4a
Opinion
23.
Thursday, March 8, 2001
Perspective
For comments, contact Chris Borniger or Nathan Willis at 864-4924 or opinion@kansan.com
Arts endowment uses tax money appropriately
The National Endowment for the Arts, the $100 million drop of change in the federal budget, just can't seem to escape the tire of penny pinchers who think tax dollars are going to waste on publicly funded art.
Using the example of a few exhibitions which contained controversial art and had some public funding, these culture police want to pull the plug on all public arts funding.
Last Friday, one Kansan columnist called public funding of the arts unconstitutional, wasteful and in need of minimum standards of decency. Spewing the usual rhetoric, this columnist failed to mention that only the smallest percentage of the agency's 110,000
grants during the past 36 years have even raised the hackles of the public.
In fact, grants from the NEA are the seed money for jobs, culture and creativity in all parts of the country. Using the trickle-down economics en vogue these days, the $97.6 million NEA fiscal year 2000 budget helped stimulate a nonprofit arts industry with 1.3 million full-time jobs and an annual expenditure of $36.8 billion.
Through income and sales taxes, nonprofit art
Matt
Merkel-Hess
guest columnist
cation@kansas.com
generates more than $5 billion in revenue for federal, state and local governments. The 36 cents each American spends annually on the NEA goes a long way.
NEA grants require locally donated matching funds, and since the agency's establishment in 1965, private giving to the arts has exploded from $0.5 billion to $10.9 billion. The jump in giving has correlated with a growth in local and state art agencies, nonprofit theaters, professional orchestras and opera companies. According to the NEA Web site, 41 percent of Americans now attend arts events — 4 percentage points more than attend professional or amateur sports events.
The federal government's support of the nonprofit arts industry is the smallest piece of the pie when compared to revenue and donations from individuals, foundations and corporations, but the federal tax dollars are important. The NEA's grants have included:
The PBS series Great Performances, winner of 51 Emmys and 121 Emmy nominations.
The design of the Vietnam Veterans
The design of the Vietnam Veteran Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Miles Davis and Sarah Vaughan. Local NEA grants already awarded for the
Local NEA grants already awarded for the fiscal year 2001 include:
- The Lied Center of Kansas, $25,000.
- City, State, Phone: 720-826-9950.
- Kansas City Symp.
- International Association of Jazz Educators in Manhattan, $30.000.
Midwest Center for the Literary Arts,
Kansas City. Mo...$10,000.
Kansas City Ballet, $10,000
NEA grants also provide money for touring companies that come to the Lied Center, such as Diavalo Dance Theater, Alvin Alley and Bullet Hispanico.
Halting these grants because some art is controversial would be ludicrous. And even the art that is deemed controversial often is misrepresented. In the 1999 "Sensation" exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, Chris Offill's elephant dung-adorned painting, "The Holy Virgin Mary," was criticized by noted art critic and New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
In fact, the dung was intended as a symbol of rebirth and rejuvenation. It was displayed next to Offili's painting "Afrodiszia," which has the names Cassius Clay, Miles Davis, Diana Ross and other African-American icons on brown clumps similar to the "Virgin Mary." The Catholic, church-going artist has been called in a New York Times opinion piece "an equal opportunity dung artist."
Also, the NEA has also come to realize that risqué art is not the best way to gain political support. The relative absence of political squabbling is part of the reason why the 2012 fiscal year marks the NEA's first funding boost since 1992 — a $7 million increase to $105 million.
But still, the calls come to ax the NEA because of controversial grants. If what some people deem as controversial does go unfunded, what comes next? Fred Phelps objects to many of the events at the Lied Center — should these also not receive funding because someone thinks they aren't worthy of viewing?
Merkel-Hess is an Iowa City, Iowa, senior in journalism and environmental studies.
Graham Moyer/KANSAN
Kansan report card
Pass:
Four Truman finalists. KU students advance to final round of prestigious scholarship competition. Freshman, take heed: Studying actually does pav off.
Brazilian week. Activities highlighting Brazilian culture on campus end Saturday with a Carnaval celebration. Prepare to samba the night away.
Chancellor Hemenway. In tough budget times, the head honcho adds $40,000 to professors' budget to travel. We'd suggest buying certain professors one-way tickets.
Fail:
Athletics Department. Days after it said it couldn't support the men's swimming and tennis teams, it found an extra $2.3 million lying around for the football team. Bob Frederick should check the holes in his pockets.
Department of Student Housing. Housing can't turn down the heat in K.K. Amini Scholarship Hall, leading to excessive gas bills. Someone needs to turn up the heat on housing.
Contractors working on the Military Science Building. Before starting noisy work in the first-floor hallway, crews removed the doors from all the classrooms. The up side: Students won't be sleeping during class.
Perspective
Parents, gun owners share blame for school shootings
it's another school year, and yet another
It's another school year, and yet another school shooting has been added to a growing list. This week at Santana High School outside of San Diego, two students were killed, and 13 others wounded in a shooting. The suspect: a 15-year-old emotional punching bag and con-
This shooting is worse than the Columbine disaster. The San Diego death toll and damages, both physical and emotional, cannot compare to the Columbine massacre, but this is more of a permanent mark on the record of high schools. It demonstrates, more than anything else, that school environments are still not taken as seriously as they should be and that even the Columbine
Ben Tatar columnist
poignon@kansan.com
tragedy was not enough to convine school boards to do more. It makes me wonder what more than Columbine is needed.
I look at it this way: Whenever an airplane goes down, the immediate recovery objective is to locate the plane's black box. The box is the key to determining what steps were taken leading up to the accident and then the cause of the crash. More importantly, the black box allows aviators to find or understand certain problems in flight or mechanics and better prepare for similar circumstances.
In any high school class in the country, there are always kids who stand as the outcasts. It takes only a small amount of taunting to convince some kids to go to dad's closest and steal his pistol. Serious sensitivity training needs to be mandated for all high-schoolers. If not already established, security should be a school's top priority. More importantly, schools need to put less emphasis on competition and ranking and more on recognizing each student's contributions. And people wonder why jocks are so often the target.
Similarly, every person in the world capable of feeling has a black box of emotions.
Moreover, parents need to connect more with their children, as well as the school environment. Parents must support their children and know about their child's out-of-school behavior.
Like many people, I hate guns. I don't care for the Second Amendment either; I, however, know that the right to bear arms will never be repealed no matter how many children end up leaving schools in ambulances. To my dismay, an average Joe still has the right to buy a firearm, starting at the age of 18. That age includes some seniors in high school.
Background checks also make no sense to me. Background checks are done when the seller of the firearm collects the potential buyer's information and hands it over to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Getting a gun is too easy. If you want a gun, you can't be a fugitive from justice. You can't be a drug addict. You can't be a stalker. You can't be a domestic violence threat. But you can go into the store in your best suit and with a golden smile and be mowing down kids within a week.
As someone who is planning on being both a teacher and a parent at some point, this really frightens me. I don't buy large suits figuring I'll have enough room to slide a bullet-proof vest under it. Now, more than ever, teachers need to watch how they tell a student that they did something incorrectly, or they might pay for it the next day. All hints at future violence need to be taken more seriously.
I amazes me how you need to have a clean background in order to eventually give yourself a dirty one.
Furthermore, gun owners need to take more responsibility. The same penalties that a high school-age murderer gets should also apply to the owner of the gun. It is not illegal to own one, but it is illegal to give one to a juvenile. Background checks may prevent repeat offenders, but I won't feel any more comfortable knowing that the person who mows down my first-grade son had a clean past.
Tatar is a Highland Park, Ill., senior in music education.
Editorial Universities deserve all info on results of test takers
Learning-disabled students deserve special help,but it should be noted on scores.
Standardized testing is one of many methods by which admissions offices decide who should attend certain schools. But these tests cause many students frustration, especially those with learning disabilities.
To alleviate some of the problems, students who have documentation of a disability are often granted extended time on these tests. In the past, a "flag" on these scores signaled the test was taken under nonstandard conditions. This method is changing.
In July 1999, Disability Rights Advocates sued to stop the flagging. Recently, the Educational Testing Service reached an out-of-court settlement. The GRE, GMAT and TOEFL will no longer be flagged, and a panel of experts will decide what to do with other standardized tests.
There should be accommodations made for those who have learning disabilities, but ignoring that a test was taken in a nonstandard manner does not give full disclosure about the applicant. While the test score achieved by these students is valid, it should be one of the factors taken into account by admissions officers.
Standardized tests — by their very definition — should be uniform. Once the tests are taken in a nonstandard environment, it changes the nature of the test. The test is no longer standardized; it has variances. Many good students without diagnosed learning disorders have major difficulties with standardized testing. These students are not allowed extra time because they are not good test takers. Students with disabilities should be permitted extra time, but it should be noted on their scores.
Standardized testing comes under a lot of fire. But it remains one of the primary methods of differentiating students who come from various educational backgrounds. Students who have disabilities but have proven their capabilities in the classroom should be accepted into graduate programs even if their test score is flagged. The flagging of test scores is not a method of discrimination — only a method of providing all of the possible information concerning their test-taking conditions.
Emily Haverkamp for the editorial board
free for
all
864-0590
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. The Kansan reserves the right to edit submissions, and not all of them will be published. Slanderous statements will not be printed. For more comments, go to www.kansan.com.
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Man, Free for all kind of sucks now. It's not funny anymore, but you guys probably won't print this.
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I'm a KU swimmer, and I'd like Bob Frederick to explain why, two days after announcing that we get our program cut, he decides to pump $2.3 million into KU's football program.
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I was going to call the Free for All today, but I was driving on campus and hit a pothole, then my head on the ceiling, and I can't remember anything.
Something repellent, something that gives you a moral hangover, something that hurts your eyes or ears can still be art.
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Boo hoo. Another sports program is shut down again. I guess we'll have to go back to using this campus for what it's supposed to be used for — a learning institute.
蜜
In a school, a kid walks in, kills two kids and wounds 13 people, and it makes the back of the newspaper. What's wrong with the newspaper?
I love how the Delta Force promises to run a clean campaign and all they can talk about is the VOICE Coalition and how they're not new.
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Pretty interesting how the VOICE Coalition says it's representing the entire University but only seems to represent the former Students First coalition and the Greek and panhallenic community.
Now I now why Steak 'n' Shake is open 24 hours a day, because that's how long it takes to get my freakin' food.
II
To all those people who are now suddenly big swimming or tennis fans, if you'd gone to their meets in the first place, their sports wouldn't have been canceled.
Too bad Memorial Stadium was paid by private funds. If we had fans coming to the games, the football team would be able to support the other 15 programs at KU. If they sold alcohol at the games, we'd probably have more fans at the game.
How come every real university's spring break is before KU's?
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You know you're in college when you can drink with your professors.
I think it's ironic that Hemenway and Frederick canceled the two athletic programs where ... scholastics and the athletic programs are held in equally high importance and then leave intact the football program, where the lack of sportsmanship, common-sense action and the lowest grade point average seems to be the norm.
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