4A
Tuesday, January 23, 1996
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Open admissions no more
The Kansas legislature is discussing the possibility of enacting a qualified admissions program for Kansas Board of Regents schools. While this momentous undertaking is a step in the right direction, the range of the qualifications is too generous and will not improve significantly the academic credibility of the Regents institutions.
The proposal calls for incoming Kansas residents who wish to attend a Kansas Board of Regents institution to have a minimum grade-point average of 2.0 on a 4.0 scale; or a score of at least 23 on the ACT; or be ranked in the top third of their high school class. If there is actually a significant number of students who do not reach these low requirements, then the legislature's proposal is all the more embarrassing.
The state of Kansas has needed a hierarchical university system topped with a flagship institution for many years. Kansas is the last state in the nation that continues to clog their so-called institutions of higher learning with the products
THE ISSUE:
Admissions policy
A legislative proposal for qualified admissions is a step in the right direction for Kansas Regents universities.
of open admissions policies. With luck, this preliminary attempt at a true qualified admissions program is only the first step. With luck, the Kansas Legislature is not really planning on passing this proposal off as a true qualified admissions system.
The proposed legislation simply is the attachment of a label to a system that will not alter significantly the academic status of the Kansas institutions of higher learning.
Granted, not all of the Regents schools need to have the highest of academic standards, but they all need a minimum. This long needed proposal is a very small step in the right direction but is still a far cry from the true reach of qualified admissions and from the idea of higher education.
CHRIS VINE FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD.
Weather endangers students
During a day when the high temperature was a frigid six degrees, KU officials were faced with the dilemma of whether to cancel classes. Perhaps the administration only had the students best academic interests in mind when they decided to keep the University open Jan. 18. The officials must take
These officials must take more issues into account.
When weather conditions are hazardous, the University considers whether traffic is capable of moving safely through campus.
However, on Thursday the wind chill reached an unbearable-45 degrees, a condition that Lawrence Memorial Hospital physicians said was so severe that it could cause exposed flesh to freeze.
Fortunately, by that afternoon, road conditions finally were bad enough that Ed Meyen, executive vice chancellor, decided to cancel all classes after 4 p.m.
Let's face it, the blizzard occurred on the third day of classes, and students couldn't have possibly missed something that they couldn't have made up in the coming class period.
THE ISSUE:
Severe weather
Students' safety and health are more important than academics when deciding whether to cancel classes.
University officials must also realize that just because a bus can make it uphill doesn't mean that the weather is good enough to hold classes. Traffic shouldn't be the only consideration to why classes must be closed.
Look at the students slipping and sliding down Wescoe Hall's stairs. The University must take the students' safety into account when it makes important decisions like the one that was made on Jan. 18.
The University can't predict the future, but accommodations should be made for the students' sakes. Each student pays a lot of money to get a good education at the University of Kansas, but this money doesn't go towards a good insurance policy.
DOUG WEINSTEIN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
'No more violence, no more pain'
BY PAUL TODD ILLUSTRATION BY MICAH LAAKER
Three days until Christmas.
Three years old. But the shooters didn't care. They didn't bother to think.
The boy simply sat in the back seat of his mother's car on a neighborhood street in north Denver and waited for his mom to return from the house beyond the dried-up lawn. A white Chevrolet sedan turned the corner and pulled up to the car, and the shooters unleashed a barrage of bullets. Perhaps the child was thinking about the latest episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, or what he wanted from Santa or why his mommy was taking so long when the bullet pierced his skull. It killed him before he had the chance to cry.
There were no other people around, and no one saw the boy die. And the shooters probably didn't know the boy was in the car. They just fired at an old car and a house on the 'wrong side of town.'
Some speculate that the home where Casson Evans was killed housed drug traffickers or gang members or gang members' girlfriends. But the 3 year old had no idea where he was. He couldn't have known to duck; he couldn't have known to run. It took only one of the 14 bullets that were fired. The neighborhood went mad.
Shirley Sims, originally from Kansas City, Mo., said that the residents of her neighborhood were tired of the violence.
"It was an act of violence that was totally unnecessary and unwarranted," she said. "It was a 3 year old that was unable to speak for himself and have the opportunity to grow up."
Sims said that the shooters were not even looking for the particular car where Evans sat — it resembled the car they wanted, so they shot it — That simple.
It's a place where shootings are common and drugs are a big consumer item, but the residents could not bring themselves to shut their doors and forget about the sound of guns and sirens and the picture on the front page of The Denver Post of Evans in his Sunday best.
At first some people wanted revenge, wanted to go out and hunt the killers among the alleys and crack houses and liquor marts. In the end, though, a large group of peaceful protesters, organized by local African-American organizations, and ministries solemnly marched down the streets to protest the violence. They were parents and teachers, business-people and children.
some no older than Casson Evans.
Thomas Lewis, who grew up in northeast Denver, attended the rally because things seemed out of control with the killing of a boy.
"That's crazy — that's Bosnia," he said. "That shouldn't happen in America."
Some may argue that a march is no way to solve a murder and that the killers deserve punishment for their evil.
But for the group of cold, scared residents, the march was the only way to respond to the murder. They needed to express that they were OK. They wanted the shooters to see them in the street staring sharply at them and saying, "You were wrong. We won't be wrong." The chant for the day was "No more violence, no more pain. Killing our kids is just insane."
The marchers then went home, knowing that they had transcended the violence of the killers in the filthy eye-for-an-eye camp of inner Denver.
Some people in the outlying parts of Denver were cynical about the effectiveness of marches and street prayer to bring killers to justice.
But not Thomas Lewis. And not Shirley Sims.
"They know nothing about the inner cities," Lewis said. "They hear stories, and then every person on the street has a gun. We are going to have to solve our own problems."
Sims said the march was more of a coming together to make a statement to the shooters.
"Change or get out of our community," she said.
The solution is not vigilantism or gun control — or ignorance. The people on those Denver streets were actually teachers demonstrating the way that neighborhoods can achieve peace.
Conflicts arise, some brutal, but some no more than a disagreement with a teacher or parent or a fight against a parking ticket. The first instinct can be to seek retribution for a wrong done, but the second instinct should be to want not retribution but change, even when that wrong is murder.
Casson Evans' teen-age killers have been caught. They did not get the revenge they wanted by shooting up the wrong car, and they could be tried in court as adults.
The neighborhood is once again quiet. The protesters have gone home. A new level of reconciliation has been reached, if only for a while.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Loan not the solution to bus system woes
This letter is regarding the article written on the financial troubles of KU on Wheels. According to the article, the transportation board will ask senators for a $140,000 loan from the Student Senate as a result of the feeble system's budget problems.
If everything the board is requesting is passed, campus fees will increase by $2 next semester.
Am I crazy, or does this sound a lot like the creation of the national deficit by our very own U.S. federal government?
Let's see ... they spend more
KANSAN STAFF
Adam P. Lyddane
Editors
ASHLEY MILLER
Editor
VIRGINIA MARGHEIM
Managing editor
ROBERT ALLEN
News editor
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
the transportation board claims it will pay off the loan during the next three years, so does this mean the student will receive a payback for their increased campus fees as well? I don't think so.
If the system does not work then either kill it or reform it, but let's not feed a plant with dead branches just so some lazy students from Naismith and Oliver can catch a ride one block up to campus.
Topeka sophomore
Campus ... Joan Birk
Phillip Brownlee
Editorial ... Paul Todd
Associate editorial ... Craig Lang
Feature ... Tom Elkinson
Associate sports ... Bill Potella
Photo ... Andy Rutledge
Graphics ... Hugh Musser
Special sections ... Karen Warner
Jen Humphrey
Wire ... Tara Treynor
On-line coordinator ... Thea Pessett
All letter and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansas newsroom, 111 Stauffer Flint Hall. The Kansas reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Paul Todd, editorial editor, or Craig Lang, associate editorial editor, at 864-4810.
Furthermore, I refuse to purchase a bus pass for many legitimate reasons: the continuous traffic is bothersome, the noise is annoying, and the fumes are suffocating.
By reforming the KU bus system, we might be able to transport those students and staff who really need it up to campus, while at the same time decreasing the number of buses and the costs.
I would rather see my increased campus fee go toward
**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.
**Guest columns:** Should be double-spaced, typed and fewer than 700 words. The writer must be willing to be photographed for the column to run.
HEATHER NIEHAUS Business manager
Business manager
KONAN HAUSER
Retail sales manager
JAY STEINER
Sales and marketing adviser
JUSTIN KNUPP
Technology coordinator
narrowing Jayhawk Boulevard, creating new bike and walking paths and eliminating the bus traffic all together.
No, I don't think I am crazy, and I also do not think the transportation board's proposal will work.
Campus mgr ... Keren Gerch
Regional mgr ... Kelly Connelye
National mgr ... Mark Ozikmez
International mgr ... Mark Ozikmez
Production mgr ... Rachel Cahill
Heather Valler
Marketing director ... Heather Valler
Public Relations dir. .. Angie Adanson
Creative director .. Ed Kowalaki
Senior programmer ... Ken Holmes
Internship/oo-mgr T.J. Clark
Business Staff
money than they bring in, acquire loans to compensate for it, and increase taxes.
How to submit letters and guest columns
HUBIE
By Greg Hardin