4A
Wednesday, March 29, 1995
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
THE ISSUE: UNIVERSITY ATTITUDES
Student-teacher apathy rising
The student-teacher relationship is on the decline.
In recent years the rapport between some students and teachers at the University of Kansas has regressed from one of respect and concern for one another to apathy and sometimes even animosity. While it would be unfair and inaccurate to attach this claim to all students and teachers, the fact that it pertains to any at all is a shame.
The increase in the ratio of students to teachers has resulted not only in bigger, more impersonal classes but in more impersonal attitudes as well. Students are less likely to seek out professors for one-to-one assistance, and professors are less likely to address students individually.
While not every student is an overachiever and not every teacher is out to educate the world, current attitudes seem to be moving in different directions. Students are becoming increasingly apathetic about their education, and teachers are becoming
Respect and concern for each other's goals needs to return to the relationship between student and instructor
increasingly disinterested in the labors of teaching.
A recent "60 Minutes" report shed light on the fact that many professors would rather do research than teach. Similarly, the students who are not here to learn, and perhaps spend their college years partying or shirking responsibility, make it difficult for the teachers who do want to teach.
Generally, instructors enjoy seeing students accomplish their goals. However, not all students are motivated the same way; different teaching styles are needed to encourage all students to participate.
The students and teachers at KU need to return to a relationship of respect for one another's goals while at the same time working harder to impress those goals upon one another.
CHRIS VINE FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD.
THE ISSUE: IMPRISONED AMERICANS
Iraq once again goes too far
Just when Iraq was beginning to get along with the United Nations, it has found a way to mess things up. Again.
On March 13, two Americans, William Barloon and David Daliberti, were visiting friends in the demilitarized zone between Iraq and Kuwait when they accidentally strayed across the Iraqi border. They were arrested and quickly sentenced to eight years in prison.
This is not the first time
As White House officials said, there was no justification whatsoever for these sentences. Barloon and Daliberti were civilian employees who simply made the mistake of going where they should not have gone.
The timing of these sentences has perplexed officials at the United Nations, who have been sympathetic to the Iraqis' effort to overturn the economic sanctions imposed on the country after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. A review of the sanctions is due in April.
By detaining two U.S. citizens, Iraq reaffirms that it intends to defy all U.N.regulations and acceptable conduct.
that Iraq has strained relations with the United Nations. The last time a review of the sanctions was to take place, the Iraqis began massing troops near the Kuwaiti border.
Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government are committing diplomatic suicide. Though Iraq views these Americans as bargaining chips, it could in no way benefit from imprisoning two citizens who have no direct involvement in Iraqi-American relations.
Future trade relations lay on the line for Iraq. The United Nations has been trying to give Iraq a fair shake, but a move such as this only reaffirms the notion that Iraq is a compassionless nation that would, once again, put hatred before a move toward world peace.
CRAIG LANG FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
STEPHEN MARTINO
Editor
DENISE NEIL
Managing editor
TOM ELEEN
General manager, news adviser
CATHERINE ELLSWORTH
Technology coordinator
Editors
JENNIFER PERRIER
Business manager
MARK MASTRO
Retail sales manager
JAY STEINER
Sales and marketing adviser
News...Carlos Tejada
Planning...Mark Martin
Editorial...Matt Gowen
Associate Editorial...Heather Lawrenz
Campus...David Wilson
Colleen McCain
Sports...Gary Pey
Associate Sports...Anthony Miller
Photo...Jarrett Lane
Associate Photo...Paul Kotz
Features...Nathan Gloon
Design...Brian James
Freelance...Susan White
Business Staff
Campus mgr ... Beth Pole
Regional mgr ... Chris Branham
National mgr ... Shelly Falvites
Coop mgr ... Kelly Comeyss
Special Sections mgr ... Brigg Bloomquist
Production mgrs ... JJ Cook
Kim Hyman
Marketing director ... Mindy Blum
Promotions director .. Justin Frosolone
Creative director .. Dan Gler
Classified mgr ... Lisa Kuleth
Finally, the administration contends that because the state legislature is presently dominated by conservatives, a union would be counter-productive. I would observe that legislatures have a way of sometimes changing at election time. Maybe a Populist legislature would view that matter differently? And in any case, the drive for economic justice and working class dignity should never be contingent on whichever party has a majority in Topeka.
Jeff MacNelly / CHICAGO TRIBUNE
The administrator's letter also contends that a union will be adverse to "collegiality" However, if collegiality is so effective, why do GTAs have to support their families on salaries that are at the poverty level? Collegiality doesn't pay the grocery bills, but a good union can be very effective on that score.
have passed. In fact, when, as a high school student, I wrote an editorial in the school newspaper opposing the amendment, town merchants called up the principal and urged an end to such latitude. Fortunately my journalism teacher stood by me. The whole experience taught me some good lessons about who had power and what regard they had for such things as freedom of the press.
Kansas' Populist past was not anti-union,anti-GTAs
This spring, University of Kansas graduate teaching assistants are scheduled to vote on the issue of representation by the Kansas Association of Public Employees (KAPE)
On Feb. 17 vice chancellors Andrew Debicki and David Shulenburger issued a letter to GTAs, a remarkable document from the standpoint of historical error.
The letter states: "Kansas, with a populist past expressed in its formal 'right-to-work' law, has traditionally revered individuals and deemphasized hierarchy. Unions concentrate authority and, eventually, stifle individual voices."
In the 1890s, Kansas became one of the national centers for the rise of the People's Party, commonly known as the Populists. Their strength arose from a cataclysmic decline in farm produce prices and a terrible drought that lasted about 10 years. One of the famous watchwords of the old Pops was the cry of Wichita's Mary Elizabeth Lease, "Farmers should raise less corn and more hell!"
GUEST COLUMNIST
Among the pro-labor actions of the Populists were such things as feeding the great marches of the unemployed as they passed through Kansas on their way to Washington in the "Coxey's Army" protests of 1894; support of boycotts initiated by the largest labor organization of the era, the Knights of Labor; and
calls for public ownership of railroads and telegraphs. Kansas farmers also sent support to the striking steel workers in Homestead, Pa. in 1892.
farmers had really burned corn for fuel in 1890, and he replied, "Yes, and by that light they read the history of the Republican Party!" Though for all practical purposes, the extraordinary turbulence of that conflict of the 1890s remains hidden from public knowledge. It is wrong to somehow claim that the Populists were opposed to organized labor.
Kansas' own Populist congressman, "sockleck" Jerry Simpson of Medicine Lodge, was once asked if
Fred Whitehead, Ph.D., is a teaching associate in the department of Family Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Kan.
Concerning the so-called "right to work" laws, I vividly remember as a young kid growing up in western Kansas during the 1950s, when it was enacted as an amendment to the state constitution, the campaign of real hysteria mounted by the Chamber of Commerce and others, to depict unions as undemocratic, corrupt and against the best interest of the people. Without an expensive, well-financed campaign of wealthy interests of this state, it never would
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
'Sesame Street' good analogy for Congress
In his Feb. 22 letter to the editor, Gary Staves declares the tough realities of ruling parties and ridicules Chris Hampton's article, which urged Congress to learn courtesy from Sesame Street. Gary and I view politics differently, but I think I can explain the Sesame Street analogy for him.
I was looking at a poem with a student recently, Wordsworth's "Ode, Intimations of Immortality." The poem describes coming into the world in God's light and renewing our faith through nature (and children). The idea forms the core of Sesame Street ethics.
It happens that this student has also just read The Scarlet Letter and The Awakening. As a single young mother, attending KU by the grace of some of that aid to the hungry and homeless that Staves dismisses as accomplishing "nothing," she didn't miss the parallels among herself and Hester and Edna in those books. With trust in the values of a liberal education, now she sets aside concern for her daily need to study Wordsworth's idea of the child-soul, unharmed by sophistry and recoverable even in members of Congress.
I'm too much of a skeptic to enjoy the inebriated faith Gary has in the Republican party. I vividly recall those years of waiting for the trickle-down while I received WIC vouchers and applied for a state medical card.
If we have materialized here on earth for any purpose other than to enhance the lives of others, then that purpose must be to convert bread into ... well ... fertilizer.
Karen Osnheorse-Fick Support Services Coordinator, Supportive Educational Services
Let's chew on that.
Haase admired for game not sassiness
Gerry Fey, in his column "Men like sassy Haase, too," points out that that the majority of women find Haase "attractive" and "hot."
For some women, myself included, the fact that Haase is a Jayhawk basketball player is the reason for admiring him.
What makes Haase such a terrific player, one worthy of admiration, is that he scored 26 points in a thrilling home victory against Missouri and that after suffering a head injury during the Oklahoma game on the road, he managed to return to the game in a matter of minutes and that he, like the rest of the KU players and coaches, conducts himself with class and grace, both on and off the court.
Men are not the only people on this campus capable of viewing Haase as a great basketball player. I am proud to be one of the women who who values Haase for his talents, not his looks.
Carrie Williams Leawood sophomore
MIXED MEDIA
By Jack Ohman
Wondering how anyone could go through life without stories
Let me tell you a story. There might even be a moral hidden somewhere in this story.
Once upon a time, just last week, while the entirety of the KU student body was off having adventures of a lifetime, I found myself all alone in deepest, darkest Lawrence. This is a different place when the students
STAFF COLUMNIST
leave, more substantial and less interesting. The average citizens come out of hiding during the breaks. They sniff the air, ready to hide at any hint of Generation X in the breeze. Fortunately, my own generational odor seems to be easily masked. Perhaps they mistook me, as many do, for a graduate student, which does not call forth the fight-or-flight reflex common to townies confronted with an undergrad.
I spent a fair portion of spring break wandering around the town. Listening, looking.
Edging closer, I began to steal portions of their conversation for my own use later.
While eating lunch downtown, I met a man who had no stories to tell. He said as much to his companion, who was one of those people who could find a story in anything.
They may have been on a date, as they did not seem to know much about one another. Or they may have been mere acquaintances.
The man with no stories seemed to hit the part. He was not tall, nor short, his hair was nondescript, his face just did not register. I could not remember any details, just his expression. He seemed calm, unmoved by anything around him.
Part way through the lunch, a metal tray was dropped by a worker, clattering and clanging. The companion jumped, her eyes immediately moving to the kitchen. The man did not even flinch. A moment or two passed, then he turned his head, saw what had happened, then turned around and began eating again.
The more I listened to them, the woman talking constantly and the man listening, adding a comment every now and then, the more I wondered. How can anyone not have any stories?
What are we without our stories?
They give us our past, our present.
All those people leaving for spring break — what would they do if they returned and had nothing to say about their trips? How would you ever know anything about anybody if you did not hear their stories? Any story, be it about a kitten owned while young or diving off a bridge with only an elastic cord to keep you from the ground.
Lunch passed, and soon I had nothing to pretend to read. The man noticed me listening, and just looked at me. For the first time I saw his eyes. They were blank, unaffected. Nothing reached him. His companion noticed me, then said, "God, how rude." They stood to leave, while she began talking about the time she was on the phone with her mother discussing a sick relative and heard someone listening in . . .
I am a creative writing major, and so I supposedly am learning how to tell stories. It is an easy major to abuse, and rightfully so, because it is not hard to say, "Once upon a time.." and then spend 400 words talking about two people I've never seen before or will again.
But it makes me aware of something a lot of people do not articulate, but we all know. Our stories are what makes us real. Not just having them, but telling them. That is the purpose of a story. Then the audience hears it, and we exist for the audience as well. The story may even be told again and again, by an ever-widening group of people, until we exist for so many people we will not be forgotten.
This man has stories but will not tell them. The stories die then and so does a part of him.
Is there a point to all this rambing? Do I have something to prove with this? Perhaps not. But I can't help feeling better for having told this story about him. Maybe he'll exist outside my own experience. To me, he is a bit more alive than he had been.
Maybe that's all the point I need
leaac Bell is a Lawrence junior in English.