University Daily Kansan. April 13, 1981
Opinion
(    )
Pick a card, any card
Aak just about any freshman on campus (and even some sophomores) what his or her student ID looks like, and you'll be shown a "temporary" paper issuance. It's a card that has been "temporary" since August. And it'll be "temporary" at least a little longer.
The University, it seems, can't settle on one type of ID card for everybody. At KU, temporary IDs tend to become permanent and permanent IDs tend to become temporary. If this trend keeps up, with five different ID changes in the last 15 years, collecting KUIDs may become as versatile a hobby as collecting baseball cards. Match 'em! Trade 'em! Get the whole set!
Until two years ago, the University's ID had students' pictures on them, a feature that made them useful off campus when making purchases and casing checks. Then the administration opted for a new credit card-style ID—and in the process eliminated the photo.
That decision has made proctoring of large classes during exams difficult; teachers have to take a student's word that he or she is the student named on the
pictureless card. Tellers in the Kansas Union have to overly trust, too, when cashing checks. And ticket window salespeople can easily wind up selling concert or basketball tickets to people presenting someone else's ID.
Add to all that the problems of having more than one type of ID floating around on campus, and the ID fiasco suffers from the same confusion as the changing of military script in the middle of a war.
The ideal card would include: the student's photo; an embossed name; the magnetic strip for checking out library materials; the semesterly registration sticker; and it would also be manufactured right on campus. Administrators should have learned by now that it's not a good idea to depend on a firm halfway across the country to manufacture cards for a constantly changing student body.
Now the newest batch of "permanent" cards is scheduled to be distributed around summer. Perhaps this series—the Series of '81—will be the definitive answer to the eternal ID problem. Maybe, just maybe, this series will last longer than the average student's college career.
Dear Abbie's sob story lacks revolutionary spirit
The other day, a former teacher of mine had some words of advice for reviewing crummy books. If the author has nothing significant to say, he said, don't waste your time. Just label it: "May be safely ignored."
Abbie Hoffman, co-founder of the 1980s Yippie movement, was sentenced last week to three years in jail for the sale of cocaine. The very next day, he was at the feet of Gov. Hugh
JUDY
WOODBURN
Carey, asking for pardon and remaining true
to his beliefs, free America
pohoda has to pay for anything.
Abbie had his chance to be a hero, and he blew it.
Well, like the crumby books I mentioned,
that's the greatest whinings can, and should be,
safe for kids.
He could have returned to open arms in 1978 at the "Bring Abbie Home" rally in New York City, where thousands of his old supporters waited for him in Abbie Hoffman look-alike rubber masks. Those people would have loved it—seeing him surface triumphantly from eight years underground like Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a path of palm fronds.
He could have gotten hauled off to jail and been a martyr of the most inspiring sort. Instead, he merely sent a tape recording that said, "Help me get back so I can do the work I'm supposed to do." Granted, the message was kind of touching, even for a person like me whose only revolutionary act in 1968 was mutting a peace sign on my notebook.
But what was it that Abbie felt he was "supposed to do," anyway? When he actually did surface in September of last year, the answer was obvious.
What he did was get an interview with Barbara Walters. And with the New York Times. He stumped for his new book, "Soon to Be a Major Motion picture," which was conveniently being released at the same time. He captured every scene of his well-cleared graphical return on film, so that someday, it really could be a motion picture.
Some martyr.
Oh, Abbie, when you withdrew into hiding in 1973 and became Barry Freed, the environmental writer and river-saver, more than just lust your nose underwent a change.
What a change from the days of Woodstock, when Abbie was hopping mad at the people who had turned the radical culture movement into a profit-making enterprise. He used to be called the "Woody Allen of the New Leaf." Once one time he banded his disciples around Pentagon and threatened to make the levitate in protest of the Vietnam War.
But, like the flower child movement itself,
Abbie's humor was not perennial. And, like Woody Allen, he must not want to be funny anymore. Now, he has, she's scared.
He's scared of jail. He's scared of getting raped there. He's scared he'll get drugged. Drugged? Wait a minute. Abbie Hoffman scared of drugs?
Poor Abiele. Once again, he's been screwed by the system. He says that the only reason he came back was that the prosecuting attorney "pursued him with a vengeance" and lured him to jail. He said with false promises of an easy sentence. He was expecting to plea bargain, I guess.
But since when has Abbie Hoffman ever believed in plea bargaining? Since when has Abbie Hoffman ever even believed in the courts, either? After the Democratic National Convention in 1968, when Hoffman and his six colleagues got repeatedly whacked on the head by Dick Daley's men in blue, Abbie vowed to turn the courtroom into guerrilla theater. Despite the shower of contempt he faced, his supporters Julius Hoffman with a constant barrage of wise cracks, referring to him incessantly as "Uncle Jule."
Abbie Hoffman didn't come back because anybody promised him anything, other than a paycheck.
He came back, waving his arms, expecting the court to say "Wow, he really is a nice guy after all. A nose job and six years of working to save a river are sentence enough."
It didn't happen, and now he's mad. He could have been a seven of sorts in 1787, but he was not. He hadn't been a seven of sorts in 1787.
He's lucky, in how a, by Going to jail and "coming home" again three years before he got an outro shot at playing prodigal son to the Lakers of America. Maybe next time he'll be successful.
KANSAN
The University Daily
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While interviewing a Kansas State University professor last April about the latest of his many trips to Cuba, I asked him about the latest Cuban situation. The first reports had just come in that month and he was going on a courtry of the Peruvian Embassy in Havana. He dismissed the reports as an exaggeration.
Cuban refugee problem quietly solved
"It seemed to be a black market crackdown."
The most people there have the figure closer to 10,000.
Nobody seemed to think anything of it. In any country there are going to be discontented people. The situation just underscored the crimes in Cuba, which had been reported before.
Unemployment was high. There were high food prices and many shortages. The sugar and tobacco crops had been bad. Fidel Castro had let them be so and it had caused much discontent in the country.
And a few of the discontented now gathered in the Peruvian Embassy. But no one could guess what would happen next. It was totally unexpected, this Freedom Flotilla.
It's been a year now. Though it is still too early to know what the total effect of the influx will be, the United States did the right thing by accepting the refugees.
It was an impossible situation, and being one, the government acted wrongly and inconsistently on some occasions. We should have accepted the black Haitian refugees, whose situation was as bad as the Cubans'. The Carter Administration hesitated on how to handle the situation and reversed its position a couple of times.
But the tradition in this country has been to accept refugees who wanted refuge. We kept to that tradition.
On Good Friday last year, six Cubans forced their way into the Peruvian compound. The Cuban government retaliated by withdrawing the security forces, and announced that anyone would be "struggle for socialism" could enter the embassy. By Easter Sunday, the entire area was packed.
The government said there was fewer than 3,000 people there. Other sources put it at 10,000. This was confirmed when over 10,000 exit visas were given out to people who wanted to leave the country. They were guaranteed safe passage as soon as a solution could be found.
Several countries, including the United States,
offered to take some refugees in. But normal
channels would be used. Each country would
be sent inland, and the whole procedure
would take weeks.
DAN
TORCHIA
It didn't work out that way. At the end of April, the flotilla started. A Cuban exile living in Miami organized boats to go to Cuba to pick up the people.
By May 12, 9,000 arrived. By May 19 it grew to
30,000. By the end of May it was 90,000. Then by
the Carter administration imposed a blockade
of foreign ships and its ships slowed.
But still, the final total was over 120,000.
The situation has died down since the summer, but it is far from over. There are still some refugees in the relocation centers. They sit there in the shelter, and they that have not been allowed to be released.
When they arrived in Cuba, they outlined the plan to Cuban officials. They accepted. Government newspapers proclaimed that anyone could leave if relatives from the United States came to claim them. The outpouring began.
This points up to one of the biggest problems of the whole situation—all the red tape by the government. From the beginning, the policy was because of the uniqueness of the situation.
A reform of the immigration laws had just taken effect five weeks before the flotilla. But privacy officials said they would not do so.
out the law. There was no way to enforce the law, which was designed to broaden the admission of refugees.
Public sentiment was never in favor of the refugees, and the government had to walk a fine line between accommodating our tradition as the first step and having a constant policy on accepting refugees.
There is a bigger, more pressing problem now, and that is the situation in Miami. The riots that shocked the nation last June were partly caused by the Cuban influx.
There are half a million Cubans in Miami, in a metropolitan area of about 1.5 million. They have a great influence in the city. The blacks, which account for about 15 percent of the city, are among the biggest contributors being admitted and because the Cubans won't compete with blacks for scarce jobs in the city.
After the McCuff decision, in the death four white policemen were acquitted in the death of a black businessman, the blacks in the city, already on edge because of the influx, rioted for three days.
The tension that caused the riots is still there. The problems are still there. If this summer is over, we won't be there.
There are also going to be key questions in long range issues involving affirmative action and bilingual education. Right now, the biggest task is getting the Cubans assimilated into society.
This latest wave of refugees should succeed. They have every right to be here. The government did the right thing by accepting them. There was no way we could have turned them back to Cuba. What everyone needs to do is to accept them, for the Cubans will be a very positive addition to the country. They've proved it before.
Many of the important banking and financial agreements that affect Latin American commerce are arranged in Miami. It was the first time they were used in 1858 after Castro came to power, that did this.
The past has indicated that the Cubans will do well. It is the Cubans who changed Miami from a dying resort town into an important financial connection to Latin America.
Cairo's poor left out of modernization push
hvA CRAIGCOPETAS
CAIRO- It was raining mud in the City of the Dead. A break midwinter sandstorm had mixed with a rare desert rain to fat pellets of wet dirt on the 1,000 acres of ancient underground city of the Dead, some $60,000 homeless people have converted into a home "city," complete with traffic tams.
These carved gravestives, situated in the shadow of the Mohammad Ali Mosque in southeastern Cairo, were once the sacred resting places for the caliphs and the Mamelukes. But because of a cripping housing shortage, the government has allowed poverty-striken Egyptians to squat inside the miles of cemeteries known as Gaaltha and El Khalifa.
New York Times Special Features
Families huddle in front of their tomb homes, stoking morning fires and carrying water from rusted taps. The thundering nose of Cairo's traffic echoes off the walls of the Old City and ricochets up and down the narrow passageways separating the tombs. A woman, her head covered with a soiled black chador, wails her child's death above the noise as she carries the body through cemetery streets in a pink plastic bucket. Nobody pays much attention, is says Mamoud (I won't use his last name), a doxy driver, "a daily occurrence and God's will."
Mahmoud and his family live inside a scarred tomb. There are no windows and the once-ornate calling is blackened with a thick crust of dirt and broken pieces, kept wrapped in red blankets on top of a crammed structure.
The government has supplied the City of the
"We are lucky to have this," said Mahmoud while hurling garbage on his donkey cart. "Others are not so fortunate in God's eyes. The government builds great hotels for the tourists and offices for their business and forgets about us."
Dead with running water and electricity but so sewage system. Even the rain refuses to wash
"It is difficult to accomplish things here," said Smit, a veteran Third-World housing expert who has worked throughout Africa. "To work here is to deal with 7,000 years of bureaucracy, red tape that goes back to pharaonic times. There is just a lot of bureaucracy and the country are opened up, and until the government can convince people to move there, the housing problem will remain."
"I life is hard," rasped the nearly toothed 37-year-old donkey driver as he wrapped his shawl around his mouth to avoid swallowing the will. "We are used to it. It is God's sand."
"It may be God's will," says Jac Smit, "but 11 million people are just too many for Cairo." Smit is an American who works as a team leader for the housing and community-upgrading division of the Foundation for Cooperative Housing, a Washington-based non-profit organization partly funded by the Agency for International Development.
A reporter from the government-controlled newspaper Al Ahram, who wished to remain
"The average Egyptian earns around $15 a month. The people come to Cairo hoping to make more money and there is just no room for them," he said.
anonymous, explained, "President Sadat has directed most of his energy into the construction of hotels, office complexes and expensive apartments. Sadat is trying to lure foreign intelligence." He is trying to Europeize Egypt. But it is an impossible task. Even the British knew better."
As hotels continue to rise at a hectic pace in downtown Cairo, more people flock to the gates of the city of the Dead in hopes of finding a vacant mausoleum to live in. The carts travel down into the depths of the tombs to distribute water among the women, and the men gather inside their domed crib to smoke tobacco and use incense sticks for decoration or glasses of pungent tea. And in the dusty streets, packs of out-of-work teen-agers carry blaring tape recorders.
"Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday, why fret about them if today be so sweet," reads a sign above the polished bar at Shepheard's Hotel.
"I have seen that," nodded Mahnoud, who once worked at the hotel. "The people who stay there laugh at that and have another drink. There is no sweetness in Cairo today. It is God's will."
It's duck in the City of the Dead and a young girl seemed glued to the damp dirt behind her father's donkey. The animal's hind legs kept inching toward her face. She began to pick through the excrement. Finding a few kernels of undigested corn, she placed them in her torn pocket, and crawled on all fours back inside her tomb.
(A. Craig Copetas, an editor for The Conde
Nast Publications, recently visited Egypt.)