4A
Tuesday, April 11, 1995
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
STUDENT SENATE ELECTIONS
The Kansan editorial board interviewed both coalition's candidates for student body president and vice president. The endorsement reflects the Kansan's choice of who would make the most effective president and vice president.
THE KANSAN'S CHOICE
FOR STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT:
Kim Cocks and Dan Hare
THE ISSUE: STUDENT SENATE ENDORSEMENTS
Cocks, Hare are most qualified for top Student Senate positions
They call it the kiss of death. For the past two years the Kansan has endorsed the losing president/vice president team, and its stamp of approval has made people afraid, very afraid, in recent years. This year the Kansan hopes things will be different because it feels that it has chosen the best candidates for KU students.
The decision to endorse a student body president and vice president is not an easy one. The Kansan takes into account such things as experience with Student Senate and how realistic each coalition's ideas are. This year, the editorial board decided that Kim Cocks and Dan Hare, of the United Students coalition, would make the best candidates for president and vice president.
Both have the experience and dedication necessary to lead Senate.
One of the big issues is transportation. Cocks and Hare have the most realistic plan for improving KU on Wheels. They would like to add more routes to West Lawrence. They realize that the city of Lawrence is not interested in a city-wide bus system, as good as that sounds to many students. Cocks and Hare also want to keep students in control of the bus system.
The coalition's plans to recruit and retain students also is appealing. Cocks and Hare would like to start a program in which juniors and seniors would be mentors for high-risk students, students who may not survive in the college arena without assistance.
Realistic transportation plan and push to keep contact with students make United Students candidates best choice.
The two also have strong ideas on how to keep students informed of what Senate is doing. They would like to move meetings around to various living groups and poll students to see what they want from their Senate. Both coalition's platforms have addressed the need for revamping Senate's public relations, especially in terms of reestablishing contact with the student body. A lot of students quite simply don't know what Senate is and what goes on during the meetings.
On certain issues, such as the need to improve the advising systems, the two coalitions' platforms are fairly similar. But Cocks and Hare have certain strengths that put them ahead.
David Stevens, REAL student body president candidate, said he would spend the majority of his time lobbying in Topeka, turning the campus goings-on over to Stephanie Guerin, candidate for vice president. Cocks and Hare understand the need to lobby but also that the student body president needs to serve students directly.
Furthermore, Cocks and Hare seem like more of a team, a vital asset in leading the student body.
Kim Cocks and Dan Hare deserve to be elected student body president and vice president.
HEATHER LAWRENZ AND MATT GOWEN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Jeff MacNellv / CHICAGO TRIBUNI
Tradition of giving dying out among nation's wealthiest
If you walk down Ninth Street from Joe's Bakery toward Massachusetts Street, you will go by a little brick building called the Lawrence Arts Center. I live around the corner, so I'm always dodging the herds of munchkins that spill out the doors and attach themselves to very efficient-looking Suburban Management Engineers (Moms). The engineers proceed to throw the collage-toting, bunny-eared small fries into their ergonomic, cul-desac charists of fuel-efficient, hellish, sliding-doored blandness. Then, it's off to tater tots and pan-fried hamburgers.
This lovely scene of middle class bliss has been brought to you by the Lawrence, uh, no, the Kansas Department of, uh, no... Who did finance that little brick building that daily spews out those giggling cherubs? A guy named Carnegie. That would be Andrew Carnegie, captain of industry, 19th-century power broker and one of the top capitalists of the universe. What gives? A Pennsylvania steel maginate popped for an art center several decades ago for the little town of Lawrence? What a concept.
Gather around and let me tell you a story of a young America. In this America, men were men; women were chattel; children were fattened up and sold as veal (not really), and the foreign masses were fed into the industrial machinery of an ambitious country like so many
chunks of coal. Men such as Carnegie and John D. Roefeller
STAFF
COLUMNIST
amassed enormous fortunes playing the laissez-faire game of Monopoly to the hilt. They sacrificed the lives of many a poor, accented man to build their empires.
Call it what you will, but one fact holds true: In those days, the big boys felt a moral obligation to give something back, something beneficial to the community. Hold your breath here as I simplify a period of American history into a few well-intentioned USA Today sentences. Maybe it was guilt, or some sense of responsibility. History books reference the noblesse oblige, the regal few who felt a moral compunction to put back into society some of the good they had siphoned off. The wealthy understood that in a capitalist society, winning didn't necessarily mean someone else losing. The winners may have viewed the losers as little more than toe cheese, but the winning wealthy understood the need to throw the
"Ah, the good old days," pant the young Republicans. "The Dark Ages," fumes the liberal crowd.
losing poor some scraps from the big table. They threw some scraps, like the occasional art center, that would have been a drain on the tax base.
Today's world benefits/suffers from the same barons of industry and commerce. But, alas, these giants of economic good fortune lack a compulsion to share with the rest of us folks. A few notable exceptions exist, but a few million to the alma mater doesn't cut it. That's tax-deductible nickels and dimes. Rockefeller gave up the land for Yellowstone National Park, and we didn't even have to name it after him.
Since the days of the New Deal, when thousands of court houses and schools were built, Uncle Sam has filled in the blanks for the public good. He tried to keep spending all the way through the Carter years. Then Reagan thought he'd trickle down some money to the masses. He was squeezing blood from a tump. So, Bush tried to turn on a thousand points of light. It still was awful dark. Now we (our elected officials) want to shut off the government tap completely. In few years, I sure hope I'll be able to dodge munchkins coming home from dinger painting, laughing at a puppet show, whining about a boring play.
John Martin is a Lawrence first-year law student.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Thinking is not just for politically liberal
This letter is in response to the concerns raised about instructor objectivity in the March 7 Kansan.
In an era in which even the dissemination of information is considered "propaganda" for the liberal agenda, people are overly concerned with opinion. Kansas is a "conservative" state — it is agrarian, populist-oriented, and "conservative."
The University of Kansas is probably the first experience for many to think about why they should believe what they believe. To ask the "why" questions is to put "conservatives" on the defensive. It is far easier to jump up and point the "liberal" finger than actually contemplate the rationale and reason
for their own (and opposing) opinions.
I highly doubt that students are penalized for having opinions that contradict their instructors' political bend. But I can see instructors docking students' grades for being unable to reason, discuss, or backup their opinions logically with fact. Whether discussing Marxism or the Old Testament, you have to read and comprehend it before you critique it.
I think many are scared to open up to understanding their opinions — for fear that they may find a flaw in their own logic. Opinion and perception of the world are not static constants — they are fluid and changing. Listen, learn, think, revise, and listen all over again.
Timothy Walker Oak Park, Ill., senior
GTA's union means whole new ballgame
Given the results of the baseball strike: no gains for either side, demonstrable harm to both sides, permanent damage done to an elegant and venerable American institution — given all that, I sure look forward to seeing what happens when GTA union members assume an adversarial relationship with their University colleagues.
James B. Carothers professor of English and associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Everyone will benefit from the death of hiring quotas
The debate about affirmative action is heating up.
In California, the legislature is drafting a bill that would eliminate the policy in its own government. In D.C., the House Republicans are discussing removing it from the national rulebooks.
The rhetoric is flying from all sides. Some content it is "reverse discrimination," denying opportunities to qualified white males. Others say affirmative action helps to "level the playing field," overcoming the effects of past discrimination.
The issue is monstrous and so
are the opposing sides. But to put it into a few words;
The time for affirmative action has come. And gone.
To begin with, most government policy interfering with the practice of private business is unnecessary. Affirmative action is one of them. If employers are racist and disregard the credentials of a minority, they will be spanked by the invisible hand. They are throwing out an excellent addition to their work force, losing them to a competitor. A rather cold way of looking at it, I'll admit, but not so much colder as saying to one population that they are unable to do it themselves and need legislative support.
And affirmative action is not "reverse discrimination," it is discrimination, plain and simple. To make consolations toward a special group; to hire according to race, color or creed, isn't that what discrimination is? Yes, it is that simple.
What is all this talk about leveling the playing field? Extending this weak metaphor, it seems to me affirmative action dictates the outcome of the game. Decides the victor, if you will.
The "field" is "leveled" with education, job training, scholarships and family support. It's called opportunity for the disadvantaged, and it's an excellent idea.
Provide the disadvantaged with a chance to improve upon their situation, and they will gladly take it. Don't pander to them. Give them opportunity. Don't mandate business practices with quotas, don't demand special treatment. It is outlandish; it is unfair, and it is wrong.
Has everyone forgotten the most important fact in this war of catch phrases?
To discriminate is illegal.
It is against the law to figure pathetic prejudices into hiring practices. Shouldn't this be enough?
All said, racism is an endangered species, being exterminated by the idea of racial equality. The students reading these words right now are not racist. The lesson has been taught by history and by example. To discriminate is wrong. Anyone with racist leaning is branded and ridiculed (e.g. put on Geraldo).
Certainly racism still exists, but its numbers fade everyday, and this is something to celebrate. Let racism die a quiet death. It is ridiculous for the government to map out our moral principles. It starts here, on the KU campus. The end to racism beings with us, not some representatives office, not Capitol Hill.
It's time to remove affirmative action from the American conscious. Let's provide the means to those that need them, and let the ends remain just that, the ends.
And yes, it really is that simple.
David Day is a Witchita Junior in English and Journalism.
KANSAN STAFF
STEPHEN MARTINO
Editor
DENISE NEIL
Managing editor
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
CATHERINE ELLSWORTH
Technology coordinator
Editor
News ... Carlos Tejada
Planning ... Mark Martin
Editorial ... Matt Gowen
Associate Editorial .. Heather Lawrenz
Campus ... David Wilson
Colleen McCain
Sports ... Gerry Fey
Associate Sports .. Annie Hillyer
Jamestown Lane
Associate Photo .. Paul Kotz
Features .. Nathan Olanon
Design .. Brian James
Freelance .. Susan White
JENNIFER PERRIER
Business manager
MARK MASTRO
Retail sales manager
JAY STEINER
Sales and marketing adviser
Business Staff
HUBIE
Campus mgr ...Beth Pole
Regional mgr ...Chris Branamann
National mgr ..Shelly Falevits
Coop mgr ..Kelly Connelys
Special Sections mgr ..Kelly Bloomquist
Production mgrs ..JJ Cook
Kim Hyman
Marketing director ..Mindy Blum
Promotions director ..Justin Frosolone
Creative director ..Dan Gier
Classified mgr ..Lisa Kuseth
By Greg Hardin