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WEDNESDAY APRIL 10,2013
Western Kansas is wherever putting canned fruit into Jello and calling it a "salad" is a thing. So, everywhere but KC
Playing hide and seek with the senate parties. Game on.
Instead of having a salad with my meal, I decided to have a salad's worth of croutons and cut out the middle man.
To the girl who just ran over to someone in the library, you clearly don't need those crutches you used walking in.
"I think I'm pregnant..." "Yeahhh, with baby Jesus." Even my mother knows about my nonexistent sex life.
It's unfortunate that I can't add "master procrastinator" to my resume.
VIRGIN POWER!!!
I am the whale in Potter Lake.
Does anyone out there understand why it seems we have to have coalitions? Why can't we just have freestanding candidates?
You do realize that as soon as you hand me a flyer I throw it right in the trash, right?
If you think you're a fraternity man, but you say you're in a "frat" or refer to your Brothers as "frat men," then you're obviously still a pledge.
Not being a virgin is a choice. At least I'll be able to please my spouse.
Being on the KU football team does NOT make you cool. Creep.
Well... at least we had Ben for a year.
Rio sat down next to me on the bus today. I was so excited, when I got home ate an entire bowl of invisible cereal.
Everyone make sure to vote today and tomorrow! Senate has a lot of power, and your vote really does matter. #Belinformed
If I had a dollar for every time I punted my computer when trying to kick-save it after it dropped it, I could replace the broken screen :{
Answer me this KU: Can the Jayhawk flv?
Try whistling while humming... You're welcome.
I just returned as a graduate student. The leggings-as-pants debate was around in 2007.
So when is @SquirrelsofKu gonna reveal himself??
Tuesday is the best day, the best day of the week! ,
It's not a debate, leggings don't qualify as pants.
"Hook up" in the stacks?? Don't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.
The frat "men" statement yesterday was the funniest joke the FFA has ever posted.
Words only affect us if we let them
I've never eaten a pear.
I guess the first time I was called a "wetback" was about six years ago in middle school, but the last time I heard it was from Republican Rep. Don Young on a radio show a couple weeks back. I know you all are probably expecting me to throw on my luchador mask and enter the ring here, but to tell you the truth, I'm not at all offended. They're just words, after all.
So, as I was saying, back in middle school some kid told me that I was a wetback and that, apparently, I should be offended by this term. Later that night, I looked it up on Urban Dictionary and learned that the term was used to describe illegals that swam across the border to enter America. I didn't understand why it was offensive - inaccurate,
certainly, given that I was born in Mississippi – but not offensive. I just figured that the kid really wanted to call me "nigger," but I wasn't nearly dark enough so he found another word to remind me that I wasn't white.
I also got "beaner," "allen" and simply "Mexican," spat out with just the right inflection to convey what a despicable thing it was to be. But what's in a name? That which we call a wetback by any other name would smell as putrid. The words could never offend me – just the intent behind them and the actions that would follow.
I'm a writer, so I spend a lot of time thinking about using just the right words in just the right context to say just exactly what I mean. But if I'm being totally
honest, my interest in diction began back when I was a kid, with such elegant words as "ass," "bitch," "shit" and whatever the hell else I can get by my editor. I found these obscenities so powerful because they were the few out of millions of words that I couldn't use. The words themselves meant nothing to me, but they had been bad words since long before I was born. They arrived in my vocabulary prein-
stalled with a meaning of hatred.
I don't care that Don Young called his dad's old farmhands "wetbacks." I don't care that Governor Rick Perry has a shooting ranch called "Niggerhead." Or that Rush Limbaugh called a Georgetown college student a "slut" on his show last year. Or that former Michigan Rep. Dave Agema posted an article about "homosexuals last week. They're just words — I don't take them any more seriously than the claims of the GOP that they are a more inclusive, diverse and tolerant party now.
You see, my old high school journalism teacher taught me to show, rather than tell, in my writing. So I won't tell you that I was "hurt" by racism. Instead, I'd show you that I stopped going to
me pool so much in the summer because I didn't want my skin to get darker and have people notice that I was different. See the difference? The actions mean more. Words have their connotations and preinstalled meanings – for instance, I've always been taught that "Republican" is synonymous with "bigot" and "racist." But truthfully, I don't care what nasty words they call me, or what nice things they say they'll do for Latinos until they actually show me they're committed to reform.
POLITICS
Webber is a freshman majoring in journalism and political science from Prairie Village. Follow him on Twitter @wmwebber
Political ideologies possess new players on their teams
A coach has a philosophy for how their game is played. A general set of beliefs that dictate the way they will coach, their team's style of play, and the kinds of strategies they will employ.
Beyond these basic philosophies however, adjustments must be made. A coach may not always have the right types of players to pound the ball into the post. When a team doesn't have the same players year to year, a coach must play to his player's strengths while balancing his philosophy on the game. Other times plans or execution may fail and adjustments must be made in the locker room on the fly.
Coaches that hold steadfast to a bad plan that does not fit their team or the situation on the court don't win many games.
An engaged citizen, a politician, a political party — all have political philosophies. However too often we do not make adjustments to fit the present circumstances. Instead of evaluating our players or the game situation we stick blindly to what our ideology would mandate our position to be; we are like Roy Williams, never calling a timeout no matter how much the momentum of the game may have swung against his team.
Our solutions must adapt to the contemporary climate and can do so within the realm of our belief systems.
The Sequester is the perfect forum for this example.
Some conservatives have turned President Reagan into a deep-red idol and in light of the recent passing of icon and Reagan's British counterpart, Margaret Thatcher, they will likely preach with renewed fervor of the timeless monotony of the former President's policies, without regard for the necessary coaching adjustments.
The players on the team are different now; we face a distinctly contrasting economic climate. We need to play with the players we have now, not try to recreate the Dream Team. When the Sequester was implemented on March 1, it brought $85 billion of cuts. It was described by virtually all members of the media as terrifying, but now (just one month
later) many have started to doubt its peril and said that President Obama "cried wolf."
In the '80s, Reagan sliced tax rates that were left in the obscenely high range after the Carter administration and sought to shrink government. For that time it may very well have been the right solution; I think it probably was. But the consequences were an administration that raised the annual federal deficit by the second most of any President, only after Obama's predecessor.
Many of the same Reagan ideologues that worship his policies also critique Obama for his treatment of our debt dilemma and they would be among the first to agree that an increase in the annual deficit akin to the '80s is not what we need right now.
The Sequester is a return to politics of the past. Old solutions need to evolve to survive. We need a halftime locker room adjustment. You can call it pragmatism or pluralism, but Bill Self just calls it coaching.
Cosby is a sophomore majoring in economics and political science from Overland Park. Follow him on Twitter @claycosby
SOCIETY
Gun control in Conn. a blueprint for the US
I'm pretty sure most of you are getting sick and tired of hearing about all of this gun control talk, but I have to get one thing off of my chest, mainly because Connecticut is my home and change needs to happen. I think it is important to mention that Connecticut has signed and put in place the most strict gun laws our nation has ever seen, and I think the rest of the nation should and will follow its lead.
The new bill will ban more than 100 different assault rifles, any ammunition clip over 10 rounds, armor-piercing bullets, and require a background check to purchase any firearm.
Connecticut is known as the "Constitutional State," but now there are people calling it the "Unconstitutional State" and this is completely preposterous. These are common sense gun laws. No one is taking away your second amendment right to "bear arms," but rather trying to better protect our country and the people that live within it, and I completely agree with that. These restrictions are put in place to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous, convicted criminals. That alone makes me feel safer than having an assault rifle locked up somewhere in the house.
It is not just the background checks that will make Connecticut or our nation safer, but also the reduction of large magazine clips. Who, besides the military, would need 30-, 40-, or even 50-round clips? Who would have a problem with 10 bullet clip maximums? Hunters don't need anything more than that, and people at a gun range certainly don't need more than that, so what exactly is the issue with this magazine reduction law that is put into place? There is
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
no downfall. Banning larger clips and forcing the shooter to reload more often can save a lot of lives. It is simple arithmetic. The more one has to reload, the more time people have to escape, and the more of a chance there is for something to jam or fail.
"That two seconds (to reload a gun) makes a difference, that two seconds is an opportunity, that two seconds is a chance," said Chief Douglas Fuchs of the Redding, Conn. police department on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight." "That protects civilians, and protects our officers, and gives them a better or fighting chance when in harms way."
I am a big believer in "history repeats itself" because of the tragedies I have witnessed in my lifetime, and these gun restrictions are doing something to try to stop another Sandy Hook or Aurora. Colo. massacre. In the past, we have just turned the other way and moved on, but now this change needs to happen.
I guess the point of these new gun laws is to save innocent lives. So, if in the future these laws do in fact save at least one person's life, isn't it worth it?
Carroll is a junior majoring in English from Salem, Conn.
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