UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kanan edithical staff. Signed columns represent the views of the editors. Ticket is a bargain February 11, 1980 A rumbling grumble rolled through the University of Kansas last week in the wake of an announcement that season basketball tickets would cost more next year than they did this year. The announcement was made by Joe Yates, athletic director for business affairs, who blamed inflation for the price increase. Talk of $100,000-deficits and abolished surcharges echoed through the University as students and other faculty in fans reacted to the announcement. However, a little comparison shopping shows that even though next year students will pay an increase of 50 cents a game, or $17.50 for a season ticket that this year cost $11, the higher price stock will be a bargain. First, compared to other Big Eight schools, the University of Kansas '11 price is higher than only two other schools—the universities of Nebraska and Oklahoma, which sell their student season tickets for $10. Assuming that the other Big Eight schools do not raise their prices, three of them still would have prices higher than the $17.50 proposed for the University of Kansas. One of these is the University of Colorado, whose student basketball fans pay $30 a season to see their Buffaloes in action. And yet the University of Kansas and Kansas State University are the only two big Eight schools that consistently all of their student season tickets. This year KU students taught 7,200 of 16,000 seats in Allen Field House. There are 13 home games in the Jayhawks' basketball season. Thirteen movies at $3 a ticket would cost $39; thirteen pitchers of beer at $2.50 a piece would cost $2.56; and go out to dinner alone thirteen times cost anywhere from $26 ($2 a meal at a local fast food restaurant) to the cost of a family restaurant), then buying thirteen paperback books at $2.99 apiece would cost more than buying a season basketball ticket next year. Second, compared to other kinds of entertainment in Lawrence, $1.35 is more than reasonable price to pay for a basketball game. Of course there are those presently disheared fans who would question whether attending 13 home basketball games is worth the disappointment even at the bargain price. But, if worse was the case, a home and take up knitting. Thirteen skirts of yarn at 88 cents apiece would cost $11.44. New grading a plus for faculty, students The University of Kansas would get an "A" for effort if it allowed all of its schools to implement a plus or minus grading system. In anyone's gradebook, such a system would earn more than pluses than deductions. The university's inflexible "A,B,C,D,F" system. Grades really don't mean what they used to. Perhaps as few as 10 years ago, an "A" was as valuable as a one-way ticket to Montreal during the Vietnam War. Now, at age 23, it's no wonder that everybody knows that grade inflation is commonplace—it is an accepted fact. COLUMNIST david lewis Grades would be a better indicator of one's academic ability. A particularly gifted student who had consistently gotten grades well enough to be on a record card that better reflected his efforts. ON THESE same lines, a plus or minus system would make it harder for a student to beat the system. A student who simply has a "minus" weight would get credit for a "C-minus". A plus or minus system would ease the sailing grade inflation rate, for example, by increasing the scale of a 3.6* scale instead of a 3.0. Getting a solid "A" or a 4 mark would make a much more difficult task. Under the present grading system, a person is rewarded a "C" for "a C-mimus" effort or a "C-plus" effort. KUR is rigid scale effect; it helps some but it also hurts many. The most obvious reason for a plus or minus system is to make it easier for KU1 teachers, who have the unpleasant task of assigning letter grades. The plus or minus system would make this chore less tedious by putting a welcome end to borderline If a student got a high "B" but was not quite an "A", his report card would say so in the form of a "B-olus." IF ONE examines the merits of the two systems, it's easy to conclude that the plus or minus system would improve the competitive climate at KU. Both the competitor "A,B,C,D,F" and plus or minus systems foster competition among students. Competition can not be avoided. Still, if competition is not used excessively, it can be a healthy influence on the classroom. But competition under KU's grading system can be more destructive than productive. The present grading system requires the student compete against the system itself. Roger was 19 when his combat platoon walked into a booby trap in the dense, steamy South Vietnamese jungle. His arms and legs were ripped by the hidden hand grenade that blasted out of the muddy, uninfested canals of the Mekong Delta. A student need not put out his best effort; can you put out the least effort to squawk out his mouth? Is he desiried. Why should a student put out his best effort under the present grading IF HE received a 90, his grade would be the same as a person who earned a 100. But since 1975, the School of Architecture and Urban Design has officially used the plus or minus system. The School of Law is also popular with faculty and students. The system is popular with faculty and students. The plus or minus system is not by any means a new idea, and it has its faults, like any other system. And if the new grading system were implemented throughout the University, it would be "A,B,C,D.F" system still would be at liberty to assign grades without pluses or minus. Each instructor runs a class in his own way. Adopting a plus or minus system would help you to keep the A,C,B,D,P" system is a hindrance to learning because they have no flexibility in grading. ANY GRADING SYSTEM has the ability to be reasonably reasonable to contend that the plus or minus system provides more safe checks and flexibility when the dreaded report cards are used. There is no active opposition to the plus or minus grading system, whose fate now rests with the University Senate executive committee. But in 1979, 10 years after his first, harrowing tour in Vietnam, Roger realized that the war had ravaged only Vietnam's images and children, but his own life as well. Although the dead nerve endings on the back of his legs remind him to this day of that numbing experience, his wounds eventually healed. However, KU officials most likely will contend that such a system would be too expensive because "the computer" could not handle the phases and the mines. If so, the computer should be issued to the incinerator and given an "f-trim" for obsolete. Nature threatened by new library plan Roger is one of an estimated 50,000 Vietnam veterans who suffer from what is sometimes called the "sweet death" for labels for men whose lives were shattered first by the nightmarish deathtrap of Vietnam, then by the indifference and contempt that greeted them when the time came. I have read with interest your series of articles dealing with the University's libraries. I would like to thank you for providing me with these resources and the proposed solutions. One man recalls the horror of war To the Editor: "We were all victims," Roger remembers. "It wasn't like coming home from work, but I got here as a hero and a winner. Nobody gave a rat's ass what we had gone through. They called us baby-killers, not heroes. We were part of something bad and they didn't want to hear you." There is one point which bothers me and this is the proposed site of the West Library. I certainly hope that the administrators haven't simply decided to dump a pile of bricks in a pleasant, centrally located open space. The library has been taken place here at the University these open spaces are becoming few and far between. God forbid that in their haste to provide needed improvements, the administrators overlook the benefits we all enjoy from a fresh air, sunshine, grass, flowers and trees. The Vietnam war claimed many a victim. Some sank to their untimely graves in the swamps of the Mekong. Others were cut down by bullets on comfortable college campuses. Still others languish today in administration hospitals across the country. Roger came home "through the I especially hope that any plan for a West Library will not result in the destruction of that huge, beautiful tree north of the library. It would. It would be a real shame if that happened. Chainy J. Folsom Lawrence senior For 10 years Roger's attempts to shrug his Vietnam experience were thwarted by a gawning, deep-settled gap for having been raised in "dens' lives and for still being alive himself. Now he takes time off once a week from his job as a prospector for a stone and gravel quarry company in Topeka to attend a memorial service. He meets with seven other Vietnam combat veterans who share the experience of having cradled a dying friend in their arms and whose lives have been marred by attacks attempted suicide and "survival guilt." Combat veterans survived when all around them bodies were blown to pieces. Their wounds haunted only by the notion that life is somehow meaningless and expendable, but also by the knowledge that, in the eyes of many Americans, they fought and lost an officer. But 10 years later, his wounds were still stitering. Last March he returned to a hospital where he was rendered meaningless by memories of piercing screams of pain and the smell of blood. hospital$^a$ after he was wounded in April 1963. He convalescaped alongside men with war-torn bodies and broken muscles—men who had suffered fresh out of high school, just as he had. "I'll never go to war again," he says. "I had to go to Vietnam because I was drafted. I went out of patriotism—to fight for Uncle Sam and to get some recognition. But Roger was lucky. He walked out the hospital doors in one piece. Vietnam was a political war. And in a sense all those people around me died in vain, for political reasons only." KANSAN 80 Before swallowing all this political pulp, think for a moment about the thousands who died in Vietnam. Before Afghanistan make the switch, before Al Qaeda scarred veterans who are still stalled away in hospitals, unable to face the world. Think of the missile blasts, the broken home and the dead. My outlook on the world has changed drastically Today our hot-and hawk-tempered politicians are swelling their chests, clamoring for registration and inference defense specialities not so obsolete military threats at Iran and the Soviet Union. They are engaging in frightening Cold War tactics. THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN US$75/640 @£49 Published at the University of Kansas date August through May and Thursday and Monday to Friday. Please refer to the back cover for details. Subscriptions by mail for $13 per month or $2 yr a Department Clerk and $25 for non-employee. Subjects include US$1,000 + US$250 + US$75 + US$25 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 + US$75 Postmaster: sends changes to the University Daily Kannan, Flint Hall, The University of Kannan, Lawrence, RS6005 Editor James Anthony Kitta Before you accept the drall as a necessary weapon, the drill has to despair, violence and guilt. And listen to Roger—then a 19-year-old who had sued up for his high school prom only a few months ago. "I'm not going to do it," he said. Manage Editor Jones Anthony Fitts Editorial Editor Brenda Walters Campus Editors Associate Campus Editor Associate Campus Editors Art Director Designer Associate Sports Editor Associate Sports Editor Corp Chiefs Wire Editors Writing Editor Writing Editor Editorial Writers Senior Staff Writer Staff Writer Photographer Photographer Editorial Assistants Editorial Assistants James Anthony Fitts Editorial Editor Brenda Walters Card Reader Justin Woodson Amy Holloway III Cryidy Hughes Meg Myrn Genny Mern Honda Huihua, Brendon H. Sch缓, Marvin J. Pierce Todd Lackey, Gabriela Padget Marketing Editor David Law, David Mould, Ralee Pound, Brennan H. Sch缓, Eddie William HI, Rodney Norman Edward Eldis Rick Jones, Michael Harrington Ben Bigner, Stuart Hill Davian Martin Mahran Humold Hamad Adalah-Lider "It it was hot and sandy when we wandered 'It Ran Rah B'h. Especially since I'm from Mexico, I don't mind the cold and strange to me and I felt as if I were in another world. For a few days we had no idea where we'll be and we spent all our time in Mexico." We filled up unteemm sandbags. Business Manager Vincent Coultis "Finally we were split up and they sent me to the Mekong Delta. The jungle was thick, hick and swampy. I was assigned to a unit called the Riversate River. Our job was to trudge through the jungle, to search and above all to watch out for body traps. Retail Sales Manager Elaine Starbrill Campus Sales Manager Dean Travis Advertising Makeup Manager Moore Paetreille Campus General Operations Tammy Hein, Nacalina Park National Manager Paul Davis Staff Product Manager Karen Hartley Staff Artist Karen Hartley General Manager Advertising Manager Stock Master Chuck Downs "We were as far south as you could go. We never saw our enemy down there. It was an open field. Farmers and villagers would turn out here to harvest. Sharpshooters would fire maddly at lanters that glided along silently in the darkness, enemies were women, children and boys. "We would trounce around the jungle for six days at a time, through rice patties and coconut fruits. That elevation was 11 feet above sea level, we were never out of the water. We slept in the rain and the sun on our mets. Leeches clump to our bodies and sticky, swarming mosquitoes made it imminent." "I walk point (scouted) the whole time I was there because I was a rookie. I was on banana leaves and I walked right into them. The stinging ants would crawl all over my body and the only thing I could be to strip off my clothes and jump into the "On my first jungle mission I saw six men in a helicopter, but they executed at close range by 48-caliber bullets pumped into their brains. I guess they were Viet Cong. To me they were just two On the second mission of his two-month tour in the Medeg, Roger's kit hit a land and mine and nine fellow infantrymen blew up so much lifeless body scraps. "The most vivid thing you remember about Vietnam is your friends screaming or crying. I was the second mission I had to pull this out of the mud. As I held him in my arms, he screamed, Save me, please save me. I lost it. I was screaming. I lost a body of myself just because I couldn't save him. Every one of those nine boys couldn't save me wrong or not done enough to help them." "It took three hours to clear the jungle so the helicopters could hover in and lift out the bodies. I just lay there in the mud because this person who had asked me to save him." "After that we started talking about getting the million-dollar wound—just bad enough to get us out of Vietnam, just bad enough to get us to Japan, just bad enough to COLUMNIST susana namnum But his buddies were busy shooting pool and fraternizing in the Pizza Hat. Besides, Roger had been in Vietnam only two months. What did he know about war? "After all I had been through, I was ready to take it on someone," Rogers recalls. "All I did was get into fights with him." He didn't have had just been to war for those people. I had killed people and seen people die. I was wrong to let anybody push me around. How dare they give me a ticket for driving left of center, when a man had died in my car." "When I came back I was nobody. There were people who fell sorry for me because of the splint on my hand, because they could not figure out how to break it, that I don't think they would care a lot or any other. Only two people said thanks when I came back, but I am dead now and I'm in jail and drunk." After years of drunk driving, "spinning my wheels, going in neath, fighting the world," Roger finally sought help by the VA. He was put into care at a suicide when he broke down and cried like a baby in the doctor's office. After years of trying to "adjust to society" by shoving the Vietnam horror to the back of his mind, all he could see was the tree that man he had found. Nobody ever told Roger that the death and destruction he had witnessed had been a deliberate act, but to whom Vietnam meant nothing, certainly didn't think he had fought for them. So for lack of Vet Colm, he identified the towns' authorities figures in particular, as the enemy. So Roger went back to Vietnam for a year, and he was told that he'd know something about war. By this time he had rank so he didn't have to face the bloody action he had. "War . . . What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" His second homecoming was less jarring because a year sounded more authentic to people. But logos learned all the knobs about the senseless horror of war during his first, brief Vietnam tour. During that second tour he was taught how to paint his unit painted a slogan on their tank. They used the opening words of an anthem that the rock group War belled in the early 1960s. get us back to the States, and no worse. That was our goal, our dream, our escape." ELM GROVE, Wai--Ever notice that hardly anyone whistles at least. At least not publicly. It wasn't always this way. As a kid growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, I am still a bit obsessed with it. New York Times Special Features Roger received his million-dollar wound on April 19, 1989. After two months of hatred and he fellame home to Seneca and tried to convince him that the man was convinced that those men had died in Vietnam for a reason. All he wanted from his country was an affirmation of that reason, an indication that the body count, the brutality were somehow insustible. By BILL NELSON for whom the melody was only part of the act. Even more important were the snapping fingers, the palms slapping against the thighs, and metal beets leeching-clacking on them. No one whistles anymore Some of my pals were virtuosus. They perfected whistles that were both melodic and powerful. In time, the art became a marvelous all in girl-watching. Buck and Junior also refined shrill one-handed sounding footsteps. Buck could whip off a one-handed, two-finger whistle that rumbled down the street at a sonic boom. The music was good. Even I, an acknowledged master of tunelessness, was known to erupt occasionally in a fit of whistling. Yet my most memorable exposure to watching came as I swept floors at the local gym, where Mr. Wheeler served supervisor, do the hits of the early 1950s. His whistled notes were clean, clear and true, and his wide-ranging repertoire made me the first one I was almost like listening to Froderow. FRED LOWREY in case you've forgotten, was the sensual blind whistle of the Horace Heid orchestra—and the finest whistler who ever puckered a耳. Back in the days when society was not nearly so homogenized, street whistling seemed, if not sophisticated, then at least tolerable. There were several distinctive types of whistlers. The "Hit Parader" would crank whistles up loudly, and the almost drove you crazy. The "Washroom Warbler," a cousin of the Hit Parader, found the resonance of the tiled walls too hard to handle. Mr. maestro whose taste ran to classical music. He would deal with the heavy stuff—four pounds of one of the most whatile kinds of composers. Then there was the "Hot Licks Whistler" as much as we might like to, we can't forget musica—not musical, not non-musical. His whistle was only a noise, an insultible, hissing monotone devoid of any melody or rhythm. He turned offices and balconies into spaces for singing. ONCE, WHEN I was fishing, I heard another angler in perhaps his finest musical moment. He began whistling a concerto, ran through some chamber music, then came on with overtures and syllables. His pianos smash a smash almost forgot to toss out my line. IT WASN'T that long ago, actually, that bringing—and a few girls', too, although whistling was basically a male domain. Fathers were happy to teach it and so were Whistling, after all, produced a cheerful sound and, besides, it was good for the lungs. A few composers ever wrote parts for whistling. Devessels claimed that there were no instruments to accompany the human voice: It's just as natural an instrument, they said, and it exceeds the one we know. One ecstatic whistle put it this way: 'My avocation consists of whisting to myself the most beautiful melodies in existence, and I will tell you why.' I prefer that not everyone else likewise like me. So why, then, does the miltiman whistle anymore? Maybe because there aren't many transducers that are blessed with transistor radios these days—but, unfortunately, they turn from active to inactive. WHISTLING also like to decrime of decorum, too much individuality to the devil's way? say a man in an era where only one law overlaps another, which whistling impinges on another's Maybe, too, whistling expresses too much good cheer. Its underlying message, of course, is that you should expect with one's life, job and expectations. Isn't all that a bit too cornery for the sophisticated man? So, street whistlers of America, I guess the time has come to say farewell. We'll miss you. Our eardrums may be better for it, but I don't think our dispositions will be. Bill Nelson is a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal.