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Thursday, November 10, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Opinion
Bush manages a victory; now comes the hard part
The big question of 1988, who will be the country's president, was answered Tuesday. But the questions the country must deal with now may linger for a while yet.
Why was Michael Dukakis, who once held commanding leads in the polls, so thoroughly defeated in the Electoral College? What are the implications for U.S. politics when a candidate can win so convincingly after hiding his vice presidential candidate, dodging debates and news conferences and campaigning in the most negative of ways from the start?
on friendships and political ties.
To further amend for evils of the Reagan years, Bush must seek out women and minorities for top positions. Not all the best and brightest minds in Washington are white males. The bill will modify
paigning in the most negative or way of wanting. Such questions, and many others, will keep the political science professors busy analyzing and second-guessing until the next election and beyond. In the meantime, George Bush has to figure out how he's going to heal whatever wounds the campaign has caused and start leading in a way the majority of the American people seem to think he's capable of.
Finally, Bush needs to start considering how he will modify his goals to accommodate the goals of the Democratic-controlled Congress. Without the claim to a mandate that his predecessor had, Bush is going to need to work closely with Congress to produce effective legislation.
people. His next step should be to start giving his cabinet posts to competent people. The multiple scandals of the Reagan administration show the dangers of awarding such posts based on friendships and political loyalty.
President-elect Bush set the right tone in his acceptance speech Tuesday. He spoke with respect of his opponent and properly avoided speaking of any sort of mandate.
Having to deal with an unfriendly Congress and a plethora of domestic problems, Bush has his work cut out for him. He has shown he has what it takes to win an election, but the world will wait to see if he can answer the big question for 1989: Does he have what it takes to lead the nation? Let's hope he does.
The curriculum committee is going to discuss a much-needed mandatory course on racism. Proposed by Concerned Faculty and Faculty Against Institutional Racism in conjunction with students from the United Coalition Against Racism, the course would provide an analysis of race and racism as well as cultural achievements of people of color.
Racism class should be mandatory
Michael Merschel for the editorial board
Other Voices
Racism is a significant phenomena in society and at the University, and the course would increase student understanding of this issue. The course is essential to any liberal arts education.
To its credit, the curriculum committee already has recommended that the proposal be instituted as an optional course. However, unless it approves the course as a requirement for all undergraduates, the class will be nothing but another ineffective token gesture.
The course must be mandatory.
The course must be mandatory.
If the course is optional, it is unlikely that students who most need to be educated about racism will choose to take it.
The university of obesing whether or
to be educated and students should not have the luxury of choosing whether or not to be educated about racism or other cultures. The University does not give students the choice about whether or not to learn a foreign language or to achieve a certain level of writing skill. To enforce these requirements and to make the course on racism optional would reflect the skewed priorities under which the University administration operates.
under which the university has a role. In order to combat racism at the University, structural changes need to be made. The University has consistently made excuses for low minority enrollment and the dismal percentages of minority faculty. In the proposed mandatory class, the faculty and administration have an opportunity to make a meaningful change. UCAR has been demanding that such a course be created since the spring of 1987.
There are no acceptable excuses.
The Michigan Daily University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Mich.
News staff
News Star
Todd Cohen ... Editor
Michael Horak ... Managing editor
Julie Adam ... Associate editor
Joseph Wade ... News editor
Michael Merschel ... Editorial editor
Noel Gerdes ... Campus editor
Craig Anderson ... Sports editor
Scott Carpenter ... Photo editor
Dave Eames ... Graphics editor
Jill Jeffs ... Arts/Features editor
Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Greg Knipp...Business manager
Debra Cole...Retail sales manager
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Linda Prokop...National sales manager
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Sarah Hinder...Marketing manager
Brad Lehart...Production manager
Michelle Garland...Asst. production manager
Michael Lehman...Classified manager
Jeanne Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
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 columns are the writer's opinion and do not necessarily reflect the
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Honest, professor,the computer did it
I finished writing the assignment on the word processor at 11:45 p.m. It was due the next morning. Just before printing it I decided to switch a few paragraphs. I thought I hit the button to "move."
move.
The next minute I was staring at the screen, baffled. The screen resembled a jigsaw puzzle. For the next three hours, I tried to piece the whole thing together. And eventually I succeeded. Everything looked all right, except that a few 'a', e's, and some other letters came out in italics. And that's the best I could salvage on that assignment.
I wasn't alone in my anguish
or severed he began to panic. He had spent almost five days on the paper. He had to make his deadline.
that's the best I can do.
I never could decipher how that happened. I decided then that I would go back to using a typewriter.
Hurriedly, he called the word processor's software headquarters long-distance in Massachusetts to get help. While talking to the experts there, George fidgeted some more with his keyboard, trying to retrieve what he had lost.
I wasn't alone in my hag. My friend George had an assignment day Monday by 5 p.m. to 10 a.m. he was typing into his word processor for the bibliography for his 18-page notebook, but accidentally hit the wrong button on his keyboard. The screen read: "Document invalid or severely damaged."
trying to restrain.
He now tried anything. Nor did he make the medicine. His research paper, its footnotes, its bibliography — all were wiped clean at the erroneous touch of a key.
Rias Mohamed
Guest columnist
George worked on the same paper, beginning from the start, after saying thanks to his professor, who extended the deadline.
to the typewriter.
About that time, Macintosh computers were being offered at discounted rates, the offer too tempting to spurn. I settled for a Macintosh.
George said he had gotten wiser since the incident. He said that if precautions had been taken, things would not have gone wrong. The ones in use to take these precautions, he said.
s
I then began to question my decision to go back to the typewriter.
The computer soon proved to be a handy instrument, until I wrote a 20-page paper for a seminar class. I finished the paper, edited, paginated and made a printout. Everything was perfect. It then made a laser printout and submitted it.
The next class my professor told me, "Your paper doesn't read at all." The professor gave the paper back to me, and to, my horror, I found that the top and bottom lines on every page were deleted. I told him it was "a computer problem."
sarcastically. But he understood the problem, and he let me correct it. (My good luck: No points were taken off.)
he selected a loud man who called out, "Computer! Isn't that a fine invention?" he said
Not long ago, my roommate Sean wrote a paper, for which he used my computer. He had almost finished the paper, when suddenly the screen read: "Error has occurred. Document erased. Sorry." His entire paper was lost and couldn't be retrieved. His situation was similar to that of George's. Sean never made the deadline; he had to work on that paper one more time.
I tend to think when deadlines are crucial — when failure to meet a deadline means an F grade, when a late submission of an assignment can turn an A or a B into a C or D — the prudent choice should be the old-fashioned typewriter and not the word processor.
word processor.
When George missed his deadline, he said he cursed the word processor, using "four-letter expletives." But two days later, in a less emotional frame of mind, he said it's "truly a godsend if you use it right."
When Sean missed his deadline, he said he wanted to fling my computer out of the window. In Sean's case, there was no way he could have taken more precautions. He had done everything right.
more precautions. I never use the word processor sometimes. But every time I use it, I wonder if word processors understand professors who give such warnings about missing deadlines: "Don't come and tell me, 'I had a problem with the computer.'"
Rias Mohamed is a Madras, India graduate student in journalism.
I have always believed that the basic freedoms are among the most precious rights given to the people of the United States. And when subjects come along to challenge these freedoms, I welcome them, knowing the United States I know is protected by the Constitution. In short, I am not one to censor the people. However, my belief has come into conflict because of a recent article in the Kansan. I find that what is constitutionally right is standing against what is truly right.
against what is truly right.
On Nov. 7, the Kansan sent an article on the death of a KU freshman. In the light of this troubleship, all the world owed him was peace. The dignity and grace of this young boy was stripped from him in the article. He died as a result of auto-erotic asphyxiation. It sounds gross, but that boy, in his last mention here on earth, did not need his name matched with his ugly fate. If the "crime" needed to be discussed, it should have been done in another place instead of this boy's final story. If the boy's death needed to be announced, let the cause of death be asphyxiation. But for everything that was right, it was wrong to let the two come together.
Once again, I believe that U.S. citizens need to be informed. And I believe it is the job of a
newspaper to do just that. But Monday's article battled what is right. It pitted a distorted freedom of the press against something I would hope to be held a little more precious — humanity. With so much youth still in me, death is my biggest fear. But to see a peer, even one I did not know, treated so callously, not only adds to my fear of death, but makes me question the basic heart of this world. I thought it had one. A boy's life passed, and the Kansan treated it as little more than a piece of gossip.
little more than the answer. The arsenal was a headline short of the Kansan Enquirer. The Kansan lacked humanity and heart Monday. It owes that boy's family an apology. And it owes that boy more. He is dead. Withholding the reasons, his life is over at 18. His school should have let him go peacefully, and his school newspaper should be ashamed for not doing that.
Kristin Blocker
Missing heart
Kristin Blocker Glen Ellyn, ill., sophomore
Recently a number of people have complained that a fee for a lockout key in the University residence halls seems unreasonable and that it is just a way to steak blood from poor college students, who control some reason beyond their control, locked themselves out of their rooms. I was intrigued. I am a desk assistant at GSP-Corbin, so I decided to seek data. I checked the files of 100 residents. On an average, they checked out keys 1.82 times for the semester. It would seem that two free check-outs are ample and fair.
Two times a charm
air.
Then consider the $5 dollar fee. To get your car unlocked, for instance, you have to find a phone, call a locksmith or mechanic, and wait 20
re
r i n i n p e s s
s i l
a t e n e u s
i r
minutes. Then you have to fork over an average of $20 dollars. Five dollars seems very generous.
of $20 dollars. Five dollars seems very generous.
I think we will find that when it is important enough, residents will learn — another human trait.
Gwendolyn T. Lietzen Kansas City, Kan., freshman
Insensitive reporting
The death of an 18-year-old is certainly not an easy topic to write about especially when the cause of death is accidental. However, it seems that there are correct and incorrect ways to report the untimely death of a young college freshman. The Kansan did not choose the correct way to report the death of KU freshman Thomas P. Lewis Jr. in Monday's Kansan.
P. Lewis Jr. in attorney.
The Kansan story was started with good intentions, but by the middle of the story it was difficult to read plain reading. Why turn a story need not be more than an expanded obituary into sensationalized tabloid gossip? Does the Kansan staff really need to expose the details of the death of a young student by delving into his private life? Do Kansan readers really need a lecture from a KU professor on how to conduct oneself safely in private?
conduct oneself safely.
Is this really how Thomas Lewis would have liked to have been remembered by his fellow student body? It seems that the Kansan has lost all compassion for the students that it is supposed to serve.
Buck Taylor Chicago junior Mike Killeen St. Louis senior
BLOOM COUNTY
THOROUGHLY DIGESTED BY A RIGGED, PURCHASED SYSTEM...AND DEPOSITED BEHIND ON THE AMERICAN SIDEWALK OF LIFE.
by Berke Breathed