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University Daily Kansan, July 7, 1980
Opinion
Improper action
Michael Edwards will probably do at
daquate and be permanent
director of the Africa Center.
Del Shankel, who will become acting chancellor Aug. 15, ignored the symbolism of his decision in picking Edwards as his final act as executive vice chancellor.
Administrators have said the University is devoted to the concept and principles of affirmative action, but in choosing Edwards as the director of Affirmative Action, the concept and principles were not discarded, but also slapped in the face.
Shankel he would not conduct a shankel on wide search for a permanent direction.
True, no sham search was made. No search was made at all. The choice of Edwards as permanent director was a preconceived one. No decision on how to conduct a search was made. Edwards was the first and only choice.
Edwards was given his extra measure of power, his change in title and his raise in pay.
Because of his eight month's experience as acting director of Affirmative Action, Edwards may be the best qualified on campus for the job.
But we will never know if there was someone better. No other applications were allowed. No other people were considered.
We will never know if the snail's pace the University is pursuing toward equality could have been accelerated by a director with greater capabilities than Edwards'. It is, rather, Edwards' capabilities that will now have to be judged.
But how can other departments, schools and offices react to calls from Affirmative Action to conduct searches to fill positions in the search was attempted for its director?
Affirmative action in the office of Affirmative Action was considered unnecessary, so why should others be expected to follow the guidelines?
The appointment, unfortunately, makes the administration, especially Shankel, our chancellor for the next year, seem hypocritical. The administrators are simply giving lip service to their devotion to Affirmative Action principles.
Otherwise, they would have employed those principles in choosing a permanent director of Affirmative Action.
Union lacking
Not since the 1970 fire has the Kansan Union approached as large a deficit in its budget as it may have incurred during the 1980 fiscal year.
Wayne Ferguson, associate director of the Union, recently said the Union faced about a $50,000 shortage in its budget. He also noted that Satellite Union's inability to make money.
Final figures for the past fiscal year will be completed later this month, but the shortage is expected to be the Union's largest 10 years' worth of damage to the main union 10 years ago.
Ferguson said economic conditions were better four years ago when planning began for the Satellite Union. He also said the team was less successful in a back of publicity have hurt the Satellite Union.
But it will take more than an advertising campaign to the Satellite Union to the United States to kill the Kalimantan.
After learning about the Satellite Union's money woes a friend offered a suggestion. He said he should offer a Friday night dinner to support his family may or may not be a practical suggestion
from a monetary standpoint, but it brings out a basic weakness with the present operations at the western student union.
The quality of food is unattractive to the appetite and dangerous to the digestive system. No one wants to frequent an eating establishment that promises indigestion meals. A salad bar or a dell-like in the main union might attract more business.
The Satellite Union could also be improved by adding quality literature to its bookstore. The selection sometimes resembles hard-to-sell titles offered at sale prices by the main union. Often certain books are not in stock. Readers are told to visit the library rather than drive across campus some will buy the books at stores in the community.
These are just two apparent deficiencies at the Satellite Union. Some of the successful business techniques now being used at the main union should be instituted at western student union. Chief among them are a quality bookstore and edible food.
Letters must be signed and must include the writer's address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include the writer's class and home town or faculty or staff position.
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor and guest opinions that present different points of view about topics of timely concern. Letters can be written in English or no longer than 500 words. The Kansan reserves the right to edit all letters and columns.
Reagan senility absurd issue
Letters Policy
Ronald Reagan would resign the presidency if he could be sent to his press secretary last week.
Can you think of a more noble gesture than that? History would surely have curtied itself an idyllic course if only a few other notables had written by the same bolt of self-sacrificing insult.
Would Atilla, who probably considered himself a most reasonable fellow, have resigned as Hun leader if found to be barbary? Suppose Hitler had retired to an Alpine hermitage the minute he was identified as a madman. What if Richard Wilson had refused to quit the first time he was caught covering up?
Would Jimmy Carter resign if found to be suffering from hemorhoids?
I wish he had. I wish they all had.
They didn't, of course. It's nonsense to think they would have, and it's downright absurd for Reagan's press secretary to suggest a resignation for senility.
After all, who gets to decide if Reagan is senile? Would he be willing to appoint a "select committee on senility" to rule on it? If the committee couldn't deliver a verdict, would the
decision be thrown to the House of Represen-
tation, and the judge may decide he canign simply trust the judgment of a responsible person.
Imagine this conversation in the oval Office: Enter a troubled Press Secretary Ed Gray, who says, "Mister President, I think that Senator Kennedy says we are a oddening old fool."
"Well, Ed," says the president, "sounds like Teddy is just tuning up for the 1988 campaign. I
Columnist J.V. Smith Jr.
wouldn't pay much attention to his harmless rhetoric if I were you."
"Sir, there's one more thing?" "Yes."
"With all due respect, sir, he says that you are senile."
"Good heavens, does he have any proof?"
"he claims to have. He says that Spock, his Foeer, and Ramsay Clark will testify to it as well."
“It’s serious then, is it? What do you think I should do?”
"Sir, a promise is a promise. I think we'd
bear it as an assistant Bush in here with his
Bush on the double."
"I suppose you're right, but I doubt if Nancy will like it. Oh, one more thing, Ed . . ."
"Would you mind helping me clean out my desk?"
"Not at all, sir."
"Boy, Nancy isn't going to take this well at all.
Ed. would you . . . "
"I'll tell her, sir."
Of course all this preoccupation with sensitility is preposterous. I've never met a single sensible person who would admit to his affliction. What's one one has a right to expect that kind of admission.
I don't even expect people to be satisfied with their own ages. I'm not, I never was. Seems that I am always either too young or too old for the presidency now because I am too young.
Too bad. With the issues as substantive as a watermelon and cotton candy cassereo, I reckon I'd have as much a chance as anyone now in the race.
Letters to the editor...
Yearbook faces crisis To the Editor.
Tammi Harbert's article on the Jayhawk yearbook (June 3) not neither exaggerates nor ignores the problems. The 1981 Jayhawk, faced with some sharply escalating costs and a recession in which student spending money probably is cut down, faces the black fights, or it may be the last one.
I wish to correct one misunderstanding. The more than $8,000 owed to the Jayhawk by the defunct Rapport Studios includes only about $1,000 in advertising and marketing expenses for the pictures. The remainder is the payment bid for the privilege of taking the senior pictures.
The major source of income to the Jayhawker is the sales at fall enrollment. The Jayhawker industry many books have been sold in the following months of the school year. Other income results from advertising, sales of papers to students and from the firm making the senior pictures.
(US$ 50.446) Published at the University of Kansas
and is available for use on June 17 and June
18 and July except Saturday, Sunday and holidays.
Descriptions by mail are $13 for six months or $2 a year in
the county. State subscriptions are **E** a semester,
paid to the county. Student subscriptions are **E** a semester,
paid to the county.
The University Daily KANSAN
Daily Kaanan. Send changes of address to the University Postmaster. Fill Hall. The University of Kansas, Lawville.
Editor
Jennifer Rocker
Jennifer Boltman
New Audi News
Business Manager
Mike Panfurelli
Managing Editor
Bobby Pittman
Alisa Cook
Retail/National
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Mike Panfurelli
Chart showing the number of individuals represented the column for the extra staff. Unweighted representation the column represents the views of only one individual. Solid columns represent the views of all
It now seems that the reserve fund carried forward will be about $3,000.
The 1980 Jayhawker, certainly one of the most attractive in the long line of yearbooks, would have incurred a deficit of $3,000 even if Rapport Studios had paid the $8,000.
The Jayhawker did survive worse crises in 1932 and 171 when reserves were exhausted and considerable debts remained unpaid. It survived then because enough of the student body wanted a yearbook. Next year will determine whether that desire still exists.
Adviser to the Javhawker
The Jayahacker receives no subsidy from the Student Senate or the University.
Banner no disruption To the Editor:
Citizens do not lose their First Amendment rights when they enter university grounds, whether the chancellor deems certain places and times inappropriate for free expression.
Those present in the stadium at Commencement had the choice of looking at the banner or looking away. This cannot comfort them, and it is one of the Academic Freedom Action Coalition. We knew that those who would refuse to relinquish the banner would probably be arrested and we agreed that those who would not have been arrested at police station. What we did not plan on were the irrational tactics used by the University of Kansas police. Instead of trying to remove the protesters and the banner in an orderly fashion, we an absurd, emotional and violent tug-of-war.
Free expression is fundamental to the American theory of education and it should be recognized as a human right.
If anyone claims to respect the rights of citizens to protest, they cannot oppose the right of the Commencement protesters to hold up a sheet with an idea on it.
Protect First Amendment rights at KU.
Juliet Matamua
Overland Park
Safety in home births
Leslie Spangler's article (June 26) on problems of pregnant women wishing to deliver their babies in a manner other than the "hightechnology" hospital route need assistance from a gynecologist/gynecologist specialists mentioned are among the most conservative in the State of Kansas, if not in the entire nation with respect to facilitating freedom-of-choice in childbirth (and why). For those obstetrician/gynecologists to refuse prenatal care to women seeking home delivery is a disturbing national trend that primarily affects minority, poor, and rural women, who have traditionally looked to midwives and intensive to expensive hospitals and specialists.
The obstetrician/gynecologists, mostly quoting from their own clique journals, have sady compromised their scientific credibility nationwide by use of sham statistics, which lump still-births and spontaneous abortions in the birth-category and which fail to consider the total number of home-births in a community. Instead they use the same method of reporting incidents and are hence reported to the hospital emergency room for the study group.
Meanwhile, most hospitals, including Lawrence Memorial, steadfastly refuse to release their own infant mortality and morbidity data for serious review.
Emotional factors are exceedingly important to the natural birth process, but are ignored or trampled in today's routine high-technology hospital delivery room. Indeed, they can be as dangerous as a Santa Cruz Home Birth Center in California which is staffed by lay-midwives who serve minority and poor women who are most often considered high-risk. Their prenatal mortality was 3.2 deaths per 1,000 at a time when the median age was 27.4 and she was born in 1978 to a population of 1,000 per 1,000. In the U.S. like 18.5 deaths per 1,000, far behind countries like Sweden (10.8 deaths per 1,000).
Japan (11.7 deaths per 1,000), Norway (11.3 deaths per 1,000) or Denmark (12.6 deaths per 1,000), where midwife-attended birth at home or in home-like out-of-hospital clinics are the rule. The ignorance of the Lawrence obstetrician/gynecologists about the facts surrounding infant mortality statistics is apparent in the fact that two deaths per 100,000 pimpsals was two deaths per 100,000 has never been achieved by any hospital. Twenty deaths per 1,000 is a more realistic figure.
James DeMeo
Ph.D. Applicant, Geography
I want to clarify Ernie Davis' story (June 30—"Research study pushed").
Center just proposed
The idea for a research center came, as far as I can tell, from the University of Massachusetts program and arrived here two or three years ago. It did not originate with "George Gomez, Topeka senior, when he was student body vice-president last summer."
This KU student research center proposal is just that—a proposal. The form I suggest in a bill will need to be acted on by perhaps two students and the Student body, president, and the Student body president.
Kows knows where Davis got the part about the University being able to provide "cheaper student service." I really do not know whether the University's services could be any cheaper. I do believe that the Senate (plus funded organizations) could benefit from a bit of cost analysis and student need research.
Mikl Gordon
Engineering Senator
Topeka, senior
way for future funding. The article's focus was a supposed funding crisis for the shelter house as a result of the Kaw Valley Pro-Famism, its accusations that the shelter would harm its accusers.
WTCS job enriching
To the Editor
In Susana Nammum's article on the Women's Transitional Care Services (June 2019) the appointment of a new 30T nurse to one change that forced mayor Mark Barkley Clark said might pave the
Since Clark's statement cast aspersions on my performance as WTCS coordinator and on my personal and professional reputation, let me say that I did not resign to become city hall's or the media's scapegoat to salvage WTCS's slandered public image. My recognition of this role burn-out, primarily the stress of working with vitims of violence for three years at WTCS.
The second assumption inherent in Clark's statement is that I must be a lesbian. I am a lesbian, and I do not have a cast that fact. WTCS does not discriminate against employee, volunteers or residents—and is committed to not oppressing any on her class, race or affectional preference.
Lesbians are everywhere, living and working proudly and competently in the world. I find it highly insulting that lesbians are treated as subordinates, considering that heterosexual pressure, indoctrination and rape inundate our senses. While on my job I was scrupulously discreet about my private life—to the point of blatant which is ultimately self-destructive.
I am proud of the good work I did at WTCC. The experience was rewarding and my life has been enriched by the brave women who seek shelter there. Anyone who wishes to know well will perform my job should ask workers—not Barkley Clark.
One more word about WTCS. The workers there function and make decisions collectively. Many fine, competent and extraordinarily talented women have been recruited. So much emphasis on the coordinator really distorts what WTCS is all about.
Pamela C. Johnson 1311 Prairie Ave.