Page 4 University Daily Kansan, February 18; 1981
Opinion
Balancing the budget
Today President Reagan is expected to deliver to the American public his proposals for slashing federal spending. He doesn't pretend that the proposed cuts for the fiscal year 1982, which begins in October, will balance the budget, but he is apparently hoping that the cuts will lead to more cuts, thus balancing the budget by 1983 or 1984.
He warned the country in his speech earlier this month that the cuts won't be painless. But if the proposed slashes are anything like what his advisers have been advocating, the cuts will be far more painful to the lower classes of America than they will be for the upper ones.
Among the areas that have been suggested for massive cuts are Social Security, where it's proposed that payments be ended to students whose parents are deceased; the CETA jobs program, which some advisers say can be totally eliminated in 1982; and the food stamps program, where eligibility requirements may be tightened and benefits reduced.
Apparently, there's only one area of government that's sacred and safe from the budget ax-defense. Washington analysts say that instead of demanding cuts in the Department of Defense budget, Reagan may want to increase Jimmy Carter's proposals for the defense budget by up to $25 billion—giving a whopping $220 billion or more to the military next year.
Budget-cutting is not easy, but it will be a great tragedy for America if Reagan someday manages to balance the budget at the expense of the poor, the elderly, the unemployed—in short, at the expense of those who have the least to give.
It can't be right that food will be taken from hungry children and jobs away from the hard-core unemployed at the same time the military is beginning the MX missile program, destined to be the largest and most expensive construction project ever undertaken. It can't be right to starve the poor in order to give the generals manna from Reagan.
If indeed the budget has to be balanced, there's another way to make expenditures equal revenues—the institution of more progressive income tax programs, to make the upper classes give more because they have more to give. But as long as Congress, the Senate in particular, remains a clubhouse for millionaires, the kind of tax reform that could finance necessary social programs is unlikely.
In essence, the only fair way to balance the budget is to increase revenues—something that the rich, as loudly as they may protest and as strong as their lobbies may be, have an obligation to provide. Striving for economic equality in America is at least as important as balancing the budget. Now, perhaps, both steps can be taken in one.
Despite fears of growing old, wrinkles not so bad after all
In a few weeks my father will turn 60 and a few months later my mother follows suit. It's pretty hard for me to believe and, frankly, I think they're caught by surprise as well. Last weekend, the mother told me, "I remember going to the beach when I was your age and seeing all those middle-age ladies with vicarce veins packed into their one-piece bathing suits—never believing that one day it might be me. You know, despite all its marvels, modern medicine can't stop the march of time and all the wrinkles that will come with it."
Her viewpoint certainly seems reasonable and yet it's one almost nobody in our society wants to
DAVID
HENRY
accept. Like hamsters running on a wire wheel, Americans are obsessed with finding, perfecting and maintaining their youth. But while spending our time running to keep thighs trim and bellies from sagging (I'm told that the term "jogging" is now out of date), we are missing the mark.
This race for youth begins almost at birth. Children are barraged by television commercials telling them that getting rid of gray hair and丑气 age spots will make grandmother more irritable, more irritability. At an early age, children come to understand that young is good and old is bad.
And children themselves are increasingly sucked into the race. Brooke Shields' sexy 16-year-old backside is spread on billboards to sell blue jeans, and no one really worries. After all, children have to grow up sooner or later, or so the advertisers tell us.
When children finally reach adulthood, the going doesn't get any easier. Instead, as growups, we see a different set of commercials. Apparently, simply being young is not enough. We want them to eat healthy while spending in the bundle eating, drinking and smoking in the process. Only if we spend time and money dressing up those few youthful years will genuine happiness be found. In essence, we are about to happiness in sex appeal, brought about by whiter teeth, fresher breath and smoother skin.
All too soon, however, the race begins in earnest. People awaken one day and find the first wristle or 10 extra pounds. The tennis shoes, gathering dust since college days, come out of the closet. Lunch consists of yogurt and carrot sticks washed down with Perrier. Cosmetic counter salespeople offer creams and lotions with a knowing smile. They can read people's minds: "If it can't be stopped, then, by God, at least I can try to slow it down."
Some people have more stamina and can continue these actions for years, but eventually the marathon takes its toll. Sooner or later, everyone is undeniably older. Dubbed mid-life
crisis, people accept the inevitable with varying degrees of happiness. According to movies and television, men typically buy a sports car or a suit and tilt while women consider a facelift or cry lot.
Perhaps the strongest evidence supporting a notion that Americans are obsessed with youth is expressed in our attitudes toward older people. anyone over 60 is a painful reminder that our own youth is only temporary and, sooner or later, we face the same problems. Thus, retirement communities and nursing homes offer a partial solution for old citizens from the community. In believing that an older person cannot contribute anything much more substantial than darned socks or a good story, young people do themselves and their elders a disservice.
I'm not sure why Americans are obsessed with youth in the first place. Perhaps it's because we're largely a consumer-oriented nation. Styles in clothing, cars and almost everything else reflect our changing tastes. The old and the new of fashion from the new and stylish. Advertisers know all the tricks to convince us that it's time to "go for something new and improved," usually modeled by young people who look as if they themselves need more clothes. But we receive it, "young is good and old is bad."
Possibly, the same message is being applied to people. By being young we're in fashion and therefore, we'll go to greater pains to stay that way. Old age, like driving an old Chevy or wearing bell bottom jeans, is to be avoided at all times. Older cars, old people can easily be placed out of sight and out of mind—well-wewn commodities which no longer serve a useful purpose.
Certainly the source of the problem is more complicated than what my previous two paragraphs inadequately explain. For that reason, it will be completely missing the mark as to why America should have withdrawn. I do, however, believe it's a problem that need not be a problem.
Youthfulness is a frame of mind, not a tiny waistline or Malibu tan. A 70-year-old person can have the energy and keen mind of a 20-year-old. Actually, a person's contributions should increase with years, as their knowledge and wisdom continue to grow, and not be put out to pasture at age 65 with a gold watch and a testimonial dinner.
KANSAN
Most importantly, genuine contentment doesn't come from wrinkle-free skin or from "jogger's high" but rather from what we do with the gray matter between our ears. Rather than trying to hide it as much as we can, count. Growing older can be looked upon as the opportunity for new and different experiences. Right now I enjoy being 22 and it's hard to imagine myself being 60. The thought of middle-age spread and a receding hairline doesn't thrill me anymore, no more time, I realize I can't stop growing older, no more how quickly I try to run. And if you can trust my mother, it best helps to the best of us.
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"WEED OUT THE GREEDY TO HELP THE NEEDY"
Ella Grasso's leadership inspiring
Back in 1974, I remember seeing a newspaper photograph of a woman, her arms thrust triumphantly into the air, her head thrown back, her mouth caught by the camera jubilantly between smile and shout. I remember thinking how happy she looked, wondering why, and wondering what could fill a middle-aged woman with such exuberance.
I remember reading the caption, reading that this woman was named Ella T. Grass and that she had just been elected governor of Connecticut. And I remember feeling excited for this woman and for myself, because this Ella Tambussi Grasse was the first woman to be elected governor in her own right. She had to be, I remember thinking, an incredible person one whom I, at the age of 15, decided to keep an eye on.
So throughout Grasso's term and a half as governor, I watched She was surprisingly moderate, a frugal economist (she graduated magna cum laude in economics from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts), who managed to both spur economic growth and maintain a low unemployment rate, and a tenacious executive, who believed in Connecticut and its people and in governing them to the best of her ability.
Grasso died Feb. 5, of cancer at the age of 61, after fighting since last April the disease that eventually forced her in December to resign, halfway through her second term. Reluctantly she had resigned because she hated to quit her job and was unable to find the best for her state; in this case, she knew the best for Connecticut was not an ailing woman in Hartford.
Connecticut had to have believed in her, too, for in her nearly 30 years of public service to the state, Ella T. Grasso never lost an election. And they believed in her until the very end, as was proven recently by the thousands who passed by her casket in Hartford, thousands of loyal citizens who stopped by to bid Ella goodbye.
Rather, an alluring person in Hartford, Grasso no doubt would have corrected. For although she was to the women's movement the epitome of success and the exemplar of their cause, Grasso did not envision herself as a woman in it but rather "as a person who is a woman."
Her womanhood was almost a non-important characteristic of the professional Ella Grasso.
AMY HOLLOWELL
something that she looked upon as a rather insignificant and minor fact, neither an advantage nor a disadvantage, and unrelated to her qualities as a leader.
In fact, during her first gubernatorial term she said that she had not begun "to think I was doing something unusual" until the press started talking about her as a "woman candidate."
"I never thought that being a woman gave me any special political problems," she said.
It never gave her any special personal problems, either. Married and the mother of two children, Grasso never was much the stary-around-home type. In 1953, her children barely grammar school age, she was elected to the Connecticut Legislature, where she was to serve five years before becoming Connecticut secretary of state in 1958. Long before the term ever existed, Grasso was the quintessential working mother.
Perhaps she worked because she always had, coming from a poor family; her parents were Italian immigrants who ran a small bakery in Windsor Locks, Conn. A bright and disciplined student, she won scholarships to prestigious Chaffee School and to Mount Holyoke. After her first victory in 1953, Grasso was headed for a career in public office. She served, after 12
years as secretary of state, in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1970 until her election as
Throughout this career, nothing seemed to stand in Ella's way except her own aspirations—as she once said, "I would not be president because I do not aspire to be president." And after observing her for merely seven years, one cannot help but believe this.
A Democrat to the bone, Grasso was a champion of liberal social programs, of government spending as an economic motivator, of opening government to the public, as well as streamlining and simplifying it. But she was also unpredictable, hardly an across-the-board liberal. On occasion she would upset some of the party's staunch constituents with a surprising position, as she did in 1975 with her "quits and fires" bill, which reduced unemployment compensation for laborers who quit or were fired.
Similarly, feminists didn't favor Grasso's anti-abortion stance. But Grasso, an Italian Catholic, did not support a constitutional ban of abortions, at least not until the issue could be addressed. And grassosgress. And feminists often wished that Ella had made more of her role as a woman.
But that role was not Grasso's former role, any more than the former roles of her male colleagues were as men. She was, as they were, a public servant, working to help her state and improve conditions for women. That she was good at it is significant; that she was a woman makes it all the more wonderful.
And back in 1974 this was what filled that young 15-year-old girl with wonder and happiness. There was that photograph of a jubilant victor, of a daring and committed victor, who had fought and won, and who happened to be a woman. It was the woman part that caught the young girl's eye, but it was the victory and the jubilation, the conviction and the courage that kept her attention, because it is the latter that was truly Ella Grasso.
KU's drop policy should itself be dropped
In case you haven't read your timetable, I'll let you in on the current university decree: Today is Wednesday.
Unfortunately for many of you, and myself as well, the golden semester is seeldom realized. Vindictive professors, antiquated attendance policies, ineg grad assistants, banal texts, mounting economic pressures—all and more are reasons enough to abandon school and lessen the impact of high stress on students to thank God. When the gets tough, the tough get to the office of admissions and records.
Ideally, this should mean nothing to you. If all has gone as you planned, you are enrolled in classes that are intellectually enthralling, presided over by highly-pedigreed professors with pleasant dispositions, and which require only a modicum of work.
But the tough have only one month into the semester to act, and then blam!—the Big Blue institution lowers the penal boon. And to what end? A University administrator or a business professor might argue that any good monetary purchase should include a limited warranty. And yes, the University is a big business, like it or not. The tuition we navy attests to.
But we didn't pay to be punished for a simple change of heart or mind. We paid for a liberal education, as in liberal arts and sciences. There is nothing liberal about an institution that damages a student's GPA for own selfish motives. The University appears to have lost its sense of urgency; students in its raison d'etre, and without us the money stops flowing.
would shout. A University can't be a success without its failures. Well, it's not the University we're concerned about here, it's the students. If a student decides a week before semester's end that he has no hope of passing a course, why not let him drop it? He has wasted his time; that
What am I hiting at? *13* something short of a total shred of the world, and I'm in a tidy row *14* with *F* and *S*. Blasphemy, the absurder who
KEVIN MILLS
Then why do they inflict the Ws and F?' School officials would probably argue that the University needs to maintain some sort of academic credibility, else the students would quit enrolling. But you can bet that any university that offered a free-drop, no-F policy was populated with fee-paying students. And it's well doubtful that college employers would look with less favor on KU after all, the same professors and programs would remain in existence. And besides, grades don't mean dodley-squat during job interviews anyway.
seems punishment易受。He will either have to make up the course or take something in its stead. The University has his money, so there should be no problem from their perspective.
P
Perhaps the University feels that penalties like W's and F's instill a sense of responsibility in students. If they fail the arbitrary drop date is wrong, and should know and remember our stin. But it is so wrong?
Do we have a moral responsibility to ride a course out to its dismal end? A financial responsibility? My God, is it a breach of contract?
The University assumes too much of the individual student's responsibility as it is. It tells us what kind and how many courses to take it into the proper niche. It mandates that we see their own their unassisted advice. Not that academic guides in our university are wrong, or undeasured. But when a student indiscretely fits into the University with no forethought of his own, just who is the responsible party?
Students who refuse to go along are correspondingly punished. Those creative enough to design their own curriculum are hung with the Bachelor of General Studies degree, which guarantees nothing but a diploma and a hard time convincing an employer that, yes, you must attend departments still institute archaic attendance programs, and ensure that a student is a student, whether he is a kindergartener or college senior. Responsibility? You bet.
Opponents to my scot-test proposal might argue that students would drop classes so frequently that they would overload the system by repeating them wantonly. Perhaps more instructors would be needed to handle the extra enrollment. But since when has the University sought to restrict enrollment? Would they not welcome the extra backs?
So if you think you might want out of a class a month or two from now, you'll better exercise your brain and responsibility today. Tomorrow the "grace" period ends, and the really sadistic stuff begins.