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Thursday, November 30, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
The recent effort to involve non-greek living groups in the annual variety show has paid dividends. The organizers of the show made an effort to help living groups not previously involved organize their presentations and raise money.
Involvement of non-greeks broadens appeal of revue
Rock Chalk Revue is hoping for a "Standing Room Only" performance this year.
A group of scholarship halls won a space in the production for the first time, as did Sigma Kappa sorority.
Sigma Kappa is paired with Tau Kappa Epsilon, Chi Omega with Phi Kappa Psi, Pi Beta Phi with Sigma Nu and Gamma Phi Beta with Delta Upsilon.
Rock Chalk has opened the door for future involvement of residence and scholarship halls. It's now up to those groups to continue their efforts. Nixon said the groups were interested.
groups would help the show,
"Without a doubt this will add an untapped audience."
With the addition of the new groups, Rock Chalk will be able to reach an audience it previously had trouble reaching.
The show raised a record $24,000 last year for the United Way, and the organizers have set a goal of $30,000 for the March production.
groups would help the show.
"Without a doubt this will add an untapped audience," he said. "As non-greek groups get involved, more people will want to see the show."
"I think that any new group participating in Rock Chalk helps itself and Rock Chalk."
Rock Chalk can now truly call itself an all-campus variety show.
Democracy has broken out in many countries recently, and the fever continues to spread.
One of its early symptoms, of course, is voting. In Hungary, the first democratic vote did not amount to much, but it was a vote nonetheless.
Brett Brenner for the editorial board
Voters in U.S. can learn from democracy outbreak
The Hungarians simply were voting for when the next vote would be. It doesn't seem like a lot, but the Hungarian opposition won a little more time to prepare for the next vote. This means they will have a greater chance of overthrowing their Communist rulers.
For example, the recent elections in India have been scared by violence and ballot-rigging. Voters have faced intimidation and death.
Of course, that's the kind of voter turnout we should expect in the United States. But sometimes people don't treat democracy the way they should.
Honduras recently held another free presidential election. People went to the polls en masse, riding trucks, buses, cars, horses and on foot to make their voices heard.
However, the people continued to vote during the three-day elections. One interesting note: Because about two-thirds of the people in that nation are illiterate, the ballots were marked with icons. Voters simply matched their candidate's symbol with the symbol on the ballot. This way, everyone can participate in elections, no matter how hard others may try to discourage them.
Even Czechoslovak might get the chance to vote. Politburo member Vasil Mohorita said the first vote most probably would take place within a year.
A recent poll of people aged 15 to 24 in the United States found that only 12 percent considered voting to be a sign of good citizenship. In those other nations, voting is the only true sign of free citizenship. When it is time for us to vote again, let's hope that everyone, but especially those in our age group, will remember the lessons that other nations are teaching us right now.
David Stewart for the editorial board
Members of the editorial board are David Stewart, Stan Diel, Brett Brenner, Ric Brack, Daniel Niemi, Craig Welch, Kathy Walsh, Thom Clark, Tiffany Harness and Scott Patty.
News staff
David Stewart ... Editor
Ric Rack ... Managing editor
Daniel Nieml ... News editor
Candy Niemann ... Photographer
Stan Del ... Editorial editor
Jennifer Corseur ... Campus editor
Elaine Sung ... Sports editor
Laura Husar ... Photo editor
Christine Winner ... Artist/Female
Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Linda Prokop...Business manager
Debra Martin...Local advertising sales director
Jerre Medford...National/regional sales director
Jill Lowe...Marketing director
Tami Rank...Production manager
Carrie Slininka...Assistant production manager
Margaret Townsend...Co-op manager
Brittle Hughes...Crash manager
Christal Dooll...Classified manager
Jeff Meesey...Tearsheet manager
Jeanne Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
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Brace yourself for bus rides
I was hoping they would help weight me down when I ride the bus to prevent me from careening around in wild abandon.
I bought some new shoes today. They have lead weights in the bottom.
Lately, I have been avoiding riding the bus as much as possible. The last time I rode it was two weeks ago. I believe that was the time I was almost sent flying through the bus windshield.
The bus driver stopped at a stoplight and anticipated the change from red to green a bit early, thus making him slam on the brakes (an instrument I wasn't sure was installed in buses).
At least not until my backpack was catapulted up to the front of the bus with me not far behind. But the proverbial
While the bus stopped, I didn't.
Not a chuckle from my fellow passengers, but a chuckle from the bus driver.
That chuckle may not have been directed at me. Perhaps he was laughing at a private joke, but it caused me to re-evaluate the character of bus drivers.
The caring, smiling, grandfatherly type was not what came to my mind. I was thinking more along the lines of Freddie Kruger's hell ride in "Nightmare on Elm Street part 2."
I easily could imagine the bus drivers going out to bars after work and comparing notes on who made the rounds the fastest or who caused the most students to fall down in the aisle.
Perhaps I am being too hard on them. After all, how much fun can it be to drive a designated route all day and make periodic stops? Maybe there is a way to make things easier for them.
It would require superb timing on the bus rider's part as he/she must start running at precisely the right moment so as to jump on the bus without breaking stride or making the driver either slow down or speed up. Agility and timing would be needed to make this system work.
I'm sure it would be quite helpful students mastered the technique of bus-hopping, much like hobos used to train-hop.
Getting off the bus would be a little more difficult but could be mastered with much practice and concentration. Once again, remember, the bus driver should not have to stop. The best method would be to pretend that you were on fire and drop and roll and pray that you were
pear a grassy knoll.
If these methods caught on, perhaps the University might even install sand pits at the bus stops so the bus riders could have something soft to land in when getting off the bus.
Merceda
Ares
Staff columnist
Not only would bus drivers benefit from these new methods, but bus riders also would benefit as they would improve their physical strength and cardiovascular fitness.
And no more being late for class because you missed the bus. Since the buses would not waste valuable time stopping, one would always be running by your bus stop every five minutes.
The added bonus would be the students jumping on and bailing off. If the bus driver didn't happen to particularly like a passenger, he could speed up a bit so the rider landed on his face instead of in the bus.
The bus drivers would be happy because they would finally have a chance to bring their fantasies into reality. Their mouths probably would water at the prospect of having dinner down their routes with no stones. A bus driver's heaven.
After all, if someone is hardy enough to dive off of a bus that is going 40 mph, what's a blizzard or rainstorm going to matter? It just makes it more of a challenge for those daring bus-hoppers.
The Bus-hopping Olympics could be conducted on the weekends and the regularly scheduled buses wouldn't have to run. This would be a small sacrifice for the sake of the snort.
Perhaps if bus-hopping caught on, there could be Bus-hopping Olympics, which could be held in any season at any time.
I'm sure the bus drivers would be cooperative through all this. After all, they would probably get to live out one of their fantasies — being race car drivers.
Merceda Ares is a Russell senior matroring in journalism.
Snapshots of the modern era
Home videos provide instant reality, not fond reminiscences
It soon became apparent why the noise level was so subdued. A large number of the parents were hoisting portable video cameras and staring intently through the viewfinders. They didn't have time to cheer; they were too busy making sure that the sons were framed in plastic Newborn cameras at the Super Boyoul couldn't have been any more serious.
At a recent high school football game, I noticed that the people who were sitting in my vicinity — most of them the parents of the players on the field — were not shouting as loudly as I would have expected. That was something you always used to be able to count on — parents yelling like crazy for their kids.
All of this will result in something tangible, of course. Years from now, when the football players of 1989 want to tell their own children what fine athletes they were back in high school, they will be able to stick the video cassettes into the VCR and embarrass themselves with the visual evidence of their cloudiness. You can't blame the parents, though. Perhaps none of the boys will grow up to be Herschel Walker, but a mom loves her linebacker son, even if the opposing fullback runs over him as if the poor lad were made of balsa wood.
The camcorders at the football game are just a small part of what is going on all across the country. Suddenly, because of technology and price-cutting, anywhere you can film them is shooting video. They're the new versions of snapshots.
Yet there is a difference. A snapshot felt like a souvenir of an event, a little reminder of what it had been like to be there. A videocassette, though, is the event — or at least the visual representation of it into gear. A videocassette makes memories unnecessary.
With video, though, there isn't that wait for the movie film to be sent away, processed and returned, for the family to gather again at some future date, for a home projector to be set up and for the movies to be flashed upon a screen. At this 1989 family reunion, as soon as the person with the camcorder felt he had enough, everyone went to the living room, and the cassette was stuck into the VCR. So five minutes after the stuff had been recorded, everyone was sitting around watching it on TV.
Example: I was at a family reunion last summer, and one of the people had a camcorder. This was the first time that this family had had a video camera present at one of their parties. While the home video was being shot, the reaction of the family members was pretty much like it used to be during the days of home movies: "Come on, get it over with"; "No, we don't want to smile"; "Cut it out, we have to eat dinner now."
Bob Greene
Syndicated columnist
The comments are instructive. "Nice dress, Caryn." "Maggie," "Bronx," "a significant difference of a magnitude when we say that"
This has been building for some time. Earlier in the '80s, a social philosopher named Eric Zorn made an interesting observation: Music videos on TVV were having a much more insidious effect on society than could be confined to the area of marketing manipulation. Music videos, Zorn argued, were replacing youthful memories. Think of your favorite song from the pre-video era. As you recall the words and music, you probably conjure up an image of a person who Vorked the car you were driving, the joys or heartaches you were going through. The sound of a pre-video song jerks that private memory right into specific focus.
Remember when we sang that song? They sang that song less than 15 minutes ago. But whatever the reality of the song was, it had been immediately replaced by the video version of the song. Then that half of the song might as well not exist, at least for that moment in time. Forever, the video version of the reunion will be the official version.
Music videos, though, have done away with that. From now on, when people hear songs, the visual images are likely to be not that of their friends or their cars or their favorite hangouts. The visual images will be of Cher on a battleship or Guns 'N' Roses in a dressing room. The visual images will be the ones provided by the directors of the videos. Memories of songs will not be unique to each listener. Memories will be mass memories, the same for everyone, and they will be memories of the visual images that accompanied the songs on MTV.
And now the Zorn Theory has expanded. It's not just music videos that have done away with the need to associate past events with visual memories. It's life itself. Just ask those high school football players whose camera-toting parents were zooming in on them. In fond, hazy memory, that handoff from the quarterback might have been allowed to result in an 80-yard touchdown gallop. On video, the handoff is famed, the vulture is at him with contempt and anger. Not a pretty sight for that football player 30 years from now, sitting in front of the VCR with his own children. But video is truth, and all truth is video.
Bob Greene is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Stop aid to El Salvador
The rebels in El Salvador are the true freedom fighters. The Cristiani government, elected in the wake of more than a decade of U.S. sponsored violence and repression, is but a figurehead for the military, the true governors of El Salvador.
Recent reports in the Kansan have provided the misleading impression that the opposition forces are responsible for all the problems in El Salvador. For example, it was reported that drinking water is now unavailable to many people. Clean water has never been available to most people because of cause of death among children in El Salvador is diarrhea caused by drinking unclean water.
Let us put the Reagan era of deliberate misinformation behind us and STOP U.S. AID TO EL SALVADOR
The 14 families that rule El Salvador through military force may have an elected figurehead, but the idea of freedom they have in mind for the people of El Salvador is the freedom to work as a slave labor without adequate food and water while watching television and in humility and illness. Meanwhile, the rich live in splendor on the agricultural bounty exported from this impoverished nation.
John Bode
Manhattan graduate student
Forum needs diversity
The intent of this letter is not prejudice, but to give constructive criticism. Last Thursday I attended a presentation called "Women and Sexism" put on by Celebrate Diversity.
I was disappointed that instead of the lively discussion and debate that I'd anticipated and enjoyed throughout my college career, it turned out to be basically a feminist forum. A panel gave some information and took questions which, excepting my own, seemed to follow only a certain liberal mindset. I would think that an open-minded, diversified group should have dissenting opinions. The panelists (who were supposed to represent diversity) seemed quick to point out male sexism but were slow to acknowledge reverse sexism. So much for the acknowledgment of all sides of an issue.
It seems to me that if I celebrate Diversity can't do a better job of attracting diversified interest (more than two people) and recognizing the viewpoints of others, then maybe Student Senate should reconsider their financing and try something else — something that represents diversity, not conformity.
I'm not unsympathetic to Celebrate Diversity's cause, and I attended three events last semester. But, with the exception of the outdoor concert, they seemed to parallel what I saw at an event organized by the Celebrate Diversity participants tend to be about one-third homosexuals (who are only 10 percent of the population.)
Brad Hansen Overland Park graduate student
The people of Iran are striving for a regime that is of the people, by the people and for the people. The time has come for those who seek freedom to step forward and do something about it.
Iranians seek freedom
I am astonished by the silence of the world, which observes people in Iran who are willing to speak and against the present regime.
Iranians need to educate their hearts and minds to have a free country based on democracy that is independent of all centralized governments. The faith and success of Iran's efforts toward a more stable, unified and peaceful nation are in the hands of every Iranian. People in Iran embrace the idea that honey sweets into one bowl of honey will sweeten their lives full of freedom, human rights and individualism.
The present oppressive regime has always had a tendency to hide its wrongdoings behind burning American flags or blaming America for what Iranians are going through. This kind of attitude, which the Islamic leaders of Iran have employed, cannot be tolerated any more.
The symbol of freedom is shining on top of Alborz Mountain. We just have to climb up the mountain and grab hold of it. In God we pray and in people we trust.
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Amir Farahnak
Tehran, Iran, freshman