4
Friday, April 19, 1974
university Daily Kansan
KANSAN comme Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Auto Fatality Rate Down
I hate to sound overoptimistic in a time of such widespread concerns, but there appears to be good news concerning the energy crisis these days.
Recently released reports by the National Safety Council indicated that the new 55 m.p.h. speed limit may be the reason for the dramatic drop in fatalities. A result of a combination of lower speed limits and less driving is a 25 per cent drop in the number of U.S. traffic deaths over levels a year ago, safety officials report.
The council said that deaths from November through February were 3,210 less than in the same period a year earlier. The National Observer recently reported that in Texas, 1974 deaths through March 29 were 30 per cent below the 1973 deaths for the same period. In California, traffic deaths were about 100 less per month.
Because of the so-called easing of the gasoline shortage, many are eager for a return to higher speeds. In view of the statistics, this would be practically insane. If limits are kept at 55 m.p.h., the council predicts, a total of 8,500 lives could be saved this year. And if reduced
traffic flow continues, an additional 5,500 lives a year could be saved.
These statistics make driving at higher speeds look almost like suicide. Even those who deny that the slowdown was a major factor in the drop in traffic deaths can hardly deny that lower speeds reduce the severity of accidents. According to the council, a driver involved in crashes at 50 m.p.h. has much of survival four times better than a driver who crashes at 70 m.p.h. The council also reports that disabling injuries during January and February were down 16 per cent.
The pessimists have responded to this long hoped-for bit of good news with still more bad news. More people intent on speeding are now using secondary roads, which are generally less safe, they say. Fatigue may increase as lower speeds and fewer people are buying more small cars and motorcycles, which have a history of greater injury to riders.
But despite the logic of these speculations, they remain merely speculations and they are offset by the benefits of the lowered limit.
—Bunny Miller
Job-Hunting Rituals
As graduation approaches, many seniors and graduate students are engaged in the pleasant pastime of job-hunting. A basic element of this game is a ritual known as the job interview. In this ritual, the interviewee is required to have sweaty arm pits, an upset stomach and a full bladder. On the other hand, the interviever is required to ask probing questions about irrelevant and personal matters, have cold, grey eyes and have a sadistic smile.
"Dear Joe (or Josephine),
The letters of rejection one receives are of such depressing uniformity that one is led to believe they are all written by the same person. The typical rejection letter runs something like this:
"We wish to inform you that the position for which you applied has already been vacant."
"We believe that your previous experience as a hogwasser does not qualify you to be a management Broom and Mop Corporation.
should have no trouble finding a job; however, you won't find one
"Perhaps you should seek a position more in line with your past experience."
Occasionally, one will encounter a letter of reply which holds out some hope. The personnel manager may express the opinion that your background as a hogwasher makes you an appropriate management trainer and that you
In the unlikely event that a prospective employer actually likes what he sees in one's letter and resume, the next step is another job interview. At this interview, one may spend two or three hours listening to various persons tell how wonderful it is to work for that particular company only to find out two weeks later that the job has been given to some other ex-hogwasher.
Not everyone is forced to undergo this job hunting ritual. Certain members of this year's graduating class are assured of employment. Because they possess such socially significant skills as throwing a football or making bone-crushing tackles, they have been offered long term contracts for amounts of money most of us wish we could afford. One cannot deny the football player his right to get as much money as he can, it is only human to feel a twinge of jealousy.
For the rest of the graduates, the picture is bleak. Job hunting is an endless series of irritating interviews and frustrating rejections which can only culminate in a nervous breakdown. The lucky ones will be able to find a job before they have their breakdown; their jobs will be followed by their employer's insurance program. The rest of the graduates will have to learn to live their schizophrenia.
—John Bender
The only bright spot in this otherwise dismal employment picture is that the graduate may be able to qualify for food stamps.
By STEVE HARVEY
Plumbers and Others Don't Like Connotations
The Los Angeles Times
Headline: "Plumbers' Suspected of Breakin"
Headline: "Chief 'Plumber' Faces 10 Years in Burlairy of Elsbisr府 Staffion"
Watergate Fallout Hits Professions
For months, "Plumbers," have been getting this kind of publicity—the ones, that is, who belonged to the secret White House unit.
As for genuine plumbers, many are upset. Especially a former Bronx plumber named Meany, who once did plumbing in the Bronx and the Grand Central Terminal in New York.
Marks ... Mel Anand
Business Manager
Advertising Director
Diana Schmidt
Classified Adv. Mgr.
Bruec Reginelman
Assistant Advertising Manager
Alidh Alabastan
Assistant Advertising Manager
"I think it is libelous against a very honest, decent profession—the plumbers of this country," said Meanty, the president of the nation, on a recent segment of Face the Nation.
Adds Everett Schel, business manager of the pipe trades of Southern Californi:
Published at the University or pursuant to the provisions of Section 159(4) of the examination periods. Mail subscription rates: $a for a semester, $15 a year. Second class postage will be charged for all mailing. Mailing fee: $1.25 a semester paid in student activity fee. Advertised offered to all students without regard to financial status. These products are not necessarily those of the Universities.
BUSINESS STAFF
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
NEWS STAFF
"Sure, I hear complaints about the name,
'Sire. I hear your journeymen feel it gives them a black eye."
News Editors
Don Kiney, Bob Marcelte,
Copy Chiefs
Lil Caldwell, Moe McFerren,
John Hitter, Kathy Tusing, Elaine Zimmerman,
Walter Wiley, Elie Blitzer
Associate Campus Editor
Larry Fish
Assistant Campus Editors
Jill Williams
Assistant Feature Editor
Diane Yeamans
Editorial Assistant
Editorial Staff
John Bentley, Jerome Lloyd,
Photographers Bill Kearns
Cedar Davig, Cereus Dashwau,
Cartomonts
Steve Carpenter, Dave Sokoloff
Makeup Editors
Don Kiney, Bob Marcelte,
McFerren
NEWS STAFF
News Adviser . . . Susanne Shaw
one of many hit by fallout from Watergate.
Secretaries, public relations and advertising people, private investigators and used car saloons also have felt the im-
Editor
Alice Burke Editors
Elaine Zimmerman
Campus Editor
Editorial Editor
Fonda Hill Editors
Sports Editor
Gerry Gery
Bullet Hitter
Carly Walker
Elaine Zimmerman
Bill Gibson
Fonda Hill Editors
Gerry Gery
Bullet Hitter
THE PLUMBING PROFESSION is one of many hit by fallout from Watergate,
So have some launderers who despair over the constant references to "laundered" campaign contributions (channeled by a Mexican bank to conceal the source).
bers, believe they have been victimized in a case of mistaken identity.
"Those men were not P.R. men even though the press sometimes makes it seem that way," declares William Story, editor of The Public Relations Society of America.
"It doesn't eat any un good, that's for sure," says an official of the International For-
"Those men" (the two Watergate figures-former Presidential Assistant H. R. (Bob) Haldenman and former Appointments Secretary Dwight Chapin) were advertising men and they did not take a "public relations approach," says Story, who has fired off letters of protest to the Wall Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Secretary magazine, in its "Secretary on the Spot" feature, recently presented the hypothetical case of a secretary who is subpoenaed to testify about her boss.
"IN PUBLIC RELATIONS, we provide information, we don't cover it up."
THE IMPACT OF WATERGATE also was reflected in a letter in the March 30 issue of P.S. for Private Secretaries magazine.
"my boss" *dirty tricks* are getting out of hand," a Midwest secretary wrote. She explained that he had asked her to "lose" an envelope to conceal the fact that a construction company's bid had arrived past the deadline for consideration.
Haldeman and Chapin formerly worked
for the J. Walter Thompson Advertising
Agency.
"SHOULD SHE KEEP her boss' confidence and risk possible contempt of court citations or should she tell everything she knows and stand the chance of losing her job?" the magazine asked its 50,000-odd readers.
Dr. Ken Smith, a professor at the University of Southern California, feels that because of Watergate public relations will never again be quite the same.
If the case seemed reminiscent of that of Rose Mary Woods, President Nixon's personal secretary and tape transcriber, the similarity was intentional.
Advertising people, however, don't quite see what all the fuss is about.
Helen Burkin, a Chicago secretary, summed up the feelings of the majority of the respondents when she wrote that the subpoenaed secretary should forget the old Perry Mason court cases where her seeming absence seemed to have a blind, often misguided loyalty to their bosses (and to answer truthfully and to the best of her ability . . . )
"Recent events emanating from Washington underscore the need for an examination of secretarial loyalty," Ruby Schwartz wrote in a copy of the Secretary's, wrote in the magazine.
Public relations people, like the plum-
"I may be the world's greatest optimist but I believe that Watergate may have a positive effect on public relations," he says. "Now the spotlight is on us and we have the skills and knowledge required for true public relations—not the Watergate type."
Guest Editorial
Nazi Slaughter Recalled
A relative blank in the narrative of history is, by no means, anything new. In regard to the more contemporary experience of misplaced history, one might have learned about Mainland China throughout one's early education or what was taught concerning Russia, both czarist and Soviet. In considering these, one might come to the confusion that, along with a gap in history, there were two relations where these two reactions were concerned.
Do Worms, Mayence, and Altemahr mean do anything? Consider then Beren-Belsen, Bacwallen, and Dachau. The latter three are, most likely, familiar. The former three are, most likely, familiar. The former three were very much the same thing happened—almost a thousand years earlier.
ALTHOUGH THE NAMES of three Nazi death camps are quite familiar, the Nazi Holocaust itself is often presented from a perspective that gives the impression of very great distance; in spite of the fact that its end was a little less than three decades old, it is still a deeply desoriented place, both sides, are very far from each other. Of such statements are hardly required; the recency of the Holocaust is often considered its most grotesque aspect.
Yet, the Nazi Holocaust is not well remembered and its lessons are perhaps in danger of being lost for Jew and non-Jew alike. The rather classical response of not
Such a response is not likely to produce practical efforts to save more lives—more "real" victims—but rather tends, perhaps inadvertently, to ignore real victims in an effort to salvage the abstract "victim". In such a case, the lessons which must be learned from the Holocaust are, for most practical purposes, lost.
Griff and the Unicorn
wanting to remember such complete depths of human brutality presents itself as a cringing figure of helpless romanticism; it is the kind which was and remains an abstract.
by Sokoloff
THE 27TH DAY of the month of Nisan, on the Hebrew calendar, which falls this year on April 19, is set aside as Yom Hasoha—a day of remembrance for the six million Jews who died in the war against Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Poland. It is a day of remembrance for the personal suffering, for the personal losses that one does not forget. Likewise, it is a remembrance of Hitler's Germany and the Holocaust, and remembering these things, the Nazi Holocaust and the systematic murder of six million Jews, in all the bloody details, just as they occurred; remembering and considering the causes as far back in time as possible, the Holocaust in all its implications of past, present, and future can be understood.
The lessons to be learned from the Nazi Holocaust must come through remembrance of it, in its all details. Mislaying or otherwise subduing history whether through the romanticism mentioned earlier or for political and other purposes cannot be fully understood without present and past experiences from their most solid predictor, past experiences.
THE NAZI HOLOCAUST established as a reality for the Jews something which remains only an abstraction for most others—the reality of systematic attempted annihilation of Jews in the former reality of the Nazi Holocaust have, perhaps by virtue of a failure to honestly consider its implications, faded into the passage of three decades. And without the understanding of its implications, much of his ideas about the Jewish concerns has, perhaps, faded also.
Holocaust, there came the State of Israel also occasioned by historical awareness, brought tragically to light by the experience in Europe.
Aside from the romantic response to the Holocaust, a number of more realistic, active responses have been made. In the atmosphere produced by the reaction to the Holocaust, there are forms of anti-Semitism, such as that voiced by Gerald L.K. SMITH or the radio-priest Father Charles Coughlin to mention only two of the most outspoken, found an audience only in the most extreme hate fringes and retreated in the face of societies victimized to tragedy of six million Jewish victims at the hands of such an ideology.
Anti-Semitism is often considered as an element of the past; but then, there are the problems of Jews in the Soviet Union, and old fashioned anti-Semitism is masked in many ways in many quarters—the old wine in new bottles. One obvious measure appears to be that one should watch not the hate-nonverge himself, but the response to him. The response appears, in some cases, to approach an acquiescence with the anti-Semite, not in a blatant sense by any means, but rather by a type of insensitivity to concerns vital to Jews and Judaism—this from individuals who would otherwise see Jews as enemies and who in most cases be no means are.
THERE WAS ALSO the historic Vatican II, which though it did not exonerate the Jews on the charge of decide, proclaimed that the Jews collectively, both past and present, were not to be held responsible in the charge, a response occasioned by Jesus' accusation of being presenting Judah not as a defunct faith that Christianity had replaced, but rather as a living parent and brother faith. Of course, from those who survived the Nazi
THERE IS AN OLD story which speaks to the question, telling of a student who went to his rabbi and said to him, "Master, I love you."
OFTEN IS WATERgate mentioned in his classroom?
"Oh, not more than 10 times per hour,
says Smith.
The rabbi responded to him by asking,
"Tell me, do you know what hurts我?"
The rabbi shook his head and answered,
"Because, my friend, if you do not know
what hurts me, how can you truly love me?"
Joel Farb
And so there is nothing new under the sun
...
Milo Speriglio, director in chief of three Southern California detective agencies, fears that the image of the private investigator also is "going down the drain."
Galveston. Tex. graduate student
"That is not true," she said. "I ask you to take a question, taken aback, asked." "Why do you ask me such a confused question when I ask you what the answer is?"
W
"Watergate is the biggest thing to blame," he says, "all those stories about bugging and breaking in. One of my staff investigators told me the other day that when he's meeting with people socially, he's been told to tell them what he does for a living."
Speriglio fears that the bad publicity might do more than affect the detective's印象.
"ONE OF THESE DAYS the legislature's
to restrict some of our activities—like
that."
Gordon Bishop, chief of the California Bureau of Collection and Investigative Services thinks Watergate may have envisioned some misconceptions about the trade.
As a result, he says his agencies are quietly looking into the activities of their competitors—an investigation of infractions—in an effort to reduce illegal activities.
"I imagine that many people weren't surprised by the Watergate hearings because they see detectives on television breaking into buildings and skirting the room, and that the number of complaints we receive about illegal activities is surprisingly low."
USED CAR DEALERS admit--though they believe it is unjust that they have a credibility problem. But still they didn't expect to be tied in with Watergate.
They were, though, one day last day when when Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz, a Democrat)
"the guys in the industry really blew up at that one, says Fred Carthy of the alpine Driskells."
"I hate to think of the old adage, 'Would you buy a used car from Dick Nixon?' But that's what people are asking around the country."
"The problem," says Eva Mosey of the National Independent Automobile Dealers Assn., "is that people expect used cars to run like new cars."
To the Editor:
Reader Responds IEC Standards Within Reason
With great interest and concern, I followed the recent Intensive English program. We had to undertake an undeniably, these students have some legitimate demands. But it seems that their frustrations are not due to their institution or its policy as many of them would accept.
I can understand their disappointment when they are not permitted to see their final exam papers simply because the exam is too long. I am going to patiase with their complaint of being examined in material never covered in their course work. But being a learner of English as a foreign language myself let me ask my colleagues at the IEC the following questions:
(1) In all sincerity, and taking into account your present level of "command" of English, you should be teachers are less qualified than they should be? Remember: Most of them have master's degrees in English, Linguistics or Methodology of teaching foreign languages.
2) Are you aware that the process of foreign language acquisition is a slow one in which the learner is to apply himself to his maximum possible potential to the task at hand?
(3) Assuming that the IEC has all the drawbacks you think it has, do you think your own drawbacks have not contributed to the increase in the regularly attend classes? Do you try to initiate conversations with American students with whom you may practice your English? Do you ever ask your own counsellor for advice or more mastery over English to help you?
(4) Don't you want (in a hurry) to join the department or school of your choice in order to pursue your academic work regardless of how much English you know? And don't you wonder why you don't get the American English who joins any department at any American university usually winds up begging for passing grades and virtually requesting his instructors to set up two standards of judgment, one for the entire class and another for him because he is a "foreigner."
These questions may come out as a slap on the face of some of my colleagues. They are not intended to be. On the contrary, they are designed for you to be troubled path several years ago and are meant to be eye-openers and soul searching questions and nothing else. I take great pride in my foreign heritage as well as in my students. I am sure the IEC students would also feel.
One last question, this time to those in charge of the IEC: What does this institution say about, and where does it stand on, those foreign students who failed the IEC exams and earned Ph.D's in a variety of Departments at K.U. and elsewhere?
Osama Toussif Assistant Instructor in Linguistics