4
Mondav. October 31, 1977
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansas editorial staff. Signed columns represent only the views of the writers.
Reform is overdue
An interim committee of the Kansas Legislature made a sensible proposal last week when it recommended abolishing the position of state architect. For the numerous victims of shoddy state construction projects, reform is long overdue.
Specifically, the interim Ways and Means Committee advocated replacing the state division of architectural services with a seven-member building commission. The commission would include representatives from university of Kansas and Kansas State University.
State Sen. Norman Gaar, R-Westwood and a member of the panel, struck a true note when he said, "We want to get rid of the civil service in the architect's office and cut down on the duties of the state in construction. We want to give the duties to a private architectural firm and hold them responsible for the project."
The significance of Gaar's remarks is best appreciated in light of the seemingly endless errors authorized by the state architect's office. One of Gaar's administrative duties is the summer studying state construction and said he had found about 100 deficiencies.
THE ESTIMATED cost of the problems was $2 million in repair work that affects 32 state buildings and three state construction projects.
The architectural division allowed construction in which the University experienced design and construction problems at the KU Medical Center; inadequate ventilation in Wescoe Hall; and a faulty roof at Robinson Gymnasium.
For a university that is big business, the
construction problems of the last few years are hard to justify. Work on the new School of Law building sometimes resembled a slapstick comedy, complete with swirling clouds of dust raised when one of its walls collapsed last spring.
The former state architect, Louis Krueger, resigned Sept. 15. He said his reason for quitting was that he thought it was impossible for one person to be responsible for all of the problems within his division.
Krueger cannot be praised for the job he did as state architect. Too many mistakes were made by his office for him to convincingly dodge responsibility for at least some of the construction problems. But his comments about the organization, its positive, and the interim panel was wise to consider them when it made its decision.
BY INJECTING the private sector into state projects, perhaps the quality of those projects can be improved. The new commission would have oversight responsibility for state projects but would be able to hold a private architect responsible for any problems. Accountability might increase; present policy does not allow the state to fix blame on one person if a state project turns out flawed.
Kruger's resignation, to the extent that it influenced the interim committee, may have been the silver lining in the lackluster performance of his office. The committee's proposal deserves to be adopted. If it is, the Regents institutions—which have been the principal victims of slipshod state construction—will be the principal winners.
A New York psychiatrist yesterday reported that employers should use Halloween tricks to guide to hiring college students.
The psychiatrist, S. H. Rink, said that aptitude tests and grade points are a poor judge of character for employers. So are down, which tend to be starchy, dense and pretentious, he said.
Costumes unveil worker fitness
Rink said the most sought after students would be those whose costumes were original and difficult to construct. Door knobs, zippers, pin heads, hippopotamuses and cracks in walls will be costumes of the inventive, imaginative, hardworking students who are not well understood under any possible task. Rink said pizza, especially pepperoni, and three-dimensional holograms also would rate as resourceful costumes.
Halloween costumes, however, are a direct and a representative way of discovering what makes the person tick. Although viewed by most as a way of masking the reality of one's identity, they are a barometer for personality and potential. Rink said.
EMPLOYERS ALSO can judge personalities by costumes according to Rink. A dress that was dressed as a vintage bottle of French wine, a copy of "Grapes of Wrath" or a 33 p.m. version of "Pennies from Heaven" or a greasy bowl of those of less prestigious bloodlines might costumes of a garbage man, a greasy short-order cook, a circle freak back of a Skookal chewing tobacco.
Rink added that blase costumes fit a blase person.
Rick
Tbaemert
Editorial Writer
Persons who go as wallflowers, door mats or mice show the kind of insecurity and spinelessness by which an employer should be repelled. Tawdry prostitutes, barkeepers and newspaper reporters are likely to be assertive, forward boisterous, be said, and show more character than sly people.
Rink said costumes were as specialized as vocations and should be regarded that way. Students dressed as perverts, voyeurs, flashers, sedists or atrocities, are not displayed at publications such as "Hustler" or in films like "I Am Curious Yellow." Those dressed as Gary Glmore, John or Robert Kennedy, Bled Crosby or John Riley would differ in different attitude toward death and might be assets to National Inquire magazine or funeral parlors. For such vocations, a disrespectful attitude toward the dead will employ employees laughing and sane.
COSTUMERS WHO are unabashed about making fools of themselves may make good television performers or rock stars. If a person can wear gloves around and sing — or attempt to sing — talent scouts may see potential therein, Rink said.
Rink added that those who roam costume parties, helping and lecturing partners too drunk to stand and then driving them home may make good public servants or social workers. On the other hand, those who patrol parties and try
South Africa must hear blacks
By PERCY QOBOZA Times Features
I have not to date come across any responsible black leader who has advanced the theory that whites are expendable and must be thrown into the sea. We have, on the other hand, a phenomenon phasized that whites are South Africans and have the right to exist in a common fatherland; and that all of us, around conference table, should use this device for future coexistence.
Indeed, all those with whom the government should be talking in the black community have been subjected to violence and danger is that the time may well come when the authorities are forced to talk to somebody, and there will be nobody to talk to. When the police begin to rob babies they will indeed have tears.
Our country is full of noble black men who have been silenced under the security that governs the types of ideas. Many are called communists simply because they call for a society where merit and not color matter. Only the type which man must be judged.
AGAINST THIS background, then, I can but express concern and alarm that present discussions in the jury that are going on in government, academic and
business circles do not involve black people. We find it more expedient and easier to go on expeditions to Vienna, London and Washington, at considerable national cost, because of the dramatic and effective impact by going to Soweto.
What we must ultimately realize is that all those trips in which we try to sell unusable products are an excursion. We don't unless the backing of black people has been obtained.
Our isolation will continue unabated until the world is convinced that black and white South Africans are on our side, while their brotherhood and are seriously engaged in the formulation of a new and dynamic political dispensation.
We must come to accept that we are a house tragically divided at a time when divisions of this nature are a threat to our security and the dangerous world we live in. No one can afford not to be distressed when we see on the one side white South Africans regarding Army officials in Africa, an enemy, and on the other side black South Africans welcoming him as a friend. How can one take comfort in seeing white South Africans in combat? We have tacks on South Africa at the United Nations, while the
blacks of the same country rejoice at the same event?
ONE OF THE greatest cries in South Africa today is directed at overseas nations, calling on them to help generate a new economic life for the country to afford its social commitments to the majority of its peoples. How can one not be distressed that this cry has become meaningless to black people, who watched as white people succeeded in precedented economic boom, building luxurious houses with swimming pools, while black people were wailing in extreme poverty and children were dying in the hundreds from malnutrition (a nutritional disease of infants and children)?
I MEAN, PLACES they can call their own — the kind of thing that makes a man feel
What confidence have you generated in my people with regard to the free enterprise system, when that system stands for white privilege and black denigration?
These, and more, are the types of questions urban blacks are preoccupied with. We are now told that we must develop patriotism. But how can one develop a patriotic black population in a country that denies blacks even the right to vote or hold office in their own properties in urban areas?
he has a stake in his country, and the kind of thing that has inspired men throughout history to take up arms and defend with their lives what is legitimately theirs.
Black people around our urban areas have nothing they can call thems, and they need to defend with their lives.
South Africans speak very fondly about how they died for their country defending the highest principles of democracy in World War II. What they never tell you is that fighting along with them were hundreds of blacks who were incarcerated and then eradicate — once and for all — Hitler's brand of racism.
I myself had two uncles who never returned. They had paid the supreme price in destroying racism once and for all, and their uncle was more vain because I, their nephew, became the victim of a new brand of racism.
LET ME HASTEN to assure you that our people know what things they would like to see is this beautiful country, which the Almighty has given us, with the resources to help us oil or the happiness of all its people by more bristle and confrontation.
ways. In the face of extreme indignity, we could still afford to smile and extend our reach in the relationship, which has been rejected.
This is why we developed patience over the years, with the hope that people will realize the folly of their
Yet, I still have faith that we have not reached the point of no return. I am optimistic, and convinced that we can still turn frustration into hope. We can still douse the flames of anger and bitterness that raged through South Africa, others of South Africa, and replace them with genuine brotherhood and understanding.
IT IS NEVER too late to do the right thing. It is never too late to transform the might of justice and dignity for all.
We have the power and the resources to transform this unjust and racist society into a just and non-racist one. There is no short cut to achieving this. It is not going to be easy. It is not going to be difficult years of white domination and replace it with a South African domination.
THE BLACKS ARE REVOLTING.
THE PRESS IS IRRESPONSIBLE.
THE ENTIRE WORLD'S GONE
MAD! THIS LOOKS LIKE A
JOB FOR...
We will not have begun doing this if we are still occupied with the exercise of defending ourselves by divide us, instead of emphasizing those things that unite us. I keep hearing people hammering away at the cultural differences that exist between us; I want to ask you what cultural differences have you detected in me that make me distinctly different from you and that merit me to be cageless in the ghettoes of South Africa.
UNIVERSITUD DALU KANAN
People who keep on repeating these things are merely compounding our problems, and eventually they will have to stand the harsh judgment of history.
Finally, I will not to lie you that I have answers to South Africa's problems, because I will tell you that if we, together, can sit around that conference table, we will find the answers to the problems facing our nation and that if we, together, can speak South Africa to what it is today, and together we have the moral responsibility to insure that it remains intact, that it remains in shape an even greater nation.
Percy Qoobza edited South Africa's principal black newspaper, The World, until his recent arrest and the banning of the newspaper. This is an excerpt of a paper written by him and presented in the museum in May at Carnegie Town conference on "Intergroup Accommodation in Plural Societies," sponsored by the University of Pretoria.
to cop other people' dates, food or beer, or who stealthily sabotage other partners' costumes, are apt to be good politicians — especially those who don't get caught.
Students who dress like Idi Amin or Fidel Castro may show potential for military work, especially if they take command of the Halloween beer keg or a bottle of beer that usually are the best with a knife when carving a pumpkin, Rink said.
AS WITH EVERY year, Rink said, there will be those drabby
dspk who have no originality or spunk. They will come in hoardies dressed as Dracula, Frankenstein, witches or Gorilla, those types are suited for few jobs except manual labor. Costumers who imitate other celebrities, especially Farrah Bailey, will use the same sort of negative employer speculation. Rink said. Their superficiality will be to put best use doing secretarial work.
healthy, if not taken in excess. Those who don't take the once-a-year opportunity to dress up not only are failing to patronize a national tradition, but also are revealing a lack of creativity and zeal for life. A person who cannot dress up in a silly costume once a year is not only a waste of time, it is Rink said. Those who cannot wear Halloween costumes cannot make it in life, he said.
People who do not dress up at all, Rink concluded, are the worst of the lot. Pretending is
Rink plans to take his findings to the College Placement宴会, the university consideration, using the slogan, "If the costumes fit, hire them."
Minimum wage provides mixed blessing for young
IF CARLSON'S predictions are correct, many KU students will be affected by the increased minimum wage. Students in public schools often find jobs in businesses that pay only the
The 27,000 jobs to be lost,
Carlson says, will break down
with the release of non-white teenage jobs and
about 12,200 white and 700 non-white adult jobs. About 6,000 of the total jobs will be lost by
Jack Carlison, vice president and chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, recently released a report that predicts the changes in the minimum wage levels will cause a 2.8 per cent increase in consumer prices in the state. The report also states because the bill will cause a predicted 4.2 per cent increase in labor costs, will lose 27,000 Kansans will lose their jobs.
Under the new legislation, the present $2.30 hourly minimum wage would increase to $2.65 in January. A series of increases would set the minimum wage at $3.35 an hour by 1981.
The new minimum wage law that now awaits President Jimmy Carter's signature may allow a mixed blessing for Kansans.
Lynn Kirkman Editorial Writer
minimum wage. And students now beginning high school who work to save money for their college expenses are also employed in the same types of jobs.
According to Carlson, a survey of small Kansas businesses last summer showed that most of the businessman expected higher prices of their products 5.2 per cent. To keep price increases from being even higher, 41 percent said they would lay off workers, 48 per cent said they would cut work hours, 75 per cent saying there would be saving and 52 per cent would substitute labor-saving machinery and equipment.
Obviously, the businessmen of Kansas are prepared to look at several options to avoid paying the new higher minimum wage that soon will be required of them. That isn't enough. You can't employee who may find himself working fewer hours — or not working at all — after the new law takes effect.
AND AN increase from 2.8 to 5.2 per cent in consumer prices is bound to have an effect on students whose jobs don't fall into the minimum wage category. These students will find themselves paying higher prices for food, clothing, enter-ment fees and other necessities of life. Such scholarship, grant or monthly check from home will buy up to 5.2 per cent less.
Carlson's statistics may be wrong, of course. The report has been questioned by several nationally prominent and by the Senate committee that developed the minimum wage bill.
But in the period from 1974 to 1976, while the minimum wage increased from $1.60 to $2.30 an hour, nationwide pay rates nearly 300,000 — and that was during a period of recession.
In all likelihood, Carter will sign the bill, and in January many working students will find a pleasing increase in their incomes. How long the pleasure lasts will remain in the future is longer-term effects of the wage increase can be evaluated.
M4FNE19 THE SUNSHINEWINDOW LIGHT ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP
850719406000201100
Student workers may find that they are giving up more than they will gain from the increase in the minimum wage.
Light law had biker in dark
However, I feel that $10 (the standard "bike-light fine") is an unreasonable amount. Not
My suggestion to the campus police would be to implement a "bicycle safety campaign," utilizing newspapers, posters, and perhaps television. After a month or two, I could maybe see ticketing as an alternative solution to the bicycle problem
To the editor:
The officer informed me that the incidence of bicycle-related accidents, in particular after dark, has become a serious problem. I can see the need for some type of action here; we need current methods to remedy this situation.
It would be pretty naive to think that the typical Lawrence biker has any cognizance of these laws; they've probably not been enforced since any of us took residence in this city.
I recently received a ticket for riding a bicycle after dark with no light. The fact that I got the ticket and my conversation with the ticketing officer have elicited my concern.
Instead of hitting us over the head with an outrageous fine, why not try to make us aware of these laws?
KANSAN Letters
only must I pay the city of
Lawrence $10, but I must also
purchase a bike light, which is
also required. You should
understand that the purpose of
the ticket is to ensure my own
safety. However, I'm quite sure
that a $4 or, at most, $5 fine
will be imposed if you me the same
lesson.
My own two feet and my bicycle are my only modes of
It would seem more beneficial to have the University patrolmen put to work to make the campus and nearby regions safer places to walk after dark.
transportation. The campus and surrounding areas are not open after dark. The police are spending a great deal of time and money ticketing us (parking violators included).
Debbie Travers
Overland Park sophomore
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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