OPINION
27
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
PUBLISHED DAILY SINCE 1912
CRAIG LANG, Editor MARK OZIMEK, Business manager
SUSANNA LOOP, Managing editor DENNIS HAUPT, Retail sales manager
KIMBERLY CRAPTREE, Editorial editor JUSTIN KNUPP, Technology coordinator
TOM EBLEN, General manager, news adviser JAY STEINER, Sales and marketing adviser
4A
Friday, February 7, 1997
Amy Miller / KANSAN
Editorials
Tardy professors steal valuable time from their waiting students
After trudging halfway across campus, you reach Wescoe Hall just in time for the beginning of your professor's office hours. The professor is not there yet, so you start removing layers of sweaters and coats, thinking he or she will arrive any minute. Twenty minutes later, the professor still has not arrived.
Missed office hours should be considered a flagrant violation of a verbal contract between students and professors. By missing their office hours, professors indicate that, while they expect students to show up for every class, they are not bound to the same agreement.
And there is a difference between students missing class and professors missing office hours. Students pay to attend classes. And if they do not go, it is their own fault. Therefore, they only have themselves to blame for a bad
Office hours are a way for the instructor and the student to communicate.
grade. But professors are paid to teach classes and hold office hours. It is their job.
Every time students waste 20 minutes waiting for a professor to show up, they are losing valuable time that could be spent reading, studying or working.
Professors should maintain their office hours because it is one of the easiest ways to remain in personal contact with students.
Because the University offers many large lecture classes, office hours are one of the few opportunities that students have to see their professors on a one-to-one basis. And whether professors like it or not, teaching is just as important to their research and administrative work.
There are times, however, when an emergency may force professors to miss their office hours. In these cases, professors have at least three options to ensure that students know they are unavailable during their office hours. Professors can tell students during class that they won't be available during their office hours, or they can post a sign on their office door explaining their absence. If professors can't make it to campus at all, they could call their department's office to leave a message explaining their absence.
Professors lead busy lives,but they need to realize that their students have similar time constraints.A little consideration could go a long way and help students in the process.
NICOLE SKALLA FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
New Regents schools would rob KU
"Show me the money!"
That's what two southeast Kansas legislators, Cindy Empson and Richard Reinhardt, could cause Kansas community colleges to say if a proposal to bring 19 community colleges into the Board of Regents system is approved.
The plan, according to The Associated Press, would bring tax relief to residents of community college districts and would allow the state to finance 40 percent of community college costs.
But what would that mean for the six universities already in the Regents system?
It could mean more bureaucracy, less attention and less money for larger universities like the University of Kansas.
The Regents play an active governing role in the academic life of Kansas universities and create broad policy in a variety of academic areas, according to the
Community colleges may mean less money for larger regent institutions.
Regents home page at www.cc.ukans.edu/~kbor/
Empson and Reinhardt want to expand this role, which is contradictory to the notion of smaller government in education.
The Regents help shape the policies that affect more than 80,000 students. Adding 19 community colleges will add students and expand the bureaucracy.
erates more tuition than any other Regents school, it may receive a smaller piece of the pie once community colleges are added to the equation.
The Regents have enough to handle without this added burden. If Empson and Reinhard's plan is approved, there may be a shortage of funds for larger schools, which require more money for technology upgrades and general maintenance.
John Gardner, a political essayist, once wrote, "The hallmark of our age is the tension between related aspirations and sluggish institutions."
If the Regents have to appropriate funds for 19 more schools, larger universities will suffer financially. Most of the money appropriated to state schools comes from state tax revenues and tuition. Even though the University gen-
Also, the speed with which the Regents can respond to the concerns of schools will suffer.
With the addition of 19 schools, the Regents may be too sluggish to handle the aspirations of the six schools already under their supervision.
KANSAN STAFF
LA TINA SULLIAN ... Associate Editorial
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How to submit letters and guest columns
Letters: Should be double-spaced typed and fewer than 200 words. Letters must include the author's signature, name, address and telephone number plus class and hometown If a University student, Faculty or staff must identify their positions.
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All letter and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newroom, 111 Stufffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Kim Crabtree (opinion@kansan.com) or LaTina Sullivan (lusilvain(kansan.com) at 864-4810.
Student philosophers should talk,share less
Columns
I have never liked talking in class. My cheeks turn pink, I begin to sweat in strange places, and my voice makes pubescent crackles and quivers.
Maybe that is why, when I find myself surrounded by people who love to talk, regardless of whether there is anything to be said, it makes me want to vomit.
You know who I'm talking about. There is one in every class. Two or three in several classes.
These are the people who nod at everything the instructor says, nearly dislocate their shoulders every time they raise their hands, and, during roll call, attempt to explain their inner motivations for coming to class.
They like to say things such
It is an enhanced form of butt-kissing, and it seems to be spreading across campus like a hacking cough.
as "apropos," "be that as it may" and many other phrases that have not found true meaning in everyday life.
Sure, participation in class is vital to the learning format. I have been fortunate to share classroom space with many great thinkers who enlightened the rest of the class with their insightful comments.
But I have come across just as many people with an uncanny knack for repeating what someone else has just said, with a few "therefores" thrown in for good measure.
And I have come across even more people who could take the obvious, fill it with flowery language and make it sound like the Gettysburg Address.
"From my personal interpretation, I feel that Mélville wants us to understand in this particular passage. . . (dramatic pause) ..is that Captain Ahab, as a highly driven individual, really . . (manic gestures) . .really wants to get that whale."
Some classes are safe from such mindless filibustering. Subjects involve concrete facts — calculus, for example —leave little room for philosophical discussion of the obvious.
humanities classes, however, can be breaking grounds for big-time talkers. The social sciences are dangerous. If you are a sociology major, watch out.
Believe me, I am not criticizing the classes or the subject matter of the classes. I like to feel poetry deep down in my soul as much as the next guy. I can handle the societal applications of Freud's theories.
What bothers me is that there are many people who don't care what they say — they just love to hear themselves talk. When this happens, it detracts from the classroom setting.
Maybe I'm just bitter because I have never had the drive or the ability to speak out in class if I don't have to. Maybe these people are saying brilliant things that soar right over my head. But I don't think so.
To quote the Tao Te Ching, (as I have always wanted to do) "True words aren't eloquent; eloquent words aren't true."
I guess this is a formal, written apology to my instructors. My blank stare in class is most likely due to frustration, not lack of interest or attention.
I'm thinking. I promise I am thinking. Or maybe I'm laughing silently at the guy who is rubbing his chin and trying to use the big words.
or maybe I just have nothing to say. Sometimes that is fine. And it's not apropos to anything.
Eric Westland is a Floyds Knobs, Ind., sophomore in journalism.
Each birthday candle highlights milestones
Last month, as I sat down to wade through a sea of monthly bills, I happened to notice a pink newsletter wedged between notices from American Express and Southwestern Bell.
At first, I rejoiced that I had received mail from someone who didn't want money. But upon further inspection of the cute little pamphlet, I realized it was from the nontraditional student organization.
I thought that someone had made a mistake. I'm not a single parent, in the continuing education program or more than 24 years old.
But reality slowly began to sink in, and I remembered the day back in November when I had, in fact, turned 24.
The ironic thing about being a nontraditional student based on my age, is that mentally, I'm about 16. And OK, sometimes I act 16, too.
Although I have lost the primal teen-age urge to loiter in a truck on Massachusetts Street during the weekend, I still have a hard time resisting the crazy candy at Hastings.
In past years, I have realized that as you get older, the actions that were once considered spontaneous have suddenly become immature.
Without knowing it, I crossed an imaginary threshold into pseudo-adulthood. Here, I am expected to be responsible and mature.
But these expectations are based on the number of years I have been alive instead of my desire to be responsible and mature.
When I think about adulthood, three specific examples come to mind.
In the first, I am wearing holiday-inspired clothing, talking on a cellular phone and driving my Volvo station wagon on the way to pickup the
kids from soccer practice.
And third, the day I have a 30-minute conversation about the price of gas, I will know that I have hit the point of no return.
In the second, I have salt-and-pepper hair in a braid that runs halfway down my back, wearing a long skirt and standing in the aroma-therapy section of my local health-food store.
It's not that I don't want to act like an adult. I want to, someday, but not just yet. Growing up is what life is all about, and each age has its own rewards.
Remember the thrill of turning 13? At last you were a full-fledged teen-ager and could legitimately begin the descent into teen angst.
For the rest of us, 16 was the magical age of emancipation courtesy of the Division of Motor Vehicles.
The age of 17 brought you respect from the local movie theater. Finally, you could buy a ticket for an R-rated movie.
Eighteen - now you were legal, not only could you be tried as an adult in a U.S. court of law, but you could vote.
At 20, you are no longer an adult, but you are one year closer to the big 21st birthday, which needs no explanation.
But after 21, birthday celebrations lack excitement. No longer are you crossing a monumental threshold, you're just getting older.
As I approach the quarter-of-a-century mark, age no longer bestows me with an automatic reason to celebrate.
I have come up with my own.
Next year is the big one: 25. I can finally rent a car.
Ashlee Roll is a Raleigh N.C., senior in Journalism
Letters
Column missed point of the Ebonics' issue
The key to Andy Rohrback's Jan. 14 column is its feeling, which is revealed by the line Ebonics doesn't scare me much.
Sound methods for making our classrooms more welcoming places for African Americans will not do any harm to you or to your language, so you need not be scared of it.
Insistence that unofficial speech offends such a thing as right and wrong is an ethnocentric insistence.
Conventions of proper speech are proper only insofar as a community has agreed upon them. Is Black folks' speech mindless? Of course not. Insistence that it is mindless is a racist insistence.
Evan Heimlich
Marlboro, N.J.
graduate student
Co-Chair, KU Coalition
Against Racism
Please come hear Dr. Robert L.
Williams, editor of the
book *Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks*. His lecture is 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 10
at the Kansas Union in Woodruff Auditorium.
Kansan should not print details of assault
I am writing to say how interesting I found Gerry Doyle's Jan. 27 editorial, which was titled Journalists must weigh facts, pain"
In the editorial, Doyle, writing on behalf of the editorial board, states that "journalists must offer some leeway in dealing with feelings of individuals... compromise must always be made for those who can be permanently scarred or emotionally hurt by what is printed."
This comes from the same newspaper, which last semester decided to print all of the crude and disgusting details of
an alleged sexual assault on a young woman by her boyfriend.
While the Kansan didn't print the young woman's name, it did print the boyfriend's name and age, which made the alleged victim quite identifiable in a closed social community like a residents hall.
Besides compounding the alleged victim's emotional trauma, the Kansan also made it much easier for other sexual assaultors to remain unpunished.
Ask yourself this: Would you report an assault or a rape knowing that every horrible cruel detail was going to be read by the entire student body?
Again, Kansan, a very interesting, if not hypocritical, editorial.
Nice to know you guys are doingyour homework.
4
Brian England
Lenessa senior