4
Monday, November 7, 1977
University Daily Kansan
Comment
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed column represent only the views of the writers.
Shape up, Senate
The Student Senate's credibility slipped another notch Thursday night, when poor attendance again plugged the Senate's deliberations. The night before, senators failed to keep a quorum and found that a new committee meetings of the year, a meeting on fall budget allocations.
Fall budget allocations, like the Senate's over-all powers of allocation, reflect the organization's main function, which is to disperse student activity fees. The Senate's department is responsible for the institution is indicative of the apathy that seems to be growing among its 110 members.
At the beginning of the Wednesday meeting, 65 senators were present. Later in the meeting, when one senator asked that a quorum count be taken, only 51 were present — and 55 were needed for the Senate to continue its deliberations.
WHEATHER CALLING for a quorum count was wise is not the issue, as some senators apparently believe. The point to be made is that when you are asked to make it seriously the job they were elected to do,
And despite the dismal attendance at the Wednesday meeting, the attendance actually was worse the following night. Thursday, an official call call count revealed
56 senators present at the beginning of the meeting, 50 at the end. Another quorum count would have meant again postponing the allocation of money to 30 groups that have a right to expect careful consideration of their requests.
It is not easy to affix blame for what is happening in the Senate's morale. But the poor attendance does tend to give validity to charges that student leaders of the Senate, including Steve Leben, student body president, may not be doing all they should be doing to involve every senator in the Senate's decisions.
THE OTHER side of the apathy coin is that it is an individual senator's responsibility to do his job. Those who criticize Leben might want to mobilize support, including better attendance by his opponents, if they are serious about the way the Senate works. They might also want to introduce legislation, as some of them have failed to do.
Apathy is not confined to the Senate, nor is it entirely avoidable in any group. Nor a group of campus leaders at least ought to be above average in its internal workings. Judging from the events of last week, the Senate needs to put its house in order.
The future of Kansas City's Union Station is in doubt. Union Station served Kansas City, Mo., and a large part of the city has been left late the venerable building has been virtually empty.
Depot's past deserves a future
Union Station in its heyday was apparently an exciting place to be. When railroads were the primary mode of transportation, large depots were centers of activity. Trains arrived and staff were filled with the building was filled with people day and night. Travelers on their way to destinations across the country, friends and relatives who came to bid them hello or goodby, local residents who stopped in to eat at the Harvey House or just to enjoy the changing scene they all came to Union Station.
Then there was the famous "Union Station Massacre" of Kansas City's "Untouchables" period, as gangsters staged a shootout in front of the station as part of a fruitless attempt to capture the bullets. The bullet holes are still visible in the front of the building.
TIMES CHANGED, however,
and air travel became in-
creased. Station slapped into a gradual decline. Fewer trains stopped in Kansas City, and fewer visitors to Amtrak service didn't improve.
Lynn Kirkman
Editorial Writer
the situation enough to secure the future of the landmark building.
All that may be changing. There's hope for Union Station as support is growing in Kansas City for a science museum to be housed in the building. Backers of the museum project are being invited to Shannon Station and make it a vital part of the community again.
Kansas City residents aren't the only ones with fond memories of Union Station. The old depot has a special place in my heart for the role it played in a memorable Halloween.
ONCE UPON a time, longer ago than I care to recall or confess, on a Saturday that just happened to be Oct. 31, the Union Station Halloween carnival, which was spent the day in Independence enjoying the Newwolli festivities. It was the end of what we called a William Inge Summer — and we had enjoyed picnics, band concertes and fireworks in Inge fashion, all in Independence area. So, of course, Newwolli couldn't be forgotten.
After the parade and a visit to
From one practical jokester to another
There's a fear on campus greater than finals, greater than graduation, greater than a lack of dates.
It's humiliation. Being laughed at by friends or looking outrageously nerdish in front of others.
There was a time when people weren't so proud, so vain or so self-conscious. A time when practical jokes thrived. One of the greatest joasers or be a fall guy without feeling like a少 person.
They could take a joke and chuckle with the rest, albeit often embarrassing. Yet, a
Rick
Thaemert
Editorial Writer
healthy dose of rifleace could bring even the most pronounced cock of the walk tumbled back behind his pinnacle of pride.
Although practical jokes still are revered in many living groups, they rarely find vent on campus, where a good joke can be made and cause harm effects. After all, you couldn't use a few more laughs?
And those who pooh-pooh the merit of practical jokes are party pimpers anyway and any excludes excluded from fun in any form.
THERE ARE those who take practical jokes to the extreme. Hiding notes for an exam one hour away isn't knee-slapping in bed, but it's psychological of satisfaction, in which case, notes, I've heard, aren't necessary. Pouring grape juice or maple syrup into a glass is easier in riot, either, unless the car is like mine. Nothing could hurt it.
Some superficial gags can
MONCAFLY BROWNPOOL PHOTOGRAPHY LAROE @ 877-254-3010
BULL and BEAR
end in severe consequences for some. A professor handing out exams isn't likely to laugh when a borderline D student strolls in with a pair of hand-cuffed locks on his wrist. Nor will he think it's normal. He might late because he had to blow-dry an unexpected swirle.
Those jokes that rate high
jinks awards are those that
evoke laughs only. An old-
fashioned "boo" from behind a
bush. A squirrtin in the mug.
A barring heart of course. A
heart of course. Auto whistles.
snip hues, pepper gum. It's all good. Fun, silly and childish, perhaps.
But, there ought to be some kid in everyone. No one is more boring than a serious wad of fun and harpums at jokes. Those are kind the real lokes.
SOME LESSONS could be taken from living groups. Shortheting, pillowcakes slopped with shaving cream and crushed ice are used in many as arm-practical likes food leftovers. Granted, cafeteria workers are less than pleased to witness their dishes being tossed and then eaten. Hoodlums dressed in raincoats and galoshes. But no one gets hurt, the culprits usually clean up and whoasted food simply don't eat, unless of the gruelling act, yes, but a living group can't complete without one.
Nor is a roommate a roommate until his clothes are hidden, and he's locked out with the keys. Nor is a roommate in a situation indeed, but a splendid
way to meet neighbors, if done with tact, etiquette and a touch of class. Not as much can be said of a situation that finds fudge or jello smeared on a last clean pair of underwear. A tasteless trick, even with fudge of the best recipe.
PERHAPS A hurricane of practical jokes will stir through campus, soon, in the same way aprons on Green Hall's statue and pumpkins placed on out-of-fashion past. Someone might borrow roadblocks and block off Jayhawk Boulevard. Another might groucho Marx glasses to class. Still another might promote a "Wear jeans if you're a prankster day guest" or the clout of gays, but they certainly are more unpredictable.
Pranks and gags might one day experience a revival not seen since the '80s, when people were stuffing themselves into cars like bread in a turkey. They made sure to shower freeze-outs. All those things that make us laugh at life and release tension born of the pressures of school, relationships and work. Troubles have a way of being shoed away when people laugh. A surge of pranks was the great catalyst for both laughter and humble character.
Of course, there will be those who go overboard. Some who try to pin a pink cloathing on the Chancellor's collar without him noticing. Or, some who keep their eyes on the Papa Kansan office and try to snuff out the electricity that feeds these typewriters.
Air fare bargains aren't myths
By C.E.MEYER, JR.
It may sound funny coming from someone whose airline passengers he's trying to lure away, but hooray for Freddie
With his Barnm Bailley enthusiasts, he's managed to restore some good-natured fun to our industry. But we owe him an even more important vote of thanks.
In his own flamboyant way, he 'sfocused tremendously public attention on the public of us have been trying to get across with mixed success: These days, there are some remarkable bargains in air
the carnival midway, the young man confessed that he had a particular fantasy he'd always wanted to experience. It was a longtime dream, he said, to be in Kansas City at midnight on Hallowen night. We left immediately for Kansas City.
TODAY THE subway is 50 cents, the 13-cent stamp is about to become extinct and the cheapest model Volkswagen will set you back more than $4,000 – but you can fly to a resort with no-reservations basis, and for $20 more you can fly T.W.A. Pan Am, British Airways and others with a reservation.
But the association of 27 trans-Atlantic scheduled airlines known as I.A.T.A. (International Air Transport Association) would get very poor marks as a cartel. It has no power to limit the number of flights offered by its members, own airlines that don't mind a bit if they lose money on their fares as long as they can promote tourism back home.
But while that miracle's been happening, a couple of myths
Myth No. 1. Is that there is an international big-airline airline that conspires to keep fares at an artificially high level.
have been perpetuated about air transportation that must be straightened out.
The way a cartel functions is that a closed group in control of a commodity allows its supply in order to drive up its price.
everyone will accept. For example, even before Skytrain, under certain applicable conditions, you could have brought a scheduled airline to London and back for as little as $350.
Because of its interline agreements, for example, you can fly over on T.W.A. and come back on Pan Am or British Airways, if you like — all on the same ticket. You can fly from Burlington, Vt., to New York to Paris to Lyons without having to fly on a plane for each leg from Allegheny, T.W.A. and Air Inter — or having to recheck your bags every time you land.
WHAT HAS happened historically, in fact, is that the members agree to set their fares at the lowest level
L. A.T.A. ALSO means there aren't 27 different sets of fare instead of the present single one — which has enough options at
I. A.T.A. enables the trans-Atlantic traveler to enjoy some other very real benefits.
Myth No. 2 is that the 27 airlines would never lower their fires unless challenged by an outside committor like Laker.
EVERY ONE of those bargains came from competition among the scheduled airlines — not because of any threat from outside. In fact, the scheduled airlines have been pushing for a lower advance-purchase excursion fare across the Atlantic for more than three decades. Skytrain gave them a helping hand that they finally gained government approval.
different levels to confuse many people as it is.
Laker did not invent cheap fares. The various scheduled airlines have served up a lot of them in the last year alone.
Which brings me to yet another myth, the one which charges that the major carriers will only offer trans-Atlantic
bargain fares if Skytrain stays in the market, but that if for some reason it is forced to leave, or jack their prices up again.
That kind of speculation ignores the economic facts of life. As long as any promotional effort to maintain business to more than compensate for the regular revenues lost by the price cut, I don't know an airline in the U.S. that would fully or ever go on offering it forever.
from vending machine to vending machine, depositing coins and placing our purchases in a safe. We had small tubes of toothpaste available. We found key rings, small games and several types of personal items of the sort we need. Our company. We bought one of everything, including a whistle that was advertised as enabling us to imitate any bird or beak. It sounded like it, but we also couldn't resist it.
BUT THERE'S something else to bear in mind. Anybody, including your brother-in-law, could hire a plane and offer a super cheap fare to San Francisco over the July Fourth weekend and make sure because that's when everybody wants to go somewhere and that's where a lot of them want to go.
That's how we're different from the would-be cream skimmers. In addition to offering bargains, we're part of a basic and essential transportation system.
But a schedled airline doesn't just fly there on holiday weekends. It files there every day, full or empty, and it also files to dozens of other places, too, year round, every year.
C. E. Meyer Jr. is president and chief airline officer of Trans World Airlines.
When we arrived, it was still early evening — far too early to go to the tower and wait for midnight. Obviously we had to find some way to kill a few birds. We decided to have dinner.
When there was nothing left to buy, we sat down in the main waiting room under the big clock and gleefully explored our treasures. We didn't have the slightest idea what'd we do with all our purchases, but we were terribly glad to have them.
At that time, the number of trains servicing Kansas City had dwindled the station was dead. There were few people to watch, except a sleepy shoer-shoer who did zoom at his stand and a handful of travelers who sat there as well as they waited for their train.
I'VE FORGOTTEN the name of the restaurant but it was, as I recall, a pretty nice place - cloth napkins, flowers and candies on the table and a plate with lemonade when we ordered wine. Midway through the meal, a trio of trick-or-treaters appeared from somewhere, begging goodies in the custom of the evening. I was concerned because we had nothing to give them, but the young man put the silverware on the plate and they went on their way.
Suddenly the young man voiced an inspired thought — we'd go to Union Station, of course.
A few hours remained until midnight and we were still looking for something to do.
The station had installed a variety of coin-operated machines to provide the necessities of life to travelers who had, at the last minute, forgotten to bring something along. For 15 cents or a quarter, you can purchase your choice of a variety of items for personal use — or just to pass the time.
We eventually got to the KCMO lower, where we spent the witching hour. But that was not enough for the back-stock- or treating at Union Station.
It was like visiting Las Vegas and coming up a winner at every slot machine. We went
So it's好 to see an effort being made to preserve and restore Union Station. The old building was an important part of the past. It deserves a place in the future.
]
The editorial staff seems to have trouble in finding justification, ideas or arguments that match the strength of those tirades they force at anything or anybody seeming a half-easy mark, like David Johnson, who went after him by threatening stamps that he took to the moon with him—for personal gain.
To the editor:
Life too short to ponder foolish fads and nuisances
For shame, says Johnson, who says it would be okay if Flash Gordon had paid for the gas. But since our hard-earned dreamtropit come true, he should hand 'em over to the public.
That's kind of a shallow remark when you consider that you're used to calling someone especially when it was for a country that prefers free enterprise. But that's not the case when he did not hawk his moon-stamps.
Mary Mitchell dons her more-tolerant-than-thou habit and assails the Southern Baptists, then defames poor Farrah Marsh, who is not in a problem with Farrah, she goes on, is that she is not a "real woman." I would say she's a damn good approximation. Of course, Farrah is little more to us than any compelling, charming person, Garbo, no class there—but harmless next to, say, Mary
KANSAN Letters
Maybe that question could suit some commentator's interpretative bent. At least it might be possible, the Letter also said that while we are here learning a skill at which we are to be unemployed after graduation, we might take advantage of this by using with ourselves rather than waste it to attack on all trifling malaiseance or mishap only because it presents itself as an editorialist seems gifted.
Perhaps we are too worried about our heroes being human, our situations being imperfect, to notice that each breath draws us one closer to our last, and we be wasteful trivial.
Mitchell. Anyway, intolerance, and what it will tolerate are both bad.
But don't you have something else to write about—or better to write—or more to say? Might you not look beyond fools, fads and nuisances? In a letter to the Kansan, Greg Funk spoke of bygone days when there was a romance in being educated, in education, in school. Knowledge was its own reward. Where has it all gone? Why? (Certainly, Farrah had nothing to do with it.)
If the press is the banner of the community's character, then one might guess from the great weight and small caliber of these editorials, that what we have here is a tombstone, dutiful recording what any bird might leave on it, guarding the complacent corpse, and hoping for an audience. However, is not dead, Comatose maybe—but waiting for a breath of life.
If the Kansan editorial writers could not rise above the public's garbage-dump realities, even if only to back down upon them; if they always wrote things like, "I think we think we think she's seyx," then one would just call them inept and be done with it. But the writers have shown the capacity to meet their responsibilities as journalists in the past, so it may they do not use themselves, thus seriously enough to commit themselves to first-rate college commentary. Second or third-rate seems to do. But if it does for them, I wish that they would keep it to themselves. We should take their there time for it. Life is too short to entertain opinions of no consequence.
Jeff Mohr Lawrence senior
Students were cowards on gay day
To the editor:
I can just see the men and women in the Gay Service office chuckling at the furor caused by their "Wear Blue Jeans if You're Gay Day." I find it quite unusual to hear the phrase of the University let themselves be duped by what I considered a joke.
If you don't like gays, don't want to see them, hear them or smell them, why play along? The student thinks as a whole showed themselves devoid of a sense of humor when they fled to the ranks of the gray and white subculture were acknowledging people that they say they despise and wish to ignore.
Students, they say the universities are supposed to be fortresses against ignorance and small-mindedness. Are you so terrified by the idea of homosexuals in our society
gaining equal rights that you are like so many sheep? Stand up for your principles, no matter how they feel. If you want to wear blue jeans, wear them. Don't be so cowardly. I'd hate to see this bunch in a real crisis situation — like a war. You can be sure the bullets will hit and hold the bag, if this evidence of bravery is any indication.
And when I hear someone
complain that gays have violated his right to wear blue jeans, all I can say is: You let your rights be violated, if indeed they were. You made the decision whether to observe the treaty in those tots tactics. I have no idea. I think the day was a success — because you, Mr. and Ms. Straight America, made it.
Elizabeth J. Leach 1301 Kentucky
Published at the University of Kansas daily August 23, 2016. Subscriptions are $15 for June and July except Saturday, Sunday and holiday. Subscription fees are $30 for each semester or $115 a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are a year outside the county.
Editor
Jerry Selb
Business Manager Judy Lohr
Publisher
David Dary
News Adviser Rick Musser