UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan edition staff. Signed columna represent the views of the editors.
March 20,1980
Cut hurts gymnasts
Intercollegiate gymnastics at the University of Kansas are no more. The gymnastics program, with its coach and 11 athletes, has been cut from the athletic department program, a victim of economics and lack of success.
This cutback will affect a number of people directly and indirectly. The coach, Ken Snow, has been released, but he was planning to resign.
The athletes are in a bind. None of them are seniors, and they are faced with the prospect of having to end their careers early or transfer to another school. For some, transferring would involve only a year at another school—little time to adjust to a new team and educational program.
And those who do not transfer may face the loss of their athletic scholarships if they stay at KU. Bob Marcum, athletic director, has said the department will have to see what commitments they have to the athletes involved and make a decision about the coach and the athletes.
It is to be hoped that Marcum does not mean only legal, on-paper agreements when he speaks of commitments. It may be discovered that KU legally owes the scholarship athletes nothing. If so, the department may take the economical way out and strand the gymnasts without a dime.
This would, in effect, force the scholarship athletes to transfer to another school where they may be
offered scholarships, or stay at KU,
quit gymnastics and pay for the rest of their education.
The athletic department should not take this easy way out. These gymnasts, most of whom are from out of state, came to KU on the promise of the opportunity to develop their athletic skills while getting a college education. They probably would not be here if the athletic department had not promised them four years of education in exchange for four years of committion.
If the athletic department is so strapped that it cannot fulfill its promises to a few gymnasms, maybe there should be some more cuts made in the budget. So far all the cuts have been made in the men's non-revenue sports. There must be fat in the revenue sports as well. It probably cost the football team as much money to play them than it would Frank Seurer and Kerwin Bell as it would provide a scholarship for a gymnasm for a season.
How will it look to golf recruits, or to tennis recruits, if the athletic department won't keep its promises to the gymnastics team while it spends thousands of dollars on football recruiting?
Cuts in the budgets are necessary to keep any kind of athletes on the fields for KU. But make the cuts with an eye toward reputation as well as other sports player players may be the only people interested in attending this school.
Drys should direct efforts at teenagers
To the Editor:
The article in the Feb. 29 Kansas about the proposed raising of the drinking age in Kansas prompted me to offer a suggestion. The suggestion that students will not be able to stop college students, but just trying to keep alcohol out of the hands of high school students. My suggestion to them is to deal with the problem. I think that my home town, Vermilion, Ohio, did.
Ohio, like Kansas, allows 18-year-olds to buy 3.2 beer. To combat the various problems associated with juvenile drinking,
KANSAN letters
the local juvenile court judge cited a standing order to law enforcement officers that all juveniles caught drinking alcohol in their home were denied access to the home. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, (in earlier times, it was the officer's decision whether to send the kid home with parents)
My local newspaper reports that since the inauguration of this policy, incidents involving juveniles have increased. Doesn't Kanzera adopt a similar policy and deal with the problem directly, instead of closing bars, firing officers, or issuing "evil blood" illegal for 18-to-20-year-olds?
Jay S. Boggess Vermilion, Ohio, sophomore
Financial standards unfair to students
To the Editor:
David Lewis editorial in the March 17 Kansan concerning financial standards displays considerable ignorance if not simple smirk meanness.
For years there has been debate within the academic community as to just what
grades measure. The recent ruckus about the grade "inflation" is perhaps the most laughable aspect of this debate. That is to say, students in grades 9 and above so seriously one could laugh. And now, we find that in an effort to protect the taxpayers from senseless waste, the administrators want to raise the standard used in schools to "reasonable academic progress."
Disregarding the controversy that still surrounds letter grades, these administrators wish to use grade points to manage student achievement. Disregarding the studies that show that the students who have already been hampered by poor education—the poor, the minorities—are the ones who are likely toPOOL in America's white middle-class class. Disregarding the tradition from high school to college is a major change in a person's life and that subsequently a academic performance may suffer as a consequence. Disregarding that distinction will leave donepoor in college. Disregarding the pure simple fact that one cannot measure academic progress with something as arbitrary as a letter grade, the power that can be given to students to determine who may and may not get an education. May they all rott! hell no!
Chainy J. Folsom Lawrence senior
Student may leave if BGS eliminated
Two months ago I moved to Kansas because I wanted to earn a BGS degree at KU, and in 2013 I received the University of Iowa or the University of Michigan for my education. My best chance for the future is with this degree. If KU happens to be surprised to see a decline in enrollment,
I usually find her sitting in her chair by the twin bed. My visit last week was no exception. She was sitting in the usual place in her room in the nursing home, her faded blue eyes fixed lavantly on the wall opposite the chair.
Karl Bradley
Topeka
To the Editor:
The afternoon sun illuminated my grandmother's white hair as she sat at her hands folded across her lap in *Pablo*
Nursing home atmosphere stifles life
She didn't hear me come into the room at first, but when she did see me I could tell that she was gled there. I was.
She was never the kind of grandmother who pampered her grandchildren. Far from it. I can remember sitting in the blazing heat of a long-past Kansas summer in my room, a yellow 1856 Crown Victoria that dripped chrome.
My sister and I sat rigidly in the backseat with the windows rolled up as Grandma drove along the dusty country road. If we showed any signs of undigging or if we made any move toward the window knob, Grandma would admonish, "Be careful of the upholster! Leave the winery and drive through the village, we were careful. Grandma Fawn ran a light ship."
MY ONLY MEMORY of the night that I spent at Grandma's house is haz. I do I remember standing in her
COLUMNIST
bob
pittman
I knew from past experience that the stories were concocted—the medicine and sedatives clouded her mind and made her go nuts.
house in the country with my face pressed against the cold plate glass window. As I watched car headlights crisscross the evening darkness I remember wondering where my pets were and wishing they would come and get me soon.
She was having a bad day when I saw her. I sat listening to her. She was a one-sided conversation. Her roommate was impossible to live with, she told me. The nurses were giving her the wrong medicine. The nurses weren't feeding her; my aunt must have forgotten to pay the nursing home. The cheerful nurse left her thinking things from her. The list of her complaints continued.
She had never seemed very comfortable around us grandchildren. We were far removed from her world then.
When my grandmother and grandfather were divorced 25 years ago, people expected her to move into town. But she stayed in the country, hovering over cows giving birth, giving my father advice on how to farm her acres and always worrying about the mercurial weather. She was a woman. She clung to the farm. It was all that she had ever known.
BUT AFTER 15 YEARS, the load became too much for her to carry. She seemed to be happy. She still had her plants and her flowers—the they replaced the cattle and crops—and she spent many warm days in her yard, bunched over her flower
After several years had passed, and after Grandma had suffered a stroke, she was ready once more to move, with more hesitancy than before. She could no longer take care of herself. Her new destination was a nursing home.
BUT LATELY, dark moods have overtaken her. She has fought with the nurses, other patients and even her family. Last week, her eyes were dulled by medicine and by the sedatives.
She was sick when she moved to the home. After much discussion with the family, she decided it was her best option. She moved from her house, taking only a few personal belongings with her.
At first she seemed to be content.
pleasant subjects: the flowers on the windowsill, her church and the beautiful, sunny day outside.
THE SHE WAS UNIMPRESSED by the weather. The warmth she had brought from her bed, was on her wall of her room. She opened the spring that filled the air outside, she could only smell the odor of urine, antiseptic and medicine that hung on the air inside the room.
Besides, she had witnessed 79 previous springs. How could the shining springs of her youth compare with this one?
I was reluctant to leave her there. When I did, I felt both depressed and guilty, as if frequently do after seeing her.
Before I left, I told her that I would see her again as soon as I returned home. She told me that she might not be alive
Her statement shocked me. I told her that she shouldn't have known me, but now she knows me she is determined, she replied that there were many days when she wished she would die. I tried to comfort her, telling her of the good things of her life, but she
THE DIFFERENCE in our ages seemed even greater as I stood there. I saw myself in her chair 60 years from now, with my future grandson standing in front of me. The idea wasn't pleasant. I tried to drive it from my mind.
I wished I was anywhere but there, in that room, hearing my grandmother tell me that she wanted to die. But then an idea occurred to me. I bent down and kissed her cheek. "Grant, I love you." I said.
At first she seemed startled, as if it had been a long time since anyone had told her those words. Perhaps it had been. Then she smiled. It was a wonderful feeling to see her smile after that afternoon.
I left her quietly. As I reached the doorway, I could see her sitting in the same position that I had found her. But a faint smile was on her lips, and instead of staring at the window, she looked up to sunlight on her windowsill and the emerging grass outside.
I HOPE THE SMILE has lasted, but I don't kid myself. He is an excellent nurse in nursing homes, places where inadequacy and hopelessness reign.
My grandmother was once an active, vital woman. Living in a nursing home has broken her will to live. I'm sure that thousands of people in nursing homes across the county feel the same way.
I still carry the thought of that smile in my mind and I hope that I find my grandmother well when I visit her again. But I also remember the vacant stare, the sedated, listless eyes, and her wishes for death to come soon.
Emotions, laws factors in divorce
BY ROSE M. STEWART
Douglas County Legal Aid
Attitudes about marriage and divorce have changed recently, but most people don't plan to have a divorce when they are married. Yet when marital difficulties arise, a person's emotional distress may interfere with the understanding the legal effects of the divorce process and that term financial effects of decisions made in time of unhealthy.
Domestic relations legal work can be stressful to both lawyers and clients, because a person's private emotions may be exposed publicly and because basic human feelings are categorized and placed into the terminology that is unfamiliar to most people.
Each state makes its own laws on divorce and local practice and procedure or various regulations on marriage, including county to county. Because of this, it is difficult to make generalizations about divorce practices in every state.
And, as with any legal situation, the specific facts of a particular divorce case determine the specific procedures and objectives. Nevertheless, people considering divestit cases lawyers of the same reason also seem to need certain general information.
The following answers to the usual questions asked in family practice should not be taken as advice on a specific situation.
- Separate maintenance is a situation where the husband and wife remain married but live apart under a court order. One party may be ordered to pay main-tenance payments to the other. This legal relationism is commonly called a "legal separation."
- Divorce completely ends the legal relationship of marriage. All matters of child custody and support, alimony, debt and debts are settled between the parties.
- 1. WHAT ARE THE differences between divorce, separate maintenance and annulment?
- An annulment is granted in the uncommon situation where the judge finds that a valid marriage never existed.
A person filing for divorce—the plaintiff must have been a resident of Kansas for at least 60 days immediately before filing the divorce petition, which brings the legal action. The spouse—the defendant—will be required to answer questions in 20 days her file an answer of its wishes.
2. What is the usual procedure for obtaining a divorce in Kansas?
After a waiting period of 60 days, a hearing can be held before a judge. The
parties may have agreed on matters concerning property, child custody and support and alimony or of those matters may be left to the court. If the parties or both parties will testify, and the court's decision concerning the divorce and all other matters is written in a decree or an entry record of divorce.
3. WHAT IS THE usual reason stated in the divorce petition for a divorce?
Incompatibility of the parties is a sufficient reason for the marriage to be unjustified. It may be "such deep and irreconcilable conflict in personal or temperaments of parties as makes it impossible for them to continue normal marital relationship. The conflict of interest between the spouses as up to be irreconcilable. This does not refer to petty quarrels and minor bickering.
UNDER THE RECENT Protection from Abuse Act, the court can issue temporary orders to protect a spouse and children from abuse. In some cases, the spouse does choose to file for divorce, a restraining order may direct either or both spouses to leave the home, to stay away from the other spouse or the children, and to seek protection of property before the final divorce hearing.
4. Is it possible to obtain a restraining order without filing for divorce?
Several items are involved in the cost of a divorce. In Kansas, the filing fee is $35. This fee does not apply to other costs the other party when he is in Kansas. There are additional costs for service outside of the state. Attorneys' fees vary because each case has a different length and the complexity of the case.
The judge may state that the divorce is on the day of the hearing of he or she may request a written statement of the journal entry is signed. Once the divorce is final, 30 days must pass before another valid marriage is made.
6. WHEN IS THE divorce final?
Other questions about child custody, support, alimony, tax consequences and property division may occur. These issues are common with parents who is familiar with the circumstances.
7. Are two people who live together in Kansas married by common law?
- Be eligible by law to be married. For example, both parties must be old enough and must not be married to someone else.
- It depends. Kansas recognizes a common-law marriage as valid, but there are certain legal requirements. The parties must:
- Hold themselves out to others as being married. In other words, they must refer to each other as husband and wife, use the
- Intend to be and regard themselves to be married and not as persons intending to marry sometime in the future.
There is no certain length of time the couple must live together to have a comma marriage. If they don't have a marriage in Kansas is a valid marriage and the only way to end it is through divorce.
same last name or show by other means that they are married.
8. What is an emergency divorce?
If a judge finds that an emergency exists, it is not necessary for the parties to wait for the court to pass. If a court uses a different system in granting the emergency divorces, but these divorces are not served until the court passes.
9. WHAT SHOULD I DO if my spouse files for divorce and I am served with divorce papers?
You should see a lawyer right away. Even if you and your spouse have agreed in advance to get a divorce, you should have a lawyer explain to you what your rights are.
10. What are alternatives to divorce?
and what might happen in your case. It may be that you will have to do something or both or provide your requests. Remember, every case is different, and what may have happened to a friend of yours could be very different.
The law neither favors nor promotes divorce. Not all people say they want divorces really need them. Don't let minor problems cause you to overreact. Some use it to avoid getting into trouble with other problems. For such individuals, counseling may be very important. If at all possible, marriage counseling services can be used before deciding upon a divorce.
As mentioned before, divorce can be a very trying emotional experience and should be used only as a last resort.
Rose M. Stewart is an attorney for Kansas Legal Services Inc. who works in the Dallas County Legal Aid Society. This is student problem series on student legal problems.
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