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Wednesday, March 28, 1990 / University Daliy Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Vindictive fee
Students shouldn't pay for dropping classes; University instead should offer more choices
The University is considering adding insult to injury by looking at a vindictive plan to charge students for dropping classes
The plan, proposed by Dave Shulenburger, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs, is designed to deter students from dropping an excessive number of classes by charging the students $30 to $40 for each credit hour dropped.
Shulenburger said he aimed to deter class shoppers. These students enroll in an excessive number of classes, sample them for a few weeks and then drop the courses they dislike. With the help of these class shoppers, 65,000 courses are dropped each academic year, he said.
Last fall, 3,000 students could not enroll in a full class schedule of 15 credit hours because of a lack of class space.
Shulenburger is missing the mark by targeting glass shoppers as the culprits in the ever-continuing problem of class space shortages.
Unforeseen illnesses, lagging grades, incompatibility with teachers — these and other factors lead students to drop classes
Also, students often enroll in unwanted classes in hopes of adding a needed class once the semester starts. The administration could reduce this problem by offering more sessions of the most-desired classes.
Rather than putting new strain on students and restricting their freedom of choice, University officials should try to ease the burden. Listing the names of instructors who teach each class, rather than only the ambiguous "Staff," would help students choose classes that could satisfy their needs.
If a student is charged $90 for dropping a three-hour class, he most likely will stay in classes he otherwise would drop. The result would be an increase in the number of individuals dissatisfied with their college careers, more in-class apathy and lower grade point averages for many students.
Chris Evans for the editorial board
Fee increase
Senate forgets its responsibility to students
student Senate is nickle-and-diming KU students to death.
In separate votes this semester, that august body has approved a $13 fee increase to be used for non-academic purposes. That means every student's tuition bill will be at least $13 higher the next time the regular semester enrollment battle begins.
In fact, including other increases, this fall's tuition will increase to $796 for in-state undergraduates.
But the increases approved by Senate will be tough to swallow given that none of the $13 will be used to alleviate University problems. None of the money will be spent to hire new professors, build new classrooms, finance scholarships or make needed repairs.
Eight of the $13 will go to the Kansas Union; $6 to pay for remodeling and $2 for operating costs. The other $5 will pay for women's and non-revenue sports.
Not coincidentally, the renovation for which Senate was willing to spend thousands of student dollars will affect the fourth and third floors of the Union. Student Senate offices are on the fourth floor.
Embarrassingly, Senate did not even know its own rules well enough to handle the increases in one vote. In a Feb. 28 vote, it killed the proposal to increase fees for Union renovation. The vote was 27-14 in favor, but that did not meet the three-fourths majority then needed.
After Senate approved the fees, Jim Long, Union director, called the action a giant step forward. Long's office also is on the soon-to-be renovated fourth floor.
On Thursday, after a "technicality" was discovered that allowed passage by a two-thirds vote, the measure was passed.
it is ironic that the one body on campus whose responsibility is the welfare of the students has seen fit to ignore their best interests to serve its own.
Students should demand more accountability from Senate and demand more educational opportunity for their tuition dollars. Contact your senator to voice your displeasure at this poorly conceived and questionably approved legislation.
Richard Brack for the editorial board
Start season with fans' strike
B baseball is on again, and America's Pavlovian fans are supposed to pant with joy and run to the nearest big-league park.
No doubt many of us will be. But some fans have grown angry,勃 with this little routine. Why should we turn out on cue when nobody else does? Why pretend that only those who play and manage the game have had their lives disrupted? Our affections have been toyed with, and self-respecting fans should not be expected to take these continued slights as lightly as the moguls in and
Some of us have longer memories. We're tired of this game — not baseball, but the on-again, off-again maneuverings that those in charge of the big-league variety have started to pull, season after season. Owners and players ought to be penalized for their latest 32-day balk. They've just about turned the most beautiful and American of sports into one more fitful negotiation.
The stars of field and box office may be all juiced up now and ready to play ball and sell tickets — at least until next season. But there's one group that is never consulted: the fans. We innocents are just supposed to wait and watch with bated breath, then break out with enthusiasm, and hold back doctors when given the signal. We're supposed to be joyous when baseball is restored to us compliments of those who took it away.
Paul Greenberg Syndicated columnist
out of uniform handle them out.
We're expected to come running when, in their own good time, they're finally ready to play ball. What if they had a season, or at least an opener, and nobody came? It might be a learning experience for those who think they own the national pastime.
One guy who's mad as hell and not taking it any more, to borrow the only phrase from the movie "Network" that may make it into Bartlett's, is Eric Vaerbaum, a public relations man from New York. He started a group, Strike Back, to protest the baseball strike in 1985. It was reactivated this spring when the owners locked the players out of spring training. Yaverbaum led them to the regular season for every one lost because of this year's ruckus. Not a bad start. But not dramatic enough. Why not pick out one particular day, say the season opener, to skip?
It's time to organize, organize,
organize. Much needs to be done if
fans are ever to become players in
the rites of spring — instead of the
mere spectators who uncompellingly
finance it all. Maybe the first
thing to remember is that we're not just fans but patrons — and expect to be treated as such.
What the country needs is a good fans' union — one that could issue its own ultimatums and deadlines. (For instance: "Take the field in March or those turnstiles won't be turning in April." Signed: Baseball Patrons of America). That might get the attention of basebaldom.
Strike Back's address is 924 Broadway, New York, N.Y., 10010. It could be the nucleus of something useful. The better things go for baseball, the dimmer the outlook for a protest organization — but this one needs to be kept in reserve and ready to spring into action next time players or owners deprive the country of a right that ought to be in the First Amendment. The mental health of America demands it.
Better a peaceful protest like Strike Back than an eruption of a new generation of Wobblies or Molly Maguires driven over the edge by an absence of baseball. Fans of the world unite — you have nothing to lose but your old drolums. Imagine the eagerness to play ball if owners and players were haunted by the specter of the United States throwing off its chains and staying home with television sets tuned resolutely to anything but baseball. That might get their attention.
> Paul Greenberg is the editorial editor for the Pine Bluff (Ark.) Commercial.
Other Voices
Wage increase yields possible problems
While some students view the minimum wage increase in a positive light, it could have a tragic effect on our (Emporia State University) campus community and the economy as a whole.
Those who feel the minimum wage increase is a positive change believe they will be paid more money for working the same amount of time. While that is true, that may be an inaccurate perception of the effects the increase will have on the campus community
If the Kansas Legislature does not approve a budget increase for the universities by 1991, students will be paid more money per hour but will be forced to work fewer hours and some jobs may even be cut. This could cause a minor domino effect as if would somehow affect every one on campus.
If the funding is not provided,
hours will be reduced or jobs will be cut. This in turn will force full-time
faculty to spend more of their quality
The worst thing about the minimum wage increase is that the effect it has on campus may be similar to the effect it will have on the overall economy — reduced hours, fewer jobs and poorer services.
Fortunately, Associated Students Government had a notion that the federal minimum wage could be increased. Last fall, ASG adjusted the minimum wage rate on campus to $3.65 for unexperienced students and $3.85 for those who were experienced or employed by a division for more than two semesters.
time completing the jobs of students, which will cause their own jobs and responsibilities to suffer.
The impact will not be as bad for Emporia State as it will be for other state universities because of the ASG legislation passed last fall. It at least gave the divisions on campus a chance to revise their budgets and prepare for the campus increase.
From The Bulletin, Emporia State University, March 19.
News staff
Richard Breck...Editor
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Christopher R. Releton
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LETTERS to the EDITOR
No nukes, please
In response to John Noltsenniemer's contentions that Earth Day is a propaganda tool for anti-industry and radical environmentalists and that nuclear power is the "cleanest, safest source of energy known to man." I'd like to suggest some locations for his summer vacation this year: Chernobyl; Harrisburg, Pa.; Hanford, Wash.; any town attempting to fight off the construction of a nuclear waste dump nearby. Chat with a few of the locals living downwind — especially those with no vested interest in the plants themselves — and get their views on the "safeness" of harnessing the atom.
Before you sell your house and buy into the "Trust us" philosophy preached by the nuclear industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Mr. Noltenmeyer, perhaps you should do a bit of research into the opposition's argument. Recent medical statistics clearly show an alarming increase in the rate of occurrence of certain forms of cancer (when compared to the national average)
in communities bordering these plants. These speak for themselves. The images of charred villagers, mutated organisms, uninhabitable towns and stockpiled containers of nuclear waste which flash across our television network can be called "conjured-up."
It is not the proper utilization of industry and technology that the environmentalists fear. Rather, it is the recklessness, negligence and blatant disregard that has given us a half-dozen major oil spills in half as many years. It is the countless gallons of raw sewage and various chemical toxins that are dumped into our oceans, lakes and streams every month and the fifth which is belched into the atmosphere.
Oxygen-producing rain forests are razed, animal species are eradicated, countries are invaded and tracts of land, homes and personal property are impounded — all in the name of "progress."
Yes, we all have grown accustomed to the luxuries provided by modern industry and technology and, yes, we hope to continue to do so. It is clear, however, that we will deplete many of our non-renewable resources in the foreseeable future unless a course of action is taken to develop other means of energy.
However, it is doubtful that major utilities will throw their hats in the ring to support such
research, since it would be awfully tough to make citizens pay for sunlight and wind. It might cut deeply into the nukes' profits, so don't ask for their blessings, either.
It is equally evident that we cannot continue to poison this planet without use of reprisal. It doesn't underpin that doesn't mean the room is clean.
W. Scott Pinkston Lawrence sophomore
Fees too much
Students of KU beware. We've been shafted by our own Student Senate! On Thursday, March 22, Student Senate disgracefully reversed its second fee increase decision in three weeks when it voted that students should pay $ more each semester for the Kansas Union renovation. Although I was not at the meeting, I did go to the Senate offices to find out what had happened. Student Senator Michael Diggs, in unannounced frank language, said the Senate basically passed the increase without any debate. He further said that this Senate had been "spineless" throughout most of the year, a statement made more believable by the two recent reversals. Even Diggs admitted that the $13 fee increase approved by Senate this semester along with higher fees
Jeff Napshin
for next year was simply asking too much. When will OUR Senate get on the ball and start representing the wishes of the students?
Leftist column
Recent world events give us the opportunity to improve human rights in Latin America precisely because the totalitarian doctrine of Marxism-Leninism is on the decline, not because the United States has lost an "excuse" to violate the people's rights. The Cold War has been a war, with atrocities on the right and left.
Dan Grossman's March 21 column about U.S. policy in Latin America correctly pointed out that the decline of communism provides the United States with new opportunities to push for human rights in the region. However, Mr. Grossman's description of U.S. policy as "McCarthyistic paranoid", represents a typical one-sided left-wing view. This view overlooks human rights violations as well as massive shipments of Soviet and East Bloc military hardware. Concern about Soviet interference in Latin America is not paranoid.
John Campbell
Winnetka, Ill., senior
CAMP UHNEELY
BY SCOTT PATTY
يُسْتَخَافُوا مِنْ الصَّدْقَةِ فالكوفاتِ فيهما تُمَا يَضَعَلَ فَلا تُمَا يُسْتَخَافُوا مِنْ الصَّدْقَةِ فالكوفاتِ فيهما تُمَا يَضَعَلَ فَلا تُسْتَخَافُوا mِنْ الصَّدْقَةِ فالكوفاتِ فيهما تُمَا يَضَعَلَ فَلا تُسْتَخَافُوا mِنْ الصَّدْقَةِ فالكوفاتِ فيهما تُمَا يَضَعَلَ فَلا تُسْتَخَافُوا mِنْ الصَّدْقَةِ فالكوفاتِ فيهما تُمَا يَضَعَلَ فَلا تُسْتَخَافُوا mِنْ الصَّدْقَةِ فالكوفاتِ فيهما تُمَا يَضَعَلَ فَلا تُسْتَخَافُوا mِنْ الصَّدْقَةِ فالكوفاتِ فيهما تُمَا يَضَعَلَ فَلا تُسْتَخَافُوا mِنْ الصَّدْقَةِ فالكوفاتِ فيهما تُمَا يَضَعَلَ فَلا تُسْتَخَافُوا mِنْ الصَّدْقَةِ فالكوفاتِ فيهما t