4A
Tuesday, April 23,1996
OPINION UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Passing bills requires students to communicate with senators
When clubs contact the Student Senate with a request to finance various activities and needs, a Senate member chooses to sponsor a bill that honors the request. The road to passing the bill is a two-way street. It requires communication and involvement between members of both the Senate and the club.
A request by the Biology Club to receive funding for a guest speaker caused some controversy within the Senate. Because the speaker is a faculty member of the University of Kansas Medical Center, receiving payment for the presentation was questionable.
The senator sponsor of this bill worked through the ins and outs of its debate to convince Senate that the speaker's purpose concerns the discussion of a book that is not connected to the University.
And because of the sponsor's effort, the bill was passed, despite the lack of support displayed by the club itself.
THE ISSUE:
Student senate
The sponsor requested that several members of the club should attend the meeting that discussed the bill to support their request and to answer any necessary questions.
Not one member of the club was present at this meeting.
Dorian Beasley, sponsor of the bill, said that he contacted the club's vice president on several occasions to request his attendance and that he was disappointed the club made no effort to support its own request.
Niraj Kapur, vice president of the Biology Club, said that the club was taken on a ride by the Senate and that he was frustrated the bill did not flow as well as he had expected. He said he regretted that his club made no effort to attend the meeting.
Maybe a little effort could have made the ride a lot smoother.
ERIN KRIST FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Seniors need to take the time to fill out their senior surveys
Let's be realistic: If all the members of the editorial board were graduating seniors at the University of Kansas, a "senior survey" wouldn't be their first priority. But senior students have to realize that this survey is more important than they first would think.
Every senior who files for a degree from February until the end of March should have received the senior survey packet from the University administration.
However, out of 2,000 packages mailed to seniors, only 680 have been completed and returned.
This is the fifth survey that the Office of Institutional Research and Planning has sponsored, and this response has been one of the worst return ratios in KUhistory.
Carrie Towns, survey analyst for the office, said that perhaps one of the reasons for the poor response was that many professional schools sent seniors their own surveys, so they threw out the University's surveys, thinking they already have filled it out.
THE ISSUE:
Senior surveys
But this survey has an impact; students can get their voices heard.
Towns said that the KU administration looked at these surveys and made plans to change the University based on student responses.
For example, one part of the survey asks students to rate their own satisfaction on 12 different areas of University experiences. In 1992, academic advising ranked the second lowest, so the administration is planning to propose a program called "Vision 20/20" and its first initiative is to improve advising.
Senior surveys do make a difference.
"Students who come after you will benefit from you taking the responsibility to tell the administration where they're doing a good job and where improvement is needed," Towns said.
So don't forget to fill out your senior survey.
DOUG WEINSTEIN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
With the constant exposure of violence in the media today, people are not usually inspired to work for improvements in the victims' rights. In the case of one Kansas family, the motivation to make changes finally occurred when the violence happened...
Close to Home
After the rape and murder of their daughter Stephanie, far right, in 1993, Gene and Peggy Schmidt and their youngest daughter, Jeni, Leawood junior, fought to make improvements in anti-crime legislation.
By John Hart
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
On July 2, 1993, Stephanie Schmidt, a 19-year-old Pittsburg State University student was brutally raped and murdered by a repeat sex offender. After her death Gene, Peggy and Jeni Schmidt embarked on a tireless crusade to change laws and work for victim's rights.
Stephanie's family has endured a tragedy few can imagine. But the way in which they have endured it has touched and inspired all who know them.
Having had the opportunity to know the Schmidt's, and the grief they still are experiencing, I am even more amazed by the courage, grace and dignity they have displayed through their struggle.
Stephanie's death was especially tragic because it was preventable. Her assailant, Donald Gideon, was a paroled sex offender who had served only 10 years of his 20-year sentence. Also, no one bothered to tell Stephanie Schnidt that one of her co-workers at the restaurant was a convicted rapist. Had she known this, she never would have accepted the ride from Gideon that led to her death.
--leaves us detached from the agony of crime. It is sad that it sometimes takes a tragedy close to home to wake up.
Stephanie was a fellow graduate of mine from Blue Valley North High School in Overland Park. It is hard to use words to describe the grief of having someone you know be murdered, but my first reaction after learning of Stephanie's death was nausea. Not even the Oklahoma City bombing brought back the same feeling. Perhaps this is because the real-life horror of that event blended with the other violent images the media feeds us, becoming part of the surreal collage of violence that often
Outraged by the miscarriage of justice that led to Stephanie's death, the Schmidt's marshaled a legislative blitzkrieg that helped in the passage of five anti-crime laws within nine months.
By May 1994, Kansas had reinstated the death penalty and passed four bills designed to minimize the threat sex offenders pose to society. Sadly, these efforts weren't able to prevent the recent slaying of another Pittsburg State student, Carrie Williams.
Gary Kleypas, another repeat sex offender, has been accused of the crime.
The parallel circumstances of the Schmidt and Williams murders underscore the fact that our criminal justice system operates more like, in the words of Jeni Schmidt, a criminal sympathy system.
The Williams' murder prompted this piercing commentary by Wendall Anschutz of Channel 5:
"If the scales of justice must tip at all, let the injustice fall on
he who has already inflicted the injustice on others. Attorneys say, 'It's better to acquit 10 men who are guilty than send one innocent man to prison.' Well maybe it's better to keep ten harmless convicts in prison than let one murderer out."
--fight for sane laws and victim's rights.
This is not to say that we should disregard the rights of the accused. We should remember, however, that this idea was born at a time when teenagers didn't kill each other for their tennis shoes. Our doctrines on crime need to fit with our uncivil times.
"Through Stephanie's death we experienced a very rude awakening. I used to operate in a sphere of ignorance about how screwed up things were in our criminal justice system. I want to change that," Gene Schmidt said.
In the midst of dealing with terrible grief, the Schmidt's have worked passionately to make our state a safer place to live. The least that we can do is offer our support by voting for candidates who are tough on crime, if not work directly to
The Declaration of Independence enumerates the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Happiness cannot be pursued without liberty, nor liberty without life — the most fundamental right. If that isn't worth fighting for, then what is?
The Schmidt's didn't choose their crusade; their crusade chose them. They have been so effective because they have not been led by blind fury or unbridled emotions. Instead, they have channeled their grief and righteous anger into a positive movement that benefits us all. And they will never give up — Never.
But they can't do it alone. Do whatever you can, great or small, to not let Stephanie's death and the suffering of other victims be in vain. Don't wait for a tragedy to hit closer to home to become motivated. That person could be a parent, sibling, child, friend, classmate or maybe even you.
John Hert is a Shawne graduate student in Journalism.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Real history lessons take time to develop
In his column last week, Craig Lang questioned why his history classes have not informed him of events in the recent past. Maybe checking a dictionary would help him answer this question. Webster's II definition history as "the branch of knowledge that records and analyzes past events."
The key word here is analyze. Unlike newspapers and magazines, which report recent events, history seeks to understand what, how and why something happened in a much deeper fashion.
happened 10 years ago it is history, it just doesn't work that way. In essence, history doesn't begin until everyone involved is dead.
The same principle applies to most of the events of the last thirty years. While there still are people around who feel involved personally in an event, objective analysis often is obstructed by ideology and emotion.
Lang's reference to the Iran-Contra hearings is a perfect example. It is obvious that there is a great deal of information about the events leading to these hearings that still is undisclosed. This information probably will not come to light until after Ronald Reagan, Oliver North and others no longer are here to interfere with an investigation.
Unfortunately for those who think that just because something
If you want history any faster, you are going to have to sacrifice accuracy. If that is acceptable, there are plenty of outlets for information on recent events.
If you truly are interested no learning about the recent past, you are allowed to do readings that are not assigned by your history professor.
But don't look too hard for the events of your own lifetime to be featured in a university-level history class soon.
Bill Flaherty Lawrence graduate student
And don't be surprised if 30 years from now someone comes along and tells you much of what you thought you knew is wrong.
Bill Flahertv
How to submit letters and guest columns
Letters: Should be double spaced typed and fewer than 200 words. Letters must include the author's signature, name, address and tele phone number plus class and hometown if a University student. Faculty or staff must identify their positions.
Guest columns: Should be double spaced, typed and fewer than 700 words. The writer must be willing to be photographed for the column to run.
All letter and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stauffer Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Paul Todd, editorial page editor, or Craig Lang, associate editorial editor, at 864-4810.
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