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Thursday, April 20.1978
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.
City secrecy wrong
Lawrence city commissioners and Buford Watson, city manager, talked about the new firemen's contract Tuesday night. They talked about it just after a commission meeting. But you'll never know what happened.
Watson and the commissioners decided that they had the right to go into executive session. Executive session simply means that everybody gets kicked out of the room and the politicians discuss public policy without worrying about public accountability. It's one of the most irresponsible things a governing body can do.
At a time when the firemen and city are trading accusations about which side is acting in better faith, both sides surely deserve to know each other's position. Secrecy is not the way to impart that knowledge.
It should be emphasized that executive sessions do more than exclude the press from reporting proceedings. They completely bar any interested citizen from seeing how his elected officials operate.
THERE ARE politicians who contend that "sensitive personnel matters" are nobody's business but their own. There may be individual cases in which that is true. But the firemen's negotiations, by definition, are collective bargaining—and collective bargaining is hardly an isolated instance of one employee who hasn't worked out. It is directly related to the safety, as well as the wallets, of Lawrence residents.
The worst thing about executive session is that sometimes a chosen few find out what went on. For example, Watson's job was on the line last year. Commissioners met with him in closed session. Did commissioners keep the session secret? Hardly. One commissioner's personal friendship with a prominent Lawrence resident led the commissioner to spill the entire story, even though that story was supposed to be con-
Rather than letting a selected few know about what is going on in Lawrence, commissioners ought to display extreme besitation in closing meetings. It won't do for them to give out a diluted account of what they supposedly talked about in executive session. Who is to say whether that version is accurate?
Watson and the commissioners let the city down Tuesday night.
In spite of contemporary criticisms that commencements are academic, the faculty of more than 2,000 congratulations, 2,000 students are expected to attend commencement at the University of Chicago.
Commencement merits speaker
COMMENCEMENT exercises are unabashedly sentimental. And notwithstanding the fact that they were a rite of passage for the KU
Commencement at KU is especially beautiful. The march of the participants down the Hill from Strong Hall and, weather conditions permit, onto Memorial Stadium generally is held to the highlight of the ceremony. After the multi-tasseled and hooded graduates take their seats, the teammates take back off and sit back and prepare to listen.
This year commencement probably will last more than two hours. Chancellor Archee R. Hogan, the university member of the Kansas Board of Regents will make some remarks and Gov. Robert F. Bennett will have something to say. After the speeches, the students will be interviewed by graduates, as soon as they are given their dummy diplomas, will skip the rest of the ceremony. For those who will be more music and afterward.
Elderly aid water quality
The Greeks used to say that the gods never distributed good and evil mixed to mortals. The same maxim also describes the state and federal governments' role in administering the so-called plot projects or by attacking offices at the beginning of each year.
But the tasks that the older Kansans have been assigned apparently are just a vehicle for them.
An example is the $100,000-a-year Senior Environmental Employment Program. The word "employment" should offer a clue to the aim of the program, as should the word "employeer."
Kansas is one of 10 states selected to administer the pilot project, ostensibly designed to educate the state's residents about water quality management. Eight Kansasans, all once retired, now lecture at civic and agricultural meetings.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency, which ultimately administers the program at the federal level, selected Kansas in December.
The real purpose of the program is to provide jobs for older Americans. The grants for the program must be used through the state's environmental management department. In Kansas' case, the department of health and environment.
The state has a water quality management plan deadline of Nov. 1 for presentation of a management proposal to the Kansas Leisurist.
"We're severely understaffed and our greatest need is in water supply." Sharon Boranay, department of health and environment, said eight workers are paid $3.50 an hour plus travel expenses to spread the word about water quality management and water pollution awareness. So far, state estimates for the program has reached about 3,000 Kansans.
All but one of the eight lecturers had retired from careers in environment-related fields, such as soil and water conservation or civil engineering. Their wages in the field were typically $15,000, so as not to interfere with eligibility for Social Security and pension fund payments.
Clay Stauffer
Editorial Writer
It is doubtful that the program's lecturers took the posts for the money.
THE PROGRAM has several strong aspects. Instead of an eastern Kansas bureaucrat's pedestrian presentation of water quality standards and proposals, the state's residents who listen to the speakers in a region of their own region. The real problems of water management in this high-plains state are addressed and exposed. Some of the management problems are regional in nature: Mineral intrusion affects central Kansans, mine drainage affects southeastern Kansans, irrigation management is a southwestern Kansan management is a western political greater near urban areas and the entire state has to worry about construction and agricultural runoff.
The lecturers, who have returned from beyond retirement, all have their districts to cover. Bertel E. Söderbom, a retired school teacher, would be suitable for a 21-county northwest Kansas region.
Katherine Rogers, a retired Fort Hays State University teacher journalism teacher, is the only nonspecialist in the program. A fall on the ice in January injured her back, tempi- neously, but she was no longer proje ct. She said reactions to the program had been mixed, but generally favorable.
"WE'RE getting a lot of so what?" "she said. 'Most it is good, and the rest it is'."
Apparently the eight persons employed in the plid project are kept busy. Attempts to contact the workers Tuesday were unsuccessful. Ivan Shul, a retired sanitary engineer who lives in Lawrence and covers northeastern Kansas, wasn't home. Neither was the popular Soderbloom, who was "out of work" at the time he retired district conservationist who covers southwestern Kansas, also was out on the road, making local contacts and speaking at
the Oswego Lion's Club. Only Rogers, laid up with her injury, was at home.
Are taxpayers getting their money's worth out of the pilot project? Rogers thinks not.
"I DON'T know," she said. "I think the taxpayers probably would say, 'No, we are not.' Speaking purely for my part of the city, I believe, we. We don't have much pollution here."
The subjects of the water quality awareness blitz are skeptical, as is the nature of many of the state's more rustic inhabitants. But the fact remains that if the program must be administered, and that need hasn't been proved, the pilot program can spread the word more effectively and the students will state employee operating out of Topeka.
"They will accept it from a fellow western Kanman before they will accept it from an alien."
But there seems to be some differences in the perceptions of the project, depending on the staff who work at it. "jobs for the elderly program," a label that is repugnant to the persons who travel around the state, or as a way of exploring the real issues of water quality
THE OFFICIAL intent of the program evidently is the former view. The grass-roots apprehension of the project reflects the prospective. Will the twain meet? Probably not.
Resent it she will, and she ought to, for that is at least half of the program's aim. For when the water quality project is finished, the quasi-retirees will be moved to the job site. At that time, protecting the environment—a noble cause, after all. And although the pilot project is an extremely inefficient way of "giving the elderly something to do," it does seem to be a relatively efficient way of acquaintancing the elderly with water quality management problems.
"I don't want to be made to feel that 'Here's a little job to keep grandma busy,'" Rogers said. After a thoughtful pause, she said, "I really resent that."
The gods never mute out good and evil unmixed, and the government concurs.
students now about to enter "the real world."
Pat Allen Editorial writer
Commencement ceremonies are a fine way for a university to send its graduates off in order to work for their degrees, and the university is proud of them. However, the rite of passage only comes from where the graduates have been, but also from where
"The real world," of course, refers to that world outside the Ivory Tower. Years ago, perhaps, it was truer that most students spent all of their time in a cloistered environment of School. Still, today's 22-year-old with a fresh bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering is likely to be just as awed by "the world." Most workers part time at a gas station for the past four years.
UNLIKE most major universities in the country, KU's commencement program offers no representative from the outside world to sympathize with, welcome the graduates.
the graduates are going. In this way, KU's traditionally beautiful commencement could be even further enriched.
From President Jimmy Carter to columnist Erma Bombeck, popular speakers and professors appear at college commencements this spring. A few speeches undoubtedly will make the news and the press obsessed with the speeches also will.
It is appropriate for the University, the Regents and the state to be represented at KU's commencement. But KU and its academic products extend past the state boundaries. Someone of broader significance also may speak to speak at commencement.
The last outside speaker at a
KU commencement was A.M. Swiritilla, dean of the School of Medicine at St. Louis University. Mr. Swiritilla represented the academic sphere, his speech provided a non-KU - non-Regent's non-
KU has everything to gain and nothing but money to lose if it included a speaker on the commencement program next year. Larry Heeb, chairman of the committee, said the committee, said the committee would try to get a speaker if the class of 1979 wanted one. Heeb said, however, that the committee always tried to trim the length of the commencement and few people would favor extra 45-minute长 ceremony.
AT PREVIOUS commences, James Watson Gerard, 1918 ambassador to Germany, James Bryant president, William president, and William Jennings Bryan spoke.
The critics are right. Commencement exercises probably are no more than pomp and
show. Maybe few graduates pay any attention to the commencement speakers, anyway. They probably do that an outside speaker's comments would appreciably ease the transition from college to work.
YET commencement pretends to be nothing more than it is—a mere two-hour course. Yet commencement is nothing to the graduate on the day before and nothing on the day after, if a graduate feels special at commencement the existence of a graduate
The suggestion that an outside speaker be added to the program is just a suggestion that would lengthen that time for you. You should top of that world he is being sent out to conquer. If individual graduates decide to cut out early, as they do now anyway, then it is only their loss. To be the least interested parties cheats the interests of the others.
Firemen forget police presence
Penner cited the fatal fire at the Coates House in Kansas
But Penner's appeal leaves reality by the wayside.
That statement, issued by Mike Pennep, president of local 1596 of the International Association of Firefighters, is aimed squarely at the emotions of the public. There is nothing like a charred body that makes before a warning a meaning man being bring home the point of "I told you goo."
The city of Lawrence will not build a new fire station until someone dies in a fire in southwest Lawrence, if the president of the local officers' union is to be believed.
Editorial writer
Bob Beer
City, Mo., as an example of a city's reluctance to deal with a problem until disaster strikes
IN AN ATTEMPT TO reinforce his position, Penner said a fire truck would not reach a fire hose until he had elapsed to 11 minutes.
The firefighters' union will well be correct in pointing this out, but it is omitting other pertinent information.
For one thing, placing a fire station close to a fire does not automatically ensure that loss of life will not occur. For
RICHARD STANWIX.
Lawrence police chief, said Tuesday that police cars are on the west part of the city. The response time of police if a fire should break out would be from
Another fact that Penner has conveniently forgotten is that firefighters are not the only ones who respond to fires.
example, on Dec. 15, 1977, an explosion and fire killed two men at 747 Massachusetts St. Firemen at Fire Department No. 1, 745 Vernont ST., responded within two minutes. A station was one block from the fire. I Imports, the scene of the fire.
Abortions for 'convenience' opposed
To the editor:
I'm sure Steven Stingley will receive plenty of letters attacking his moderate position on abortion, so I feel that I must write in general support of his article of last Friday.
My position is more conservative than Slingey's. I am not a Catholic and I do believe in the necessity of therapeutic thinking, think "convenience" abortions ought to be permitted by law.
As the mother of two beautiful, intelligent and wanted adopted children, I have watched them grow and develop as unique individuals, and I have become convinced that I could conceive in incest or by rape and so long as their coming into the world did not take the life of the biological mother or render her blind or crippled, their right to live supersedes any "right" a pregnant woman might assert in an unhappy or embarrassment suffered as the result of her freely chosen actions.
Letters
KANSAN-
If we choose to close our eyes
to what is being destroyed merely so people can be free of responsibility, if we pretend that that fragile and mysterious little spark of life is ours and ourselves as human beings.
Blood samples test pregnancy
As a laboratory professional who has had experience performing both the urine pregnancy test and the Biocept-G pregnancy test, I feel there is a need further clarification.
I would like to respond to the April 11, 1978, article concerning pregnancy testing.
Nan C.L. Scott
E.I.S.C. instructor
To the editor:
1) Although it is true that a positive urine pregnancy test may be detected as early as 2%
weeks after conception, the manufacturer recommends that any negative test performed at that early date be confirmed. A negative result is not possible, therefore, to be confident about a negative result until at least 12 days after conception of date of menstruation.
For the president of the union to state publicly that the city will ignore firefighters' problems until someone dies in a fire will not accelerate recognition.
THE CITY DOESN'T have to discuss problems with the union because Lawrence has not officially recognized it.
3) A positive pregnancy may be detected as early as 10 days after conception with the Bloepcht G. Accuracy of as much as 98% may be expected at the time of the first missed menus.
To the editor:
I agree that the traditional urine pregnancy testing is adequate for most medical considerations in the detection
2) Urine containing blood, large amounts of protein or bacterial contamination may produce false results. The Biocept-G is performed on humans not subject to these limitations.
He said, "We voluntarily agreed to sit down and discuss wages and working."
Polish humor wasn't funny
Considering there are no methods of birth control, short of abstinence, that are 100 percent effective, probably one of the most common reasons for running a pregnancy test. "A few days" can make a hell of a lot of trouble to the "currious" woman.
of pregnancy, but I personally feel that the Biocept G-is more satisfactory in meeting needs or reliable pregnancy testing.
We deeply regret your decision to print the "cartoon" by Wright that appeared on the editorial page of the Kansas Tuesday. That such a flagrant error would have made print anywhere is inexhaustible; that it should appear in a paper published by and for students of
Rose Marie Keating, M.T. (ASCP)
345 Indiana St.
Penner's attitude will hurt negotiations that are going on between the firefighters and the city, Binn said.
renner's statement has managed to raise the irice of the Lawrence City Commission. Mayor Donald Binns said Tuesday that Penner was guilty of sarcasm and exaggeration.
"They're not going to wait for a fire truck if a rescue is needed." Stanwix said.
Lawrence firefighters would be better off in their negotiations for wages and working conditions if they would give Penner explicit control over making unfounded statements that cause unnecessary alienation and outrage.
an institution of higher learning is an abomination. We feel that an apology to students and faculty of Polish descent is in order, as well as an apology to the population of the University as a whole for this insult to their intelligence.
Kathryn D. Petrowsky
Lawrence graduate students
Student to miss dean of women
To the editor:
I, like many other students who have had the opportunity of interacting with Kala Stroup, dean of women, would like to thank her for the many contributions that she has given to the office of student affairs and to the University. Dean Stroup has played a major role in the development of the elementation of policy affecting students at the campus level, while keeping in good touch with student perspective. Her experience, contributions and
student awareness will be missed by all.
Jess Paul Ingalls junior AURH president, 1977-78
Letters Policy
It is indeed hard to imagine a policeman not trying his best in an emergency situation. But Pemer would have the public believe that if a fireman is not on the scene, a death may occur.
The Kansas welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten and include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include the writer's name and contact or staff position. Letters are not to exceed 500 words in length. The Kansas reserves the right to edit all letters for publication.
That is absurd.
Editor
Barbara Rosewicz
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
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