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Thursday, April 26, 1990 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Sounding off
How should Lawrence answer loud students? Noise ordinance is an unenforceable response
For 150 years, the city of Lawrence has been inhabited by students. For 150 years those students have been loud
Those facts make it tough to understand why the city commission suddenly decided this year that an ordinance against noise was necessary. Clearly, the ordinance is unconstitutional and must be repealed.
Lawrence police admit that their enforcement of the ordinance is selective. A spokesman said that it depended on the type of noise and that even the attitude and cooperation of the "offender" played a part in the decision to issue a citation.
Last week, fraternity president Derek Bridges filed a petition in Lawrence Municipal Court stating that the ordinance violates First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Bridges was the first person cited for violating the ordinance. His citation came four days after the ordinance went into effect.
Since that first citation, more than 20 others have been affected. A popular night spot near campus has been cited twice; the second citation came after a bar patron made obscene
remarks to the police.
Such vindictive, unfair and uneven application of the ordinance points up its central problem: There is no standard to follow in its enforcement.
The officer who responds to a noise complaint might drive by several loud parties in one neighborhood on the way to a residence or business. There, he or she would decide whether to issue a citation to an "offender."
For a noise ordinance to be fair and its enforcement evenhanded, police would have to carry sound-level meters to measure the noise being made at a location. The ordinance would have to specify where, when and what types of noise were allowable. Since most people do not own equipment to measure sound levels, police would have to issue warnings and allow people a chance to comply before issuing a citation.
We don't want or need our police to enforce an ordinance that is unneeded and unfair. The noise ordinance is unconstitutional and unenforceable as it stands. It should be repealed.
Richard Brack for the editorial board
Look out for No.1 Cheating is becoming an integral part of our lives
They are all across campus, wearing their national championship T-shirts from 1988: the disciples of the new moral standards.
Everyone in Kansas remembers that we won the national championship that year,but what were the means to this end?
WE CHEATED!
But who cares? We won, didn't we?
So it came as no great surprise last week when Danny Kaiser, assistant dean of student life, said that one of four KU students surveyed admitted to cheating.
But who cares? We're all going to graduate aren't we?
In 10 years, none of us will remember that the basketball team broke NCAA rules but just that we won and that we have our diplomas.
60 and one more. But who cares? After all, cheating no longer is a sin.
Today's sin is getting caught.
Just like adultery, lying and having impure thoughts, cheating is a sin of the past.
Our leaders and idols have taught us this lesson well. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Ollie North, Ben Johnson, Larry Brown and Charles Keating are the moral demigods of the 21st century.
In September, the Journal of College Student Development reported that between 40 and 90 percent of college students across the United
States cheated.
Wait a minute. At KU only 25 percent of the students surveyed admitted to cheating. Are we just not admitting to cheating, or are we below the national standard in yet another category?
Maybe we could learn a lesson from Larry Brown and company.
But KU also lost a lot of money when it was caught breaking NCAA rules. Another good lesson — DON'T GET CAUGHT!
But KU also lost a lot of money when they were caught breaking NCAA rules. Another good lesson: DON'T GET CAUGHT!
Maybe if those in charge of the basketball program would have taken some classes in cheating, KU wouldn't have gotten caught.
Yeah, that's what KU needs, some classes covering the finer elements of cheating and how to avoid getting caught.
But wait, that would tarnish our reputation as one of the finest institutions of higher education in the country. We wouldn't want to do that.
So, for now, we're just going to have to settle for imperfect cheaters walking around wearing T-shirts glorifying other imperfect cheaters and hoping that one day KU will echo in the classroom what we learned as small children.
Stephen Kline for the editorial board
HOSTAGES
Education fad ignores ability
"T the chief wonder of education is that it does not run everyone concerned in it, teachers and taught." - Henry Adams
The latest fad in Educação is to eliminate tracking that is, grouping students by ability. Tracking might made sense to simple laymen like you and me, but the educationists have just about decided that it's ineffective, not to mention elitist, racist, fascist and possibly even old-fashioned. Can any more serious indictment be imagined?
Those of us who thought that tracking kids makes sense are going to be accused of being unspeakably ordinary and possibly even parents. Parents are notorious for trusting children with their children with doctores, which makes us a suspect category in a society that prefers theory to experience.
The same educational establishment that once eliminated phonics as outdated is now out to relieve us of having kids work on the most appropriate level. An abundance of "scientific" learning materials for grouping students by ability is bad, bad, bad. Naturally such studies come from the producers of U.S.
The newest approach is to throw kids together regardless of ability or knowledge. It is assumed that the superior knowledge and skills of the sharper will rub off on the rest. Uh huh. This is the kind of assumption that would make Pollyanna look like a hard-bitten cynic. If it weren't so dangerous and destructive, the notion could have never nailed it. As George Orwell once said of another fashionable idea, "One has to belong to the intelligentia to believe things that no ordinary man could be such a fool to believe."
Paul
Greenberg
Syndicated columnist
education rather than the consumers. It's doubtful that parents had much input. Indeed, according to one report, parents "are the biggest backers of ability-grouping, especially middle-class and upper-middle-class parents." Gosh, do you think they might know something?
I regret to report that the academicians' war against tracking has reached previously unsullied Pine Bluff, Ark. At a recent meeting of the Pine Bluff school board, a couple of exemplary principals came up with this suggestion: Drop the lowest level in each core subject — math, science, English and social studies. Hespo presto, ipso facto, all of the students now on the lowest level would be expected to work on a higher one. Instant progress. Gosh, why didn't we think of this before?
But seriously folks, does anyone really think that eliminating a level of learning is going to automatically raise standards? If that were so, all that the schools would need to do would be to erase all levels but the highest and bingo, instant excellence.
What we have here is another instance of purely nominal progress, and U.S. education already has had entirely too much of that. Surely, concerned parents and the sharp teachers aren't going to be fooled by a lesson in ninth grade. The surest result of moving the least advanced kids to the next level of learning will be to lower the natural curve on that level.
Yes, the very best teachers may be able to maintain standards in those circumstances, but it won't be easy. It will be next to impossible. The pressure — social, organizational, parental and especially bureaucratic — would be on to lower standards in order to keep the rate down. Only someone who has too many mind-numbing courses in Education-ism would believe that you can improve academic performance by paying less attention to the academic differences among students.
The best teachers are able to give students individual attention even while teaching the whole class. It's a great challenge. It won't be met by eliminating levels of learning. What are the more advanced students in English, math, science and history supposed to do as less advanced ones are bumped up into their class? Learn to be bored? And what about some students who are assigned to a higher level, not because they capable of doing the work but because there no longer is a level suitable to their skills? What are they supposed to do — learn to be frustrated?
In the days of the one-room school house, older or brighter students often took charge of the younger ones
— rather than being challenged by new material. It had its advantages but not that many. Mainly it was a matter of necessity. Are we headed back to that system in the name of Progress? If so, you can be sure it's given some multisyllabic名语, such as "cooperative learning," and hailed as a great advance in the field of journals. Educanto murches on.
Paul Greenberg is the editorial editor for the Pine Bluff (Ark.) Commercial.
Other Voices
Lithuanian crisis jeopardizes goodwill
Mikail Gorbachev's admirers in the West are concerned that slamming the iron fist on Lithuania might jeopardize the considerable reservoir of goodwill that exists here for the Soviet president.
They have every right to be concerned. Not since the Russian Revolution has a Soviet leader seemed so promising to the outside world, and yet all that hope is now jeopardized with dependence crisis in Lithuania.
Because Gorbache is such an improvement over every one of his predecessors, we in the West have tended to emphasize — perhaps
exaggerate — his qualities as a statesman . . .
We should ask: Is he intent upon a Russian counter-revolution, as many of his partisans in the West believe, or are his reforms mostly cosmetic in nature, a change of some names and reshuffling of bureaucracies? . . .
We do reserve the right to punish . . . Gorbache for betraying his expressed ideals . . . Why put off the inevitable? It is far better for all concerned to talk to the Lithuanians than to threaten them with reprisals.
From the April 19 Providence (R.I.) journal Bulletin.
News staff
Richard Breck...Editor
Daniel Niemli...Managing editor
Christopher R. Relaton...News editor
Planning editor
John Milburn...Editorial editor
Candy Niemli...Campus editor
Mike Condellino...Geo Editor
E. Joseph Zurga...Photo editor
Stephen Kline...Graphics editor
Bergie Krugle...Art/Features editor
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Margaret Townsend...Business manager
Tami Rank...Retail sales manager
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Mindy Morle...Co-op sales manager
Nate Stamos...Production manager
Mike Jankowski...Assistant product manager
Carrie Staninka...Marketing director
James Glaaninka...Creative director
Janet Robolm...Classified manager
Wendy Martz...Sales manager
Jennie Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
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LETTERS to the EDITOR Stop aid to Israel
Israel has been receiving these multibillion dollar infusions since the 1967 war when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. The United States has supplied all types of weaponry, from M-16
As you pay your federal taxes this year, keep this fact in mind: We are sending $4 billion annually, $13 million each day, to Israel. More than half of it is military aid. Israel is the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the world, despite that it has a deficit of the 45 million U.S. aid makes up 20 percent of Israel's $20 billion budget.
rifles to tear gas, as well as many other "tools of occupation."
Without U.S. aid, Israel could not have maintained this illegal and inhumane occupation for all these years.
During the past 28 months, the Palestinian people in the occupied territories have engaged in an unprecedented uprising, the Intifada, which has united virtually the entire population. The Palestinians are calling for an end to the occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
The Israeli response has been a policy of brutal repression. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands seriously wounded, usually without medical care, torture. House demolitions, expulsions, intensive tear gassing and round-the-clock curfewing of
entire cities for days at a time are common.
The Israeli army carries out these cruel policies, but we pay the bill. Isolated in world public opinion and with its economy in crisis, Israel depends on a constant flow of U.S. dollars and arms to sustain its military domination of the West Bank and Gaza.
At a time when President Rush and congressional leaders are calling for more cutbacks in health care, education and other programs that meet people's needs, why is $4 billion being spent to finance Israel's continued suppression of Palestinians? The tax exemption is being offered to 9 people淳 youths while many youths here, denied decent education and jobs, are facing a future without hope.
In the interest of justice and peace in the Middle East and here, the time has come to stop financing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza with our tax dollars.
The huge U.S. aid package to Israel is an obstacle to peace in the Middle East. The Palestinians have proposed serious peace negro-
tiations that would include all the major parties in the region: Israel, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Arab nations, the United States, the Soviet Union and others. The purpose would be to establish an independent Palestinian state and guarantee the security of all countries in the area. Israel, bolstered by Washington's massive and continuing support, refuses to even talk to the Palestinians, and has, fact, further heightened repression in the West Bank and Gaza in recent months.
Aida Dabbas Manhattan graduate student
Alda Dabbas
CAMP UHNEELY
EDITOR'S NOTE:
THE REGULAR
SO-CALLED ARTIST
OF THIS STRIP IS BUSY
WORKING ON A FINAL
PROJECT. BIL KEANE,
CREATOR OF "THE FAMILY
CIRCUS" HAS AGREED
TO FILL IN FOR MR.
PATTY TODAY.
PARROTT ATHLETIC CENTER - Where Exotic Birds Go To Work OUT.
BY SCOTT PATTY
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