Monday, February 25, 1974
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Language Requirement
Considering the bills introduced at Wednesday's Student Senate meeting, it seems John Beisner is going to make more than the normal perfunctory attempt to live up to his campaign promises.
One campaign promise Beisner didn't bring up at the meeting, though, was his promise to work to abolish the foreign language requirement of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. During his campaign for student body president, Beisner promised to eliminate the 16-hour foreign language requirement and to have the funds that are used to finance foreign language departments transferred to other college departments.
A story in the Feb. 7 Kansan paraphrased Beisner's statement that many prestigious schools had already abolished foreign language requirements; and that new students often lose interest in KU's liberal arts and sciences program because of the requirement.
Well now, isn't that too bad?
If a high school graduate wants to come to the University of Kansas to receive a liberal education, but doesn't want to study a second language, then he has no business being here.
Abolishing the foreign language requirement would only mean that KU would be flooded with still more people who didn't belong in college.
Does that sound elitist? You can bet it is.
Tradition seems to be a no-no today and relevance is the most
sacrosanct criterion of the worth and value of college courses. But things are getting out of hand.
Liberal arts majors should still be concerned with the cultivation of knowledge and, as the introduction to the college catalogue says, eager to range widely over the field of learning in order to acquaint themselves with all of its main areas.
Unfortunately again, those aren't
mature of many college ma-
ters.
Don't believe it? Ask the next liberal arts major you see whether he can name the seven liberal arts. How many liberal arts there are.
Granted that the methods of instruction used to teach students a second language aren't the best, but the solution isn't to junk foreign language departments. Rather the goal is to improve methods of instruction.
John Beisner received only 1,207 votes in the recent election—hardly a mandate from a student body of more than 18,000.
Even if Beinner could persuade the college to abolish its foreign language requirement, he wouldn't be affecting all students. The School of Journalism, for example, recently approved a new requirement making journalism majors take 16 hours of one foreign language or 10 hours each of two foreign languages; or two courses in statistics or computer science—fields with languages of their own.
Chances are the senate will not be able to effect any change in the law, so they will require the requirement. The question is, though, should the senate even try?
Fear Stalks at Night
Why shouldn't I be? Every 12 hours a day there in where in the United States is safe.
I don't have any phobias that I know_of and I'm not afraid of speaking to groups or of meeting people. But any time I have to walk somewhere alone, particularly at night on campus, I become a nervous wreck. I'm afraid of being raped
Normally, I'm not a fearful person.
We used to feel secure, knowing that things like that just didn't happen in the Lawences of the country. But that's not true any more. The police has been about one reported rape in Lawrence every week.
About 25 cases of rape or attempted rape were reported to Lawrence police over the last 18 months. A Lawrence police detective, Sgt. Francis Alexander, last week told the Kansan that one man was probably responsible for 15-20 rapes or attempted rapes, 11 of them occurring since May on the University campus.
He said that over the past nine months police and KU Security and Parking officers have checked approximately 50 leads in connection with the attacks. They are, Alexander said, up against a blank wall.
The officers' frustration can be understood, especially since many women are much too slow in reporting an attack. But what about the frustration of the woman who ran out into the street and flagged down a police car after twice struggling away from an assailant only to have the patrolmen lose the suspect.
Meanwhile, somewhere out there is a sick man who will continue to rape women until he is caught. This knowledge brings a fear that every dark shadow and every bush hides a rapist.
Women are being forced to have a male friend drive them around or accompany them to and from their cars. No man seems to understand how degrading such dependency is for most women. Men might see it as a necessary nuisance, but I see it as an unavoidable indignity.
Energy crisis be damned—more lighting in parking lots and between buildings would be one effective deterrant. Another would be a foot patrol of campus police. It may be asking too much to make the whole city safe for women, but the University should be expected to do all it can for the safety of its students.
Or do women walking alone have to continue to be afraid?
Bunny Miller
intimate to the President. The concept of a White House staff is that a president is entitled to a group of people whose loyalty runs only to him, not to the Congress and not constitutive pressure groups which often vie for the attention of cabinet and agency heads.
Solzhenitsyn Supporter Faces Party Opposition
MOSCOW-The Soviet Union is faced with another not yet problem with one of its writers, and this one could cause the Communist leader at home than the Solzhenitsyn scandal.
It is inconceivable to me that Richard Nixon hasn't been involved in every aspect of the Watergate scandals since June 17, 1973. I do not believe that Ronald Ziegler would brief the press without clearing his statements with Richard Nixon directly.
Special in Newsday
By EDMUND STEVENS
My own mishawn would be that an analysis of the presidential logs of Mr. Nixon would show that Mr. Ziegler, or whoever was doing the press briefing on a particular day, checked either that day or the night before Richard Nixon to find out what to tell the press when he press corps. A playing of each day's tapes might much more aware of the details of what his press secretaries say than most citizens realize.
While some of the older party stalwarts still eyed him with mistrust—and the putative cause, too, is a failure
witness by witness through committee hearings, and congressman by congressman during debate on the house floor.
By JOSEPH A. CALIFANO JR.
Special to the Washington Post
Veytushenk doubtless realized from his past experience that he would be in for a hard time if he protested again. But his feelings about the durges and repression of the Stalinist period are intense for personal reasons.
Kennedy wasn't misled by bad advice when there was death and violence on the house floor. Then he misled by bad advice when he lost the D.C., home rule discharge petition on the house floor. Each man was deeply involved in the legal decisions relating to the dramatic events.
EVERY ONE OF those presidents was intimately involved on a daily basis with his closest staff members—and those members don't act on their own authority in matters
And Richard Nixon is not mishled by bad advice, or unaware of what his closest aides do. Reasonable men may doubt his advice involvement in the Watergate bugging and burglary; they must recognize that he would have been unarmed of his own gun. Richard Nixon doesn't need involved in everything that followed the capture of the burearians on June 17, 1972.
This would partially explain Yevtsushenko's conviction that the abuse of the Stalin era should not be hidden from the view of new generations of Russians.
Port Veyteng Yevtushenko protested the explosion of Alexander Solzhensyn last week, and the Soviet government responded by canceling a scheduled appearance by the late Russian president. Solzhensyn far more popular here than Solzhensyn, especially with younger Russians. Only one of Solzhensyn's novels has been published, and the book is no longer available. But editions of Yevtushenko's poems have run hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions.
Even the poet's closest friends were caught by surprise by the protest. Despite his activities in the past, he never had been regarded as a dissident. Though he fell from office in 1965 and was coach protest, he has since made full protection, never straying from the party line.
Former Chiefs Knew; Does Nixon?
Yevtushenko was 5 years old in 1838, when his maternal grandfather, Ermoli Yevtushenko, was arrested and shot. A Soviet civil war hero, the grandfather had been a corps commander in the artillery section of the Red Army general staff for 12 years
selling out—his prolific verses were welcomed in the most prestigious Soviet publications, including Pravda, and he was known as a kind of cultural ambassador at large.
All of Vytushenko's recitals have been packed to overflowing, and his appearance last Friday was to have been televised nationally. This may have been behind the scandal, but it also led to a program, denying him a platform for a possible statement in support of
WASHINGTON—The founding fathers placed the impeachment process in the hands not only of a politically sensitized branch of government, but also of a politically expert one. The house and senate voted to add blue ribbon politically as juries could be.
In one sense, the Congress is likely to have a better understanding of and high tolerance for political activity which may threaten the integrity of our impeachable. This may help Mr. Nixon.
In another sense, however, they will understand better than most of us how political leaders operate—and this may hurt him.
The political leaders in the Congress are more likely than most citizens to conduct impeachment proceedings in the context of a realistic understanding of what it takes to succeed in politics—particularly the enormous need for attention to detail.
Lyndon Johnson followed major legislative proposals which bore his name.
From my own perspective as a former white house aide, if the press is to be criticized in connection with its reporting of these scandals, it is not, as Mr. Nixon and Mr. Agnew suggest, because it has been careless in printing unverified charges. It is, rather, because of its acceptance, with so little skepticism, of the myth that Mr. Nixon is somehow the uninformed victim of aides whose political entenlusion spilled over into an empathetic splinter this myth defies the reality of presidential power and the personal, political and historical ambition that accompany the exercise of such power.
Thus, John Kennedy was involved minute by minute in the desegregation of the University of Mississippi and was so deeply concerned about his 1964 re-election that he went to Texas to try to heal local political crisis.
This is particularly true where what is at stake is the very continuation of Mr. Nixon's presidential career. For what Watergate and its surrounding events involve is Mr. Nixon's place in history, Mr. Nixon's personal reputation, and whether he will be remembered of a crime or impached, remember the man who opened the door to China or as the man who headed the most corrupt administration in the history of the free world.
Presidents from Washington through Nixon have had different personalities. But every successful American politician, and presidents are the most successful, like successful lawyers, businessmen and entrepreneurs, in pays and close attention to details.
WHERETHER a President has the publicly seductive style of John Kennedy, the overbearing intensity of Lyndon Johnson or his conservative Richard Nixon, he will personally direct every major issues, particularly when those moves could decisively affect the marrow of his contemporary political career and historical judgments on the long term value.
We don't have to plow through the pages of "Six Crises" to know that Mr. Nixon is most attendant to details that intimately affect his political career. One needn't work in politics, but he should be about any president who served there. One need only understand human nature, politics and fathers who are bound to be concerned about what their children think of them. Any analysis of impeachable offenses must be made against this background.
A Game We Can't Afford to Lose
By MARC SCHOGOL
BROOKVILLE, N.Y.-First, I shut down nearly all of the world's industry and stopped all of its airplanes, railroads and buses.
But my meters indicated that the world's energy supplies still were disappearing at an alarming rate and, so although it gained credibility just about every appliance on the planet.
Then, in a desalination move, I ruthlessly reduced food production to near-starvation levels and turned my nuclear reactors into a greenhouse for regulating air and water pollution that resulted.
No use. Energy levels were almost nil, time was running out and all I had left to maneuver with were the fundamental necessities of life—air conditioning, hot water and gasoline for the cars. I can't eliminate them, I thought. I just can't.
Ab. fatal hesitation. Suddenly, it no longer mattered. The needles were all pointing to zero. All energy was gone. I had brought the end of the world. And it took only 483 years.
AS I STOOD there, staring at the console at C. W. Post College, physics professor Paul Krauner walked over to see how I had done.
The game, built in limited numbers by the Atomic Energy Commission, is a large computer-like gadget that is designed to demonstrate the finite quantities of energy resources left on earth and the infinite demands made upon them.
"That's not bad," he said. Persons playing the electronic "Energy Environment Simulation Game" for the first time usually succeeded in ending the world in about 200 years or so, Kramer said. That made me feel better.
Games have been loaned to five college faculty members across the country for use in lectures to school and community organizations on the energy crisis.
The game cost the AEC about $4,000 to build and, according to a commission spokesman, there are eight in circulation, three under construction and 10 on order. Kraner, a nuclear physicist and longtime AEC associate, said that the game is a fairly realise one, based on today's energy resources and technology. I found that I ran
out of natural gas in about 30 years of game time, which, Kramer said, is the amount of time scientists say current natural-gas reserves are expected to last.
THE GAME, however, does not take into account such potential energy sources as the sun or the fusion of atoms. (Current reactors are run by fission.) Research into these reactions has laid up sources is going on, and Krutov said, "They could be breakthroughs. I hope there are."
Kramer said he believed that the energy crisis was a real one. He said that he wasn't even aware of it.
The AEC game dramatically demonstrates how little time there is. Each second of real time is one year of game time, and the lights and meters that indicate energy shortages seem to start flickering and jumping very quickly.
major oil companies were manipulating the crisis to their advantage. However, he said there was no doubt that the world was running out of oil.
Reserves may last another 100 years or so, he said. "But that's not much time, is
To stretch energy supplies for 1,000 years.
the goal of the game, I discovered that one would have to take drastic conservation measures. The need to conserve energy, water and air is increasing, EEC is trying to convey through the game.
I assured Kramer that I was all for frugality and turning off unneeded lights, but observed that to beat the game and last 1,000 years, I would have had to eliminate all technological advances made since the wheel.
Kramer agreed, and said he didn't accedate anything that extreme. "It wouldn't be dangerous," Kramer said.
China Watchers Eve 'Revolution'
The campaign could still exert profound effects on every aspect of Chinese life and policy—as did its forerunner, the great proletarian cultural revolution of 1968-69.
HONG KONG—The thought-reform revolution ordered by the Peking government so far has failed to catch fire among the masses and, almost equally unreachable, no significant changes have been discernible in China's policy of detente.
The Los Angeles Times
BY ROBERT S. ELEGANT
But the movement's failure to alter China's essentially conciliatory approach to almost all nations except the Soviet Union has surprised veteran observers.
DURING THE cultural revolution, thousands of officials were purged because of "mistakes" they had made in the past. Western businessmen feel that the leading officials of state trading organizations may simply be exercising caution until they see which way the present struggle will move. The diplomatism has become clearer, deeper, and more serving opiums.
On the equally important economic front, there are factors to indicate that a change in foreign trade will not be coming. But the slight lessening of enthusiasm for trade, which foreign merchants have detected, could have little to do with individual officials' apprehensions.
The United States is being attacked in print with slightly more vigor than has been
normal during the past two years. But the Soviet Union is still beyond question the United States and its allies.
The last South Vietnamese prisoners captured when Peking's forces overran the Paracel Islands in mid-January, 43 men in all, have just been released.
PREMIER CHOU En-Lai, according to a visiting Thailand statesman, has just promised that China will no longer give significant aid to insurgent forces within Thailand. Further, most Chinese troops and guns have been withdrawn from road Peking built through northwest Laos.
Several minor diplomatic events may indicate a slight cooling of Peking-Washington relations. But, at present, those events pressure no major alteration in the Sino-American quasi-alliance. Even the U.S.-China security chain may be more shadow than substance.
Ambassador Huang Chen, chief of Peking's liaison office in Washington, has been absent from his post since November. Ambassador David Bruce, chief of Washington's liaison office in Peking, is not scheduled to return to his post for a month.
In its relations with its Southeast Asian neighbors, Peking is, if anything, being even more conciliatory than it was before the new thought reform movement started in January. The Chinese obviously wish to retain Beijing as the Soviet to penetrate the region further.
The State Department has denied that Bruce's absence indicates any decrease in
Griff and the Unicorn
bv Sokoloff
mutual cordiality. The ambassador has been assigned to assist Henry Kissinger in Europe—where Bruce has had much experience and Kissinger has many problems. The Chinese have offered no explanation for Huang Cheng's absence.
THE ONLY substantive signs that mutual cordiality has decreased are: (1) The American mission has not been permitted to send a replacement for one officer who is on leave; (2) Nicholas Platt, chief of the political section of the mission, who was killed in a traffic accident, has not been replaced; (3) foreigners are not being permitted to travel quite so freely—with specified limits—as they were previously.
The mass movement could, of course, increase in intensity at any time. If it should become violent, it is bound to affect China's foreign policy seriously. But so, far, both radicals and moderates agree publicly on the present approach to the outside world.
Nonetheless, Premier Chou En-Lai,
leader of the moderates and architect of China's foreign policy, has been criticized for going too far too fast. Should the mass movement catch fire, he could be forced to retreat a few steps in foreign policy.
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