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Fridav. April 26,1974
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Male Power Isn't Sexy
The other day the Kansan ran a story about an experiment that purported to prove that physical domination by the male increases a female's interest and romantic response. The experiment was supposed to have disproved frequent complaints by young American men in which women innervate in which young men resort to "the gratuitous use of physical contact" as a method of attempted seduction.
Dr. John C. Touney of Florida Atlantic University, the experiment's sponsor, based his "discovery" on a test in which a male subject told his female partner which answer holes to punch with a stylus, either verbally or by physically guiding her hand.
If the women knew the men had done well on the test, Touhey said, they thought more highly of and were more willing to accept a date if they didn't. If the men had "physically dominated" them during the test.
I've got a better test for Touhey. He ought to take his male subjects to a bar, a theater or a party and instruct them to get a little physically dominant with the females. What undoubtedly will happen is that at least 9 out of 10 women will tell the men to get lost.
Even in serious and prolonged man-woman relationships when man-man interactions are mild and domineering, there's liable to be trouble. It's all
too easy for a man's physical strength to become a weapon. Nearly every day in any city there are homicides caused by men who got a little bit too domineering with their wives or lovers.
Many of these men probably thought women secretly desire hard-guy toughness and rough play. I recall a movie scene (or was it a Vaudeville gag?) where a fragile flower of a woman cries out, "Please stop. You're hurting me!" as a Brandeeso man throws her to the floor and crushes her beneath him. His reply is practically classic: "You know you love it."
Oh bull.
It is just the kind of twisted sexual logic that leads to the idea that women "ask" to be raped and that men "ask" they are fundamentally masochistic.
Dr. Touhey's experiment serves only to add one more distortion to our ideas about masculinity and femininity, about the proper interplay of dominance and submission in any relationship.
What is most frightening is that Touhey is confirming a myth that many believe in—a myth that sets degrading and dangerous guidelines about who does what to whom. These guidelines and their destructive quality of the interaction of men and women in society.
Bunny Miller
By ERNEST CONINE
The Los Angeles Times
Veto-Proof Congress a Possibility
Vice President Gerald Ford laid it on a bit thick when, in the wake of the latest Republican defeat in special congressional elections, he warned that the trend is toward a Democratic "legislative dictatorship." It does appear increasingly that voters will better or worse the Democrats will have a veto-proof majority in the next Congress.
With the victory of J. Bob Traxler in last week's election in a Michigan congressional contest, the Democrats have won four out of five such House races this year—all in support of George W. Bush defeat was particularly noteworthy because President Nixon campaigned personally for the Republican candidate. George Bush, chairman of the Republican National Committee, took refuge in the assertion that GOP candidates will do better in the Republican nomination elections, when the Republicans will hurt democratas as well as Republicans.
For weeks organized labor has made it plain that its political goal for 1974 is to elect a veto-proof Congress. That is, one which would be the result by the unions. There would be no need to worry what the White House thinks, a veto would be overridden anyway.
THE WHITE HOUSE PURPURORS to feel the same way. But Ford, more realistically, said, "The trend in congressional elections is that Republicans are an overwhelming majority in the House."
A RECENT GALUP POLL indicated that 38 per cent of the voters prefer to be represented in Congress by a Democrat, with only 29 per cent favoring the GOP—the lowest Republican rating in 38 years. If the poll findings are an indication of what will happen in November, the Democrats will have their veto-proof majority in 1975.
Since some Republicans can be counted on to vote with the Democrats, however, labor's political strategists figure they need only seven more Democrats in the Senate and 22 in the House to attain their two-thirds majority. In point, it is hard to see how they can miss.
"OKAY JAWKERS! YOU WIN---COME AND GET THE TAPES."
The big labor organizations, for their part, are acting on the assumption that a veto-proof majority will be a lot more amenable to union goals than the present
What will they do with it?
WORSE THINGS COULD happen, considering the fact that organizer labor's record, on the whole, is one of support for progressive legislation. But unrestrained labor power would not be in the public interest.
At present, for example, the AFL-CIO is lobbying for restrictive trade legislation which, with the avowed aim of protecting American jobs and industry, would really hurt the consumer and bring foreign retaliation against U.S. goods.
Similarly, for reasons having nothing to do with the broader public interest, labor is doing its best to block a reform plan which would reorganize the congressional committee structure in the interest of efficiency.
Finally, despite the crying need for national health insurance, and an obviously favorable legislative situation, labor seems bent on withholding its support, which could be vital, in hopes that a plan drawn to union demands will be passed by the next Congress.
MORE SERIOUSLY, a veto-proof majority would upset the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches.
As politicians, members of Congress are
If a vet-poor Congress is elected, and does what comes naturally, this balance wheel would be removed. Rational management of the nation's economic affairs might become impossible—in which case inflation would grow far worse than it is.
much more willing to vote for large spending programs than for the taxes needed to pay for them. Normally, the President's in federal budget to tolerable levels.
THERE IS STILL another danger -- that Watergate-disagusted Americans could vote in candidates without bothering to find out what their views are on other issues.
It is almost certainly true that the Democrats' dramatic election successes this year, and their impressive showing in public opinion surveys, do not represent a liberal shift. While the polls indicate that more people are calling themselves Democrats and fewer admit to being Democratic, they indicate that more people are calling themselves conservatives and fewer see themselves as liberals.
TAKE NEW YORK, reputedly America's most liberal city.
In 1970, a pollinator found that 33 per cent of New Yorkers called themselves liberal or conservative, and that considered themselves moderates, and 27 per cent conservatives. When the same questions were used not long ago, the results came out to be the opposite: 57 per cent conservative and 27 per cent liberal-radical.
President Nixon's victory in 1968 represented a turning of the American majority against the activism of the Kenyan people longed for a period of consolidation.
THE VOTERS MAY be ready now for a new period of activism—but not of the sort which will be brought to light.
Temporarily, at least, a lot of people seem to have lost faith in the possibility, much less the inevitability, of progress. They don't expect the government to produce a people society. What they do want the government to help them and their families survive in the fast of inflation, high taxes, crime and changing moral standards.
IF A VETO-PROOF Democratic majority reflects these concerns, well and good. but if the anti-Watergate tide brings in activists and people who are opposed to the people who elected them, there could be dangerous widening of the public disillusionment with politics and government—and, for that matter, another issue in the presidential election year of 1976.
Since Democrats come in all shapes, sizes and places on the ideological spectrum, it will very doubtful that that veto-proof majority will actually come together in ways that are of the kind of step with the country's mood. But if it does, they will close their minds and their ears to everything but Watergate will have only themselves to blame.
Colombian Ads Warn Smugglers
-Victims Are 'Mules'-
BY DAVID F. BELNAP The Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times
Bogota, Colombia -Don't be a "mule!" can cost you up to 12 years in jail plus a fine.
That warning appeared in Colombia's principal newspapers the other day in advertisements paid for by this country's Civil Aeronautics Authority.
In the slang of the illegal international drug traffic, a "mule" is a person who knowingly or unwittingly serves as a courier for dangerous drugs.
Hundreds of such "mules" depart from Colombia's airports each year, most of them women and most of them bound for the United States, the golden marketplace in Guajara produce here or sanguined here by neighboring countries for transshipment.
Most "mules" have some idea of the risk they're running, but others do not, and the purpose of the recent advertisements was to inform the latter.
"Every day in any airport, a drug trafficker may ask you courteously and innocently to help him carry a suitcase", declared the ads. "If you agree and cocaine or marijuana is later found in the valise, you have become a 'mule'. Don't accept someone you don't know-or even someone you do–without knowing its true contents."
Not long ago, a government official missed being arrested as a "mule" when he reluctantly refused an overburdened mother's request to help her through labor in warmer warmers. Plastic-wrapped packages of cocaine were later found in the baby's diaper.
Professional women "mules" have long since abandoned wearing shoes with the thick, cork platform soils still fashionable in much of Latin America. Customs and drug enforcement officers quickly discovered these as favorite hiding places
for the white powder that is retrained coccus,
and a person wearing them is certain to be
Most "mules," however, are not professionals but one-trip amateurs recruited from the ranks of the 250,000 mountain riders. Only a few ordinary tourists in an average year. They are approached by drug traffickers and tempted to run the risk of trying to smuggle two to four pounds of cocaine in return for enough money to pay the expenses of their
Amature "mules" arrested before leaving here or upon arrival in the United States have ranged from teenagers to elderly women. The local family was caught when he tried to enter the States with two pounds of cocaine he hid on the person of his 14-year-old daughter.
Since heroin has become scarcer in the United States, cocaine, which is just as expensive, has become as a-called "drug of choice" for both the Mexican and Peru Drug Enforcement Administration. Colombia is the world center of the cocaine industry, with Peru, Bolivia and Chile are also important.
Colombian authorities calculate that illicit laboratories in this country turn out 12 metric tons (26,400 pounds) annually of refined cocaine, worth more than $1 billion at current street sales prices in the United States.
Local drug users consume a fraction of this production, while the rest is directed abroad, mostly toward the United States, through smuggling channels.
Enforcement officials estimate that about 10 per cent of the cocaine aimed at the United States is seized but it can leave no trace, and no per cent is seized at point of destination.
"Traffickers employ every means you can possibly conceive of to try to get their
stuff to market—"mules" being only one among them," said a local enforcement officer. "Commercial ships and private yachts and lots of small private aircraft are involved in the traffic. They even have ocean-going vessels armed with machine guns and cannon. If they could buy rockets, they'd try to rocket it in."
Colombia's geographic position makes it an ideal drug transhipment point. It is impossible to patrol effectively this country's thousands of miles of frontiers with the coasts of Venezuela and Panama and its seascapes to the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
Easier to make than bootleg whiskey, cocaine derives from the coca bush, cultivated for centuries by South America's leaders who chew coca leaves as a narcotic.
Colombian authorities are moving agilely against all drug traffic, not only as a measure of cooperation with the United States but also an increase drug use in this country.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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David Hunke
I want to compliment Margie Cook for recalling Environment Day in her column of April 22. One calendar which I have makes no mention of April 22 as "En-tenuation." I know that Congress approved the use of the In-Gel We Trust" on our money on this day in 1864.
Readers Respond
Furthermore the Scriptures illustrate disciplined use of all resources (e.g., Joseph establishing a reserve from the crops for lean years, or Jewish land practices in Sabtaharya years in Lev 25:17). Christian history has long extolled St. Francis even though it has not always understood and accepted his ways. More recently the Hebrew Bible describes the servation districts in observing soil stewardship weeks—this is the 28th anniversary of this celebration and it will be May 19-26.
Environment, Senate, Rape Spark Comment
The reference to Gen. 1:28 should be understood as an explanation of man's role and responsibility vis-a-vis the rest of the creation—not a carte blanche to rape, plunder, exploit, abuse, etc., either man or nature.
To the Editor:
Her recognition of the complexity by which religious people have exploited the earth as a "right" of domination is a correct observation. I would, however, request that the Christian world unconsionable exploitation ("subdue and have dominon," Gen. 1; 28) of the earth of Judeo-Christian people as the Judeo-Christian land ethnic. To absolve us in the church is not my intent or contentment, but I must actively justify her comments with a few observations.
My critique of Cook's article would suggest that her point would be more explicit by pointing out that our Western, American economy is overwhelmingly consumption revolution is overwhelmingly consumption.
While religion may have abetted improperly the abuses of the past, present thinking in theology would join Cook's critique and press for concerned discipline of theologian. This marked of mankind and the whole earth. Both Islam and communism are the real curators.
oriented. The greed of the 19th century capitalists and the quiet complicity of the church at that time provided the soil in which Marxism could take root. It is tragic to note that Marxism has become equally consumption oriented—and that the church still has not picked up on the disastrous impact of capitalist democracy as a part of either capitalists or communists.
Actually Christian (and Jewish) theology needs to affirm more clearly its respect for man and nature on the basis of Gen. 1, which describes each phase of creation as "good," and which declares man's status and responsibility as the most significant element. Good and correct Christian theology is not always identical with the practices of "Christian nations" or the practices of "Ethiopian." The ecological and energy crimes indeed pose these questions compatible with proclamations about Christian stewardship.
Donald L. Conrad
Pastor of University
Lutheran Chapel
Senate Suppression
I am ashamed to have ever been associated with student government at KU. The activities of a present student senator, Bill Webster, in his efforts to prevent the arrest of former International Films Series from presenting arguments before any Student Senate
To the Editor:
committee or the senate itself is political suppression similar in kind to that experienced by dissidents in the Soviet Union, Brazil, the Vietnamese or Greece.
Webster prevented either Craig Walker or myself from defending the film series before the senate "culture" committee by not telling us that the committee had already decided to eliminate the series. Webster would not let us present our arguments and evidence favoring the retention of the series to the committee. We should have disbanded the senators from giving assistance to either Walker or myself in our efforts to speak to the Senate when the issue was considered April 11.
The beauty of this political conspiracy can be seen in a continually high level of support by Student Activity Fee funds for the American University, who is member of KU's deaf student body. Goodbye to "luxury" class to his tournaments next year. Good luck to the debate team. Goody to democratic processes. Goody to reliable and honest student involvement in university governance and goodby to a significant part of KU's cultural environment.
Immediately after Webster and his cochairman, Hal Urbanek, delivered their one-sided and inaccurate account of the state of the International Films Series to the Board of Directors, he was called for the question resulting in an immediate vote against funding the film series.
I urge faculty members and University administrators not to believe that the elitist student groups that often control the more important student organization such as the college committees are representative of college committees are representative of student body. I do not want anyone to be
heve that the five or six members of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, including Webster, who are in the Student Senate, are representing myself. Is it really necessary to stifle free and open debate when one already has a sure six votes in one's pocket?
Jeff Lough
Salina senior
Publicity Paranoia
To the Editor:
Every now and then a situation arises on this campus which the administration invariably bungles. The latest is the one concerning rape. Due to the recent publicity given to the rape situation in Lawrence and the start of Project Whistlestop, the administration is becoming increasingly concerned over its image as a have for
Such an attitude illustrates the immature way in which the University deals with its problems. Just as our President is sitting in Washington worrying about his image and technique instead of the economy, so is the University becoming paranoid over its image instead of being concerned about KU women. Instead of supporting Project Sparrow, it wants to give it a publicity opportunity that will ignore a problem long enough and don't talk about it, maybe it will go away—isn't that the attitude?
Certainly what didn't help the issue was that Rapee's camera was entitled "Project Watchstop." Rapie is
nothing to joke about just as murder is nothing to laugh at; but men don't really care since they don't get raped.
Perhaps what really upsets the boys who run the show here is the fact that women are organizing and uniting over a common issue and not begging to the administration for a few crumbs. Those smart guys with their Ph.D. Shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the administration's most important function is to support and protect students and their interests in the college and even in the money. But then, again, women's interests never have been the main concern of the educational system—money is.
Jerome Perkovich Chicago senior
Griff and the Unicorn
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by Sokoloff