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Friday. November 19, 1993
OPINION UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Over-enrolling is selfish burdens other students
Intentionally over-enrolling harms class availability and the quality of KU students' education. Every semester, many students enroll in more classes than they will complete, and much of this over-enrollment is intentional. Students enroll in more classes than needed and do their "class shopping" after the term has started, dropping their least favorite or most difficult class. For example, a student might enroll in eighteen hours with the intention of dropping to fifteen within the first month of school. This kind of enrollment is selfish and short-sighted. It must be stopped because each instance limits class availability for students enrolling later.
This year, as always, many classes were closed by the time underclassmen enrolled. A reprehensible number of the spaces in these filled classes belong to students with no intentions of completing all of their enrolled courses. While dropping a class is quite effortless, adding one after the term has started is anything but painless. Often students cannot add some classes that they desperately want or need until a week or more has passed in the semester. These students start out behind and their instructors, in an effort to accommodate them, slow down the class. Also, many students who withdraw because of academic difficulties are the same ones who had to fight to get into the class late. These problems could be lessened if classes were not filled by students who over-enroll.
It is inexcusable for a quality university to send students away from the enrollment center with only a fraction of their desired schedules. While the University is not exempt from a role in solving the problem of class availability, students are also responsible. Over-enrolling has direct and detrimental effects on the academic career of other KU students. All students know or remember what a purgatory enrollment can be. Students who ignore the problems that they could cause for other students and over-enroll for their own convenience should stop. If the students cannot act responsibly and keep other students' concerns in mind when enrolling, the University will be forced to discourage over-enrolling by charging for add/drop transactions or charging full-time students by the credit hour. The whole of the student body should not suffer for some students' thoughtlessness or academic greed. Shop for classes before enrollment, not after.
CHRIS REEDY FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
House deserves praise for approving NAFTA
The House of Representatives' vote to approve the North American Free Trade Agreement is to be applauded.
Through eight hours of long and protracted debate Wednesday, both sides put forth arguments that stressed the qualities and deficiencies of NAFTA.
The arguments for NAFTA were clearly stated by the leaders of the pro-NAFTA forces. The main idea of this radical trade agreement is to lower Mexican tariffs and allow the U.S. to export more of our goods to both Mexico and Canada. As one speaker phrased it, NAFTA will not create a sucking sound of jobs but of exported goods that create American jobs.
We are hopeful for the Senate's quick action to approve NAFTA and to have this revolutionary trade agreement implemented on January 1, 1994.
TOM GRELINGER FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Kimmel is too liberal to realize Rush is right
In his vilification of Rush Limbaugh, Jim Kinnel ("Rush is Wrong," Oct. 29) managed to demonstrate his gnat-like grasp of conservative opinions. Had his attention span been longer, perhaps he would have seen beyond Rush's delivery and noted his conservative ideals; self-reliance, personal excellence, hard work and sacrifice. Rush provides a needed balance in today's liberal-dominated media.
The liberal construct of hyphenating our nationality is "Balkanizing" these United States, dividing "ourselves into ever smaller subgroups," and contributing to the breakdown of our national identity.
Liberals must also accept responsibility for the use of fear in politics. The health care "crisis" of today is a classic example. Conservatives do not "ignore" those who do not have adequate health care. We are not "unwilling" to reform the present system. What we oppose is a socialized system that projections show will put 600,000 to 3 million people out of work and add up to $300 billion a year to the national debt. This system, without market competition or incentives, will ration care through a huge federal bureaucracy while costing 25 percent of Americans the same amount or more for less coverage.
If you disagree with our opinion, fine, provide thoughtful counter-arguments; do not insult us with your pseudo-intellectual ranting.
David Kaminska
Bronxville, N.Y., graduate student
Population growth not only cause of poverty
A recent editorial stated that "[o]ne of the repercussions of population growth, the flow of immigrants from poverty-stricken Haiti and Central America, affects us already." There are many more important factors in producing poverty in these and other countries. One is the growing of cash crops for export instead of food for local consumption. Another is the debts of poor countries, which cost them $40 billion per year and lead directly to the deaths of half a million children per year, according to UNICEF. Although we preach free trade, protectionist measures by
industrialized countries cost poor countries twice the amount of official aid. The rich countries now want intellectual property rights protection, which will result in the transfer of another $61 billion per year from poor to rich countries.
There are reasons other than poverty for people to flee Haiti and Central America, such as political persecution. Harsh repression, frequently supported by the U.S., is necessary to maintain the vast inequality between the rich few and the poor majority. When this repression generates refugees, they are simply labeled economic refugees and returned to their persecutors. To attribute these refugees, or world poverty in general, to population growth ignores our responsibility.
Michael Barfield Lawrence graduate student
Michael Barfield
Extend health reforms to include auto insurance
Health care reform has become one of the hot topics of discussion overheard in coffee shops, bars and restaurants across the country. The president and Mrs. Clinton have told us about the travesty of millions of uninsured citizens and have expounded that every American has a right to health insurance.
With this argument, it seems that we should change the Declaration of Independence to read, "...certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and health insurance."
If this is the case and health insurance is an inalienable right, then I would like to propose another inalienable right.
It has been suggested over the past several decades that, without cars, Americans would cease to be American. We drive to school, to church, and most importantly, to work. In many major cities across the United States, more than half of the licensed drivers don't have auto insurance.
I don't need to tell you that most of these uninsured motorists are poor; they don't have insurance because they can't afford it. If they have accidents that disable their automobiles, they have no transportation and may lose their jobs because of their inability to get to work.
Therefore, I am proposing government-controlled universal auto insurance for all Americans so they don't have to risk losing their jobs because they drive uninsured.
Think about it!
Brian Orr
Overland Park senior
Editorial on trafficway full of holes, mistakes
I would like to recommend some insightful and informative reading material to your editorial board. It's called the Environmental Impact Statement concerning the South Lawrence Trafficway. What a shame your editorial board didn't read it before printing the editorial on Monday, Nov. 8.
To correct the misinformed picture the editorial painted, please note (again reading the EIS would have been helpful) that Haskell does indeed own the land upon which the trafficway is to be built. The county possesses only an easement. As for your statement concerning the terrible congestion on 23rd Street and the need for the trafficway, the EIS notes that, at maximum, traffic will be relieved by only 14 percent and that the original justification for building the trafficway was to facilitate growth and development in that area. Easing traffic problems became a justification only later in the development of the plans.
Finally, to fill in the gaps in your incomplete picture, it should be noted that the EIS itself is deficient and the 404 permit, allowing the filling-in of wetlands, is erroneous. The EIS states that Haskell property is not affected and fails to address the spiritual uses. The 404 permit does not list Haskell as either the owner of the land or owner of adjacent land. As things stand, both the EIS and the 404 permit are procedurally defective.
Considering the purpose behind an editorial persuasion of the reader, it was irresponsible of you to print an "official" opinion full of holes and misinformation.
Robin Webb
Robin Webb
President, Native American
Law Students Association
Reverdy Potter
Vice President, NALSA
Laura Palmer
Secretary/Treasurer, NALSA
Katie Greenwald Washington report
U.S. should take care of homeless,not rest of world
The streets of Washington tell a story that Capitol Hill lawmakers may not be hearing.
I do not remember ever having been in city where, at the beginning of an hour, I could be walking down the street and pass a person screaming about the world coming to an end, and at the end of the hour, be sitting in on a news conference with five governors and the Secretary of Education.
There is something different about Washington. It is not the size of the city or that every square inch is packed with people, buildings and cars.
It's the power. The city is humming with it. History is made here every day. 9
But Washington has another side. I was walking to Capitol Hill for an appropriations hearing one day when I saw a homeless man.
There are many homeless people here, and it is something I will never get used to no matter where I go. But this man, who wore a tattered cdat and a defeated expression, somehow was different from the others. As he stood on the corner in the pouring rain, he held out a cup with the hope that passersby would throw in spare change.
That's when the irony of the city hit me.
How could the Senate consider spending billions of dollars on missiles and jet fighters when so many remain homeless? Why does Congress continue to worry about U.S. involvement in Somalia and Bosnia when so many are going hungry?
I do not think of myself as an isolationist, but it seems to me that we should take care of our problems before we tackle the world's problems.
What about the U.S. citizens who go hungry? We have many people to provide for here.
But the military has not been called to save them.
We are well into autumn and, jin some places, the first snow has fallen. Many soon will be looking for shelter from the cold.
Granted, we have no civil war. Food is not kept from our homeless with weapons and warfare. Because the opposite was true for Somalia, the mission was called "humanitarian." But isn't it inhumane to let anyone starve, especially your neighbor?
I have heard the arguments many times that the homeless or those on welfare only are looking for a hardout. They should get jobs. They can help themselves.
The same people who argue about the "no good, lazy burns" in this country find it important that the United States play "Big Brother" to the rest of the world, which apparently cannot help itself. They suggest we feed that world's hungry and fix its social injustices while we allow the inequalities in this country to continue.
"Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses," it reads on the base of the Statue of Liberty. Nowhere does it say, "but only if we do not have to look out for you and provide for you."
As a child, I was taught that charity began at home. It seems, however, that many have forgotten that lesson.
KANSAN STAFF
Katie Greenwaila is a Denver graduate student in Journalism.
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