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University Daily Kansan, March 10, 1981
Opinion
One tin Senate . . .
Once upon a time in a mythical kingdom, there was a legislature charged with the duty of running itself. It had the power to take in dollars and to appropriate dollars—real ones, not Monopoly money—and it spent a great deal of time deliberating just who would get how much.
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But up in the castle on the mountaintop lived the king, who had already determined just how much would be given. And when the legislature's final decision didn't agree with the kings' edict, the legislature found out why the country was called a kingdom.
KU is far from a fairy tale, and KU's Student Senate isn't so mythical. Neither is its constituency—but its power, if last week's events are any indication is.
For, after weeks of deciding how much (if any) next year's student activity fee should be raised, the Senate found it didn't have the final say in the matter.
Acting Chancellor Del Shankel, rubber-stamping a suggestion by David Amber, vice chancellor for academic affairs, decided that the $14.55 activity fee requested by the Senate was just too much—especially with the other increased fees and tuition students will be paying next semester.
That would have been a $3.45 increase over this semester's activity fee, and would represent the first hike in the fee in several years. In cutting the request, the administration forced upon the Senate an artificial ceiling—$14 tops, no more. And the Senate is left with the unpleasant job of deciding who of the deserving gets cut.
The chancellor's power to overrule the Senate in such matters should be a safeguard against totally unreasonable actions—but a $3.45 increase to pay for the Revenue Code-funded student organizations is far, far from unreasonable.
The administration's edict doesn't save students a potful of money—just think of all the fun you'll have with that 55-cent windfall—and worst of all, it undermines student authority over its own affairs. Imagine one of the puppets in the old "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" show getting out of line and Fran whacking it into submission with a two-by-four, and you've got an idea of how the Student Senate was whacked back into its place . . .
"Now they stood beside the treasure On Mt. Oread, dark and red, Turned the stone and looked beneath it; 'Fifty-five cents' was all it said . . ."
Special convocation address must confront real problems
KU students are going to come back from spring break with the opportunity to hear Acting Chancellor Del Shankel reassure the University of Florida about concerns in a University-wide convocation.
Administrators are closed-mouthed about what these concerns are. Perhaps they're trying to whate our interest, or prevent us from leaving the classroom, but we know a lot about the problems at the University of Kansas.
Perhaps the upcoming NCAA tournament makes it unwise to reveal the topic right now. In light of Shankel's statement in the Kansan last Wednesday to KU faculty, staff, and students
JANE NEUFELD
alumni about student athlete academics, we can probably assume that a good part (or at least some) of the convolution will be about the academic progress of KU athletes.
Somehow, people at the University seem less than friedened about the problem. A few administrators and professors huff and puff and reaffirm that a lack of academic progress, the way they do every time anything at the University is criticized. It's a fill-in-the-blank problem—criticize something and will reaffirm their commitment to high standards, pure hearts, motherhood and apple pie.
But it's hard to how anyone could be crushed by the charges the Kansas City Times made against the KU athletes. After weeks of investigation, the paper announced to the world that KU athletes were deliberately taking easy classes.
It was an anticlimax. Where is the scandal we were all expecting, the allegations of bacchanalian orgies in the locker rooms, the hundred-dollar bills slipped to the athletes by shifty-eyed coaches? "Here kid. Buy yourself some and get cranked up for the big game?"
Instead, we got a pallid brew saying that athletes are steered into easy courses by their advisers, that they get other people to do their class work and they throw themselves on the
mercy of their professors and try to get their grades changed when they fail a class.
Certainly, academic incompetence is a matter of some concern, but it's hard to imagine that people didn't know such incompetence existed, not only for athletes but for everyone.
The problem is not just athletics, but any time-consuming extracurricular or academic activity that takes time away from studying, whether it's basketball, debate, theater or band. The more time spent on any particular interest, the less spent on classes.
Every person must determine his own balance or time spent on academics and time spent on other activities.
Few people spend a day debating or rehearsing a play and feel like studying when they get home. It also is probable that few athletes come to town for training and practice it's time to relax. I think I'll read my chemistry."
If a student athlete doesn't get a degree and doesn't make it as a professional athlete, he could add digging ditches. He will probably not realize it but he is realizing you couldn't get a job with that degree.
It is ultimately not the University's or the adviser's job to see that people take their education seriously or make clear-headed choices that will lead them to an upper-middle class good life when they graduate. The individual must decide what he wants to do.
True, advisers can steer students into awful classes, but any person who hasn't figured out that 50 percent of college advisers are reckless dolis is a slow learner. It is still the person's duty to select classes and to ignore foolish people who stand in his way.
The University can provide the classes, but it cannot force people to learn from them. The best it can do is try to see that the classes use a college, not a high-school, level of material, and that the professors do not unjustly favor athletes in their grading.
We can hope that the convocation is not going to be a lot of high-minded rat about KU's wonderful academic program and ceaseless dedication to education. Maybe it will even have something useful to say, like 40 legal ways to get an Kansas University slashes our budget any more.
But if it's about academic slackers and cheats, more people should be cringing at a few stale news.
Oh, John! Oh, Rita! Oh, brother!
Ever since Watergate, we've heard story after story about Watergate and the fast-paced world of high-powered conspiracy theorists.
Juice stuff, isn't it? But do we really need you know about all this? Why are they tearing their marriage apart in public? It's not doing them justice. How do we see our perceptions of Washington and politicians.
© 2018 MIMI NAGA
When we last left our couple, they had quarreled on the Phil Donahue Show. Rita was a guest and John called in. In front of a national audience they quarreled about money, John's recurring drinking problem and Rita's posing for Playboy.
Want to follow a good soap opera? Forget "Dallas" or any of the mid-morning shows. There is a real-life soap opera that puts them all to shame.
I'm talking about the saga of John and Rita story. In case you haven't followed the story, you can read it online.
John meets Rita in Washington. He is a selfmade congressman, putting himself through school. She is the wealthy daughter of a cattleman.
They marry, and she goes about the business of being a congressman's wife. She tries intuitively, but she is criticized for being outspoken and not conforming to a more sedate image.
Then Rita discovers $2,000 in one of John's shoes. Some of the serial numbers match the money. John and Rita separate. Rita bars records, in words and pictures, for the April Playboy.
Then ABCAM hits. John fights for his political life, with Rita by his side. He is convicted and works on his appeal. Rita writes an article about the episode, "Diary of a Mad Congresswife," not all of it complimentary to John.
surprising that nothing gets done. Everybody is too busy partying. Or being corrent.
In Watergate, we got Nixon's bugging and a burglary. In Corvengate and the storied influence brought by Hillary.
Those were the big scandals. We heard about the smaller ones, like Wayne Haws and
DAN
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Elizabeth Ray and Wilbur Mills and Fanny Fox.
Now we come to ABCSCAM, and more talk of influence buying. John and Rita, mostly Rita, have provided most of the publicity. The rest of the MDA defendants are wisely avoiding the spotlight.
But Rita plugs away, effectively burying John and herself and chipping away at any credibility politicians still might have with the public.
Are all politicians that way? Are they all boozeers, just fitting from one reception to another, accepting money and women along the way? What do we believe?
Did John and Rita really make love on the Capitol steps when the Congress was in session late one night, as she maintains in the Playboy article? Did a governor really bargain on her when she was in the show? Did a lobbyist really supply John with women and liquor?
Does she really need to tell us these things?
In the Playboy article, Rita defends her profiling off of ABCAM and her husband by saying she is not the first to profit off a scandal.
"I am criticized for speaking out of turn, exploiting myself and cashing in on my husband's misfortune," she wrote. "It seems that his memoir is a woman's indiscretion."
Well, she does have a right to memorize, but she exhausted a long time ago. She had a legitimate story to tell. Being the wife of a college professor at SCAM had to be a painful thing to go through.
Writing her article, "Diary of a Med Congresswoman," which came out last December, was justified at the time. She was candid about her life in Washington, and she provided information about one aspect of political life—the wife's role—that was not offered before.
But now she has gone beyond that. She is unabashedly cashing in, appearing on TV, posing in the nude, and negotiating the book and movie rights to her story.
She really has not added any information to what she has already told. Her TV appearances and her Playboy article are rehashes of what she wrote in December.
She should be criticized now, and not for her gender. Anyone who is involved in a scandal and then tries to profit from it, like Richard Nixon with his TV interviews or Liz Ray with an attempt to be an actress, should be criticized. It's anyone's indiscretion, not just a woman's.
But no doubt she will continue on. The divorce proceeding should be starting soon, and more details will come out about soiling Washington and John.
But there is no way she can avoid soiling herself. After all, she was a participant in Washington, an observer. As the details get juicier and jucier, a lot of people—including Rita—are going to be affected. No one is going to gain.
To the editor:
Letters to the Editor
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The saying "money talks" has become somewhat of a revered adage in our society today, yet the principle on which our nation was founded is that the majority of the people have an inherent human right to govern the destiny of their community.
action development. The wisdom demonstrated by such action is all too seldom witnessed in our region, where one medium-sized town after the other has succumbed to the pressure, politicking and pecuniary power of an outside developer who, in bringing to its own personal gain, was on bringing to the market the pavement and a "climate-controlled" monolith, with it the demise of the city's own downtown.
The planning commission has recognized the inductability of that right - hats off to them.
The commission has demonstrated by its vote a degree of commitment to, and concern for, the welfare of the majority of its constituency, which has become and is partly in the erse of the cost-benefit analysis.
Let's just hope the city commission proceeds in as enlightened a manner later this month.
Jeffrey Grogger
Let me see if Ive got this straight: my First Amendment guarantee of free speech can be considered denied if someone refuses to finance espousal of a particular political theory. In other words, if someone refuses money to enable me to publicize my position, I am being denied the right to state my position.
To the editor:
Questionable funding
I can imagine the uproar that would ensue if someone organized a campus chapter of the Moral Majority or the National Rifle Association and was awarded student funding.
Dubious logic, at best! Yet this seems to be the argument being made by certain student committees and organizations up in arms over recent court rulings that have led to the recognition of one-sided political views be reconsidered.
Free speech is there for anyone who chooses to
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exercise that right. If the belief is strongly held, those holding it will find a means of expression. To assert that I and every other KU student must bankroll those who wish to air their views or be guilty of a denial of constitutional rights is not only a tenuous legal argument, but would seem to indicate that political conviction proceeds from adequacy of resources.
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I cannot believe that those holding such strongly felt convictions would not find a means of expressing their beliefs in the absence of Student Senate funding.
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Pam Johnston of KU-Y contends that "the very idea of setting up guidelines threatens censorship." I cannot help but feel that if a member of her increasingly political organization requested KU-Y (and thus the Student Senate) funding for, say, a pro-nuclear energy committee, that person would find himself in a veritable forest of KU-Y guidelines.
Student Senate funding of political organizations should be an all-or-nothing proposal. And because funds are necessarily limited, the rational and fairest course for the entire student body would seem to be to refuse to fund such groups. To equate such a policy to censorship is to admit that one has nothing to say unless somebody pays.
Colin Gage
Coll Gage
Lawrence graduate student
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