thursday, may 13, 2004
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the university daily kansan 9
9A
FINALS: Success requires semester-long studying
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"The last two weeks are brutal," Hale said.
Finals can also be brutal for students who go into a class thinking it will be a piece of cake.
Steve Shawl teaches an introductory astronomy class. He said most students expect to simply look at stars, but he requires much more.
Blair Thompson took Shawl's class thinking she would just be learning about stars. The Norman, Okla, sophomore took the class to learn more about the subject. She discovered there was more science involved than she thought.
For her, the toughest part of the exams was the fill-in-the-blank section. But Thompson said Shawl gave students every opportunity to succeed if they put effort into the class. The top students in the class
have the option to take an oral exam.
Shawl regularly notices that many students don't study as hard for finals as they should. Perhaps it is the time crunch or the successive projects, papers and tests. But Shawl said the point of finals was to test knowledge, and students should aim to understand the material.
"If you try to simply memorize
you can easily screw it up," he said.
Mark Haug, who teaches a business statistics class, said students must strive for more than memorizing.
"If you pursue ownership first, then grades will follow." Haug said. "But if you pursue grades, then you don't know what will happen."
questions. He shows them how the test applied to what they had studied in class. Then, the students realize the connections with the lecture that they might not have noticed while taking the test, he said.
He said most students described the test as difficult but fair. He invites the few who really criticize the test to his office to go over the
while taking the grades in the class if there are not enough As or Bs. He tries to keep the bar high so students have high expectations for themselves.
Will Lamborn is a straight-A student, but he said Haug's final was the hardest test he has taken in college. Lamborn took the class last semester and said he had heard Haug's final was hard. He studied almost eight hours, but when he got the test he said nothing looked familiar on it.
But Lamborn must have done more than memorize—he got an A on the final.
— Edited by Nikki Nugent
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Tickets given to VIPs are nontransferrable, Konzem said. He said he did not anticipate other tickets becoming available at a later time.
CLINTON: Ticket distribution upsets some students
Not all reserved seats went to non-student VIPs. Konzem said tickets went to Student Senate executive staff members and two or three political science classes, which will be seated in the orchestra pit. Konzem said Clinton staff had requested students sit in the front.
Some students were disappointed with the ticket distribution. Bryan Begham, vice president for the University of Kansas Young Democrats, said it was unfortunate the institute gave tickets to VIPs first instead of students. Begham said he arrived at the Lied Center at 8 a.m., but it wasn't early enough to get a ticket.
early enough to
Jeremy Jewell, Wichita sophomore, said the situation was absurd. He said he missed out on tickets because he had to go to class yesterday morning and couldn't stand in line.
The Lied Center's ticket office hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.
There were some students who received tickets. Sarah Hemme, Perry senior, didn't stand in line for tickets.Instead, she called the Lied Center box office at 11 a.m.
"I found a tiny momentary loophole, and some people will find that unfair," Hemme said. "I was just doing everything that I could think of, and I'm really grateful to the person who answered that phone."
Hemme said the number of tickets allotted to VIPs was completely unfair.
"This is probably a once-in-a lifetime opportunity for most students to hear a former president in person," Heme said, "and it's just a shame that so few tickets were available to us."
Chris Cardinal, Salina junior, formed a camping group with about five others for the event. Cardinal, who was No. 16 in line at the Lied Center, said he arrived at midnight yesterday morning to stand in line. He said he received tickets early but saw many other students still standing in line when he left.
Katie Wolff, Student Senate legislative director, said the Student Legislative Awareness Board was considering starting a petition tomorrow on campus to show student support of moving the location of the lecture.
PLEDGED: Author looks at sororities, stereotypes
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Edited by Louise Stauffer
Never having joined a sorority in college, Robbins admitted she had always thought of sororities as being "the popular group of girls from high school — cooler, prettier, wealthier, multiplied by 10, living under one roof, and recognized officially by their college as a clique."
cally by them. But when she set out to openly observe a "major national sorority," she was denied access, first by the chapter's adviser, and then by the sorority's national office. Eventually, she wrote, every one of the 26 sororities in the National Panhellenic Conference refused to let her report on their organizations. Robbins wrote that they were hesitant to allow the women in their organization to cooperate with the media after such negative portrayals of sororities as in MTV's Sorority Life.
"That doesn't surprise me in the least," said Angie Carr, coordinator for Fraternity and Sorority Life. "They wouldn't want one person representing their national organization because one person's views and opinions don't represent the masses."
But Robbins was not deterred by the National Panhellenic Conference's access denial. Plan B was to seek out individual sorority members who were willing to let her secretly follow them for a year. To protect their identities, lest they face possible expulsion from the greek community, she wrote, Robbins gave the women, their school and the school's greek organizations pseudonyms as well as changed their identifying details.
the book chronicles the daily soap operas that are the lives of Vicki, Sabrinia, Caitlin and Amy throughout their year at "State U." Nothing was off limits, from their online away messages — "my life has been officially taken over" or "another day, another dumb T-shirt," for example — to
an affair with a professor
Robbins wrote that to provide a balanced view, she selected "goodhearted girls who were members of 'normal' sororities" at a campus where greek life was considered "important but not essential" and supplemented her observations with interviews from hundreds of sorority women from campuses across the country.
But Elaine Jardon, Overland Park freshman and member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority, said she thought that Pledged represented Southern sororities, where the pledging process was more intense and the culture of greek life was a different experience.
different experience.
"I think she did a good job of showing what goes on elsewhere," Jardon said. "But I didn't feel like it applied to greek life at KU."
applied to good progress. Throughout the pledging process, Robbins uncovered a variety of hazing practices. She found that some women had to watch hardcore pornography as a condition of joining. Others were subjected to customs such as "boob ranking" where topless pledges were forced to line up according to breast size.
Although she is waiting to read the book this summer, Amy Sullivan said these incidents were not a problem at the University. The St. Louis junior said hazing was not tolerated within the University's Kappa Delta chapter.
In another chapter, active members branded pledges with cigarettes or metal stamps of their sorority letters. Women also told Robbins about traditions like "circle the fat," where pledges undressed and stood in front of the chapter as members circled the fat and cellulite on their bodies.
"I could never even imagine hazing someone or imagine me as a strong independent person being hazed," Sullivan said. "I would never put up with that, and I don't think that it is happening on our campus."
Robbins also claims that despite operating under the guise of organizations based on scholarship and community service, sororities are simply an ever-present group of friends to party and go to bars with.
friends to play "The pillars are scholarship and community service, and we do those things," Grode said. "But really I think people need to kind of own up to the fact that it's really primarily a social organization."
"She was trying to find dirt," Sullivan said. "And I don't think she covered the positive aspects you get from being in an organization like this."
But sororities are about more than just the alcohol consumption that Robbins witnessed, Sullivan said.
Sullivan said that as a sorority member, she has made lifelong friends and lasting memories that she would not have otherwise have had the opportunity to experience
had the oppressor.
But Robbins displays a darker side of sororities throughout Pledged, including the prevalence of rampant eating disorders. She reported that she found an "alarming number" of sorority
houses that needed monthly visits from a plumber to clean out the house's pipes after they had been clogged with vomit. She also cited a 1990s study that reported that 80 percent of college women who frequently self-induced vomiting were in sororities.
"I know that that's an issue in some houses on this campus," Grode said. "You know, having to close down certain bathrooms and house directors regulating how much you eat, and stuff like that."
The content of Pledged is a sensationalized, unfair representation of sorority life, Jardon said. These reported eating disorders, hazing incidents and general selfesteem issues are not unique to the Greek community, she said.
"I guess the worst part is that it's going to turn people off before they get a chance to make up their minds on their own," Jardon said. "There's enough anti-greek sentiment going around that we don't need more fuel for the fire."
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