Real campus issues

Taking action against toilet paper rolls at the university

While reading the profiles of the ASUH election candidates presented in the April 2 issue of Ka Leo, I was distressed to find none of the candidates in the general election had any sort of strong stance about any issues.

Mike Manu, as explained in that issue, believes in fighting for students' rights, promoting diversity, and improving the university's academic status.

What these are definitely the sort of priorities a senator should espouse, don't' those same sentiments apply for all candidates?

I mean, what candidate would, in their right mind, campaign for booting out selected minorities, further exploiting students, and degrading our university's academic status even more?

Where are the issues of today's campus? Where are the debates? Where is the heated friction between factions?

Though examination of Senate minutes, one will find that most motions pass with very little objections, probably due to their common sense nature.

For example, Senate Bill 37-98, a decision to lower Ka Leo advertising expenditures to $147.50, pass with 21 ayes, zero nays, and zero abstentions.

Snice there seems to be little disagreement among senators, I wonder if we could downside the ASUH Senate. If the attendance issues brought up at the March 30 executive committee are any indication, there isn't too much going on that can't be handled by half the current number of senators.

A this meeting, just before the April 2 elections, ASUH Vice President Mike Manu addressed the problem of attendance. Then-senator and current president-elect Stanford Togashi was absent at the January 12, February 9, and February 23 Senate meetings. Also absent from that very meeting were president C. Mamo Kim, Treasurer Tracie Matsuo, and then-senator and presidential candidate Watson Robinson.

These facts reinforce my theory we don't really need all those senators in the first place. The student body would save almost $12,000 a year in stipends by cutting the Senate size from thirty to fifteen.

As it stands, it's hard to see how the senate can justify having twenty Arts and Sciences senators, plus another ten for the other colleges when they all come to unanimous or near unanimous decisions. Besides the greatest problems UH faces lie outside the scope of the senate's powers.

The budget deficit, considered the greatest problem, is controlled by the state legislature, but the only document the senate could issue to protest the recommendation to cut the European Languages and Literatures department was Resolution 07-98. This appeal to the governor, university administration, and media listed several reasons, but he senate had no power to guarantee its acceptance.

Since it is doubtful the senate would vote to downsize itself, we should at least justify the senate's size by debating some REAL issues. Seeing that the big problems our university faces are largely beyond the jurisdiction of the senate, we should instead focus on the more readily resolvable enigmas.

The minutiae of campus, the sorrows that affect only a few overtly sensitive individuals, have proven to be a much more exciting field for reforms than the largely unsolvable budget quandary.

Ass announced in the April 20 issue, the forces that have worked so hard for a whole year to rename Porteus Hall have succeeded.

This encourages me because I've been hoping for someone to start up a Toilet Paper Uniformity Committee for quite some time now. This, I feel, is one of the most disturbing obstacles to having a high-quality campus. Unlike most Hawai`i schools, the majority of UH's buildings use toilet paper rolls in their bathrooms.

Frighteningly, those that were brought up in public grade schools where tissue-like squares were used are forced to confirm to the state-determined standard of the roll.

Not only are they found in elementary schools, these same toilet paper squares are used in the restrooms of the Honolulu Zoo and the Wa`ahila Ridge Park at the top of St. Louis Heights.

There are compelling reasons for switching to squares. In my grade school on the Mainland, kids used to place an end of a roll into the toilet (while it was still connected to the dispenser), and flush.

The cyclonic effect would result in great lengths of tissue being sucked into the sewer system, thereby wasting taxpayers' money.

The university may not have this problem, but we do have to worry about larceny. The public parks use squares because it immensely reduces to8ilet papers losses and theft. Whereas rolls are easily stolen and installed in private homes, perhaps even sold on the black market, the I haven't seen the squares' dispensers anywhere else.

This situation should be speedily resolved because, as Abraham Lincoln put it, "a house divided against itself cannot stand." Hawaii's school system cannot endure forever half square and half roll.

I'm sure if I act offended enough someone in the ASUH Senate would listen. The building formerly known as Porteus stands as a great example of how, with enough perseverance, any asinine idea can be carried out.

If C. Mamo Kim's term was characterized by that breakthrough, a strong stance on the toilet paper issue would definitely give President-elect Togashi a notable section in the list of recent senate accomplishments.