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Opinion
University Daily Kansan, January 28, 1981
Showdown in Poland
Polish laborers got a day off from work last Saturday. Or, rather, they took the day off.
Probably half the Polish labor force didn't report for work that day, in another of a series of protests aimed at the government's refusal to grant a five-day work week.
That Poland runs on a six-day work week may surprise Americans, who've come to believe that a 40-hour week is some sort of birthright. The Polish government, however, insists that the length of the week is whatever is best for the country.
Polish workers, meanwhile, have been entertaining dangerous notions that they, the people, have the right to determine what's best for the country. Hence, they
demand two days of rest a week rather than just one.
Saturday proved again that the country could, and would, rally around Solidarity, the independent workers' union in Poland. Solidarity first showed its strength last summer, when it initiated a series of strikes that crippled the country.
But because the government is not likely to make substantial changes, despite its promises last year to do so, Polish laborers are steadily working their way to another showdown. If the government thinks that it has solved the nation's labor problems, it will have to think again.
The big confrontation is yet to come. And if the history of Poland's sister satellites is any indication of what's in store, Soviet tanks may wind up resolving the question of who really rules Poland.
Scholars' training program should aim at wider group
Adjust your telescopes. A new cluster of stellar objects in the University Scholars, will soon be visible in the K12 telescope.
This spring, 20 likely overachievers from the freshman class will be chosen for membership in the scholars program. They'll be assigned special advisers who are hand-picked from the
JUDY
WOODBURN
ranks of the University's most distinguished faculty. They'll attend a special Junior Honors Seminar, and they'll write special papers, a prize of the University, and a prize of the Rhodes, Marshall or Fulbright award.
As in the informal "mentor" system that flourished at the University of Kansas beginning in the 1960s, promising students will be targeted for the careful guidance in choosing courses and instructors that could help them to nab one of those ever-elusive and prestigious scholarships.
The grooming process will begin at an early age, essentially during the second semester of the freshman year, as prospective geniuses are screened for acceptance into the program.
According to Phil McKnight, the programs' chairman, these 20 brilliant neophytes will eventually be required to present research papers in a setting that will approximate the competition for scholarships. That way, they'll have to compete against students they're thrown to the pack of bloodstuphy faculty evaluators who screen and nominate students for scholarships during their senior year.
The program's a great idea. It's the kind of preparation and guidance that has been missing from the University support system ever since the "mentor" system fizzled in the 1980s. Personal experience has proven that shooting for a big-time scholarship is no party. It's an event second on the list of life's most grueling judgments only to St. Peter's roll call at the Pearly Gates. Over the past, she has often gone this thick and hard process with only the advice of well-intentioned—but misinformed—fellow students to guide them.
A few years of organized and through preparation could do worlds of good not only for ambitious students, but the University as well, because KU's national reputation would grow with each distinguished scholar drawn from its tutelage.
Ves, the program's a great idea, at least for
widely used applications deemed worthy of
enrolling in its elite ranks.
But it seems that in a program like this one, the objective should be to provide the greatest possible opportunity to the greatest possible number of deserving students. And surely there are more than 20 such bright and capable students each year.
I worry about the bright students who, for some reason, don't quite make it into the scholarly fold as freshmen. Will their chances for nomination by the University for a big scholarship be affected because they did not attend to the kind of guidance that nurtured those 20 special students?
Ostensibly, any student who wants advice in applying for a scholarship or fellowship can get it. But it usually doesn't work that way. Students often don't know where to go for the kind of help they need, and they often end up with conflicting answers to the same question.
It's an unarguable advantage to have a group of concerned and respected faculty members at the center of this work.
I wonder, too, if some exceptionally sharp students might not be excluded from the program just because the selection is made so early in their academic careers.
If you're not a freshman now, think back to that first tortured year at KU when you were greener than the grass on Daly Street and even learn about your scholarly or career aspirations. Your interests and talents may still have been rather poorly developed, and all of a sudden, they want you to apply for a program designed to prepare you for something that's a good three years away.
Perhaps high schools could start an earlier program that would prepare students for application to the University Scholars program. Or, more realistically, the program could be opened up to any student seriously considering applying for one of the big-name scholarships. It wouldn't jeopardize the caliber of students in the program because well-known students probably don't waste their time applying for graduate awards in the first place. It would give a few more students a fighting chance at a scholarship that means so much to their scholastic lives.
But if faculty resources demand a smaller, more manageable number of students, why not simply delay decisions on acceptance into the program until the sophomore year? It would still allow a good two years to prepare for the big event, and it would allow bright students more than one flimsy semester's worth of grades to prove their academic worth.
Letters to the Editor Parking lots of trouble at KU
To the editor:
I write this letter to document another of the daily inspirational experiences available to all at the University; not a weight one to rival the University; not a weight one of life's small but meaningful dramas.
The tale continues that very evening, the night of the Kansas-Missouri game. It seems that law students, by crafty alleging a need for library access, have obtained 50 passes for reserved parking close to school on game nights, available to those who don't have basketball tickets.
Our story begins with the villain, one of those truly privileged, self-assured future fat-cats, a KU law student. Confident of his status, he appears on campus at the outrageous hour of 10:20 a.m. and finds himself in an ample funds have purchased him parking-place-security only steps from the classroom.
Feel no sympathy for our struggling villain.
After all, with a little luck, he too can someday become a wealthy alumni contributor and park anywhere. The real message here is the example
But wait—there are more permits than places, and our villain, are rather driven to O Zone and be late to class, must swallow his corpulent pride for a few days of metered parking lot west of the Satellite Union.
Holding one of these passes, our villain casually returns to campus at 8 p.m. and flashes his study ticket with a devil-may-care grin. However, once again he is thwarted; the attendant informs him that those “reserved” spaces double as “overflow for lot 3” and are filled. Our artistic shivers as he finds himself and his permits shunted into the cold mainstream of common traffic. His frivolous studying must wait.
Mark Hinderks
Lawrence law student
of courage and diligence provided by those men and women who protect our precious parking resources from students. We can all rest safely tonight, knowing that even though occasionally maligned by sarcastic letters to the Kanan, they have been given the power to toward the ultimate goals of metered spaces in the library stacks and a no-backing-in rule for sitting at student desks.
Foreigners mistreated
To the editor:
He reported, with some bewilderment and hurt, that even his simple “hellos” were being rebuffed because he was being taken for an Iranian. Are we so provincial at KU that all dark-haired foreigners are lumped together in one group? And what is more to the point, are we so small, indeed, so cruel, that even if the student were an Iranian, we would take out on him our frustrations for actions for which he was in no way responsible? Perhaps the American Gothic stereotype of the dour-faced Midwestern is accurate, after all. I hope not.
Recently I had occasion to speak with a new student at the University who had just arrived from one of the small countries near the Persian Gulf. I had encouraged him, naively, as it turned out, to spend as much time with speakers of English as he could so that his experience at an American university would be a rich and valuable one for him.
Elizabeth C. Banks
Associate professor of classics
Courtesv abandoned in selfish rush
Hers was a paradoxical grumble. That this saleswoman should frown in the face of a potential buyer was curious, if not rude, even if it was a typically busy Sunday afternoon in the museum bookstore. After all, such an inquisitive browser, one would imagine, could be cultivated by a courteous clerk into a "properseus" purveyor. It doesn't matter whether Sunday or not, busy or not, buyer or not, courtesy should be, it seems, essential to the art of salesclerking.
Not to mention to the art of living.
But the frowning clerk, the disgruntled waiter, the impatient movie goer, all are becoming characteristic motifs of the art of American living. More and more, with out the old push/shove, we wouldn't even recognize ourselves.
Go, for example, to the Friday night movies, particularly to a box office smash, and take a place in line. Wait in the winter chill for maybe five minutes until "friends" of the folks ahead of you show up. It's the familiar grammar school "tail"训, right; Problem is, one person's "tails" are another's "heads" and "friends" lead to "friends" lead to "friends."
Problem is, everybody's trying to get ahead. Not only at the movies, but on the highway, on the telephone, at the bookstore, in the cafeteria. You are not alone in needing the energy for courtesies or the desire for either.
Sociologists attribute the impolite modern American, in part, to a deep-seated feeling of anonymity. Barely recognizable specks in the eyes of American youths yearn to be just that—a reasonable speck.
So they give themselves significance. They put themselves at the head of the line. They pick up only their own trash if they pick up an any. They rarely serve others, and even more rarely
do they do so happily. They only give the next
beneath them, or a greeting if it first
becomes themselves.
We like ourselves, is that then why we can find time to like anyone else? Maybe. But maybe we really don't like ourselves at all, so we won't want to let anyone else be liked either. Some
AMY HOLLOWELL
experts say we're a desperate lot, deeply unhappy with how things are going and feeling
"Life seems out of their control," says Jonathan Freedman, Columbia University psychology professor. "This builds frustration—and the single role that we build, that tends to lead to anger and aggression."
In the depths of this anger, Americans lash out at whoever happens along. A disgraced waiter, then, maybe has his rent payment due, as well as a car payment and the government's 1940, and the matte d' if informed him that if he comes late again, he need never come back.
But then what of President Reagan's son, who refused to shake the hand of his father's defeated opponent because Carter had the "morals of a snake?" And what of the cigarette smoker who refused to smoke the face of an unsuspecting non-smoker? Definitely not an overwhelming despair swirling here.
Perhaps the younger Reagan is such a prin-
cipled man that mere common courtesies cannot
sway him. Perhaps in his eyes, frankness and sincerity far outwhelm raciousness as virtues.
Says Harvard University sociologist David Reisman, "We live in a society in which letting it all hang out and being candid are viewed as virtues, and this leads to rudeness."
This is the "tell it like it is" *mentality*, born of a newly-friended society burdened by chains of conformity, conventionality and archaicism. Finally let loose, we've gone maybe a bit too far.
Meanwhile, the smoker at the next table is simply unaware, hardly attuned to the discomfort he is imposing on the non-smokers around him, but highly aware of the pleasure his tobacco is providing for himself. Once again, self over other.
This is exactly in accordance with democratic principles, with survival of the fittest, to each his own, finding one's place in the sun and all the other by-words of true Americanism. This is, after all, a truly "look out for yourself" nation, a nation that has pitiless fatalism and democracy with unsurpassed rigor.
As we struggle to redefine the roles we play and the ways in which we play them, we've brushed the old etiquette off the stage. And we're not sure, it seems, how to fill that empty spot, and we're not happy, it seems, with what we've got.
So in our national heritage there are traces of the individuality and self-centeredness that we now see surfacing in contemporary American manners. But in keeping with this tradition we are now so accustomed to the use of common courtesy; thank you's are hard to come by as of late, as are excuses me and pleases.
Because, sure, values change with styles,
doors open and principles remain; but as words
are to literature, courtesy must remain essential
to the ever-changing art of American living.
American misconceptions hide real Russia
Bv THOMAS J. WATSON JR.
New York Times Special Features
MOSCOW—When I said farewell to the American press corps in Moscow the other day, I complimented them on the quality of their reporting. They have done much to explain the workings of that country to all of us. But, at the same time, I had to tell them that despite their best efforts, the Soviet Union is not basically understood by most Americans.
Oh yes, we know who controls the levers of power; we know they are an ageing lot, most of whom will not survive this decade; and we know something about the factors that lie behind those policies, both internal and external, that we so often find abhorrent. America's lack of understanding does not result from a lack of information.
It stems instead from a mistaken belief, augmented from time to time by articles in our press, that we can continue to assert ourselves in the world and successfully compete with the Soviet Union without sacrifice and without major new demonstrations of national will.
we long for days gone by when the United States had nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union and knew that if push came to shove, we were in a dominant position. There are snake oil salesmen and medicine men in America today perurying their various and sunny balms with all sorts of promises of quick fixes that would restore us to this position. A basic element in most of these elixirs is a call for a rapid build up of our nuclear forces, accompanied by assurances that the Soviet Union will be unable to touch us.
Even if one could achieve meaningful nuclear superiority—and one could not—I submit that this is a fundamental and dangerous misunderstanding of the Soviet Union.
I spent six months in the Soviet Union in 1942 and watched as the Soviet people made incredible sacrifices for their homeland. I see no evidence today that the Soviet war effort would be any less successful in imposing sacrifices on their people, deflecting still more resources from
the civilian to the military sector to match any build up of arms that we make. The Soviet people are accustomed to sacrifices and shortages and, except for a few frusturally-suppressed dissidents, they have no experience in challenging—nor winning—a challenge—the decisions imposed by their leaders.
During my tenure as ambassador, we heard frequent reports of alleged food shortages, work shortages and the like. On occasion, I sensed that various wishful thinkers back home were ready to seize on such reports as evidence that the United States could not long survive in its present form.
In my judgment, nothing could be further from the United States toward service policy.
Although our officers regularly reported scarcities of some food items, and although living standards are indeed far below those of most Americans, in no case have we found evidence of public unrest or any serious political instability. And Soviet economy has made good progress since World War II and does provide the Soviet people with much more than they had earlier.
What does all this mean? Simply that we can and should be equal but that neither of us can
*Wait, the prompt says "Maintain original document structure and flow."*
Actually, it looks like a single paragraph. I'll just provide the text as it appears.
What does all this mean? Simply that we can and should be equal but that neither of us can
On the other hand, neither should we accept second-class status. We have the strongest economy in the world and the social system best suited to deal with a changing world.
The leaders of the Soviet Union have both the will and the means to match any arms build up we make. All we will accomplish is to throw good money after bad and to heighten the dangers of an accidental nuclear exchange. Like it or not, we have to acknowledge that the Soviet Union will not accept second-class status. Once we understand this, our attitude towards superior safety should be far different—as should our attitude towards arms control.
To face the Soviet challenge, we should commit to the United States to a carefully considered program aimed at putting our house in order and restoring our allies' confidence in us.
But let us do this realistically. Let us do it with the idea that we can never return to those good old days of yesteryear when American power was supreme. Now, for our lives, and the lives of our children, we must learn to reason with our opponents, and they have there no other assistance with them.
That process could and should include conventional arms increases, a program of universal military service, a reduction in government spending, a balanced budget even with the sacrifice of increased taxes, a national energy policy, and a carefully reasoned foreign policy—one that will both allow us to stand up to the Soviet Union when our national interests are at stake and also will allow us to work with it when we can.
Thomas J. Watson Jr., who became ambassador to the Soviet Union in October 1979, resigned his post after the presidential election.
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