Tuesday, November 22, 1977
University Daily Kansan
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Comment
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent only the views of the writers.
Students won a noble but hollow victory Saturday when the University of Kansas Athletic corporation (KUAC) weeded out the team in favor of its plan to renovate Memorial Stadium.
The KUAC board yielded to student pressure and threw out three suggested stadium improvements: construction of a wall around the south end of the stadium, addition of a press box on the north side of the Victory Club, a facility for contributors to the KU athletic program.
These improvements are unnecessary in view of other, more pressing needs at the stadium. At any rate, there is no excuse for partially funding such luxuries for freepending outsiders through an increase in student ticket fees, as would have been the case under KUAC's original stadium renovation package.
REMAINING IN THE renovation package are plans for replacing wooden benches in the stadium with aluminum ones, resurfacing the field, renovating the dressing rooms, remodeling rest rooms and preparing the press box. These changes are necessary.
Removal of the frivolous portions of the renovation package demonstrates that students, if loud and persistent, can overestimate the need for KUAC students attitude that pervades the KUAC.
When the original renovation package was announced, the Kansan ignored attempts by Clyde Walker, athletic director, to suppress students' participation in the KUAC squawked; a group of students circulated a petition opposing the plans; and the Student Senate passed a
resolution opposing the method of financing the stadium renovation. On Saturday, the KUAC backed down—at least in part.
But although students won a moral victory, it will not help relieve the pinch on their pocketbooks much. Removal of the unnecessary portions of the renovation package only reduces the cost of remodeling from just $100 to $400 ($15 million). Plans still call for increasing student ticket prices 50 cents a game, or from $20 to $23 a season.
THE TANGIBLE BENEFITS are minor. The KUAC will seek a smaller loan that presupply will be repaid sooner. In addition, the KUAC agrees to provide higher public revenues each year to allow higher public revenues could allow the suspension of the price increase.
In plain terms, this is wishful thinking. The KUAC does not think twice about raising student ticket prices; it certainly will never lower student ticket prices.
There may yet be a final roadblock in front of the renovation plans. The Kansas University Endowment Association Sunday will discuss on whether to grant a loan for the project.
Now that the worst parts of the renovation package have been purged, one must grudgingly hope the Endowment will lend the loan. The remaining improvements are necessary.
But even if the improvements are made, nothing can erase the sour taste left by the KUAC's and Walker's attitudes and actions in this entire episode. The KUAC simply has important things on its mind than students. One day it will pay for that attitude.
From controlling violence on television to removing saccharin from diet soft drinks, the government extends its influence in people lives. Somebody in the Washington bureaucracy is always ready, it seems, to slip down a regulation here, hand over it to the police, generally make its presence felt almost everywhere we go.
There are those who express concern over the seemingly endless encoachment on our personal freedoms. We are adults, their argument goes, able to make our own decisions.
Give us the facts and let us decide for ourselves whether we want a tasteless soda, Kojak or Walt Disney. After all, we're growmats and we should be responsible for own lives.
FOR EXAMPLE, the matter of violence on television must be considered. There is a great deal of brutality and mayhem in this debate. Violence on violence isn't being forced on us. By watching the violent programs, we're saying to the networks that produce these shows and the sponsors who pay them money. "We like this. Give us more."
But if we're grownups, it's time we started acting like grownups. It's time we took a little initiative and made some of those decisions we insist we're canable of making.
And because television is business and in business to make money, the violence continues. The program executives aren't to blame—they're meeting a need and taking advantage of a situation they didn't create.
Parents of young children were concerned because of the violent programs that were broadcast during the early
Helms merits no badge of honor
We're all acting like children
BY DICK CLARK
N V Times Features
WASHINGTON — President Jimmy Carter's affirmation that the former director of Central Intelligence, Richard Helms, deserves "no badge of honor" for deceiving the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was well taken.
By DICK CLARK
What is remarkable is that, for all the public debate about the sentencing of Helms, there has been remarkably little change in his contention, "I found myself in a position of conflict."
Heims has argued that his oath to the Central Intelligence Agency to protect secrets was fundamentally irreconcilable with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I do not accept this.
FIRST, HELM'S CIA secrecy oath did not contain an absolute prohibition against disclosure. It expressly allowed disclosure of its own duties and in accordance with the laws of the United States."
One such law authorizes each standing committee of the Senate "to take such testimony . . . as it deems advisable."
If not were the case- if Helms' secrecy oath prohibited the disclosure of any CIA secrets—then he violated that oath on the 15 earlier occaustions of the United Nations Senate. Foreign Relations Committee on equally sensitive and highly classified subjects.
Among Helms' duties,
presumably, was testifying
truthfully before congressional
committees that have valid
legislative or oversight
judication.
The Justice Department has elected to sacrifice the dignity of the very democratic institutions it exists to protect.
Further, the "conflicting oath" argument is one that Justice Department prosecutors apparently never heard until recently during their negotiations that results in his pleading noolo
contendere did they procure a copy of the secrecy oath from him or the CIA.
SECOND, If a conflict did exist between the two oaths, Helms ought not to have sworn to speak truthfully to the committee. Or, he ought not to have answered the specific questions he found objectionable. No national-security officer had either chosen to join the narrow issue of whether the committee had a right to the information in question.
Nor was Helms to choose between deception and disclosure to the entire world. He testified before the committee twice on U.S. involvement in efforts to block Salvador from being freed from 1978—on March 6, 1973, in closed session, and on Feb. 7, 1973 in open session.
WHEN ASKED about it in that open session, he could have suggested reconvening in closed session—a common practice among executive branch witnesses when sensitive issues arise. His 15 earlier closed-season meetings with the committee provided no ground for believing that such testimony would have been leaked.
Third, I doubt that the ramifications of Helms' position are fully appreciated by many who accept it. Every CIA employee has taken a secrecy oath. is every inference exempt from testifying truthfully before congressional committees that have legitimate jurisdiction?
IF SO, congressional oversight of the intelligence community has effectively ended and the blueprint has been drawn-in the form of a simple secrecy oath—for a major shift in the balance of executive-legislative power.
Willful deception under oath of a government body conducting a fact-finding proceeding undermines the integrity of our legal process. To imply that such deception is inconsequential—as the Justice Department did by
THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT argued that the "trial of this case would involve tremendous cost to the United States and might jeopardize national secrets." On the contrary, the cost of not trying to may have been far greater.
The CIA's operations abroad are conducted to protect the United States and its allies in the nation, let the that theory that offices are themselves sacrosanct, the Justice Department has elected to sacrifice the dignity of the office for the institutions it exists to protect.
If anything is more ironic than the sight of Helms parading as a candidate for a badge of honor, it is the sight of the Department of Justice proceeding to subvert democratic institutions, in the name of saving them.
Dick Clark, senior Democratic senator from Iowa, is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Lynn Kirkman
Editorial Writer
hours of the evening. After some lobbying by parent groups, the television industry set up the family viewing period and moved most of the questionable programs in the evening, when the little ones were presumably fast aiseen.
THIS SITUATION was a perfect example of growups' refusing to act like growups. Rather than parental authority from within the home, we looked for landowners at the bureaucracy. Somebody else did the dirty work for us.
Or we can look at the case of the power lawn mower regulations in Michigan. Americans must own a power mowers upon them, according to common
sense rules of safety. But a small percentage of people have accidents every year. Most of these accidents are caused sheer carelessness on the part of the operator. It's trag when an accident happens, but it's the result of one person's stupidity and short-sightedness.
However, that wasn't good enough for consumer lobbists who put pressure on the government to force safety features and regulations. Because of their efforts, the cost of power mowers will rise and the power mowers will be inconvenient to operate.
accident rate and the bureausrate will come up with a new set of regulations, designed to protect us from ourselves.
MAYBE WE will see a reduction in the number of accidents that involve power mowers. But, more likely, the lunkheads among us will continue to misuse the accident-proof equipment. The lobbytors will again "view with alarm" the
We're all acting like children, refusing to act with the responsibility expected of us, and we decide to decide in favor of externally imposed authority, someone will step in with that authority. Then we can chafe under the pressure, probably go alone with them.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver wrote a column recently on the increase in pregnancies and venereal disease that has reached epidemic proportions in America's high schools and
junior highs. In addition to contraception and medical treatment, Mrs. Shriver wrote, we should be looking at the deeper problem: the reasons why young people, value education, sacrifice their futures in the face of a little pressure.
SMALL WONDER THAT the powers that be look on us as babes in the woods. Maybe they don't know enough to refrain from drinking 800 cans of saccharin-sweetened beverages every day. If we act like children, we'll be treated like children.
ITS A MATTER of self-respect, she said. And she may be right. But it’s probably hard for a 13-year-old to maintain independence in supposed adults acting without judgment and common sense.
We need an increased sense of our own worth and our ability to do things we may not say no, we may find that we can get along without external restrictions and stand up to the pressures that would impose their values on us.
After all, we don't need a paternal hand-slapping bureaucracy to tell us what we already know is right. That's what being a grownup is all about.
Divorce requires understanding
Unfortunately, for most people who have experienced abuse, they may completely heal the stigma that society attaches to it has not withered, even with the freer moral standards that exist.
The average yearly total of divorces in the United States exceeds a million. The divorced person quickly becomes a statistic, but the ramifications of divorce spread further than that.
The newly freed person is thrown back into a society of single people, and it becomes difficult to adjust.
Friends of a divorced couple often decide that they must
FOR SOME time, he has been accustomed to being with married couples. He no longer fits in there. These couples often face a problem by making little effort to include him in their groups.
Mary Mitchell Editorial Writer
choose sides. Each party in a divorce suit loses friends.
The problems of adjustment become even greater when an older divorced person returns to school. People in the same age group and people who are tolerant are hard to find. People older or younger do not readily accept him.
THE EUPHOIRIA of newly discovered freedom is tremendous at first, but once that feeling subsides, the crises
begin. A great part of the pain is society's fault.
Tradition urges that one marry early, but Early marries later. But early marries the same tradition. Thus the same tradition deromains the divorced person.
For the divorced person, the depression and the loneliness of the woman had proved for him to realize that marriage was worse than divorce. For the woman, depicted in a movie called *Lost*, this situation is grimmer.
Every cliche about the divorced woman is applied. Men seem to think she is easy. Women seem to take advantage of the situation. There are single men who are inductinated in society's biases that they are drawn torasse to her out in public.
However, the entire weight of responsibility does not rest with society.
THE DIVORCED person has the responsibility of learning to cope with his problems. He must learn to erase his vulnerability and become his own personal recorder of success. This is not an easy task, but it could be made easier.
Society should share in this responsibility. It is time to eliminate the notion that people with disabilities are disrespectable and disgraceful. They are people who have made a mistake and care enough about their lives to make a difference. Society should suffer through personal hell.
For having the courage to make such a change, they should be commended, not condemned. Society should give and accept problems without additional burdens of ostracism, prejudice and callousness.
Reducing Senate size favored by students
To the editor:
This letter is prompted by recent publicity concerning Student Senate apathy, and the student responsibility to the students.
After reading of Randy McKernan's resignation and
the failure of the Senate to field a quorum two weeks ago, we came to the conclusion that some senators are not fulfilling their obligations to represent their constituents. We would suggest that if a senator cannot or does not wish to fulfill his
Letters
obligations, perhaps they should consider resigning, as McKernan did.
Apathy is being blamed for the phenomenon of missing senators. It seems to be stylish not to care; but as students who are supposed to be represented, by our vote, it would seem proper that apathy or not, our senator meets with his students meetings. We are, after all, funding the Senate through our activity fees.
At present one from the Senate has defended the Senate, or offered an explanation for the Senate's problems other than, "Steve Leben is hard to get along with," or, "Apathy is of epidemic proportions." We think it is time for the Senate to do its job, or perhaps we should get new senators.
One solution might be to have fewer senators who care, rather than a lot who don't. It seems in recent years the situation is viewed as being desirable. We disagree, and feel that a much smaller
group of students would be more responsible to the student body as a whole.
Shelby Douglass
Kansas City, Kan., junior
Jeff Riley
Pratt junior
Jpratt junior
S. Africa letter was misleading To the editor:
I was electrified by the title "South African Blacks Should be Happy Now" by Jeff Smith. I read it and attacked after reading it. However, I wish to nominate Jeff's article for the most misinformed, misleading, and animated article of the semester.
Sure, Jeff Smith wants the excruciated blacks in South Africa to be happy because "there will be no majority rule." They should be happy, he says, because "blacks enjoy more freedom than the people of Tanzania, Zambia, Ageria,
and many other African countries." Without going into the technicality of the concept of "freedom" I wish Jeff would have told his readers his basis for equivalence and commonality with Europe, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Algeria; also what indicators he is using in measuring "freedom."
The people are then told "All right, if you want to earn a living you have to come to our area under a pass system to work and to keep our economy going."
I am in agreement with Jeff if he means that South African blacks should be happy because they are considered people free from threats, foreigners in their own home, the subjects of a pass system.
Happiness is theirs because the government has put them, 80 per cent of the population, in 13 per cent of the land It is not urban or industrialized and has few natural resources.
They should be happy that they have no citizenship rights, "No right to vote, regardless of educational level or economic level. They can be arrested and held without trial, indefinitely.
and then murdered in cold blood like Steven Blko and his predecessors.
Happiness should be theirs for being able to work in the urban-industrialized areas separated from their families.
Blacks should be happy that they can't have firearms, that no more than two blacks are on their homeland 'without being given
They should be happy that their educational levels are, in terms of expenditures, one to ten with white. On the same job and with the same qualifications, black workers' wages are one-tenth of white's wages.
tear gas for oxygen, and that their blood is reserved for police dogs. Naturally these are black shields should be American black shields should be American.
It is not true that "Mediterranean journalists simply make headlines with their conclusions." Rather, it is misleading to write and to write, that make headlines. Jeff for sure would not like to come from Tonganoxie to Lawrence with a discriminatory pass system. While I have not told the South that I am a civil servant, I will be glad to do so if Jeff sincerely wants me to.
Baridoo Deeyor Ikaba
Nigeria graduate student
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