4A
Thursday, April 27, 1995
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
THE ISSUE: SOUTH LAWRENCE TRAFFICWAY
Trafficway running over budget
Douglas County taxpayers have a right to know the actual cost of the South Lawrence Trafficway. The trafficway is running at a minimum of $20 million over budget and could ultimately end up going $40 million or more over budget. Route changes to accommodate real estate developers have caused some of the largest cost overruns. The worst part is that Douglas County residents could get stuck picking up the tab.
The Douglas County Commission signed a contract pledging to pay for all costs of the trafficway above the original $59.3 million estimate. Yet, Douglas County commissioners do not think they are responsible for the additional cost to finish the road.State and federal grants have paid for the majority of the road so far, but the Kansas Department of Transportation thinks that it is indeed the county's responsibility to come up with the additional financing.
With a possible price tag of $80 million, more and more people are questioning the need for the South
Tax pavers should know the costs of the trafficway. Increased overruns may force residents to pick up the tab.
Lawrence Trafficway. The highway threatens to destroy spiritually and biologically valuable wetlands. And, because development has increased in the southwest part of Lawrence since construction of the trafficway was approved, many people are worried about the consequences to this natural floodplain area. On April 5 the Environmental Protection Agency said, "the South Lawrence Trafficway poses a substantial risk to any and all development in the floodplain."
Obviously the Douglas County commissioners, in their relentless push to build this highway, have not considered the likely property damage and increases in flood insurance that will result from the construction of the trafficway.
Douglas County legislators should conduct an audit of trafficway expenditures to clear up this confusion.
AMY TRAINER FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Flaws not in foes,but selves
THE ISSUE: OKLAHOMA CITY REACTIONS
The recent bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City has aroused emotionally charged responses that tel us a lot about our country.
Immediately after the bombing, politicians and citizens began to denounce the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists that they assumed were behind the attack. Ironically, the plot appears to have originated among red-blooded citizens in the United States.
However, suspicion of Islamic fundamentalists as well as the early search for two "Middle-Eastern looking" men (whatever that means) are examples of the gut-level misconceptions many Americans believe. The disaster showed America its ugly side, the side that believes that persons from the Middle East are ethnically and religiously homogeneous terrorists.
Increasingly, in the post- Communist world, ethnicity has become the factor
The United States needs to fight stereotypes which led to unjust ethnic accusations against the Middle East.
by which people associate themselves. The damage this trend can cause is evident by ethnic fighting in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia Republic and northern Iraq. Americans should fight against the ethnic stereotypes that ultimately lead to such conflicts.
The aftermath of the bombing in Oklahoma City represents a slap in the face of the idea that the United States is a place where people are judged by their deeds and not their ethnicity, a place where racial and religious stereotypes are not major factors. As a nation founded on religious freedom, which espouses racial equality, we should be ashamed of our xenophobic conduct following the bombing.
STANTON SHELBY FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSANSTAFF
STEPHEN MARTINO
Editor
DENISE NEIL
Managing editor
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
CATHERINE ELLSWORTH
Technology coordinator
JENNIFER PERRIER
Business manager
MARK MASTRO
Retail sales manager
JAY STEINBR
Sales and marketing adviser
Editors
Business Staff
News...Carlos Tejada
Planning...Mark Martin
Editorial...Matt Gowen
Associate Editorial...Heather Lawrenz
Campus...David Wilson
Colleen McCain
Sports...Gerry Fey
Associate Sports...Ashley Miller
Jarrett Laver
Associate Photo...Paul Kotz
Features...Nathan Oleson
Design...Brian James
Freelance...Susan White
Campus mgr ...Beth Pole
Regional mgr ...Chris Branaman
National mgr ...Shelly Falvite
Coop mgr ...Kelly Connelys
Special Sections mgr ...Brigg Bloomquist
Production mgrs ..JJ Cook
Kim Hjm
Marketing director ...Mindy Blum
Promotions director ..Justin Frosolone
Creative director ..Dian Gier
Classified mgr ..Liesa Kulesth
Jeff MacNelly / CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Reality isn't just a script for a close-to-home film
You just don't know how it feels to be real.
I was stunned by the documentary "Hoop Dreams." I sat and watched all three hours of that documentary and relived all 19 years of my life. The only difference is that for me, instead of basketball, it's journalism.
I'm frustrated because I keep politely slapping hands and correcting words. But what changes? How many people, after reading something in the paper about what it really means to be Black in America or Black at KU, really try to understand?
I keep hearing the phrase "the angry white male." I think you don't know what it means to be angry.
I watched Arthur Agee's family learn to live on welfare and saw my family. I saw William Gates' father try to buy his way back into his life, and I saw my dad slipping me ten bucks and then driving off.
I saw Agee's frustration and anger when his best friend was killed for dealing drugs, and I started to cry a little for my friends, who have died for the same reason.
And when the lights came on, I didn't know if I was about to burst into tears or a fit of anger.
All this is a three-hour movie to you. It's an O.J. Simpson case.
As they walked out, people behind me asked each other, "What did you think of the flick?" The response: "I don't know, are we going out tonight?"
Rufus Coleman is a Dallas freshman in pre-journalism.
A white woman debated, "Should we have Gumby's tonight?"
It was as if everyone had missed the point. I couldn't believe people could be so dense. There was this attitude of "Oh, it was a great movie. A really sad look at reality, but it's done. Problem solved. They pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps (clap! clap!)."
You don't understand, and to be honest, I don't think you even want to understand. You live in fear of and in false superiority to a Black nation that you don't seem to have the time to comprehend, when I have no choice but to understand this white nation.
How many people forgot that this was a documentary? It seemed as if
STAFF COLUMNIST
no one gave a damn.
begin to make anyone understand what it's like. I can't get on a bus and travel from the University of Kansas to the nearest ghetto for a tour.
I sit and listen to people tell me how great it is that I got here on scholarship. "But you could have made it here on your own," they say. These people tell me this as if I didn't make it here on my own. I'm frustrated because I can't
It's as if the world chooses its reality of me from a riot on television or a Snoop Doggy Dogg video. The only reason any white cameraman is going to show up in my neighborhood is to see who got shot, who stole what, who our picturesque welfare mother is. And typical white America is to live that fantasy.
You keep saying that at college we're all the same, but you ignore what it took for each of us to get here.
It's something that, at times, I try to make people understand. But what do I gain? I feel as if I'm talking to a wall. To every "liberal" someone who says, "Oh, I'm colorblind," "Oh, I have friends who are Black," how real do you think that is? If you're so colorblind, why do you turn your head at a Black man with a white woman? If you're so liberal and free of stereotypes, why would so many white people make the general assumption that I like rap and then play at being a "gangster from the 'hood' around me? Do you think that impresses me? Why is it such a
surprise for me to be literate and intelligent and from the "hood"? Why does everyone ask me if I'm here on an athletic scholarship?
Do you think that if you shake my hand you automatically know me?
It may not poison you, but it definitely contributes to poisoning the American mind.
Pizza Hut, Limbaugh are not appetizing
Is Pizza Hut Pizza hazardous to your health?
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
In recent weeks, an ad has appeared in which Rush Limbaugh plugs Pizza Hut — or more to the point, plays up his own agenda. This suggests that Rush is right (a major theme in the ad).
The right-wing terrorists who blew away people's lives in Oklahoma City have themselves been blown up — farned into action by the approval of the bigry so prevalent in talk-show terrorists-of-the-mouth, none of whom is more prominent than Limbaugh.
Now Limbaugh is rewarded — paid handsomely to promote pizza.
If you object to supporting a man who says there is no hole in the ozone layer, calls independent women "feminazis," bashes poor people and minorities and promotes sundry other lies, tell them so at the Kansas Union and then call the Pizza Hut consumer line. Tell them you will not buy their pizza until Rush is flushed (and by that, I don't mean red in the face).
It is a travesty that the only company with a fast food franchise in the Kansas Union thinks nothing of featuring and supporting a man who opposes critical thinking, scholarship and equality for all peoples.
Make yours love and understanding,
not pepperoni and prejudice.
Call and complain. The toll-free
number is 1-800-358-2222 or 1-800-
262-1744.
Publication of salaries proves enlightening
David Norlin Lawrence resident
It comes as no surprise to me that among the better-paid people on this campus are our colleagues who always speak out against unionization because it might bring about a loss of "collegiality."
I would like to thank the Kansan for publishing the enlightening, albeit depressing, special section on "Who Makes What at KU."
At the rate we're going, I don't know how much longer so many of us can afford to be collegial.
Paul Stephen Lim associate professor of English
MIXED MEDIA
By Jack Ohman
Like always, mom's advice provides best life guidance
"Tell the truth," my mom said as I clutched the contraband "Star Wars" action figure in my sweaty, 14-year-old hand.
possible income other than my m e a g e r allowance.
EDITORIAL EDITOR
"But I bought it with my own money," I whined, actually believing I was going to get away with it. It's not like I had my own lemonade stand or some other source of dis
The truth: I had swiped a five-dollar bill from my sister's secret box and skipped up to TG&Y to buy the Luke Skywalker figure dressed in Hoth snow gear. I had just seen a commercial for it on the tape. Had
been older and wiser, I might have blamed the whole thing on TV. I might have even sued the station for contributing to the delinquency of a goober. Oh well.
Anyway, in the time I was gone, sis' went to mow walling about the lost money. Typically, living in a family of four children provided adequate cover for any broken furniture or permanently borrowed items in our household. But, I was the only one there. I never said I was good at math. When I strolled in, I tried to hide the bag behind my skinny little back—to no avail.
"Honey, where did you get the $5.50 for that?" she asked, both rhetorically and sternly, as she took Luke out of the bag. She wasn't asking me so much as telling me, in mother-ee "I know exactly where you got the $5.50 for that, so you had better come clean before I come clean for you."
It's not like I was a bad kid. The only other thing I had ever taken was a piece of 3-cent gum from the market.
"OK," I blubbered, breaking down in tears. "I took it from Annie. I didn't mean it. I'm sorry."
She let me finish starunering, then explained that my punishment would be to take it back and to explain to the woman behind the counter what I did.
Ouch. Double whammy. I was afraid I would be hauled off to jail, thrown in grade-school prison. I hung my head for a while but managed to breathe a sigh of relief after I gave the money back to my sister. I was given a clean slate. Sort of.
Thinking about it later, I came to the conclusion that I never would have been able to enjoy the toy. It would have been tainted. Luke would not have been proud. Once the truth was brought to light, apologies were made, attitudes were adjusted, then life went on much as it should have.
I decided that bringing the truth to light was my mom's job. And a pretty cool one, at that (she's also a psychoanalyst; I never stood a chance). I would decide later that I wanted to be my job, too.
All I had to figure out was how.
First, there was the superhero phase. Batman, Spiderman, etc. Then I grew out of my Underoos.
Then there was the archaeology phase. Indiana Jones made it look so exciting, so adventurous. Then someone told me that archaeologists spend most of their time in dark corners of libraries and deserts, figuratively and literally collecting dust.
OK. let's trv journalism.
Now I write for the Kansan. In a few weeks I will start writing for a newspaper in Colorado, where I'll earn my keep by trying to find the truth.
What does this story have to do with anything? Nothing, other than I was stalling so that I could remember the real story, which is that recently, while killing time at a bar in the Denver Airport between flights, a burly, leathery man named Craig introduced himself. I was on my way back to Lawrence from the interview that got me my first real job in journalism. I told him my news; he made a toast to me. I got the impression he had been toasting lots of things. We talked about planes, jobs, ex-wives (his), beer and life.
As he lumbered away to his flight, he shook my hand and said, "Just tell the truth, and you'll be all right." Strange, I think I've heard that somewhere before.
Matt Gowen is a Lawrence senior in journalism.