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Friday, February 3, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Jayhawk basketball teams deserve respectable fans
The eyes of the nation Wednesday night watched the Jayhawk basketball team play the Missouri Tigers at Allen Field House on ESPN. But they got to see more than a basketball game. They learned that KU students know how to cuss. Loudly. On national TV.
class library. On national TV.
At recent basketball games, some fans have reacted to unfavorable game situations with shouts of obscene language.
Not so surprising, you may say.
not so surprising, you may say.
Sure, oboxiousness is fun and it has its place; good basketball games need fans that can get riled up. Maybe it was funny the first few times; but there are reasonable limits, and the chanters should know that their actions offend others.
Nobody wants the place to be a library, but college students are supposed to be adults. Is consideration too much to ask?
Our basketball team brought home the national championship last year. They deserve fans that know how to win and how to accept a bad call. They don't need the image these fans and present. Neither does the University. Thousands no doubt were watching on ESPN that night, and many KU fans could not help being ashamed.
To fans who insist on inflicting their unsportmanlike conduct on everyone, if you can't act like adults, maybe you should watch the game on ESPN. Surely others would have loved your great seats, and the University would have loved for them to have those seats.
Julie Adam for the editorial board
Parents can curb teen sex
The Kansas Senate is considering a bill that would take away a legitimate, right of 16, and 17-year old girls.
a legal abortion activist are pushing for a bill that would force girls under 18 to get parental consent to have an abortion.
The measure is worthy in its purpose to inform parents of this medical procedure, as they would any other, but its aim is missing the target. The bill should address children who are missing abortions; 16- and 17-year-olds are not children. They are old enough to decide for themselves whether to have an abortion. A more appropriate age limit is less than 16.
Parents must teach abstinence and maturity at home. The family unit is the most important factor in shaping our young people's values and morals. Parents must be informed about what their children do, and responsible parents will support and guide them.
abortion. I should of commanding young girls to go to their parents after they have gotten pregnant, we must teach our children sexual responsibility. Children who are younger than 16 should not be having sex in the first place.
and guide them.
But the state cannot assume that all families are responsible, caring units. The measure would allow a judge to bypass the consent requirement if the girl feels she cannot go to her parents, but it does not guarantee the judge's sensitivity. The bill carelessly disregards horrific family situations such as abuse and incest, despite its loophole to bypass the requirement.
ment.
By forcing children to face their parents and the consequences of sex, the state is fighting the wrong problem. Teen sex is a more urgent opponent than teen abortions.
Grace Hobson for the editorial board
Other Voices
Drainage ditch won't cease illegal immigration problems
History suggests that fortified barriers seldom stop invading armies or discourage determined people in pursuit of economic or political freedom.
Waging war against drugs and illegal immigration with a four-mile drainage ditch on the U.S.-Mexican border is an act of desperation, with an improbable chance of success.
or political freedom:
On a higher political plane, the U.S. and Mexico should explore investment and free-trade agreements that create job opportunities in Mexico. Both countries would benefit.
Securing our borders with a "buried Berlin Wall" is not what this country is all about.
The Seattle Times
News staff
Julie Adam...Editor
Karen Boring...Managing editor
Jill Jess...News editor
Deb Gruver...Planning editor
James Fuarquar...Editorial editor
Elaine Sung...Campus editor
Tom Stinson...Sports editor
Janine Swiatkowski...Photo editor
Dave Earnest...Graphics editor
Noel Gerdes...Arts/Features editor
Tom Eblen...General manager, news adviser
Business staff
DEBRA Cole...Business manager
Pamela Noe...Retail sales manager
Levin Martin...Campus sales manager
Scott Frager...National sales manager
Michelle Garland...Promotions manager
Brad Lenhart...Sales development manager
Linda Prokop...Production manager
Debra Martin...Asst. production manager
Kim Colleman...Co-op sales manager
Carl Cressler...Classified manager
Jeanne Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
tracing
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Regents Center serves others, too
A Jan. 27 Kansan editorial - based on opinion expressed in a column in the Wichita Eagle-Bacon - accused the University of Kansas of "ignoring the other Regents institutions to benefit its satellite campus."
It is, of course, essential that each Regents school work within and for the system. Equally essential, however, is that we understand how that system is meant to work. In assessing the potential impact of a new Regents Center, we need to know what the center actually is and to examine first-hand our plans for fulfilling KU's mission.
First, KU already has a campus in Kansas City — the University of Kansas Medical Center. The present Regents Center is not a satellite campus of the University; nor is its envisioned successor to be one. What is planned is a single building of modest size, a replacement for a facility that virtually everyone recognizes is inadequate and increasingly costly to maintain, where for 14 years, we have offered instruction, mostly graduate level, to about 1,500 students a semester.
Further, the new building will allow us to increase that number, but not to the 15,000 mentioned in the Kansan. I might pause to suggest, however, that if that level of need is present, surely it behooves the Regents to con-
This building will accommodate on-site growth of only about 20 percent. By reaching students in
Judith Ramaley
Guest Shot
their workplaces, the advanced telecommunications to be built in will allow us to increase that percentage somewhat. Perhaps we eventually will accommodate 3,000 or 4,000 students, the majority of them employed and taking graduate courses part-time.
colses pat curriculum
The next point is that, beyond the current university is that and support staff, the new center will not have the staff that one expects to find on a campus. Faculty who teach at the Regents Center are assigned to the Lawrence and Med Center campuses and teach there primarily; none is assigned solely to the Regents Center. That will continue to be the case.
that you can teach. Fourth, the Regents Center is what its name says. Although KU faculty teach the majority of the classes, the center is not, as the Kansas suggests, exclusively a KU facility. At the moment, Kansas State University operates Telenet there, through which Fort Hays State University, Emporia State University and Pittsburgh State University also conduct classes. In addition, the latter two schools staff non-telvised classes. Though Wichita State University is not using the center at the moment, it has been
involved in Regents Center programming in the past.
How can a new center be unfair to other Regents institutions? Increasing the telecommunications capacity surely will enhance the possibilities for the center's use by the other schools.
In 1986, the Board of Regents adopted a mission statement for each institution in the system. KU has, among other things, the responsibility to serve the Kansas City area. That means we must cooperate closely with the other Regents schools, and with Missouri schools, to bring education and public service to the people of Johnson and Wyatt counties and surrounding communities if the direction of the Regents is educational programs there and will continue to do so. Collaboration with other Regents schools allows us to provide additional educational opportunities in the Kansas City area at minimal cost to taxpayers, because we combine forces and share resources.
KU is striving to do its part, as a Regents institution, to meet the educational needs, primarily at the graduate level, of one of the most rapidly growing parts of the state. Economic development in the Kansas City area demands greater educational opportunities. The benefit, ultimately, will be for all Kansans. New jobs anywhere in the state help everyone.
Judith A. Ramaley is the Executive Vice Chancellor at the University of Kansas.
Whites also benefit from black history
The winter months are difficult ones for white people. In January we had to endure the birthday celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. On that day a local
television reporter led me out of a cathedral, asked me what I was doing to preserve King's dream and put a microphone in my face. I'm still not sure whether it was a question or an indictment.
Compounding our discomfort with the holiday was an embarrassing statement from the mouth of Ronald Reagan, the great communicator and champion of white society. President Reagan suggested in a television interview — just in time for the holiday he strongly opposed — that modern civil rights leaders overemphasize racial tension in the United States to keep their own agendas alive.
Reagan's statement perfectly capped eight years of civil rights neglect. It also corresponded with the race riot that started when a white Miami police officer shot a young black man.
Miami police officer.
Reagan's statement and the riot soon will be forgotten in mind that police officers still blacks disproportionately, that black churches still burn mystically and that whites still grin knowingly when telling "nigger" jokes. Forget also that black families still earn little more than half what family earnings, that blacks are still twice as likely to be unemployed and that racist graffiti still shows up on professors' doors.
Mark
Dugan
Staff columnist
Staff columnist
But now that we've safely forgotten Martin Luther King Day, they tell us that February is Black History Month. Considering that we're stuck with it, I tried to find some reasons why we should notice it, or maybe even participate in it.
The first thing I found out was that the reason we haven't learned black history is not because there isn't any. It's because the history we've learned traditionally has been taught by and to white people. We learned about the racial policies of Dwight Eisenhower, the Kennedy brothers and Lyndon Johnson, but not about the concrete actions of civil rights activists Marcus Garvey, James Farmer or Stokely Carmichael. We learned about Samuel Morse, but not about Charles Drew, who developed a technique to separate and preserve blood.
separate and be photographed. Moreover, the movies we see about blacks contend a white perspective. The controversial film "Mississippi Burning" depicts two white Hoover-era FBI agents as civil rights heroes. Even two recent movies about South African apartheid are about whites.
parted are about whites.
I discovered further that we whites actually
can benefit from learning history taught from a black perspective. Good education, in fact, depends on it. The more we learn about black history, the more we are able to understand not only the struggle of black people, but also their contributions to society. The more we learn about differences, the more we can appreciate them, not merely tolerate them.
When we realize that racism is a persistent problem and not a mere remnant of stale backwater sadism, we become more able to confront it or to confront injustice, however subtle it may be.
Of course, it's possible for blacks to overestimate the white menace, to misinterpret their own racial anxieties. It's just as possible, and perhaps worse than it was in the 1950s, when women-in-Discrimination today might be less overt than it was 25 years ago, but prejudice remains pervasive.
I don't mean to disparage whites. We're as able as anyone to read black history, to desegregate our social clubs and to refuse to tolerate racial slurs.
Martin Luther King Day is our holiday, and Black History Month is our month as much as anyone's. And with the help of the leaders Ronald Reagan belittles, perhaps we can remember King and others when the winter months are gone.
Mark Dugan is a third-year law student
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed