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Thursday, March 23, 1978
University Daily Kansan
-UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unused editors represent the opinion of the Kavan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
Fee waiver needed
A proposed graduate fee waiver, designed to secure top-notch graduate teaching assistants and assistant instructors for the University of Kansas, proved too innovative an idea for the Kansas Senate Ways and Means Committee last week.
The committee approved only a 60 percent free reduction for graduate students involved in University teaching. KU, the Board of Regents and Gov. Robert F. Bennett had approved a full tuition waiver.
For five years, KU educators have been working to build support in the legislature for such a fee waiver. They have reason and data on their side.
WITH A full fee waiver, KU could bargain better for the graduate students it so heavily relies on for teaching. Currently, KU offers no fee waiver and the second-to-lowest wages offered by Big Eight schools and KU's nine Midwestern peer institutions.
Why should a graduate student work for nine months at KU for $3,500 when he could teach at Wisconsin, a peer institution, for $3,337. Even Ohio State, the only peer
university to pay lower graduate wages than KU, offers a fee waiver.
Assuredly, those who support the waiver appreciate the committee's recognition of the importance and necessity of a waiver, even with the committee's limited measure of support. Something is better than nothing. But if it is agreed that the waiver would give KU the educational boost it needs, why only half-hearted support?
IT CAN be assumed that legislators fully support good education in Kansas. Therefore, they ought to fully support a plan that for $243,194 would help KU compete for the highest-caliber teaching personnel available.
availabie
The committee's recommendation on the fee waiver is to be presented to the full Senate this week. Before senators are scared by the figures and vote to pare them down, they ought to consider what the money promises to buy. The fee waiver is a modest and sound investment in the academic quality of KU and the entire educational system in Kansas.
Women's athletics is deservedly receiving more attention than ever before. The Kansas Senate Ways and Means Council's recent reluctance to acknowledge the potential of women's sports as a vital funding on the part of committee members.
Women's sports need state funds
The Ways and Means Committee recommended that the 1979 state funding of the women's athletic program at the University of Kansas be increased 7 percent on this year's funding. This increase, which applies to all Kansas Board of Regents schools, would increase the 7 percent across-the-board budget increase for KU, is just not enough for the KU women's athletic program.
THIS YEAR the Student Senate voted, beginning in fiscal 1979, to cut the women's athletic program from the students' purse strings. This explains why the women's athletic department approached the Kansas Legislature with a budget request increased $33.3 percent from last year. Most of the increase represented an estimate of $480,000 in response to the budget. With basic needs as a first priority, the women's athletic department didn't dare ask for much to improve the program's quality.
The pursuit of quality ought to be the motivation of any program that KU deems worthy sponsoring. But financial constraints often make distant restrictions for KU's women athletes.
If Kansas senators' and representatives' votes are guided by the
Pat Allen
Editorial writer
recommendation of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, the KU women's athletic program is sure to suffer further in both quality and morale.
As is most obvious during the football and basketball seasons, Kansans expect quality from the sports at Regents institutions. And, because KU is the largest regents institution, the athletic efforts have pleased Kansans more often than the others. Athletics often is the only barometer by which a school's overall quality is measured. It is a fact to both blemish and to remember in light of the future of women's sports.
IN THIS scheme, where does women's athletics fit in? Judging from the recent Senate committee recommendation, there doesn't seem to be much room.
Anne Levinson, president of the Council of Women Athletes, said women's athletics was at a disadvantage. There are no influential alumnae in favor of supporting the programs. The programs are not yet crucially important to Kansas on college KU athletes are torn up of state and therefore are unable to wield even their insubstantial voting clout.
our club. The women's program at KU consists
of 10 sports. According to the Senate committee's recommendation, the members think that *181,882* will adequately fund a 10-sport program. The legislators must know that KU's Student Senate has abandoned the women's program and that the state is the only logical remaining source of funding for such programs; whether the legislators are truly concerned about providing an opportunity for the women's athletic program to produce high quality performances.
LEVINSON said there was a possibility that legislators were misinformed about KU's program. She has organized a phone campaign, staffed mostly by athletes, to call all senators in the House and the House Ways and Means Committee.
Levinson said, "I can understand why they voted that way from the information they were given. It was too general and some things were incorrect."
Along with all its other problems, the women's athletic program also is suffering from a personality clash between Washington, director of women's athletics.
Much of the tension that exists between these two women, both of whom are committed to women's athletics, can be attributed to money.
Levinson is in a Massachusetts sophomore who came to KU to play on the field hockey team. Because of insufficient funds, the women's athletic
department cut funding for this year's field hockey team. A special allocation from the Student Senate enabled next year's funding but next year's funding is an uncertainty.
Impending oil shortage dooms highway project
ALTHOUGH THE threat that field hockey may be eliminated next year has stifled recruitment effort, the field hockey team is interested in athletes interested in KU's team.
Rep. Joe Skubitz, R-Kan.
Tuesday introduced a bill
designating construction of a
new bridge in Kansas City and Houston.
In addition to her job as director of the women's program, Washington doubles as the basketball coach. Levinson has a dual role in a women's filtration is a conflict of interest. Sufficient funds to hire either another coach or another director might alleviate this.
The proposed route, the Sam Houston Highway, which is similar to the interstate system, would follow U.S. 69 south through Kansas, paralleling the Kansas-Missouri border.
Support for the proposal, at least from eastern 8th District constituents, was described as deserving the attention in Washington and Pittsburg.
At the moment, however, Washington is troubled by the fact that KU's basketball program, along with the track and field program, has the most to improve to be on a par with the schools with which KU competes.
The 680-mile route's design has not been explored enough to place a cost on the project, Skubitz艺 Jim Reimker said. But unofficial estimates place it at about $1 million a mile.
Although U.S. 69 is a dangerous and outdated highway, construction of another four-lane highway would be a tremendous mistake.
THE MOST immediate reason for rejecting such a massive highway is simply that by the year 2000, there will not be enough truck traffic hicules expected to travel the route. A recent study by Andrew R. Fowler, a British Petroleum expert, predicts that the high price scenario, demand for oil will exceed supply by 1997.
The most recent estimates for completion of the federal interstate system agree that the highway can't be finished before 1994.
be finished three years before
we run out of oil. And if the Skubitz
proposal fails, the usable life-
span of the Sam Houston
Highway, given a 10-year
construction period, would be
rebuilt.
The system as planned would
If the whole idea begins to sound ludicrous, that's because it is.
The governors of Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma are expected to endorse the proposal, indicating that just about everyone feels the appropriate way to look toward the future is by looking backward at the heyday of cheap oil.
AND ALTHOUGH Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, prophets of the interstate highway system in Jack Kereno's "On the Road" saga, are dead, their visions have become a part of our visions. President Dwight Eisenhower eisenhowered in 1866, which spawned the interstate system, was born just west of Topeka, near the Maple Hill interchange on I-70.
It is fitting that Americans end their oil-consuming love for gasoline, so the same region that gave birth to what has been hailed as the "greatest public works project" in recent years, can afford any more slabs of concrete for a mode of transportation that is doomed.
A better solution would be to upgrade the dangerous stretch of U.S. 68 in Kansas in propor- tional probable life span of the highway.
And the ideal solution would be to face the impending oil economy constraints by designing transportation systems that take into account the future, not the past.
Officials predict the proposal would take years to become law, making the 10-year highway highway highly unlikely. If so, it would mean that Sam Houston Highway might be finished as the world simultaneously runs a high-speed freeway, it must remain unfitted.
THE PROPOSED highway would be financed by the federal Highway Trust Fund, the same source that funds the interstate system. States would percent of the cost of the highway.
it is understandable that Kansas groups such as the 20-year-old Highway 69 Committee, which have pressured for a safer route, are elated by Skubt's success. Other interestes are super-seded by worldwide energy constraints.
U. S. 69 should be renovated by engineers so lives are not lost because of the highway's poor and outdated design.
The Student Senate is at fault for writing off the women's athletic program. If, as the Kansas Senate committee recommends, the legislature repeats the Student Senate's mistake and makes money even tighter, relations between the various sports' participants are bound to intensify.
But spending $800 million on a slab of concrete that will never carry its full load is astronomically wasteful.
IT COMES AS no surprise that the women's athletic program's funds fall far short of the funding men's athletics and women's athletic law that says "equal athletic opportunity for both sexes" must be provided, all federal funding of the Regents institutions may be withdrawn if the institutions are not made equitable by July 21.
After witnessing the enormous amount of money spent on intercollegiate athletic events, one might suggest reducing the men's athletic program's budget as one way to make up for the discrepancy between men's and women's sports. But things already have gotten too far out of hand for such a notion to be taken seriously.
In the words of KU's own study of the differences between the men's and women's programs, the men's program has "revenue-producing sports." The women's program only has "potential revenue-producing sports."
The legislature would do well to take notice of that operative word—“potential.” Regardless of whether she wants athletes in sports, women's athletics has a sound future. If the state refuses to invest in women's athletics now, women athletes and enthusiasts may well see no reason to attend and talen in Ransas schools in the future.
To the editor:
Students, faculty ignored in statue move
After all the debate concerning the University's plans to move the Jimmy Green statue, it appears that the administration is showing a high degree of disregard for the university's goals. Among students, numerous faculty and community members.
In the past Student Senate election, students voted overwhelmingly to allow the statute to remain at its present location rather than to stare down lawmakers on the lines of the new law building.
Why would the University want to move this historic landmark from a location where students have admired
its presence for more than 50 years?
Despite the fact that the Kansas State Historical Society gave the University permission to release reluctant to grant the University their graces. Bound by legality rather than logical reasoning, the historical reason for choosing to grant the move of the statue.
Daniel Chester French designed the Jimmy Green statue for old Green Hall. The statue represents not only the
quality of our law school but also the classical architectural design of the building before it was built, a 1920s old of Jimmy Green law school. To take it from its present location to another one would be similar to taking Potter Lake Street to west campus.
Why not start another tradition at the new law building by designing a statue better suited to the particular architectural design required, so students have one less reason for questioning the administrators at the University of Kansas.
Barney McCoy Lawrence senior
Cadets shocking
To the editor:
tecently I was in the basement of the Military Science building in what I understand was the Air Force cadets recreation room. While there, I was shocked to hear that the cadets were bluntly anti-Semitic remarks. I was shocked. It is inconceivable to me that three potential officers in the United States Air Force would harbor such concepts and thoughts. These are our future military leaders, with responsibility to protect and defend our nation. These "ladies" don't seem to understand that the protection of the people of this country, which was founded on the concept of religious freedom, also includes a fair proportion of Jews.
That some of our nation's armed service will be under the control of these big troops (one had the rank of major) is utterly inconceivable to me. It also seems a shame, too, because I have come to know many of the Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets. That the honor and pride of these people is degraded by three bigs seems a waste.
William Romstedt
Lawrence sophomore
Middle East peace hinges on Palestinian state
By SABAH KABBANI
N.Y. Times Features
By SABAH KABBAN N.Y. Times Features
Mid-March occupies a special place in Middle East developments. Just a year ago, President Carter told a Clinton, Mass. audience that the states have a right to a homeland.
The Arab world found in Mr. Carter's statement the first, long-overdue public acknowled-
edgement by an American President that the Palestinian people have a right to a homeland like any other people. The Palestinian people will for 30 years never caused it to vanish, and that the Palestinian people are not simply refugees whose problems can be solved through dialogue outside Palestine. Moreover, the Clinton pronouncement
indicated that an American Administration had finally focused on the core of the Middle East problem and had begun to approach it clearly. He was also consistent with the concept of openness which Carter promised during his campaign.
ISRAEL expressed displeasure at Carter's new vocabulary, which they had vigorously tried to suppress for the past three decades. Israeli efforts had focused on getting Americans that accept their contention that the Palestine issue was not the core of the Middle East crisis, and that it was former Premier Gold Meir, the 3.5 million Palestinian "did not exist."
1 1
The Clinton statement was made in the context of an affirmation of American support for Israel and concern for its security, but a more overall framework which did not necessarily coincide with the Arab posture, and it was defined as one of the three conditions necessary for a support of the Middle East problem.
Israel's security cannot be maintained by occupying other people's territories or by taking control of the Palestinian people.
Thirty years of experience have shown that Israel wants land, not peace.
SECURITY SEEMS to be a one-way street for the Israelis, who will face problems because we become aware that the Arabs are the ones who in fact need it, with their lands in the 11th year of independence from Palestinians still homeless.
Granting Israel its requested $13 billion in military aid and
equipment is not conducive to peace. Billions of United States dollars given Israel in the Middle East should be more tightly to the very policies which prevent peace; oc- ciousness and rights of the Palestinian people.
The guerrilla attack north of Tel Aviv only a few days before the anniversary of the Clinton declaration underscores the necessity of implementing an idea which, like most wars, The Americans are resorting to violence because they are desperate and still deprived of a homeland. Until they have one, conflict between those deprived of a homeland and others is inevitable. The implementation of the principle of which President Carter announced last year, together with the United Nations resolutions which address the threat of terrorism, can bring the bloody and tragic cycle to a halt.
IF RESORTING to violence is to be used as the pretext to deny the Palestinians the right to establish their own state, they have never come into being and should not have as her Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the former leader of the Irgun, a notorious terrorist group, carried out the massacre of 250 defenseless Palestinians in the
village of Deir Yassin on April 9,1948-five weeks before Israel was established.
The brutal new invasion of Lebanon, which is in progress at this writing, is further evidence that Israel's appetite for territory has not yet been satiated. Israel is repeating a pattern of attacks on its foundation, occupying more Arab land under the pretext of needing a "security zone." This is how Israel has expanded to seven times its original size when recognized by the United States in 1948. The coveted waters of eastern Lebanon are part of Israel's dreams of expansion into Lebanon.
TOGETHER with the world community, the United States
Israel's allegation that the current invasion is to eliminate Palestinian fighters is belied by the bombardment of residential buildings and civilians. It is also belied by history, which has taught that the determination to resist an occupier mounts as he faces a one’s territory. In the words of Columbia University professor Edward Said, “People do not disappear under oppression; they acquire a certain wise resilience in the process.”
must assume its responsibilities as a major power and permanent member of the Security Council, as well as principal supplier of the arms and aircraft Israel has used to launch its invasions. Unless Israel is joined in its international border with Lebanon, a new occupied territory will have been created, along with the West Bank, the Sinai, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Israel is occupying Lebanon, occupying Lebanese territory, and in the process creating more Arab refugees and
ultimately new settlements and new obstacles to peace.
The most urgent task now is not to salvage the illusory Egyptian-Israeli "peace efforts" but to salvage peace itself. And peace begins with the Jews, who are for the Palestinians, not with a reprise of Israel's 1948 campaign to annihilate them.
In these critical hours,
President Carter's Clinton,
Mass. declaration must be
translated into reality.
Abdulhamil is Syria's
Ambassador to the United
States.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
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