4.
Wednesday, May 3, 1978
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Ranan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
Keep sign law intact
A sweeping revision of Lawrence's sign ordinance was finished last week by Lawrence city commissioners. Although local business interests are jubilant, the changes are bad news for the rest of the community—especially University students.
students.
Commissioners increased restrictions on certain types of signs. But the overall result of their efforts was an ordinance that a Chamber of Commerce official estimates could greatly reduce the number of signs that would come down, or be reduced in size, under the city's current sign ordinance.
under the University, however, there is only repression. Students accustomed to posting small leaflets or handbills on campus buildings or telephone poles might end up $100 poorer and in jail for 30 days. That's the penalty the city wants to adopt for the posting of such notices.
Meanwhile, City Commissioner Barkley Clark helpfully noted. "This is going to be the best drafted sign ordinance in America."
THE CHAMBER of Commerce official, Al Hack, is chairman of a Chamber group that has studied the Lawrence sign issue for more than a year. He said Monday that he was "very, very pleased" with what the commissioners had done and that the new ordinance, which is about to be officially approved, might be "the best in the state of Kansas."
"They adopted almost all of our recommendations." Hack said.
City Commissioner Marine Argersinger, a previous opponent of revising the current ordinance, had a change of heart. Two months ago, she said the revisions would "negate all the progress we've made so far in cleaning up the city."
Now Argersinger thinks differently.
"I don't think we've been that drastic," she said Monday.
HACK SAID that Lawrence now has from 150 to 200 signs that don't conform to the city ordinance. But if the commissioners' changes are approved, according to Hack, only 15 to 20 signs will have to come down or be reduced in size by an October 1979 deadline already established by the city.
That's a big change. The city has succumbed to the Chamber after years of taking a hard stand and assuring the people of Lawrence that they wouldn't have to put up with the aesthetic jumble characteristic of all too many cities.
What are the changes being made and their built-in loopholes?
One instance in which the city has backed down is that of how it proposes to regulate wall signs. Wall signs now may be 25 percent of a building's total wall space or 90 square feet, whichever is less. Under the revised sign regulations, a wall sign may be 10 percent of the total wall space or 150 square feet, whichever is less.
THE EFFECT of this change will be allowing smaller signs on small buildings and larger signs on larger buildings.
The city also proposes allowing wall signs to be as large as 450 square feet, depending on how far the building is set back from a roadway. That's a 500 percent increase from what the city now permits.
But for the University, commissioners want only a crackdown on the freedom of speech inherent in posting small notices. The K-Mart on South Iowa Street will be able to get away with not altering its mammoth sign; students who post small notices of coming events will have the book thrown at them.
It's impossible to fathom why the city wants to let businesses keep permanent, unsightly signs up but wants to go after handbills or posters. These notices are a vital form of communication for students who can't afford other ways of announcing what they want to say. They're even used by campus politicians now and then. They're individual, not commercial, expression.
COMMISSIONERS also want to add to the current ordinance provision that would exclude oversized signs granted an exemption from the ordinance, before October 1975, from the 1979 deadline.
Before October 1975, businesses were not formally told of the 1979 deadline. Therefore, commissioners concluded that those businesses should be allowed more time to bring signs into conformance with the ordinance. But the deadline was public in October 1974. Isn't that enough time for businesses to change a relatively minor part of what their buildings look like?
The city has gone squishy soft on the Chamber of Commerce faction. Commissioners want to give businesses that have received the exemptions 11 years from the time they got the exemptions before they have to change their signs.
And students won't be able to put up small fliers. The commissioners' priorities just aren't in the right place.
Should the students and faculty at the University of Kansas be concerned that KU invests money in the repressive racist regime of South Africa?
KU invests in repression
Yes. The University invests in more than 200 companies. There are more business with and have holdings in South Africa. And that nation still adheres to the rules of races called apartheid.
Worse, the Kansas University Endowment Association, which invests KU funds, doesn't want to tell anyone just what companies it invests in.
The investments are used to make money for KU, money that eventually will go for better facilities and for scholarship money. Those students now on financial aid have received $25 of money they have received to the South African investments.
Some people feel that by investing in companies that do business in South Africa, KU invests in the racism and the entire structure of power there. The University's part may be small. KU invests about $2.4 billion annually but it indisputably exists.
PEOPLE SUCH AS Ed Dutton, associate professor of social welfare, have been asked to questionable investments. Dutton said last week that KU should decide whether it really wanted to give the African government its support.
If KU wants to stop its investment policies, though, it might find the way difficult. The Endowment Association does not willingly provide lists of investments, and invests it does not have to. It is an independent corporation that handles University money on a contractual basis and keeps its records, books and interests separate from the University itself in the business of giving money to KU makes no legal difference
That still does not mean its secrecy is not frustrating. The treasurer of the Endowment
Association, Richard Porto, has said that politics is not a factor in making investment decisions. He assures his students one responsibility to KU-to make as much money as it can for the University. That implies that he should do it their own business.
BUT IF THE larger picture were seen, it might be bleaker. Among the companies KU invests in that operate in South Africa are IBM, Econ, General Motors,
and Honeywell. The trouble with trying to invest elsewhere is that most of the companies that are considered good moneymakers are difficult to finance. If KU were to give up its holdings in all of them—assuming it could determine which companies to get rid of—it could find itself with a lot of money in Shanghaï and less money for scholarships or University gifts.
Still, divestiture of South African interests is being urged across the country. Some sentiment about divestiture is arising at KU. Several colleges and universities in the East—most recently Harvard—have
began writing resolutions asking the companies in which they hold stock to give up and get out of South Africa. If they, as stockholders, cannot convince the companies to they will try to sell their stock in those companies.
What effect would it have if KU were to sell all its holdings in corporations that deal with South Africa?
IT WOULD SOOTHE the consciences of those who felt that KU money is supporting even in a small way, a repressive government. It would take the University would take on the path toward world harmony It would be a demonstration to
the country, some advocates say, that the University adheres to enlightened values and moral precepts.
It also would be a move that would make nary a ripple in the ocean of world commerce. Symbolic value is the only value that the divas would have to bear from one company would be reinvested in others that do not operate in South Africa, and the money possibly would not earn what it did before. The protest, therefore, would rise as well as righteousness.
Even one of the leaders of a nationwide movement to divest is aware of the limits on such a policy. Tim Smith, the director of an organization that works in minds about South Africa, said recently, "Yo sell your stock; someone less concerned than you buys it"; there is a lapse in the market after the day and then it "over."
SMITH STILL SAYS though, that divestiture can be helpful in some cases. So does the University of Wisconsin, which now is selling its stock—about $ 5 million worth—in companies that do business in South Africa.
It would be right for KU to introduce shareholder resolutions to the companies it holds stock in. If those did not pass or were ignored, it would be right to sell the University's stock in those companies in dealings, not only in South Africa but in any other repressive country.
But to do all of that, the University should learn where its money goes. It can don't anything but ask the En-动力ment does with its money, and perhaps the contract should be redrawn between KU and the Endowment Association so the institution could accounted for. Then the University could take steps to ensure that the institution usually concerned about human rights in Kansas concerns that concern worldwide.
Guard Southern African rights
N.Y.Times Features
CANADA's power in Southern Africa is transferred without a full-scale race war, a comprehensive bill of rights—guaranteed for a transitional period by concerned nations, including the United States—into force on January 25 of the negotiated settlement. The principal danger to the preservation of those rights would be gradual, undramatic erosion, one case at a time, by acts too small or ambiguous to achieve. A report from the states guaranteeing the new constitutional order
BvTOM FARER
Too small, that is, unless the ambiguities were clarified and the isolated victim's pleas for redress were amplified by his own power, the requisite integrity, competence and prestige.
No such body exists in Africa today. But it could be assembled, principally by drawing on the human resources, as well as the rich experience, of the two regional human rights organizations who have won their spurs the European and the Inter-American Commissions on Human Rights.
IN THE SOUTHERN African context, the Inter-
American Commission would be a particularly appealing because it exemplifies the need to recruitists from nations marked by very different histories, forms of government and levels of involvement.
One way of structuring the institution needed to monitor human rights in a politically transformed Southern Africa is to have members of each regional commission with three distinguished African jurists designated by the indigenous parties to any event, with the presidents of the front-line
African states who support the guerrillas but are anxious to rapidly achieve enduring peace.
The mandate and essential procedures of this ad hoc monitoring commission would be written into the settlement agreement. At a minimum, they would guarantee the commission's access to the interviews in question and the right of all citizens to petition and present evidence to the commission.
FUNDING WOULD BE accomplished through a fund established by the guaran-
tian government, with revenues sufficient for the
commission's work. Among other things, the fund would support a small, highly skilled mult-national staff, most of whose members would be among the nations being monitored.
If a proposal of that kind were put into effect, the prospects for a relatively peaceful and just settlement mostly repressive Southern Africa would be enhanced.
Tom Farer, a professor of law,
is a member of the Inter-
American Commission on Hunting
and Conservation of American States.
Stripper article sexist, slandered women
To the editor:
Once again I feel compelled to point out the obvious slandering
Students' salaries stingy
The University of Kansas Memorial Corporation is to be commended for providing, in its proposed 1979 budget, for the increase in the federal minimum wage
Although payment of the federal minimum wage to student employees has in the past been standard for KU and its offshoot operations, KU will be unable to pay the federal minimum wage when the wage increases by 25 cents an hour Jan. 1. The Kansas Legislature in a vote passed the Regents' institutions to retain the current amount of student employees and still pay them the increased wage.
Ambler sees that as a problem.
IF THE FEDERAL government exempts KU an estimated 1,700 student employees will be working for the school at less than the hourly wage considered, allowing for the 1978 inflation rate to be the very minimum. But the 200 to 300 students who work for the Kansas Union will, this year at least, be making an extra quarter an hour.
David Ambler, vice chancellor for student affairs, said Monday, "Because we are under somewhat of a mandate from the Legislature not to pay the increase, we are considering applying for an exemption to the federal minimum wage."
Pat Allen
Editorial writer
"I's not a matter of having the money or having the money sources," he said. "The issue is consistency in how we teach the student who works in the auxiliary agencies, the Union, the residence hall or the student health center distributed from the student who works on campus."
So in the interests of consistency and fairness to the students, if KU qualifies for the exemption, the Union's board of trustees is likely to Indian-give that wage increase.
He noted, "We think our needs are somewhat unique and different from KU. The Union is open seven days and seven nights." He added that the same as a Monday-Friday, 8-schedule.
WARNER FERGUSON, associate director of the Union, said although the budget was prepared to increase the increase in resources, the Union's policy to follow whatever KU pays.
*This is the student Union and we're student-oriented in our philosophy and
funding. We think our students merit at least minimum wage."
THE UNION can afford to pay its employees better. The suggestion that it should put a lid on its wage increases smacks of unnatural wage control Why shouldn't the student employee be free to shop around for the highest bidder?
The consequences of a 25-cent-an-hour difference between the Union as an employer and KU as an employer are obvious. The Union could be expected to attract the pick of the market; KU would be staffed with a few less desirable students.
But Ferguson stresses that the relationship between KU and the Union is a cooperative one. If KU issues the directive that all agencies can pay no more than what KU can afford to pay, $2.65, Ferguson asserts that the Union will comply.
The legislators deserve the full blame for not providing the funding needed by the Regents' institutions to adequately pay their student help. Maybe it is not KU's fault that financial support for student employees could not be found in the Legislature this year, but perhaps because of the information from the federal minimum wage and if KU expects University-related agencies to follow its example, it will be sacrificing consistency for fairness.
Letters
Although Timothy Tankard's article on "Strippers" adequately portrays one facet of a woman's ex-sience, it also verifies the fact that men are sex-starved for dealing with a woman's mind except through the exploitation of her body.
of women by the University Daily Kansan.
If Tankard's goal was to be as realistic as possible he succeeded only by falling into the gutter language of the environment. "She succeeds a racer down to the nub," she adds, "to penelope pens with reefer and the implications are easily seen."
it's precisely that kind of publicity that reinforces society's values against women. The Kansas is only after publication awards for posthumous careers in writing fiction.
The Krasnan missed an excellent opportunity to show the talent and creativity of her group, a premier feminist theater group. "At the Foot of the Mountain," perennial audiences in Bainbridge Hall.
The Kansan also failed to print an interview with Margie
Adam, one of the top women's music performers who was in concert in Kansas City recently. The interview was prepared well in advance of deadlines by the university, because it carried no sexual overtones, it didn't make it past the camus editor's desk.
Also, a touring women's band, "Baba Yaga," recently gave a concert on campus. Its music is unique and deserved some kind of a review by the Kansan.
The Kansan has dangerously violated principles of basic reporting and has shown itself to be ignorant of women's culture and the economic system it is attempting to create.
Unfortunately, the Kansan also reflects the stubborn attitude surfacing throughout this school, with an adequate athletic department is floundering for lack of funds. The reorganization of the dean of women's and the dean of men's libraries was a necessary adequate student opinion and endangers services for women that were previously handled by the dean of women's and budget cuts and office assignments by the
In print or spoken language, sexism should not be tolerated
Student Senate were done in total disregard for the programs established and threatens their efficiency.
by any institution, person or newspaper campaigning in behalf of the public's beliefs.
Jennifer Roblez Emporia junior
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Editor Barbara Rosewicz
Published at the University of Kansas daily August 26, 2015.
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