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Wednesday. December 8,1993
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Teacher deserves raise but was fired instead
Ateacher worthy of promotion was fired last week. In Georgetown, Del., a woman named Adele Jones was fired for attempting to educate the youth of America.
The school board of Georgetown, in a 6-4 vote, fired the algebra teacher for flunking too many students. The tragedy is that instead of being rewarded for her refusal to accept mediocrity, a teacher was dismissed because she would not let the children slide by.
Sussex Central, where Jones worked, has a 60-70 percent rate of college attendance by its students. They enjoy their school. They enjoy their teachers. They do not however, enjoy an easy algebra class. Students must adhere to the highest standards of academia to pass Ms. Jones' class. She runs a tight ship, and she knows it. For this reason, she holds review sessions before tests and is willing to help students with their homework up to three hours before school each day. Despite her efforts, the Georgetown school board terminated her employment.
The decision was a mistake. In America today, education is not up to par with international standards. The system consistently passes its students so it will appear to be doing a valuable job. It doesn't recognize that many of its graduates missed out on challenging worthwhile educations.
This case sets a horrifying precedent. The message it sends is: If you are a teacher and you fail a student who doesn't comprehend the material, rather than send him unprepared into college or the work force, you will lose your job.
The school board stated that something is wrong when a teacher flunks 60 percent of her students. On the contrary, when a teacher refuses to pass someone who does not deserve to pass in lieu of robbing him of a high-quality education, perhaps something is finally right.
CARSON ELROD FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Students: be responsible and save KU staff time
The semester is almost over, and students are starting to panic. Finals, vacation plans and the stresses of the holiday season are here. Although the University staff, which includes fellow students, faculty and classified employees, are almost always willing and eager to help answer questions, we must remember that we are college students and are responsible for taking care of our own accounts.
Mom and Dad dropped you off at college, but you sign your own loan papers and stand in enrollment lines. At the same time, the University staff is not your surrogate parent. The business office, registrar and financial aid office, to name a few, are overwhelmed with questions that can be answered by simply reading the information available to you. Not everyone is guilty of being too lazy to read general information, but too many students assume that someone else will sift through and solve their problems.
Whether you like it or not, someday you are going to graduate from college, and nobody will be around to make your phone calls or ensure that all of your papers are filed. Next semester make a vow to become responsible for your own actions; you might be surprised how easy and less stressful life becomes.
MANNY LOPEZ FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
KC TRAUER, Editor
JOE HARDER, CHRISTINE LAUE Managing editors
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
BILL SKEET, Systems coordinator
Assistant to the editor ... J.R. Clairborne
News ... Stacy Friedman
Editorial ... Terrilyn McCormick
Campus ... Ben Grove
Sports ... Kristi Fogler
Photo ... Klip Chin, Renee Kneeber
Features ... Erza Wolfe
Graphics ... John Paul Fogel
AMY CASEY
Business manager
AMY STUMBO
Retail sales manager
JEANNE HINES
Sales and marketing adviser
Business Staff
Campus sales mgr ... Ed Schager
Regional sales mgr ... Jennifer Perrier
National sales mgr ... Jennifer Evenson
Co-op sales mgr ... Blythe Focht
Production mgrs ... Jennifer Blowey
... Kate Burgess
Marketing director ... Sheily McConnell
Special sections mgrs ... Judith Standley
Creative director ... Brian Fuco
Classified mgr .. Gretchen Koetterheinich
Some Rock Chalk groups had financial advantage
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
I applaud the Rock Chalk Revue Advisory Board's interest in encouraging nongreek participation, as was stated in the Nov. 30 article, "Rock Chalk Reve — It's not just a greek thing." However, it seems the board, while requesting more diversity, is unaware of the budgetary restrictions of nongreek living communities that potentially prohibit these groups from submitting winning entries. Therefore, I challenge the board to follow through on its comments by capping the amount spent on notebooks. The purpose of submitting anonymous notebooks is to concisely present all aspects of a musical performance. While I was not involved in my living organization's Rock Chalk efforts this year, I was still aware of the frustration experienced in attempting to compete against groups with sometimes three times as much money budgeted for this vital portion of the competition. Rock Chalk exists to raise money for the United Way while inciting community spirit. Limiting the amount spent on notebook compilation would not only base competition on creativity alone, but would also save money that could be directly donated to charity. If the Advisory Board is serious about increasing nongreek participation, it should take action to ensure fair representation for everyone.
**Letters** should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words. They must include the writer's signature, name, address and telephone number. Writers affiliated with the University of Kansas must include class and hometown, or faculty or staff position. Guest columns should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The writer will be phoned. The Kansas reserves the right to reject or edit letters, guest columns and cartoons. They can be mailed or brought to the Kansas newsroom, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall.
Kansan must show guts to publish.be damned
Whitney Baker Wichita senior
The Kansan has a well-deserved reputation for neatness, professional execution and predictable dullness. No doubt that is why it regularly wins awards for the best student newspaper. But anyone seeking articles of real interest and relevance to campus life on a regular basis will be disappointed. Those rare occasions when the paper produces a real scoop — the publication of the list of faculty salaries, the Tonkovich story, the Dean Jerry memorandum — only serve to emphasize the day-to-day bansality of the paper the rest of the time.
university that presumably the Kansan finds "too hot to handle." One can think of several:
the inconsistency of the ROTC policy on homosexuals with the ideals of the University, which was "solved" by sending off a couple of academics to take on the Pentagon!
the policy of the University, dripping with political correctness, circulated by Vice Chancellor Meyen this fall that faculty are required to hold special make-up tests for student who decide that they don't wish to take an exam because of a conflict with a religious festival.
The paper has failed to cover a wide range of questions facing the
discussion of the problem of academic dishonesty by students, 25% of whom, according to a Fall 1993 circular form the vice chancellor for academic affairs, are fraudunkies
the complete breakdown of the grievance procedures at the University of Kansas, which seem to function only when there is a student or an "undesirable" faculty member to be expelled.
The editorial staff of our student newspaper can't live with their collective heads in Kansas loan forever. They need to be conscious that there are problems at KU and that they have to have the guts, and independence, as professional journalists-in-training to chase up a story, to publish and be damned. Or does the training in Stauffer-Flint Hall consist of the shaping of complaint yes-men (oops! yes-persons) for the official press? How much official pap should we have to take in our diet anyway?
Associate professor of mechanical engineering
The Nov. 23 "Viewpoint" editorial argued that the Pentagon's policy regarding gays in the military was "best" because it "avoids conflicts of homophobia and sustains morale."
The policy accomplishes neither. Rather than avoiding conflicts over homophobia, its institutionalizes homophobia through a morally corrupt scheme of "let's pretend that there are no homosexuals in the military" and of excluding an entire class of citizens because of a characteristic unrelated to individual ability to serve in the military. Such a policy inevitably undermines the morale of a modern, liberal democracy.
Pentagon's policy fails to resolve gay conflict
The ostensible assumption driving the government's policy — "homosexuality is inconsistent with military service" — has been discredited by the Pentagon's own research reports that were commissioned to examine that assumption. These reports concluded that homosexuals were as capable as others to serve and that full integration of homosexuals into the military was feasible.
The courts, however, will decide the merits of "don't ask, don't tell." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit recently became the fourth federal court this year to strike down the policy, dismissing the government's arguments as similar to those that formed the basis for racial segregation in the military until 1948. The court held that the military's stated reasons for excluding gays were irrational on their own terms. This "rational basis" argument may be the argument most convincing to the swing justices on the Supreme Court, should it hear a case challenging the policy.
I have to say after reading the commentary on Furrs by Sara Bennett in the Dec. 3 Kansan, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. My opinion of Sara Bennett's article is that it is tasteless and without class. Furrs does cater to the elderly which I think is wonderful. Having a place to go eat and meet friends without listening to wild music and people running around, as a lot of the eating establishments in this town who cater to college students do, is a pleasant change. Her quote of "no-mans land of white, tasteless food, where equally tasteless people repeatedly slide up to the trough, giving new meaning to the term 'all you can eat'" was thoughtless, rude and judgmental. I will feel sorry for you in your twilight years but right now... please show your article to your father and apologize to the man who pays for your education.
Furrs deserves better treatment by writer
Geoffrey Steere
Associate Professor
Sabrina Marino Lawrence resident
COLUMNIST
Liberal label starts quest for accurate political call
After several of my columns had been published and I still hadn't received any letters, I began to wonder if you were paying attention. So I put it to the test. I wrote a column that was slightly critical of a certain over-exposed, egotistical media figure — you know which one. I was not disappointed. The dittoheads were happy to set me straight. They called me the most dirty, vile and insulting thing that they could think of, a word that the FCC was considering banning from the airwaves as obscene, something that you wouldn't want to say in front of small children. Yes, they called me a ... liberal.
Needless to say, I was shocked. I had never really considered myself "liberal." I always thought I was a middle-of-the road type of guy, but if a ditto-head took the trouble to write and tell me that I was liberal, then it must have come down from Rush, supreme god of the noble conservatives, and has to be true. How devastating. What would my friends say if they found out? When it was published in the letters section of the *Kansan* editorial page, it was definitely time for some damage control. So I carefully asked a friend of mine if she considered me politically, well you know, the Lword.
"The L word?" she asked as she broke into laughter for five minutes. "Oh no," I thought, "it must be true." Then, after she composed herself, she assured me that she thought I was way too conservative on almost every issue imaginable. She also assured me that she could not understand how I could get a job writing for a liberal paper like the Kansan in the first place, or why they would make the mistake of publishing my columns.
At first I was relieved. But then the thought occurred to me, "What if she was liberal too, maybe even more so than I am? Or worse yet, what if I was a conservative?" I didn't want to be a liberal, but I didn't want to be a conservative, either. I decided I needed a second opinion. So I met another friend of mine at a local bar. I knew that he was a good Republican who watched Rush at least once a day. I bought him a beer, and he told me a couple of tasteless jokes about Hillary Clinton. I asked him where he thought I stood politically. After carefully considering the question, he said that I did have liberal "tendencies." He assured me that the condition was entirely curable if I watched Rush's TV show at least twice a day and listened to his radio show. Otherwise, I might lose my eternal soul.
Well, now I had a real problem. I was either a bleeding-heart liberal or an oppressive white male conservative. I was without a political identity. Finally, another friend suggested that I might be a moderate. "A moderate?" I asked. "What's that? "That's someone who forms an opinion on an issue based upon its individual merits or problems," my friend told me, "not by allowing someone else to form their opinion for them." "Do such people really exist?" I asked. "They do, but they are becoming more rare all the time. Looking at both sides of an issue seems to take too much effort," my friend replied. "That's too bad," I said. Yes, agreed my friend, "it really is."
Jim Kimmel is a McLouth junior majoring in history and sociology.
University of Mars
by Joel Francke