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Thursday, April 27, 1978
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
Kansas legislators have discovered the idea of "sunset" legislation, in which state agencies periodically must justify their existence or be abolished. The Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit would exercise the oversight.
The sunset idea itself is good. But legislators seem bent on turning it into a selective political tool for cracking down on aneries that they don't want to protect.
agencies that the city. The Kansas Senate this week monkeyed with a sunset bill sent over from the House. The bill in its original form would have affected 40 agencies. Four of those were the state departments of health and environment, transportation, administration and corrections.
The House version, strangely enough, didn't apply to the department of social and rehabilitation services. The Senate version does. But the Senate also acted strangely by taking out the four departments that had been in the House version.
THE POLITICS of the House and Senate decisions should be obvious. The House prefers less scrutiny on such items as welfare; the Senate preferred overlooking such items as state corrections. If the lawmakers are really serious about reducing bureaucracy, surely all components of government should be affected.
Incredibly, some legislators didn't even want the sunset bill at all. They argued that a legislature and governor are all a state needs to adequately supervise its agencies. That argument, however, loses credibility not only because 23 states already have seen otherwise and adopted sunshine laws, but also because adequate supervision of government is never enough. With the constant encroachments by bureaucrats on individual freedoms and tax dollars, agencies should be watched as closely as possible.
THE MAIN question about sunset legislation is not whether it is needed in Kansas. A majority of the Legislature agrees that it is. The issue turns on whether the current bill can be made to apply across the board to all state agencies.
If not, sacred cows could operate inefficiently while other agencies, not so politically blessed, would be working to justify their existence. As the bill goes back to the House for further revision, representatives must consider the justice of making the bill uniform. For each additional agency that is reviewed, the efficiency of Kansas government can only rise.
Legislators ought to imitate artisans, who recognize that when a piece of work has been formed and refined, any further meddling only flaws and obscures the creation.
A bill that would have tightened the rules for expungement of court records in misdemeanor and certain criminal cases last year by Gov. Robert F. Bellnett. Bennett said the reason for the veto was an amendment to the measure that was fraught with intricate legal implications. The amendment obliged the order of the bill, and by most accounts, it was unnecessary.
The intent of the bill, as originally formulated, was to place a grip on the health records of persons in the records of their actions pressed by the statute, immediately a conviction. That's on target.
THE CASE of a student athlete at Wichita State University illustrates the ab- bility to lax judicial record keepning.
Ronnie Schumon, a football player at the university, pleaded to charges of stealing a police officer after an incident in February at a Wichita apartment complex. The record of his guilty plea and the conviction was erased immediately after the trial.
Bookstore blues await reduction
The professional football
Students at the University of Kansas have not choice but to patronize the Kansas Union Bookstore. The bookstore's monopoly on textbooks places students at a disadvantage. The bookstore, because it is easily accessible, is free to be responsive or as unresponsive as it wants.
Lately, the signs are that service from the bookstore can be expected to improve. The bookstore is exposing itself more to the public in small but significant ways.
Who or what is behind these changes in the bookstore?
Because only 30 percent of KU's professors have been responsible enough to send in their book requests, the store has gone some distance with their advertisement on a local non-university FM radio station. The ad suggests that if the professor don't order the books soon, as they have frequent calls to the store, then they will be penalized for being late with the work expected of them.
WHEN in the bookstore, cashiers often ask the shoppers to fill out suggestion forms. Comments on the form are later followed up with a telephone call from a department
Reform judicial record-keeping
Last semester, for the first time in years, a bookstore competitor challenged the KU bookstore market. The competitor, the Varsity Shop, moved to a location ideal for Daisy Hill and West Campus Road residents. The shop sells the same kind of school supplies that the campus uses; it also offers the textbooks. And Jim Chrestman, the Varsity Shop manager, was the general manager of KU's store until July of last year.
After the competitor set up shop, the KU bookstore lengthened its store hours and increased its advertising somewhat. But the reason KU books are changing is the reason why KU's bookstore is changing.
THE NEW manager, Betty Brock, is behind many of the changes. Brock would be the first to say so, but her results thus far are not encouraging. He might be exactly what KU's bookstore needs.
Pat Allen
Editorial writer
The bookstore hasn't been, and still isn't', a pleasant place to shop. The lighting is poor; the merchandise is diced and prized higher than other stores'. Cashiers' across-the-counter conversations dwell on breaks and quitting time.
However, Brock said that with a few more merchandising techniques from the outside retail industry, KU's store someday would be "first in the United States of America." More power to the four months ago, when Brock sold to KU, he alled the store a disgrace to the University.
The problems with the store were many and wide-ranging, she said. Obsolete stock with full price stamp on each item has sought out wholesalers who have come in and taken away some stock, but at a substantial loss to the store. Other items have been reduced and are being sold for less.
BROCK SAID the former management was not aware of special deals available through some companies. For example, some companies have "ad allowances," which help pay for part of the bookstore's advertising costs.
"It makes sense," Brock said. "Advertising promotes sales, and the more the bookstore sells the more the manufacturer can sell to us."
Brock said, "Someone told me that the committee I interviewed with was looking for the most professional manager. Well, they got the most professional manager."
There is no reason why a university bookstore, in keeping with the expectations of a university setting, should not be just as important as or even ahead of what the other stores offer.
One of Brock's changes, the gradual return of textbooks back to the publisher after the start of the semester, is an example of something that isn't done by most college
bookstores. Many students and professors don't like it. But Brock said it was a move that would save students money by decreasing inventory write-offs.
ALL OF THE bookstore's merchandise is now fully guaranteed by the store because Brook insists on the guarantee from the retail company. The employee raise system from a seniority basis to a merit basis and also plans to work away with the glossy appearance with a remodeling job.
Brock is aggressive in a way that could benefit the University. She recently went to a bookstore management conference in Las Vegas. To hear her tell it, Brock hobbed佣会 and finked all week with the supply companies to get exactly what she wanted for the bookstore and on her terms. No doubt she made a name for KU. That always helps.
Brock doesn't hide her own ambitions.
"I WENT to Boise State University's bookstore," she said. "I brought that bookstore up to the top 10 in the country in three years. I've been gone three months and they've dropped out now, so I know I can do it for KU. I'm friends with managers of the top five bookstores. I enjoy the challenge and competition with them."
Right now Brock would be hard pressed to fit one student into her busy schedule. After a secretary instructed a columnist to make sure that she was on time for a 9 a.m. interview, Brock kept her waiting for more than an hour. Brock promises that after she has trained what she calls her "management team," she will have more free time.
Brock said, "I want the student to say,
There is a person. I can just if I have a
phone."
To be fully responsive to the students want, Brock and the bookstore will have to
Students will just have to wait and see. At any rate, KU could have done a lot worse in the selection of a bookstore manager. Time was short because as Brock says, couldn't have done any better.
IT DOESN'T appear that there are any defensible reasons for maintaining a statute that permits such abuses to continue. What is the use of court order in this case, at least removed from public inspection, immediately after a court has taken action?
punged after a two-year period, provided that no new convictions or court cases arose during the two-year period.
Already any serious felony conviction or case records must remain on record for five years before they become eligible for a vehicle registration. A five-year period applies to more serious motor vehicle offenses, such as vehicular homicide or driving while under the influence (DUI) or alcohol. That five-year waiting period would remain unchanged.
Of course, there is no reason why a person should carry the opprobrium and financial burden, such as from extra insurance premiums, for longer than the two years proposed in the bill. The bill would have enabled a person to have records of traffic offenses, city ordinances and certain felony crimes ex-
THE two-year period for other, less serious offenses should be made law before the court. The muddy language of the
amendment that led to Bennett's veto should be removed. Court records are worthless unless they reflect the dignity of court action, something the law says not to allow, shown by the Shimon case. The bill that was vetoled would have alleviated that crucial defect.
curate chronicle based on records, is reduced to a loke.
The bill also would have given persons convicted of violations a reasonable period of time to return the insurance form they have been removed from the scrutiny of insurance companies and employers. The weight of a relatively minor violation does not have become cruelly taxing.
The expungement reform measure should be revived and passed.
The hours worked by the
To the editor:
The Kansan in its April 17 edition wrote of recent salary increases for student government officers. Several points were erroneous, and I think they should be corrected.
Harper plugs Senate salary increases
The editorial made the statement that "Congress obviously has no monopoly on voting itself increases." This is true, since, unlike Congress, no member of the Senate staff affected by this bill is a voting member of the Senate except Reggie Robinson, and he is only eligible to vote in the event of a
The most unfortunate part of the article was the comparison of the number of hours worked by this year's officers with the hours worked by the last administration, have been sensible if the Kansan had asked me about the number of hours worked by the current Staff staff instead of using outdated figures. Reggie Robinson, the current student body vice president, works an hour a week or more. That amount is about 1.25 an hour.
draft, which arrives in May, weighed heavily on Shumon's chances of surviving about the unwelcome incident with the police might have jeopardized Shumon's chances of survival. Then they took the appropriate steps.
The abuse of the statute demonstrates that records cease to be worth keeping if they may be erased even as the defendant is still under the same system. Judicial history, which is nothing more than an ac-
KANSAN Letters
current executive secretary and by the treasurer were not discussed in the article.
It is true that the current executive secretary works an average of 25 hours a week for $1.70 an hour. However, the current treasurer are inaccurate, based on the current treasurer's record. Phil Cobb averages more than 25 hours a week for less than $1.70 an hour; during which time he worked almost 60 hours a week.
Finally, any one of the current staff members have the qualifications for other positions that pay at least minimum wage or higher. To be qualified, they must chastise used for these raises, but instead should be praised for their dedication.
Although it may or may not be true that these positions yield "intangible prestige benefits," those prestige benefits don't pay bills for any of the staff.
Mike Harper
Student body president
FROM around the bend, far
Everything seemed large that night, the night of the Anschluss. Bonfires flickered from windows and wafteed into the streets beneath smelling pleasant and making eyes water. People lined the street, some milling about in low, muttering expectancy, standing in front of their homes and stores, listening and waiting.
PHILADELPHIA—The town of Modling, Austria, population 19,000, is a half-hour's tramway ride from Vienna, and although it is a beautiful piece of land where Beetoven and Schubert were born, its achievement has achieved fame beyond its nine-wooded surroundings.
Austria visit revives Nazi memories
By HANS KNIGHT
below the town hall, came the muffled sound of drums, the rhythmic crashing of feet, the blurry sound of voices. As the parade approached, the words became clear.
Not long ago, I went back to Modding. I had spent my time at the school evening, and I walked up the street until I came to the bank building across from the town The town had changed little
The bank still had the low windowsill on which I had perched, with some excitement, and was soaking in the 1938 I sat down on the ladder again.
All together: "Ein Volk, ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer."
Solo: "Austria . .
Solo: "Judah . . ."
Chorus: "Berich"
Now the marchers appeared. They were mostly young boys and girls, carrying flaming torches. Some of the people in the building column. Others stood quietly, their backs pressed against the walls. The marching column, unfolding, poured into the town hall square. About 30 policemen appeared on the building's front steps, fingering their rubber truncheons, uncertain what to do.
Chorus: "Heil"
THE SHOUTING had subsided to a low bunz. Somebody produced a wooden ladder and leaned it against the town hall's facade. A body in leather shirts rolled up, his legs climbed up the ladder, a weapon dangling from his belt. He quick quick slushes, he cut off the
The policemen now had
"The rats have left the sinking ship," he cried. "The Schuschnigg regime has resigned. The slavery is over, the Führer is coming, Sieg Heil."
Austrian flag and fastened a swastika flag to the pole. The crowd along the periphery gasped. The boy looked down.
received an order. They pulled swastika arm bands from their pockets and slipped them over their elbows. The crowd roared approval. Near the bank a couple of windows shattered.
A MAN wearing a clap cloth turned to his companion. "This can't last," he said. "The Russians won't allow it. The Russians won't allow it."
Not far from the town hall, the synagogue already was burning Tongues of flame licked upward toward the gates of a firehole. A firek检 carefully approved the adjoining buildings.
English are arming like mad. In six months this will be over."
The horn of a truck made the crowd part. The truck was filled with men in brown shirts. The truck bore an anti-jewish banner.
Near the creek that wound through the town, there was a commotion. Some students had grabbed a teacher, a well-known Catholic, handed him a pile of black stones from the stone steps to the creek bank. They told him to write something on the wall.
The other man said: "I don't care as long as they don't give us some work. Things can only get better."
HE SHOOK his head and a tall youth kicked his shin. Slowly the teacher began to write on the wall: "I am a patriotic swine. I am a traitor to the fatherland."
They let him go and he vanished into the darkness. Up on the hills, the bonfires crackled far into the night.
Now, on my visit, I thought I still could smell the sweet, acrid scent of the wood smoke, hear the wood smoke, "We thank our Führer." "We thank our Führer."
The next morning, I walked down the stone steps to the creek bank. I tried to find a trace of what they had made the teacher write on the wall. The teacher didn't make it. Hans Knight is a columnist for Discover, the Sunday magazine of the Philadelphia Bulletin.
Letters Policy
The Kanasw welcome letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten and addressed by address and telephone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letters should include a class or hometown or faculty or staff position. Letters are not to exceed 500 words in length. Letters should serve the right to edit all letters for publication.
KUAC method
too expensive
To the editor:
I learned from one of my professors how poorly the University of Kansas Athletic Corporation operates. I realize the cost of measuring a measure or incentive for keeping the costs of operation to a minimum, KUAC assumes that the University will bail it out if the costs are greater than the revenue it takes in—and it's well worth it that it will support this academic year as well as the next year.
Another thing that I learned is that when the teams play at KU's home games, the team players are taken to a hotel the night before the game to keep themselves. They themselves. The coaches want their players in prime condition. It was implied that many of the players found "restful activity." You would think that the kind of activity would be very training on one's amount of energy.
It was very irritating to learn that KUAC wants to further reduce the seating of the students because it could bring in more revenue from off-campus money sources. Because the women's athletic program is almost put out to
pasture and the library is dwiming in capacity and capability to function, how can KUU help students KUU! I hope that there may be future changes in which academics would have priority over the modern gladiators' rooms at the University's money resources. I hope Archie Dykes and the rest of his administration will look more into the activities of the KUIAC.
Paul Schmidt
Wichita iunior
Student Senate racist, sexist
To the editor:
Attending a recent Student Senate meeting was truly a learning experience. I did not realize there were so many racist, sexist people at this college that was like the Civil War revisted.
"I'd like to point out something to those senators who think that minority and women's groups should be raked over the coals and allowed only minimum funding: If the shoe were on the other foot, we would gain more respect and for one another.
Kelly Lyne
Lawrence sophomore
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas daily August 20, 1978. Subscriptions are valid from Sunday to Saturday, July and August; Saturday, Sunday and holiday. $650. Subscriptions by mail are $1 a semester or $14 a year; outbound mail is $3 a semester or $14 a year; a county return is $3 a semester or $14 a year. Student subscriptions are not accepted.
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