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Wednesday, March 23, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Success in advising process relies on students, advisers
Enrolling at the University of Kansas these days can be a waking nightmare.
waking nightmare.
Lines can last forever. Graduation and admission requirements both can be elusive. And who knows what the add-drop policy is these days or will be in the fall?
prevention for entitlement problems. The solution to those problems is simple.
But that's why there is an advising period, which runs from Monday until April 8. And the advising period is the primary prevention for enrollment problems.
The solution to those problems Students need to do their homework before they meet with their advisers. Know the graduation requirements. Know what's needed for admission into a professional school. Develop a long-range course plan. Talk to an adviser before April 8.
The same rules of preparation apply to advisers. If they want to avoid hassles the next semester, they should take the time during the advising process to do a good job.
during the advising process to do a good job. Advisers too must know what their students need, even if the students belong in different departments or schools. Proper advising now by all faculty can ease the pain of tomorrow's add-drop hassle.
add-drop hassle.
And if students find that their advisers can't cut it, the staff at the Academic Advising Support Center in Wescoe Hall is not only knowledgeable but also willing to help.
The enrollment process can become at least tolerable students and advisers want it to be. Do the homework. Use the available resources. Plan. Enroll. Pray.
Russell Gray for the editorial board
Drug testing only will harass
Douglas County officials say there is no problem, but they have created a solution, nonetheless.
have created a solution, nonetheless. The county commissioners passed a regulation last week that would allow officials to test employees for drugs if they had "reasonable suspicion" that controlled substances were being used on the job.
used on the job. Officials say that the regulation is an extra measure of protection to co-workers, property and the public. If executed in a careful and reasonable manner, it would indeed be a measure of protection.
County workers in safety-sensitive jobs, such as transportation workers and heavy machinery operators, need to be in full control of their mental capacity.
However, this regulation can turn into a harassment measure that simply will cost the county more than it bargains for. Success relies entirely on county officials' ability to find "reasonable suspicion" for drug use. They have to know what they are looking for.
The difficulty of doing just that makes this regulation somewhat unreasonable.
If the county officials have committed an unreasonable act at the onset, who is to trust that they can exercise "reason" when deciding whether a county employee is using drugs on the job?
Jody Dickson for the editorial board
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board.
Other Voices
High standards should be for everyone
The University is raising admissions standards in an effort to decrease the size of upcoming freshmen classes and increase the quality of its students.
quality of its students.
However, the standards still have a flaw that pertains to the much-debated requirement quotas. Minorities still won't have to meet minimum admissions standards if the University needs a greater number of them to meet expected goals.
Henlin lies a fundamental problem. The University does need to recruit more minorities, especially blacks.
recruit more minorities, especially biles. By the same token, waiving admissions standards to meet quotas is inappropriate.
Allowing below-average students into the University, regardless of race, dilutes the student quality and instead of encouraging high school students to study harder and improve themselves so they can get into college, it allows them to stagnate.
college, it allows them to stagger admissions. In fact, that these University officials would address waiving admissions only for blacks is a deplorable statement that they themselves only expect lower quality from black applicants.
themselves only expect lower levels of
As for the University, raising admissions standards across the board
is the only way to improve quality here. Exceptions only hurt the good
students and the University as a whole.
The Red and Black University of Georgia
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Alison Young...Editor
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Seance reveals historic parallels
Being far, far too dedicated to my studies to waste time, brain cells and bodily fluid in the flesh spots of Padre, yet feeling that Spring Break required at least a mild attempt at diversion. I attended a seance.
They were having a special, "Quit Chats with Dead Writers," and of course I couldn't resist. I went in and paid my money and went into the dark booth, settled down on the couch, and almost immediately found myself sharing an astral plane with Hans Christian Anderson. We chatted for awhile, pleasant, largely innocuous conversation, until by some chance the word "editor" crossed my lips. It seemed to touch a sore spot.
I said that I knew exactly what he meant. He looked skeptical, so I told him about King Ronald and the Threat to National Security. I whipped out my handy inflatable globe and pointed first at the United States, then at Nicaragua, then at the Soviet Union; then I told him about nuclear weapons and submarines and
I included.
"Too much of a dower," they said. You know where the king is starkers and marching down main street, and the little brat hollers, "But he hasn't got anything on? and everybody says, 'Oh,ow, the kid's right,' and learn a great lesson? No way. I don't remember exactly, but the gist of MY ending was that the brat says, 'Hey, the old tyrant' naked,' and everybody turns and stares at the kid, and his mother smacks him one and says, 'What are you trying to do, use us killed?' And his father says quietly. 'Yes, son, we know he's naked, but doesn't he look good for his age?'?"
("Extremely vehement, interesting, and obscene expletives deleted") diots") he said.
"Did you know," he told me, "they completely changed the ending of one of my stories? You know 'The Emperor's New Clothes'?"
I nodded.
King Ronald did this because King Ronald calls himself a Capitalist, but he actually believes Communism works better, and he was afraid that everyone in Nicaragua would be richer and happier with the Communists than with the Tyrants-called Democrats who were kind to corporations and were the kind of Capitalists that King Ronald likes.
First, I said, there were some Tyrants in Nicaragua who called themselves Democrats while killing lots of people and stealing money from the poor and sharing it with U.S. corporations. These are the kind of people King Ronald likes. Then there were some poor people who called themselves Communists because those Tyrants were Democrats and gave democracy a bad name in that country. Anyway, the Communists kicked out the Tyrant-Democrats and took over the country and stopped helping the U.S. companies, so King Ronald called those remaining Tyrants "Freedom Fighters" and gave them money and guns.
So, instead of the Communists having to prove to the people that they were actually going to make them richer and happier with a system that has proven over and over to be a complete economic failure, the Communists could blame all their problems on the "Freedom Fighters" and the War against the Imperialist Giant. And because they were fighting the Imperialist Giant.
ICBMs and so on, and then we discussed the possible effects of radiation on ectoplasm for awhile. Then I got back to my story.
the Communists were becoming Tyrants because being a Tyrant is easy when there is a nationalist war to justify it. And they became totally dependent on the Soviet Union for guns and money. Therefore, the Soviet Union had much more influence in Nicaragua than they would have had if King Ronald had never given money and guns to the Tyrant's Freedom fighters because he was afraid that the Soviet Union would have influence in Nicaragua.
Then, at least partly because the people of Nicaragua did not like them, the Tyrants-Freedom Fighters were losing the war. And when the people in the U.S., who didn't want King Ronald to send money and guns in the first place, made it so that King Ronald couldn't send any more guns, then the Communists-turned Tyrants, who now need the Tyrants-Freedom Fighters to blame for all their problems, invaded a little ways into Honduras so that the people in the U.S. would let King Ronald send more guns and money to the Tyrant-Freedom Fighters because after all, the only alternative is to bring the Tyrants-Freedom Fighters to the U.S. and nobody, not even King Ronald, wants that because they're Hispane, and foreigners, and all they have been trained to do is kill people.
kill people."
And King Ronald has justified all this by saying that if the Soviet Union, who has the ICBMs and the submarines and so on and couldn't even control Afghanistan on their own border, would endanger the National Security if the Soviet Union had friends in Nicaragua, which is patently ridiculous. And king Ronald is very popular because no one blames him for anything because we all know he's completely incompetent.
"that's absurd."
Hans said, "But that's adroit.
"Precisely," I said. And Hans said he knew.
"Precisely, I still exactly what I meant.
Jay A. Cohen is an Alta Vista senior majoring in journalism.
Big mouths increase classroom stress
Sure, students need a decent amount of time to shop for classes. And with over-enrolment problems, students need every break they can get to get into needed courses.
The University Senate is voting on shortening the length of the add-drop period. I really hope they don't, but not for the reasons most people might expect.
But the most important reason for having a lengthy drop period is to give that mouth geek who keeps showing up in my classes all the time in the world to get out.
Although his looks might change, he always distinguishes himself once he opens his mouth. Anytime a professor calls on him, watch for giveaway openings such as, "Well, I think . . ." followed by a lengthy testimonial on his or her personal beliefs about an issue that might have
He'll probably follow you from semester to semester, too. One semester he'll be the deep intellectual in your English class, dressed in an old cloth trenchcoat and his grandfather's wire sunglasses, like a member of the Salvation Army's spy corps. The next semester, he'll be the bright yuppie-to-be, looking like a page out of "Dress for Success," sitting in your political science class.
You know the guy I'm talking about. He's probably in one of your classes right now, where you, like me, cringe every time he raises his hand to speak.
He might even be a she, dressed in any way you can think, in any class in the University, or any other university, I hear.
Michael
Merschel
Staff Columnist
something to do with what he's supposed to be talking about; "But Professor, don't you think
... followed by a lengthy rhetorical question on his or her personal beliefs about an issue that barely relates to the subject; or my favorite, "This doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about, but ..." followed by a lengthy lecture on his or her personal beliefs about something not even related to the subject matter
inese people can be nice enough individuals. Occasionally, they'll even make an interesting statement, just as now and then almost any student can say something really inane that they think is brilliant. I've been guilty of that myself.
But I'm not talking about the occasional rambler. I'm talking about the hard-core supermouth, the one who geyers for mindless, egotistical drivel every class session he attends.
During one rambling in an English class, where the professor just couldn't silence the mouth—that would-not-die, (even the best professors can't stop a really good talker once he gets going), I figured out how much the time he wasting was costing me. Dividing my tuition by
the hours I spend in class, I came up with about 14 cents a minute.
It's one thing when I choose to daydream through class on my own. It's another when someone else decides to steal it from me. Losing the equivalent of a Coke and a candy bar because somebody wanted to express a ridiculous subpoint that nobody but he cared about is enough to rile even a calm person.
It took nearly five minutes for the professor to shush the mouth and get back to the point she had been trying to make. The series of useless, pointless questions had cost me 70 cents.
Someday, when I see the mouth's hand go up in class, maybe I'll leap up, something like "Stop! Shut up! Nobody cares!" and wedge a sock between his parted lips before he can steal more of my time. It might be violent, but at least my sanity would be saved. The class and professor would probably give me a standing ovation.
but until I get up the courage to do so (probably never), or until this pathetic person realizes that the rest of us don't care about every little thought he has (also probably never). I guess I'm doomed to keep wishing for the chance that maybe, just maybe, today will be the day he drops.
Please, University Senate, keep the drop period as long as it can be. Give us silent sufferers some hope by giving the never-say-listen types an easy way out.
Michael Merschel is a Lakewood, Colo., junior majoring in journalism.
BLOOM COUNTY
bv Berke Breathed