4A
Monday, November 11, 1996
OPINION
UN I V E R S I T Y D A I L Y K A N S A N
VIEWPOINT
Program must preserve individual admissions
The Student Senate Multicultural Affairs Committee suggested last week that all minority students who receive scholarships from the University of Kansas be automatically enrolled in the honors program, according to a Nov. 1 article in the University Daily Kansan. This proposal, while well-intentioned, could be detrimental to the students it intends to help.
Ron Chen, chairman of the Multicultural Affairs Committee told the Kansan that most minority students who receive scholarships would meet the current honors program requirements. Those who meet the requirements should be enrolled in the honors program.
However, those students who don't meet the requirements, but receive scholarships, should not be accepted into the program unilaterally. Those minority students should be evaluated as individuals, as are all other students who are considered for the program.
By treating each student as an individual, honors program officials would not only be able to determine which students would benefit the most from the program, but would also be able to make these students feel like more than a number. Certainly, these benefits are absent from the new suggestion.
Although recruiting minority students for the honors program should be a top priority, the suggested plan by the Multicultural Affairs Committee could rob students one of the most important aspects of the honors program: individual evaluation.
THE KANSAN EDITORIAL BOARD
Amendment should not be used to keep student hearings secret
Although the Buckley Amendment is a well-intentioned act, the amendment has been widely misused to keep disciplinary proceedings confidential at universities throughout the country.
The 1974 act prohibits schools from releasing a student's records, which includes grades, classes, counseling and disciplinary records, without a student's consent. The act does not prohibit universities from releasing these records to other schools or administrators.
The act has recently come under fire from students and administrators who say that universities could use the amendment to keep public information secret.
According to an article in this month's edition of U. Magazine, the University of Georgia has opened its student judicial hearings to the public. The university's school newspaper, The Red and Black, sued the school, arguing that the Buckley Amendment didn't cover proceedings, just student records. The court ruled in favor of the student newspaper.
Some universities claim student judicial hearings can be closed using the Buckley amendment, even though the Department of Education has said that the amendment does not cover judicial procedures.
In light of this revelation, all universities should open student judicial hearings. In addition, students should be allowed legal counsel in judicial hearings. Making these hearings public is especially important when handling sexual assault and similar cases where student safety is at issue.
Some have argued that opening judicial hearings would make it more difficult for administrators to make fair decisions against public opinion. But keeping student judicial hearings closed could lead to corruption. The only way to ensure that some students don't receive preferential treatment in these hearings is to open the process.
Public accountability is the cornerstone of democracy. Any attempts to abridge the public's access to information, including judicial proceedings when student safety is at issue, are unjust.
NICOLE KENNEDY FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
AMANDA TRAUGHBER
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CRAIG LANG
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Jeff MacNelly/ CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Shakespearean romance reduced to physical desire
I don't know how it happens.
Every day, my roommates and I read the New York Times, but it takes less than three hours for every section to disappear except for "The Living Arts." Usually, no one wants to read that section, but on Tuesday I came across something worth reading: a review of last week's No. 1 film, William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The film is not to be confused with William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, although the dialogue is the same—all comments about the creativity of Hollywood screenwriters aside.
The film essentially takes Shakespeare's play and transposes it in a quasi-modern world that socially resembles the play's original setting but technologically resembles today.
I'm not Michael Medved, and I haven't seen the film, so I have no grounds to comment on its artistic merit. More interesting than the film's entertainment value, in fact, is Times writer Bernard Weinraub's expression of surprise that more than half of the movie's audience was teen-agers. Is it surprising that teen-agers enjoy a film about rebellious, desperate, passionate love? Hardly.
A careful perusal of the film's Web site, hidden cryptically at www.romeoandjuliet.com, shows that director Baz Luhrmann intended his work to be strikingly surreal. The Times article called it almost psychicelied. If those words aren't the song of the Pied Piper to America's teen-agers, what is?
At issue in *Romeo* is the idea of pure love. Apparently, modern America can't handle this ideal, the concept of romance without adulteration. Luhrmann's *Romeo* mixes
sex, violence and outright rebellion with Shakespeare are an romance to make it palatable. Frighteningly enough, this is the concept of love that most teen-agers see today.
STAFF COLUMNIST
I caught the last half-hour of Steeples in Seattle Wednesday
night on television. What happened to movies like this? I guess they all have been cubby-holed as "chick flicks" or whatever derogatory term suits them. Whatever the case, the good, old-fashioned love story without guns and sex has gone the way of the dodo.
Ideas such as buying flowers or having a conversation are passé. The love that Romeo and Juliet shared is foreign to teen-agers today.
The root of the problem lies in that we have forgotten how to communicate love. In the 1990s, the ultimate romantic experience happens in the bedroom.
High school English required most of us to read the original play. And we all complained that the language was too hard, the assignment was too long, and what could this centuries-old book have to do with today? At least this is what I thought, and so did just about everyone else in my class. Today, however, I remember the old story, and I don't remember a sexual element to the title characters' love. In fact, the most famous and most romantic scene in the play takes place with
Juliet on a balcony and Romeo far below. But the Internet site and the previews make the mission of Romeo, the movie, clear to translate the romance of Shakespeare into physical desire.
Don't get me wrong - I won't pretend Shakespeare is completely pure and free from physical attraction. Romeo does indeed speak of Juliet's beauty: "she doth teach the torches to burn bright." What I'm getting at is that Shakespeare's characters can communicate and understand love with simple words. They don't need sex or physical "intimacy" to make each other understand they care. Love exists in a completely separate realm from physical wants.
Is it possible that the only way people today can understand love is through animal cravings? Can it be that the cynicism that has become our bread and butter has annihilated our ability to understand phrases such as "Be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet?" Sworn to be someone's love? Tied down? Committed? Are you serious?
So we have go-betweens like Baz Luhrmann to help us understand that love.
Eloquent words used to be sufficient; now we require external symbols and physical representations. Impassioned speech used to move our hearts; now guns and gangs have to help out. Are we that shallow?
I must admit I'm curious about the movie. I'm more interested in people's impressions, and my e-mail address is arohrback@kansan.com. Replies are guaranteed.
Andy Rohrback is an Andover sophomore in Journalism.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Column feeds cynicism offers no real solutions
In response to Cory Hedgepeth Nov. 6 column, The perfect candidate for election 2000, I would like to say that this is exactly the type of ignorant commentary that devalues journalism.
Although it was in the opinion section of the University Daily Kansan, it is this type of pointless cynicism that the American society enjoys conforming to and it really never poses any beneficial answers to problems that obviously have roots in
societal functioning.
Perhaps you could have offered some possible solutions to such areas of discontent, or asked the reading public to question more of what is spoon fed into their minds.
Negative issues answered with negative, coping, cynical mechanisms isn't news, it is silly.
You should read Clarence Page is you want to learn true editorialized journalism.
Instead of putting down the system, try building it up with suggestions for betterment.
As for your qualifications for president, I am a bilingual student from the Midwest with a very good understanding of European societies and systemic functioning in both the United States and Europe concerning issues of education, economics, government, the environment and health care.
Maybe I'll run against you in the year 2000.
Graham Johnson Lawrence senior
Lawrence senior
The following is a confession from a political pleasure seeker:
Politics lust tempered by anti-climactic election year
I'm addicted to political foreplay
I love the desperate courting of
It's true. I get these urges every day, and I can't control them. Not even two C-Span television channels can satisfy my lust for political persuasion. I especially love election season.
social groups; I love the tactical wooing of young voters; I love the romantic campaign promises, and I really love it when candidates sling mud. Oooh, oooh baby!
released. And each one was so darn good. Each had only a 3 percent to 4 percent margin of error. These pollsters have it down to a science.
Letting those geeks at Gallup tell me my vote won't matter is scary. Political impotency is not something I'm capable of facing right now in my life. Maybe when I'm older and have experienced more, I will have the strength and wisdom to let it go. But not right now.
These polls and pollsters are at the root of my political dissatisfaction. Increasingly, they're making political pleasure elusive.
For me, this election year was utterly anti-climactic. The presidential race especially disappointed me. Everybody knew Bill Clinton was going to be re-elected weeks before Nov. 5. To try to get excited, I tuned into every conservative radio station and read all of the conservative newspapers. Yes, it was in vain, but being deprived of political satisfaction was disappointing.
This year, I had to seek some relief in a few hotly-contested House seats where young and embattled Republican freshmen were running for re-election. They had to bear the dangerous association of Newt and The Contract. Now that's the action I like — down to the wire when it's too close to call, even too close for the talking heads.
However, this year I had a difficult time getting . . well. excited. It was those darn polls. Every day a poll was
Right now they're struggling, but together, maybe we can overcome our irrational feelings of shame. We must mobilize and demand our right to political pleasure.
I confess I am addicted to political foreplay, but I refuse to let my pleasure be compromised. It's high time I come out and admit my indulgence. I know there are men and women out there just like me.
Do they not understand my fragile political feelings? Forcing me to accept the future destroys my tender innocence. Call it infatuated nostalgia, but I long for a return to the days of unpredictability, the days of excitement, the days when nobody could see the dark horse.
HUBIE
Down with the polls!
How romantic is it when, weeks before election day, these brain statisticians predict the outcome of races? These days it's all calculated, packaged and predicted before you can start to enjoy things.
On Tuesday night, the pollsters were really ruthless. Like the Grinch who stole Christmas, they stole the excitement out of the night. Most of the races were declared finished quickly and heartlessly with a mere 1 percent of the vote tallied.
Andrew Longstreet is a Liberty, Mo.
senior in French and political science.
By Greg Hardin