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Show ...,_ ACCESS SUU's bureaucratic rituals ,I "Access" is a recurring column through which students, Jacu/Jy or staff may comment on issues of concern to our readership. To submit to "Access, " contact Dave Barratt, our op inion director, by phone at .586-7795, orb-ye-mail at barrattd@student.suu.edu Today's column is by PHIL BRAUNBERGER, a seni,0r English mcl}or from Sandy, Utah. Most of the time J consider myself lucky for ending up at SUU. For a relatively little money 1 get to take interesting classes from teachers who have t ime to address my academjc concerns. SUU is an environment where J can LL5Ually foCtL5 on learning. However, I have a problem with cen ain rigid, time-consuming , and wasteful, bureaucratic rituals that SUU students and teachers must go through. Herc 's one (hut hy no means the only) example of how silly the bureaucracy here can sometimes he: last year a professor advised m'e to take his Basic Spanish Conversation class. To ins ure that a ll students in t he cJass only spoke a ver y· remedial level of Spanish, the teacher required everyone to get his permission prior to registering. Fine wit h me . I picked up a yellow pennission form at the Registrar's Office. My teacher s igned it before the fi rst c lass started, and I wok It hack to the Sbarwan Smith Center right after. Then I stood in line for 10 minutes, thinking that o nce I showed the lady at the registration desk that magic yeJJow paper w ith my instruc to r's magic b lue signature, she'd p unch a spell into that magic keyboard of hers and I'd be in the class. No problem ! rught? Wro ng. The class had just reached its 30 s tllden t li mit. And because it was on the yellow fom, , the blue magic of my teacher's signature was only powerfu l enough to give me permission to register for the class. Now that the section was full , I needed the magic pink section closed fo n n. Never mind the fact that the teacher had asked m e to take h is class. Never mind that he had just barely seen how hig the class was and signed me in anyway. Yellow forms just weren't the proper talismans for section closed spells. So I left the Sharwan Smith Center and climbed a hill and three flights of stairs to that great mountaintop where the language and litcmrure offices arc located . Once again I asked my teacher for chc blue mark of approval that the Rcgistar's Office venerated so. ''iPOr quc?" he ask ed . J told him all the reasons w hy the pink form was a necessary ingredient for the let-this-s tudcnt-into-thecloscd-scction incantation . "Esta ridk ulo," he said, shaking his head . I nodded and climbed hack down to st~nd in line. Now I ask why it has to he so ridiculo us. Why arc we wasting stude nts', t each ers' a nd registar e mployees' tim e w ith petty paperwork rituals? Don't we all have better things to do? U N IVERSITY JQld~~~ 01.RECllNG STAFF ANO DESK PHONE NmIBERS: Editor Glenn H:ih cnnan 586- 77~0 Sports Editor D.W. Ando:rson $65-8443 Almonac: Edhor Ann3 Turpin 865·1!226 Ad M.anagcr Maggie Neisen 586-7758 Ad Representative Kyle Case 5811-7758 Ad Des igner Jansen G undcrson 586-7758 Facuh y Advisers L.arry Baker 586-7751 Morris Brown 865-855/i Associ3tc Edi tor Chad Lamb 51!6- 7759 Opinion Oircc:tor DnviJ llart:111 586-7759 Photo Edito r John Cucrtlcr 586-7750 Copy Editor Russell Miller 586- 7750 Focus Editor Kcl Luken 58(-.. J992 Ass't Focus Editor Kami Ega n ~86-1992 Arts Editor Brandon Bcv3n !!65·8443 SENIOR STAFF W RIT ERS ANO RE PORTERS' DESK 5 86-7757, 586-5488 Thi: Umv,:rliHf /oun-1,,/ .is puhlish..:1.I every Mom.lay 2nJ ThursJuy nf Lhc ac:adcm ic )'i.::ar hy 11nJ for Lhc :i,tuJcm hoJy of Souchcm Utah UOl\' CJSlly, h n:ccivcs: 11Jv,scmcm (rum thi.: un,vcrs u r 's- cummun 1c.tt lllrt Ji:1,:mnh:nt JnJ fo un the un1wrs1,y 11Jmh1l$tratiun. Th..: vll..:w.s anJ urinion.s cxrn.:Ssc, in the Journal ~re \hos..: ul m,J,,.,,,111al writer$ anJ Jo nm n1..-c1Js.s1n ily rdll'.CI the vkw,s ul the in5t1tuu11n, lacuh y, staff m st mknt h1.1...ly in ,:..:ncr.al, An 1111$1)1.ncJ ..:,titurtal J ir1.--ctly -;ihoVI.' is t he upm,on uf th.: Univcrrsiry {uurnul .a.s .. sm,ck cmny. Ll'ucrs w the- "',Jitur must he lY/lCJ anJ 1ncluJi;- Lhe.namc .tml phon..: n umhcr. On y the mime \•.il ll he pnntc,1 NJmcs \\'I ll nu1 l,c wl1hhe J unJcr ;any c i·rcumst.1ncc111nJ the c1,.litur l'cscrvcs cJ hin,: pnv1l1t~cs. L..-ucrs must be suhmith:J hy :i p,m. Thuts~l:ays for incluslnn'" MunJ..ay cJhiuns. ;anJ hy S r .m. Mc,nda)'S fo r ThlHStby cJ1uon.s. Crievanct'~'! Anr inJh•iJu.al whh ;a ~ricv:illCC ,1~.&inn the fih rmul s huulJ Jircct such rmhlcm Hrst t0 the l.-dltt1r. If umcso V\.'tl, th.at ~m:vanc.c .)houlJ then ht· Jin.:ctcJ to the f:1cuhy uJv1s1:r($J. U.sull unresolved, the >:,m.:v.rni:c shuulJ h1; J lrcctcJ w the: /uurnul Su:crin~ Cummin-.:.i.:1 whlch is chain:.J h>· Dr", Fr.tin C . Pa.&r..son. :iK~-7"7 1 Unfruiilr /uumo/: O fllccs on SUU Techn11l11~y 8u1IJ1n~ 00.l. Mail a, SUU Bux \1.1~4. CL-Jar Ci1y. U1•h K47l0 F/\X IH,1 :iKf>.54K7. E-ma,l •dJr<ss; juurn,l(huu.L-<lll 0 l·~IIHF.!) .ll~ Jl~C:)'<;l.l1 l1'Al'f.Jt.,l'!·F;\~K Kf.~c\'t:l.f.TII~~ ( <WY. ~ 11-tasf= WHo WE. Slc.K oF f<EAC71NG ~ ~ ,LIES> t-.ND Pa..rr,cs . MOLLY IVINS COMMENTARY The ,nini,nu,n wage debate Amid the mountains of evidence o f increasing economic inequality in tl:us country, it might be useful to focus on the solutions rather than the problem . . Herc's the bottom line: Low-wage w orkers in this country-working 40 hours a week , 52 weeks a year- make $10,700 a year, which is $2,900 hclow the poverty level for a family of three. On Sept. 5, Sen. Edward Kenne dy offered a minjmum-wage increase as an amendment to the bankruptcy hill , anno uncing in a n ews release: "These Americans arc just o ne paycheck aw ay fro m ba nkruptcy . If face d with divo rce, an unc._xp ectc d h ea lth c ris is or a no ther famil y emergency, these families often have no option hurto declare bankmptcy." Kennedy offers a minimum-wage increase that would get workers up to $6.1 5 an hour by the end of the century. He is ih the happy position of hcing able ro say, "I told you so." Kennedy wrote and passed the last increase, w hich took effect in 1996 and 1997, amid the usual cries from the usual suspects-the Business Ro und Table , Se n. Phil Gramm , che Natio nal Restaurant Association and others-that doom and chaos would result. AJI the hoary arguments were trotted out: Small businesses would he driven to the brink, massive layoffs would result, inflation wouJd spiral out of control, etc., etc. One can forgive Kennedy his polite, senatorial . har-dc-har-har about this because, as he points out, "Since the last increase, inflation has gone down. Unemployment has dro pped . Job s have b een added , not lost, in low-wage industries. Retail employment has been growing almost one-third faster in the 11 months since the last increase than it djd the year before. 517,000 new retail jobs have been added since the wage increased to $5.15 last September." Etc., etc. from his side, all of it hacked up by government stats and, indee d, by reports from small business itself. B.ut .th.c .Kennedy am e ndment h asn ' t: cbe. proverbial snowball's chance for political reasonsthe pleasing economic good sense of it making no difference at a time when Our Nation's Capital is foc used on som ething else-so let us consid er some other solutions that apply here. While Washington dithe rs, th e people arc already at work on a solut ion. The living wage campa ign is o n e of th e most under-re p o rte d movements in the United States (sorry, the media arc husy with something else). Unions, community groups and rcHgious organizations have won living· wage campaig ns in Ba ltim o re, Los Angeles, Milwaukee and New York (and bus te d out in Houston, swamped by a ton of business money). The premise is simple; You srnrt hy targeting city governme.m with a requirement that any fi rm ho lding a serv ice contrac t w it h t h e c ity pay enough (with gradual increases over about three years) to get their worke rs o ut of poverty. It's a concept, no? Jt's a sort of roundahout way of increasing the minimum wage because as city contractors bump up, other local employers arc fo rced co fo llow . Same concept as the Davis-Bacon Act, so loathed by the right w ing, w hich o bliges governm ent contractorno meet tbc prevailing wage. This re markable g rass-roots ca mpa ig n is chronicled in The Living Wage: Building a Fai1· Economy, by Robert Pollin and Stephanie Luce. It's a fairly technical hook (what DO economists do for fun ?) and far from a rah-rah account -- it's almost tediously dispassionate. But the authors do have enough sense to realize just how important the movement is. An alert reader called the other day to propose stilJ ano ther partial solutio n fo r inequality: a maximum wag e, t o a pply t o those ob scene takeover deals in w hich the top execs collect tens of millions in exchange for firing thousands of workers. I like it. .Molly luins. is.a natjonaJly. sy1.ulicat/!d column isl.. _ |