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Friday, April 28, 1978
University Dally Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Stressed columns represent the views of only the writers.
Education bill wise
The Kansas Legislature showed sense this week when it passed a bill dealing with competency-based education. The bill, previously thought to have died on the last day of the Legislature's regular session, was resurrected and approved via an obscure procedural tactic.
Competency-based education is, simply, the idea of testing elementary and secondary students at periodic intervals to determine whether they are competent in reading and mathematics. In Kansas, the tests will be administered in the second, fourth, sixth, eight and 11th grades.
The tests could reap ample dividends. As applied in the 30 other states that are using them, they measure the basic skills that all high school graduates ought to have. If those skills are lacking, the penalty is that students don't graduate from high school.
NO STATE that has adopted competency-
based education has seen fit to repeal it.
Given the high rate of functional illiteracy in the United States, that's not surprising.
The tests, for the next two years, are only experimental. For the coming school year, they will be administered on a voluntary basis, probably in about 25 school districts. During the second year, all public and accredited private schools will give them. Further use depends on the preliminary results.
It's fortunate that the tests are experimental because some questions about them need to be answered. What will be on the tests, how will they be given, will they discriminate against impoverished students and minorities and, most importantly, what will be done about the remedial education required for those who aren't up to passing the tests?
Once the questions are answered, it is likely that competency-based education will deserve permanent status in Kansas. State universities might even have freshman classes that can actually read and write.
Strong Hall waffled
To say that the administration of the University of Kansas has acted wrongly in canceling the exhibit of Nazi memorabilia is probably an understatement.
Delays in scheduling, which resulted in a mismatched opening time, helped having the exhibit to KU at all. Worse, the faiso has made at least one owner of a KU nervous about censorship.
The exhibit had been set up and was ready for showing Thursday morning, April 20. The collection was to be opened on Saturday at Research Library to a small private group that afternoon at 4. Then it would be open to the public through the summer, to be shown for its historic value on a class in the Third Reich.
Thursday morning an article appeared in the Kansas City Times. The article stated what the exhibit was going to be, gave some of the history of the collection and included the fact that a former World War II German, D-Lawrence, had complained about the exhibit.
Perhaps it was the complaint by Berman. Perhaps the article touched off a barrage of complaints. Perhaps someone who had been invited to the private showing had told someone else, who started stealing from the house Thursday morning, four administrators were meeting to talk about the exhibit.
BERMAN, A JEW, had said that opening the exhibit on the day before the Passover festival of the Israelites believable poor taste," and that "the idea of using the University to display kitsch memorabilia from Hitler and Nazi Germany simply boggles the mind."
I book more than four hours
for a decision to be handed
down by Del Shakel, executive
vice chancellor, Richard von
Schweitzer, president and
secretary; George Griffin,
curator of the Kansas Collection
in Spencer; and Ron Calgaard, vice chancellor for academic affairs. The exhibit would not be opened. Less than an hour later, it was dismantled and put in a vault in Spencer.
The official statement on the cancellation came from the organizer of the exhibition was intended to demonstrate the banality of National Socialism and to remind us all of the terrible injustices.
"However, the intent of the exhibition has unfortunately been misrepresented and misused among a large number of people.
AFTER THAT, the deluge.
The president of Hillel, the campus Jewish organization, said. "If someone wants to show the exhibit, he should show pictures of Jewish individuals in the chambers and pictures of the anguish of Jewish children."
Jim Scally, assistant to the chancellor, said that showing the exhibit would have been painful to a great number of people on and off campus. The chancellor was out of town.
There seems to be confusion about just what the exhibit contained. In it were paintings of his wife, Hitter and his staff, postcards sent to Hitter, orders signed by Hitter and the exhibit's most celebrated article. Hitter's sister, Sandy Mason, a Spencer librarian, the display also included books and Nazi publicity posters arranged to show Hitter's rise to power in Ger-
MASON SAID Tuesday, "It was a historical exhibit which showed contemporary documents demonstrating how to look lower and how he laid the ground for the terrible events to come.
So that was it. The artworks of a tyrant, and some of the evidence of his tyranny. It is distasteful, and probably stomach-turning, for Jews to contemplate the engineer of six million murders. But an historical artifact, the contents have great value to those who study the past. Deciding to cancel the show before it began was an act of censorship.
The decision was not a good one for other exhibitors. Specifically, Larry Wilcox, who attended the extratime extremist political material at Spencer, is now worried about its possible censorship. Earlier this week, he announced that he had joined an exhibition collection from the University.
No administrator yet has answered some fundamental questions about what led to the cancellation. How many phone calls and complaints did Strong Hail receive that morning? Why wasn't the matter looked into before the scheduling day? why was the opening planned for just before Passover in a week filled with remembrances of the mass murders?
WORST OF ALL is that no one seems to know just how much complaining it took—or how little to the move. Adversaries often use cameras, Scaly, Griffin and the chancellor's office reported receiving complaints that morning. But no one can or will say how many there were—or they came, besides Berman, they came.
So where are we? With no exhibit and no decision on when, if ever, it will be shown; with less prestige for the University; and with an administration of the museum. Under questionable pressure. The owner of the Nazi exhibit and the owner of another exhibit have reason to be angry. Appeasment could not work against Hitler himself. It does not seem to be working well.
After years of silent submission, the American Indian is on the warpath once again.
Proposed laws threaten Indians
This time, however, he is not painting himself in preparation for fighting the U.S. cavalry on the plains of the wild West. This time, the Indian peoples are not armed with arrows.
But the survival of the American Indian's way of life, and the land that supports that way of life, was now as it was in Custer's time.
The Indian "warrior" of 1978 is peaceful, armed only with words and convictions. He is the most powerful battle with political weapons.
One of those political weapons is the "Longest Walk," a protest march that began in February in California and will end in Washington, D.C., sometime in July.
THIS WEEK the walkers have been camped at Lake Perry, a site that has brought the plight of the American Invasion to the fore, and brings with it the color of a culture and spirituality that once dominated the plains of Kansas. The walk brings with it a determination and pride that are try-ing to flourish in a white man's world.
But why are Indians from about 70 tribes from across the country camped at Lake Perry? What is motivating this small group to walk the breadth of the United States?
The answers can be found in 11 bills now being considered by the U.S. Congress--bills that the American Indians think will devastate the human rights of the Indian people.
When the bills are closely examined, it is easy to see why the American Indians are alarmed. The changes in tribal self-government; state and federal jurisdiction over Indian land and peoples; Indian hunting rights; Indian rights on Indian reservations.
ALTHOUGH most of the bills have only slim chances of being passed this year, they still represent direct threats to the White House and to what will happen in Washington in the years to come?
One bill that is of particular concern to the Indians is House
Steven Stingley
Editorial writer
Bill 9054, called the Native American Equal Opportunity Act of 1977. This act proposes to terminate the conditions of all treaties between Indian tribes and the federal government.
At first glance, the bill looks as if it has noble intentions. Its stated purpose is to give full protection of Native Americans under law to Native Americans.
But to accomplish this "equality" would mean an end to all water rights, hunting rights, land rights and any other rights the Indian peoples now love because they are Indians.
If this bill were passed, it also would mean that tribal members no longer would be entitled to any of the services that the federal government gives Indians because they are Indians. The relatively affection Indian hospitals, schools and housing projects.
ALSO, Indians would no
Fine and dandy. Shove the Indian people out into the mainstream of American life and make them equal under the American form of government. It all looks good on paper, yet a little less clearly evident quite into account the special problems and heritage of people robbed and ravaged many times by "Americans."
longer be living under tribal laws. They would be governed by the laws of the state in which they lived.
Besides, Indian tribes want sovereignty over their own land and their own people. Surely they are wary of entering the American mainstream and being forced to live exclusive to them. That has a long history of ripping off the American Indian.
The right of self-government is essential for the Indian tribes if they are going to nurture their own government. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, a puppet of the federal government, has failed to give the tribes self-government—and the states obviously would even do a worse job.
IF FEDERAL or state government takes away any more Indian sovereignty, it risks taking over Indian way of life completely.
Another bill before Congress would further limit Indian tribes in governing themselves. The bill, called the Omnibus Indian Jurisdiction Act of 1977 and the National Tribal Regulatory power:
"The Congress finds that the policy of permitting reservation Indians to govern themselves and order their own internal affairs ... has created great harm to the state and tribal power, and constitutes barriers to the effective administration of justice."
This bill, if passed, would decrease tribal government's powers in lands under national law, and hunting, fishing and trapping rights. It would increase the state's role in regulating and prosecuting all of its crimes.
Yet another bill many American Indians are concerned about is the lengthy Criminal Code Reform Act that recently was passed by the Senate. This bill would make several significant changes in criminal law that Indians think would affect especially them.
INDIANS say that the bill would add too many major crimes that the federal courts could prosecute on Indian lands. Also, the bill doesn't give tribal courts jurisdiction over non-Indians who commit crimes on Indian lands. Indians are not allowed to sue the bill that hint at increased federal and state jurisdiction over land and over people that is the business of tribal courts.
Those three bills listed are only representative of the kind of legislation American Indians fear. And they have good reason to fear all 11 bills they are protesting.
It is obvious that the Indian people have come up on the short end of American law and politics many times before. The sting is familiar with the sting of broken treaties and promises.
But to allow the termination of all treaties, and to allow Indian legislation that the Indians don't want, would be to allow the ultimate outrage against all Indian peoples.
To the editor:
Accounting teachers attack CPA column
It is always amazing how many people with a small amount of knowledge instantly become experts on a given subject. Patricia Allen, armed with the right information, has become the self-proclaimed protector of righteousness in the School of Business and, more specifically, in the accounting program (April 26th Kansan University) that mind people sticking their noses into areas they are not associated with, but it does bother us when they draw false conclusions based upon hastily derived assumptions about such a specialized field as accounting.
First of all, her interpretations of the CPA exam are common and not comparable to the MCAT or LSAT exams. It is a three-day, 20-hour test of the various subjects in the accountant must be skilled in to
KANSAN Letters
competently perform. Whereas the MCAT and LSAT are the passports to continued study, the CPA exam is the passport to a profession comparable to the legal profession's bar exam.
We can forgive such an oversight, considering the analogy that was offered by someone basically ignorant to the problem and therefore persistent onslaught from KU's accounting program is not forgivable. It is her relative ignorance of national trends in academic programs that becomes a major part of the current consideration of expanding the accounting program to a five-year requirement. When accounting programs were initially established in general, operating in a care environment
However, conditions through the years have increased the depth of knowledge the practicing accountant must have to function professionally. The tenets of accounting—personal and individual versed in one specific topic called "accounting." Moreover a CPA now must be an expert in business law, auditing, financial accounting, managerial accounting, governmental accounting, management theory, computer operations, statistical methods, finance and a host of other business-related topics. To meet the demands of a more complex society, four-year programs national are being offered by the Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the national body that controls much of the profession's activities, has recognized the possibility of deficiencies resulting by crumbling for four years. The sentiment is nationwide in favor of the expansion to five-year programs. Allen's insistence that the net result is merely an "inflated bachelor's degree" is impersonal, and the article classifying the current master's degree in accounting
as merely an extension of the material covered in the undergraduate program again reflects her relative ignorance of technology and its important topics covered in the master's program and increase her confusion on the subject even further, it will suffice to mention that society has long desired to consider five year accounting programs just to cover a sufficient body of material. The compiling of this amount of material into a four-year program would require a functional from a true learning aspect. We would be overloading the students with accounting information and the net result would not warrant the master's inclusion in the first place.
Finally, the comments cast upon the faculty, and particularly the reference to 'shrunken faculty interest' in the program cannot go without rebueltal. It beyond us how she so cleverly draws this inference. It is amazing indeed that someone foreign to the program is so up on the job that they have been our experience that after a combined total of 90 accounting hours, we have never felt such apathy toward the undergraduate students in the accounting program. Such statements are more journalistic sensationalism.
In our concluding comment, we pose one question for Allen. If the KU accounting program inadequately prepares the student for the profession, what exertions must KU take to fact that KU ranks extremely high among all institutions nationally in the number of alumni holding partner positions in the national CPA firms (a position comparable to the chief executive officer of a corporation and the most prestigious position at the public accounting unit)? We answer an await.
Garv Cole
Overland Park graduate student and assistant instructor in accounting
Lynn Torbert
Lynn Torbert
Leawood graduate student and
assistant instructor in Accounting
Bill O'Brien Leawood senior and teaching assistant in accounting
To the editor:
Spirit squad a great outfit
When an organization brings national attention to the University by competing for a job, it might network television, it would seem that that group would get some type of coverage in the school newspaper. Unfortunately the Kansan is this not the case.
The University of Kansas Spirit Squad has brought prestige, coverage and a third-place ranking nationally to the University but has been virginly ignored. It would be great if all supposed was the school newspaper. But your paper seems to think that a full page article on a group of strippers is more important to
the school than recognizing a group of students who work hard for KU. I am afraid many of you need to understand your reasoning.
The one article that the Kansan did run on the squad was as impersonal as possible, mentioning no names of the students on the squad. It was hardly a fair tribute.
For those of you that don't know, (how could you have?) the spirit squad appeared on national TV last Monday and the team with the five top squads in the United States. As a comparison, the Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina presented its squad in a front-page color photo on the day it was announced. Then it then reported the team's success in the week after its return.
The 21 men and women who have worked hard nearly every day to bring honor to the Kenyan government deserve better than the Kanan.
David Preston Memphis, Tenn sophomore
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