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Monday, December 6, 1993
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Templin residents should lose battle over the buff
The Templin Hall residents who stubbornly refuse to remove the pictures of scantily clad women from their hallway doors are fighting an inane battle.
When a few residents of this men's residence hall recently taped pictures of topless women to their hallway doors, a female employee of the Department of Student Housing complained that the pictures created a hostile working environment. Templin's hall director asked the residents to remove the pictures, but the residents claim that they are justified in putting whatever they choose on their doors.
This simply is not true.
When these Templin residents signed their residence hall contracts, they agreed to abide by residence hall rules. Student Housing guidelines forbid door decorations that are offensive by University guidelines. University guidelines prohibit actions of a sexual nature that create a hostile working environment.
Furthermore, residents' doors technically are part of the hallway. The hallway is a public area, not a private room. Accordingly, the hall director has the authority to control public areas within the hall. But residents may display pictures of nude women on the walls within their rooms if they choose.
Common courtesy suggests that the residents simply display the pictures inside their rooms and respect the feelings of the female employee. No justifiable reason exists for displaying these pictures outside rather than inside their rooms.
These Templin residents are refusing to cooperate out of stubbornness. Templin residents would be wise to choose their battles more carefully. A battle about bare-chested women is not worth anyone's time or effort.
COLLEEN MCCAIN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Awareness decreases holiday drunken driving
Mixing drinking and driving this holiday season is a reliable way to ruin a joyous time of the year.
Deaths from alcohol-related accidents have declined from 22,084 in 1990 to 17,699 in 1992. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the number of traffic deaths attributed to alcohol decreased as a result of tougher law enforcement and increased awareness.
To raise consciousness of the dangers of the forthcoming season, groups like GAMMA, Greeks Advocating Mature Management of Alcohol, and PARTY, Promote Alcohol Responsibility Through You, encourage students to resist the temptation to drive while intoxicated. Last week, GAMMA set up a table in front of Wescoe Hall and distributed red ribbons to students. By accepting the red ribbon, students pledged not to drink and drive during the holiday weeks. GAMMA hopes that the display of red ribbons will show other people that college students disagree with the dangerous practice of mixing alcohol and driving.
PARTY will have a table in the Kansas Union on Wednesday and Thursday. They will encourage students to sign pledge cards promising not to drink and drive during the holiday season, or until January 1. Students can also get pictures of Santa, and there will be a list of the top ten reasons for being a designated driver.
These efforts are to be applauded and are one small step in reducing alcohol-related traffic accidents and the tremendous cost these accidents impose on the health care system.
TOM GRELINGER 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 ... Kip 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 Evanson
Co-op sales mgr ... Blythe Focht
Production mgr ... Jennifer Blowey
Kate Burgess
Marketing director ... Shelly McConnell
Creative director ... Brian Fuoco
Classified mgr ... Janice Davis
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photographed the right to insert or edit letters, text columns and cartons. Then you
LET'S FIGURE OUT WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS THING
Painted roving cows could provide tax help
It is pathetic but true that we Americans hardly ever think about agriculture. We walk into a restaurant and order a hamburger, and we rarely stop to ask ourselves: Where, exactly, did this hamburger come from? And did everybody involved wash his hands?
Yes, too many of us take agriculture for granted, failing to realize that, without it, there would be virtually nothing to do in, for example, Nebraska. That is why today I am going to devote yet another column to an extremely important facet of agriculture: the cow facet. We'll start with a
TROUBLING COW-PRODUCT
ADVERTISEMENT
This advertisement, which was brought to my attention by readers Gloria Bell and Betty Hermsmeyer, appeared on pages 10 and 11 of the February 1993 issue of Beef Today magazine. If you foolishly threw your copy away, I urge you to rush out to the landfill and dig around until you locate it, because this is a fascinating advertisement. It's for a product called "Safe-Guard," which is used to de-worm cows (the headline states: "It pays to question your dewormer"). There's a large color photograph of two men, clad in overalls and billed caps, standing behind the rear end of a cow (the cow's face is not shown, and you will see why). The men look normal and sane, except for one thing: One of them has much of his right arm inside the rear end of the cow. The man does not appear to be at all concerned about this. He's not even looking at the cow. His head is turned casually toward the other man, and he's saying something, perhaps: "I'm afraid I can't go bowling tonight, Ted. There's a cow on my arm." Or "Hey! I found my dentures!"
I wrote to the manufacturer of Safeguard. Hoechst-Roussel Agri-Vet Co., asking what was going on in this pic.
COLUMNIST
ture. I got a letter back from a veterinarian; he explained that the man in the picture is "palpating" the cow to find out if it's pregnant. Apparently this is a perfectly legitimate veterinary procedure, although I imagine there are serious risks if you don't know exactly what you're doing.
MOB LEADER: We caught this varmint palpatin' out at Jess Fooper's place!
SHERIFF. What seems to be the trouble, boys?
VOICES IN MOB: Yeah! He's a palpator!
SHERIFF. But that's a perfectly legitimate veterinary procedure!
MOB LEADER: He was palpatin' a BULL.
SHERIFF: String him up.
VOICES IN MOB: Let's palpate him first!
--words so as to "create a new text." I think this is a terrific idea, and I believe that the government should seriously consider using wandering painted cows to generate the instructions for filling out federal tax forms. I bet cows would do a MUCH better job than whoever is doing this now (my guess is hamsters).
Meanwhile, out in Pinedale, Wyo.,
we have a situation involving:
ARTISTS PAINTING ON COWS
You may have heard about this. Three artists got a $4,000 grant, some of which came from the federal government, to paint words from a pioneer woman's diary on the sides of live cows. I am not making this up. The idea was that the cows, with the words on their sides, would wander around and poop on symbolic representations of U.S. taxpayers.
No seriously, the idea, as explained by one of the artists, was that the wandering cows would scramble the
nnn
COW-PART SPILLS IN MARIETTA,
OHIO
Speaking of government action, it is clearly time to do something about.
I have here several issues of the Marietta Times, sent to me by a reader named Sheri Fleagle. These issues contain a series of front-page stories — with headlines such as DUMPED ON AGAIN! and NEW SPILL NO JOKE — concerning an epidemic of trucks spilling loads of cow parts on the highways in and around Marietta. There are large, vivid color photographs, including one with a caption saying, "Street Superintendent Richard 'Moose' Mayer removes cow parts from Washington Street," and another one captioned, "Cow heads and feet along Muskingum Road" (this one is directly over a headline that says, CLINTON WORKS ON HIS IMAGE).
In a strongly worded editorial, the Times came out foursquare against cow parts on the road. I could not agree more. The people who do this should be arrested and thrown into prison, unless of course it turns out that they are artists, in which case they should be given federal grants. The important thing is that SOME-THING must be done if we are to maintain our quality of life in this great nation, a nation in which all people have the absolute and fundamental right to question their de-wormers.
Dave Barry is a syndicated columnist with the Miami Herald.
COLUMNIST
Sexual misfits are pop icons of the'90s
In the beginning there was that little Fisher girl, Amy, and the Buttafuccos, Joey and poor, faithful Mary Joe. Then, more recently, we got to know the Bobbitts, John Wayne and the infamous Lorena. You would think that reports of their exploits would have come and gone. Instead, they are the recipients of one of our country's highest accolades: Pop Ion status.
All have become what we both fear and love. They are the Sexual Superheroes of the '90s.
I keep wondering why these people keep garnering double-page spreads in normally newsworthy magazines like Newsweek. Once upon a time, this was the stuff of the tabloid press. Is it our morbid fascination with the bizarre? Or, in these AIDS-ridden times, did these five live out our own unachievable fantasies? Or could it be that they represent a microcosm of modern-day society? In one instance, we find the brutal victimization of women, in the other, an example of cutting the intergender playing field down to size.
Actually, I think it was the movie
actuates.
Let's face it, we had Drew Barrymore prancing, wriggling and giggling out all the juicy details of the "Long Island Lolita" more daring escapades. If we didn't like Drew's version, we had a second. Why ever bother reading Nabakov?
While "Cutting Through the Thick of it," or "an inch or a Mile: The Search for John's Penis Envy" (my own working titles) haven't been put into production yet, rumor has it that Madonna is hoping to play Lorena Bobbitt.
Producers are still desperately searching for someone, anyone to play John Wavne Bobbitt.
I guess the long and (in Bobbitt's case) the short of it is that if it's well, scandalous, can be construed to represent truth, justice and the American way, and is all (well mostly) true, we will watch it, read it and talk about it with Phil and Orah.
Gone are the days of Lady Chatterly's Lover and Wuthering Heights. Sadly, we just don't need them anymore. The nonfiction versions, while not as well written and much less developed, thrust us into the story with live action video.
But at least we don't have to worry about any dreary sequel. Eventually, the Bobbits, Buttafuococcs and Amy Fishers will recede from the collective memory.
Unless... No, it would never happen.
But then again, with both Amy and Joey in the big house... I can see it now:
"Prison Child: The Last Buttafuoco."
Kind of has a nice ring to it don't you think?
Vat Huber is a Lawrence graduate student in Journalism.
Column about gays appalling to reader
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Enough is enough! I have had enough of Patrick Dilley. The political correctness movement on this campus has gone so far that people can no longer express their feelings without asking first: Who will this offend?
I cannot say that I am totally devoid
of homophobia. But I can say that I am comfortable enough with my masculinity to allow homosexuals to go about their business as freely as I enjoy going about mine.
The Kansan has chosen to place the interests and values of the homosexual community above the concerns of other students at the University, and I am appalled. Whatever happened to opposing viewpoints
that are supposed to be the mainstay of objective reporting? Honestly, if you people can't find anything better to do with your editorial space, let me suggest selling it to local merchants for advertising space and at least earning a little money for the amount of paper you waste everyday on ridiculous articles like "conference crush" and Dilley's past experience as an AIDS activist!
University of Mars
Because you don't believe in printing anything that might be considered "incorrect," I don't expect to see this in the paper. But I felt something had to be said on behalf of the heterosexual majority here at the University who are smothering under this blanket of "politically correct" journalism.
John Colfax Lenexa senior
I don't need to study because I've figured out a system to "ace" these bubble tests" It's all mathematical mumba umba.
A mathematical formula, if you will. You probably would wouldn't be able to grasp the concept if I told you. But I will tell you this: With my system I'm guaranteed an "A"
by Joel Francke
Vola, Instant + "A".
looks more like an instant "Happy Face."
That's just because you're looking in the math don't
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