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Friday, February 4, 1977
University Daily Kansan
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Opinions on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Kansas or the School of Journalism
Fee waiver needed
Classroom teaching by graduate assistants at the University of Kansas was one of the more volatile issues under discussion in the past year. We have promised to be a subject of much debate.
FOR KU to be able to attract highly qualified teaching assistants from throughout the country, a fee waiver for them, in line with that given by many other peer universities, is badly needed. Without it, University officials and departmental staff will graduate students may be lost to the University, to the eventual detritum of the institution.
CURRENTLY, more than three-quarters of lower division required courses are taught by graduate assistants, most of whom are living on salaries of $3,000 to $4,000 for a nine-month, half-time appointment depending on seniority and department.
Out of this, assistants working less than 40 per cent time (100 per cent time usually means 40 hours of classroom related activities) still must pay regular fees of $2.50 a credit hour, which in some cases, leads up to the regular enrollment fee of $21.90. Assistants working from 40 per cent to 90 per cent time receive staff fees of $14 a credit hour.
ACCORDING TO a faculty activity analysis prepared by the Office of Institutional Research, graduate assistants work an average of 23.2 hours a week in lower division courses and 4.5 hours in upper-level reactions, as compared to 11.1 hours for instructors and 5.2 hours for full professors.
In two successive years, proposals for fee waivers were placed in front of the Kansas Board of Regents by KU as high-priority budget items. Both in 1975 and 1976, however, the proposals received short-lived approval from the Kansas Board of Regents representing the five other state institutions said the proposals were designed to benefit KU.
LAST WEEK a glimmer of hope appeared when members of the Regents Coordinating Council, which sets the agenda for the Regents, decided not to reject the principle of fee waivers for graduate assistants, a consequence of being forced from university. Regents that their schools wouldn't be adversely affected financially by such a move.
AT THE University of Colorado, for instance, assistants receive resident tuition waivers three, six or nine hours depending on the percentage of time they are appointed. At Iowa State University assistants pay full-time resident fees of $258 each quarter, but receive partial scholarships to pay the fees. The University of Missouri also gives tuition waivers to assistants on at least 25 per cent time.
KU's proposal isn't a frivolous or excessive one. A number of fellow Big Eight schools that belong to the Association of American Universities already have full or partial-fee waivers for their graduate teaching assistants.
At present, the greatest stumbling block remaining before a system of fee waivers can be implemented at KU seems to be the Kansas Legislature, which would have to change a 1964 attorney general ruling saying it is unlawful to waive fees in the hope of attracting high caliber graduate students. If changed, the proposal would then need the approval of the Board of Regents and the Kansas Legislature.
Both the University, by its past proposals, and the Student Senate, by its recent subcommittee report on classroom teaching, have shown that the University's tradition for academic excellence must be upheld by financial and administrative improvements for graduate assistants. It now remains for the Board of Regents and the legislature to give their complete support for this important and necessary action.
Carter needs trust
Jimmy Carter may not have succeeded in warming American hearts with his fireside chat Wednesday night, but he certainly gave it a good try.
There wasn't really anything new in the President's talk; no earth-shattering announcements or new policy statements. The only "news" items were that he would cut the White House staff by one-third and put a ceiling on the number of federal workers.
BUT THEN his talk wasn't designed to be a policy statement. It was designed to bridge the gap between the Presidency and the people. The object was to build trust. shorter terms talked casually and for some people talked was hokey; for others, however, it worked.
It would have been humanly impossible for Carter to have built trust in a very large number of Americans in one speech. It will take many years before Americans are able to trust a president. Gerald Ford, straight ahead, was the first president to believe the barrier that Nixon and Vietnam and other things have put between the White House and the rest of the country.
People have gotten into a habit of mistrusting and downgrading their leaders. They have gotten to finding all sorts of cracks in the image and dirt in the corners.
The public has grown to expect the bad and the selfish from politicians as a matter of course. Attempts by Congress to create new ethical standards are not taken seriously. The right-to-kill bill is big farce. Headlines on scandal in high places draw he's and hum's from just about
everyone. Politicians—and the U.S.
government—are only out to take us all for
all we're worth.
THE AVERAGE college student, weaned on Vietnam and nurtured on Watergate, finds it especially difficult to believe in anyone in power. He has been taught since the dawning of political awareness that politicians are a bunch of crooks whose motives are never as they appear to be. And he has learned the lesson well.
So well, indeed, that it is rare that he listens to a politician without waiting for a chance to loose a smart remark.
There is certainly a place in this society for a measure of healthy skepticism. And it certainly would be a bad thing if everyone was so respectful and trusting of their leaders that they frowned on satire and legitimate criticism. Our politicians and leaders are very human and very capable of evil.
BUT THEY can be—and this seems to be
torgoned sometimes—capable of good as
well.
Carter should continue to try to reach the people, regardless of how fruitless it may seem sometimes. And the people should give him a chance to succeed or fail before condemning him. Without at least some cooperation, a president is helpless.
Carter cannot even begin to fulfill any of the responsibilities he has undertaken as a publicist or as a thinker-publisher.
It's probably better to have believed and gotten screwed, than never to have believed at all.
Cold jokes lie in frozen state
Babv. it's cold outside
How cold is it? It's so cold that the newest drink sensation is antifreeze daiquiri.
How cold is it? It's so cold, that bun-warmers are now standard fare on every pair of Levi's.
Okay, so being cold isn't funny, and it hasn't been for some time now, if you get my (snow) drift.
'I c-can't remember w-w when it's been so — & 'i cuddle?' people blurt out as they hurry back inside, while the effects of the cold still anoint their frosthint features.
UPON HEARING this, others begin nodding their heads enthusiastically (perhaps they're shivering, too) and flip mental file cards to respond with a clever winter anecdote.
Cold weather makes even the most gregarious of people silent, recursive and surly. My
Weather, long the subject of the Johnny Carson joke routine, is not funny anymore. Never was it so been funny and so bum.
more ubiquitous than death or taxis (sic).
Suddenly, "winter's fricol"
has turned into "winter's warm-
weather famine." Weather
news has crowded out all other
the bus stop. But evidence of the cold on human behavior can be seen elsewhere. Bundles of unrecognizable humanity scurry silently across campus daily, their walks mimicking some early movie character's pantone.
Paul Jefferson
Editorial Writer
AND SNOW isn't funny anymore, either; 151 inches of it in some places—how funny is that? In fact, it's not even snow anymore. It doesn't have the unrecognizable hulks of blackish-grey matter that act like a second bulding seem
news in importance. It has put everyone in a state of suspended (read "frozen") animation. People are reluctant to leave the diminishing warmth of their homes, prisoners of ice, gauges and something called the wind-chill index.
IT'S MAKING us all older and more reflective. Already people are chronicing this season as the "Winter of 77," and equating it with the "Winter of 2015" because of feelings of mortality and helplessness, as the real "masters of the earth." Mother
Nature and her second husband, Old Man Winter, return to wreak their seasonal have on the creatures innumerable of all creatures.
In dealing with the unreasonably and unseasonally cold weather, government leaders are stymied. Any changes made will probably prove to be cosmetic.
PRESIDENT Carter put on some long underwear and toured a factory. Then he called an emergency session of Congress (maybe their hot air respirator) to respire from the freeze). Energy czar James Schlesinger mouthed the understatement of this still-your year, "I don't think the full seriousness of the cold weather) problem has sunk in. Well, that's because we only things sinking are temperatures and oil tankers.
from prolonged exposure to cold
in Ohio and New York.
reductions of a second Ice Age
will again more credence
every day.
PEOPLE in Ohio have gone back to praying for relief from the weather. It has restored the primal forces within us, returned us to the age of primates, when then-modern man had to use a basic means to fight the freeze.
The weather is currently a form of capital punishment that isn't affected by legislative changes. The court already 45 people have died
Even today, Man has his hands full (of snow) in trying to deal with the weather, to tame it and mold it as best as his hands can, but people are still freezing But people are still freezing their oranges off in Florida.
There is no doubt that the groundshog (and his shadow), in a display of common sense heretofore reserved for Christmas, was Wednesday. It's going to take more than just one day (and a perpetually cold one at that) in his honor to bring him out in weather until for men, beasts or cats, at least for another six weeks.
Seven-week drop time opposed
Letters
To the editor:
As a representative from the junior class to the College Assembly of Liberal Arts and Sciences, I am taking this opportunity to inform other LA&S students and representatives why I feel the proposed new curriculum will prove I encourage all students interested in this matter to contact their representatives,
and if they feel capable of spending one or two hours every month in discussing issues such as this one, to run for one of the 117 Assembly seats to be filled in the coming elections (the filing deadline is Friday, Feb. 11).
The present drop policy, which allows a student to drop with a "w" until the 12th week of classes, has come under fire and faculty alike for its leniency. Unfortunately, the proposed policy, restricting withdrawals to the first seven weeks, is too extreme a remedy, considering that most students have little or no indication as to how they are doing until after midterms are graded. The proposed policy allows no input at all from an instructor, nor can students submit PROMPT review of withdrawal petitions. At the last Assembly meeting, the faculty members present tried to ignore these objections by implementing the yearlong proposal defeated only by the lack of a quorum.
I fail to see how an undesirable policy is made less objectionable when made temporary. Unless students act to protect their interests, must be taken seriously, so be passed at the next Assembly meeting. Therefore, I plan to introduce a compromise policy at the February meeting, one which would allow dropping with a 'W' through the seventh week (left up to the instructor) through the 10th week, and with a 'W' only for vital personal
reasons for the rest of the semester.
I urge all student representatives to fulfill their responsibilities and show up at the next Assembly meeting. I also hope that all who are interested in this issue—which affects all LA&S students either directly—to contact either my sister or their other representatives to the Assembly.
We should not have to rely on other members being absent from meetings as the only way to interest the interests of our fellow students.
To the editor:
In the past few weeks, I have heard about all the practical reasons for discontinuing use of the campus horn. What I haven't heard is the horn, and neither have my professors.
It seems that every instructor has a watch, and just as miraculously, they are all correct. This is fine and dandy except that according to my history professor's "correct" watch, class ends at 1:35, and according to my English teacher's "correct" watch, class starts at 1:37. Even Laverne Smith can't get from Learned to Wescos in two minutes.
Since I never have had any classes in Flint Hall, I don't know what it's like to be "blow out of my chair." I DO know how the horn affected the campus as a whole.
Although the fact that my grandfather set his watch to the horn when he was a student is irrelevant, tradition often is
It served as an alarm clock for mappers, a timekeeper for bus drivers, and more importantly, it was an excellent way to keep 22,000 students and instructors on time.
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replaced by practicality. In this case tradition IS practicality.
The great horn debate brings to mind some great lyrics:
Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
I'm beginning to wonder.
Omaha freshman
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Editor
Published at the University of Kansas daily August 16th, 2018. Subject matter includes July and June excursion Saturday, Sunday and Holiday weekend and July expiration Saturday, Sunday and Holiday weekend. Subscriptions by mail are $ a member or $18 year outside the country. Student subscriptions are not eligible to be sent outside the country. Student subscriptions are not eligible to be sent outside the country.
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