Opinion
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, February 17, 1981
Fine way to treat KU
KU's parking situation is like the weather. Everybody complains about it, but nobody ever does anything about it.
However, unlike the weather, if you wait a minute, parking problems don't change. They stay just as bad.
Last week, a Student Senate resolution showed why nobody ever does anything about it. The resolution, which aimed at removing the extra fine levied against students who accumulated enough tickets, was buried better than pirate treasure by the University Parking and Traffic Board.
The board, you see, says it can't do anything with the resolution until next fall, when it revises parking regulations. As parking board chairman Harold Yarger explained, "It should have been brought up in October."
Oh, well, October's only eight months off.
Be here before you know it. (Incidentally,
KU Parking Services will keep giving out
tickets in the meantime. They don't have to
wait.)
Other University boards and groups manage to change policies and regulations during the course of the year, not just for a free magic day out of 365. The parking board, however, is apparently special.
Parking is a major concern to students because last year, KU Parking Services issued enough tickets to give one to every person crammed into a packed game at Memorial Stadium, and still have a few left over to stick on windshields. That's 54,879 tickets in 1980. That's a lot.
The inflexibility of the parking board's sacred schedule makes rather ironic Yarger's comment that any student with a gripe should "come to the student board members. They are on the board to represent the students."
Senate learned the hard way what their representation really means. You point out a problem, and you wait eight months for it even to be looked at. The main lesson here, it seems, is that whoever it is that has the say on KU's parking policy, it most certainly isn't the students.
Possible NCAA violations should concern all students
When the Kansan printed a story last November about alleged phone abuses by members of the basketball team, a lot of people I know were upset. Why attack KU athletics, they said, especially with the Kansan being a school newspaper?
When the Kansas City Times printed allegations 11 days ago about lax academic standards among athletes and possible NCAA violations, the same question came up.
Either people are upset at the Kansas and the Times for looking into the allegations at
all, or they are not concerned by the alterations.
DAN
TORCHIA
What is harder to accept is the apparent apathy by students and sports fans. Why isn't it harder for them?
The first reaction is easy to accept. Whenever a paper investigates an institution like KU athletics, there always are going to be some people who don't like what is being alleged or don't like the paper doing it at all. That's fine.
True, none of the charges have been substantiated outside of the newspaper articles. And they may never be. It may be that the athletic department has taken care of the long distance absences and that there was nothing to the stories of lax academic standards.
But there also is the possibility that KU violated NCAA guidelines. And that is a very
"Sure they take a lot of put classes, but so everyone else," one student told the Kansai.
"Our stories upset a lot of rabid sports fans," Michael Davies, editor of the Times, told Sports Illustrated. "Many seem shocked. They tell us, 'What you are printing can be wrong.' Even if it is true, so what? Everybody else is doing the same thing."
Most of the reactions by students and sports fans are common. The allegations, they said, were not that surprising, and hell, other colleges do it too.
Then we shouldn't be concerned, right?
Then we should be concerned, right? No. We should be concerned. The fact that everyone else does it dramatically enlarges the problem of corruption in college sports. If the abuses are that widespread, then something has to be done to revamp the program.
There has been a lot written about student apathy, about how all we care about is job security and a piece of the pie. This wasn't meant to be another column bemoaning the failure of students to do it, but the student reaction to the sports allegations is one more facet of our apathy.
Wrong. The allegations concern rules violations and breaks that ordinary students don't get. Corry as it may sound, people believe the rules when they hear about alleged illegal practices.
The latest round of stories didn't happen on the West Coast, where the Pac 10 became the Pac 5 because half of the teams are on probation, but in the Midwest. The three major Kansas universities-KU, Kansas State, and Oklahoma are violating its. It is surprising, if only because these things are supposed to happen elsewhere.
As children of the Watergate era, are we simply fed up with and desensitized to every abuse, real or imagined, that the press picks up? Or do we just not care? We should be concerned when two newspapers in four states start shady activities by the athletic department.
Sports has done so much for KU and for the state. At KU, it brings in a lot of revenue and alumni support, two things that are vital to running the University.
KU, and KU athletics, is not God. It is not infallible, nor is it beyond the scope of an investigation. If something is wrong, then it should be exposed and corrected.
Or in our own rush to look out for number one, we have no reason to single out the athletes, who after all are only getting ahead in their own way, right?
Then there is the opposite emotion to apathy, the outrage that some people have. They are mad that a newspaper would have the call to investigate KU athletics.
If the NCAA or the Big Eight finds that the athletic department is in violation, it is going to be much harder for the department to continue doing the good it has done in the
Sports spreads KU's name all over the state. The first contact many people have with KU is with sports. Without it, people need to go to non-sports services that the University offers.
KU now has the opportunity to prove to the NCAA that none of the allegations are true. But the implications, if they are not correct, will be all of people. And we should be concerned.
I hereby proclaim you guilty until proven innocent
Letters to the Editor
Abortion columns prompt responses
To the editor:
My emotions immediately swelled at reading Amy Hollowell's editorial on abortion. She hails the right of every woman to choose whether to "terminate" a living fetus; yet, I ask if it can be allowable for a woman's liberty to cause a living person's death? I cannot accept it.
Our nation has had the best of everything, yet we allow an abortion to be committed once every five minutes. How tragic. If a woman decides to have sexual intercourse, she accepts the responsibility of possibly being blessed from God with a living child.
I realize that a pregnancy can begin at an inconvenient time in a woman's life, but there are those who are willing to help her and her child. Birthright, an international organization that provides financial assistance for encouragement to have the baby, and to help in finding the financial and medical assistance to do so. I really believe that Birthright is taking positive actions to help the unborn. I pray for the day when a constitutional amendment will be passed that lives, because my own life is so precious to me.
Linda Paradis
Chesterfield, Mo., sophomore
Henry owned slaves
To the editor
A few remarks in regard to Amy Hollowell's Feb. 9 column seem to be in order.
First of all, by appealing to Patrick Henry concerning such a question as abortion, Hollowell made use of an ad verecundiam argument, an informal fallacy of relevance.
'Even if Henry's views on the issue were known to Hollowell (she seems to suggest what they might have been but never clearly states them), they could not logically be considered authoritative because no true authority on such a subject exists
Secondly, the choice of Henry as a standard bearer for Hollowell's position appeared odd and perhaps somewhat ironic. One must remember that Patrick Henry, in addition to his work as a lawyer, was an active slaveholder and firm defender of the prominent slaveholder and firm defender of the peculiar institution. Evidently Henry's commitment to liberty was so great that he could not abide the thought of infringing upon one human being's right to choose to act brutally against another human being. Or possibly he simply defined "human being". In such a way as to those whose rights he did not care to protect.
James Clinger
The example of Patrick Henry is, of course, in no way directly relevant to the issue of legalized abortion. But it is intriguing to note that many times those who appeal most loudly to the values of liberty may also many themselves be guilty of promoting and defending the most fundamental of barbarities.
James Chung
Lawrence graduate student
When life begins
In his editorial on Feb. 8, Eric Brende claims that the fetus has human traits from the moment of conception, and therefore should be given the rights of a human being. Brende also states that the fetus' brain begins functioning by the sixth or seventh week.
To the editor:
If Brendee feels that the fetus is entitled to the rights of a living human being at conception, he is obviously at odds with the accepted criterion for establishing death as defined by the 1968 report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School.
The committee concluded that if the electrocephalogram (EEG) is flat and no change is noticed in 24 hours, the fetus is declared dead. Using this criterion, the fetus would not be considered a living human being for the first six months of pregnancy, even if it were not in the womb.
Secondly, I would like to respond to Brende's comparison of legalized abortion with genocide. Nazi Germany attempted to kill off races of people because these specific groups did not "fit in" with the Nazis and were killed down these "subhumans," and kill them. After the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was legal, I know of no one who went out and hunted fetuses and killed them. In fact, today I see pregnant women moving freely throughout the United States. In Nazi Germany, I doubt very much Jews or gypsies were freeely from ghettoes and concentration camps.
Marc B. Fried
Prairie Village junior
Don't argue—leave
After reading Eric Brende's editorial on
To the editor:
abortion it becomes apparent to me that anti-abortionists and anti-gun controllers are one and the same; that is, a group of conservatives narrow-minded individuals. Brende's attitudes are quite typical and representative of those held by others who take his side of the stand on these issues. It seems they always try making their passion through the use of illogical, irrelevant comparisons.
Fr
Kansa Frank which asked
It's just too easy to respond to someone like Brende who asks that because passing laws against abortions won't stop the demand for them, why don't we then make it also legal to hire murders, because there will always be a demand for them, too? Shouldn't we then, or rather, eliminate other laws that are usually ignored just because they are also often ignored?
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It would just be too easy to say, "Sorry, Erie, but one thing had absolutely nothing to do with the other." If you had absolutely nothing better to do, or just wanted to waste some time, you could tell him that one cannot logically compare the two, and even if you could, he would still come out wrong. For although the question of what to do with other laws is not what is being dealt with but rather, specifically, only those who have a lawyer, one would still be yes, maybe other laws that are being ignored do need to be remedied. In Elgin, III, for example there exists an age-old law that claims it is illegal for flying supersons to come within city limits on Sundays.
People like Brende find it easier to confuse the issues than to deal straightforward with the one issue at hand. People like me find it too easy to argue with people like Brende. It is usually much easier to point out the holes in their reasoning than it is to save your breath for questions about what you're doing about but then, you're lowering yourself down level of argumental ignorance. So take my advice, and don't take the easy way out. Instead, bite your lip and walk away.
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David Traisman
Wilmette, Ill., senior
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