UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of the editors.
April 24.1980
Tattletales in Watson
A library—specifically, Watson Library—very well might be a gold mine of knowledge, but resorting to Fort Knox-like security measures to protect it borders on absurdity, or at least extreme impracticality.
"Tattle-Tape," a new electronic detection system, is scheduled to be installed in Watson and KU branch libraries during the next school year. The system uses electronic sensing devices at library exits to detect thin metallic strips concealed in the spine or gutters of library materials. Books are stored in these spaces at the circulation desk will cause the exit gates to close and activate an alarm system when they are carried through the sensing devices.
Leaving aside the fact that the system sounds like something from a James Bond adventure, one has to wonder about the practicality and potential effectiveness of such a system. Watson and its branch library house libraries of book clubs and pet stores. How, in the name of honesty, do library personnel plan to "bug" all these materials?
There still are many books not marked for identification in the library's new computer system. This task is being accomplished book by book as patrons discover and want to check out unmarked publications. Is the same method to be used for placement of the metallic strips?
Also, will the detectors be sensitive
only to the metallic strips? Or, patrons can be divided to rivet themselves of all metallic objects before they can even enter the library? Perhaps their entire bodies could be properly demagnetized at the circulation desk, allowing them to leave the library quietly.
Nevertheless, $100,000 has been set aside for the installation of the Tattle-Tape system, according to John Glinka, associate dean of libraries. Many other schools, high schools as well as universities, already employ security systems similar to the one planned for the University of Kansas. The University of Missouri has effectiveness by former patrons of these libraries range from "It worked pretty well," to "People still found ways to get around it."
Unfortunately, not even time and usage can be depended upon in evaluating the effectiveness of the system. If no one knows how many books are stolen now, no one will know whether they were stolen or only be a causal assumption if the number of "lost" books decreases after the system is implemented.
Degree changes will decrease grade failure
Although the stealing of library books seems to be a problem, Cliff Haka, circulation librarian, concedes that some of the 1,286 books declared lost last year just may have been lost within the library itself. In other words, it really knows how many books are being "borrowed" permanently.
By RICHARD COLE
Guest Columnist
The College Assembly will soon be voting on a motion to reform College requirements for math courses. The college will general studies degrees. The proposal for the B.A. is modest: an option will be introduced to allow substitution of interdisciplinary courses, certain basic work would be done early and at least one math course would be taken to satisfy the math/logic require-
What the new BGS will do that the present BGS has done is to equip students with skills, obtainable in high school by those who take a college preparatory course, are acquired either through or in the form of college warrants.
The proposal for the BGS is also modest. The proposed new BGS will allow the student to present a 45-minute presentation, or 94 hours of a student's uninterrupted time.
THE "WORST CASE" situation, then, is one in which a student faces a requirement of 94 hours, 40 of them in courses numbered 300 or above, and as few as nine hours in distribution areas the student would not have been required of the 30-hour basic requirement.
The basic requirements are mostly proficiency requirements. They add up to 30 hours, but entering freshmen can test out of 21 hours if they have taken sufficient coursework. Most students who cannot test out of any of the requirements will devote only 30 hours to the satisfaction of these new requirements and moreover, will have satisfied up to three-fourths of the nine-course distribution by taking the new requirements.
What the new BGS degree will not do is guarantee that the student will get a good education from those 94 or more wide open colleges. These are the schools their advisers. The additional freedom in these 94 hours, a result of having satisfied some distribution requirements and having a strong educational background, necessitates diplomatic courses as the BA students can, have still be abused. Or, to put it
positively, a student can create an education from these hours as good as he can and wishes.
THE PROBLEM addressed by the proposed requirement, then, is not that of insuring a good education for the BGS students. We hope to solve more to do with the large number of students who drop out to do with those who successfully acquire degrees, for a principal cause of attrition is the lack of adequate potential, but to inadequate preparation for college level work. We overlooked when we introduced the BGS degree was the possibility that more and more students will be short-changed by their high schools.
When an entering student asks what courses are required to get a degree the answers are too long and the requirements of the least structured degree. There are no entrance requirements for the college, so the requirements for the BGS requirements do not include satisfying minimum skills requirement, students can, and have, ignore that basic part of their education. Naturally, they find the rest of their college work frustrating and difficult, and they end up without a college education even though, in proper preparation, they could have one.
THE REFORMED BGS differs from the present one only in introducing a safeguard against the inability to function on the computer. For students with a good college preparation it provides more than 75 percent of the freedom of the present degree.
The penalty for voting down these reforms is to continue the present situation, for there will be no other effort to change things for a longer period of time. The status quo is to condemn thousands of future students to a career of W's, I's, P's and withdrawn from the University and other institutions.
Richard Cole, professor of philosophy, prepared the IA, and IG subjects before he began his work on the Junior-Senior Task Force and the Junior-Task Force on Degree Requirements.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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COLUMNIST
Cuba isn't a nice place to visit, and I wouldn't want to live there. My feelings apparently are shared by thousands of native Cubans.
On April 14, nearly 10,000 Cuban dissidents swarmed into the Peruvian Embassy in Havana to seek sanctuary from
U.S. overlooks Cubans in distress
bob
pittman
Fidel Castro's iron-handed communist rule. This was only the latest of a long series of protests that started after Castro's takeover of the island in 1958.
Castro was then an idealistic young man. He did not want to stand against the corrupt regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro's movement to overthrow the government began in 1953, and his own army soon followed.
The statement Castro made after his triumphant takeover, "From now on the
CUBA, UNDER BATESTA, was a police position to further the interests of its friends. Bureaucratic corruption, embezzlement and corruption in government citizens was common
people are entirely free," turned into an empty promise by the summer of 1989. Castro then began to tighten his strange hold on the world, and he was unavailable months before. That spring and summer, he suspended habae corpus, set up military tribunals to silence his critics, ended the right of appeal for convicted defendants and allowed the courts to act that later would become his trademark.
THE EXPOSUS of citizens began immediately after Castro's takeover. Many wealthy and educated Cubans sensed what was to come and started to leave as soon as Batista was overthrown. In many cases, the refugees left behind their wealth and they were jubilant to be away from Castro. They were less wealthy. Cuban forces were forced to stay.
But many of them could not be tailed to stay afloat and would have been never stopped. Cubans have risked death countless times by sailing from Cuba to Florida on makehift rafts and in diapilated fishing vessels.
According to State Department officials, the United States has accepted nearly 60,000 Cuban exiles since Castro came to power in 1957. More than 400,000 and 100,000 within the last 15 months alone.
dissidents had received in Costa Rica. Perhaps he also feared that if he did not stop to the wave of Cubans leaving the islands, they would become Cuba's major export.
SOON AFTER DISSIDENTS filled the
Peruvian embassy, U.S. officials grumply said that the United States would accept 3,500 of the dissidents, but that Latin American officials responsible for the evacuation and eventual relocation of the Cubans. The first dissidents to arrive in America reached Key West, Fla., on Monday through the help of a U.S. envoy and part of indifferent government officials.
AS OF TUESDAY, about 1,500 dissidents in the West African country of Bahrain, without the efforts of Costa Rica, majority of the original 10,000 people wishing to leave the country would probably return.
Washington is obviously not preoccupied with another embassy—one that if halfway across the country, the president attention to the plight of the dissidents in country that lies at America's doorstep.
On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched by the embassy chanting, "Out with delinquents, trash and parasites," during a day-long demonstration that coincided with the 19th anniversary of the United States' Bays of Pigs invasion of Cuba. At many times over the past three weeks, dissidents' lives have been in grave danger. Yet the United States has sat idly by, less than a month after other matters it regards as more important.
BUT THE CUBANS are leaving. Almost two weeks ago, the Cubans began the flight from Havana to San Jose, Costa Rica, on an airline flight that has been dubbed the "Lost Flight."
It was surprising that Castro allowed the dissidents to leave. Castro has hardly been known as a humanitarian. But the dictator's generosity has had its bounds. Airlifts of the dissidents were ended by Castro last week after only about 780 of the dissidents had been released. And Castro halted the flights because he was angry about the red-carpet treatment the
In the past, Americans always were the men in the white hats, the first to run to the police when a robbery occurred now, as our indifference to the Cuban dissidents illustrates, times saddly have
The next time that people in need of help ask the United States for aid, America should be in person, not in word.
Abortion an escape from responsibility
To the Editor:
I am writing in response to Louise Farham's plea to hear from some female antiabortionists (April 15 Kansan). First of all, have a terribly difficult time believing that people really support abortion or even the right for a woman to choose to have an abortion. Rather, rather, that these people support an easy way out of a tremendous responsibility.
I shall never be convinced that those who claim that a fetus is not a baby hold this to be true. The mere fact that Farman refers to the fetus as an "unborn child" shows that. However hard she tries to assure herself that a woman from a women'snb is not killing her because her basic premise is unfounded in her own mind . . . and heart, if I may add,
Furthermore, aside from any religious or political beliefs, any woman who has ever reached her sixth month of pregnancy has that the life growing within her is baby.
In addition, I pose a serious question to those who claim to be 'pro-choice.' How can you say that 'no man has the right to abort'? In fact, she says that a woman has a right to do what she wants with the body of an unborn child? And why should a woman be allowed to 'make a decision based on her own beliefs' when the choice to live—much less beliefs?
Farnham wanted to know how female anti-baboontion "can explain that the life of an unborn child is more important than the life of a baby, and that the ruined by unused pregnancies." First, I say that a child is important because it is the precious life of a human being. Second, and more personally, I upland my view because she does not have the choice to abort me; mother did not have the choice to abort me. I am alive today. Yes, a woman sacrificed her body—her whole self—to carry for nine long months and painfully bring me to the grave even though she chose not to raise me.
Third, there are many, many couples who desperately want children but are incapable of raising them. I am putting her baby up for adoption is easy for a woman, but any trauma she might go through can cause pain.
consider this, Christ Jesus commanded,
"Love one another as I have loved you"—and this means sacrificing our lives.
Jean Marie Finch Lawrence senior
Louise Farman, and all those who stand in great relief in all of their grateful mothers or mothers-in-law love, please think of the unborn children that cannot beg their mothers to make that same kind of sacrifice.
And fourth, though many shall refuse to
Abortion immoral consider alternatives
To the Editor:
Second, you have done men a great disservice. They are not mothers, but they are fathers, and are, therefore, intimately dependent on the pregnancy and its consequences.
We are responding to Louise Farnham's wish to hear from pro-life women. First, we will point out that one should apply oneself in a argument, not the gender of the speaker.
There are so many reasons to oppose abortion, but we will give only one.
The unborn have the medical characteristics of life: structure, growth, metabolism, irritability, etc. They are not born to people and are therefore human lives by available standards.
In general, pregnancy is not accidental—the possibility is just ignored. It requires a positive act to occur, and it will result in birth unless another positive act occurs.
The question, therefore, is whether there exist circumstances that justify the termination of what science and ethics define as life.
This question is not addressed to an individual. It is addressed to every individual. That is where law begins.
Now, apart from a dairespectable sense of self, I have the philosophers agree; that using immoral means to accomplish some good is an injustice. That is a hard statement, but it is one we all should accept.
No, we do not consider ourselves more important than unborn babies. If we are not able to marry or support a child there are Catholic Support Services and other
organizations to help. In other words, and we emphasize this, there are simply no unwanted babies. There are only unintended pregnancies. We abort it. We us to us to make use of them.
Judith Paltin
Kim Senior
Marilee Quinn
Evelyn Koch
Lawrence residents
To the Editor:
Fetus is important in eyes of Creator
As female multi-abortionists, we would like to respond to Louise Farnham's April 15 letter.
Farnham says that she cannot take seriously a man's view on abortion because he won't carry the child or rear it. She wants her baby to live in an environment of value on life from conception to birth, will then place a low value on that life from birth to 18 years. It is just as easy to assume that a mother would place a high value prior to birth would place a high value on life after birth and would share or take sole responsibility for rearing the child. Men do have a corner on the irresponsibility market.
Farnham asks for an explanation of why we believe an unborn child is more important than our own lives. The child is not important. It is less important. In the eyes of its Creator, an unborn child is just as important as any one of us. Just as God knew and had a purpose for them, Jesus before Baptist and Jesus before He created and fashioned them in their mothers' wombs, so he knows and has a purpose for each child. Jeremiah 1:4-5, Luke 1:13 and Luke 1:31.
Farnham speaks of an unwanted pregnancy ruining one's life. The most unwanted pregnancy we could think of was a baby born severely deformed and retarded or conceived as the result of rape. None of us would choose to abort such a fetus to keep it from "ruining" our lives. As Christians, the mother is not obliged to not depend upon circumstance. No
circumstance could ruin our lives ever if it were to result in death. God has promised to give joy, peace and love to overcome every circumstance. A baby born as the result of unfortunate circumstances would serve as a blessing and the only reason thereby obtaining more joy. The only ruined lives are those who never know Christ personally, for He is life.
Farnham says that “whether or not a fetus is life from the moment of conception is a religious issue, not a political one.” One of the papers in the New York Court of Appeals ruling in the 1972 case of Bynn vs. New York City Health and Hospital Corporation. The court found that the unborn child is a human being and the right to live, so that it is up to the legislature to decide which human beings are “persons” and, therefore, are entitled to the right to live. The political and sociological implications of this must be taken into account. A study of IQ is over 85-or-age is under 65, our health is perfect and our skin is the right color? Are we people only if we are productive members of society? What might be humanity’s greatest responsibility, depending upon the whim of those in power.
r many, the grisly metamotes used in abortion "sound as if someone is hacheting to death the cute kid from the Gerber jar" because women are hacheting or poisoning potential cutis. In a wanted pregnancy, every effort is made to keep the premature baby alive, often较快 successful. The helpless fetus, who is usually aborted, has an immortal spirit and will be with God. It never again will be born to a more loving parent. For each fetus its birth was a tragedy.
Therefore, any woman who decides to have an abortion should do so with the permission of her parents. God for her action. And any man who also is irresponsible in his sex life, impregnates a woman and continues his irresponsibility by holding his child equally responsible to God.
Joy Fry
Susan Frobish
Donna Ellis
Jo Rosentrasser
Ann Parry
Lawrence residents