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Monday, March 28, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Student Senate candidates must make their ideas known
You'd never know it, but in just more than two weeks, KU students will elect a new Student Senate.
Where are the debates? What are the issues? Who's running?
The answer to the last question is only known from posters, not because any candidates have made an effort to make themselves known.
because the candidates haven't made clear their stances on issues, perhaps they should consider discussing some of the following.
Lowering the student activity fee. KU students pay a $28 student activity fee each semester. This money, totaling about $1.2 million each year, is allocated by the Senate to various projects and student organizations. But not all of the money collected is used. Unused money goes into the Senate unallocated account, which has about $170,000 in it — and it's still growing. The new Senate should make lowering the activity fee one of its first actions.
Campus parking. Finding a place to park is a daily problem for many students. The new Senate administration should take an active role in the allocation of student spaces in the proposed parking garage and in the allocation of temporary parking spaces while the garage is under construction.
Student services. Senate leaders should realize that this organization has had its greatest impact on KU students by providing needed services. KU on Wheels bus service, Secure Cab and campus lighting are some of the most important and lasting contributions the Senate has made. Future senators also should seek to provide innovative services to their student constituency.
Senate leaders should concentrate on issues that most directly affect students, such as tuition, add/drop, grading systems, student housing and financial aid. And student senators should remember that their first priority is to be representatives of the student body, not of the University administration.
Alison Young for the editorial board
Bloomingdale's is conducting a great search for Kansas products to try out on the New York market. It seems New Yorkers have gotten tired of imported, exotic products such as yak's milk and sushi and decided to go for the down-home instead. Of course, to New Yorkers, anything on the other side of the Hudson River is Wild West and just as far-out as Katmandu or Kyoto.
Kansas needn't cater to fads
Here's Kansas' chance to get a good laugh. New Yorkers don't know — or, let's face it, care — about Kansas at all. As far as they are concerned, Kansas is still the dust-bowl state of Dorothy and Auntie Em. — in black and white, of course.
So why not play on our own image: Let's send 'em some products Kansas-style, by golly! Every fabric that goes from Kansas to Bloomie's should be blue gingham. Food products should taste like wheat, and the ones that don't taste like wheat should taste like buffalo meat. The possibilities are practically endless: wheat-flavored popsicles (all natural, of course).
General Foods International Wheat-and-Milo Cappuccino, buffalo flavored breath mints. Lawrence's own wheat ice cream and hickory tofu are just the beginning.
After all, we'd be following a great lead by Japan. The Japanese capitalized early on New Yorkers' love of everything fashionably exotic by turning sushi into the food of the decade for the entire Eastern seaboard.
And look how profitable the sushi market is. If Kansas can follow that lead, the price of wheat could shoot sky-high. There could be a giant new demand for all things Kansas. Heck, someone will probably come up with a Toto-ate this-brand dog food so New York dogs can chow down Kansas-style on that good country home-cookin'.
So let's do it! Let's run with Bloomie's sudden urge for a taste of the Wild West. If we play our cards right, it could be worth a lot of money — and a great laugh.
Katy Monk for the editorial board
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board.
News staff
Alison Young...Editor
Todd Cohen...Managing editor
Rob Knapp...News editor
Alan Player...Editorial editor
Joseph Rebello...Campus editor
Jennifer Rowland...Planning editor
Anne Luscombe...Sports editor
Stephen Wade...Photo editor
Richard Stewart...Graphics editor
Tom Eblez...General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Kelly Scherer...Business manager
Clark Massad...Retail sales manager
Brad Lenhart...Campus sales manager
Robert Hughes...Marketing manager
Kurt Messersmith...Production manager
Greg Knippe...National manager
Kimberly Coleman...Traffic manager
Kimberly Coleman...Classified manager
Jeanne Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
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War of windows is fierce Professors battle each other for an office with a view
They say an army marches on its stomach. Well, a university is more or less the same. Universities often march on their bellyaches. One of the things that gets faculty members bellyaching the loudest is allocation of office space.
Talk about acrimony. You think that it's tough trying to make peace between the Iranians and Iraqis? You think that diplomacy is guiding the Sandimistas and the contras toward a settlement? You think the situation in Northern Ireland is about to explode in more violence? You haven't seen war until you've seen a bunch of professors going at it over who gets an office with a window. Strategy. Tactics. Forced marches. Secret missions. Suicide pacts. They're all part of the secret War of the Windows, also known as "My Tenure for a Window."
Take a recent case. My friend, Westly Tormwhippet, dean of the School of Duplicative Communigraphics, was sitting in his office the other day when Repunzel, his secretary, buzzed him. Dr. C. Mingley Praductive, a long-time member of the faculty, wanted to see him. Without even an exchange of pleasantries, Praductive said:
"OK, Wes, out with it. Who's it going to be?"
"Don't play games with me. Who's going to get Smellingford's office?"
"My stars. Is Dr. Smellingford leaving? I was sure that after we gave him the Chippendale Distinguished Chair, he'd stay here until he retired."
There's been a lot of construction on college campuses since the 1960s, and most of it has made the office problem worse. Architects and planners, wise in the ways of energy conservation and footstep-per-erglaze ratios, have centralized faculty offices deep in the bowels of great tummy classroom buildings. Row upon row of 8-by-10 foot cubicles face each other in hallways the width of the theater aisles.
"That's precisely my point," Praductive said. "I just talked to Smellingford, and he's going to retire in 1996. I want to know who's going to get his office."
These rabbit warrens are always jammed with students, all sitting with their backs to the walls, their legs stretched out into the passageways, eating chilicheededs and jabbering away like a national magpie convention.
Meantime, upstairs, professors are taping butcher paper on windows to darken the classrooms enough to
show a few slides or get their overhead transparencies to show up on the screen.
But not everyone in academia suffers from office undernourishment. Certain individuals have what you might call an embarrassment of office.
For example, there's Maria Siempre Adelante y Arriba, the new deputy assistant vice provost. Adelante y Arriba came to the university five years ago as an assistant professor of hispano speak. Her computerized content analysis of thumb-sucking motifs in the early works of the 18th century Uraquayan novelist Umberto Salvador Martínez Ungardo was all the rage among Spanish scholars that year.
To entice her to join the faculty, the department chairman, Ivan Bludgeon, offered Adelante y Arriba the only above-ground office the university had available. It had two, count them, two, windows. Bludgeon fought a horrendous turtle battle with two other department chairmen; he lost by a blow. Bludgeon left the university, saying he could no longer stand the gaff in academia. He became a labor negotiator in the coal mining industry.
Meanwhile, Dr. Maria, as she had affectionately become known, went, well, onward and upward. The departments of quantification and antique events, recognizing her talents (not to mention the fact that her gender and hispanic surname would count twice on affirmative action reports) both offered her adjunct appointments. Each appointment came with an office.
The deputy assistant vice provost position carried a quarter-time appointment, and it came with an office in the administration building. That made four offices in all for Dr. Maria.
These days, though, she spends most of her time in a research carrel at the library. When she runs into colleagues or students who say "I've been trying to get in touch with you for days," Dr. Maria replies, "I'm sorry. I'm not in the office very much anymore." Larry Day is a professor of journalism. He has an office with a window.
Dole is not finished
To be a victor among the vanquished requires an exceedingly able and brave man.
Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole might have lost the race, but he has not lost the war.
Kathee A. Crough Salina junior
Promoting ignorance
Associate professor Norman Forer's remarks regarding the need to restrict the freedom of speech of individuals or groups are most unfortunate. To argue that because some restrictions of free speech now exist "throughout Western Europe and in 30 U.S. states" any university must follow suit is a poor argument. Rather, it is this herd-like behavior which is the real source of so many social problems.
The war camps in Nazi Germany took place in a state where free speech did not exist. It is also evident that what put to death millions of people was not free speech, but, rather, free and detestable acts. Presumably, the war criminals were held accountable for their actions precisely because they were free to act, not because the rhetoric of Nazi propaganda overwhelmed their moral discernment. Words do not kill, people do.
Without the freedom to express one's opinions and ideas, communication is impossible and ignorance must be the result. Despite what even a professor may suppose, ignorance is not a good thing.
Jonathan Eck Lawrence graduate student
Turtle deserved life
"Special turtle killed for KU research."
just what kind of research is being done on this special turtle? Let's see. I guess a record-setting turtle does need to be put to sleep. I even suppose that this turtle ranks right along with animals used for cancer research in importance. This turtle probably lived all of those years with only one dream: to end up in the Museum of Natural History's reptile collection. It's a good thing that all beings big and special aren't put to sleep for research. The basketball team would dearly miss Danny Manning.
Pattee Borst Overland Park senior
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed