Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 2010
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--ing any individual the right to marry because of sexuality is discriminatory.
Dear boys: Please do not
shave your treasure trail. How
am I supposed to know where
to die?
I don't know about you, but I've never woken in the morning feeling like P Diddy.
Yes! Every Tuesday and Thursday I make it home in time to watch "Arthur!"
If I were a bee, would it be weird if I ate my own honey?
--ing any individual the right to marry because of sexuality is discriminatory.
How does a bee know which honey is his?
--ing any individual the right to marry because of sexuality is discriminatory.
Thank you for being amazing.
About once a day I get Mister Roger's "It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" stuck in my head.
I just did the lottery for camping. I have three words: IT WAS AWESOME!
--ing any individual the right to marry because of sexuality is discriminatory.
Upside to working nights: I make good money. Downside: I sometimes lose track of what day it is and when I last showered
I'm taking all GPA boosters this semester, so now I'm in class with all the bros and soristutes.
--ing any individual the right to marry because of sexuality is discriminatory.
How did you find sexy guys here? The only guys I see are either wearing pants tighter than mine or appear to be thirty and haven't showered in a few days.
I have a girl crush on my English professor.
--ing any individual the right to marry because of sexuality is discriminatory.
Damn it Facebook,. You win every time!
--ing any individual the right to marry because of sexuality is discriminatory.
I want to get ON my teacher... hope he gives in when I seduce him.
--ing any individual the right to marry because of sexuality is discriminatory.
Until this semester, I thought Blackboard was a pirate.
--ing any individual the right to marry because of sexuality is discriminatory.
Oliver, these fire drills just aren't working with my study schedule. I'm going to need you to reschedule.
I heard the best quote during the Oliver fire drill: "If Oliver was really on fire, it would be a pot inferno—everyone would be high!"
--ing any individual the right to marry because of sexuality is discriminatory.
I get asked out atleast three to four times a week.
--ing any individual the right to marry because of sexuality is discriminatory.
HUMAN RIGHTS
California court case still carries weight in the lives of KU students
Recently there has been heavy national coverage on the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger before the San Francisco district court. The case has involved debate of Proposition 8, the controversial California law banning gay marriage.
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To many students, this case may not seem relevant to their lives. It is, after all, in California. What's more, people outside of the LGBT community may not think the issue affects them.
That assumption is far from the truth. The ongoing battle over Proposition 8 has everything to do with the basic rights of individuals in the United States.
The outcome of the San Francisco case has the potential to change state laws and jurisdiction regarding gay marriage and other human rights issues.
In 2005, voters in Kansas passed an amendment per referendum banning same sex marriage, similar to California's Proposition 8. Now, 30 states prohibit gay marriage.
The case is about more than gay rights; it is about whether a state can restrict the rights of people.
Neither the state nor federal government can define marriage in religious terms, as that would be a breech of separation of church and state. Therefore, deny
Rights and the Law
BY KELLY COSBY kcosby@kansan.com
A church may certainly refuse to recognize a marriage. The government should not.
As everyone knows, for a long period in U.S. history, there was discrimination by the government against people because of race. This included denying the right to interracial marriage.
Some advocates of Proposition 8 may not understand or agree that gay marriage is a human rights concern. Perhaps it helps to think about the issue as analogous to racial discrimination.
The Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia declared Virginia's Racial Integrity Act unconstitutional and overturned the previous Case Pace v. Alabama, which outlawed interracial marriage. Therefore, states could not supersede certain unwritten rights still protected by the federal
Constitution.
Obviously, it would be outrageous, and I would go as far to say downright disgusting, if states still banned interracial marriage. Although, apparently some do not agree, namely Louisiana Justice Keith Bardwell, who recently resigned after his refusal to marry an interracial couple.
This comparison provides some much needed perspective in the gay marriage debate. No matter your views on the morality of homosexuality, this prohibition of marriage is oppressive. This is an issue of legally withholding rights, and not for the greater good of preventing harm.
It is my hope that eventually the San Francisco case will lead to the same acknowledgement for same-sex marriage as has been won for interracial marriage.
Because of the discriminatory nature of this state law—or any law regulating marriage based on sexuality, race, socioeconomic status—marriage laws should strictly be a federal issue. This would ensure protection for all United States citizens, regardless of where they live.
Cosby is an Overland Park sophomore in journalism and political science.
AROOJ KHALID
HUMOR
A key skill: finding free food
First, I know what you're thinking; "Stuff KU Students Like? That sounds an awful lot like the title of the popular and humorous blog/book 'Stuff White People Like'. Did he steal that idea?"
Well, of course. But I prefer to call it "creative homage to previously-used material," or "laziness." It's all about perspective.
As any good KU student should know, the best sources of free food are the "school Year Kick-off Event." Throughout the first month of the school year, campus groups, churches and businesses throw barbecues and potlucks.
Don't look down on me. After all, it's hard to get through school without a little help from others especially when it comes to food. More simply, KU students like free food.
The goal of these events is to entice starving young students to pledge their loyalty to the particular group in exchange for a pulled pork sandwich and a juice box. It's proven to be a highly effective strategy.
Free food comes in many forms. It's important to be knowledgeable about all of these sources in order to have a successful college career.
Kick-off events are also great ways to sustain yourself for weeks without buying any of your own food. That's why I spend the entire month of July creating a School-Year-Kick-Off-Free-Food
Stuff KU Students Like
The SYKOFEFSSP includes times and locations of these events, any non-perishable items to take home and freeze and even possible gastroanomical complications.
A KU student can either cave in and focus on "studying" and "working a real job to buy my own food" as my friends like to call it. Or he/she can commit to finding every decent food giveaway possible.
As the school year progresses, however, free food becomes more scarce. This is when the real work begins.
Strategic-Sustenance Plan (or SYOFFSSP).
BY JOEL PETTERSON
This could include weekly campus group meetings, a nonprofit group raising awareness or the dumpster behind the Underground, although this is not technically a 'giveaway', as the manager has firmly pointed out to me several times.
Insider's tip: Boring classes are a great time to research potential free food sources. Philosophy might be enlightening, but not nearly as rewarding as 17 chicken wings at
the community poetry reading.
In the hunt for free food it's also important to lower your culinary standards. For example, I usually don't go for lukewarm, boiled hot dogs. But, if they're free, you can be sure I'm going home with about two dozen in my backpack.
Finally, if a KU student gets extremely desperate for free food, a trip home can be a great last resort. If your parents live within a day's drive, a strategically planned trip home can keep you from starving until those "Good Luck with Finalis" snacks start popping up.
I even created a simple mathematical equation for optimum parental food donations: (Cubic feet of your parents' freezer) + (Number of hugs given to mother) x(Grade Point Average)/(Number of siblings) = [Average volume of food received.]
I got a *b* + in high school calculus, so you can trust that equation.
So, in dedicating yourself to gaining some real life skills this semester, be sure to include the skill of earning food without, you know, working.
After all, if you give a KU student a fish, he eats for a day, but if you send him to the weekly fish fry, he should stuff the鱼 in his pocket and run home to freeze those suckers.
Petterson is a Prairie Village sophomore in journalism.
GUEST EDITORIAL
Heightening of airport security useless, wasteful
Getting up to go to the bathroom on international flights in the
national flights in the last hour is no longer allowed.
Passengers on inbound international flights to the United States have to pass through two separate layers of security. In the U.S., shoes must still be removed and put back on and liquids thrown away or bagged
These steps are all taken to stop terrorist attacks. All of them were put in place after one incident that was missed by security.
In the book
"SuperFreakonomics," the authors calculate that about 14 human lifetimes are wasted each year just from the one minute it takes passengers to remove and put on their shoes in an airport line. Of the millions of shoes removed and liquids checked, no terrorist attacks have been stopped by taking these steps.
In fact, according to statistician and blogger Nate Silver, the odds of being on a given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 during the past decade. Being a victim of a terrorist attack anywhere is exceedingly rare, as professor John Mueller of Ohio State has been trying to point out for a number of years.
Even including the 9/11 attacks, one is in less danger of being involved in a terrorist attack than they are of being injured or killed driving a car or walking down the street.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutalab's attempted bombing last December wasn't stopped by all of the security checks or the billions spent on gathering intelligence.
Despite the warnings of his own father that his son was a threat. Instead, he was stopped by individual passengers and personal incompetence.
Had the bombing succeeded, the risk of dying and the overall threat of terror would not have significantly changed.
Though the attack would have been an absolute tragedy, the excessive and unnecessary security precautions that would have been put in place would all have been unnecessary.
Thousands of lives each year are lost because of homicide, and those deaths are just as tragic. Homicide could be significantly reduced if due process and innocence were disregarded and draconian police tactics authorized and invasive surveillance techniques were utilized.
All of these tactics are regarded as bearing too high of a cost to liberty and were rightly rejected. Against terrorism they are seen as acceptable, necessary and, at times, not enough.
The randomness of terror and the media's quest for ratings combine to greatly overstate the threat Americans face
All of the added security checks and tactics aren't designed to make us safer; they are there so we feel that something is being done.
Politicians can use this threat to corral money for their constituents and push an expansion of government power that normally would be rejected.
It is a high price to pay for the illusion of security.
Jack Millman, The Lantern, College News Network.
Buzzwords What Kansan columnists have been talking about...
—Braden Katz, "Still waiting for promised changes to financial structure," Wednesday, Jan. 20.
"The idea that public opinion matters in U.S. government continues to be an illusion as financial firms enjoy record profits while the rest of us pay both in taxes and a poorly performing market."
"This country deserves better than a parade of politicians making public apologies for remarks some people find offensive."
—Chet Compton, "Obama fails to bring post-racial era," Wednesday, Jan. 20.
"Let's show Oprah that we have vaginas and penises and that we are not afraid of saying so."
—Caroline Bledowski, "Ending use of 'va-jay-jay', Thursday, Jan. 21.
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THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Members of the Kansan Editorial Board are Stephen Montmorency, Bruno Plannedetter, Tim Wittgenstein, Vicky Lickey, Emily McCoy and Kate Larabee.