OPINION
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
PUBLISHED DAILY SINCE 1912
4A
CRAIG LANG, Editor
SUSANNA LOOP, Managing editor
KIMBERLY CRARTREE, Editorial editor
TOM EBLEN, General manager, news adviser
MARK OZMEK, Business manager
DENNIS HAUPT, Retail sales manager
JUSTIN KNUPPE, Technology coordinator
JAY STEINER, Sales and marketing adviser
Tuesday, January 14, 1997
Jeff MacNelly/ CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Editorials
Enrolling in excess hours hurts others who need those classes
Class shopping may be a tradition for some students at the University of Kansas, but it is an irresponsible habit with negative consequences for the staff of the University, other students and the shoppers themselves.
Enrolling in extra hours with the intention of dropping a few courses, or shopping for classes, allows students to try out a class and its professor before deciding whether to stay in the course.
But when a student enrolls in a course he or she does not necessarily intend to take, one less seat is available in that course. A student who may have made a responsible decision to enroll in the course could be unable to do so. Shoppers close courses to other students, making enrollment far more frustrating.
University officials also are affected
Shopping for classes affects not just the shopper,but others,too.
And of course, students dropping the classes are affected, because they pay for the hours to begin with.
when students drop classes, because the University has to have workers available to process the changes.
According to the University's web site, the linear tuition system was created in part to discourage students from shopping for courses. The University also has reduced the refunds for classes that were dropped once the semester began as a way of discouraging students from enrolling in classes they don't intend to stay in.
shop for classes create an add-drop nightmare for staff and other students trying to set their schedules.
Still, some students who can afford to
The web site also expresses policymakers' hope that with a reduction in class shopping, more class space will be available and the University will save money because students will not overenroll.
Instead of class shopping, the web site encourages students to learn about the class and the professor before the class begins and offers requesting a syllabus as a way to find out what's required in the class.
Also, students should ask other students about a class and its professor. Following this advice instead of overrolling and dropping classes can save shoppers' money and the time and sanity of the University's staff and students.
KELLI RAYBERN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Allowing KKK protest preserves freedom of speech for everyone
Recently, the Ku Klux Klan applied for a permit to demonstrate in Salina. It intends to protest Martin Luther King Jr. Day and inform the public about why it believes the holiday is wrong and should not be tolerated. Although the ideas embraced by this group are abhorrent, the idea which is strengthened by allowing them to demonstrate — free speech — is not.
Members of the Klu Klux Klan espouse hate. Their unbridled prejudice against minorities and certain religions is destructive to society in general and civil rights in specific. These ideas should not be embraced by Salina or any other city.
However, the societal tenet of free
Ku Klux Klan members will protest the Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Representatives of the Ku Klux Klan have said that their demonstration would be peaceful. If they were barred from demonstrating, it would set a disturbing precedent to bar others from speaking their mind in public.
speech is even more important. The First Amendment grants all citizens the right to freedom of speech and the right to peacefully assemble.
If this situation occurs, then greater problems arise as nobody would be able to freely address any issue in public or elsewhere.
planned a counter-protest. Like the Ku Klux Klan members, this group is simply exercising a Constitutional right.
To keep the spirit and immense power of free speech alive, then, the Ku Klux Klan must be allowed to demonstrate.
To protect the rights of every citizen of the United States, members of the Ku Klux Klan must be treated like every citizen in the United States: They must be allowed to speak their minds. Simply because their ideology is disagreeable, they should not be barred from demonstrating.
In response to the Klu Klux Klan protest, a church group in Salina has
GERRY DOYLE FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
LA TINA SULLIVAN . . . Associate Editorial
KRISTIE BLASI . . . News
NOVELDA SOMMERS . . . News
LESLIE TAYLOR . . . News
AMANDA TRAUGHBER . . . News
TARA TRENARY . . . News
DAVID TESKA . . . Online
SPENCER DUNCAN . . . Sports
. . . Associate Sports
BRADLEY BROOKS . . . Campus
LINDSHEY HENRY . . . Campus
DAVE BRETTENSTEIN . . Features
PAM DISIMAN . . . Photo
TYLER WIRKEN . . Photo
BRYAN VOLK . . . Design
ANDY ROHRBACK . . . Graphics
ANDREA ALBRIGHT . . . Wire
LZ MUSSER . . Special sections
AERICA VEAZEY . . . News clerk
NEWS EDITORS
ADVERTISING MANAGERS
ADVERTISING MANAGERS
HEATHER VALLEY . . . Assistant retail
JULIE PEDLAR . . . Campus
DANA CENTENO . . . Regional
ANNETTE HOVER . . . National
BRIAN PAGEL . . . Marketing
SARAH SCHWERWIKI . . . Internet
DARISE McCLAIN . . Production
DENA PISCOTTE . . Production
ALLISON PIERCE . Special sections
SARA ROSE . . . Creative
DANA LAUVETZ . . Public relations
BRIAN LEFEVRE . . Classified
RACHEL RUBIN . . Assistant classified
BRIDGET COLLYER . . Zone
JULIE DEWITT . . . Zone
CHRIS HAGHIRIAN . . Zone
LIZ HESS . . . Zone
ANTHOHY MLIAZLOE . . zone
MARIA CRIST . . Senior account executive
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 newsroom. 111 Stauffer Flint Halt. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Kim Crabtreat (kcrabrett@kansan.com) or LaTina Sullivan (isulillian@kansan.com) at 848-4810.
Columns
Roundball paradise. Three seats on the front row of the student section, right behind the KU bench at the basketball game against Washburn. They were open although the rest of the Allen Field House was packed, and the game was only half an hour from starting. Still, when field house fade smiles on you like that, you don't ask questions. You sit down.
Ebonics is inherently self destructive, divisive
A few minutes into the game, we knew why those seats were open. Someone sitting behind us spent the whole game shouting random taunts at the players. One of his favorites was "You will never learn!"
I had to wonder if this might be more accurate if directed toward the "educracy" — the establishment that has constantly sought to politicize education. They will never learn. They tried new math
and values clarification, but soon realized that you just can't circumvent reality. Today it's Ebonics, the pseudo-language that is supposedly the native tongue of African Americans.
"Bad' has a different connotation?" Attitudinal information? Equipped with the strategies to hear the child? Cook must have been either an English or a political science major, because her entire spiel could be summarized by saying "The teacher is not going to correct the child, because the teacher doesn't want to hurt the child's feelings."
Ebonics is used in the Oakland, Calif., school district, where teachers are instructed to use Ebonics a separate language and not criticize students when they speak it. Essentially, Ebonics is English without verb conjugation or consonant enunciation. "I am walking to the store" becomes "I be walkin' to the store."
Most Ebonics proponents claim that Ebonics is a separate language because it stems from African languages. I find it interesting to note that these same groups are the ones who claim to seek racial equality and unity. I'm not a sociology major, but I don't think that telling people they speak two different languages helps them feel more united.
Before debating the merits of Ebonics, I'll let its advocates have equal time. Toni Cook, a member of the Oakland School Board, was asked on CNN's Crossfire on Jan. 2 what would happen if a student told a teacher, "I need to ask you a question."
"Does the teacher tell this student that 'aks' is bad English and don't use it anymore, because it's going to hamper your course in this society?" the interviewer asked.
"Well," she answered, "if that school teacher has been through our standard English proficiency program that school teacher will be equipped with the strategies to hear the child and to assist the child in bridging the gap necessary to speak standard English." Don't you just love psychobabble?
I had to laugh, however, when on a different CNN program, someone compared teaching Ebonics to teaching "Valley Girl English." He's not far off. Perhaps teachers should accept a proliferation of the word 'like' in every sentence. We don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.
Cook replied, "If the teacher has been through our training, the teacher will have the attitudinal information necessary to capture that child's attention, so the child will listen to them and they'll make the necessary bridges to bridge the gap. When you say that, particularly to a fourth grader, or even to a first grader, 'bad' has a different connotation and when you've said that, you've said also a lot about that child's family, who may have the same language pattern. Our job is to work with children where they are."
We will never learn. Feelings are incidental, reality is inscrutable. If someone is wrong, it's better to tell them so and hurt them now than to allow their mistake to become normal practice. One of these days, we've got to figure that out.
Ebonics doesn't scare me much, however. It's just stupid enough that average Americans can see right through it. Most of us know that there is a such thing as right and wrong, at least in grammar. Like new math, Ebonics is inherently self-destructive.
I be sure it not goin'to last.
Andy Rorbrack is an Andover junior in journalism.
E-mail: arorback@kansan.com
The funeral home industry lies in a state of utter gaudiness. It forever thrives on the millions who fall helplessly victim to it, keeping this deathbed industry forever living. I, however, am ready to euthanize it.
Funeral industry kills all attempts at serenity
Recently, my winter breaks have included an obligatory funeral. What has really begun to disturb me about this is not the particular death of someone but, rather, the service in general. The event has become a spectacle.
Plagued by kitsch and all that is tasteless, the recently departed doesn't stand a living chance to escape this final humiliation.
From my experience, which seems vastly ever growing, the funeral home is the heart of all this obscenity.
Those attending the memorial service — since when did we become so afraid to use the word "funeral?" — cannot escape the sight of the corpse under the rose-colored lights unless you are lucky enough to attend a closed-casket ceremony. The slightly smiling sewn lips and heavy-handed makeup can make even the most masculine of men appear like drag queens. After this segment of the service, the coffin is wheeled out the doors directly to a waiting hearse, which conjures up images of efficiency and fast-food drive-
The service is perpetually enveloped by the morbid sounds of organ music. Occasionally, this is interrupted by a soloist belting on some familiar hymn (what an enviable gig to work) or, at this last particular service, the familiar voice of Elvis Presley.
thru window.
The excesses of poor taste are now continued beyond the walls of the funeral home. The cemetery is located conveniently behind the facilities, creating a sort of intimate backyard affair. Littering the grounds are thousands of plastic flowers. Aside perhaps for the floral aisle of Wal-Mart, no other place could hold as much petroleum refined by-products.
Instead of merely walking the eighth of a mile to the grave, the procession climbs into dozens of cars following the white limousines, which seem better suited for Vegas than a funeral home, to the circus-tented site. Fortunately, my great uncle was spared spending eternity in the "Garden of Crucifixion" and is now currently enjoying his new digs in the "Garden of Serenity."
By now the white-lacquered coffin, trimmed in midnight-blue satin, is wheeled to its final resting place. Six feet under still does not seem deep enough to hide the world of such hideousness.
The climax of this event has to be the lowering of the casket. The hydraulic whine of the coffin, hoist is reminiscent of a kind of death wall, for I too would be screaming if someone threw my corpse into something so tacky.
Since when did our American way of death become so strangled by the hands of Liberace? I propose a more tasteful ceremony to carry us into the after world. When my time should come, I would like a cocktail party, black tie of course, with hard liquor and a catered buffet, NOT trays of Vienna sausage links and bowls of Chex mix. My body should be thrown onto a cliff in the Ganges to be pecked away by birds. And, finally, please do not forget to R.S.V.P.
Mike Cole is a Mission Hills junior in Journalism.
Jeff MacNelly/ CHICAGO TRIBUNE