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Thursday, December 8.1977
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Staged columns represent only the views of the writers.
Problems stemming from the shoddy architecture that has persistently plagued state construction projects surfaced again last week, when the Kansas attorney general's office filed a lawsuit in connection with the expansion of the KU Medical Center.
The malpractice lawsuit should come as no surprise to those familiar with the design problems at the Med Center, most noticeably its defective heating and cooling system. The state is seeking $200 million from Mamillah and Brown-Sidowicz, Kansas City, Kan. Four individuals also were named as defendants in the suit.
Specifically, the Med Center's new educational building, occupied for about a year, is too hot in summer and too cold in winter. Inadequate ducts in the building's ventilation system, according to Med Center, have been a problem since the building opened.
THE LAWSUIT is hardly the first indication of trouble with the Med Center expansion project. Last summer, construction of a new 515-bed hospital was delayed because of a bricklayers' strike. In addition, the architectural firm's president is now appealing a conspiracy conviction to commit bribery in making a political kickback to get the expansion's original design contract.
The state has filed suit against the firm to recover money lost in cost overruns, building defects and arbitration awards won against the state by contractors. Doug
Construction at Kansas universities is big business, but slipshod, professional work continually hammers such construction. The new KU law building, as one example, was late in opening for classes this fall because of a plethora of construction foul-ups.
Muxlow, assistant attorney general, has said that the state pay $525,000 in arbitration awards alone.
The suit is just another painful reminder of the need for reform in the method of handling state building projects. An interim committee of the Kansas Legislature explored the problem and in October proposed replacing the state architect with a sevenmember state building commission. The commission would select private architectural firms for state projects and hold the firms responsible for their work.
The state government and civil service system would be less responsible and private enterprise more responsible for the success of state building projects under the proposed building commission. Architectural work on state buildings could only improve, and, as the recent lawsuit indicates, improvement is in order.
GOV. ROBERT BENNETT is not unaware of the state construction problems; he was brutally honest when he called the Med Center project "an outstanding example of the worst piece of construction that has occurred in the Midwest in the last century." Bennett, however, did not address himself to the larger question of what future measures could be taken to improve the state's dismal architectural track record.
Brainwashing is subject Anita should know well
To the editor:
I heartily commend Lucy Smith for her report in the Kansan on Dec. 6, which was balanced with a report of the treatment of Amy Bryant's visit to Topeka. Smith refrained from the vindictive reporting to which we have become accustomed with Bryant's speeches.
She was in good voice, praising God for keeping the queers out of her school, for keeping the school pristine-wheat caucasian, for allowing her to continue selling orange juice and for making Christians morally right. Of the exclusion of all persons, she was also thankful for people like Cecil Todd and other religious businessmen for making the whole think possible.
Again, I commend Smith for being so restrained in her reporting and instead allowing him to say what he may say, I am equally opposed to the vicious and premeditated violence to which Bryant has been subjected. The premeditated violence of pies at Anita seems extreme.
Despite her modest denials, Bryant has been carrying on a well-financed and vociferous campaign against homosexuals, atheists and underprivileged pregnant women since her coronation as Miss America. She is not alone in children being pressured and brainwashed, she knows of which she speaks.
I recall watching her on television singing to children attending the religious school that her own children attend. It was an incredible scene, with little five- and six-year-old" dressed in a red dress and white gowns, being serenaded at their first-grade graduation by Anita.
The homosexual and perverted penetration into the crevices and imaginations of
KANSAN Letters
society have been passionately resisted by the nice southern lady with the orange fruits in her hands, who has with her many friends grown this whole nasty matter to a throbbing and pulsatile head.
Richard Adams
Richard Adams Lawrence special student
KU ice hockey merits attention To the editor:
The KU ice hockey club is finally getting the recognition it deserves. When searching for any news of the club, I am always disappointed when I find that "hockey" in the title of a Kansan article invariably refers to field hockey. Ice hockey requires fast moving sport requiring quick reflexes, agility, and an almost innate sense of functioning on ice.
It's always been surprised to me that ice hockey had not been played at KU before Val Rader of Anchorage, Alaska, the student responsible for gathering together the founding club members and getting the Student Senate to allocate funds to KU. All college ice hockey has a spirit all its own.
Having watched the original 1972 club members practice as well as play, I can honestly say that the KU ice hockey club is one of the most dedicated and hard-working groups of guys around. I'm glad to see that the KU Kaplan and Kauai you hope will keep KU students informed about their games and the progress of the club.
Topeka graduate student
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Editor Jerry Seib
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Frank Burge, the white-haired director of the Kansas Union, is one of the most inspirational persons on campus, but too few of us take time to say it. Burge, who outruns him to help serve students and faculty, has been a leader for so long that we take for granted his creative and unstinting services.
Burge has no problem with weight control, for he is constantly on the move from floor to floor and room to room to see that every need and desire of guests of the Union are met.
Union director an asset to KU
We all owe Burge special kudos for helping us to have the finest student union to be found anywhere.
To the editor:
Samuel Adams Associate professor of journalism
Is that too much to ask, Santa?
Dear Santa.
I'm going to take it easy on you this year. I'm not going to ask for much . . . well, at least I'm not going to ask for anything unreasonable. After all, what I ask for is easily accessible in this world.
long, dark hair, dark eyes and glasses.
Then, when she takes the glasses off—zoose, instant sex goddess. And, I don't want her to get fat or have early wrinkles. Maybe I've seen too many great-aunts who look like rotund prunes, but I'm really scared of a woman who will give out in a few years.
Oh, I'm sure you've heard all these requests before, but not from me. I'm different. I used a dash of wisdom and practicality to compile this list, unlike those thousand times we train and GI Joe pilots. Phoebe on them. Sanna. Listen to me.
First, I want a job when I get out of this horrible place. I want an 8 to 4 job where I can enjoy what I'm doing, get some work, and do things that I when I go home. I want free weekends and evenings, and time to read those books I've been wanting to read for
SECONDLY, I want the right woman.
I want one who will be interested in what I'm doing, but who will have a life of her when she is not feeling very natural. That way, no one will have to change or sacrifice anything.
And, I want that woman to be liberated, but not too liberated. You know, no one wants you to be free. And I want her to be beautiful, with
Thirdly, I want plenty of money. I want a nice house with a nice wooden fence. A chain link one wouldn't do. I want a big fireplace and deep orange and red pile carpeting. Imagine the such a room when a fire was kindled.
I WANT TO BE able to buy a new can before the old onepoops out, and a new brand. I want it to be the best name braids: Hallmark, Enroe, Johnny Carson, Mateus, Johnny Walker. Mercedes, Canon, Hamilton Beach. You can travel anywhere, money to travel. I've always wanted to go to Hawaii, Canada, Europe and many other places. Even if all, a person should be able to see what goes on in a city.
Speaking of the world, Santa, I would like as a fourth item a little world organization. I'd like to see those who
cause world confusion and turmoil wiped from the map. That would include PLO members, Nazis, KKK and other extremists, supremacist saints, moones, Here-Krishnas, crooked politicians and, in general, bigots and racists. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't want my wife to grow up in the world as it is now.
Santa, the world is like a clogged toilet that needs a plunger.
WHEN THE MISMOGUED peoples of the world are taken care of, maybe my children could grow up without being disgusted and disgusted by what goes on with them. They could just grow up without problems. No communication gaps, no government disapproval, no anti-corruption ideas—just normal growing up.
the popularity of a candidate by offering my support. I'd like to be on the cover of Rolling Stone and People magazines.
And, I guess as a fifth item I'd like fame. I want to know the feeling of having all my colleagues respect me and I want to walk into the finest of places and not need a BankAmericard. I'd like to be able to call Chera a husy and Howard Coelan a jerk and have them beg me to buy her an arm brace or to raise millions in a telethon or boost
AND LASTLY, Santa, I'd like to be happy. I don't like to be plagued by life's pitfalls. I don't want to be pressured by my job or ever feel the need to use alcohol or cigarettes as crutches. I don't want to worry about abuse, cancer, or a growing old and have to watch what I eat and do.
I don't want to be tempted to have another woman when things go wrong at home, or another God when the one you want to marry is not another job when I begin to feel small and inconsequent. I guess what I mean is, Santa, I'd like everything to happen.
Is that too much to ask for in this land of opportunity?
Practically,
Rick Thaemert
Abuse doesn't justify homicides
Courts seem to be moving toward a significantly extended definition of self-defense in cases involving battered wives. Legal experts are wondering whether these women are getting away with murder.
More than one-fourth of the murders in this country are between family members. Juries traditionally have been lenient toward defendants who act in the best interest.
The verdicts in several cases have posed moral and legal questions. In some cases, the women could honestly argue for justifiable homicide, but in others, it seems to be premeditated murder.
Several cases have come to national prominence and caused detractors to say there is an open season on men:
Mary Mitchell Editorial Writer
- IN LANSING. Mich., Francine
Hughes was acquitted of murder on the grounds of temporary insanity. She poured gasoline around her sleeping equipment, and she died years of physical abuse drove her to do it.
- In Waupaca, Wis., Jennifer Patriot hit her husband, from whom she was separated, in the back when he came to pick up her daughter for an afternoon outing. Her trial began on Dec. 6, and she is saying that she was justified in such action because of years of physical and sexual abuse.
- In Rockford. Ill.. Ernestine Taylor
was acquitted of murder in the stabbing death of her husband, after numerous witnesses testified that she had been the victim of a serious physical abuse for nine years.
Under the normal rules of law, a person must fear immediate physical harm in order for a fatal attack to be justified. The defendant claiming self-defense also must prove that he tries to get away and can use deadly force against an assailant.
WOMEN'S GROUPS are against such guidelines. They are saying that abused wives are so afraid of their husbands that they don't have the courage to leave and that they have no place to go if they do leave.
"GOOD HEAVENS I THINK THIS IS THE WRONG ARAB SUMMIT!"
women's abuse group. There is always the possibility of a divorce or a separation.
Such women are not only afraid of enduring abuse but they are afraid of the poverty and loneliness they will suffer if they leave. But again, such actions can be handled legally. If the woman really wants to endure, then she has a case against the man.
THE WOMAN who continues to endure such abusive treatment is not acting sensibly. The fact that she doesn't leave or take some sort of action is cowardly could lead her either to commit wrong behavior or adopt serious psychological problems.
Feminist leaders have backed such cases. Their support began two years ago when Joan Little and Inez Garcia killed men who had tried to rape them. Little and Garcia were acting to protect themselves from immediate danger.
Feminists are insisting that repeated abuse is a cause for self-protection, regardless of the outcome. They are arguing that the failure of such abuse make murder justifiable.
The upcoming case of Roxane Gay, a New Jersey housewife, may establish a solid precedent in such cases. Gay has been husband while he slept because he repeated the call. It is obvious that she, not her husband, was the aggressor.
If these cases are redefining the term self-defense, how far can its application go? Some husbands have to contend with nagging wives. Verbal abuse can often be as frustrating and as destructive as physical abuse.
CERTAINLY, if any of the women had defended themselves when they feared for their lives, it would be justified. But that simply hasn't been the case. Killing a man while he sleeps or shooting him in the back is wrong.
More emphasis should be placed on helping battered and abused women rather than allowing the situation to go as far as murder.
Certainly if the woman is protecting herself or her children, the verdict should not be against her. However, condoning murders of this sort is wrong and could only lead to more violence, violence this country does not need.
Independence changes Mozambique
By PETER PRINGLE
N. Y. Times Features
When President Samora Machel of Mozambique and his Freelimo Party gained independence from Portugal just over two years ago, they turned a country into one of the world's north of the country, into a national monument.
Although I had written about the massacre from Mozambique, I had never actually been to Wiryum until last September because the threat of death had devastated in a vain attempt to cover up the atrocity.
In the now-deserted clearing in the brush there, a wooden box of skulls and bones sits on a rough pile of stones in remembrance of the 400 Wiryiam villagers who were massacred by the Portuguese Army in a so-called security operation in December 1972.
HAD IT NOT been for the vigilance of some prince sprites, who found some wounded surprise on their feet.
Because I wrote about it, in 1973, I was arrested by the Portuguese secret police and expelled from the country. To be in Wiryamau was a painful reminder of the brutality and destructiveness of those people, in a place from which to reflect, briefly, on the changes brought about by Frelimo's nonalong socialism.
Frelimo won its long imperial war against the Portuguese, to become involved in an equally protracted struggle on two fronts: first, supporting the fhodesian black nationalists against the fhodesian illegal regime, and, second, rebuilding a naval left to ret by the departing colonialists.
DESPITE OFFERS from Machel that seek to
count the country, Mr. Obama has
spent 290,000 dollars while White Pow-
ter
As a final act of revenge against the new order, these Portuguese, deprived of their sumptuous lifestyle, smashed their cars, burned their buses, and tore up the house windows and fittings and tore light sockets from the walls.
Their flight, government officials are first to admit, disrupted the country's distribution networks, particularly of food, and people wait in sometimes for hours, at the government shop.
But no one is left to starve. The black Mozamicans are clearly well rid of the oppressive racism of their former white landlords and merchants.
left, either for Lisbon or neighboring Rhodesia or South Africa.
THE NUMBER OF migrant workers, formerly 125,000, who have worked in South Africa's gold mines and have brought home, quite literally, chunks of gold as wages, has been curtailed by Prime Minister John D. Vorster and, by the end of the year, may cease altogether.
Frelimo has a program of vigorous political reconstruction: Schools, health care and housing.
MAPUTO, ONCE a busy holiday resort for South Africans, is now a black-African city. People dress proudly in flamboyant colors instead of rags, and wear shoes they never had before.
The effect of it will hit the Mozambican economy twice as hard as Mozambique's closing of the Rhodesian border in March 1976, with the submarine and helicopter Salurley for use on the Mozambican port of Heira.
It is along the 800-mile border with Rhodesia that Frelimo is fighting its demoralizing war against Smith. His well- equipped raiders come from the African continent and carry out *search-and-destroy* missions
against the Zimbabwe (Rhodesian) black nationalists.
BEFORE A recent Rhodesian operation in Mozambique against two camps housing Rhodesian refugees and Rhodesian nationalist guerrilla forces—in which Salisbury said, 1,200 died—almost 1,500 civilians, either Rhodesian refugees or Mozambicans, had been killed.
The most horrific attack on civilians was on the village Nyazonia in the summer of 1976 when the final death toll was more than 800. Among the dead, I learned, was a Spanish priest, Father Castro, who had helped me to compile my report on Wiriyamu.
Perry Pringle is the New York correspondent for the Sunday Times of London.