4
Mondav. April 3, 1978
University Daily Kansan
Comment
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers
The Kansas Senate made a serious mistake last week when it fiscally snubbed the KU women's athletics program. The Senate slashed Gov. Robert F. Bennett's proposed University budget so that what had been an $85,115 increase in funding for the program became a miserly $10,853 increase.
Unless the House amends the budget, every one of KU's 10 women's teams will be confronted with possible cuts. That news is hardly encouraging in view of recent federal efforts to determine whether men's and women's athletic programs are equitable at the University.
But more importantly, KU ranks a dismal sixth in the Big Eight in funding for women's athletics. It's highly unreasonable to suppose that the University will be able attract good women athletes if it can't point to decent financial support from the state.
THE MONEY simply has to come from somewhere. And it should not come from the Student Senate, which last fall voted not to fund women's athletics for fiscal 1979. Its decision was a wise one because its proper role focuses on allocating student activity fees to campus groups that otherwise might not be able to survive.
Nor will it do to charge a special tuition fee to get the extra money, at least not without a referendum on the matter. The best solution lies in immediately impressing on members of the Kansas House the need for undoing the damage that the Senate has done. University administrators should be urged to lobby strongly for such a reversal.
The women's athletics program simply must not be sabotaged by stinginess.
Kansas government can only be as good as the people in government. If Kansas cannot be good, then competent people available, the highest hopes and expectations for the state must necessarily be trimmed.
Low salaries a waste of money
This year Kansas suffered a 25 percent turnover of state employees. According to Jack Green, Gov. Robert F. Bennett, one third of those employees left strictly because of salary pressures. Two thirds of the workers left for other reasons.
Speculation about the further good those workers might have done for Kansas is guesswork at best. But their mass departure has had at least one recognizable effect.
Although some employees took advantage of the state's early retirement program, Crocker said the workers might have chosen early retirement because they were convinced they would not be able to make much more money on their jobs.
THE EFFECT, a financial one, is a result of what Crocker calls "a tendency to be pennywise and pound foolish."
A state employee on a salary of $4,000 might, with his resignation, be only in productivity but also in efficiency. Taking this example to its extreme, the state could expect to suffer an annual tax rate of 15 percent on the dividend at the highest possible salary $42,500 would resign.
Crocker said that people outside the civil service system typically thought government benefits were not a benefit. He has testified before
the Senate, however, that fringe benefits for the upper level employees were not even half as good as private industry's
For workers at the lower level positions, the benefits are probably comparable, he added.
TO THE VOTER, a major look as if the Legislature is being duty conscicientious by not approving large salary increases for state employees. But in fact, current tightening of tax rates will vote more tax money in the long run. The state's pay system is a wasteful, nonensical way to spend the taxpayers' money and perpetuate stagnant government at
Bennett's office proposed a 7 percent increase, across the board, for all state employees. After considering the proposal, the Senate Ways and Means Committee specified that salaries be increased 7.25 percent of a maximum of $1,200.
of $15,000 or less would receive
the full 7.25 percent increase.
For those with salaries of
$16,000, the Legislature would
tack on an additional $1,200. The
Senate amended this plan.
At first glance, this system may appear to be equitable. It seems to champion the little ones. It is time to be realistic.
State employees with salaries
IF THE Legislature persists in being stingy about expenditures to provide for a sound future, it is at least obliged to organize its priorities realistically. The fact is, not only are employees in the lower level jobs easier to find, but all factors remaining constant, a higher rate of turnover in those jobs is typical and at times good for employee morale.
Crocker told the Ways and Means Committee that during the last three years, top-level state employees had lost 11.8 percent of their earning power because an increase would, of course, be greater on lower level employees. And, to their credit, the
legislators have given lowerlevel workers more frequent raises.
But higher level government workers tend to have more expensive tastes than lower level workers. Why shouldn't a competent, skilled employees expect to live on a high salary if his work and experience are commensurate with the salary of the Senate really expect the extra $1,200 to be an incentive for government employees who could go into private industry such as $10,000, or more, a year?
GOVERNMENT work requires special dedication and commitment. Kansas legislature "the very best people" to work for the government at the workers' own personal and financial sacrifice. If salaries aren't in their budget, the work will be sought only by those who have been rejected by private industry. And Kansas government will haveEssential itself as a nigory employer.
Farm policy feuds traced to annual lack of listening
The farmers like, the president doesn't like. What the president wants, the farmers disdain. And the dispute between farmers and their government goes on.
The farm market is low. Prices have been driven down by grain surpluses and higher fertilizer prices, producing grain and getting it to market have risen. The result is that a bushel of wheat now brings at market about two pounds of produce, which costs the farmer to produce it.
The United States has just passed through another winter of the farmers' discontent. It was a winter though, in which a group of farmers took action. A group called American Agriculture supported threats of a farm strike, and no one took it seriously. Few thought the tractor brought to speeches would be followed up at all.
But the farmers were arguing from need. They estimated that the cost to them of one bushel of wheat would be about $2.40. What they wanted from Washington was help to make up the difference in parity support, they called it.
THE WINTER is over, and price supports have yet to increase. 'Farmers' attitudes haven't changed. And this spring farmers are taking action.
The reasoning behind it was good. If the farmers' problem was a giant surplus—and surprize we were growing every day, too—it would make wheat scarce enough to bring higher prices.
Last week, farmers in the southeastern part of Kansas began to destroy part of their crops. Some soils soon imbated by northwest Kansas farmers. They would plow their newly sprouted grain under, or turn their cattle loose in order that they 'called it a "plowdown."
John Mitchell
Editorial writer
The destruction of the farmers' crops also lent some credence to their threats.
The message was not lost on Congress. On Feb. 2, Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., introduced an amendment to an insignificant bill regulating rainfalls. The Senate agreed with the idea of crop destruction, but rather encourage it and pay farmers for it. The proposal harks back to the days of what President Franklin Roosevelt promised that farmers would receive increased price supports if they put less land into production. Dole, in fact, fairly supports to farmers who would ideal half their land.
THE amendment was a hit with the farmers participating in the plowdown. American Agriculture member Ardis McCray of the organization's state headquarters said last week to think Dale's bill is the best thing to come out of Washington."
But the people back in Washington apparently do not agree. Dole's amendment is challenged by another one, the Talmadge amendment. The Talmadge, D-Ga. Talmadge's amendment is simply a plan to pay farmers for setting aside land. It does not promise to support parity or even change the supports at all.
The bill, with both amendments still thumped on, will be worked on by a conference in Washington. The effort could be futile, though. Vice President Walter Mondale said last week that the bill would push Jimmy Carter to veto any emergency legislation that
Congress rushed through on the farm-support issue.
Instead, the administration has used some of its discretionary power to strengthen subsidies to farmers and make sure the same ends are envisioned, but administration officials seem to think it would be better to accomplish them without new legislation. The American government does not like that plan.
"IT'S A BUMMER," McCray said. "It throws us a little crumb in some areas, and in some it does nothing at all."
At first glance it seems that the administration, Dole, Talmadge and the farmers are heading in the same direction; the farmers would grow down on the amount of grain grown in the country. The farmers would like to get paid for their cutback efforts, and they think that one way or the other their crops will accomplish that.
There also is a feeling on the farms that farmers' goals should be accomplished by natural economics rather than market pricing. McCray has supported the Dole amendment. He said the prices on grain would rise as a result of the 50 percent set-aside and other prices that buyers of government supplies would have to pay.
Unfortunately for American Agriculture and its supporters, the Dole bill probably will not make it. No bills seems likely to make it to and through the White House. A Department of Agriculture official, recently dismissed the proposals as "vex bait."
And so the farce plays on, and it seems no one is listening to what the others have to say. The farmers like what Congress is arguing over and what the president doesn't want. And because it must be plowed down. The discrepancy between what farmers pay and what they get becomes no narrower.
MANNELY
Laetrile harmless, should be legalized
The Kansas House Friday approved a bill to legalize the use of Laetrile. The 72-49 vote that the bill now goes back to the Senate, which prefers it to the Obama legislation, for final action.
The approval is curious because a federal law prohibits the sale and use of Laetrile. Federal medical research officials have fought the use of the drug, arguing that it is the most important and is the most recent in a long series of "patient medicines."
Patent medicine or not,
cancer patients certainly have the right to whatever sources of solace that exist.
Contemporary cancer treatment—mainly radiation and chemotherapy—is an ordeal for cancer patients. The treatments are almost all, although those therapies are based on medical science, are
Indian studies plan merits nod
American Indians, a people ravaged and robbed since the white man's "winning the West," need to be better understood. A group of faculty at the university is trying to achieve just that.
The group is trying to establish a formal Native American studies program at KU in an effort to organize the curriculum. The American Indian courses. There are 37 of these courses now scattered throughout the various departments in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Also, there are many materials that contain some materials related to American Indians.
That is the reason the group of faculty members has for two years studied the possibility of establishing a Native American
High enrollments in these classes indicate that there is strong student interest in the affairs of the American Indian. Although KU's Indian enrollment varies, a non-visible see-ya studying a people with which they share the land.
And Lawrence is the perfect place for such a program to
mentally and physically debilitating. Families that have endured a death from cancer know that the treatments often compare with the cancer in unpleasant effects.
THEY HAVE requested $102,941 to support the program, from the National Endowment of the Humanities in Washington, D.C. The money would be used for staff salaries, library acquisitions, films, and operating expenses, according to Don Stull, co-chairman of the committee.
Although Laetitra probably does little more than act as a placebo, cancer-ravaged thought to have access to the placebo.
For several reasons, it would be money well spent. A student at KU because there is an interest and because it would help students to understand better a history historically has been neglected.
studies program. The groundwork for such a program has been laid, and now the special committee members are waiting for a response to their appeal for funds.
arise. Situated in a region saturated with the heritage and culture of several Indian tribes, Lawrence also has the added advantage of being the home of Haskell Indian Junior College
The committee's recommendations simply call for an interdisciplinary major in Native American studies, more courses and the hiring of a director and faculty for the program.
Stull also points out that no Big Eight schools have formal American History curriculum. Kiiuchi would be an appropriate place for such a program to develop because of the numerous courses already offered.
It is a good idea and something the University administration should work hard to obtain.
The bill requires that a patient could use Laetrile only if the substance were prescribed by his physician.
THE FOUNDATION for the program is well established and all that is needed is a financial and organizational boost.
But what is to be gained by such an endeavor?
Although Stull admits that there's not much of a job
**THIS IS especially true where the American Indian is concerned. It is time for Americans to re-examine the plight and prejudices facing the people whose heritage and culture is lost in this land than the peoples who migrated and intruded here.**
Obviously, there isn't much of a job market for many disciplines within the liberal arts and sciences. But practical economics never should take over the benefits of education.
market for graduates in Native American studies, he says that there is much to be gained by Indian and non-Indian students in studying the heritage, history and sociology of the American Indian
Certainly, many native American Indians are tired of being twisted and dominated by political and social system
The American Indian surely is misunderstood and suffers for it.
The establishment of a Native American studies program would be a step in the right
"It is as if Americans, and Kansans, have stavred to forget their land's true heritage and identity. It is time to begin remembering."
direction in resolving some of these misunderstandings and alleviating some of these preductions.
Letters Policy
The Kansan 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, they must have the writer's class and clude their class or faculty or staff position. Letters are not to exceed 500 words in length. The Kansan reserves the right to edit all letters for publication.
Testimony about the bill from persons who used Laetrile demonstrated to legislators that patients would use the drug in order to treat their disease. The bill wouldn't promote the use of the drug. It merely would remove the penalties and eliminate some of the opprobrium that a physician must subject himself to if he is using Laetrile only for the patient's psychological benefit.
The need for more study of the substance is unquestioned. Use of the substance by dying cancer patients would give researchers the opportunity to further investigate the drug.
One cancer patient at the Memorial Hospital at Topeka asked his physician to gain access to Laetrile. The permit for Laetrile in that case was limited, and he didn't do a dying man said he began to feel better after taking the substance.
But more than any of the practical reasons dictating the legalization of the drug, the case represents a placebo dominates the issue.
Feeling better certainly is no indication of victory against the mysterious causes of cancer in human tissue. But there have been no uniformized licensed interferences with modern cancer treatment.
The bill would help eliminate shameful profiteering by
"Laetrile pushers." That fact in itself is a weighty reason for endorsing the bill. Those who would deny Laetrile's use because they feel the expense for Laetrile would be a waste of money, but those who have never seen the hawoc that expensive cancer treatments can cause a cancer patient and his family. The worst effect is the shame that the patient often feels for burdening his family with expensive medical bills. That's enough to depress even a healthy person.
the solace has not been demonstrated to have any medical value? Has prayer been absolutely proved to have positive medical value? Have the flowers that brighten the beaten tested and found to ameliorate relentless diseases?
What right do the living have to deny the dying solace, even if
Attitudes toward the dying should be a source of shame to every American. Perhaps those who have been condemned by cancer should explain their heightened love for life to those who would judge placebos "worstless."
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas daily August 27, 1998. Subscriptions to the journal are $10 for January and July except Saturday, Sunday and bishop days. Subscription rates are $12 for 60445. Subscriptions by mail are $1 a member or $15 a year outside the county. "Student subscriptions are a year outside the county." *Student subscriptions are a year outside the county.*
Editor Barbara Rosewlez
Harbara Hosewey
Managing Editor
Irvast Kavey
John Mueller
Managing Editor
John Riordan Editor
Campus Editors
Barry Munny Editor
Assistant Campus Editors
Deb Miller, Leon Urchin
Associate Sports Editor
Walt Brabant Editor
Entertainment Editor
Pam Kuey Editor
Copy Chiefs
Mary Mitchell Editor
Lori Bergman,
Make-up Editors
Cary Luman,
Wire Editors
Diane Porte, Jane Piper,
Editorial Writers
Pat Alan, Clay Stuart,
Photographers
John Mitchell, Steven Stuart
Handy Olson, Donald Walter
Lynn Kirchner, John Wintlesbeck
Staff Writers
John Wintlesbeck
Staff Artist
Business Manager
Patricia Thornton
Assistant Business Manager Karen Thompson
Advertising Manager David Hedges
Marketing Manager Lara McRae
National Advertising Manager Kim Merrison
Classified Advertiser Katie McRae
Marketing Manager Dawn Mac
Publisher News Advisor
David Darv Rick Musser
Advertising Adviser Mel Adams