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Wednesday, June 21, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Laboratory or playground? KJHK ends alternatives
Poor Mike Kautsch. He keeps trying to act like a leader, but he just can't get seem to get the hang of it. Especially when it comes to that thorn-in-the-side of his journalism school, radio station JKHJ.
for students interested in tateo.
It just seems funny that the summer session, when the Kansan publishes only once a week and the majority of students are far from earshot, is the time that Kautsch, dean of the School of Journalism, chose to announce decisions about changes that will be made at the station.
It's not that recent efforts to introduce more professionalism into the radio station are off-base — they are not. The station for too long has been more of a playground than a laboratory for students interested in radio.
Last summer, for example, the station manager pulled "thresh" music recordings from the station's library and prohibited that style of music at the station. At the same time, non-students were prohibited from appearing on the station. No matter that some non-student shows were among the best the radio station had to offer.
radio station had to order The reason given for removing the recordings from the station and locking them away was that "thrash" was no longer consistent with the radio station's style.
The new station style would be more mainstream, they said, more like every other college radio station in the country. No matter that KJHK had gained recognition as a trendsetting, unique station and was credited with advancing awareness of new music in the Lawrence area.
The latest changes in station policy were also made under the protective cover of summer. Kautsch showed up at a KJHK board of directors meeting last Tuesday to announce faculty-mandated operational and organizational requirements for the station.
At a radio station staff meeting last Wednesday, many student staff members said they weren't as upset about the changes as they were about the way faculty members forced the changes upon them. They voiced frustration at how such faculty-mandated changes have become a regular occurrence and how difficult it is to run a professional station when the rules seem to be constantly changing.
rules seem.
We agree that the station has not been as professional as it could have been. But pulling a certain style of music seems to be a move aimed at discouraging certain people from working at the station more than fostering professionalism. Who said alternative music and professionalism could not go hand in hand?
radio?
How much professionalism could Kautsch have expected from a station that was set up to allow students with no training in radio to go on the air? Prior to Wednesday's decree, non-journalism students were allowed air time when they enrolled in a 100 level theater course. That could be equated to opening Kansan facilities to any freshman and saying that whatever they produced would be published in the Kansan. Poor policy? Yes. Student staff members' fault? No.
Students have made mistakes at the station. Questionable donor announcements have prompted a Federal Communications Commission investigation. Questions of taste have arisen. Disputes over the station's organizational structure have led to inmuendo, smear tactics and have landed the dispute in a cover story in a weekly Kansas City magazine.
But it has not been the fault of the KJHK student staff. It has been the fault of the way the system was set up. The blame must lie with Max Utsler, chairman of radio-television-film sequence in the School of Journalism. It must also lie with Kautsch.
The needed changes at the station should have been implemented with student knowledge, not in the heavy-handed way that it was done. Now that the decree has been handed down, we hope the journalism school will back off and allow the students the freedom they deserve.
Ric Brack for the editorial board
HIC Brack for the editorial board
The editorials in this column are the opinion of the editorial board. The editorial board consists of Jill Jess, Ric Brack, Kirsten Bosnak and Kathy Walsh.
Other Voices
One down and two to go
The Ayatollah Khomeini, grand wazoo of all Iranians living and dead, has passed into another world, where he is presumably roasting over a slow fire.
Deng Xiapeng and Ferdinand Marcos are still alive.
You can't win them all.
Philadelphia Daily News
News staff
Jill Jess . . . Editor
Heidi Kim . . . Manager editor
Sian Diel . . . Campus editor
Kelly Lamson . . . Photo editor
Stephen Kline . . . Graphics editor
Tom Elkins . . . General manager
Business staff
Scott Frager ... Business manager
Jeremiah Ford ... Retail sales manager
Lori Plant ... Campus sales manager
Adam Pfeffer ... Production manager
Mike Lehman ... Classified manager
Steve Hagen ... Sales and marketing
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SUPREME COURT
"I SEE THE CONSERVATIVES ARE WEARING THEIR NEW ROBES."
Keep your laws off my body Adoption background doesn't hamper pro-choice viewpoint
If abortions had been legal in South Dakota in 1967, I might not be writing this column. You see, in 1967 a young female law in South Dakota
student at the University of South Dakota discovered that she had become pregnant by a man she had been seeing. The man may have been a visiting professor from England, may have been married and probably did not know the woman was pregnant. She was married, and she did not want to raise a child as a single parent. So she put the baby up for adoption.
In another town in South Dakota, a couple was waiting to adopt a baby girl. They already had two boys, but they decided that a girl would round out the family. One day they got a call that a healthy baby girl was in a foster home awaiting adoption. The couple brought the baby home when she was eight weeks old and made her their own.
I thank my biological mother for the choice she made.
That's about the extent of the information I have about my life before becoming a Jess.
have about my life before that. But I do know that the decision to carry me to term and then give me up could not have been an easy one. I know that my biological mother did what she thought was right. And I know that the pregnancy could not have been easy on her. In 1967, single pregnant women were not socially accepted, especially in South Dakota.
But I also am thankful that women today have more choices. A woman should not carry a child
Jill Jess
Editor
to term if she is unable to — physically or emotionally.
The Supreme Court could rule as early as this week in a 1966 Missouri abortion case. The case could be used as an opportunity to rescind the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion.
Even the slight possibility of the denial of these choices is frightening. Just because abortions would be illegal does not mean they would not be performed.
If the Roe vs. Wade decision is overturned, a once-sanctioned rule would be brought by dangerous self-abhorrence.
Already, women are gearing up for the possibility that abortions may be outlawed. An early-1970s guide to self-abortion, "When Birth Control Falls," is back in circulation. And a 28-minute video tape, "No Going Back," demonstrates menstrual extraction, an at-home method of terminating early pregnancies. Sales of a device for menstrual extraction have tripled since January.
But menstrual extraction is risky. It can result in incomplete abortions or infections.
Granted, these are not coat-hanger approaches to terminating pregnancies. But do we want to return to the days when women had to risk their lives to control their bodies?
Pat Turner, president of the Wichita chapter of Right to Life, a national anti-abortion group, said in the Wichita Eagle-Beacon, "Their choices were before they were pregnant. If they want to control their bodies, they better think a little earlier."
But no birth control method is 100 percent reliable. And some women are not physically able to use certain types of birth control
it is unfair to call women irresponsible if they have unplanned pregnancies.
And while my biological mother chose adoption instead of abortion, the majority of women do not. Nationally, only about 6 percent of all births are still in the maternity or pregnancies to term not their child up for adoption.
Without an option of abortion, many young, poor, unstable women are going to be forced to have a family. This is an unhealthy atmosphere for the parent and the child.
My biological mother chose to put me up for adoption. I thank her for that.
but if I ever meet her, I will tell her that I support her right to make any decision she wants concerning her body.
And I demand the same right.
It's AstroTurf, Joe
■ Jill Jess is a Lawrence senior majoring in journalism.
At first, Ray Kinsella though it might have been the rustling of the cornstalks, the howling of the wind or a practical joke played on him by his wife and young daughter. Then he cloud banks made him realize that the voice he heard emanated from the heavens:
"If you build it, he will come."
"Build what? He will come?" the Iowa farmer stared in his field loomed an answer. And then the vision came.
Ray Kinsley suddenly knew he had to build a ballpark, a place to play baseball. And when it was built, Shoeless Joe would come back.
So Ray visited Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh and Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati — or it was the other way around? They all looked pretty much the same. He took pictures of life's savings and started construction. Three municipal bond elections later, it was finished.
And he came. Wearing a glove barely larger than his left hand,
"Shehoeless" Joe Jackson, one of the greatest players of all time, sought redemption. He had been tossed out of the sport he dearly loved because he and his Chicago White Sox teammates were accused of conspiring with the pitchers of 1919 World Series, his ballpark will give the scandal-ridden "Black Sox" a second chance.
Ray pored over a chewed-up copy of the Sporting News' ballpark manual, looking at photographs and trying to decide what his stadium would look like. He loved the designs of Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, Shibe Park and Crosley Field, but apparently these old ballparks had outlived their usefulness and practicality. The pencil-pushers who balanced the books and purses penny to good use needed that green grass, brick walls and uneven timber set out of touch with modern times and economically unfeasible when maximum profit margins were considered.
Bill Kempin Staff columnist
dressed in the white flannel uniform that was immaculate until the initial head-first slide, "Sheeless." Joe Jackson walked into Ray's ballpark. After flawless flying a few of Ray's fungos, Jackson cut his shoe off his too-tight footwear so he could feel the cool air in his stocking feet.
"That's not grass, Shoeless Joe. We call that AstroTurf."
"What kind of grass is this, Ray? We mighty stiff."
`baseball sure has changed since the last time I played it. The rules are all different. Even the field looks different. What's that 20 doing out there in left field where I caught that last fly ball?"
"That indicates the 20-yard line of the football field," Ray explained. "I scheduled an exhibition game between the Packers and the Giants on Saturday night. This isn't just a all-park. It's a multi-use facility."
"Mighty strange, mighty strange" Jackson sighed. "At least it's a beautiful night for baseball. The sky's filled with stars so bright they don't even seem like they're twinkling."
"That's because they're not stars, Sheoeless Joe. Those are lights in the roof. We're indoors. I built this stadium under a domed roof out of panels that schedule doubles to headers where people can see two games for the price of one."
"This skin is a damn No." Ray said as he examined the foot of Shoeless Joe. "It's turf toe."
"I'm beginning to wonder if the Lord meant this to be redemption or punishment . . . Ow!" the ballplayer moaned as he removed his sock and saw the red irritation on his foot. "This sure ain't heaven."
K·A·N·S·A·N MAILBOX Rush is misled
We are in a time of hope. We are in a time of despair. In one moment we envisioned promise and a joyful future as we saw Chinese students rallying at Tiananmen Square, fighting for the democracy of China. We were granted. The next moment, however, we were in despair as we saw the Chinese government fire upon the unarmed students, and more importantly, as we seek support we are turnover to today's world leaders who actuated by a damper to the fire of freedom.
Are we, the youth, a lost generation? Negative? We witnessed hundreds of thousands of Chinese students leaving campus, chanting, protesting and hunger strike. Right. Lost? Absolutely not!
Then, who is lost? Come on,
there must be someone or some
group of lost people mixing up the
world, isn't there? It is certainly
the Chinese regime, who is more
than lost — they are lunatics!
While being lost is pardonable,
being crazy is damnable!
Obviously, the Bush administration is lost at this point in time. While over the past century the U.S. government has been, for good or for bad, assuming the role of international policeman, attempting in vain to keep the troubled world in peace, the Bush administration struck us dum-bounded by pulling its squad out of the spot, allowing the culprit to get away with murder.
The Bush administration is lost because as the Chinese troops fired upon unarmed students in Tiananmen Square, President Bush, upon request, merely said that he would freeze arm sales to
The administration is lost when
President Bush refuses to fix blame for the massacre in Beijing. As China's Red Cross estimated, 100 people killed and another 600 injured.
The administration is lost when President Bush rejects suggestions to impose more sanctions on those fires upon its youth to survive.
Jengjyh Duh
Jengjyl Duh
Hualien, Taiwan, graduate student
Facultv unfair
On Tuesday, June 13, 1989, the KJHK Board of Directors met to respond to Student Senate recommendations to increase student representation on the board. The faculty board members' response included requirements for all KJHK staff heads to take seemingly impossible-to-get into journalism classes. It also included a list of disc jockey qualifications (i.e. pre-written, pre-approved play lists and no automatic allowance for ad-libbing on the air).
Can you believe that? The faculty board justifies these changes by standing on their shoulders and right to run or destroy the station at will.
For the record, as a student board member, this was not my dirty work, and apparently not the work of Student Senate-appointed board member Dawn Abrahamson. We had no say at all. Instead, the journalism school faculty wrote the qualifications and they became law. Our board meeting on them took place. I was told we would discuss the Student Senate recommendations. Instead, the faculty's response was thrust upon me. I had no vote. I had no say.
Am I part of KJHK's governing body or is that, too, just a farce? I was led to believe that I was one of KJHK. In reality I was an observer.
Janet M. Ciniell Lawrence senior and broadcast representative on the KJKH board