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Opinion
University Daily Kansan, February 25, 1981
Taxing one's patience
The latest news from Detroit is that thousands of auto workers—presumably, those who haven't been laid off from work—are staging a tax revolt. But instead of dumping K-cars into Lake Erie, they've been doing it by falsifying their income tax returns, or simply refusing to file them at all.
The Internal Revenue Service began to take notice of the revolt when more than one auto worker claimed numerous dependents. It seems that when someone claims 99 dependents, even the government has to realize something is fishy.
Some protesting auto workers claim it's unconstitutional to have to file IRS forms
because reporting their incomes violates the protections against self-incrimination. However, reporting your income is only self-incriminatory if you're ashamed at what you're earning, and besides, there's a whole amendment to the Constitution legalizing income taxes.
Perhaps these overburdened, overtaxed, overbearing auto workers are to be pitted, although not because they have to pay taxes to that mean, nasty old government. Rather, they should be pitied because their greed has blinded them to the thousands of fellow auto workers who would gladly pay income taxes, and who are only asking for an income to do so.
Everything's great at KU, with these few exceptions
Januarv 29
Dear Mom and Dad.
Well, I survived Country Club week and enrollment and finally got a chance to relax and start classes. Things are going well. I am getting back into class and this is only the second week of classes.
I don't know why, but it seems that things start to happen faster in the spring semester than in the fall semester. I'll try to backtrack and get you up to date on what has happened.
Do you remember me talking to you about the social welfare professor who went to Iran
DAN
TORCHIA
last year? He is back in the news. Some state representatives are conducting these tests, and they are conducting these tests for the housing system.
He said that the professor's trip to Iran was an embarrassment to Kansas and that there ought to be some way to get rid of professors like that. Too many of them were protected by tenure. The legislator had these hearings, and he went on to go to Topeka to testify about his trip.
I didn't see anything wrong with what he did. He got other faculty to cover the classes he was teaching, and how hard are social welfare classes anyway?
I thought he had a good idea. He got a nice vacation out of his trip, so I decided to try my own diplomacy. I told my English teacher that I was going to El Salvador to try and work out the situation there, but she didn't want me to help him; would take care of my homework, but she still wouldn't believe me. It was worth a try, anwav.
The biggest news this week is that a fraternity here lost their registration with the University over a supposed hazing incident, and now they can't be affiliated with the University. It's all they're talking about at the Wheel.
I guess a couple of their pledges turned their house in. I was talking to a couple of guys here at the house and they said if any of our pledges did that they would make them do pushups for a week. You can't argue with logic like that.
It snowed the other day, the first one of the year. The campus sure is pretty, but it is hard to drive. But they try to make it easier. There are barrels of sand at the bottom of all the steep hills. The problem is, they're usually so full of trash that you can't get to the sand.
I found out the real reason the barrels are
there when I drove down 11th Street too fast. They help you stop when your car slides off the road. Oh, well. The damage to my car isn't too bad.
Boy, those buildings and grounds people, they sure are on the ball. They've been clearing off the trees and bushes so the weight of the snow wouldn't harm them. That way everything will be nice and green in the spring.
My roommate, who is a botany major, was explaining this to me when he slipped and broke his ankle. They hadn't cleared off the sidewalk yet. You gotta have priorities.
That's all for now. Take care, and please send me my ski mittens. It's cold.
Dear Mom and Dad.
Februarv24
Thanks for the Valentine's Day card. I recognized your handwriting, Mom, although it was nice of you to put "a secret admirer" at the bottom. It's the thought that counts.
Well, I spent another Valentine's Day alone,
lutting in old Barry Mankion records.
Songwanna played on the piano.
I know a woman who called Valentine's Day
Black Saturday," she's right. Next year I'm
him.
It's a slowed down some from the first of the semester. The snow is gone. It didn't last too long. I am kind of mad because I never got to use my Taco Tice tray to slide down the Campanile and, I went through a lot of it to steal it. Maybe it will snow in March.
Most of the news that has been happening has been with athletics. The athletic corporation raised the student prices for the basketball games. Both are going to cost around $25.
Most of the people I've talked to about it are upset about the increase. "Stick it to the alumni," they say, and I kind of agree with them. Who are the games for? Not the students, I guess. Or at least that's what the KUAC thinks.
The KU-Kansas State game was last week, and that was exciting. There was a big stir the day of the game. A bunch of K-State students watched the game and wrote a lot of things about the Wildcats.
A lot of KU fans were upset, but I was surprised. I didn't know K-State people could write. Anyway, we won the game, so that shows who is right.
Well, that is all for now. I'm bidding my time until Spring Break, but it's getting hard with all the nice weather. The evangelists should be coming back soon. That will be exciting. Please send cookies if you think of it. See you soon.
Love, Dan
Cut, snip, trim
Washburn would be unfair burden
Washburn University is dying financially, but no one will let it fade gracefully awaiv.
Topeka legislators, guided by Republican State Rep. Bill Bunten, have introduced a bill to save the municipally supported university from extinction, and in doing so may be sacrificing the overall effectiveness and quality of education in the state of Kansas.
If the bill proposed by the 10-member Shawnee County delegation passes, the state of Kansas will be paying for a small university, whose faculty will offer liberal arts courses and a law school.
According to the bill, the Kansas Board of Regents would take Washburn under its wing, incorporating it into its system of seven Kansas universities. The Regents would be expected to budget between $15 million and $20 million to keep Washburn from going under.
Washburn now receives its money from student tuitions, which are comparatively higher than other Kansas schools, and from the state and tax revenue from the city of Topeka—the highest property tax rate in the state. Student tuition and state aid dollars represent the major portion of the money available for Washburn's budget.
This isn't the first time Washburn has come to the taxpayers for a handout. In 1914, the university was put on the city's tax roll and made a municipal university. If the entire state is now being asked to foot the bill for Washburn, what the state can't afford the bill either?
Bunten says that the bill, which is before the House Ways and Means Committee, is only to provoke thought about adding Washburn to the state system.
"Nobody expects the bill to pass this year or next year," Bunten said recently. "The
important thing is that discussion has been started on the issue and that the attention of the local taxpayers has been directed to Washburn's problems."
Not only has the public's attention been drawn to Washburn's problems, but the Kansas Board of Education has agreed.
CYNTHIA
CURRIE
direction, and not with the most admiring of glances. The Regents have had enough trouble getting legislative approval for the universities the board now represents. Another $20 million is more than Chairman E. Bernard Franklin thunk you could get away out of a budget-conscious Legislature.
And the state doesn't need to find room in its budget for a university that duplicates the courses and degrees available at other Regents institutions. Less than 25 miles away from Washburn, the University of Kansas offers a school of law which, realistically, is better than Washburn's, and a liberal arts college said to be one of the best in the Bie Eight.
If the size of a Big Eight school such as KU or Kansas State is unaware, Falling HU State University and Pittsburgh State University are two of the smaller schools in the state system. If you want to attend more than happy to host transfer students from Topeka who would boost their enrollment.
Extra students at the small schools will offset expected enrollment declines. The money they
bring will allow schools to attract students by improving their courses and campuses. This year more than 40 improvement projects were submitted to the Regents by member schools.
Ultimately, Washburn will put its bids on the legislative shopping list for improvements, even though the university's officials say they will ask us to change them. That status will once. Once again, it's a fight for the dollars.
But money is not the only issue involved with the transfer of responsibility for Washburn from its own Regents to the Kansas Regents. Bunten's motives for sponsoring the bill are unclear. Washburn Regents have charged Bunten with paying a fine, but he also has a personal friendship with outgoing Washburn president John Henderson, who resigned after the Washburn Regents refused to rehire him.[15]
It took Wichita State University eight years to be incorporated into the Regents system. Eight years from now, the prospects for Washburn won't look much better than they do now. The school's staff of 100 students in schools when enrollments are expected to decline and support for higher education is waning.
Washburn doesn't offer anything unique. To ask Kansans to fill Washburn's coffer is unfair and economically bad business for the state. It is especially bad business when President Reagan is slashing state grants and leaving the states to either increase taxes or lose services.
It's sad to see a bastion of higher learning succumb to inflation and financial insolvency, but the city of Topeka and the state of Kansas can no longer afford to support a dying university. Like other small liberal arts schools, Topeka is now trying to generate substantial private support, or lead a future that can be none other than a slow, painful death.
Letters to the Editor
KU medical scholarship program an asset
To the editor:
Most KU students have read the articles about the proposed state Senate bill sponsored by State Sen. Mike Johnston, which would eliminate the medical scholarship program at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Many students, especially pre-med majors, disapprove of the bill, but how many will do something about their feelings?
First, we have to understand the program. The program pays for a student's tuition and also provides $500 each month for expenses. In return, the student must practice in an underserved area of Kansas for five years. Currently, a student may repay the loan with interest (10 percent) and avoid serving in the state.
Abolishing the entire medical scholarship program will not help future doctors attend medical school. Johnston's bill will not solve the problem, but it could have underserved. Johnson even suggested using the money "saved" by abolishing the program to laure doctors from other states to come to Kansas! Tax money can't be used to educate Kansas students and should be encouraged to encourage nonresidents to practice here?
Pam Fitzpatrick Madison freshman
Only a little of your time is required to let your representatives know how you feel about the bill—your life or the lives of your relatives could have been upended upon their own. Legislature's vote. Pam Fitzstrick
As taxpayers and future patients, I urge all students and faculty members to write their legislators and to urge them not to support the bill. Pre-med majors should be especially concerned, but so should all people who may one day become a pre-vent medical care that simply does not exist.
Don't blame the rich
The tax proposal seems to be based on a faulty assumption, which is implied by the statement "striving for economic equality is at least as important as balancing the budget." But how
The editorial “Balancing the budget” in the Feb. 18 issue is basically harmless until near the end, when it becomes downright terrifying. In the land of supposed freedom, the Kansan government has built budget problems that momentarily caused me to forget where I was. After reading phrases like “economic equality” and the suggestion that more progressive income tax programs should be instituted to balance the budget, I had to make sure I hadn't been mysteriously transported to a different world.
Tothe editor:
B
important is economic equality? The United States was founded largely on the principle of equal opportunity, and that includes equal access to public services that that economic equality itself should exist?
The two supporting "reasons" the editorial offers for the need of such a tax structure are first, the rich "have more to give," and second, the rich "have an obligation to provide."
It is true, the rich do have more to give, but who feels like giving when so much is being taken? People who have their product taken are probably not going to call slaves. Now they are the obligated rich.
And from what principle does this "obligation" originate? There is no logical rule, law, document, bill or philosophical statement that says one man is responsible for another. In fact, if a person is free, he really has no obligations at all, except to allow others to be free.
The question of who to support cannot be answered by statements like "It can't be right." It is not a moral question, but a strategic one. The majority of people on Capitol Hill now believe that more people will eventually benefit from a strong defense than from certain social programs—unless, of course, they are acting on other selfish motives, which tend to happen in governments. The solution is to hand the question of stealing from the rich transends time. That answer depends on principles and reason, which never change. It can be wrong.
David Drumm Lawrence junior
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