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Opinion
University Daily Kansan, April 8, 1981
Slowing proliferation
President Reagan's attention may be focused on recuperating from his gunshot wound and pushing his budget programs through Congress, but his advisers are getting ready to present to him a proposed policy that would govern American exports of nuclear technology.
Unfortunately, Reagan's top nuclear adviser, James L. Malone, seems to be favoring a break in the previous administration's nuclear policy. In contrast to President Carter, who wanted to prohibit nuclear sales to countries likely to build A-bombs, Malone may propose that the United States use nuclear technology sales to win friends—thus possibly giving the raw materials for A-bombs to crackpot dictators.
America must remain highly selective about the countries it shares nuclear technology with, for history has shown that ambitious countries looking for the ultimate national ego trip tend to take atomic fuel and turn it into bombs. Indeed, the classic example of a nation that imported nuclear technology for "peaceful" purposes and became a nuclear power with it is India, the sixth nation to join the worldwide nuclear club.
Malone's theory seems to be that the United States could sell nuclear technology to nations such as Pakistan—which is believed to already have A-bombs or be in the process of making them—while at the same time shielding them with the all-encompassing American nuclear umbrella. Those small countries, it is hoped, would then find no need to make their own bombs.
But if it didn't work with India, it certainly won't work with Pakistan or any number of other countries.
Reagan should formulate a comprehensive nuclear export policy, but it should attempt to keep those suspect nations from getting nuclear technology in the first place. Once the world's small nations build up their own nuclear stockpiles, the mushroom cloud may become a tragically common specter.
Tuition increase may sting, but education's still a bargain
Today, members of the Associated Students of Kansas will set up tables all over campus to distribute free postcards to KU students. On the cards, students will have opportunity to tell the story. Regents just what they think of the proposed 10% percent tuition increase planned for next fall.
ASK lobbying groups in most state universities will conduct similar drives this week, and soon, the Regents will probably receive a flood of postcards protesting the increase.
The group's efforts are admirable. In fact, any attempt to involve students in decision-making
VANESSA
processes that affect their lives should be commended.
However, the tuition increase probably is not a good cause to use as a rallying cry. Because for several reasons, the increase seems to be both warranted and necessary.
The biggest argument in favor of the $4 tuition increase is the fact that in-state KU students now pay only $200, which is 19 percent of the actual cost of education.
The rest of the $35.60 that appeared on most of our bank withdrawal statements was composed of student fees for services as health, transportation and use of the Kansas Union.)
Originally, the Regents intended for students to pay 25 percent of their costs, but over the years, that intention seems to have been forgotten.
Future tuition increases, starting with the one proposed for next year, will slowly bring tuition back up to that level. But even then, we should remember that the state will still pick up the tab for 75 percent of educational fees for in-state students.
In fact, KU students should count both their blessings and their money. If they were natives of Pennsylvania, they could be expected to pay for their tuition or of their tuition in some of that state's schools.
At this point, it is difficult not to avoid sounding like a public relations brochure. But it is true that the students are getting a pretty good educational bargain for the amount of tuition they pay.
Most people (except for a few hold-outs in Manhattan) agree that academically, KU is the best state university in Kansas. And with careful planning and careful choice of professors, it is worth costive receive an education at KU that would cost five times more at a big-name college back east.
In increasing the tuition at KU and at most other state schools, the Regents seem to be in mind of offering their own scholarships.
administration has brought into fashion—if you use a service, you pay for it.
Within limits, that kind of policy is warranted.
The proposed KU tuition increase is well within
the limits.
In contrast, the federal government's education funding plan does not seem quite as harmless. If implemented it could cost some students thousands of dollars, not $40, and it could cost many others the chance to attend college at all.
Students who qualify for work-study programs would earn only $2.75 an hour, and families would be required to spend 20 percent of their income on education before receiving financial aid.
In general, Reagan's plan for higher education would make student loans smaller and harder to qualify for. And it would cut funding for basic grants in half.
According to the plan, 500,000 fewer students would receive basic grants in fiscal 1982, and about 100,000 fewer students could receive National Direct Student Loans.
In those halcyon days, every boy wore a letter sweater, earned spending money by working in the corner drugsstore and was supported by Mom and Pop, back on the farm. And incidentally, in those days 75 percent of college students were named either Bib or Mary.
Perhaps the problem is that members of the Reagan administration remember college days as the simple, happy time depicted in our president's old movies.
Therefore, the drastic cuts in student grants and loans that are proposed could have a devastating effect on millions of college students.
In real life, however, most students pay for some of their education, and a large proportion of them are not.
The education spending cuts should be fought before they become policy. And later this month, student lobbyists from across the country will meet in Washington, D.C., to do just that.
However, back here in Kansas, the proposed union agreement, nor as untested as the Reagan proposals.
The increase will help bring state university charges up to date. And it's probably about time, because fee increases have recently trailed revenue and the rate and the 25-percent that was originally set.
Later, if students are asked to pay more than 25 percent of education costs, there may be cause for alarm. But at the moment, it is unnecessary over paying an extra $40 each semester.
Today and tomorrow, perhaps students should address their cardinals not to Topeka, but to Wichita.
KANSAN
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Sigmund Freud, well-known purveyor of things psychological, might have termed this a
Cold turkey means strange habits
It wasn't too long ago that grown adults cavorted across television screens, clicking their heels together and shouting things like "I'm stubbing it" at the tops of their healthy pink lungs.
Well, you may not know it judging from the choking blue haze that makes finding a table in Wesco cafeteria such an adventure, but all those silly slogans, not-so-silly scrape tactics and downright disturbing medical evidence have finally paid off.
Most recently, a physician came up with a humorous way to combat the majo image tobacco companies try to promote: He's fighting fire with fire by developing advertising that makes smokers look ridiculous. There's one ad of a handsome guy with a cigarette up for the smell. There might be another ad with a really rugged guy lighting up. His fly is down.
Coupled with a vehement crusade by non-smokers for their rights, and some crafty
There were ominous postcards showing the lung of a nonsmoker, clean and pink as a kitten's tongue, in a glass jar next to the crusty, black lung of a smoker. (This evoked mortal fear in some kids and just left others wondering why, if the guy with the pink lung was so healthy, was his lung being pickled in a glass jar?)
Leaflets got handed out in public schools. They had pictures of an ugly old hag with a cigarette stuck to her upper lip, and the caption read, "Smoking is very glamorous."
Then somebody found out that smoking increased the risk of heart disease. That smoking tobacco, like taking birth control pills treated with an injection, made the breath bad and stained the fingers.
entrepreneurs who saw there was plenty of money to be made helping people quit, federal and private anti-smoking campaigns have grown, according to some such as 41 percent, according to some estimates.
Other studies show that, 36 years ago, more than 50 percent of adults smoked cigarettes. More than a third of Americans smoke.
This is super news. Aside from the obvious health benefits, it might be safe to assume that
JUDY
WOODBURN
But before the back-patting gets too vigorous, there's one thing to remember: Old bad habits never die; they just make way for new ones.
you'll smell 41 percent less smoky when you come home from the bars on Saturday nights.
Multinational cigarette companies responded to the decline by looking elsewhere for a receptive market. They turned to the largely unattapped Third World, to roughly two-thirds of the countries where only 24 percent of the countries have any health regulations regarding smoking at all.
Some of the new ones are serious.
Through one side of its mouth the U.S. government espouses the dangers of smoking and urges the nation to quit lighting up. Through the other side, it urges the tobacco industry on with Commodity Credit and Department of Agriculture loans.
Tobacco is even included in Public Law 480, which was designed to improve markets for U.S. agricultural commodities overseas through the Food for Peace Program.
Freud might have called the government "schizophrenic" in this respect.
It's not surprising, though, when you consider that tobacco is a mult-billion dollar industry in the United States, and that it brings in more than a few billion dollars in taxes every year. But it also makes it a truly lethal habit? I hear they have a population problem in a lot of countries anyway.
Luckily, there is also a lighter side to all this.
are ovaries. Now that people have cut down cigarettes, it seems that there's been a proportionate increase in the number of other things they re sticking in their mouths.
There's chewing tobacco. Blame it on the "Urban邦ony" syndrome if you want, but spitting brown juice has definitely overtaken exhaling blue smoke as the muy macho thing to do in some places. One California school student tired of metting out suspensions to be punished by the sidewalk was forced to create "tobacco extravaganza" areas in each of the city's three high schools.
And then there's gum—the new nicotine gum for confirmed addicts, sugarless gum, softie bubble gum, gum that squirts. An informal count in a recent political science class showed that nine out of about 25 students were chewing gum, some more discreetly than the remaining 14, five were chewing reflectively either their fingernails or the ends of their pens.
Freud might have called this a "need for oral gratification."
Finally, there are the people who have really gone for a drastic change. They've started putting stuff in their noses instead. It's cocaine, and according to conservative estimates, the use of it in the United States has increased by more than 14 percent in recent years.
I'm not sure what Freud, an avid user of the white powder himself, would have called that.
Baby boomers now face serious challenges
The baby boom. So much has been made of that overworked phrase. It is perhaps the ultimate cliché of the generation that came of age in the sixties and seventies. But it does fit. What happened between 1945 and 1961 was spontaneous, a boom, a unique phenomenon that wouldn't have happened if it weren't for World War II.
The baby boom is the period from after World War II when landed birth rate rose dramatically in the United States.
After the war, the returning servicecame canned from the hospital and established their private honor. Hence the baby born
It perfectly accommodated the growing suburbs and the sudden increase of disposable income. Parents were intent on having the good life and giving it to their kids. It all fell together.
It peaked in 1987 and then began to decline. Reasons included economic uncertainty, improved contraception, easier access to abortions and growing concern about overpopulation.
For a long time, I didn't think I was in the baby boom. Being born in 1960, I thought I was too late to be included in those years. But not according to biologists. Besides, I never have really felt a part of the baby boom, members of the baby boom. It was too young to participate in the events that galvanized the 1960s.
But I vividly remember the unrest of the time, of the dark days of the Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy assassinations, of living room and the TV and of the promise and dashed dreams that have been created by them, as they shaped everyone in my, and our, generation, shaped me, though in a different way.
Well, we are growing up according to 'Time
and Place' curriculum and perceptions of the college students in
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We are different than the first part of our generation. We are pragmatic and intent on getting jobs and getting ahead, though there may not be much left when we arrive. We realize that. Idealism is out. College is for job skills and learning for its own sake is secondary.
The attitudes are OK, up to a point. All we are doing is hedging our bets against an uncertain future. The economy is so shaky and there is no chance it will happen. Nothing wrong with protecting yourself
their junior and senior years about to graduate
the last of the baby boomers.
But at the same time, by being so pragmatic
DAN
TORCHIA
Change the world we can't do. But we can solve some of the problems that face us. We are inheriting a lot of them, by the way. Energy, crime urban decay, social programs, roles of leaders and societies that need and the aged all have major questions that need to be answered. There are others.
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The people in power aren't going to solve them. They don't have much time left in power. Those in power since World War II are ending their reign. The leaders in all areas of society are
we have lost the idealism that was the best quality of the sixties youth. By deliberately aiming our sights in one direction, an economic one, we may be missing the entire point.
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The attitude of the old guard was that Americans could do anything, could solve anything. There is a lot wrong with that attitude.
It is unrealistic. But it did give us the pluck to overcome many seemingly impossible problems.
We haven't replaced the flaws in the old attitude with anything else. We can't do everything, and we correctly realize it, but we need the pluckiness. It is missing in a lot of us.
Last month Darrell Sifford, a writer for Knight-Rider Newspapers, wrote about his 21-year-old son, who was just about to graduate from college.
"Here I am at 21, and I know that I've already had the highest standard of living I'll ever have," he said. "It doesn't seem fair. No matter how hard I work, it's out of my reach."
It depends on what you're reaching for. Most of us weared on affection and conspicuous spouses there are the just have to be more realistic. There is a knowing note of defeatism that should be there.
That could spread to what we need to do. We have to try, but with modified scopes. It points back to our old attitude, that we could do anything, also brought us the attitude that we could have anything.
But now that isn't proving true. Our new attitude should be that we can solve some of our problems.
Now that we are growing up, we have to reconcile this attitude. We baby boomers range in age and experience with problems to solve. But we also have a lot of experiences and a bit of potential. Let's see what we can do.