4
Tuesday, March 30, 1976
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN Comment
Oninions on this page reflect only the view of the writer.
Politics take tact
The Tashef administration is off to an interesting start.
Last week's battle between Tedde Tasheff, student body president, and John House, then Student Senate treasurer, got stude. t politics back on the front page of the Kansan and of his political blog into the show. Maybe it was a silly fight in some ways, but it certainly got a lot of people talking.
WHAT BASICALLY happened was this:
Tasheff introduced a bill that would have eliminated the office of Senate treasurer and given its powers to the StudEx chairman. She said this would make the Senate treasury more subject to Senate control (the treasurer is responsible only to the student body president).
House disagreed and sent a letter to all the senators that said so. He said that the bill hadn't gone through the normal Senate committee structure, that the chairman wouldn't be able to meet that the chairman probably wouldn't be able to handle both jobs anyway.
TASHEFF CALLED the letter a "horrendous misuse of Senate funds," said there wasn't time to go through the committee before the April budget hearings and that the administrative assistant to the treasurer and the student body vice president could take up the slack.
At the Senate meeting, it was announced that House's term had expired that day. House said that it expired April 1 and that he had a paper to prove it. Tasheff said the records said March 24 and that she had a paper to prove it. The Senate voted to hear House's treasurer's report anyway and, after a few hours' debate, defeated Tasheff's bill 55-28.
55-28. NOT good for a president who was elected by more than 500 votes—especially when 50 members of her coalition were elected last month with her.
Tasheff's idea had some merit. There certainly is a need for some sort of office, and this has been the office. The vice president, for example, traditionally spends most of his time
And there probably is a need to make the treasurer's office more responsive to Senate. After all, without the money you might as well not have a Senate.
running around trying to find things to do.
BUT IT IS hard to see handing the treasurer's job over to the StudEx chairman. StudEx chairmen are not only among the busier Senate officers, they also have a tendency to be the president's campaign manager or best friend.
When it comes right down to it, the merit or lack of merit of Tashef's bill didn't have all that much to do with it being defeated.
QUITE A FEW senators voted against the bill because they viewed the whole matter as a personal vendetta. For one thing, Tasheff and House have never gotten along very well. For another, House also is just about the last non-Tasheff appointee left in the Senate office.
THIS, COMBINED with the relatively heavy-handed way Tasheff handled the whole thing, killed the bill's chances. And apparently two weeks isn't enough.
Although personal dislike and philosophical difference weren't the overriding concerns some Senators may have thought they were, you can't help suspecting that somewhere in the back of Jeff's mind they were taken into account.
Tasheff's early introduction of the bill, the confusion over term expiration dates and Tasheff's loud reaction to what was admittedly a serious misuse of Senate funds, all combined to create the impression of a new president trying to throw her weight around. The debate over the usefulness of the bill became sort of a surface scum over the real issue.
EVERYONE IS entitled to a few mistakes, at least as far as politics, journalism and multiple choice tests are concerned. Next time something like this comes before the Senate, maybe both sides will handle the issue on its merits, rather than on personalities.
It would be nice.
By Jim Bates Contributing Writer
American faith in election ritual weakened by political atheism
WASHINGTON — God checked out sometime in the middle of the 19th century, but He didn't take the need for an ominipotent, unifying and integrating principle with Him. Many have remarked, was transferred to the national state.
detest our government while we worship our nationhood. which
tabernacle was obvious enough in Fascist Germany, but not as
IT WAS A relatively easy transmission since God was so frequently associated with the secular power when He was alive. The substitution of the state for the divinity in the
By Nicholas von Hoffman (C) King Features
self-evident in a democracy like our own for we are a people who
Wilderness crucial to man
This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at night or falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and glooming, on sea and continues and islands around round earth rolls. — John Muir.
By JOHN JOHNSTON Contributing Writer
John Muir saw the wilderness as an essential factor in the life of man. Therefore, he dedicated his life to preserving those places in America that could not be rebuilt once they were lost. He was cherished father of today's environmentalists in a time when preservation wasn't looked upon as a virtue. The Sierra Club which he founded is today's most vocal defender of the environment. He became a prominent member of America's national park system and had a direct hand in establishing six of these parks.
John Muir realized his world wasn't static. He realized he was a part of that world and he wanted to experience everything it had to offer. Muir captured in nature the wilderness as the healer of wounds and the nurturer of great thoughts.
He would walk in the woods after his friends had bedded down for the night just to experience silence. He climbed to the tops of pines during blizzards just to feel the snowlakes whisth his face and to sway with his heart. He was aged 74 Muir traveled into the jungles of the Amazon just to see the famous aracn trees.
The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down to earth. The dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature's workshops.
Muir was born in Scotland in 1838 and for the first 11 years of his life the rugged coast of the North Sea was his playground. This was Muir's first experience with his "University of the Wilderness." In 1848 Muir's father moved the family to
America. They built a farm in Wisconsin. There in the deep woods of the American frontier they settled and experienced with the natural world.
Muir was preparing to enter medical school in 1863 when a friend questioned him about a locust blossom. Muir professed his ignorance of the subject but was at once intrigued. He found a craving for the study of botany that was never satisfied.
no synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether a mountain with glaciers or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of gardening—still all is Beauty!
When he saw the Sierra Nevada Mountains for the first time at the age of 50, he realized that the land was in love with Yosemite. He began to study the area intensively as he wandered around the mountains, and Emerson and Thoreau he drew strength from nature, but he went deeper, beyond philological knowledge for the wilderness.
Muir's first book, "The Mountains of California," was published in 1884. The book was also the source of increased momentum for the movement to preserve the nation's forests. Muir had done some writing for San Francisco Century magazine. After his book was published he gained even more notoriety, and Atlantic magazine requested that it be preserved by the American wilderness. Walt Hines Page, Atlantic's editor, said circulation increased markedly because Muir's articles were printed.
He developed a theory that Yosemite Valley had been carved by Ice Age glaciers. Leading geologists ridiculed Muir. They said the floor of the valley had dropped down in the caldera column. But Muir's theory proved to be the correct one.
Our crude civilization engenders a multitude of wants, and lawyers are ever at their fringes. Our leaders are the theater and the church have
been invented, and compulsory education. Why not add compulsory recreation? Our forefathers forged chains of duty and habit, which bind us notwithstanding our boasted freedom and we ourselves in it have been groaning and making medicinal laws for relief. Yet, few think of pure rest or of the healing power of Nature. How hard to pull or shake people out of town! Earthquakes cannot do it, nor is the civilized to pray and ring bells and cower in corners of bedrooms and churches.
In 1892 Muir began his work as an organizer with the founding of the Sierra Club. The group was started to "explore, preserve and restore" mountain regions of the Pacific Coast; to publish authentic information concerning them; to enlist the support and assistance of the government in preserving the forests and other natural features of the Sierra Nevada Mountains." Muir served as the organization from the time of its founding until his death.
Muir won both prestige and converts with his enthusiasm. President Taft consulted with him about the details before Taft, Roy Rosevelt
sought Muir's advice. He spent three days camping with Muir and when the two emerged from the mountains, the president was an affirmed follower. Muir's influence on the presidee has had lasting effect on his work. Muir's favorite cause, the retention of the Yosemite Valley as a part of Yosemite Park. In later years T.R. followed Muir's recommendations in setting aside the Petrified Forest, the Blue Blank Forest and the Grand Canyon as national monuments.
Muir's final battle was the fight to save Hetchy Hetich. The city of San Francisco wanted to dam this beautiful mountain area to serve as a water supply for the city. Muir loved the area because it offered the plan. The city and state refused to budge. The fight took on national proportions as Muir's adversary in the forestry department, Gifford Pinchot, entered the fight. Pinchot believed in utilitarianism. He campaigned against the land, and Muir had blocked his path before in battles to preserve areas for their aesthetic value.
Muir lost the fight and died soon afterward, but his message had been spread widely. He was a great philosopher, his writings, and his
Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Here grow the wallflower and the buttercup, and sit upon your knee, the lockergecko will wake you in the morning. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upsess accessible to mortals, there is no comparable to the mountains.
Muir had drawn his strength from the mountains and he had shared it with his friends and followers. But most important, he was the catalyst that began a movement to preserve wilderness all its forms, so that we too can draw strength from Beauty.
scientific contributions had made him famous. He had received honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Wisconsin and California. In 1908 a track of sequoias in Marin County, Cal., was designated the Muir Woods National Monument. He had played a titan role in the Mt. Rainier Mountain Rainier, Crater Lake, Glacier and Mesa Verde national parks.
is the spiritual essence of our state.
BUT ANOTHER and larger impediment to our recognizing our worship of the state exists. We are a democracy, and we believe democracy is a rational arrangement of human society whereby first there is reasonable debate and then the will of the people is expressed by the election of officeholders in order to carry the popular mandate into practical effect.
National elections are nothing of the sort. The mandate or platform or program is invariably ambiguous to the point of incomprehensibility, and the election of one man as opposed to another is saddom of any practical consequence to most of us.
INSTEAD YOU might regard elections as a way of celebrating mass in honor of our nationhood. It is the supreme symbolic and religious life, the older forms of Christian worship it
It is easy enough to look at the old newsreels of the Nazi rallies in Nuremberg and the current events in Berlin. You see what principle reigns where the dead god once did. Because we attend similar events ourselves in a happy, reverential and patriotic spirit, the character of our Veteran's Day paradises escapes us.
serves to unify, reaffirm and assure the voters in the news.
The political atheism in the air is palpable. The same commentators refer to it as the cynicism and disillusionment in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate. But, other bad guys had also knocked and dreadful politicians. Of our 38 presidents, 10 or fewer can be fairly said to have reached the heights of mediocrity. No, the difference is that in times past, in the church and in the voting booth, there are facelessificious these ceremonies are in terms of their own lives. Now they do.
during the semester only holders of hacks and during the second-phase course付 at La Salle account period held holdings in a semester or $1.99 each for a semester or $1.99 each for a Douglas County and $30 a semester or $20 each for a subscriptions or $2.00 each for subscriptions are $2.00 each, paid through the University.
Editor
Carly Young
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Carl Young
Associate Editor Campus Editor
Betty Haegelin Yael Abouhalkah
Associate Campus Editor
Greg Hack
Associate Sports Editor
Steward Branwyn
Photo Editor
Staff Photographers
David Crowley
George Millman
Allen Carney
Sports Editors
Kevin Snow
"THIS ISN'T the first period in our history that we've had low voter turnouts either, but it may be the first one that doubts the efficacy of the ritual. This isn't about it, but a lot about if questionable, general apathy. It is disbelief, and without faith the electoral sacrament can't do its work of relieving social tension, or resolving anxiety and providing the communion of post-electoral voters, the commentators to tell us." "The people have spoken."
FEWER AND FEWER join political parties, the very rough
Business Manager
Baby Faith
Assistant Business Manager Advertising Manager
Gary Burk
Linda Brooks-
Claimed Manager
National Manager
Assistant Director
Assistant Manager
Assistant Manager
Assistant Managed Manager
Joseph Marquardt
Jolene Burk
IF THE TIMES have swollen the proportion of political agnostics, it may account for the impression that who wins in the presidential election than that we have elections. Certainly, the acyolates in the cathedral of American democracy, the media people, seem to be straining as never before. We can also see that the Candidates themselves act like priests of troubled faith and let the media hit us from every side, twice a day, with lectures and lessons on the importance, the value of education and every detail of the electoral celebration: Crankite, Chancellor and Reasoner out on the streets distributing Bible verses like Liberals do, but we don't care who you vote for but for vote. Long decades religiously affiliated schools had compulsory chapel attendance for their agnostic classes. But we wasn't the cure of souls but the concealment of the loss of faith from those officiating at the services. Some people are demanding voting be made mandatory in all states, will faith in the American national state pack it in also?
But in this late winter primary season, it appears that the members of the great American church are suffering a crise of fa. Many are saying, "What difference is there?" We all go back on their promises."
We're not the first Americans to say those things. There have always been atheists in the church, and they have always been members who temporarily absented themselves because they objected to church conduct. But the national religion, but the still believed in the religion.
equivalent of the Holy Name society or teaching Sunday school in the secular church. Again, the failure to sign up is attributed to disillusionment, the honesty or honor of politicians, the predictor of a person's party affiliation and political disposition has been his parents, his family, not the honesty or honor of politicians. Perhaps, just as families can no longer believe, they can no longer transmit political values. Are we disillusioned, or are we coming to be a nation of different people who perceive differently because we live in changed circumstances?
"PEANUT BUTTER!"