4A
Thursday, November 9, 1995
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
THE ISSUE: STUDENT GOVERNMENT
Students should get involved
Only two KU students greeted the student senators
who hoped to conduct a Student Senate town hall meeting in Ellsworth Hall last Thursday night.
Apparently, when it comes to voicing their opinions to senators, some KU students think their ideas won't make a difference or that their concerns will fall on deaf ears.
If this is the stereotype that exists, efforts should be made to change it. Senate should increase publicity about its efforts to better represent the student body. And students should take advantage of opportunities such as residence hall town meetings to express their approval or criticism of Senate's actions.
Because Senate is responsible for allocating money collected from student activity fees, the average KU student will be affected by decisions made in Senate meetings. Therefore, if students want their concerns aired in Senate, they
University students should make an effort to learn about Student Senate and voice their concerns to it.
Additionally, senators should make every effort to be approachable. The Senate office, located in the Kansas Union, should be a place where any KU student would feel welcome.
Making Senate an organization that unites students with the senators who seek to represent them should continue to be a priority. Students should attend town hall meetings. Senate should give them good reasons to go.
need to talk to the people who have a vote.
AIMEE WITTMAN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD.
If senators don't know where students stand on University issues, they only can make educated guesses about what would best meet the needs of the student body. But when students offer specific viewpoints and concrete suggestions, senators can vote accordingly.
THE ISSUE: PARKING
Parking garages best idea yet
A parking permit purchased at the parking department allows the holder to park in the color zone designated by that permit. However, often one can park in these zones only after lengthy hunting for open spots. Often during the day the lots are filled to capacity. Adding another level above the Kansas Union lot and/or the Robinson Center lot would solve problems without interfering with the campus' natural beauty.
Parking garages are the answer to the University of Kansas' parking problems. The KU master plan calls for improvements in parking on campus but does not specify those changes. Construction of safe, convenient parking garages will solve the problems of KU parking better than other alternatives.
Lots above the Union
Adding levels to the Union or Robinson parking lots would provide convenient and safe parking spaces for students,faculty,staff
and Robinson would alleviate not only daily problems with inadequate parking spaces but also would alleviate the parking problems faced during sporting events held at Memorial Stadium and Allen Field House.
The current problems include where to find the money for the construction of these lots and how to build them without interfering with the daily activities of campus.
The parking department owes a service to the students, faculty, and staff who have purchased permits. That service is adequate, convenient parking close to campus. Parking garages would provide that.
KELLY DIETRICH FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
COLLEEN MCCAIN
Editor
DAVID WILSON
Managing editor, news
ASHLEY MILLER
Managing editor, planning & design
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
Editora
News & Special Sections .. Deedra Allison
Editorial .. Heather Lewrens
Associate Editorial .. Tina Fassett
Associate Editorial .. Virginia Margaret
Associate Campus .. Teresa Vazeyz
Associate Camps .. Paul Todd
Associate Teams .. Matt Gates
Associate Sports .. Tom Eckerton
Photo .. Paul Todd
Hockey .. Paul Todd
On Our Coverage .. Tina Fassett
STEPHANIE UTLEY
Business manager
MATT SHAW
Retail sales manager
JAY STEINER
Sales and marketing adviser
JUSTIN KNUPP
Technology coordinator
Sainteen Staff
Shawn Trimble / Kansas
Campus mgr ... Meredith Hornning
Regional mgr ... Tom Daleau
Senior manager ... Michael McDermott
Special functions mgr ... Neesher Nihanee
Production mgr ... Kenny Eason
Messaging director ... Karen Hanauer
Public Relations director ... Botha Gattl
Creative director ... Brian McQuinnicola
Internship/oo-op mgr ... Kelly Commsy
More oversensitivity equals less joy for life
I think Americans have become entirely too thin-skinned.
A walk through the "Stupid Lawsuit" files offers scads of evidence. Our court system is clogged with people filing lawsuits to address what they consider an insult.
The most recent is the threatened lawsuit over the crowd count at the Million Man March. This petty bickering has overshadowed the importance and the dignity of this event. The National Parks Service is not known for regularly matching crowd estimates with organizer's counts. Judging from other independent counts, the service underestimated its count by about the same amount that Farrakhan overestimated his.
In Olathe, there is a court battle concerning a school district's decision to pull a gay-themed book from the school libraries. All the posturing, righteously insulted participants seem to have overlooked the fact that a librarian testified the book hadn't been checked out in 10 years.
America's over sensitivity extends to other realms. Name an ethnic group, religion or gender (white, Christian males included) and it has a beef about some insult that is inconsequential. I get sick of the search for victimhood.
It saddens me that the discussion of consuming issues and the search for solutions can be sidetracked by such inconsequential matters.
At the top of my teeth-grinders is the brutalization of the American language by political correctness. Words like chairperson and spokesperson are clumsy and ugly. Womyn gets into the bounds of temper tantrum. Terms like African
I know my thoughts on many of these issues will be discounted because of my skin and my gender.
COLUMNIST
American and Asian American serve only to divide. Why should Black be offensive if white isn't? What's wrong with being proud to be a plain old American? You don't like being an American — nobody is keeping you here. Try to find someplace else as tolerant.
The term Native-American especially bothers me because I consider myself a native American. I was born here, too. American-Indian would seem the more appropriate term.
Mascots are a huge sensitivity issue right now. TL grant that the Washington Redskins is every bit as offensive as several other racist slurs this paper won't allow me to print. But team names like the Braves and the Chiefs are no different than the Vikings and the Yankees.
Over sensitivity is killing us. Murders, beatings and violent acts from seemingly harmless differences of opinions occur at an alarming rate. I fear for my life on my bike because someday somebody will decide I am moving too slow and run me down.
Teams want symbols that stand for winning qualities. There is no conspiracy to belittle a group. The accompanying cartoonish caricatures, rituals and slogans belong to the world of sports alone. The tomahawk chop has as much to do with Indian culture as the wave does with surfers and waving the wheat does with farmers. To say otherwise is just looking for a reason to
be offended.
The American education system panders to the thin-skinned. In Wichita, teachers are not allowed to fail students because it might damage their self-esteem. Grades are inflated because it is not worth the trouble to give students what they actually deserve. Too many lawsuits have proved this. Courses like Western Civilization are turned into a muddle because it is discrimination if you leave any group's representative literature out.
Maybe I'm just too sensitive.
Oversensitivity sanitizes all the fun and color out of our world. When Power Rangers are the big costume for Halloween and gathering candy the main goal, it seems a little absurd to call it Satan's holiday. Maybe that is what you will teach your kids, but I'm telling mine that it is a good day to pretend you are whatever you want to be.
Jake Arnold is a Lawrence senior in Jour
nialism.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Embezzled money story needs follow-up
I read with interest your Oct 31 article about the budget shortfall of KU on Wheels. Several years ago the Kansan ran a series of articles about KU on Wheels, and the focus of those articles was also budgetary. However, they talked more about how the then-director of KU on Wheels had embezzled vast amounts of money from the program. If my memory serves me, the amount embezzled was about $375,000. Possibly I missed the follow-up to those stories; was any money ever recovered? If not, why not?
City should work with KU on Wheels
John Youngbauer Assistant Director search and Training Center for Independent Living
Three weeks ago two members of Environs and I attended a meeting with Mike Wildgen, Lawrence city manager, and two other city planners to discuss alternative transportation in Lawrence. The city, surprisingly, was optimistic.
Lawrence, which has been somewhat daunted by KU's independent operation, was open to our ideas.
The verdict was that if the city, the students and the University cooperated in the formation of a comprehensive bus system, it would work. These three could come together as a transportation authority that could devote itself to regulating a partly federally funded system. It would be a transportation board responsible for its actions; otherwise it would lose funds.
We (the University of Kansas) were close to setting up a city-wide bus system — not one that just stopped at various apartment complexes and the University but also at Wal-Mart, downtown and other locations. The University of Iowa in Iowa City has a similar plan which has been running like greased lightning for years, and it's free.
But because of poor management of KU on Wheels and the resulting strapped financial situation, the city cannot engage in setting up a comprehensive bus system. Despite repeated fee increases during the past few years (37 percent since last year), KU on Wheels and the transportation board can't seem to get their act together.
They're forcing the students to suffer the consequences. The students are continually held responsible financially for the negligence of KU on Wheels and the transportation board, and now we are being denied a needed citywide bus system. This is unacceptable.
Matthew Caldwell
Lawrence junior
Minority Affairs newsletter disturbing
Reading the "One Community" newsletter distributed by the Office of Minority Affairs was a very enlightening experience.
In one article, freshman Sean Fradieu wrote: "Anyway, I don't want anyone to think I hate white people, because I don't. But I LOVE black people!"
Great. Sean, are you saying that you prefer Black people over white people? Are you saying that your preference is based on the (gasp) color of the person's skin? Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
System specialist Department of Mathematics University of Kansas
English-only bills exclude immigrants and minority kids
Hablas Español? Parlez-vous Francais? Well, if you're living in the United States, I hope not because non-English speakers aren't welcome here — at least not in Newt Gingrich's and Bob Dole's eyes.
Currently, the federal government finances bilingual and English as a second language classes for an estimated 2.4 million eligible children. On average, eligible children spend 2.7 years enrolled in these classes. They were created to help assimilate the English language into many non-Eng-
STAFF COLUMNIST
lish speaking homes with the idea that not knowing English should not prohibit some 32 million residents from obtaining an education or important information.
Quebec's close vote on succession from Canada, with bilingualism fueling the fire, has some pretty important people shaking in their zapatos. Gingrich says Congress probably will vote on a measure next year that would make English the official language of the United States. Gingrich believes that the vote in Quebec should warn Americans about the threat that bilingualism poses to unity in the United States. Bob Dole embraces this same idea.
Rep. Bill Emerson, R-Mo., is sponsoring a bill that would declare English the national language of the United States and ban the use of tax dollars to print forms in languages other than English.
Because Hispanics will make up close to 25 percent of the U.S. population by the middle of the next century, they are the main target of this debate. My question is: What debate? Until now, I thought English was the national language — maybe it's not the law, but it sure is the understanding that in the United States, English is the most spoken language.
Learning a language is hard, as many of us know, because we have had to fulfill a language requirement in order to graduate. People immigrating to this country face these difficulties, but 10 times more. We shouldn't deny them the right to learn about political policies that affect them in a country where they not only pay taxes, but also want to be included so badly that they have given up their own countries to be here.
Since its beginning, the United States has fought with the concept of "E pluribus unum" — from many, one. And now, a fear is rapidly spreading throughout the homes of patriotic Americans that we somehow are going to lose our country because we print documents dealing with important information in languages other than English so that everyone can understand. Why is it so wrong to make sure children, who are already behind in the English language, don't get behind in biology or other areas of education? Or how can we deny valuable information to people struggling to be a part of this country? They will learn English, not by force, but by "ganas" — "wish."
Amy McVey is an Olathe Junior In Journalism.
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.
All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansas news room, 111 Staffer Flint Hall. The Kansas reserves the right to edit, out of length or reject submissions for any questions; call Heather Lawn, editorial page editor, or Sarah Morrison, associate editorial editor, at 864-4810.
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