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Wednesday, February 25, 1976
University Dally Kansan
KANSAN Comment
Oninions on this page reflect only the view of the writer.
Real issues the issue
The Supreme Court made a reasonable decision in its interpretation of the Constitution allowing women to make individual decisions of conscience concerning abortion. Those who are unequivocal in their views can work as a constitutional amendment either to prohibit abortion or to allow individual states to prohibit it.
Abortion and busing, two of the biggest issues in the 1976 presidential campaign, shouldn't be issues. Both are issues in constitutional law, but the President is charged neither with the responsibility of interpreting the Constitution nor with the power to amend it.
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS are the domain of Congress and the states. The President has little, if anything, to do with them. Whether he would support such an amendment says nothing about his capacity to administer the functions of the executive branch of the government.
Much the same is the argument against busing as a campaign issue. The courts have used their power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment to order busing to achieve racial integration in public schools. Their decisions have been neither arbitrary nor capricious. The courts have the authority to enforce
the supreme law of the land regardless
of the President's personal opinion
may be.
INTEGRATION of the schools is a state and local problem that can often be worked out without the use of court-ordered busing. Neither a constitutional amendment nor a tirade against busing by a candidate will guarantee will improve the public schools.
There are too many real issues that need rational discussion by all the candidates to allow these wellsprings of emotion to obscure the debate.
UNEMPLOYMENT, FOREIGN policy, defense spending, national health insurance and the intelligence gathering agencies are important issues that shouldn't be glossed over just because of thinking instead of the blind fearing which so often accompanies the mention of abortion and busing.
It is the voters who determine the issues because the candidates are eventually forced to talk about what the voters want to hear. For busing and abortion to become the dominant issues of the campaign would be a vast abjuration of responsibility by the electorate.
By John Hickey Contributing Writer
A aficious plot is developing concerning the stairs of the Kansas Union.
when informed of the plan as he was moving his per sonal effects out of the Student Senate offices.
The Board of Regents approved renovation of the Union Friday, including removal of the stairway to the right of the southeast entrance. Immediately, a fund raising opportunity was seen.
Union stairs stairway to money
By Betty Haegelin Associate Editor
But Ed Rolfs, former student body president, was aghast
Some stairs will be cut into sections and will be sold for $25 for each section. Some people said these sections would be ideal for pedestals or bird bath
The Memorial Corporation Board, after an emergency meeting in the Hawk's Nest Friday night, decided to auction off the stairs to the highest bidder.
"Who wouldn't want to own a piece of Kansas Union history?" Melvin Freedman, chair of the organization. "One of these stairs would grace the den or living room of an KU booster. In fact, some people have said that they should be bar, the true symbol of KU."
"We were perplexed by such an unthinkable action, as were many other students," Ed postulated. "That old center stairway represents a Union heritage of which distinguished firebombers and students, firebombers and thousands of alumni are a part."
Ed noted that some fat cat might actually end up owning the very step on which the arsenal stood when the place was empty. And what concertgeer, he asked, hadn't gone up those stairs at one time or another to buy tickets to such memorable performances as those of Somy the Righteous Brothers?
"That stairway belongs to those people who put something into it," Ed fumed. "This makes the KMUC look like money changers in our University's temple of anarchism!"
Especially in this bicentennial year, the least the KMUC could have done was to
paint the stairs red, white and blue before selling them so more money could be raised forworly bicentennial causes.
"And they at least could have told me about all of this," he said.
Tedde Tasheff, recently elected president, said she hadn't formed an opinion yet.
“But Ed's left me a lot of good files on the screen and I'll get someone in my address books to mess with this real soon,” she added.
Rolfs said that from suggestions received in the Student Senate office, the most popular option suggested by students was to use the stars in to represent approved satellite union.
"If those stairs could talk," he said, "I'm sure they'd say I want someone walking on them that has a part in creating the rich heritage of KU, or at least someone who isn't so fat."
It was reported that Chancellor Archie R. Dykes was to rule on the matter shortly, but he could make no decision until
he had gone over to the Union and gotten a "feel" of the stairs by taking off his shoes and down them several times.
But Freedman said he just didn't understand the fuss over the innocent capitalistic venture.
"All we wanted to do was make a couple of quick buckets," he said. "You'd think these were the staircases to heaven or something. I don't understand all the sentiment over a few cupped, terreroa stairs. I guess I'm not just patricid enough."
Commercialism colors birthday
Happy Birthday, USA! The slogan repeats itself in television advertisements, radio commercials and on KU's national network. The commercialized nation won't miss any opportunity to make a few buckets and this is the best opportunity yet. The nation is having a birthday and everyone is bidding, especially businessmen.
When all of the absurd uses of the bicentennial theme are taken into consideration, it makes one wonder whether the last 200 years haven't been spent contemplating the
celebration. The birthday has become so commercialized that it appears to be run by a large
offices in a high-rise somewhere in New Jersey. DURING THIS YEAR, son
DURING THIS year, con-
By Marne Rindom Contributing Writer
advertising agency, probably named Bicentennial E:ings, Inc., or Patriots Unlimited, with
States' rights still abused
WASHINGTON—Now and then a classic example comes along to illustrate the rise of nationalism and the fall of democracy. The croppied up in the Senate three weeks ago in the matter of day
background is in order. In 1974, congress approved certain amendments to the Social Security these "those known as Title I appropriating funds in the form of matching grants for the
care centers for children. The matter isn't easily explained, but it merits a few minutes of your time.
Our nation was founded in part upon the sound principle of federalism. The idea was that the national government would exercise only those powers of a truly national concern; all other powerws should be reserved to the states to be exercised in respect to the respective uses and prudent theory has suffered rough abuse in recent years. On January 29, the Senate kicked it around once more.
By James J.
Kilpatrick
(C) Washington Star Syndicate
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operation of day care centers. The 1974 Act laid down specific requirements for the staffing of these centers as a condition for aid. The federal bureaucracy enlarged upon the standards.
In order to qualify, it was thus decreed that a day care center must have one adult for each child up to age six weeks, one adult for every four children between six weeks and three years, an adult for every four children between three and four, and so on, up to one adult for every 20 children between 10 and 14.
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THESE REQUIREMENTS were to have become effective Oct. 1, 1975. When it became apparent that few day care centers could comply by that deadline, the deadline was extended to Feb. 1, 1976. The effect of the Senate's action on January 28 is to extend further deadlines and provide a supplementary $250 million in grants to meet the mounting costs.
The critical debate was not on the extension or even the money. The critical debate was on an amendment by Sen. Robert Puckett Kane. He struck the specific federal requirements from the act, and to let the states establish their own staffing rules. It was an excellent amendment and it have passed. It lost 37 to 44.
IN ARGUING for his amendment, Packwood voiced the same arguments that states righters have urged since 1788. The state came to the Senate seven years ago, he had the feeling "that somehow there is a magic in Washington, that we have a superior knowledge, that God has spoken to us and only us, and what God says to the states and the local governments."
we impose it on the whole nation."
leave the dead alone. A University of Pennsylvania anthropologist was hired last year to dig up Betsy Ross and move her to the courtyard next spring, digging led to some excitement when her bones weren't immediately recovered, but they were finally found and moved. The project was deemed a success and it was considered of such value to the country that her body was identified as Pocahontas, are now being considered for exhumation.
Sen. Paul J. Fannin, R-Ariz.
Dewey F. Bortkle, R-L坦略.
Dewey L. Bartkle, R-L坦略,
spoke to the same effect. Said
Fannin: "I totally reject
the notion that only in Washington
can we influence the needs of
our children."
"I no longer share that view," Parkwood said. "I have come to the conclusion that we cannot run this country well from COF, because we must program that will work in Massachusetts may or may not work in Maryland or Minnesota ... My amendment would say to me We trust you. We think you understand your priorities."
SUPPOSE THE specific standards are wrong? Pack- wood cited the conflicting views of authorities in the field of child care. He observed that a departmental study of staffing ratios won't even be finished until the Senate not to mud all children, all states and all localities into a single mold.
THE CONSERVATIVES got nowhere. They were snowed under by liberal forces led by the governor of Minnesota. Mondale expounded pathetically upon the terrible damage that might be done to tender-aged children if they were not well cared for were relaxed. It should affect
"The one disadvantage of a federal program," he said, "is that when we make a mistake.
sumers had better strike up a fancy for stripes and red, white and blue, for producers are offering little else. If you don't like these colors, the manufacturers seem to be saying, then you must not love them. You can't toilet seat clothes,衣服 and baby blankets is designed with the patriot in mind.
Well, there are some of us who gravely doubt that children will be damaged or "destroyed" if they are subjected to only one adult for every six children between three and four, instead of to one adult for every five children between three and four. If we were born in the name of the Constitution day care centers got to be the business of the national government anyhow. But this is how the wind blows; and the wind chills.
Braniff International Airlines has shown recently that with the right design, the American flag can be the tackiest thing in the air. The abstract painting of the American flag in motion on a Braniff jet looks as if the artist tried to paint it while the jet was moving. "We're putting our colors on the line with the flying colors of the United States," does little to help the image.
BIG BUSINESSES are baping that by associating themselves with the history of the United States, they will be placed in a position to be an important people. The National Football League gave $10,000 to a high
our conscience, he said, "if we pay for day care centers that damage children, destroy them, kill them," 1 y. n a d psychologically.
school junior for her essay about the league's role in American history. When historian Henry Steele Commander heard of the essay by Marianne McCormick, the most concise entry. "It has importance whatsoever," he wrote.
Businessmen aren't the only ones who are trying to come up with bigger and better ideas to celebrate the birthday. Service projects, in turn, units keep coming up with ideas. This year should provide a great opportunity for service projects. It is a time when projects could be very effective. Projects of this type are being started, but many others with little value are also being done. Enormous sums of money are being generated with no redeeming features.
The bicentennial year has only just begun. We still have more than 10 months left of the fall and spring, and red, white and blue packages. We'll make it through, though; we always do. And when it's all over, when the United States becomes the odd one out, we'll still look forward to bilateral clearance sales.
THESE GREAT thinkers of bicentennial follies won't even
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