Opinion
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, January 30, $198^{a}$
C'mon, kids, quit hazin'
Alpha Tau Omega fraternity found itself out in the cold this week after its registration with the University was revoked. In other words, it can no longer be affiliated with the University—temporarily, at least.
Such dishonorable punishment came as the result of dishonorable acts, revealed by several ATO pledges. The fraternity, they said, practiced hazing during pre-initiation activities a few weeks ago.
Fraternity members have whimpered that whatever happened—and no one's saying just what did happen—it wasn't any atrocity, and, besides, everybody else does it anyway. As one member said, "We just got caught."
So did Nixon.
Boulder, Ark.
Hazing, the "grown-up" version of childish initiation rites practiced by many youth groups, has somehow survived from the Dark Ages until the Year of the Prep, 1881. It's based on the fundamental principle that people will do in groups what they'd never consider doing by themselves.
The average Greek isn't some sort of blood-sucking goul that lives solely to torture, abuse and humiliate young
pledges. But somehow, when pledge time rolls around, hazing raises its ugly head and once again, the green Greeks are embarrassed, knocked around a bit, or worse.
Hazing was accepted for many years as part of that crazy college life, until recently, when fraternity systems cracked down on the practice because people in various parts of the country started getting killed. Such tragic deaths bypassed KU houses, but hazing remained.
Such childish rites continue because of the 'we-all-went-through-it-and-survived' syndrome. Those in the upper hierarchy of the national fraternities are unanimous in their condemnation of hazing practices, but word doesn't seem to have trickled down to all the local chapters yet.
Will the disgrace ATO has suffered bring an end to hazing at KU houses? Probably not, and that's too bad. What a pity that all the good a fraternity does—raising money for worthwhile civic causes, helping orphans and the like—can be eclipsed by one ugly incident of hazing.
It's time all the fraternities at KU receive a sudden dose of maturity and make haziness a thing of the past.
Revenue Code organizations deserve increase in funding
Next Tuesday, a small group of students will make recommendations that may affect, among other things, the expansion of legal services to students, the number of visiting concert artists coming to KU and the effectiveness of the student lobby group in Topeka.
These students, as members of the Student Senate's Finance and Auditing Committee, spent this week listening to the budget requests of groups funded through the Revenue Code. And
DAVID
HENRY
on Tuesday, they will pass their opinions on to
their colleagues. The fiscal decisions
will be made next Wednesday.
Revenue Code funding isn't as complicated as it appears. Simply put, certain student organizations and services that serve a large number of students on a regular basis receive part of the activity fee you pay during enrollment.
Revenue Code groups have yearly expenses that are paid out of this block allocation. All other groups request Senate funding each year during budget hearings. The $11.10 you pay is broken down to support the University Theatre, KJHK-FM Radio, the University Daily Kansan, KU Bands and numerous other broad-based organizations on campus.
None of us need be reminded how expenses have risen over the past four years. Prices for everything have skyrocketed. Yet the last student activity fee increase was in 1977, according to Loren Busy, chairman of the Finance and Auditing Committee. Revenue Code groups have been hard-pressed to keep pace with rising costs in operating their organizations.
For example, the Kansan's printing costs have risen 69 percent since the last activity fee increase.
Jacqueline Davis, director of the Concert and Chamber Music Series, said, "The cost of the current series is twice that of the 76-77 season, rising from $28.83 to $33.00. Moreover, we are experiencing an annual increase at at least 11 percent in expenses simply to run both series."
Every Revenue Code group faces the same problem: how to maintain a consistent level of services with a budget shrinking because of increased costs.
In one way or another, everyone in the University community uses the $11.10 worth of services he pays for, probably more quickly than imagined. Only when you compare what you pay for a concert or theatre performance at KU- usually free or, at most, a few dollars—to the $10 to $20 you'd pay elsewhere, do you begin to see how valuable the student activity fee really is.
Even if you were to only one concert or played racquetball twice during the semester at Robinson Gymnasium, your $11.10 paid for itself, because you spent far more than what you actually received.
Therefore, the decisions that will be reached by the Senate next week will affect all of us. Busy estimated that the additional $139,000 requested by Revenue Code groups would add an additional $3.50 to our student activity fees next year. We believe that at a bar or the price of admission to a movie.
In the recent past, the Senate has come under attack for being oblivious to students' needs and concerns. But these claims are by their very nature subjective and open to dispute. As such, the Senate must not disprove these charges in dispute but also to disprove these charges through its decisions next Wednesday.
Certainly, the Senate should review carefully the requests; there indeed may be waste that can be cut away. However, I hope our student senators make their decisions in the proper perspective. Keep in mind the services these groups provide and the increased costs they would pay. We must pass since the last fee increase. Finally, try to remember the last time you actually got a good bargain. The student activity fee, even with a nominal increase, is one such bargain.
Letters to the Editor
America not so bad, after all
To the editor:
Kevin Mills appears to feel that the current rise of conservatism is tantamount to impending doom. The liberal had a shot at solving the nation's problems and failed. Good intentions are not worth anything without practical application, something the so-called "liberal" seems to forget. Perhaps it is time for the realist to step forward.
His ever-popular cheap shot at America also misses the point. It is the people in the United States who govern. There are political power groups and centers of influence, to be sure, but in the final analysis, it is the average citizen who has directed America's course. The defeat of former President Johnson in the primaries and the midterm elections has classic examples. It is not the United States that murders the opposition when a new ruling group takes over.
Mills also lives in a different world than I. The rest of the world does not believe or live in the same manner as the inhabitants of Kansas. It is a cruel, vindictive and corrupt world out there, and it is the human life. To be innocent and unarmed in this world ensures only one result, extinction.
The world is not starving because of a lack of help from the United States. Cambodia and several African nations have starving populations because their governments prevent food shipments from arriving. Where is the hue and cry against Vietnam, which is continuing its genocide of the Cambodians? Where is the support for the Afghans?
the united States has always given aid during disasters such as the recent incident in Italy. One might remember that it was the U.S. military
that was at the forefront in distributing this aid and helping the survivors. In conclusion, Kevin Mills, you might try reading other American clichés such as, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country!"
Virginia Beach, Va., senior
Jeff Johnston
KANSAN
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For years you've turned on television Now let television turn you on.
President Reagan's opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment has provoked little outcry.
Sex stereotypes thrive on television
Women seen not to be apathetic but complacent. They have won a number of important battles for equal pay and the right to enter the workforce, such as medicine, law, politics and sports.
Most people pay lip service, at least, to the idea of dignity and equality for women.
But underlying the lip service are clear indications that basic attitudes toward men and women have still changed very little and complacency is premature.
Television commercials are one of the best illustrations of current attitudes. A recent study conducted by Cleveland State University showed that the attitude toward women in commercials was about the same as it was 10 years ago.
This conclusion should surprise no one who watches television. A typical scenario in a commercial is a group of women turning to the news for advice to a live man for help in solving a domestic problem.
Although more women have entered the job market, the study said, they are still, for the most part, depicted as housewives and mothers.
"Relax, ladies," he soothes them. "Try new improved bright-brightening Brand X. Even the stains your little ykes get rolling in your clothes (girls) won't stand up to this detergent."
Relieved and grateful, the women vow to buy Brand X to remove the ring from their husbands' collars. They will how have bright laundry, wonderful sex lives, grateful children and the envy of all the neighborhood women whose whites are gray and dingy.
Of course, women are not limited to doing laundry in commercials. They also bake dream pies instead of cream pies that are awarded first prizes by male judges. They worry about finding a dishwashing detergent that leaves their dishes shiny and their hands soft. They seek the elusive cup of perfect coffee and the elusive batch of moist brownies.
The role of men in commercials is hardly admirable, either. Men are smug authority figures carrying boxes of detergent, or they are bumbling idiots who need their wives to find the right cold medicine to relieve their symptoms and the right bran cereal that is both tasty and nutritious.
Bad as the commercials are, they cannot equal the caricatures of sex roles found in
JANE NEUFELD
much popular literature such as Harlequin or
Gothic romances...
The novels range from suggestive to sleazy, but the basic message is the same. Women are foolish and helpless and prone to gasp or tremble uncontrollably if confronted with any crime. They are lauded, stern individuals who alternately atlack it and attack the shivering women.
The hero of the book, generally named Bart or Garth or Steve or Bruno, eventually carries off the green, gray- or violet-eyed heroe named Felicia or Virginia. She will now find eternal bliss as Bruno takes care of her and protects her from the outside world.
These novels sell. Their basic premise—love and sex and conflict and men and women falling into bed and marriage—is an old one and not of itself without merit. Anyone who avoids contact with this plot and reads Plato's *Criticism of the City* can banish, but like eating twinkies and watching “Three's Company,” cheap books offer no artistic merit but much enjoyment.
Still, current exploitation of this plot could drive a sensitive person to give up sex and retreat to a Tibetan monastery with seven cats.
The books show a relationship between men and women, with contempt, lust, sass, and sadness. Sandra and sademan
Typical dialogue from a Harlequin romance, one of the more innocent brands, runs like dinner party dialogue from the Marquis de Sade:
She: You endow every man with your own base instincts.
He: You call them base? I call them male. How does it feel to know that all those men out there would like to be sharing your sleeping bag?
She: You're the most horrible man I ever
loved, it's absolutely nothing, will
influence not to keep her secret.
After 200 or 300 pages of this, the hero and heroine can't stand it anymore and they get married. They realize they have been in love under the guise of mutual contempt and loathing.
The sleazier novels are more explicit, but the message is still the same: She resists, he pursues and she will yield in the end because she really loves someone who can take charge and relieve her of all the trouble of having to think and act for herself.
Commercials and books don't lie. They are made to sell. If they were presenting an idea that was unpalatable to the public, they wouldn't sell and the idea would be discarded. The fact that the idea of women as fools and men as animals does sell suggests that we have a long way to go before we can feel satisfied with new and improved sexual roles.
The books are not shy about who should dominate in the relationship. In one of them, described on the cover as "A rapturious love story," the hero tells his true love, "You're a great friend, but, I think you can be brought to heel. Perhaps I've just used the wrong techniques."
We will know we have broken through when we see a Harlequin romance whose brown-haired, brown-eyed heroine is a tax accountant with a weak-and-skeptical nest with a weak-chinned hero named Harold.
Pot Shots
One of my dreams is to wear a men's suit size and not be mistaken for my junior high cousin.
Some say my height, 5 feet 6 inches, is not short. In a way, they are right. I know I'm actually 6-foot. It's just that nobody else can tell.
All my friends have these grand dreams of
Dan Torclin
All across America, these street-wise, no-jive little gmea once are again getting the "yeah," yeah, yeah. (For more on how the gmea got it, see www.americangmea.com.)
getting Danforth Fellowships or landing a cushy top shelf of my closet without reaching the
Shoes talk. Penny loafers say, "Gee whiz, Pop!" Black pumps say, "Good evening, Dahling." Wing tips say, "How's the market, Dahling?" Wing tips say, "How's the market, Dahling?" Wing tips say, "How's the market, Dahling?" Wing tips say, "How's the market, Dahling?" Wing tips say, "How's the market, Dahling?" Wing tips say, "How's the market, Dahling?" Wing tips say, "How's the market, Dahling?" Wing tips say, "How's the market, Dahling?" Wing tips say, "How's the market, Dahling?" Wing tips say, "How's the market, Dahling?" Wing tips say, "How's the market, Dahling"?
Actually, it's not bad being short. I can get into movies for half price. I never have to worry about low shower heads. But there are disadvantages.
I can't remember how many people have asked me, "And how is your cousin in college?" When I tell them I'm the cousin in college, they usually get flustered and start to stammer.
One time, I saw a great suit on the boys' rack. A boys' size 19. The cut was stylish, the fabric was of one that natural weaves and it fit like a cat. But the cut was too much to have the ducky taken off the lapel.
When I applied to Yale University while a senior in high school, I did so imagining myself strolling among the ivy-covered Gothic buildings, chatting with distinguished grayaired professors over lunch in Gothic dining halls and reading Gothic novels nestled in what I somehow knew would be the fifth-floor dormer window of my 100-year old Gothic dormitory
new wave's answer to country and western's cowboy boots, have leap back into fashion, revived from the early years of rock 'n' roll, with a kind of softening. The new jets, and the Jets, wouldn't have worn anything but.
While slick leather models with multicolored swishes and stripes are gracing basketball courts, true "yeah, yeah, yeah" high-tops are out here. The finest are white canvas Converse All-Stars.
High-tops are simple, comfortable and durable, their energy bounded only by that of their wearer. Their style is versatile, blending as well with straight-legged Levi's as with purple leotards or black denim jeans. And their language is universal, singing happily forever and ever, above the assorted carton of the shoe world, simply, "Yea, yeah, yeah!"
bedroom. (In case you didn't notice, I have been momentarily seized by a Gothic fixation.
Indeed, Yale wouldn't be a bad place to go if you had $10,000 to spend on古建筑 architecture.
However, at the University of Kansas you can get about one-fifth the Gothic architecture for about one-fifth the price. This is not a bad deal, especially if your passion for gargoyles doesn't happen to be all-consuming. What's more—and I say this with confidence having done some time at both institutions—KU throws in an education that quite possibly can equal that of Yale's, provided you know what classes to take and what teachers to take them from.
Sure, it's a no-frills education—no hand-carved wood paneling, no stained glass windows, no libraries resembling Notre Dame Cathedral. It's also no lifetime student loan payments.