UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of the editorial staff.
April 4,1980
Consumer voice axed
The Student Senate Services Committee drew its budgetary butcher knife across the fund request of the Consumer Affairs Association Wednesday, carelessly cutting the butcher knife at the University of Kansas and in Lawrence.
By an outrageous 2-1 vote during final budget deliberations, the committee refused to finance the association. Eric Harkness and John Lamb, the committee members who cast the fatal votes, contended the services provided by Consumer Affairs were duplicated by other organizations, KU Information Center, KU student Legal Services, off-campus Housing Board, Associated Students of Kansas, Office of Residential Programs and the Student Assistance Center. This contention is flagrantly false.
Consumer Affairs was established in 1972 and has received Student Senate funds since 1974. Last year, the Senate gave Consumer Affairs $10,424, of which $639 have been spent. Consumer Affairs has until July 1 to spend the remaining money or have it taken away. The point, however, is that the Senate committee has refused to give Consumer Affairs as much as a penny for organization, to obtain death organization. Although the association receives funds from other sources, these all are dependent on the provision of the director's salary, which is paid by Student Senate.
Consumer Affairs exists to help prevent and resolve consumer problems. It is open weekdays to assist people and to provide information about landlord-tenant problems, automotive problems and questions, corporate problems and other business-consumer disputes. It maintains a consumer information library and makes available original publications written by staff members.
It conducts workshops and conferences, sponsors public service announcements and provides many other information, that, in fact, no other organization does.
The KU Information Center is primarily a referral service. The Offcampus Housing Board deals only with off-campus housing. KU Student Legal Services does handle some consumer problems, but only if those problems cannot be resolved by an intermediary. Associated Students of Kansas is a student lobbying office at Teka and neither the Office of Resident Services nor the Student Assistance Center is prepared to handle the kinds or number of consumer requests received by Consumer Affairs.
The life of the Consumer Affairs Association now rests in the hands of the Senate Finance and Auditing Committee, which will meet Monday night to discuss the matter. This committee has the power to approve or to overturn the Service committee's decision.
It should be clear that overturning the duplication charge is the only choice possible. To approve such a seriously ingention petition would be to break and irresponsible precedent for future deliberations and decisions.
Last year, 1,138 KU students contacted the Consumer Affairs Association; 1,888 non-students contacted them, for a total of 3,026 Inquiries. Inquiries were up 2,129 from the 814 received in 1974. The need is obviously there. But without a Consumer Affairs Association, who will fill it?
Lawrence does not have an office of the Better Business Bureau and key officials of the organizations cited by Harkness and Lamb strongly argue that business organizations do not duplicate the services provided by consumer affairs.
U.S. foreign policy must cut through fog
Bv PHILIP GOLD
New York Times Special Features
WASHINGTON—When the thugs of Tehran and the milk bewared gentlemen in this city, there are other things, the matter of fog will remain.
As we yield and yield to all who wish us lettered, chamed, impoverished or dead, the matter of fog—of our utter unwillingness to leave a place where we refuse that to leaves we refuse to leave a alone will remain.
We chatter, no, we chatter that we chattle, no more Vietnamese," as if that incantation all alone might obviate the chance of war in Vietnam. No, against an enemy who is not Vietnamese.
And when, despite protests, keening and sincere regrets, the final Russian tank has run the final Afghan body down, the matter of fog will remain.
For it is not so much that we are weak as we are strong to tug on; an obsession with asking the question, and an irrelevant conclusions, and always, forever acquiring the requirements of our needs.
WE MUMBLE "HOLOCAUST," mutter "Armageddon," whisper "escalation" as though the firm defense of that sustains an existential reality, and it guarantees our ultimate destruction.
Between the massed, incessant, numbing plant of platitudes and the castes of babbling experts to whom we entrusted our intelligence of debate—the language itself—has collapsed.
We intone "complexity," "interdependence," repeating mantra-like "no easy solutions," as if that intonation all
alone might remove the fact that our existence is predicated not upon mere comprehension of complexity but upon its active mastery.
WE SCRIUTIZE POLIS—that ultimate WE SCRUTIZINE the statistical and the normative, the uncaring and the passionate, the ignorant and the understanding—and, relying on their percentages to sanctify whatever evasion it might seem convenient to avoid this week, regard the numbers as well, valid until next week's press release.
We conduct a foreign policy so overlaid with symbolic gestures, vague meanings, grandiose pronouncements and abstractly ludicrous fights of force that, individual to run his life in a similar manner, we call him to the attention of a psychiatrist.
A seeming universe ago, John F. Kennedy spoke of the long twilight struggle in which he was compelled to take on a burden, and it is, but one that can be borne successfully. The burden of a foreign policy at once benign toward who merits it is a burden of effective magnanimity, the burden of effective self-defense. It can be as difficult to exercise until such time as we again comprehend the difference between symbol and truth, fruth, gesture and steadfastness, word and phrase.
And, most of all, between twilight and fog.
IT IS TIME to stop dealing in fo ;
Philip Gold is a teaching assistant in the history department at Georgetown University.
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TV and radio on trial in the courts
without a pen and notepad. The radio reporter needs a recorder and microphone. The radio operator has cameras and the television reporter is impotent.
Television and radio are part of our daily environment—not only in the home, but on the street, in the classroom and at public meetings and events. Television is the primary source of news for many people and helps them read of habitual reading, but a lot faces to face.
Most public bodies have recognized the needs of the electronic media and have opened their proceedings to cameras and microphones. But one of the most important institutions in this democratic society has been the radio and TV—the judicial courts.
The competitive instincts of reporters haven't helped their case. It was the press that turned the 1935 trial of Richard Bruno and George Hirsch baby into a circus. The conviction of Texas financier Billy Soltes for fraud was overturned by the Supreme Court because broadcast of part of the trial carried him of his right to due process of law.
JUDGES AND LAWYERS won't open the courts if they fear that the presence of the electronic media will be grounds for a reversal of the judgment.
But there are signs that some members of the legal profession now think that the broadcasting of trials is not only a First Amendment issue, it also may help the judicial process.
david
COLUMNIST mould
to do so. Massachusetts is the latest to anounce such an experiment.
In Colorado, it has been allowed for 20 years, and the state's Court Justice says no court should have to determine the proceedings were televised. In Alabama, the Georgia, the media and the courts have worked together to allow such proceedings.
But it was the Florida experiment that most. The players and judges the most in the Romney Senate and technicians showed they could cover all proceedings responsibly and unobtrusively.
the jurors were not embarrassed, the defendant was not harassed and lawyers did not play to the television gallery.
IN HIS BISH report on media coverage, the trial judge, Paul Baker, said the worst fears of opponents of broadcasting were not realized; witnesses did not feel intimidated.
On the contrary, broadcasting may raise the standards of the legal profession.
TELEVISION STATIONS don't need a truckload of equipment to cover a trial. A video camera and recorder are adequate for most purposes, and in most states where they have been conducted, stations have rotated coverage and arranged a reporting pool.
The American Bar Association's Fair Trial-Free Press Committee says radio, TV and photographic coverage of judicial proceedings is not inconsistent with the right to a fair trial. Although the ABA's counsel in this case did not adopted this position and federal courts do not allow TV and radio coverage, the atmosphere may be changing.
"Who wants to walk into a courtroom where there are TV cameras and say that the prosecution of the defense isn't ready because they hadn't time to prepare?" wrote Baker.
The judge's conduct, he added, should be open to public scrutiny.
"The public," he wrote, "has a right to know whether a judge is decisive or indecisive, attentive or inattentive, courteous or rude."
MANY AMERICANS know little of the workings of the courts. Their images are, ironically, drawn from TV—not the news media or the fictional courtroom dramas of Hollywood.
TV news coverage of trials may help to inform the public, according to Dow Smith news director for WPLG, "Cameras inside the courtroom are teaching people that justice isn't what you expect."
"They're learning that judges aren't silver-hair-aged, augent gentleman, or that the real culprit doesn't stand up in the court where it isn't. Did the guy you accuse is innocent."
Without access to the courtroom, reports of trials will remain inadequate. As Washington Post said, "With the present restraints on good television—no more than football would be good television if cameras were not inside a stadium parking lots and hot dog stands."
KANSAS COURTS have made no concessions to the electronic media, although the state think they need such access to the material that access to the topics that will be discussed at the regional meeting of the Radio-Television Commission, at the University of Kansas later this month.
Bill needed to make faculty pay up
It's true. Today's educational system is a very old one, but the examples of the moral decline of academia are University of Kansas faculty members who park where they choose and disregard the rules of the university.
In blatant disrespect of the law and the authority of the University's parking service, faculty members have accumulated more than $12,000 in unaid parking fines.
The University has no way to make faculty members pay their parking fines or the $3,000 in library fees they have piled up. Faculty members can be denied parking permits for unpaid fines or may have their parking privileges suspended. However, faculty members who lose their parking privileges simply park off-campus and don't worry about paying the fines.
Last week, however, the Kansas Senate Ways and Means Committee approved a bill.
kate COLUMNIST pound
For the $15,000 question, pick the traffic ticket and library fine welsher who thinks he's above the law.
that would allow Regents institutions to withhold all or part of an employee's wages to force payment lines. The bill is one of the many actions taken by the Legislature this session.
The bill would force faculty members to become responsible for violating University regulations. In the past, only students could be punished for not paying fees—they could be kept from enrolling or denied access to their transcripts. Faculty members, the incivence of parking off-campus as punishment for their transgressions.
SEVERAL FACULTY members seem to be a bit disgruntled by the Senate bill. It requires the university to offer academic freedom to float the law. Life is tough, it isn't, having to obey the rules and regulations.
McKinney also claims that the bill would further eat away the paychecks of faculty members. Now it is true that KU faculty members get paid for attending a budget is no excuse for breaking regulations. If faculty members haven't the money to pay $75 on parking fines, they shouldn't risk tickets by parking illegally. And if you don't walk, do walk — it's good for the health, you know.
One particularly vocal opponent to the bill is Lewis McKinney, professor of history. According to McKinney, the bill is simply a plan to make money by preying on the more affluent in the matter. McKinney, too cheap to help pay for the parking services you enjoy?
McKINNEY ALSO must be assuming that
inflation doesn't affect students. Sorry to disillusion you, sir, but the financial aid checks and paychecks aren't getting any money. And even when these businesses have been going for students, too.
McKINNEY SAID the bill would leave
McKinney went so far as to assert that it was perfectly acceptable to punish students for parking transgressions, but unacceptable to punish faculty members. McKinney and her classmates McKinney* Goodness, we silly students just realized how real special professors are and how more deserving they are of privilege. Remember, McKinney, our tuition and our parents' tax money pay your bills. We are hired to serve us, not vice versa.
faculty members no options and would force them to pay fines they might consider unjust. Irate employees might sue the University or even quit their jobs.
you to obey the law? You probably spit at police cars.
MKINNEY, FACE IT. For years, tac-
breaking the law. Not only they have
given away with it, they have watched as students
have been punished for the same tran-
sition.
Poor logic, McKinney. Faculty members simply could appeal their tickets, the way they do to pay the teacher's petty or too irresponsible to pay fines or obey the regulations, perhaps they're too petty and too irresponsible to teach. Who should be taught on chisler teacher courses in ethics or law?
Justice, democracy, equality—those are the things history books say this legal system was built on, but you don't read them. Let's see a little justice on campus. Faculty, although more learned, deserves better treatment by the law than do students.
If the Legislature passes the fined bill, it will be impossible for the faculty and the legislators would sour. An interesting statement, that, it indicates a deep-seated rebutishment of authority, 50, to 100, of the Legislature's legislative powers.
So faculty members, assuming the Legislature gathers enough intelligence to pass the fines bill, line up and pay up.
Taekwondo fund use misrepresented
To the Editor:
The March 26th Kansan story about Student Senate budget deliberations contained references to the budget request of the KU Taekwondo Club that we thought the students would be interested in our club. The story suggested that tempting to seek funds from the Senate to support the business interests of Choon Lee, the club's head instructor, who reportedly was being the operating his business under the guidance of a campus club. This simply is not true.
Lee operates a school in Shawnee Mission and is the senior Taskwonde figure in this project. Lee serves as instructor of the KU Taskwonde Club directly by student registration fees each year.
The club asked for funding to publicize T楚woekand at KU, to stimulate increased interest in the equipment within the Big Eight and to purchase it. Protective hand and foot gear. None of these items had anything to do with Lees equipment or equipment that would "save." Lee from having to purchase it for his own school is incorrect. He likely intended for the use of student equipment solely for the use of student equipment.
It is the responsibility of the Senate to rigorously scrutinize and question items in our, and all other budget requests. We think
the Kansan's initial reporting of the preliminary budget hearing was extremely prejudicial to our case because, in fact, the committee had asked that these objections at the hearing. It seems only fair that the club should be able to answer the committee's questions during the hearing. The committee is printed in print as a catchy and suggestive news item. We think the reputation and intentions of our club, and certainly of Mr. Lee, have been justified by the suggestion made by the Kansan.
The committee recommended that our club not be funded, we were told, because they all equipment requests could be funded. We thought that if they funded advertising for our club, the effect might be an increase in our membership, which of course was one of our biggest priorities. We argued that because the club members paid a registration fee each semester for Mr.莱's instructions this would have the effect of reducing their budget, and would not be a wise use of student funds, and
We wish to emphasize that the club's budget request was conceived and written by the writers of this letter, with NO involvement on Mr. Lee's nart.
Presented in this fashion, the committee's action seems reasonable, and we agree that the principle if a sound one-if it is uniformly applied to all clubs
thus decided not to fund our advertising either.
Had we been questioned extensively by the committee while Kansas reporters were told that the people they would have been a much different one, less damaging to the reputation of our club. We hope this letter will clear up any misunderstandings in our actions that the Kansas article fostered.
Bavaria Quattro
Treasurer, KU Taekwondo Club
G. Cameron Hurst III
Faculty advisor, KU Taekwondo C
David Duquette
To the Editor:
Prof not above law in fine enforcement
This letter is not directed to all members of the KU faculty, but only to those who believe that "It's OK for the student to not
be allowed to enroll, but not able to get his transcript, but not for the faculty* concerning disciplinary measures for the failure to pay campus fines.
Who are you to be above the law? By your own statement, "We have plenty of laws on the books now in force payment." You are not likely to be bent, stretched or rearranged, but utterly ignored. If the faculty members will refuse to comply with a bill that would take it out of their salaries.
You're willing to play have with the students' futures by denying them their education by not allowing them to enroll or take courses in college or jobs by refusing to release their transcripts, but can't seem to see the justice in paying for your mistakes. Is it something that could be done better above the law and the students in these circumstances? I'm sorry, but I grew up with the evidently outdated notion that all mean are equal before the law. I hadn't heard of the law until recently much. In one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's plays, "Oklahoma!" one of the characters says something along the line of "The man who does the body also, but damned if it is a good!"
And vice versa, Professor McKinney.
Harry Moore
Olathe freshman