured for dirty fighters. These are mean-spirited bureaucrats, I thought. They are going to stall the union as long as they can.
When they forced a hearing before the Public Employees' Review Board and made GTAs fight to be defined as employees, again I saw a strategy of delay. They don't have our interests in mind, I grumbled, and they would rather pay the salaries of their lawyers than offer GTAs anything.
But Shulenburger's proposal has turned back these dark thoughts. Had I known such benign intentions lurked behind the administration's apparently contemptible actions, I never would have questioned its moves.
After investigating the conditions of apprenticeship during the past two weeks, my feelings for Shulenburger and the whole administration have changed. No longer the object of my ire, they are now recipients of my respect. Shulenburger is now my hero. His proposal for improving my working conditions has become my reason for being. I'm elated. And I'm in the market for that long-needed pair of new shoes.
This year, after six months of fruitless negotiations, I became convinced of their motives. They put a gag order on negotiations and then proceeded to steer meeting after meeting away from the contract issues. The administration was holding off until the union lost all support, and the union couldn't talk about it. They had it in for us.
So, GTAC, I'm sorry. I appreciate the hours of negotiating, organizing and effort that you have put in for me. I hope there won't be any hard feelings. You did your best, but this is my future we're talking about. Health care and cost-of-living increases are no longer enough. I'm going to accept Shulenburger's proposal and become an apprentice.
Kip Curtis is a Lawrence doctoral student in history.
Letter
GTAC hopes for open communication
On March 26 I attended the meeting of the Classified Senate (CS) as an observer for GTAC.
The meeting discussed the letter of reprimand that CSH had issued to Richard Kershenbaum for his having discussed with GTAC's president what
At the meeting in question, KU Public Relations Director Tom Hutton refused to acknowledge the legal status of GTAs as employees.
had taken place at the meeting.
Increased discussion and solidarity among all those who work for this university, and not gag orders, is what is required to achieve the just compensation and fair working condition that we all deserve.
GTAC hopes that there will be open communication and collaboration between all of the various employee groups on campus.
Dave Young
Indiana graduate student
Member, GTAC Steering
10 Committee