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Thursday, April 9, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
A fair fee
After a semester of lengthy quarrels over where money should be cut and where fees should be raised, a fee request has been submitted to the Student Senate, and it probably will pass.
In the wake of frequent overloads of transcript requests, the office of student records has made its plea heard for the adoption of a fee. Sally Bryant, the assistant to the dean of educational services, has recommended a $2 charge for each student copy of a transcript after the first request.
Demanding a fee is not a radical measure. The policy is similar to the procedure followed by all other Kansas Board of Regents schools. At
the university of Kansas, the measure has been viewed as a last resort to cure the perpetual mayhem at the office of student records.
The $2 fee should result not only in a lighter workload, but also in higher productivity in the records office. The funds raised from the fee will go toward a new computer system that will provide transcripts at a faster rate, and the costs for the system will be borne equally by users of the service.
Student body president Brady Stanton indicated that he would recommend the $2 fee for approval. And why shouldn't he?
Playing a silly game
The Soviet Union and the United States are playing childish games with each other.
The latest tug of war is over the new U.S. Embassy building now under construction. Some congressmen and intelligence officials have said that the $190 million project should be demolished because the building is full of Soviet eavesdropping devices. Soviet workers are building the embassy with some prefabricated parts assembled at a site that the United States was not allowed to inspect.
U. S. officials now are saying that the building, which has been under construction since the 1970s, lacks sufficient security against Soviet spying.
This discovery also has created a controversy over Secretary of State George Shultz's trip to Moscow this week. Shultz will use a house
trailer outside the embassy for secret conversations.
The project is well under way and tearing down the building may be the solution to this isolated problem, but it will not help U.S.-Soviet relations. Communication, not eavesdropping, is the proper step towards improving relations. The United States and the Soviet Union are so worried about spies that they are reaching the outer stages of paranoia.
The two countries are playing silly games with each other, and no one is going to win unless officials from both countries begin constructive talks.
Instead of tearing down the prefabricated walls of a building, the two countries should work toward tearing down the walls that are separating them.
Dragged down by druas
Another star has fallen from the heavens — pulled down by drugs.
After the test results were disclosed, Gooden volunteered to admit himself to a New York City drug rehabilitation center and was put on the disabled list by the New York Mets.
Dwight Gooden, one of the brightest young stars in sports and a hero to young baseball fans everywhere, was admitted last week to a drug rehabilitation center after testing positive for cocaine. And although it is a tragedy that someone with so much influence on young people is on drugs, the story of Gooden's recovery could set a positive example.
Gooden, 22, undoubtedly has been one of the best pitchers in the game since he entered the major leagues at age 19. In 1985, he won the National League Cy Young Award with a 24-4 record. 1.53 earned run average and 268 strikeouts. His performance last year was good, but with a 17-6 record
came rumors that Gooden was using drugs.
The one positive sign in this situation is that Gooden seemed to want to be caught in his drug use. He repeatedly volunteered to undergo drug tests, the same tests that discovered the cocaine in his system. Some think his agreeing to the voluntary testing was actually a quiet cry for help.
Now is the time to see just what kind of hero Dwight Gooden will be. If he can recover from his drug use and play at the level is capable of, there is little question that Gooden will be a Hall of Famer. But just as importantly, if he can recover and is truly sorry for his offense, he will serve as an important symbol that drugs can be beat.
The best that could be hoped for is that all of the fans that sat up and took notice as Dr. K struck out batter after batter will see that even a superstar is no match for the devastation caused by drugs.
News staff
News staff
Frank Hansel . Editor
Jennifer Benjamin. Managing editor
Jul Warren . News editor
Brian Kaberline . Editorial editor
Sandra Engelland . Campus editor
Mark Stebert . Sports editor
Diam Dullmeier . Photo editor
Bill Skeet . Graphics editor
Tom Ebnel . General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Lisa Weems. Business manager
Benanie Hardy. Ad director
Denise Stephens. Retail sales manager
Kelly Scherer. Campus sales manager
Duncan Calhoun. Marketing manager
Lori Coppel. Classifier
Jennifer Luismanski. Production manager
David Nixon. National sales manager
Jeanne Hines. Sales and marketing adviser
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Opinions
POSTMASTER Send address changes to the University Daily Kansan, 118
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Fear of advisers a common phobia
I have gotten something out of my four years at the University of Kansas. It is a phobia. Not an uncommon one at universities, but a phobia just works.
Barbara Shear
Associate editorial editor
I first began to notice it about four years ago. It was a humid, partly cloudy June day. Thousands of wideeyed, soon-to-behreshmen were roaming the campus of the University. It was pre-enrollment day.
Completely confused, along with everyone else, I was herded from building to building, room to room, filling out forms, listening to speakers and filling out more forms. Finally, after hours of University red tape, we got down to the business of what we were there for — enrolling in classes.
pursue as a lifelong career, I entered the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, along with most other freshmen, and subsequently was assigned an adviser from the college. That was when my phobia first reared its ugly head.
Not yet knowing what I wanted to
About 4:30 p.m. that same day, about 25 students were sitting in a small, cramped room in Wescoe. A middle-aged man dressed in a suit and tie was sitting behind the desk at the head of the room. Little did I know when I first entered the room that the man sitting smugly behind the desk would be the root of my worst nightmares.
Not knowing about the reputation of University advising, I sincerely looked to my assigned adviser for guidance. Boy, was I in for a surprise.
I aimlessly thumbed through the timetable, picking out classes I thought I was required to take. When I finished, I took my card to my adviser to have him look at and approve.
"I don't see any math course or here. You really need to take Math: 101." He gave me back the enrollment card.
I chose a section of the course and handed him the card again. This time, he was looking at my high school transcript.
"Your ACT score in math is high enough to exempt you from this course. But you really should take some kind of math course." Again, he gave me back the enrollment card. My fear began to take root.
I soon discovered my liberal arts and sciences adviser was a language professor. That only added to my phobia.
When I went back to see him during the next enrollment period, my adviser was trying to push foreign language classes on me. I had a silly notion of becoming a computer science major, and, not being entirely clueless, thought I needed some more math classes.
My adviser gave me a dumb-bounded站ed. "Well, I don't know
about that, but I really do think you should take another foreign language course besides French."
That's when I sunk into the lowest depths of my phobia. Whenever enrollment came around, I would shake uncontrollably, become nau-
cle.
seated and break out in a cold sweat. Fortunately, I entered the School of Journalism just in time. By then, I learned to take the right precaution — to ignore the advise of my "advisers" — and, slowly, my phobia began to disappear until just recently.
With just a month left until graduation, the nightmares are starting to reappear. And it's always the same. I am walking down the hill, my family proudly sitting in the stands knowing they no longer have to support me. I am getting older and I receive my diploma. He looks through his stack of diplomas.
"Shear, Shear ... I'm sorry Miss
Shear, but you are three hours short
of receiving your degree. You still
need to take a Math 101 course."
Fame and fortune a terrible fate
It's just human nature, I guess.
Most of us fail to appreciate how good we've had it until we see the ordeals that others who are less fortunate have had to endure.
Mike Royko Columnist
This struck me when I read what Frank Cashen, the general manager of the New York Metrs, had to say about his star pitcher, Dwight Gooden.
In announcing that Gooden, 22, would enter a drug rehabilitation program, the grief-striken Cashen said, "This is a terrible thing, one of the saddest things I've ever had to do in baseball. I have been agonizing over it for the last 48 hours.
"The sudden fame and fortune he achieved is nice. But we sort of robbed him of his vouch."
He was referring to the fact that he became a star pitcher, call the longer lenght.
His sad fate has made me look back on my early years and realize how much I missed them.
Little wonder that Gooden took to snorting expensive white powder to relieve the emotional anguish of being had his youth plucked from him.
Think about that — what a terrible loss, to be robbed of one's youth in exchange for fame and fortune.
be in Texas, where I made the acquaintance of a rustic father-figure named Wilson, who had three stripes on each sleeve.
Before dawn, he would awaken us by playfully shouting, "Git your ace out of bed and git on the road in 10 minutes."
Once we were out on the road, Sgt. Wilson would spend the next 12 or so hours entertaining us with remarks like: "RayKain, cain't you run no faster than that? . . . now we're gain' on a nice 10-mile hike with full equipment
At age 19 I was fortunate enough to
... Rico, git your ace over that obstacle course ... you call those boots shiny? ... you call that carbine clean?"
I'm sure that many members of my generation knew someone exactly like Sgt. Wilson during their youths.
And I realize how luck I was to have spent that portion of my formative years with him. It's chilling to think of what might have happened if I had been cursed with the capability of throwing a baseball 95 miles an hour to a precise spot.
Then I, too, might have found myself caught up in the drudgery of having to pitch a baseball game every fourth or fifth day. The awesome responsibility of playing baseball. What a sad way to squander one's precious youth.
Then there was my 20th year. Like thousands of other young men of my generation, I spent it frisking boyishly about a lovely land called Korea. We trockled on one side of Korea and hundreds of thousands of Chinese
youths frolicked on the other side.
But for our good fortune in not being able to whip in a sharply-breaking curve ball, we, too, might have been forced to spend our 20 years as did Gooden: the youth-draining regimentation of spring training in Florida; another summer of being confronted by hostile batters and domineering umpires; being bombarded by the ear-shattering din of thousands of shouting fans, and accosted by the menacing pencils and scorecards of the dreaded autograph-hunters.
And somebody said war was heir?
All that suffering, and for what? As General Manager Cashen said, mere fame and fortune. A million and a half a year, plus endorsement fees.
And with it, the enormous, youth-draining pressures of having to figure out how to spend it.
And somebody said war was hell?
And I'm sure that you could find many of today's more fortunate 22-year-olds who will share Cashen's regret that the less-fortunate Gooden had been robbed of his youth.
I'm sure they would say, "You ask if I would give up these pleasant youthful pursuits for the cruel grown-up world of playing baseball? For more fame and fortune? What do you think I am — a masochist?"
And remember one other thing. Because he pitches in the National League, when he takes a hit, the poor lad had to take batting and bunting practice.
Isn't there something in the child labor laws to cover such cruelty?
Mailbox Think before acting
First, I would like to clarify that I am not homosexual, nor do I condone homosexuality. However, I understand when homosexuals lash out against "homophobia" because, in a sense, it does exist. Homophobics, in my book, are not necessarily those who do not condone homosexuality, but people who go "bleugh!" when confronted with it, showing an irrational fear and/or hatred of homosexuals. Homophobia is when someone is treated as sub-human and as unworthy of consideration because of their homosexuality.
I think that homosexuality is in the same ballpark as, say, casual sexual intercourse. A homosexual person does not need self-righteous condemnation, for that will merely alienate him. For Christians, this means remembering that God hates the sin but loves the sinner.
I guess the point of difference I have with my homosexual friends is that I think homosexuality is a problem to be overcome, while they do not think it is a problem. But that does not keep me from being open to it, because we allow our friends to only the sinless ones, we'd have no friends (not even ourselves!).
So the next time you run into homosexuality, think again before reacting, and you may gain a friend; not a "queer" friend, but one just like many others who have the qualities and failings of human beings.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, senior
BLOOM COUNT1
by Berke Breathed
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