OPINION
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
4A
PUBLISHED DAILY SINCE 1912
CRAIG LANG, Editor
SUSANNA LOOP, Managing editor
KIMBERLY CRAIBTREE, Editorial editor
TOM EBILEN, General manager, news advisor
MARK OZIMEK, Business manager
DENNIS HAUPT, Retail sales manager
JUSTIN KNUPP, Technology coordinator
JAY STENNER, Sales and marketing adviser
Monday, March 31, 1997
Jeff MacNelly / CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Editorials
Proposed holds center fosters procrastination and laziness
One of the greatest lessons students should take with them from the University does not come from a book. It comes from being forced to make decisions regarding time, money and priorities, because decisions like these, only with more serious consequences, are going to have to be made outside of the University.
Unfortunately, some people in Student Senate don't feel that these lessons are valuable, and instead want to be coddled even further by the University. Headed by Jamie Johnson, student body vice president, some members of Student Senate are diligently working to create a special holds office in Strong Hall where students could pay bills that are putting holds on their enrollment forms.
The center would be next to the enrollment center in Strong Hall so students could conveniently pay fees and
A holds center would allow students to pay enrollment holds on in one place.
then enroll. For some students, one less trip to campus would be a blessing, and this seems to be the motivation behind the proposal.
But in actuality, a holds center would only foster laziness. When a student gets a parking ticket, it can be paid immediately, hence the pink, addressed envelope the ticket comes in. Bills for services at Watkins Memorial Health Center can be paid anytime, and there are no late fees. Reminders for both parking tickets and Watkins bills are also frequent. Although tickets or Watkins bills can be expensive, the policies for delinquencies are lenient.
In addition, a holds center is not necessary. Any holds on a student's enrollment show up on his or her Academic Record Tracking System form, which is mailed about three weeks before enrollment. This should be plenty of time to take care of holds before enrollment. The idea of a holds center encourages students not to pay bills on time because they know they can wait until the last minute.
An institution to prepare students for the real world should not encourage irresponsibility. What is a student going to do after graduation? Wait until the house or car is about to be repossessed before paying off credit-card bills or payments? A hold center is futile because it would require student money to staff and equip a center for bills that students should have paid in the first place.
CATHY PIERCE FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Tournament win deserves day off
At what should be considered the mecca of college basketball, Chancellor Robert Hemenway's March 10 announcement that classes would not be canceled if Kansas had won the NCAA basketball tournament caused sparks to fly among many fans, and with good reason. If classes were canceled in 1988 to celebrate the win, and a half-day was given off to celebrate making the Final Four in 1991, why shouldn't tradition and precedent be followed had this year's team had the same success?
Some people have cited a difference between the 1988 championship and the once-possible 1997 championship because of different expectations going into the tournament. The 1988 team was not really expected to win the tournament, they say, whereas this year's team had high expectations and hopes to win it all.
This year's team was favored to win. If it would have gone all the way, would
Celebrating a tournament title would not demean the academic caliber of KU.
that make victory any less sweet? A magnificent feat is just that, and the fact that fans had higher hopes this year should not have diminished this year's accomplishments.
For the past wins, days off were a way to honor the team and give students a chance to celebrate with a welcome-home rally. If a team with higher expectations wins the championship, is it not entitled to the same commemoration of the achievement?
Another reason the chancellor gave for his decision was that few tournament-winning universities had canceled classes in celebration of the national title.
sity merely be a reflection of other universities' policies? Few other schools may cancel classes following the winning of the national title, but few other schools have the fans and tradition in basketball that the University has. There are times when following tradition of our own is more appropriate than following the examples of other schools.
Yes, this is an academic institution,
not a fan club. But even among students of the highest caliber, basketball mania will forever exist as long as students can look down the Hill and see Phog's field house. Taking time to celebrate a tradition does not demean the academic caliber of our institution. Rather, it commemorates a feat that hasn't been accomplished by the Jayhawks since 1988.
Since when must policy at the Univer-
It's tragic that at a school where basketball is such a tradition, a tradition that celebrates its success isn't policy.
KANSAN STAFF
KAREN CHANDLER FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
LA TINA SULLVAN ... Associate Editorial
KRISTA BLASI ... News
NOVELDA SOMMERS ... News
LESLIE TAYLOR ... News
AMANDA TRAUGHBER ... News
TARA TRENARY ... News
DAVID TESKA ... Online
SPENCER DUNCAN ... Sports
GINA THORNBURG ... Associate Sports
BRADEL BROOKS ... Campus
LINDESE HENRY ... Campus
DAVE BrettsteinTEIN ... Features
PAM DISIMAN ... Photo
TYLER WIRKEN ... Photo
BRYAN VOLK ... Design
ANDY ROHRBACK ... Graphics
ANDREA ALBRIGHT ... Wire
LIZ MUSSER ... Special sections
AERICA VEAZEY ... News clerk
NEWS EDITORS
ADVERTISING MANAGERS
ADVERTISING MANAGERS
HEATTER VALLEER ...Assistant retail
JULIE PEDLAR ...Campus
DANA CENTENO ...Regional
ANNETTE HOVER ...National
BRIAN PAGEL ...Marketing
SARAH SCHERWINSKI ...Internet
DARCI MCLAIN ...Production
DENA PISICOTTE ...Production
ALLISON PIERCE ...Special sections
SARA ROSE ...Creative
DANA LAUVETZ ...Public relations
BRIAN LEFEVRE ...Classified
RACHEL RUBIN ...Assistant classified
BRIDGET COLLYER ...Zone
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LIZ HESS ...Zone
ANTHONY MIGLIAZJO ...Zone
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Columns
'Magic fingers' gives new meaning to life
I discovered the supreme secret of life during spring break.
My good friend Frick and I drove from sunny Floyds Knobs, Ind., to Lexington, Ky. He was going to visit some old friends and decided to tag along. At the end of the two-hour drive, we arrived
in a charming neighborhood that reminded me of downtown Lawrence. It was full of old houses with porches that were perfect for sitting and watching the sunset.
We knocked on the door, and the two people who emerged have changed my life. They were a couple who must have been in their late thirties. She was very friendly and very attractive. He, on the other hand, bore a
strange resemblance to Tatu from Fantasy Island. Of course, being a completely shallow person at times, my first reaction was to wonder what circumstances brought these two together. As we all know, the whole "beauty is skin deep" thing is nice to say but is rarely applied in the search for a mate.
As I reveled in my idealistic fantasy, I began to
This, however, was an exception. As I looked around at the decorations on the walls—wedding pictures, tapestries, paintings—I saw that this couple had settled into a comfortable existence in a great neighborhood. It was the kind of lifestyle I had always envisioned for myself. They seemed very happy together as we sat around and talked. The best part was that she had ignored the strong guidelines of physical attractiveness and had apparently married someone solely for his personality. How nice, I thought.
wonder what these two did for a living. Then the guy mentioned something about one of his "biggest clients." Were they drug dealers? Art dealers? Internet consultants? Frick told me after we left that he wasn't sure what she did, but that he was a professional masseuse.
Suddenly, everything was clear. He seemed like a nice guy, and I'm sure his magic fingers weren't the only reason they were a happily married couple, but I bet it didn't hurt. I bet it didn't hurt that he could knead the muscles in her back like a baker kneads bread. I bet it didn't hurt that he knew how to tweak, twist and prod every muscle in her body until she became like putty beneath his hands.
Yep, that's the supreme secret. Massage school. It doesn't matter if you look like a troll or have the personality of a walnut. If you know how to give a killer back rub, you will have your pick of any man or woman on the planet. Is that sick? Maybe. But is it true? Maybe. Put yourself in this situation: You are at a bar and you meet a member of the opposite sex. After a few minutes of conversation, it comes out that he or she dropped out of the University two years ago to study massage in Sweden and that he or she has just come back to the country to set up a massage parlor. What is the first thought that creeps into the back of your mind? Is it "Boy, I sure do hate Swedish massage," or is it "Back rub for ME!!"?
I am presently investigating ways to attain professional masseuse status while still completing my journalism degree in four years. I figure that, regardless of where I end up in life, it can't hurt to have a little massage know-how. Just like the jelly-of-the-month club, a knack for massage is the gift that keeps on giving.
Eric Westander is a Floyds Knobs, Ind., sophomore in Journalism.
Gangsta rap only reflects violent gang subculture
Like the death of rap star Tupac Shakur, the death of his rival rapper, The Notorious B.I.G. (alias Biggie Smalls aAlias Christopher Wallace), is an example of a culture's chickens coming home to roost.
I am talking about the culture known as gangsta rap. But I am not talking only about that.
The music known as gangsta rap is only an expression of a violent subculture known as gangsta, in the Ebonics of
Unlike C. Delores Tucker or former Education Secretary William Bennett or other famous critics of gangsta rap, I do not blame the music. My blame goes deeper than that.
ghetto life. The Notorious B.I.G. went out in true gangsta style, gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles. So did Tupac Shakur, six months earlier in a drive-by in Las Vegas.
If anything, the deaths brought to national attention a continuing string of black-on-black violence that usually rates no more than a local headline, if that. In this world, as The Notorious B.I.G. put it, you're nobody until somebody kills you.
This edgy atmosphere of peril appeals to the risky sensibilities of impulsive youths. But they didn't invent it. Death long has been a dreary companion to youth music cultures. The rock culture of the 1960s is remembered, in part, for its famous overdoses, like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. Gangsta rap will be remembered for its famous drive-by shootings.
Those deaths signaled the end of the '60s. But gangsta rap appears to be going strong, helped, if anything, by these famous deaths. The Notorious B.I.G.'s latest album is expected to soar to the top of the sales charts the way Shakur's did after his death, where it stayed for weeks.
We need not turn to record or CD spinners to find
someone on whom to pin the blame for the downfall of our youths. Gangsta culture had many parents.
It grew out of an urban society that saw jobs pack up in the 1960s and later move to the suburbs or overseas or somewhere far from the people who formerly depended on them for employment
It grew out of statistics that show the numbers of black males in jail (683,000 in 1994, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics) exceeding those of black males in college (549,000 that year, according to the United Negro College Fund.)
The number of African Americans who go to college has never been higher. That's the good news. The bad news is that the number of black men in prison has never been higher, either.
The results: a society in which at least 28 percent of the black males born today will go to prison sometime in their life, if current trends continue. That's according to figures released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics a few days before the Notorious B.I.G. died notoriously on the streets.
Gangsta rap was a natural byproduct of a segment of black America that was left behind.
Poor blacks created the blues and, out of that, rhythm and blues. Poor whites helped turn it into rock 'n' roll. Gangsta rap was created by the ghetto and consumed largely by suburbanites who made rappers rich and provided an incentive for the creation of more rappers.
I once heard a teen counselor say that if you want to prevent girls from getting pregnant, don't just give them a condom; give them a future.
I'd say the same for the violent gangsta youths. It is not enough for parents to denounce rap CDs and tapes and snatch them out of our children's hands. Forbidden fruit only becomes more tantalizing.
Rather, we have to give kids something to believe in. We have to show them they have a future, that they can be somebody without somebody killing them.
Clarence Page is a syndicated columnist.
Letters
Ebonics is a different form of communication
J. Ramon Ziadie's letter, published on March 11, concerning Ebonics reflects a number of misconceptions. There is no definition of what constitutes a language—for linguists the point at which a dialect or accent or slang becomes a language is fuzzy and indeterminable. Ebonics is a distinct style of communication. It is sufficiently different from standard English in that the two are not always mutually intelligible and speakers of one variety may often misinterpret the other.
Ziadie suggest that the only difference between Ebonics and standard English are minor phonetic differences. although the lecture that Ziadie refers to may have given phonetics as an example, Ebonics differs from standard English on all levels, including phonetic, syntactic and pragmatic.
Ziadie's letter promotes the notion that Ebonics contains errors. This is only true compared to standard English. it is no more valid than saying that Americans make errors, which they do if the English spoken in England is taken as correct. Ebonics is a different form of communication with different rules. Ebonics speakers follow those rules. Let's take the so-called incorrect verb conjugations used in Ebonics as an example. The incorrect use of the verb "to be" is commonly used as an example of Ebonics and of bad English. But Ebonics speakers are perfectly capable of conjugating the verb "to be" where appropriate. The unfamiliar use is a verb tense known as the habitual, which is common in West African languages but does not exist in standard English. "He be happy" is a an example. Ebonics speakers are capable of conjugating the phrase "He is happy," but this sentence would mean something different to them—it means he is happy right now. Ziadie may be happy writing Ebonics off as bad English, but perhaps we
should all be more aware that it contains sophisticated elements, some of which do not even exist in standard English. It is absurd to judge the correctness of one style of communication by the rules of a different style.
This does not mean schools should be teaching Ebonics: it is clearly a communication style that is going to inhibit someone's ability to get ahead in society. But we should refrain from ignorantly writing it off as bad English, and we should refrain from squabbling over whether it is a language. Instead, let's make sure that teachers in schools with large numbers of Ebonic speakers are able to understand their students; they are skilled in helping those students know when standard English is appropriate and do not further disadvantage an already disadvantaged group by telling them that the way they speak is wrong.
Jake Harwood
Jake Harwood assistant professor, communication studies