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Monday, April 16, 1990 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
On the edge
Tense racial situation needs rational thought cooperation and a rapid but peaceful resolution
How ironic it is that so much racial tension could be erupting at a university in Lawrence, a town founded by settlers who believed in freedom and equality for all. The free staters' convictions were tested by murder and mayhem wrought by those who didn't believe in the basic equality and dignity of all people.
And how outrageous that the administrators of an institution of higher learning in a town with such an esteemed history would not voluntarily open their doors to begin a dialogue with students who were concerned that their freedom was being infringed upon. It took a reported assault and a mass protest to get an audience with Chancellor Gene A. Budig. What will it take to keep that dialogue open and get further action?
The administration has made some progress to look into the incident at Sigma Alpha Epsilon and to improve the campus climate in general. But many students do not think that enough progress is being made and have charged the administration with inaccessibility. Those perceptions could prove costly.
the protest at Strong Hall on Wednesday was an exciting event. Students of all backgrounds banded together so that their collective voice could be heard. It was exciting, but, at the same time, it was frightening.
at the salute.
It may have taken only one misstep, one wrongly spoken word, one misdirected joke, to turn the peaceful excitement into horrible violence and perhaps give new meaning to the words "bleeding Kansas."
It has been 16 days since the incident at SAE that started the recent wave of unrest. The following matters have yet to be resolved: No criminal charges have been filed by the county nor do we know whether any will be filed
- The University has not indicated whether it will take legal or punitive action against the fraternity or whether it can legally do so.
- And perhaps most reprehensible, the fraternity where the incident reportedly took place has yet to tell the truth about what happened in that second floor hallway early in the morning on March 30. The story has changed each time it has been told. The fraternity also has not taken any concrete action against its member who admitted assaulting Ann Dean.
Protesters on Wednesday successfully captured the attention of the administration. They do not need further physical action to hold it hostage. More protest now could at best be counterproductive and at worst destructive.
The last thing that is needed now is an adversarial atmosphere pervading the campus climate.
The free state of Kansas was built on ideals and honed with rational thought and cooperation. Today the same ideals, thought and cooperation are necessary to resolve the tensions that threaten to split the University community.
To be sure, administrators must keep their doors open to the students' anger, but the students must make sure that their anger seeks a positive, peaceful outlet.
Richard Brack for the editorial board
Members of the editorial board are Richard Brack, Daniel Niemi, Christopher R. Ralston, John P. Milburn, Liz Hueben, Cory S. Anderson, Angela Baughman, Andres Cavelier, Chris Evans, Stephen Kline, Camille Krehbiel, Melanie Matthes, Jennifer Meitz and Scott Patty.
Defrauding the people
Justice Department should restore IRS integrity
As hard-working taxpayers rush to meet the midnight deadline for legally filing income tax returns, they can be assured that many IRS officials are less than scrupulous about enforcing the tax laws.
Of all the government agencies, the IRS should be the one most above reproach. It is
A continuing congressional inquiry has uncovered a broad integrity scandal in the inspections and criminal investigation divisions of the IRS. According to congressional documents, some high-ranking IRS agents used their power to harass businesses as a favor to the business' competition, billed the government for personal travel and associated with reputed organized crime figures. It is considered the worst misuse of the agency since Richard Nixon used it as a weapon against political enemies.
responsible for collecting the revenue upon which the United States must function. The task and responsibility are enormous. Furthermore, the IRS has been ruthless in its methods, often circumventing rules of due process that apply in other areas of the law.
The IRS cannot be allowed to run amok and abuse its power at the expense of the taxpayers. Congressional investigators should turn over their evidence to the Justice Department, which should vigorously prosecute the agents involved.
The IRS invades people's lives and takes from them their hard-earned money for the common good. The IRS has betrayed the trust of the citizens of the United States. The agency needs to clean house and restore its integrity.
Daniel Niemi for the editorial board
Push for scholarly research dilutes teaching's effectiveness
Once, I was the director of a college journalism program so small (just me) that it was attached to an English Department. The year I came up for tenure, of the department's senior members, who sat on the committee that was examining my qualifications for that honor, took me aside to offer some fatherly advice.
Denney Clements
Guest
columnist
My teaching record, he said, was good, but, frankly, my publication record left something to be desired. Dumbfounded, I replied that I had contributed occasional articles to several newspapers, including the largest newspaper in the state.
Yes, he replied, but these were not "scholarly." He suggested I try writing "research" articles for one of those small, juried publications read regularly by academics. This, he assured me, would shore up my credentials as an academic and make me a better teacher. To my queries as to what subjects these "research" articles ought to address and where I would find the time to write them given my heavy teaching
load, he had no answer.
I ignored his advice, kept on writing for newspapers when I could, and, as it turned out, got tenure anyway. But I thought I was alone in thinking his reasoning silly until I read Page Smith's "Killing the Spirit."
Spirit.
In this splendid book, Smith, an academic historian who writes with warmth and passion, lays bare the evils that plague higher education, making it less effective than it should be. Not least among them is the notion, widely held among the nation's professors, that research is the primary duty of the college or university faculty member. Teaching comes second.
As a result, Smith says, U.S. under
graduates, particularly freshman and sophomores, tend to get shortchanged. Instead of being taught by experienced, senior faculty, they are taught by often-callow graduate teaching assistants and lecturers with little stake in the university.
Professors, Smith says, are able to get away with that because they tell those who pay their salaries and determine their working conditions that conducting research, in some mysterious fashion, makes them better teachers. It is the assumption that Smith demolishes with a simple assertion: "The notion that research enhances teaching, although thoroughly discredited by experience and research, is one that linger on and is often trotted out by the ill-informed as a justification for the publish-or-perish policy."
He adds that, "The best research and the only research that should be expected of university professors is wide and informed reading in their fields and related fields. The best teachers are almost invariably the most widely informed, those with the
greatest ranges of interests and the most cultivated minds."
Belaboring the obvious, you say? Perhaps, but as Smith notes, the closed-loop, closed-minded nature of the academic world makes such a necessity. The research-ahead-of-teaching mentality, which infects even our non-listist public universities in Kansas, is but one manifestation of American higher education's 20th-century retreat from the real world and its problems.
Other such manifestations include the partitioning of "knowledge" among narrowly drawn, often valuable, academic disciplines, which makes it exceedingly difficult for the typical undergraduate to acquire an integrated, comprehensive view of the world. Never mind that is something he or she desperately needs, given the diversity and vehemence of messages competing for our attention.
Couple this cafeteria-style approach to education with scienceism - the notion that any subject, even history and literature, can be boiled
down to measurable, objective basics
down to measurable, objective bases — and you go a long way toward explaining why so many young americans emerge from their college universities scratching their heads in wonderment: What did it all mean? Why am I, an "educated" person, so ill at ease with the world?
And why, oh why am I so confused?
Having been instilled with
“thought,” how do I act? And upon what?
Smith argues that American higher education, particularly the large public universities, must rediscover its roots, what he calls Classical Christian Consciousness. He refers to the values that the scientists carefully distilled out of their academic offerings during this century.
Smith invites us to consider the words of Robert Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago: "If education can contribute to a moral, intellectual and spiritual revolution, then it offers a real hope of salvation to suffering humanity
everywhere. If it cannot, or will not,
contribute to this revolution, then it is
irrelevant and its fate is immaterial."
Until teach-or-perish becomes a watchword of the academy, until the academy again seeks to educate the whole student, passionately, there is little hope it can be more than a place where young Americans get the credentials, and perhaps the job-training, they need for economic success. There is little hope that it can create in students the nourishing inner life they so desperately need.
Smith has made a compelling case that we are not getting full value for the billions in public and private dollars we annually pour into the academy. Were other academics as passionate about the subject as he, and as able to express themselves clearly and enjoyably, we wouldn't have this problem.
▶ Denney Clements is an editorial writer for the Wichita Eagle.
Copyright 1990 — The Wichita Eagle
Other Voices
. . For those faculty members on tenure track . . time had always marched on through serious illness, child care or pregnancy.
Last week senators approved "stopping out for tenure," buying a year's worth of time for those with pressful family-life needs. Qualified University instructors no longer will be victims of circumstance.
The new guidelines allow for tenure-track professors with special circumstances, and the executive vice president and provost's
approval, to take one academic year out from the period they will be reviewed by the tenure review board. The year out is not intended to give professors extra time to increase productivity...
As the new option considers the human factor, those professors with exceptional circumstances can now address extinguishing personal needs without worrying about falling short in their careers. . . .
From The Daily Collegian, Pennsylvania State University, April 5.
News staff
Richard Brack .Editor
Daniel Nieman .Managing editor
Christopher R. Raleton .News editor
Lisa Moss .Planning editor
John Milburn .Editorial editor
Candy Niemann .Campus editor
Mike Considine .Sports editor
E. Joseph Zurga .Photo editor
Stephen Kline .Graphics editor
Kris Bergquist .Artz/Features editor
Tom Ebben .General manager, news adv
Business staff
Margaret Townsend ... Business manager
Tami Rank ... Retail sales manager
Misyy Miller ... Corporate sales manager
Kathy Stolte ... Regional sales manager
Mike Luhan ... National sales manager
Mindy Morris ... Co-op sales manager
Nate Stamos ... Marketing manager
Mindi Lund ... Assistant production manager
Carie Blumelma ... Marketing director
James Gleason ... Creative director
Janet Ronholm ... Construction manager
Wendy Stertz ... Teesheeters manager
Harry Hunt ... Sales and marketing adviser
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LETTERS to the EDITOR
Reduce energy use
Faced with the constant onslaught of environmental disasters (e.g. oil spills, acid rain, ozone depletion), it is easy to become discouraged at the thought of tackling such large problems. However, these problems occur because the public consumes goods at a rate that necessitates such environmental damage. It follows that a reduction in personal consumption will result in a reduction of environmental polu-
tion. Here's where you fit in:
Being that people in the United States, representing only 5 percent of the world's population, account for 25 percent of the world's commercial energy consumption, it shouldn't be too difficult to reduce our appetite for energy without seriously harming our precious standard of living.
Following are several painless ways to reduce our impact on the environment:
Turn off lights, TVs, and other appliances when not being used.
Use a microwave instead of a conventional oven.
- Replace incandescent bulbs with energy-efficient fluorescent bulbs.
Thaw frozen foods before
cooking.
Buy products with as little packaging as possible.
Don't use disposable products such as paper plates, plastic utensils and styrofoam dishes.
Reuse any item you can, especially paper.
Buy recycled products whenever possible.
Take your own reusable bag or backpack to the store.
- Recycle your aluminum, tin, glass and paper.
These are not difficult things to do, but they will require a conscious effort until they become second nature. And while they do not appear to be large sacrifices, their effect will increase as more people make a habit of them. Make conservation a way of life.
- Don't buy styrofoam products or products packaged in styrofoam.
- Avoid plastics; use paper instead.
- Don't let the water run while brushing your teeth, shaving, washing hands and face and washing dishes.
- Walk or ride a bicycle for short trips.
- To conserve water, wash clothes or dishes only when you have a full load.
Take shorter showers
Springfield, Mo., senior
Mike Horan
CAMP UHNEELY
BUT MARTIN YOU'RE RIGHT.
LUTHER KING BOY THE
DAY IS DURING ADMINISTRATION
WINTER BREAK REALLY SCREWED
US STUDENTS
BY SCOTT PATTY