4A the university daily kansan
opinion
thursday, april 8, 2004
BUDGET OVERVIEW: A 'KANSAN' SERIES
University tuition increases: Good if used properly
This year will complete the second of a five-year tuition increase at the University of Kansas. Although the Kansas Board of Regents has yet to set the rate of increase
for next year's tuition, an addition of about $600 has been the norm.
As cringe-inducing as the University's words "tuition enhancement," sound to the students who have to pay for it, it's helpful to know just where
OUR VIEW
Tuition increases will improve the University as long as they are used in the ways they are intended.
that money is going. For the most part, the intentions are good. The University saves 20 percent of the revenue for need-based financial aid. About 4 percent of the increase is used for improving technology equipment for all parts of the KU campus. For this academic year, a combined $2.2 million of the increase is projected to boost the salary of faculty and unclassified staff.
The increases are fine as long as they do what they are intended to, which is actually enhance the University and meet its goals. But Gov. Kathleen Sebelius's budget recommendations for fiscal year 2005 still leave this University with a $7.7 million shortfall.
Furthermore, the Legislature shouldn't see tuition revenue as a justification to plug other holes in the budget. As Chancellor Robert Hemenway said before the House Education Budget Committee,"We do not believe that students pay tuition to earn
USES FOR TUITION ENHANCEMENT REVENUE
The decision to approve how tuition money will be allocated for the 2004-05 year won't be finalized until June. Here's a look at what has been decided and what is pending:
WHAT'S CERTAIN:
- $2 million: faculty salary
- $2 million: new faculty/programs
- $1 million: GTA salary
interest for the state generally. They expect their tuition to pay for education."
The University continues to be recognized as a "best value" institution, as it was again this week by the Princeton Review.
$1 million; miscellaneous operating expenses
■ $900,000: unclassified staff salary
■ $500,000: faculty start-up
■ $500,000: libraries
$500,000: libraries
WHAT'S PENDING:
- $500,000: new staff positions
- $200,000: new GTAs/lecturers
Source: Office of the provost
Tuition increases are meant to be a step in strengthening the University. But given the continuing budget crunches in Kansas, the word "enhancement" becomes an unpleasant irony.
PERSPECTIVE
Internet e-mail scams can stop with you
Warning: any self-proclaimed Internet junkie should read this. You may have already fallen victim to what I am about to tell you, and if not, it won't be long until you too are in danger. We must get the message out — tell everyone you know. Mass e-mails claiming impending danger are not real. Stop sending them.
COMMENTARY
Sara Behunek
opinion@kansan.com
In the milieu ruled by Jerry Springer and supermarket tabloids, e-mail hoaxes play on our humanistic tendencies toward others' misfortunes and juicygossip. but unlike its sensationalistic counterparts, e-mail hoaxes pose as a credible news source and are taken seriously despite glaringly obvious lapses in logic.
With all cerititude, acquaintances frequently send me grave e-mails warning of the dangers of chemicals in tampons, gang initiation rituals and off-the-wall conspiracy theories. M.L. Grant, cofounder of boutell.com, inc., a guide for Webmasters, said he thought e-mails carry unwarranted reliability because of a public who ascribes importance to the written word.
This may apply to from the "netlore" I recently got from a concerned friend. The message was from Captain Abraham Sands with the Jacksonville Police Department. In desperate and foreboding tones, he warned about a malicious prank in which someone was attaching HIV-positive hypodermic needles to the
underside of gas pumps.
"In the Jacksonville area alone," Sands' e-mail said, "there have been 17 cases of people stuck by these needles over the past five months." At the end, it urged — in capital letters and an excess of exclamation points — to pass the message to everyone in my address book.
But there is no Jacksonville Police Department; it was changed to the Sheriff's Office in the mid-60s. And there has never been a Captain Abraham Sands on the police force.
Suddenly disillusioned, I decided to look further into the e-mails that have plagued my in-box for years, the anonymous notes from strangers with a harrowing tale, revealed only to save the at-risk masses.
Rob Rosenberger, Internet watchdog and founder of vmyths.com, a site disseminating the truth about Internet security hysteria, said he thought most hoaxes proliferated through well-meaning but gullible people. Like a digitized version of the telephone game, hoax-mails are changed, added to and edited over time, he said.
In the days of snail mail, chain letters still flourished. But no doubt, the Internet has vitalized and accelerated the chain-mailing process.
The only way to curb the spread of hoax-mail is by individually determining what is worthy of forwarding.
If a suspect e-mail urges you to forward it to everyone you know, it is probably a hoax, Rosenberger said. Similarly, if it is from an unidentified "genuine expert" or if it doesn't offer a link to an authoritative Web site, it's fake.
Most importantly, use logic; mass murderers and hypodermic needles belong on the news and in headlines, not as the subject of mass e-mails.
Behunek is a Fort Collins, Colo., senior in journalism.
MR. PRESIDENT,
YOU SAID IRAQ
HAD WMDS, BUT
YOUVE YET TO
FIND ANY...
THE CIA
GAVE ME
BAD
INTEL.
SO WHY HAVE YOU BEEN SO RELUCTANT TO COMPLY WITH THE SEPT.11 COMMISSION?
...SAID TAX CUTS
WOULD HELP
CREATE NEARLY
2 MILLION JOBS
BY FEB. 2004..
THE ECONOMY IS STILL FEELING THE EFFECTS OF SEPT. 11!
BELER'04
WET CAMPUS
... WE'VE NOW
LEARNED THAT
9/11 MIGHT
HAVE BEEN
PREVENTABLE...
CLINTON DIDN'T DO ANYTHING, AND RICHARD CLARKE IS A LIAR!
Nate Beeler for KRT
Free for All Call 864-0500
For more comments, go to www.kansan.com
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
countries that have brutal dictators and oppressive regimes, fabricate findings of weapons of mass destruction and occupy the entire country all for the sake of the war against terrorism.
You know spring has come again when the crazy preacher man is out on Wescoe shouting gospels.
You guys don't know what you're talking about. The Kansan is not just good for it's Free for All and crossword puzzle. I check out the forecast too.
图
I'm in love with my boyfriend's best friend. Should I tell him?
countries that have brutal dictators and oppressive regimes, fabricate findings of weapons of mass destruction and occupy the entire country all for the sake of the war against terrorism.
It is 83 degrees in our room right now. For the love of God will someone please turn the air conditioning on in Templin Hall.
countries that have brutal dictators and oppressive regimes, fabricate findings of weapons of mass destruction and occupy the entire country all for the sake of the war against terrorism.
I just ran over a squirrel.
countries that have brutal dictators and oppressive regimes, fabricate findings of weapons of mass destruction and occupy the entire country all for the sake of the war against terrorism.
Guys wearing blue shirts make me want to run around campus naked.
--countries that have brutal dictators and oppressive regimes, fabricate findings of weapons of mass destruction and occupy the entire country all for the sake of the war against terrorism.
Voting for Delta Force is like having hickies on your neck and not wearing a turtleneck to cover them up. It's just wrong.
countries that have brutal dictators and oppressive regimes, fabricate findings of weapons of mass destruction and occupy the entire country all for the sake of the war against terrorism.
I just saw KUnited turn down Delta Force in a friendly game of dodgeball. I think that they were scared.
That guy had no tires on his bike. I don't think that is very good for the bike.
Thank you Broadband man.
酷
I see fat people.
WAKE UP!
'George Bush's Vietnam': The United States in a mess
It has been more than a year since President Bush declared war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Since then, American soldiers have successfully killed or captured 59 of the 52 persons from Saddam's regime who were on their most-wanted list, including Saddam and his sons Uday and Quasay.
Capturing Saddam and dismantling his regime was supposed to significantly cripple the resolve of Saddam's Baath Party loyalists and regime remnant radicals. Instead, small pockets of resistance throughout Iraq have helped to add to the more than 600 troops who have lost their lives for the sake of spreading democracy to an oppressed people who did not ask for U.S. assistance.
Sometimes I ask myself when the Iraqi conflict is going to end. Maybe Bush wants to impose a new form of the Truman Doctrine. Instead of stopping: the spread of communism throughout the world, the United States will topple
COMMENTARY
Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy said, "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam." If that is the case then Bush is following in the footsteps of Kennedy's brother, John E Kennedy, who got America in Vietnam in the first place. I do not usually agree with Ted Kennedy but I have long said
Brandon Cobb
opinion@kansan.com
There are some interesting parallels between the Iraqi War and Vietnam. First, the U.S. government has underestimated the resolve of the enemy. No matter how many people the United States kills or captures, it will be impossible for them to crush every pocket of resistance. In the Vietnam War, the United States killed more than 2 million Vietnamese and still could not stop the communist North from taking over the South's capital of Saigon. America had to evacuate Vietnam after losing so many soldiers for absolutely no reason.
that the Iraqi War is this generation's Vietnam. However, I do not believe that the number of casualties will reach 58,000, as it did in the Vietnam War.
Second, I do not think any of the presidents who served during the Vietnam War had a clear objective as to why the United States was there, and Bush is falling into the same category.
tary of Defense Robert McNamara, who served during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and is considered one of the architects of the Vietnam War, said, "The United States, is making the same mistakes all over again. We're misusing our influence. It's just wrong what we're doing. It's morally wrong, it's politically wrong, it's economically wrong." I could not agree more. Everyone knows that America is the only superpower in the world. The U.S. government does not have to bully countries such as Vietnam and Iraq to prove its might to the rest of the world.
Onimwithdennis.com, former Secre-
The last interesting parallel is Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Kerry served in Vietnam only to come back and criticize U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Now fast forward to 2004, John Kerry supported Bush's Iraqi Resolution but later criticized the United States' involvement in Iraq. That is a pretty crazy coincidence.
The June 30 deadline to hand over power to the Iraqi people is right around the corner and I do not see how that is going to happen. The United States is going to be in Iraq for a long time trying clean up the mistakes they have made.
KANSAN
This nation-building nonsense has got to stop or Bush will have to move out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., next January.
Michelle Rombeck
editor
864-4854 or mburhenn@kansan.com
Bush had better get his act together soon. Weekly roadside bombings and guerrilla warfare against U.S. soldiers is wearing some Americans' patience thin. Bush also needs to make a clear distinction between the Iraqi War and the war on terrorism, because the two seem confusing at times. I have yet to see the correlation between Iraq and terrorism. Now America is a year into this Iraq mess and none of the threats the Bush administration said existed have come into fruition.
Cobb is a Kansas City, Kan., senior in political science.
Andrew Vaupel
managing editor
864-4854 or vaupel@kansan.com
Meghan Brune and Johanna M. Maska opinion editors 864-4924 or opinion@kansan.com
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business manager
864-4358 or adddirector@kansan.com
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retail sales manager
864.4358 or adsales@kanan.com
A.
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sales and marketing adviser
864-7666 or mfisher@kansan.com
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Editorial Board Members
Kendall D'Lynze Ford
Laura Francoviglia Anna Gregory
Amy Hammontree Kelly Hollowell Teresa Lo
Mindy Oabore Greg Holdmuist Ryan
Scarrow Elizabeth Willy Sara Behnek Kevin
Flaherty Brandon Gay Zack Homenway Alex
Hoffman Kevin Kampwille Amy Kelly
Cameron Koalling Courtney Kuhlen Brandi
Matheisen Travia Metcalf Mike Norris
Jonathan Reeder Erin "Eifir" Ales Smith
Karl Zimmerman
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