WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2011
PAGE 5A
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
opinion
I need to quit watching those "I shouldn't be alive" shows on Animal Planet. Absolutely horrifying.
1) Get off your phones while driving.
2) Quit riding everyone's ass; that's how you get in wrecks. 3) Learn how to park, between the lines. Come on, you're in college.
apps.facebook.com/dailykansan
Who wants to skip class and search for the meaning of life with me today?
I think I just realized that I'm the girl who laughs too loud at your jokes when I'm flirting with you. Damn.
I hate every single person who says, "LoJ."
How epic would it be if everyone on campus went to Allen Fieldhouse and played a game of ultimate ninja? MIND BLOWN.
I just watched "Mario's Miracle" on YouTube and tears welled up in my eyes. The Madness has begun!
The only reason I'm studying for this test is because it gave me an excuse to color with my 150-count crayon box.
Put on real clothes before going to class, you dirty little hamsters.
I just turned 20 and am making an OKCupid account. All-time low in my life right now.
Actually, the most legit Pi day was on March 14, 1592, at 6:53 a.m. Good times, good times.
I just went through my list of contacts, and I do not have any backup boot calls in there. WTF?!
It's time for some cereal and milk. And by milk, I mean beer. And by cereal, I mean Taco Bell. And by beer, I mean... beer.
I am going to Febreeze all of those nasty bus seats. Gross, think about how much booty has been on those seats!
Hipster Jayhawk has a fight song but you've probably never heard of it.
So I tried having emotionally free, physically gratifying, lustful sex, and now I think I like the guy. This is dumb!
Some losers, some losers, some losers and THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS.
"I don't care if you are playing games on your laptop or sleeping in my class, but please, no talking," KU professor.
I was about to go up and talk to her, then I saw the mace on her keychain.
Why can't girls come with a sign saying how their minds work?
Sometimes I mistake the chimes from the Campanile for an ice cream truck.
EDITORIAL
Proposed cuts risk future funding for vital student resources
Recent proposed cuts to important student resources have resulted in ripples of frustration among members of the KU community.
Last Tuesday, the Student Senate finance committee voted to remove all funding for the Willow Domestic Violence Center starting next year and all funding for the Douglas County AIDS Project, Headquarters and DaGuGi SafeCenter, starting fiscal year 2013.
These cuts will go before the full Senate for approval at tonight's meeting.
future.
The proposed bill would remove these programs from block funding status, which is allocated from the Student Senate Activity Fund. The argument is that these programs are not technically student activities, but student services, and should be funded elsewhere in the budget, outside of the activity fund. Michael Wade Smith, the student body president, is working to put together a task force to determine how these services could best be funded in the
By not fully funding these services, students will undoubtedly suffer. The Willow Domestic Violence Center provides shelter, peer counseling, advocacy and other services to survivors of domestic violence; Headquarters provides a mental health services hotline; the Douglas County AIDS Project provides free HIV testing, among other services, and DaGuGi SafeCenter provides sexual assault counseling.
In an interview with The Kansan, Chief of Staff Aaron Dollinger said he was confident the task force would find alternative means of funding by the fiscal year 2013, when block allocation funding for these programs would stop. Therefore, the success of this task force is absolutely crucial. However, the task force is yet to be formed and sometimes even the most well-intentioned task forces fail. Possible failure to fund these programs is a risk Student Senators cannot take.
If Student Senators agree that these programs are essential to the community and should be funded, then they should establish a new funding plan before eliminating the current funds altogether.
Each student pays $2.11 per semester for these services. In an interview with The Kansan, Student Senate Treasurer David Cohen said the money saved from these proposed cuts would not be reallocated to other activities. Therefore, this is not an issue of saving money but an issue of semantics.
The cuts would affect the Douglas County AIDS Project, Headquarters, DaGuGI SafeCenter and Willow Domestic Violence Center. Even if contributions per student are relatively small, with funding cuts coming from federal and state levels, these services need every bit of funding they can get. Gov. Brownback's proposed budget completely cuts state funding to community mental health centers, making student funds to such programs even more crucial.
If Student Senators agree that these
WHEN: Tonight at 6:30 p.m.
WHERE: Kansas Room of the Kansas Union
FULL SENATE MEETING
programs provide vital resources for students and should be funded, then a plan for funding should be put in place before voting to approve a sweeping change in the current funding system. While an effort to put together a successful task force might be well-intentioned, there is still a chance the task force might fail. If the task force fails to establish a different funding plan for these programs, then the Student Senators have failed the students they have been elected to represent.
Erin Brown for the Kansan Editorial Board.
POLITICS
A democratic beginning does not guarantee a liberal ending
When Egyptian protestors pushed President Hosni Mubarak out of office last month, elated crowds celebrated in Cairo's Tahrir Square. But even as opponents of the old regime revealed in their success, observers posed a sobering question.
Answers varied. Even neoconservatives - the foremost defenders of regime change in the Middle East during the George W. Bush administration - failed to reach consensus. Some, like Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, voiced fear that the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood would dominate a democratic Egypt's political scene. Others, including Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, argued that long-term American interests lay in siding with pro-democracy activists.
Can democracy actually take root in Egypt?
While Kristol and Krauthammer typically inhabit the same end of the ideological spectrum, their disagreement on this particular issue perfectly encapsulates the division between Americans who embrace the wave of demonstrations gripping the Arab world and those who cast a wary eye on the turmoil.
Krauthammer's fear of the ramifications of the Egyptian revolution seems further misplaced when one examines the dynamics surrounding the Muslim Brotherhood. The group announced recently it would not field a candidate in upcoming presidential elections. Most experts estimate it commands the support of no more than about 20 percent of the Egyptian population, and if the protestors of Tahrir taught us anything, it's that Egyptians won't countenance disproportionate power in the hands of a small faction.
Closer to home, Hugo Chavez's demagic rants resonate with many Latin Americans contemptuous of past U.S. support for right-wing dictatorships in the Cold War era.
The pro-democracy stance is bolstered by even the most superficial of glances at the historical record. American support for Mubarak's dictatorship engendered considerable suspicion of the U.S. in Egypt. The U.S. continues to feel the repercussions of its misguided support for the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian prime minister in 1953
BY LUKE BRINKER
lbrinker@kansan.com
The Muslim Brotherhood's minority status set aside, it's unavoidable that in an overwhelmingly conservative Muslim society, democracy will mean some measure of Islamic influence in Egyptian politics. Many regional observers note parallels between Egypt and Turkey, where a mildly Islamist government ascended to power amid strong civil society and a vibrant economy, Democracy and Islam, Turkey shows, can go hand in hand.
And yet.
Although American support for Egyptian democratization remains the best policy, policymakers should be cautious about putting Turkey on a pedestal as an exemplar of democratic reform. It is a democracy, recent events have shown, of a decidedly illiberal flavor.
The Eregenekon case highlights the democratically elected regime's decidedly undemocratic behavior. Fifty journalists have been imprisoned and another 4,000 face lawsuits, ostensibly for plotting to overthrow the regime. The government has little use for the idea that democracy requires the free expression of dissent.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have the support of a majorog of middle-class, pious Turks, but he is ruthless in his persecution of those - secularists, journalists and military officials - deemed insufficiently loyal to the ruling party.
As the Turkish case shows, the success of Middle Eastern democracy hinges on more than just the principle of majority rule. It also demands a genuine respect for minority rights.
Turkish journalist Asli Aydintasbas lamented in the Wall Street Journal that "democracy has been reduced to majoritarianism."
Brinker is a sophomore in history from Topeka.
If your tweet is particularly interesting, unique, clever, insightful and/or funny, it could be selected as the tweet of the week. You have 140 characters, good luck!
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The "think piece" went downhill
Ms. Blakeborough stated "Before the death toll in Japan is even calculated, our national media jumped straight into speculations about Hawaii and California." A deadly tsunami was barreling down on U.S. states. The death toll in Japan is still weeks away from being calculated and the tsunami arrived at our shores days ago. Which issue was more pertinent to Americans? The American media had already broken the story of the devastation in Japan. How would you feel if a giant wall of water was headed toward you and you couldn't find any mention of it in the news? To insinuate (in such a patronizing manner at that) that CNN should have been telling us about whether or not Minami-Sanriku had running water versus informing American citizens about a potentially life-threatening situation is absolutely absurd.
American media coverage of Japan showed understandable concerns
I was appalled by Jessie
I was appalled by Jessie Blakeborough's opinion piece "Japanese lives should matter more than U.S. interests." Naturally, considering that we live in the United States, one would question whether or not a tsunami that had devastated Japan would have similar implications on American coasts. To say that questions about possible damage brought up by American news outlets are "putting U.S. interests above Japanese lives" is a gross generalization at best.
David Johnson is a senior in communication studies from Salina.
I think the only mentality that needs to stop is the cultural masochism that an unfortunate number of people in this country embellish. I didn't think it was possible for someone to spin a story about an earthquake in another country (to which we have pledged massive amounts of aid) into an anti-American opinion piece, but I was wrong. Blakeborough states that she has "never been more disappointed to be an American." That's sad, because I have never been disappointed to be an American and this country's response to the tragic events in Japan is just another reason to be proud to be one.
from there. Blakeborough asks "When did we first begin desensitizing ourselves to foreign deaths?" Did we? Are we so desensitized that American citizens have already donated millions of dollars in aid? So desensitized that the military is operating around-the-clock relief efforts? To say "Americans weren't involved in the situation in Japan until there was a possibility that it would affect us" is ignorant and asinine. Why were we operating the same aid and relief campaigns after the Haitian earthquake then? It had nothing to do with us. I didn't exactly see Japan scrambling the choppers and cutting us a check after Katrina.
Eliminating death penalty won't solve flaws in the criminal justice system
A recent article entitled "Death penalty should be abolished while reasonable doubt continues" was premised on a few misleading assertions. Claiming that we have wrongly convicted and sentenced at least 138 people to death makes you think that innocent lives are being taken. This is not the case. In fact, no one has ever proven that any state has put to death one single innocent person. It is absolutely horrible to think that anyone was ever convicted for something they didn't do and sent to death row for it, but would eliminating the death penalty fix that? What if we didn't have the death penalty and instead those people faced life in prison?
The availability of the death penalty wouldn't affect whether or not they were found guilty. They would have been sentenced to life in prison and spent the exact same amount of time in prison before their DNA exoneration set them free. The flaw is not the death penalty, but the judicial process that allowed for a wrongful conviction.
The article went on to assert, "Clearly the practice of capital sentencing is arbitrary and certainly not reserved for cases without any shadow of a doubt." There is nothing arbitrary about the practice of capital sentencing. States have to very narrowly tailor their capital sentencing guidelines, for if they don't, they will be, and have been, struck down in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Most arguments against the death penalty are premised heavily, if not entirely, on the risk of false convictions. However, the people advancing these arguments seem to only focus on the death penalty, without addressing that false convictions are a problem throughout our criminal justice system and this problem is not unique to, nor will be solved by the abolition of, the death penalty.
Chris Nelson is a second-year law student from Overland Park.
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Nick Gerik, editor
684-4180 or ngerik@kansan.com
Michael Holtz, managing editor
684-4180 or mholtz@kansan.com
Kelly Stroda, managing editor
684-4180 or kstroda@kansan.com
D.M. Scott, opinion editor
864-4924 or dscott@kansan.com
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THE EDITORIAL BOARD Members of The Kansan Editorial Board are Nick Gerik, Michael Holtz, Kelly Stroda, D.M. Scott and Mandy Marney.