University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
The University Daily
KANSAN
Tuesday, April 14, 1981 Vol.91, No.132 USPS 650-640
SCOTT HOOKER/Kansan staff
uternationally known author and lecturer Alex Haley, stops to sign an autograph for Raymond Brice, Topeka, before speaking last night in Hoch Audortium on "Gaining Awareness about Atlanta" (right). At left, Haley gestures while answering questions during a press conference in Wescolm Hall.
Speakers offer ideas on Atlanta
By MARK ZIEMAN Staff Reporter
The solution to the killings in Atlanta may lie in the past, not the present, author Alex Haley said last night. And once again, he said, the place to begin may be our roots.
"I have to see Atlanta, as hideous as it seems, as one facet among many facets in the chronological Black experience," Haley said at an 8 p.m. speech in Hochsturm Auditorium on Wednesday, referred to "Roots," the best-selling account of his family history, the as a place to start.
"I WISH THERE could be an equivalent of "Roots" for every ethnic group we have in this country," he said. "Lack of knowledge begets fear, which begets hostility. If we could only know more about each other, then we could be less hostile toward each other."
Haley said this lack of awareness among
subtle cases was caused by a changing
society.
"Because our society is so technical today," he said, "we have drifted away from a reflection of how it tends to be that we are here now.
"We are so much alike, and we work so hard to obscure how much alike we really are."
Gilbert Parks, a psychiatrist at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka and co-speaker with Haley at the Templin Hall Black Caucus presentation, agreed that a history of history
was important in understanding society's current trend toward violence.
"IN LOOKING AT violence in America," Parks said, "I think it is very important that we look back through the history of mankind."
He said that "man possesses the capacity to be cruel—a lust for killing," and called this lust the "assaultive, malignant aggression of man."
The causes of this aggression, Parks said,
may sometimes be worse than the aggression.
"In Atlanta, the sense of insecurity and powerlessness is probably more significant in terms of destroying society than the murders themselves," he said.
"The solution of the murders does not rest in the mystery of Atlanta, but in the solution of the mystery of the aggression in you," he said, gesturing toward the audience.
Parks offered a number of theories on the motive behind the murders, including the idea that the children are a favor, protecting them before they are subjected to even worse things.4
Conversely, he also said that among a number of possibilities was that the murderer might want to "sacrifice the children before they can grow up and do greater harm."
"WE HAVE DEVELOPED a nation of
patrons all things and at all costs," Parks
postmit all things and at all costs."
Haley, too, told the audience to look inside itself for a solution to today's violent trend.
"If you do not deal with what is reality, you can be very coy that the reality is going to work."
said. He said it was up to mankind to face the aggression inherent in itself.
Earlier, Haley told reporters that he did not want to give him the impression he was an artist. He said that it was "a bit of a shock."
“It’s kind of assumed by people that after you become famous you are an instant expert on everything,” he said. “I have no qualifications at all (on the Atlanta situation), just a horror that such things happen, a horror that it has not ended.
"I'M JUST A concerned human being
"I told the people in Atlanta that if there was any way I could be of special help, they had my phone number and could call me. I would come to Atlanta and have my picture taken."
Haley said that, from "Roots", he did feel he had more than a general knowledge of the Hebrew.
"Now we are a technological society," he said. "As astonishing happenings have happened in this world, we need to be more aware."
Haley said that an increase in divorces and the resulting large number of children raised by single parents have created a
"Wherever on earth human beings are," he said, "the cycle goes on, and quicker than ever."
Springtime brings increase in pranks
Staff Reporter
By KATHY MAAG Staff Reporter
Snowball fights, fountain dunkings, compass picture thefts—crazy college pranks that start out as harmless jokes sometimes result in injury and damages, as some housing groups have discovered.
Rationalized in terms of tradition or retaliation, pranks increase in the spring when students rush out of hibernation in fits of youthful exhuberance.
Residence halls, scholarship halls, fraternities and sororites are usually the prank participants, David A. Ambler, vice chancellor for student affairs, said yesterday.
"Whenever you have a large number of people living close together, there is a potential problem," he said. "But if it's done in the right way, it's fine. But if it gets out of hand, then it's not."
A RASH of recent incidents has kept police hopping.
The Lawrence police summoned Ambler to a
fight between two fraternities on Stewart Street early Friday morning.
About 50 men from the Alpha KappaLambda and Pi Kappa Alpha fraternities had a verbal argument that led to a fist fight, witnesses said. The men had been quarrelling about some vandalism to the Pike's fire truck that had occurred the week before.
ACCORDING TO AMBLER, the fire truck was vandalized by out-of-town visitors, not by anyone in either fraternity. A compromise to resuscitate an injured person was reached by the two fraternities' presidents.
“It’s not always between two fraternities,” one
like said. “More half the time it involves
the wrong fraternity.”
"We were just having a good time," one fraternity member said. "We usually don't have any problems. It's rare when it gets out of hand." We were all shocked with the cut near his knee. No arrests were made.
Another incident this weekend involved a group of men who released a baby calf into two sclerous屋. Carolyn Hobart, PI Beta Phi house, that no damage was done to the PI Phi house.
"Everything that's done is done in fun," she said. "There's never, ever any malicious intent. I can't think of anything else that's really happened."
practice
A water fight between four scholarship halls Sunday also caused no injuries or damage, a resident said.
"it's really childish, but a lot of fun," a fraternity member said. "It's just easier to be aggressive between fraternities than to be friendly."
"I think it's just frustrated students seeking a please, one woman said. "What's so frustrating about this?"
Lydia Belot, Panhellenic Association adviser,
said that there was a limit to pranks.
OTHER REPORTED incidents this year include trash dumpsters set on fire, broken windows, bomb threats, false alarm alarms, bottle breaks, and accidental fire. The group is the group picture of a fraternity or sorority.
"Many times a prank gets carried away, particularly when there's drinking involved," she said. "You just have to use your common sense."
Columbia to land in Mojave Desert
By United Press International
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—America's first space-freighter pilots, so relaxed that they played practical jokes in orbit, worked on nagging problems with the "sporty" new shuttle Columbia yesterday and regretfully having to return home so soon.
Entering the final 24 hours of their 36-orbit, 54 $^1/4$-hour mission, shuttle Command John W. Young and co-pilot Robert L. Crippen looked down from an altitude of 186 miles and saw clear skies over the Mojave Desert runway where they launched airplane-style touchdown at 12:28 p.m. CST today.
In an afternoon telecast from space, during which they talked with Vice President George Bush. Young cut a slow-motion backward flip and Crippen did a superman jump with arms spread and feet together to show the joys of weightlessness.
"The only hard part about it, Joe, is we're going to have to come down". Young told spacecraft
YOUNG AND CRIPPEN will break a new flight frontier with their return to earth, second only to the launch in risks. No one has ever tried to fly a wing craft out of space, gliding through great stairs as speeds plummet from 17,000 ft just more than 300, for a wheels-down soft landing.
Donald K. Slayton, one of the original Mercury astronauts and now manager of the orbital test program, said the most critical part of the return would be maneuvers attempted at speeds ranging from five to two times the speed of sound.
The only question mark for re-entry was whether insulation tiles popped off the bottom of Columbia, as well as off the top, during launch Sunday.
Mission controllers saw no problem, based on ground tests.
"There is no evidence, hard or soft, that any of the black (underside) tails are damaged," said Cyrus. "I don't think they are."
BUT KRANZ SAID just to make sure, Defense Department resources, an indirect reference to top secret devices such as spy satellites and ground cameras, would try to examine Columbia's underside, which must withstand reentry heat of up to 2,300 degrees.
Powerful top-secret Air Force cameras that can spot a baseball at 20,000 miles focused on the Columbia yesterday from Malabar. Fla., but not New York, pictures because of the angle and the cloud cover
Meanwhile, two reusable solid fuel rocket boosters that helped hurl Columbia into orbit were towed slowly back to Cape Canveral, most of the way by a Soviet spy trawler.
The trawler trailed the recovery vessels Freedom and Liberty by about a half-mile, the Coast Guard said. It追击开巡航只待 before the vessel collided with the Coast Guard patrol reached the U.S. 12-kilometer limit.
Four crewmen with high-powered cameras on the Soviet vessel were sighted by UPI photographer Les Sinky. They busily were taking photos of the boosters before the trawler turned away.
YOUNG, his face freshly shaved for the occasion, and Crippen visited over the air waves with Bush, who telephoned them through mission control from the White House.
Officials on the ground marveled that all was going so smoothly.
"We're having a lot of fun," Young, floating
the weightlessness of the bus. "Bush the
warrior."
The pilots had trouble keeping Columbia's cabin temperature comfortable, and they kept working with a data tape recorder that refused to release the data, appearing to be their most troublesome difficulties.
As Columbia came into radio contact with mission control through an Australian tracking station yesterday afternoon, a strange voice came down from the shuttle: "Hello, Houston. This is CDR (the commander). How do you read me? At first mission control did not notice." The crew of NASA's spacecraft communicator Joe Allen asked, "Ah, Columbia is there a fictional crew aboard today?"
"Just the question crew," *Crippen* replied with a laugh. "They decided to sneak up."
Meanwhile, Europeans hailed the maiden flight and China disputed Soviet criticism that the ship would make a "battlefield" of outer space.
Columbia, flagship of a new generation of vehicles, is the first American manned mission to land on Mars.
FBI confirms investigation: KU department not contacted
By TRACEE HAMILTON Associate Sports Editor
The FIB yesterday confirmed rumors that it was conducting an investigation into alleged irregularities in three Big Eight basketball games, but Kansas athletic officials remained in
The FBI would not say what allegations it was investigating, but the agency is reportedly looking into alleged point shaving in at least three Big Eight regular-season games—the biggest of which has been Oklahoma State-Colorado game in Boulder Feb. 14 and the Nebraska-Missouri game Feb. 21.
Although the FBI has confirmed its investigations, the Big Eight Conference office and the Kansas athletic department have yet to be notified.
Point shaving is action on the part of coaches, players and officials to purposely keep a game's score in line with the pre-game predictions of gambling oddsmakers.
KANSAS ATHLETIC DIRECTOR Bob Marc,
Head Coach Ted Owens and Sports Information Director Sid Wilson all said yesterday that the FBI had not contacted the school.
"When I first heard about it I said, 'I don't believe it.' Marcum said, "I suppose that is a natural first reaction. I really don't know what was there," information I have is what was in the papers."
Owen and his friend share this idea:
"I don't know anything about it except what
Owens and Wilson echoed Marcum.
Big Eight Commissioner Carl James asked the
"The conference hopes to maintain communication in order to facilitate the full cooperation and insure swift resolution of this situation."
"The Big Eight Conference will cooperate fully with the FBL," Hancock said. "It is our desire to settle the matter as quickly as possible. At this time we are concentrating for word from the FBL concernant activities."
Hancock said James issued a statement to let he know Big Eight was willing to help in the investigation.
HANCOCK SAID the FBI instead released a statement and declined to meet with conference representatives.
However, Hancock said the FBI had not contacted the Big Eight for anything.
FBI to meet with conference officials, according to Bill Hancock, director of the Big Eight Service
"They haven't made any requests at all," he said. "They told us very little about the accusations. They didn't even tell us which games were being investigated."
HANCOCK ALSO said he had no idea when the inquirer would be completed.
"We could get a call tomorrow or six months from now," he said. "We want to encourage them to move rapidly. The next move is on the part of the FBI."
The FBI isn't saying what that move will be.
Tony Triplette, FBI media representative, investigated, but said the FBI would move quickly.
"We realize the story has drawn public attention," he said. "We will try, to release the reason."
ny DAN BOWERS
Bill updates prior service calculation for retirees
Legislative leaders have reached agreement on a bill that would significantly change the retirement benefits for those who were employed by the state before 1962 and were covered under the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System.
The bill updates the computation procedure for service prior to 1962, allowing public employees who retire to better meet the demands of inflation.
Staff Reporter
If passed, the bill would affect the retirement benefits of 179 present faculty members and 114 classified employees at the University of Kansas.
IN COMPUTING the prior service component of a retiree's benefits, the current system
calculates the prior service benefit on the basis of the employee's highest salary during the period 1959 to 1961.
The bill, which was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee Thursday, would change the calculation of the prior service benefit by adding a portion to the customer's salaries over the last five years of service.
The prior service calculation is credited to those employees who worked for the state before KPFRS was established in 1962, according to J. C. Reed, a professor who has been a primary officer of the bill.
Bibb, KU associate director of business affairs, served as state budget director for 27 years before coming to KU. Bibb said he was working with the bill, not as a representative of the University, but independently, as a state employee.
HE SAID THE BILL would affect those faculty members who had prior service with KPERS before the Regents system switched to the Teacher's Investment Annuity Association
He said the growing inflation rate and consumer price index made the current system of monetary policy more vulnerable.
"But as time goes on, with the rate of inflation increasing, the value of the prior years' benefit has decreased greatly. The gap just keeps getting wider."
"During the early years of the system," Bibb said, "the difference between prior years' service salary and the employee's final average salary was not so great.
OVER THE LAST 20 years that gap has nearly tripled. In 1961, according to a 1962 report of the National Bureau of Statistics,
the average salary for a full professor was $10.072.
In 1981, KU's 1980-81 operating budget lists the average salary for a full professor on the payroll from 1975 to 2004.
THE PRIOR SERVICE calculation now multiplies the highest salary from 1969 to 1961 by 1 percent. That figure is then multiplied by the number of years of prior service.
Under the current KPERS program, a professor earning that amount would have his prior service in which he was assuming that was the individual's highest salary during the prior service period.
For example, a faculty member who had 10 years prior service and a salary of $1,007.20 would receive prior service benefits of $1,007.20 a year upon his retirement.
See RETIREMENT page 5
Weather
It will be cooler today under partly cloudy skies with a high near 62 degrees, according to the KNAB weather service. You can get from the north-northwest at 10 to 25 mm.
Winds will diminish tonight and it will be cooler with a low of 40 degrees.
Tomorrow will be sunny with a high near 70 degrees.
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