4A the university daily kansan
opinion
EDITORIAL BOARD
monday, april 12, 2004
Good platforms from both coalitions
Although the Editorial Board for The University Daily Kansan will only endorse one coalition, both KUnited and Delta Force have relevant platform issues that will contribute to the good of the University. Elements of the platform are
important to recognize.
Regardless, if the coalition system that has become a party system is to survive, both KUnited and Delta Force should work together to ensure the promotion of these student services within their bounds of student government. To assure accountability, which is a popular term in both parties, the partisanship must end. Get things done for the students, and then accessorize our backpacks with buttons.
Both the Delta Force and KUnited coalitions have relevant platforms which would benefit the University.
OURVIEW
KUnited advocates a switch from gasoline to eco-friendly biodiesel fuel for campus busses. Student Senate is in the unique position to do this because it is the only Student Senate-run campus bus system in the nation. But in campaigning, the tradition has been that coalitions promise next year's successes. This is a longer project than one year, and coalitions should let students know how long it will take.
Running on an environmentallyfocused platform as well, Delta Force
wants to initiate a curbside recycling program in student neighborhoods. This would involve citywide support, new sources of funding and eventually more work than any student senator could do. Delta Force should devote its energy toward campus recycling improvements.
Delta Force's campusoriented plans include increased street lighting on popular campus paths. This is a welcome platform issue, especially because it doesn't promise more blue phones, a typical platform promise for both sides. Although the
intent of installing blue phones is safety they are expensive and in a crisis situation difficult to reach.
Delta Force also promises moving University Career and Employment Services, 110 Burge Union, to a more accessible location, such as Strong Hall. The coalition hopes this will offset student debt by helping graduates get jobs. Although it is unlikely a new location for the services would "offset student debt," University Career and Employment Services is vital to the success of graduates and needs to be
Paul Whittemore for The University Daily Kansan
better supported.
KUnited also wants to make wireless Internet available all across campus. Although it may be a requisite in the future, technology fees for now should go
To improve student services and participation, KUnited proposes a "say before you pay" system. It would allow students to vote on-line before Student Senate raises any campus fees. Although direct democracy is good in theory, KUnited must solidify an on-line voting system before implementing this platform.
to updating the computers and computer programs the University already have. At this point in time, only a minority of students have laptops with access to wireless Internet; this proposal would not benefit the entire student population.
GET MORE
For more coverage on the Student Senate candidates and the four referendums, see today's special section.
For Free for All comments go to The University Daily Kansan Web site, www.kansan.com.
PERSPECTIVE
Learning about world happens outside of classroom
GUEST COMMENTARY
It was October 1981. A year earlier, rising tensions between Iran under the Ayatollah Khomeini and Iraq under Saddam Hussein had erupted into a bloody conflict that would kill thousands, drag on for eight years and threaten the stability of the entire Middle East.
Representatives of nearly every Gulf nation, including the two then at war, had gathered to debate the causes of the war, discuss its long-term implications and argue for specific solutions.
Joe Potts
opinion@kansan.com
I they were not meeting in Geneva, or at the United Nations, or as part of some secretly-arranged summit. They were future business, professional and political leaders of their countries, and were in the basement of McCollum Hall, eating supper in what was then a cafeteria for McCollum residents. They were University of Kansas international students, graduates and undergraduate students, seated around a big table, debating the war between bites and on into the evening.
I lived in McCollum with them, and thus had the opportunity — the privilege — of sharing residence hall food with
them and sitting in on their debates, not only that evening but many others as well. Only years later did I realize what a tremendous learning experience that was, the kind of experience that cannot be had in a classroom.
It has been my good fortune to sit at tables like that in many places. As an undergrad in the late '70s I became friends with the first group of students from the People's Republic of China to attend Kansas State University, and began studying Chinese with one of them as my tutor. I learned a great deal from talking with them, then talking with my Taiwanese buddies, and then watching
the two groups cross paths, a phenomenon that had been impossible for nearly three decades beforehand. In the early '80s I shared residence hall food at Beijing University with students I couldn't have met at the University of Kansas.
My circle of friends at "Bei Da" included Russians, East Germans, Poles and Czechs. I even had the incredibly rare opportunity (for an American) of talking with a North Korean. It was a rich learning experience, not just talking with these students, but watching them, especially the North Koreans in their identical uniforms, all wearing Kim II Sung buttons, always under the watchful eyes of their group leaders. All this in the context of daily lessons in applied economics as I experienced first-hand what life was like under Chinese socialism. What classroom substitute is there for something like that?
I cannot imagine how different my undergraduate and graduate experiences, not to mention my professional life and basic understanding of the world, would have been if there had been no international students at Kansas
State University or the University of Kansas. Too many American students fail to recognize the precious opportunity they have during college to get to know people from around the world.
It is alarming that so few American students pursue opportunities to study abroad while they have the opportunity, before families and jobs must be factored in.
One has to wonder how differently the war on terrorism might have been conducted if our administration had possessed a more nuanced understanding of political, historical and religious realities in the Middle East. One can't help but wonder what might have been if our leadership had grasped the historical significance of that remarkable window of time after Sept. 11, when citizens from scores of countries came forward to place flowers and candles at the gates of U.S. embassies around the world. What an opportunity. Now, however, feelings directed toward our embassies are rather different. Our decision-makers had degrees, but they didn't know the world.
This is International Awareness Week
at the University. Attend the events, especially World Expo on Friday afternoon and the Festival of Nations Friday night. Read Joseph Nye's book Soft Power. Ask your department to help counter the decline in applications from international students.
While you're at it, challenge your department to integrate more opportunities for study abroad. Talk to the Office of Study Abroad about ways you might work time abroad into your academic plan. If you aren't friends with anyone from another country, do something about that. While you're at it, you might as well call 864-7265 and talk to Jane Irungu. She's the new coordinator of the Global Awareness Program, or GAP, and can tell you how to get certification on your transcript for international experiences.
Getting a degree is one thing. Learning about the world is something else entirely. Do your best to do both before you leave the University.
Joe Potts is the director of the International Student and Scholar Services at the University of Kansas.
PERSPECTIVE
Being educated doesn't always mean having good sense
...in the hushed academies, your murmur will applaud the wisdom of a thousand quacks. For theirs is the kingdom. — John Fearing, poet
Sometimes academics possess more education than sense. Nowhere is this more evident than in the loony world of postmodernism.
GUEST COMMENTARY
In case you don't know, according to the postmodern school of thought, logic and rationality are just tools for white people to oppress people with. And words don't have actual meanings beyond the hidden, endlessly subjective messages they contain. Everything is just a matter of "perspective" which is inextricably tied to one's gender, class, race, sexual orientation, etc.
"Where there are so many culturally constructed truths there is no truth," writes Myron Magnet of Fortune magazine. That is precisely the point.
Arrah Nielsen opinion@kansan.com
Couple the pedantic wordiness of a postmodern academic with the irru-
tionality of a plastered sorority girl and you get sentences like the following from Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology: "Does not thinking seek forever to clamp a dressing over the gaping and violent wound of the impossibility of thought?" Hmm, well, interesting point.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the nonsensical scribblings of postmodern writers, here's a sampling from Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy; "Seeing before me a cat on a mat directly causes me to truly believe that
There's a good reason why humanities departments are awash with postmodernists but they are conspicuously absent from, say, the School of Engineering. Engineers are constrained by reality and the laws of the thermodynamics. But humanities professors are free to float whatever absurd, postmodern crapola suits their fancy. Fortunately for them, there's a safety net for over-nourished, mediocre, professor types. It's called tenure.
the cat is on the mat. Such causation, though, falls desperately short of the call for the epistemic evidence that epistemically justifies beliefs." While people in the real world solve actual problems and meet bottom lines, postmodern scholars quibble about whether the cat is on the mat. A gem like the cat on the mat piece is too deliciously daffy for anyone but a postmodernist to have come up with.
It's easy to dismiss the postmodernists as a kooky bunch, and the truth is no one but other postmodernists gives a fig
about their philosophy. However, they have been destructive to the extent that people have bought into their way of thinking. It wasn't a coincidence that Paul De Man and Martin Heidegger — two of postmodernism's all-stars — were willing Nazi collaborators. It was a logical extension of their nihilistic philosophy. Is it any wonder that De Man, who wrote viciously anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi articles went on to espouse a philosophy that insists that everything is relative and words have no determinate meaning?
Some ideas are so exceptionally stupid, silly and false that they don't deserve serious consideration in a university, anymore than Holocaust deniers deserve serious consideration in the history department. Postmodernism, a philosophy that "effectively levels all theories" as Mark Goldblatt of The National Review puts it, certainly fits this bill.
A philosophy that denies the concept of objective truth and provides no framework to judge some ideas and theories as
more accurate than others is a philosophy that cannot even draw a moral distinction between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the evil demons trying to rule the people of Sunnydale. If all truths are mere cultural constructs, then the viewpoints of Holocaust deniers and racists are every bit as legitimate as their counterparts.
That the truth is sometimes difficult to unravel and often misconstrued does not mean we should abandon it. A flight from reason and logic won't "empower" anybody. Nor will abandoning the quest for reason and truth. Relativism run amok is not likely to yield worthwhile scholarship or lucid writings, and for that reason postmodernism should be rejected.
Their emperor is naked but the postmodernists have yet to notice. Sometimes the wise men are the biggest fools of all.
KANSAN
Michelle Rombeck
editor
864-4854 or mburhenn@kansan.com
- **nursen is an Andover senior in anthropology**
Andrew Vaupel managing editor 864-4842 or vaupel@kansan.com
Meghan Brune and Johanna M. Maska opinion editors 864-4924 or opinion@kansan.com
Danielle Bose
business manager
864-4358 or adddirector@kansan.com
Stephanie Graham
retail sales manager
864-4358 or adsales@kansan.com
Matt Fisher
sales and marketing adviser
864-7668 or mfisher@kansan.com
Malcolm Gibson
general manager and news adviser
864-7667 or mgibson@kansan.com
Editorial Board Members
Editorial Board Members
Kendall Dix *Lynez Ford* *Laura Francoviglia*
Amy Hammontree *Kelly Hollowell* *Teresa Lo*
Mindy Osborne *Ryan Scarlet* *Elizabeth Wily* *Paul Whitmoretome* *Zach Stinson* *Zach Newton* *Wes Benson* *Sara Behunek* *Kevin Flaherty* *Brandon Gay* *Zack Hemenway*
Alex Hoffman *Kevin Kampwirth* *Amy Kelly*
Cameron Koelling *Courtney Kuhn* *Braedi Matheisen* *Travis Metcalf* *Mike Norris*
Jonathan Reeder *Erin Riffey* *Alea Smith*
Karl Zimmerman