4
Friday, March 16, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Burying the Hatchet
A few hundred Indians have declared war on the $70-billion-a-year war machine in the United States, and the plot for a very amateurish play.
The Indians are serious, and although the odds are great against them, they do have one thing in their hand: "The whole world's watch."
It appears that in the FBI's transition from Ford Fairlanes to armored personnel carriers they have become a feature of their cool professionalism.
Foreign newsmen are at the scene and the rest of the world, especially the nonwhite world, is waiting to see what government will do at Wounded Kpee.
More importantly, there are reports that several paramilitary groups are operating in the area. Some newsmen report from the scene that the FBI has armed these militias with high-powered weapons.
There have been several reports of federal officers aiming their weapons at newsmen and others.
A situation so critical should not be handled by anyone but the most highly trained, professional officers. It is the responsibility of the federal government to remove any "monitor" help from the reservation.
Members of the American Indian Movement who are in Wounded Knee protest a petition asking something for their cause is public sympathy and that hostile government action will further this.
But perhaps the Indians know that they cannot win and are willing to suffer for it.
The annual report from the Pine Ridge Agency written Aug. 28, 1890, weeks before the massacre of the Sioux at Wounded Knee, by H. D. Gallagher, Indian agent, contained these accounts:
"I must acknowledge it was a matter of some surprise when I learned shortly after departure of the Sioux Commission that the state had been reduced to 1,000,000 pounds, or 20 per cent, for the year.
"I am well aware that such a course is objected to by land speculators and others who have no sympathy for the Indians, who think it no crime to do them the greatest wrong, and would be willing to see the last one of them perish if such a thing would be turned into profit by them. But is it right that the government should be influenced by such men in its dealings with these people? I hope for humanity's sake that the time is not far distant when the interest of the Indian will be considered of paramount importance to the wishes of any unscrupulous politician or professional land-grabber."
Unfortunately, his words fell on deaf ears in Washington, and weeks later he did see the last one of them perish. Perhaps now, 83 years later, the time he hoped for is not far distant.
—Eric Kramer
$t. Patrick's Day
The world is full of tragedy.
Robert Raikes, Sunday School founder, died April 5, 1811. On the Ides of March 44 B.C. Julius Caesar was bloodily assassinated. As if that weren't enough, 537 years later to the day, Odacer was slain by Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths. Then, on May 18, 1915, H.M.S. irresistible sank in the Dardanelles.
In the meantime, St. Patrick's day, replete with profits, creeps upon us. In the fifth century St. Patrick was born. He allegedly
Somebody got so depressed one winter—or perhaps several somebodies got so depressed over a number of winters that he thought up excuses for so many spring holidays that today we could distribute one to each week of this semester, excluding spring break. If the federal government would only recognize this valiant effort and would appropriate the appropriate Mondays, maybe, for a moment, we could forget high taxes and the rising cost of food.
made Christians of the Irish and charmed Ireland's snakes into the sea. Hallmark took it from there. The foresight of American manufacturers has run far ahead of them. Clay pipes never had it so good.
however, if by any chance all of the shamrock-studded greeting cards, plastic and felt derbies, leprechaun napkins and iridescent blairney stones are snatched off the market too early this year, America's entrepreneurs need not lose a prime opportunity to encourage the generosity of American consumers.
Celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act by sending a personalized message to a friend:
"Titus Labienus, in year 45
Was killed by fearless means,
today, his day, he were all alive.
He died in the house of a
I've missed you. It seems so long since we've talked. Happy Ebenezer Elliott Day.
—Linda Schild
Sprung
Think of all those papers. Just think of them. The 40-page dissertation on the eradication of dandelions, the 15-page theme on the role of the tree in American history, the three-page summary of the complete works of Ayn Rand. And the three works of John Updike don't despair, spring break is upon us. Forsake the tedium, the research, the typewriter, Escape!
Go west young men and women. The University is but a state of mind. Meanwhile, think fondly of your legislators, who have graduated from heated debate on whether big blue stem grass or
wheat should be the official state grass of Kansas to a discussion, in one committee at least, of the merits of recycling cattle manure into gas to alleviate the energy crisis. And think of those who have valiantly campaigned for the Student Senate, struggling against the black demon, apathy. But don't dwell on them too long. You've only got a week.
Forget your job hunting woes,
seniors. Too late to change majorms
now, juniors. Sophomores, Western
Civ's almost over. Forget about the
Pearson program, freshmen. It is
spring break, so break.
—The Office Cat
It Gets Curiouser and Curiouser
A Voice from the Establishment
BY CALDER M. PICKETT
Professor of Journalism
It is always instructive to see someone else's words put into your mouth. For several years I had been bracing myself. I had been having bad dreams after school, and Barbara Spurlock and me have it in a letter to the editor. I had not read the letter until today, and I was interested to see that nine inches of type had been used in my own research. I had made about the issuance of a call for "courses relevant to women" at a time when the University was wondering how to keep people on the faculty and a degree was being debated existence was being debated.
been talking about. Well, it's your
ladies, ladies. If it occurs to you that
the courses you discuss are crap I want you to remember that you made the list and that you used he word, too.
Ah, well. The persons then proceed to discuss my use of the word "crap" (a no-ko, I know, but so descriptive of certain things going on in our society) and to discuss what I might have
You do offer a special challenge, but I won't pick it up. I won't get myself into a "Hate you stopped beating your wife" situation by being off-court courses you have listed are—with apologies to you and the English department—crap. But I miss you a key point. Subject matter can be quite valid without creating any bias in our courses to house it. Considering the human aspects—rather than the female (is "female a forbidden word these days?" I have lost track)—of the various concepts you treat uplifting to be more compelling as a movement as militant as yours. It does seem sad that Barbara
Spurlock, a fine young woman and a backer of woman's rights herself, should be speared along the fence. In newspapers you just aren't supposed to talk about certain matters; Barbara (forgive me for not referring to her as a feminist) is an editorial author; justists are in learning.
And I would like to give her a bit of support on one matter. You describe us as uninformed, as not doing the proper research for our writing. I refer to your comments about funding; I argue that we have done everything requiring special funding. Or perhaps things operate differently in classics, English and the library. Next fall, when I offer my Seminar in Dorothy Thompson and my course in Elaine May: Auteur of Film, 3 to teach it, I either will have to teach him or my grade may be 10-12 hour load or leave out something else.
In any case, if you have a formula for handling such matters I wish you wold pass it on to me. You can still flict to offer even the old courses these days, let alone the new, without new faculty. But probably all of you, having been held in slavery for so long, will be convinced someone that the money be found for new faculty lines.
alienated old friends, having been singularly unsuccessful in helping the Pearson program and having been advised by cautious friends to up for a white, I am more aware that any more in my current series of columns. But there sat the typewriter, and nothing was being typed on it. Something drew me to the thing. I tried to find the nuance of inimical force, an irresistible Impulse, drew me across the room.
Up there a few paraphrases ago I said that safe writers just don't treat certain subject matter. In recent years we have learned not to discuss student government, the mass media and the mess in the Middle East and the war in Vietnam. Pleasant dinner parties have been disturbed. Classes have become exercises in name-calling. The safe thing is to talk about the safe subjects, if you can find any, I can ask you to do so. And about current movies without all of us becoming surly about it.
Must I issue a disclaimer, a statement that I approve of many goals in the Woman's Liberation book, off the hook? It won't. There's no escape. War is peace, negative is affirmative, occupation is liberation, and the whole atheist gets curious and curious.
EARTH
A column like this is as effective as old King What's His-Name trying to sweep back the sea. We are caught in the Tidal Wall, and we think nothing in all likelihood that any of us can do about it. The Paul Mosterts of the world are not numerous enough, and it isn't easy to get away from hawaiianists were taught when little boys that we should be nice to girls, and the propaganda apparatus of woman's rights is so powerful that it all like John Wayne in the Ambush at Gulch "Gulch."
recently were shown in a Journal- World picture, scanning books used in our schools to find evidences of "sexism."
Shall we not discuss Person Power? Is it to be the new taboop? There surely are some comments about it that editorial writers ought to be making. The whole English language is being hated in our schools, hated syllable "man." Our textbooks are being censured; three Lawrence women, impeccable in their public service
But we can still try. That's how the Person Movement got where it is, by trying. You're winning all the time, but no one else has one lonely voice, howling in the wilderness, where no one will hear, but let me know, and then I go back to how it went, too. Twenty years from now someone may be listening.
Back to the subject, Having
Nicholas von Hoffman
TV Counter-Advertising Fumes Away Effortlessly
WASHINGTON — Counteradvertising is something we hear about from time to time but haven't really seen much of since. The best way to ban advertisement from broadcasting by an act of Congress, with the pre-and-cigarette commercials both off the air, the consumption of cigarettes and tobacco brings into question the idea that the best way to beat an idea
Readers Respond
To the Editor;
Indian Story, Action Plan
Generalizations To the Editor
like smoking is to suppress the people who advocate it.
In the third paragraph, he runs together a string of names—Little Big Man, Red Cloud, Big Foot, Crazy Gray, Sitting Bull, Humpback and seaweed; they were all Oglala people were in, fact seven groups of the Western Sioux. Sitting Bull and Gall were Hunkpapas, and their reservation was in North Dakota, at Standing Rock. Sitting Bull and Gall were Hunkpapas, and their posite factions of the Hunkpapas during the 1880s, if the agent's reports are to be believed: Sitting Bull was leader of the traditionalists, while Gall was a prominent "progressive" who boarded school schools efforts to teach agriculture and like.
The introduction to James Cook's eyewitness account of the siege at Wounded Knee was surprising but hardly surprising.
In the same sentence, Cook refers to the Oglala's "forced removal a century ago from Sioux territory," and Sioux were not a Kansas tribe; they came south of the Platte River chiefly to raid the Sioux village. Nebraska road map, one may see "Massacre Canyon" marked as a historic spot in the southwestern part of the state. It is where the Sioux attacked the Pawnee in them. The "forced removal" of
the Sioux occurred in the 18th century in Minnesota when the Chippewa, who had access to firearms from white traders, drove the Sioux out of the eastern part of that state.
One should be particularly careful to avoid generalizations when discussing American Indian people, their history and culture. This helps the kind of emotional generalization that appears in Cook's third paragraph has been disturbingly common since Dee Brown's best-selling book, "Boy Meets World," Wounded Knee," created a nation of one-book Indian experts.
This letter is not a personal attack on Cook. It is merely a reaction to the general level of ignorance about Indian people. William Research Assistant, American Studies
In an editorial in the March 7 Kansan it was alleged that the KU Affirmative Action Plan was developed in secrecy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let me give an account of the events leading up to the recent adoption of the plan.
On Oct. 2, 1972, the Affirmative Action Board sent the chancellor a first draft of a proposed affirmative action plan, with the support of the Board, we suggested that the draft be widely publicized and that
Open Action To the Editor:
suggestions be solicited from all segments of the University community. One thousand copies prepared and efforts were made to publicize its availability through notices in the Faculty and Staff Newsletter and in stock for the entire university. Lawrence Daily Journal-World.
I quote some excerpts from an article in the Kansan of October 11: "Won Ende said, 1,000 copies of the affirmative action proposal distributed on a first-come, first-serve policy. , Shaffer said students should pick up copies of the affirmative action proposal and then make suggestions to the Affirmative Action Board, the Office of Minority Affairs or the Office of Affirmative Action for Women."
Furthermore, at a large, well-publicized public meeting sponsored by the KU Commission on the Status of women, four members of the Affirmative Action proposal and answered questions from the audience (reported in the Kansan of Oct. 12).
At the time Congress whisked cigarette advertising off the tube, the ad agencies and the broadcasters made bitter lament. In retrospect, though, it appears that a lot of lawmakers kicked cigarettes out if keeping them had meant they would also have to run the counter-advertising. Broadcasters get alarmed if controversy is let out of the format of the news show or video conference on the Press; but protests is only as swoons and jobs in setup questions.
As a result of our efforts, we received about 30 written comments on the proposal, from both individuals and groups. Between early October and Feb. 2, when our revised version appeared, we received a lot of feedback with great care and made many changes as a result. Our second version was discussed in a Kansan article on Feb. 12, and it too was publicly available. In summary, during more than $4\%$ between the release of the manuscript and the conference held Feb. 21 and 22, we continually solicited reactions and suggestions.
By Sokoloff
Griff and the Unicorn
They'll even broadcast ads reminding you to use your zip codes as if that or anything else would be useful. They'll cooperate with the American Cancer Society's terror campaign to frighten unmeeded millions out of the public, but it was no soap when they got there and a commercial of Ralph Nader's group reminding the public that millions of Chevies had potentially faulty engine mounts and that some vehicles brought to the dealer for installation, for a free safety cable.
Although you've probably never seen them, counter-commercials continue to be made. They and the non-profit outfit called Public Communication, Inc., which makes money from their time to time, but seldom are they aired. It's not that the networks or your local TV station don't have the time. While they'll refuse to broadcast a counter-commercial even if they're offered money, they'll put that outdoor, campers jerk, Smoky Joe, or stick their cheeks out and their thumbs in the armholes of their vests and claim they've committed a public service.
On another occasion, Public Communication prepared an ad for the Medical Committee on Human Rights telling people that the merits of the association and found products like Excedrin, Empirin, Cope, Vanquish, and Bufferin to be "either irrational, not recommended, or unsound." That one didn't air either, but did suffer difficulty with a Bayer ad that said virtually the same thing.
As pointed out in the Kansan, the plan calls for an active involvement and participation of all segments of the University in the continual development and implementation of the plan. The plan also requires us to continue to exist in order to review progress under the plan and suggest changes. For those who did not get our message before, I will repeat it once again. We welcome comments we have and everyone we will consider all comments seriously.
Juliet Shaffer
Chairman
Affirmative Action Board
more millions of us are coming to believe that they're all a pack of liars, con artists, and loud-mouthed deceivers.
Why wouldn't television let a group of doctors give this message without plugging a product? The answer to that came at a Federal Communications Commission hearing last March when John B. Summers, general counsel for the National Association of Broadcasters, spoke, "The position they occupy, have much more credibility with the public." The effect upon advertising is more disastrous."
It would work just the other way. Counter-advertising could store credible advertising industry, as it is now, more and
Thus, counter-commercials could actually make the broadcasting media more believable and effective advertising, saving their sponsors millions of dollars in legal fees for fighting off consumer groups and government regulatory bodies. A simple idea but too much for many businesses. Instead, Public Communication is just about one of the counter-commercial business for want of money. Through the help of donated labor, Western can turn a poor area into a TV spot and four or five TV spots and distribute them to hundreds and hundreds of stations around the country for what it costs his commercial, but the foundations won't kick in.
"If we get some of this stuff on the air, it's an argument for diminished Federal Trade Commission regulation," says Tracy Westen, Public Commission director. "You can't prohibit it, really market of ideas, you don't have to regulate."
Counter advertising could give people a new respect for media that encourages and makes statements that fly in the face of advertising. Counter-advertising also could police the content of the commercials. Ad agencies would be more careful of their client's good names if they knew their tricks were likely to be refuted by commercials or effective commercials following on the heels of their own.
If I went to the foundations for half a million dollars to study how recall information on Chevroletis circulated, I'd get it, but I can't get $5,000 to tell the people the cars have been recalled."
Western's enterprise has gone as far as it has with help from a few small, brave foundations and his grant from Consumers Union. He has also given hope to hope that Ralph Nader can get his message across as well as Andy Granatelli by staging press conferences and meetings. While he does his best and Western goes out of the counter-commercial business, the oil companies have a clear shot on the airways to paddle their energy crush with profits so big they dare not divulge them, can pig it up good in buffered aspirin.
(C)
Washington Post-King Features Syndicate
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