4
Monday, May 8, 1978
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unagged editorials represent the opinion of the Kanan editorial staff. Staged columns represent the views of only the writers.
Watson expansion vital
A sensible plan to improve Watson Library surfaced last week, when two KU architecture students proposed building an underground extension to Watson. The chief advantage to the idea is that it could save the University $4 million.
Specifically, the extension would gain 287,000 square feet for the library, space that is desperately needed. The overcrowding at Watson is one of the reasons that it is a disgrace to the University. Even with the renovations that will soon improve it, Watson simply will run out of room.
That room will have to come from somewhere. And if there aren't enough funds for a completely new building, the very least that should be done is to expand Watson. Expanding it above ground, with the same amount of space as the architecture students predicted in their
proposal, would cost about $17 million. Under the ground, however, the extension would cost only $13 million.
IN ADDITION, an underground extension would reap the fringe benefit of cutting energy costs. It's cheaper to operate under the soil because soil insulates from heating and cooling losses.
Besides being cheaper, an underground extension wouldn't affect the visual appearance of Watson to the extent that one above ground would. As University administrators recently discovered during the Jimmy Green controversy, campus sentiment is strong for preserving what the University historically has looked like.
Watson must grow if it is to continue acquisitions of books and periodicals. What the architecture students have proposed merits further study.
Energy move outrageous
Gas Service Company, a regulated monopoly that provides northwest Kansas with natural gas, has declared war on conservation-minded residential consumers (then successful) in reducing their consumption of the fuel.
Last week, Richard Byrd,
chief counsel for the company,
said that about one-fourth of the
$4.0 million rate increase
request before the Kansas
Corporation Commission was
attributable to a "conservation
adjustment."
The rationale for the adjustment, Byrd said, is that when the volume of gas sold decreases, the company must earn its authorized rate of increase in increasing the price of the fuel.
The futility of the move is exceeded only by the audacity of such a request for an increase based on sales lost through consumers' decisions to reduce their consumption.
IF THE rate request, complete with conservation adjustment, were to be approved by the Kansas Corporation Commission, consumers would be charged for their consumption further. Apparently, the company would then ask the regulatory agency, for another adjustment. All this would be happening as the price of natural gas undergoes an inregulatory price increases.
The gall of the company is appalling. And in 1978, when the
word “patriotism” is seldom heard, the company’s obsession with obtaining its monopolistic rate of return as the nation unterposes the threes of an aristocratic crisis is plainly unatriotic.
Residential users already pay the highest price for natural gas because of price discrimination. Industrial and commercial users of the fuel gas buy a gas at a lower price than homeowners.
BYRD SAID that in Kansas, the average residential use of gas from the company's system had dropped —from 180.9 billion cubic feet per household in 1976 to 168.8 thousand cubic feet in 1977.
Byrd admitted that most of the savings that would go to homeowners be wiped out by the so-called conservation adjustment. Conservation officials promoted on the premise that it is a dwindling natural resource, he told the KCC.
AS AMERICA'S imported energy bill rises above the $25 billion recorded last year. Byrd's explanations sound too much like patronizing and indulgent, misleading information.
Natural gas is a dwindling resource, although there may be billions of cubic feet still underground. The point is,
Americans should begin to learn how to conserve resources, not exploit them in the wasteful tradition they have cultivated as a national style of life.
But the disturbing news is that other public and private utilities are considering requests for conservation adjustments. Kaw Valley Electric Cooperative of Teopoca has a lease it, which costs it, too, seeks to raise its rates because of a reduced sales volume that is partly attributable to conservation.
FRED ADAM, director of utilities for the KCC, said that utilities had proposed conservation adjustments in the past but that the KCC "has always looked on them with disfavor because it was viewed as temporary in nature."
Adam said consumers were beginning to demonstrate price elasticity of demand in their reduced consumption, a statement showing that the consumer is more economical fundamentals.
But the real test for the KCC will be in the outcome of the Gas Service Company's conservation adjustment requirements will then be able to see whether the KCC is impotent and whether consumers receive the protection they deserve from such conditions and unpatricled question for "conservation adjustments."
It is quiet now on the earthen dam west of town. At night it is dark, the only light comes from the white glow of Lawrence and the waning moon.
The times, they are a-changing
At night the dam provides a good vantage point from which to view the city. Four miles away, the city looks distant, yet alive and energetic. The city is just beyond the city limits lies only blackness spotted by an occasional farm light.
But soon this all will change. There will be an explosion of light, bursting outward and westward from the city and enveloping the now unit dam.
Champion. The long-awaited Clinton Dam will have made its debut.
EVEN TO the west of the dam, now a landscape of erase and hardy forms in the black of night, will soon be spotbed by waves from the case of white mastaches on a dark torso.
Lawrence is going to change a lot in the next several years. Not only is the new dam to the west, Clinton Dam, going to attract development to its forerunner domain, but Lawrence is sure to continue his change within its current boundaries.
The most noticeable change, of course, will be the new Clinton Lake and its link to Lawrence, the Clinton Parkway. The city's main road will connect next year, and from then on it is difficult
The student now leaving Mount Oread certainly will be amazed when he returns for a homecoming five years from now.
Steven Stingley
Editorial writer
to tell just how fast or how much the area will develop.
THERE ARE some big expectations.
The Army Corps of Engineers, builders of the $48-million, 12,000-acre project, predicts that the lake will draw about three million visitors annually. Local investors, realtors and speculators are eager to help put the mounds of money to start forming.
The Clinton Parkway will be a new focal point for Lawrence in itself, funneling the thousands of swimmers, campers and commuters to and from the
There are other indications that Lawrence is being transformed from a small city into an urbanized town.
A scenery of signs and streets will eventually all but replace the serene countryside as it now stands.
SIGNS BOASTING of businesses that soon will be constructed line the southern end of Iowa Street. If one were to go to sleep now and wake up five years later with an apartment, they would have as good a selection of fast food on Iowa as has one now on 32rd Street.
soon there will be a new and shiny shopping center at 23rd and Iowa streets. When urban sprawl begins in a town that
hungry for "bigness," it is hard to stop.
"Hamburgers, hammers and Hallmarks," the restless naries cry.
And on the other end of town, there is the promise of a new city hall and two new spans across the Kaw. The city hall will be a noble tribute to the healthiness of our community, down town bank building, city administrators soon will have a place of their own. And how grand it will be to be in front of the heartfelt birthplace of Lawrence near the river.
NO LONGER will a visitor from the north have to be ushered into Lawrence by a battered bridge and a damsal scene with glass and towering grain elevators.
Who knows, perhaps the beautification of the north end of downtown will be the boost that north Lawrence needs to pick up. The city may march to a more progressive tone.
And then there is the ivy environment of Mount Oread, which has dominated and stabilized Lawrence one academic year after another. It is changing and will continue to change.
Modern architecture has made its debut on the hill with buildings such as Wescothe Hall, the new law building and a public library that appears less susceptible to the appeal of urbanization, surely the face of Mount Oread will change with the times. Just ask a 1960 alumnus whether he annotated the likes of the new computer center.
LAWRENCE is going to change drastically in appearance as it stretches and proopsers. That is a good sign—an empty city would be a stagnant place to live.
The old is likely to fall to the new.
But with the changes there are going to be problems. The ugly is bound to accrue. Our skin is not invulnerable going to be side by side with the subtle and tasteful. Open space that now soothes the eyes is likely to be uncomfortable by an overdose of asphalt and cheap tin.
One of the most interesting and genuine aspects of Lawrence can be found in the older parts of the city. There, huge oaks stand guard over ornate houses on streets that look much the same as they did 50 to 1900 years ago. Those are the streets that display the history and heritage of Lawrence and are the rooms that represent the heart, not the pocketbook of Lawrence.
ALTHOUGH it will be good to see Lawrence grow and change in the future, it will at the same time be said to see the small-town atmosphere being replaced by a manifestation of the contemporary idea of progress.
A nearly manmade lake and a handful of striped streets may be what every city the size of Lawrence has been working for all along.
But to someone who is skeptical of this kind of progress, there may be as much to lose as there is to gain.
MACNEELY HEPHANCE NEW WARE HIXBURNS TOWE
Don't criticize KUAC, McNish pleads
To the editor:
The ill-tempered outburst by Professor Tom Weiss against the KUAC in his letter to the president of April 20, demands a reply.
His statement that the KUAC budget is approved by "a handful of people who are either ardent supporters of the program, and who nald a win at any cost or who have not had the time or the knowledge necessary to understand the KUAC budget," is a defamatory slur against the board. The board is compulsory to admit those involved, 11 respected, highly knowledgeable faculty and staff members and six aliquen members, all of whom are outstanding successors in business. The KUAC budget carefully and understand it very well.
His next complaint is that there is no incentive to control costs. We have the greatest incentive imaginable. The continued existence of our staff will take the best management and most stringent cost controls to prevent its unhappy demise.
The next allegation must have come straight out of the opium pipe. It is to the effect that funds may be taken from academic programs to substitute the KUAC. This has never been done and never will be. The fact that it supports and helps substantially to finance, although it has no responsibility for it, women's athletics. This is a fact that few seem to understand.
Ton next states that student seats are threatened. This assertion requires an explanation that is longer than would be desirable. The KUAC must have additional revenue if our athletic programs are to be conducted. Contributions are limited. Last year the students bought 8,790 season tickets (there are no single-admission student tickets). There are several thousand more than 8,790 seats allocated to students. Some of those could be sold to former coaches and our revenue could thus be greatly augmented. Realizing that this was a potentially explosive issue, the decision was made to discuss with the student leadership what could be done sort of way the problem and see what the reaction might be and if there existed any possibility that they might agree to surrender some seats that they are unable to with the assistance of the Kansan, this tentative attempt at rational discussion was made to appear as a diabolical conspiracy aimed at doing the students in Weiss now contextualize understanding by parading this false charge once more before the reading public.
Most objectionable of all, in my opinion, is Weiss's insistence that the KUAC pay over a part of the tuition. He constantly pushed this view when he was a member of the board of KUAC. In the first place the articles of incorporation required that he conduct varsity athletics and
nothing else. In view of the fact that $700,000 of income comes from Williams Fund contributions for the support of athletics and the athletic club and the approval of any gifts to the University from the KUAC would be a breach of the fiduciary relationship the board members owe the corporation and its employees to subject them to personal liability in my opinion. It is the province of the Legislature to support the University. That is not the function of the KUAC. More important, there is no "profit." The athletic program is conducted at a tween level, and students carry on only because of contributions to the Williams Fund. This was pointed out to Weiss when he was a member of the board and as an economist he worked with the university there never can be and he knows it. That is why I consider
mis remarks on this subject to be specious.
He says that his economics professor told the class "how poorly the KUAC operates." His professor said that the practice of taking the football team to a local motel on the night before a game. He sees this as a prime example of the difference. This is understandable.
Paul Schmidt, whose letter to the editor appeared April 27, deserves an answer.
Paul, this procedure presents an issue on which reasonable minds can differ. I will give you our side of it. Successful football, like many other high-performance activities, requires a very high level of concentration. Experience has shown that if the players are not sequestered on the night but a game is being mostly played by relatives, hometown friends and well-wisheres of all descriptions with the best of intentions. That is why we do it. It is a headache for all concerned. It is certainly not a problem; we don't need it not like it. It is an expense we would like to avoid. We rely on the best advice we can get from experts in the field. We find that all the major college we know of do it. Our judgment is that our overtrial ritual is vital in assuring that our players are on a psychological parity with their opponents. It can easily be the difference between winning and losing. Thus, we approach each year when this year it will be dredged up in an attempt to make the KUAC appear ridiculous.
Perhaps your economics professor is more qualified to judge the merits of this issue than the experts. In any event when we need someone to help budget, the expense involved in staying at the motel is not a large issue. However, if we were to lose a game or two that would have affected mental preparation it would seriously affect our revenues.
Hammond McNish Chairman, KUAC
We may be wrong in our judgment, but the expenditure is not profligible or a disregard for fiscal responsibility.
out a misconception advanced by Jennifer Rober in her book *The Body: How to sex-starve, drooling froels is incapable of dealing with a woman's mind except through the exploitation of her body*. Simply exchange women for men, man's for women's, his for her, and the same holds true for women. Men are no more "incapable"
Don't call men
drooling fools
Thoughts and feelings are
never immoral. I am tired of all people being stereotyped and categorized. Change is always possible and there is always some place to start. Let's stamp out sexism, starting now!
"Do I dare disturb the universe?" asks a character in a poem by T.S. Eliot. Dare You've got much less to lose, and more to gain, than you think.
Claude Powell
Liberal, fourth-year pharmacy
student
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