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VALENTINE'S DAY SPECIAL: Consumer holiday or time for real love? Send us your opinions in 80 words or fewer about Valentine's Day.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13,2007 WWW.KANSAN.COM
Email: opinion@kansan.com
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
PAGE 9A
>> OUR VIEW
End of term sees Bush altering policies
Observers were understandably taken aback during President Bush's recent goodwill visit to Wall Street, where he spoke out against the exponentially escalating salaries of Americans top corporate officers. Could this be the same Bush, the punditocracy wondered, who had long embraced the free market and whatever conditions it dictated? Was the nation's first MBA president really calling for public checks on private wages?
As it turns out, the executive pay speech was only part of a broad pastiche of surprising proposals advocated by Bush in the last few months. Bush has lately embraced and supported the causes of increased healthcare coverage, explorations of renewable and alternative energy sources and higher spending for environmental protection.
These, along with the obvious use of the military for nation-building and instituting global change, causes decried by Bush in 2000, make the president a starkly different political creature today than he was just a few years ago. If a voter had taken an Rip Winkle-esque nap after the 2000 election and had just awoken, he would hardly recognize the president.
Bush's many critics will quickly denounce his tactics as crass political opportunism, the product of a man who sees the mounting coverage of the 2008 race and has shifted his
focus to his own legacy. Cynics will recall the same strategy employed by President Clinton, who in his waning years embraced a number of conservative causes to burnish his own Oval Office accomplishments.
But in Bush's case, these evolutions of principle do not seem to be aleatory or strictly political. After all, he is not going to win any more business-sector friends by calling for salary caps. Rather, these changes reflect the developing worldview of a man confronted by new realities, and in these new ideals lie important lessons for young voters.
Presidents enter office with the highest ambitions, busiest agendas, and loftest aspirations. But the constrictive nature of the governing process requires that presidents turn instead to the tools of practicality and trappings of bipartisanship. Our nations' best leaders have been those who embrace cooperation over combat, compromise over contention, and consensus over conflict. As the focus on the 2008 election hones in on the basest and most rabid elements within each party, young voters should remember that little in American history was accomplished with the politics of division and dispute. A better future lies down the path of collaborative pragmatism, not rigid idealism.
McKay Stangler for the editorial board.
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Instead of increasing our required campus fee, how about they just turn off the lights at the baseball field in the middle of the winter?
I don't know what I like better, seeing KU win or seeing Duke lose four in a row. I hate Duke! I also hate how they get to sit court-side at all their games. Come on, Lew!
Did anybody find an iPod in the Wescoe second floor bathroom?
To the person who tried to save their spot with the orange safety cone: Thanks for the parking spot!
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I've got my rain boots and my umbrella. I'm prepared for rain, sleet, snow, or shine. I'm so prepared, I should be a Boy Scout working for the post office.
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So I think I'm going to drop out of school and become a weather man.
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I hope I just made someone's day today, because I totally slipped outside of Budig and busted my ass, and it hurt.
I am honestly so bored that I'm considering letting people see my boobs for $40.
To those who saw me on Saturday night: I'm sorry I cried. It's quite unlike me, and I don't plan on it happening again.
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Some people must have special umbrellas that protect against mist.
Since when were Alexander Hamilton or Ben Franklin presidents? And I'm pretty sure that Ulysses S Grant was a pretty bad president.
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My French teacher just asked if we eat rabbits here in America.
To the lady with a small child that saw me smoking a joint on campus today: That was a mean look!
To the Asian kid that just tried to walk on the ice at Potter's Lake: It's clearly not frozen, you dumbass!
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To the KU basketball players who just tried to play chicken with me on 15th Street: I would be very upset with you and call the police, but you just beat MU, so I guess I'll allow it.
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Grant Snider/KANSAN
>> COMMENTARY
Valentine's Day deserves celebrating by singles
There is a disconnection between dating on Valentine's Day and the other 364 days of the year. More than half of young, single adults in America are not actively searching for romantic relationships, according to a study by pewinternet.org and American Life Project. In fact, 49 percent have gone on no more than one date in the past three months. With the dating scene being more casual than ever, why do singles still feel un-entitled to celebrate Valentine's Day?
We live in a time when the prevalence of text-messaging and "hooking-up" are ever-present reminders that mating is adapting to 21st-century America. In a society in which dating has come to have significance only when proceeded with online speed or in reality TV, it's time we take this holiday into today's context.
As a single woman adapting to this normative of "dating" since hitting Mount Oread, it's natural that I've come to rely heavily relationships
come to rely heavily on my platonic relationships.
BY ABBY HUGHES
BY ABBY HUGHES
KANSAN,COLUMNIST
OPINION@KANSAN.COM
Family ties have strengthened thanks to e-mailing. My high school girlfriends and I use AOL Instant Messenger and the ever-relevant "fresh ink" line of Hallmark cards. My male roommate and I tend to frequent 24-hour favorites like Java Break and IHOP to catch
tory.com.
Nothing about today looks or feels like it did in 1840 when the first Valentines were mass-produced in the United States to celebrate "romantic love," according to his-
So in line with the progression and development that our society has become known for and accustomed to: I'm spending time with my Valentines this year. My girls will be receiving their fresh-ink cards, my parents a special phone call and my co-workers and I will take a break to celebrate our good
working relationship. My roommate and I will enjoy a platinic evening of baking chocolate cake and ordering pizza with toppings in the shape of a heart
It's easy for singles to be disillusioned into thinking that they are in the lonely minority and not realize that conventional dating isn't so conventional in the 2007 context. Celebrate your relationships with the ones you care most about and stop expecting your Valentines to fall into a neat-tidy dating category that doesn't exist anymore. After all, who doesn't deserve to celebrate the good people in their lives?
>> COMMENTARY
Hughes is a St. Louis senior in journalism.
Professor-rating site deserves hits
Our professor gazed down at us with hooded eyes. You could feel them burning into the back of your skull. As always, he was searching the room for a sign that someone had not read the week's assignment. All at once, he would notice a timid expression and swooping down would cry out. "You there, Mr. So."
deserve better.
I lived in a three-credit-hour hell because of that famous freshman statement, "This sounds interesting." At that time I didn't understand
Have you ever had one of those classes that inspired Freddy Krueger dreams
and so, tell us the significance of this statement on page 224."
BY SAM SCHNEIDER
in you the night before? Ever had a class that was unable to raise either your eyelids or your interest? In a university as big as this, they're bound to exist; accept that fact, and then avoid those classes. You
Ever had a class that was unable to raise your eyelids or your interest?
KANSAN.COLUMNIST
OPINION@KANSAN.COM
that a good professor is more important than the name of the class. I found ratemyprofessors.com later that semester.
Now when a new semester comes around, I sit at my computer and open two tabs on my browser. The first contains the class lists put out by the university. The second is the Rate My Professors Web site. First
another class.
I find a class that sounds interesting and a time that will fit my schedule, then I check the attached professor's rating. If I find a negative consensus among students, I look for
Of course, not everyone loves this site (though few of these opponents actually take classes). They point out that it's quite possible for a student who has received a well-deserved F to slant the rankings negative. What you see is a slice of extremes: People who loved or hated a particular class, because no one else would have the motivation to leave a comment.
They're right that the comments tend to be a collection of praise and
damination for each professor, but they miss the point. We don't take a class because one cared about it. We choose a class precisely because someone raved about it or blew up in it.
To make sure Rate My Professors has actually helped me, I tested my own seven favorite professors. Sure enough, most of their overall ratings sat securely near a perfect five and only two dipped below a four.
Be wise. Don't base your decision entirely on ratings. But do use them. They may not reveal to you to the best professor in Kansas, but they do a fine job illuminating the worst.
Enjoy the classes you take while in college. If you can avoid bad professors and gravitate to the many excellent ones on this campus, do it.
Schneider is a Topeka junior in English.
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