Page 4 University Daily Kansan, April 27. 1981
Opinion
Sale symptom of crisis
In a move bound to spark congressional opposition, President Reagan has decided to sell sophisticated American radar planes to Saudi Arabia, despite strong Israeli objections.
The sales are part of the administration's plan to show other nations just how beneficial it is to be a buddy of Uncle Sam. As Secretary of State Haig promised after his recent Mideast trip, America will share its defense technology with its friends. And besides, the state department notes, America's got to respond to the Soviet threat in the region.
But whatever rationalizations are used, the real reason why America has to cater to the whims of Saudi Arabia is Saudi Arabian oil. Neither nation likes to admit it, but the Saudis have the United States over a barrel—a barrel of crude petroleum, the lifeblood of the American economy.
Because of this relationship, in the last few years, the Saudis have frequently acted in America's favor. They've tried to keep OPEC price increases at a conservative level, and they've agreed to produce above their desired capacity to cushion world oil shortages. But in return,
the Saudis are expecting a lot from America. And in this case, the Saudis want aircraft that could scan right through Israel's defenses.
Not that the Saudis are necessarily planning a war, but American submission to other nations' desires will continue as long as America continues to rely on imported oil.
That lifeline was broken once before; America survived. Now the country's even more dependent upon such oil; but what happens in the next oil shutoff?
Sadly, the new administration doesn't see the threat posed by the fragile oil lifeline stretching from the Arabian Peninsula to American shores.
The countries in the Mideast (which America has armed) will attack other countries in the Mideast (also which America has armed), and the American people wind up with a bonafide national emergency—one that can't be cured by the president's free enterprise speeches and Mobil commercials about drilling for independence. Ten years after an allying America first had its life support systems unplugged, the United States hasn't learned its lesson—a failure that could someday prove very, very costly.
Corporation code-named KU profits at expense of students
On the whole, corporations have been a mixed blessing for this country. They have had their good points. For example, the mass-produced goods they tend to turn out are cheaper than the goods they produce in other countries and had their bad points. Because the overriding goal of corporations is to maximize profits, the quality of those mass-produced goods has become a secondary consideration. Yet, so long as corporations are businesses, they are relatively innocuous. They remain mixed blessings.
However, when other institutions, such as universities, become corporations or corporate-
ERIC BRENDE
like, the results are wholly bad. Take the University of Kansas.
Its size has become vast and impersonal. The dehumanization of students and faculty alike that has resulted is counterproductive to learning.
"Growth" has become an end in itself. I look at the south side of Mount Ouread above Murphy Hall. Or recall that old Fraser Hall and old Blake Hall—two of the most beautiful buildings in the state of Kansas—were demolished and replaced.
But worst of all, the priority of turning out a quality "product"—a liberally educated college graduate—has been displaced by a priority that is much more of the corporate profits. This new priority is the emphasis on prestige-spelled with a capital "P" and a capital "R". Such prestige is to be attained not only by good public relations, but also by perpetuating "publish or perish" policies, and, of course, by maintaining a well-manicured campus with lots of construction taking place on it.
Indeed, Archie Dykes now works for an insurance company, and our new chancellor's prime qualification for the job seems to have enabled his ability 'to sell the university to the legislature.'
Indeed, prestige is probably now to KU what profits are to IBM. This shift in priorities has occurred partly because the important decisions of the University are now in the hands not of teachers—those who would be more likely to know what a liberal education is all about and who have the closest contact with the students. Instead, they are in the hands of adults in need of at heart who could easily be interchanged with corporate business counterparts without anyone.
An education in the liberal arts does not consist at its core of a six-hour crash course in Western Civilization, which is usually taught by a graduate assistant and which a student is most grateful to get over with. It does not consist of prematurely funneling students into narrow vocational or technical cubbyholes, sometimes even before they arrive on campus.
Instead, it must consist of a systematic and integrated teaching of the main currents of Western thought, from Socrates on up to the present day.
But any notion of implementing such a program (which, in fact, does exist on here a small scale, as the now de-emphasized Integrated Humanities Program) remains on the edge of reality's real priorities don't center around education, anyway—instead, corporate prestige.
This is accurately reflected in the hierarchical arrangement of its salaries. Those who cultivate prestige and procure funds most directly, and who have the least to do with educating—the administrators—are paid the most by far. The chancellor makes more than the governor of many universities, numerous vice chancellors make about three times more than average faculty members.
For the faculty, the highest salaried professors are those who bring "business" to the area. Research faculty, who have little contact with students, are found in obscure professional journals, are next in line.
Last on the scale are the teaching faculty. Thus, even if the University would adopt some systematic liberal arts program, those who knew which it would still be last on its list of priorities.
This pay scale is best understood if it is put in terms of a corporation. The administrator's salary is to the prize-winning teacher's salary and to the executive's is to the assembly-line worker's.
The office of research, graduate studies and public service casts a starker light on this inverted pyramid of priorities. Created to promote the cause of "research" (translated prestige) at KU, this office has been extremely well funded. Its director, amazingly enough, has the status and salary of a vice-chancellor—that is, he makes in the neighborhood of $50,000 a year. And no comparable office at KU exists to advance the cause of good teaching.
So where does this leave the students? The answer is, lower in the University hierarchy than even the prize-winning teachers. If these teachers are the assembly-line workers in the corporation that is KU then the students are the products which they drearly mass assemble.
Thus, while administrators have been busily "selling" the University to the Legislature and the rest of the state, and while researchers have diligently been getting themselves published in professional journals, the real education of students has been on automatic pilot.
The university has quietly and predictably fallen into place as a vocational-technical assembly line. Instead of turning out a quality product—ladies and gentlemen well versed in the craft, they are turned in to mass-produced cogs, which will fit quite nicely into the corporate machine of America.
KANSAN
Because KU ressembles a corporation more than it does a place where people receive a live demonstration of its rightful place alongside Volume Shoe and RPL, and begin to issue stock.
The University Daily
(USPS 690-489) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Tuesday and Thursday dates and July except Saturday, Sunday and holidays. Second-class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas, 690-485 and July except Saturday, Sunday and holidays. Second-class postage or its S.A. year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $2 semester paid brought to student activity. Postmaster: Send changes of address to the University Daily Kansas, Flint Hall. The University of Kansas,
Editor David Lewis
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Modern technologv destroving itself
We've all heard about the evils of technology displacing millions of workers and destroying the environment of our planet. It is my pleasure, however, to inform all evangelical conservationists that far from being poised to destroy the earth, technology is in its own death throes. it is destroying itself. I base this conclusion on personal experience. Over the last week nearly every machine and machine in my possession has ceased to operate.
It all began when my typewriter developed a stricture in regard to the D key. This forced me to write to the Managing tector of the typewriter company and complain in no uncertain terms, "Ear Sir," I say, "this amme machine can't print the letter between C an E, making it impossible to type wors like insasur an affool." So far the angry letter has ha no effect whatsoever, just goes to show that these ays they just on't give a arm.
Which is why I'm tapping away with sweaty fingers on this borrowed machine at work. I'm sweaty because the air-conditioning has gone kaput after three unbelievably hot days. They've blamed it on almost everything—including a possum in the ceiling—but they can't fix it. And that's not all. There's a heater across the room and a ceiling fan over the windows and the whole building reverberates to its subterranean throb. It's like working inside a migrate.
The refrigerator is the second warmest place in my home. It went on the blink after the air-conditioner at work; then the dishwasher and hot-plate struck in sympathy. As they all the same brand, the serviceman is just about living here. I'm thinking of offering him a room.
Then there's the lights. Almost every time I flip a switch, there's a flash followed by profound gloom, so I'm forever teetering on the
kitchen stool trying to fit a new light bulb. I seem to be rubbing all puls in my place through another photographer.
Alternatively, I'm struggling with a flickering fluorescent which, according to reputable medical opinion, causes fits and epileptic seizures. Whereupon my flashlight is
PETER
SOMERVILLE
out of batteries and I can't light a candle because there's not a match in the house and my roommate who smokes is trying to cut the habit.
As for the rotten fuse box, it devours fuse wire as if it were spaghetti. So as far as I'm concerned, technology is in open revolt or is self-destructing or both. If our appliances are so corrupted, they can be destroyed to us, they're electric lemmings rushing toward the oblivion of an urban junkyard.
Take the stereo set. or rather, take the mono set, as it's gone deaf in one speaker. it reproduces static and hum with such remarkable fidelity that you'd swear you were right in the room with a malfunctioning H-bomb. Put on your favorite record (say Mariah Carey) and, by the time it's garrilled and muffled by the impaired, it sounds like the University Chorus locked in a lavatory. And talking of the lavatory, our ceramic cistern is hardly flushed with success. Instead of the promised Niagara, we have these pathetic half-hearted squirts.
The TV has more ghosts than either the Bloody Tower or Mrs. Muir would care to admit. This has led to a long, protected war between the people who installed the set (they blame it on the aerial) and the people who installed the aerial (they blame it on the set). Meanwhile, when I look at Masterpiece Theatre, Alistair Cooke is twins.
Actually, you get a better picture on the tumble dryer, particularly since it's stopped tumbling. I can see it, I haven't had much call for a clothes dryer since the washing machine went on the blink.
Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. It still goes round and spin dries. It's just that it makes this awful, grinding noise just like the sound you hear in a kitchen sink, if it shouldn't and the garbage disposal doesn't.
The other night I was watching superimposed images of the same feature film on my double-vision set. It was all about a world controlled by two giant computers, the American Colossus and the Russian Guardian. And it reminded me of Aldous Huxley's grim satire on that the evolutionary process had stopped in man, that now his machines evolved for him.
What else? Certainly the four-stroke lawnmower is well named. It's had a succession of them. Strokes, I mean. Even if you can get it started, it goes all wheezy and asthmatic within three feet of grass. It's much the same with the bronchial vacuum cleaner.
Then I looked around me at all my crippied gadgety, and I recalled another voice, that of the late Walter Lippmann: "You cannot endow the best machine with initiative. The jollest steamroller has anything in common with my steam-iron, it won't even steam.
Letters to the Editor
Titanic's sinking no cause for celebration
To the editor:
to the editor:
I was reading the Kansas,
When I got quite a surprise
From the aids of two local taverns
Appearing before my eyes.
One suggested a celebration
Of the sinking of the mighty Titanic,
And there were hundreds of lives
Years ago in the cold North Atlantic.
The船 started sinking at midnight;
They said we should all do the same.
But instead of taking on water,
To drown ourselves in champagne.
I can't help but think the survivors,
Who helped ones drowned in the sea
Will relocate at just how appropriate
This celebration will be.
But the other one did even better
In creative ad selection.
They suggested we all get plastered
Festival flooring.
They want us all "primed" for Easter By seeing how much we can hold Without having to go to the bathroom Or letting your kidness mold.
They also referred to Good Friday. But I must say I'm at a loss. To see how stretching your bladder Brings honor to Christ on the cross.
There seems to be one objective
In all this fun and frantic;
It's to help us celebrate Easter
By making us alcoholics.
The least thing these ad-writers need
their talents won't all go to waste.
Is to hurry and end inroln
An intensive course in Good Taste!
Pastor Hobbinion
Pastor, Faith Southern Baptist Church
Your Course in Good Taste!
Fred S. Hollomon
Pastor at Faith
Bad camera angle
Thank you very much for your unbiased article
about the Hare Krishna movement that was printed in the Kansas on April 16. We certainly did not have an official program.
All this notwithstanding, however, I do feel obliged to comment on a couple of points that may have given inadvertent misimpressions.
Unfortunately, the noble knights of the national news media have so pulverized our eyes that the overwhelming majority of Americans are completely convinced that we are, at best, bizarre.
It is also unfortunate that the distorted angle shot photograph of us in the Kansan will do nothing to dispel that image. "A picture is worth a thousand words." Although surely not printed with malicious intent, such a misproportioned picture will tend to psychologically reinforce preconceptions that our movement itself is distorted.
Actually our movement is not distorted nor bizarre, rather it is strictly founded on a bizarre, so anarchy and sophisticated that, in comparison, Christianism like "a new religious movement in America."
Visitors to our lunch program are surprised to find that we are sane and rational individuals who don't "brainwash" them, indoctrinate them, "rip off" all the money their busp them over the heads and drag them into the back room to shave food. Instead, they deprive them of food and sleep. Instead, they congenially feed them a delicious vegetarian meal in a pleasing atmosphere, and simply request them to come back again. I think a straight-on shot of us would have been better.
Sometimes students call and ask, "How can
The report that "visitors . . . are urged to contribute money" is somewhat incorrect. Webster's Dictionary characterizes the word "urgle" as forceful or pressing, which is not at all the mood of our modest form. The 5-by-8 inch card states, "This program is supported entirely by donations. If you can, please give a dollar to help. Thank you. Hare Krishna." Hardy forceful or pressing. And, other than the sign, we never request money from guests.
Lawrence
Mahadyuti dasa Lawrence
you afford to offer a free lunch?" When one does not waste his money on drugs, beer, movies, chasing sex and other nonsense, it becomes quite feasible to spend money to benefit others.
Exchange clarification
Because your article in the Kansen of March 25, 1981, entitled "13 KU students to attend schools overseas" contained a number of inaccuracies, I should like to give you some factual information, as I consider part of the report incorrect by not giving credit to former Chancellor Franklin Murphy and former Dean J. H. Nelson of the graduate school.
To the editor
They authorized the original KU Direct Exchange Programs with the approval of the Kansas Board of Regents. As chairman of the Foreign Student Scholarship Committee at that time, I was instructed to arrange for the details of the exchanges.
The direct exchanges began with Switzerland and Sweden in 1949-50. Chancellor Murphy and Dean Nelson, thereafter, authorized an equal settlement for England-Scotland, France and West Germany.
I must, therefore, contradict Anita Herzelf's statement that "most of the exchanges are still with Germany because the man who originated the program was German-born." Unfortunately, financial problems and the introduction of the Fulbright Exchange Program forced some British and French universities to terminate the technical arrangements with KU, whereas the Federal Republic of Germany has not only retained the direct exchanges but expanded them to eight under my successor, Dean Arnold Weiss of the graduate school.
I am proud of having had a part in the ever- expanding international education at KU.
Antony Burzie
Emeritus professor of German