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Thursday, February 16, 1978
University Daily Kansa
Comment
=UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
Graduation salvaged
After two months of protests from University of Kansas students, their parents and KU alumni, it's official: Graduation this spring in Memorial Stadium is going to come off after all.
The office of Chancellor Archie R. Dykes announced yesterday that behind the-scenes efforts by KU officials had paid off. Because of a $1.9-billion renovation of Memorial and resulting insurance problems with the renovation's contractors, it had been feared that the traditional graduation ceremony was only a pipe dream. Now, however, the insurance difficulties have been worked out.
Specifically, the contractors' insurers were concerned that holding any public event during construction on the stadium could conceivably result in damages to the
stadium. That line of reasoning, although a painful one, did make sense. But so did the feelings of those to whom moving the ceremony would simply be further evidence of University bureaucracy.
THE MESSAGE, most fortunately, got across. The University has purchased liability insurance to cover the ceremony. What had previously appeared to be unjustified optimism on the part of KU officials now confirms their earlier rosy predictions—predictions grounded in private administrative actions that apparently began as soon as the insurance problems were made public last December.
were made. It still isn't clear why the official efforts were not made public, at least hinted at by those responsible for them. But good news is still good news. Seniors, their parents and alumni have cause for celebration.
UMW waiting for recognition
The coal industry, the bright light at the end of the impending energy crisis tunnel, is sputtering convulsively.
At stake is the potential energy supply for United States during the next half-century. Behind the coal reserves are a group of corporations in the world. The agonist is the ageing 88-year-old United Workers union, which now mines less than half a million tons per year. UMW members minded about 70 percent of U.S. coal.
The harbinger of the struggle is the machine. Machines that heat homes and transport people are akin to machines that spew out gargantuan amounts of coal compared with even the most intrepid miner's tonnage.
UMW LAST week passed the 60th day of a strike that is the longest in that union's history. About 160,000矿工 in Apalachia and the Midwest are members of the 21-strict union.
Bottle deposit legislation needed
Litter. Everyone deplores it, but very few to anything about it.
The federal government estimates that 60 billion beer and soda cans and bottles are manufactured every year in this country, and of those end up issued into the countryside.
Even around Lawrence, which looks clean and tidy at first glance, roadside ditches are spotted with colorful cans and shiny bottles. Those kinds of color and glimmer are not at
Recycling and "Keep America Beautiful" campaigns can only go part of the way in an effort to clean up our industrial act. It is necessary that we go to the very source of the problem and begin to enact basic anti-litter laws.
Fortunately, many Americans have become aware of the disastrous problems of pollution and litter. But the transition from awareness to adopting methods to stop litter
**IN** THAT IS where the Kansas Legislature comes in.
Currently the Kansas House Federal and State Affairs Committee is conducting public hearings on the general concept of a proposed law that would dictate total states that sell beer and pop to provide a return deposit of at least five cents on every beer or pop container. In effect, the bill would force the substitution of beer containers with returnable and reusable containers.
It is exactly the kind of legislation needed to keep Kanans from littering up their own state. Obviously, personal initiative and emotional anti-litter aren't dealt with properly, so it's better to clean the bottle bill, which has been proved effective in many states, is needed here.
Rep. Robert M. Wellington, is the chief organizer of efforts to get a bottle bill passed in Kansas this year. He said this week that after public hearings were had on the bill, he said the subcommittee would be appointed to hammer out a specific bill. The affairs
Steven Stingley
Editorial writer
committee would discuss and vote on the measure.
THE BOTTLE bill is a long way from being enacted as law, and its chief enemies are certain to be the beverage merchants and manufacturers.
At this week's public hearing, opponents presented a battery of facts supposedly proving that a bottle bill would cost beer and soda, manufacturers said. The officials also asserted that the bill would be difficult to put in effect, causing a host of practical problems. Besides being costly, opponents protested jobs in the beverage industry would be lost and retail profit would fall.
said. For for every statistic that the beverage industry quotes in protesting the bill, proponents have another statistic that supports the bill.
Proponents have gathered most of their information from states that have had similar bottle bills for several years. Although there are five states that some vowelism and other differences two of the Oregon and Vermont—have practiced the bill for any length of time.
IT IS the consensus, among proponents and opponents, that state bill bills have worked well in reducing litter. Oregon's litter is down 66 percent from when it enacted the bill in 1972. Vermont's litter is down 74 percent. Those are nice statistics.
Proponents of the bill note that energy costs for the manufacturer of reusable beverage containers are down because fewer containers need to be manufactured. In the same way, raw materials are used and the same containers are used over and over.
It is a perfect example of turning one-way exploitation of natural resources into a
cycle in which the same raw material is used more than once. It is a common-sense approach to dealing with decreasing supplies of natural resources and energy, while also reducing an uply by-product of industry—litter.
The bill's merits, however, continue to be disputed. There is the argument that a bottle bill for Kansas would reduce the number of jobs in the beverage industry and cost the industry large sums of money because machinery would have to be converted from one-way bottle and can production to reusable bottles.
RETOOLING MACHINES is costly; there is no way around this fact. In the long run, though, it seems as if manufacturers would not suffer greatly.
Local bottlers might be hurt at first by a sales lag and the higher cost of returnable containers, but after that they would benefit from the new technology. In a new, new and refilling returned ones.
tettainers would bear the cost of deposit transactions plus handling and sorting the containers, but that cost might be offset by the multiple cost of beverages in reused containers.
in short, an immediate rearranging of the way beverages are bottled and canned might cost some money, but costs eventually would level out and the industry would be better off. Everyone would be better off.
AS FOR jobs, studies of Oregon and Vermont show that there have been increases in the number of women working in the state; there would be rearrangement but little self-sacrifice.
If the bottle bill can clear the legislative hurdles and overcome self-centered business interests, the state would be licking several problems at once.
Displorable litter always will be glaringly present, it seems, because human nature dictates that it will. But that shouldn't stop Kansas from attempting to do something about it by enacting legislation that goes to the heart of the problem.
There are about 800 miners in District 14, which includes areas of southeastern Kansas, Missouri and Iowa. Like their brethren in other districts, predominantly in the nation's Eastern coal country, the miners view the health benefit issue as the biggest obstacle in the four-month-old negotiations.
"We're not happy with the contract as we understand it." Harold Shiderle, district board member, Pittsburg, N.J.,Microsoft's district manager, Shiderle's voted over overwhelmingly last June for Loretta Patterson, a candidate for the UMW presidency. Arnold Schoenberg, the five-year re-election by a 40 percent margin in a three-way election.
As one Eastern district member said last September, "It's not a fight with the coal operators, it's jealousy within the union that's tearing us apart."
SINCE THE DAYS chronicle in George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier, coal miners have fought for free health benefits in an industry once the backbone of its kind. "The card," which entitles union members and their dependents to free health care, is part of a bill by federal government and coal operators' representatives.
"The methods of pension funding have all been rewritten," Shielder said. Royalties, based on an increase in finance the health benefits program. For every ton of coal a miner produced, the UMW health fund would be raised to a predetermined schedule.
Coal companies, prodded by legislation, are reworking pension plans and advocating similar to Blue Cross-Blue Shield
"The companies no longer want to be a part of the health and welfare fund of the United Mine Workers," Shideler said. For an older miner, this is "very much like work in the UMW health benefits fund, time is running out as coal operators shift their benefit plans.
SMALLER COAL operators, whose firms have short life spans, are faced with developing employee benefit plans that adhere to federal guidelines.
The changes in health care plans are taking place throughout the economy. But why didn't the UMW funds come under attack for political insolvency before?
The coal industry is awakening after a dormancy that has lasted since World War II, when the nation began its now-burdenseme oil habitat. Energy firms have跃跃 for position on the global stage, but that the combination of more mechanization and efficiently run outside pension plans streamlines operations.
UMW wages in District 14 are about $7.80 an hour. Employers like the idea notation nonunion heavy equipment operators, who contribute to pension plans out of insurance pension plans.
NO ONE PAID much attention to coal miners during the '80s and '90s, the halcyon era. Coal prices in Petroleum Exporting Countries
and the 1973 oil embargo were audacious dreams of obscure nations' controllers.
"During the '56s and '68s, a lot of minors got used to being out of work," Shideler said. "They'd work maybe one or two days a week." It's no wonder that health departments that depleted; they were based on production levels that had fallen over decades.
The nation is girding its loins for a drastic increase in coal output. The strike is timely for another reason. The UMW needs to leadership and capacity to the '50s and '90s, President Jimmy Carter needs the assistance of union leaders to convert the nation to coal-fired power production. That's what the workers would effect an 80-day cooling off period, hasn't been invoked.
If a contract were to be signed today, it would be the beginning of March before coal output would begin to flow. With emergency coal supplies planned for shipment to nine Eastern states, the miners' strategy is clear, but ominous.
"We're just waiting out here buddy," Shideler said.
To the editor:
Publicity causes IHP prejudgment
One lesson my advanced years have taught me is to avoid the stress of power rather than good common sense.
prompts my first letter to an editor, written to express my concern about the implications of the first controversy over the Integrated Humanities Program.
Greenbacks fuel California dreaming
By MARION KNOX
MEN IN black bathing suits, glossy with Bale de Soleil, smoke dope by the pool. The cushions on my couch were a blue-and-green floral design, the previous tenant had bleed on them, been sick on them, spilled egg-drop soup on them.
hang over the coastline from Santa Barbara (SB) to Carpinteria. Houses turn pink as Pepo-Bioslim to fire-retardant (diammonium phosphate and attapultile clay) is dropped on them from the ground, leaving and ground vegetation—ice plants and avocado groves are said to be best.
BY MARION KNOX N.Y. Times Features
In CA, people take courses in Prosperity. They chew on dollar bills (woody in taste) to learn that the best way to up and down while wildly hand-clapping is called "enthusing" and is required. Prosperity costs $250, takes 41 hours in LA and is available in LA and SAF .
In CA young women drive squash-yellow Datsuns home from work, faithfully checking in the kitchen and tending in Rapacious philodendron swell big as souls on the sun. I rent my apartment on a month-to-month basis. My neighbor works in the restaurant where an extra was an "Beatlemania."
Every year some of CA burns. Clouds of fudge-colored smoke
Graduates lose their hang-ups about money and can imagine cash piling up in their laps, spilling onto the floor, filling rooms, busting ceilings. They are rewarded by silver by the mayor, Mr Sunshine, the trainer, at graduation. People hum fiercely into each other's ears imparting fiscal energy. The poor are not as poor in CA as they are in other parts of the nation, but the rich are so very rich and have bought themselves so many things that being less than rich makes one feel bad, dumb.
I was reading the new John Gregory Dunne. Screams outside the door. "Help me, God,
somebody help me." A young, naked, pale, trembling man crouched in the corridor against the wall. I offered milk in a Styrofoam cup. He'd been doing angel dust balm on my arm, police arrived. Only the female cop was nervous, whackened my neighbor on the hand with her billy club when my neighbor reached for a pocketbook. It a two-inch well appeared; it was there the next day.
COOL LUNCHES wrecked by
blinding light. The air stings at
4 p.m. every day I invested
in Columbrin, an eye-wash.
In CA, spectaculair parties are given to introduce new liqueurs. Fountains splash; ice statues glitter; 10 Martins in
silvery dresses pass small bottles of banana colada, strawberry margaritas, eggnog. Lawns long as runways; an English Tudor courtyard; hundreds of people; a polite band and a bow-backed weimareiner on a leash, elegant as all get out. "I'm into centering myself," a young woman confidenced. "I can see you split. It was in the first class ofomen to graduate from Yale."
People in CA have more room. I never went to Malibu; Venice was told to be filled with artists. I did not see any, but there was a long line of people who were carrying barrels in area that had barbell and weights on pulleys. A Diane Arbus man, naked from the waist
and with a belly like an open umbrella, pulled at the cables. Two 40-year-old women on white ankle-high roller skates, giggling, looking only at each other, no waist no sidewalk cakes in Venice.
In LA there's an "in" dry cleaner. Twenty people holding tickets wait. Fleetwood Mac in the air. Signed photographs of Bette Midler and Bing Crosby on the walls. It takes 45 minutes to get you a car from the parking lot. Get minutes to get you a car back from the parking lot. A young man with a hook for a hand waves drivers in and out.
A RANCHER in CA was kind to seven Mexican alliances. For only $10 a month each, he aliased his agents in the water tower on his land.
A middle-aged man in a tapered shirt is successfully wooing a young woman under Ma Maison's green awning.
He makes an elegant gesture and his gold necklace clinks against his salad plate. Every day at noon, constant as a dripped faucet, Maximilian Schel came out in a black robe to swim the water. The Marmurt's kidney-bear-shaped pool. He nodded to the ladies and left. Thanks a million, Maximilian.
People who break into cars in CA are the best in the nation. The entire contents of a car can vanish with a single jimmy mark. The telephone cables overhead with electricity as if there are teenagers chewing bubble gum inside.
CA, ESPECIALTY SB, is full of comic. Potpunks night in the clubs are Mondays and Tuesdays, and comics flood in from everywhere to work on the personae. For five minutes the stage is theirs in the lights. Flash punchlines are frequently wounded. Sometimes the light doesn't flash soon enough.
Sample: "The kids in Marina del Rey have strange accents. They sound as if they were to college and majored in yogurt."
I had a friend who said she was tired of being the ugliest woman I ever met and a friend who had someone come to her office three times a week to lead her in exertion, so exceptionally beautiful in CA.
The place of honor at CA dinner parties is next to the hotshot reactor.
Marion Knox is now back in NY after seven months in CA.
KANSAN Letters
Two visitors once sat in front of me during an IHP lecture. The professors were discussing what was admirable in a timocratic society, so why did it disadvantage advantages and disadvantages of each of the societies described by Socrates in Plato's "Republic." After listening for 20 minutes, one visitor wrote a note to the society to read. They vocate a society based on slavery.
These men were not evil, nor were they uneducated nor intelligennt. Then how did they come to such a specious, non-sequitur conclusion? I believe they found what their prejudice of the course led them to expect in the literature. I believe publicity given to the charges brought by the Rev. Barnet, has created an atmosphere in which the general public has been led to accept unsubstantiated allegations as fact.
I have repeatedly heard that Barnet has evidence to back up his charges, which he always is going to present at some future time and place. I would suppose the court would accept HIPWO would be finally, the appropriate setting for such proof. If he did have facts to support his charges, I would assume they would prove what ascertained as the fact that Dr. Quinn did not attend the forum. As many times as the Kansan has printed Barnet's accusations, the evidence supporting those accusations should surely prove its importance. What is that evidence?
If Barnet and his organization are able to bring the HIP to an end by implication rather than by proof, it will be a severe loss to the freedom of the academic community, as well as to the people of Israel, be freed by the program. Somehow, it's not funny that Barnet is doing his worst in the name of academic freedom.
Marilyn J. Allen Auburn, Kansas non-traditional student
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Editor
Harbara Resewiez
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