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Monday, February 14, 1972
University Daily Kansan
Garry Wills
KANSAN comment Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Beautiful Kansas
It seems Kansas is finally on its way toward compliance with the Highway Beautification Act, part of a plan to make America a bit more livable.
The particular bill provides for the removal of billboards from interstate highways and some federal highways, and moving others back from roadways. It is interesting to note that Kansas was among a few states with pavements from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Here, the 10 per cent cut would have meant about $6.8 million. That apparently was too much for even this sluggish legislature to risk. The bill to bring Kansas into compliance with the federal guidelines is now of Senate committee and on the Senate floor in which it be passed. If the bill finally clears the legislature and is signed by the governor, Kansas will have taken a small step toward upgrading its environmental quality.
The Kansas bill should give no hope, though, to serious environmentalists, as its passage was an eleventh-hour commitment. If indeed you can call it a commitment.
A stranger might guess that land in Kansas is paved if no other use can be found for it. By and large the land takes a back seat to highway contractors and the banks that finance the construction.
The legislature is too closely tied to economic pressure groups such as the Kansas Power and Light Company to initiate much important legal questioning. The governor, it seems, is just no busy worrying about whether he should run against Sen. James Pearson to care about such a trifle.
Until those that make the laws are shaken from their environmental apathy and timidity, the state should be custodied to the heavy federal hand.
—Thomas E. Slaughter
Great Mid-American Rip-Off Center
The new Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is proving the most appropriate of Washington institutions. Blaeted and grandiose, trying to do everything, it is already having trouble doing anything.
It opened with the Leonard Bernstein "Mass," which had everything but the kitchen sink thrown in—and that, it turns out, probably would have been added; but some one must have stolen it first.
The place has you see, become the Great Middle-American Rip-Off Center. Snips of carpet, clipped-off facets from chandlers, faucets, electrical outlet covers—anything that can be pried off and stuffed in a handbag—all these things have been taken away. The Center has been closed during non-performance hours, its free Christmas events canceled. For the Center is not like a single theater, interesting in its architecture but geared to one
purpose—it is a kind of Lincoln Memorial fitted out for multiple showbiz purposes.
That combination expresses pretty well the emotion binge our nation went on in the Kennedy years—a jag that simply exaggerated our general treatment of politicians as movie stars, but who show bit. Even as "non-chairmanlike" President Nixon has his cuff-links torn off when he goes to shake hands with a crowd, and the Kennedys were mobbled in particularly violent spasms of pain because they should be no surprise, at the fact that Center has its cuff links torn away. Our politics is simply our highest form of conspicuous consumption.
One woman, caught in the act of such minor piftering, coolly went ahead with it, commenting 'I'm a tax payer.' The woman's face was hidden; she use it to can be it defended, that it's her
right. Middle America, moralistic in so many ways, has this weird code of marking up, putting a stamp on, or simply ripping off the things that belong to us all—as if general use were an affront to the individual ethic and non-social view of "private property." The children in the kids' eyes as the young people's own affair to their parent's moralism about things like sex.
At any rate, the particular form of American "use" for this monument has caused a drastic reduction in its use—before it gets all used up. And that is the final sign that the thing truly belongs to Washington, and to us. This is a closed administration, clamped down, cut off, made unnecessary, going out, all right—in this Center and that other center for the performing arts called the White House.
Copyright, 1971 Universal Press Syndicate
James J. Kilpatrick
The Burner Is Set at Simmer
MOUNT PLEASANT, MICH—
This is Thursday, so it must be
where?
Central Michigan
University, somewhere north of
Saginaw, the country sheeted in
snow, flat as a queen sized bed. It
was built in 1940. The lecture trail resumed the first
of the year, and everywhere the
story is about the same: things
are quieter now.
The peripatetic lecturer operates like a beetle on a grapevine of shared impressions. He talks with students and professors who have just talked to other speakers in the class, helps students and other professors. The word gets around. The word this year is sober.
In those days you felt the ferment, the pot tops trembling.
the hall full of steam. Campus bulletin boards were shingled with notices, nailed on with bang-marks: "Rally!" This means you," ad hoc committees were budding every month, for black
burner now is set at simmer.
Here at Central Michigan,
primarily a teacher-training
institution, the mood is anxious;
teaching jobs are not easily found
today. Faculty members share
That was not the word three years ago. Then the word was, maybe, crazy. It was as if master chef had marshalled the kitchen bedecked with instructional instructions: In a bowl of young people, mix together four parts Vietnam, two parts draft, two pieces Nixon, two teaspoons Swain, seasoned with sex, two grams of tung; and bring to a rolling boil.
The word for this year's campus is "sober," says Kilpatrick, after traveling the lecture circuit. He notes that the campus comes from the university campus comes not from revolutionaries, but basketball fans.
studies, for pass-or-fail grading,
for anti-war demonstration, for
open dormitories. A visiting
activist—Jane Fonda, Dick
Gregory, William Kunster,
and James Gayle. You expect
an audience churning with hot blood and bursting in wild acclaim.
The heat has been turned down.
Not off. Just down. The campus revolution has not ended, but the
the disquietude; a young speech instructor active with the American Civil Liberties Union, wants a new post in the fall at a lively institution, but in what is known as the academic slave society, homily. The supply of hungry teachers far exceeds the demand.
The economic outlook, a visitor is told, is only one among a dozen factors that have contributed to
the new sobrietv.
Vietnam has almost ceased to be an issue with the draft effectively ended, the risk of personal commitment has lost its cutting edge. There is some concern about amnesty, but the concern is not keen. A number of students are reluctant to campaise; few of them, it appears, have much interest in launching political combat.
Faculty members, after a long period of permissiveness are recovering a sense of values, as their teaching and research recently have observed, in a report on academic freedom prepared for The American Enterprise Institute, order is being placed into the process. A year or so ago professors began to comprehend the threat to their freedom posed by the new barterants; and they stopped supporting the crazies.
Leadership is a tidal force; it comes and goes. Now it ebbs. A part of this phenomenon is attributed to the media; student radicals have lost their role as romantic novelties; they no longer can summon the red-eyed genies of TV, they have run out of
hot-blooded causes.
The trouble is, says a frustrated rebel that many of the old campus wars have been won a few years ago, student leaders in favor of black studies; they wanted to sit on boards of trustees, they cried out for curriculum reform, for greater personal freedom, for an open classroom setting. They got most of what they sought, but it proved to be no millennium after all. Like the Shropshire Lad, they had thrown their binge at Ludlow Fair. They knew no, no, they found the old world yet.
Here and there, the red fire flickers: Ed Muskie is shouted down at Wisconsin, otherwise the mood is quite different. Walking across the University of Missouri, he is standing in front of visiting newsman beard wild halloopes in the distance. A budding revolution, heraps? Were these students out to hang a dea? No. indeed. Their team came downed Kansas. It was something, at last, worth shouting about.
Copyright, 1972 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
Readers Respond
Chauvinism; Child Care; Bible...
Ignorance
To the Editor:
Your chauvinism runneth over! Is it that your editorial page requires that be the scent of roses? At any rate you miss the point.
After quoting Robin's statement about the necessity of radicalism in the movement, you wear an emblem that enlist the support needed to overcome the oppression, especially oppression as a means to assemble as a charity to muster all the help you can get. To appeal to the masses, you must moderate. Why do we need to moderate the masses? The necessity is not to appeal to the masses, but, rather, to radically oneself in a more or less Marcusan sense (though I am not Marcusan fashion, is a male chauvinist too.
Woman (or female, either epithet is "subconscionably in the American society is "programming, accepting the severe rationalism
which man, i. e. male, has developed and impressed upon him the purpose of subjugating equals—if it isn't that women aren't in objective reality (cf. the "Natural Superiority of Women,") This magnificent rationalization Aristotle logic shows is the male of the species the illusion that, because he plays the game better and more readily, his position is the better. I must admit though, that you. Mr. Moffet can't even play those sexes most atrocious. The purpose of radicalization is to help women raise themselves above the rest, receive from cradle to grave (c) Germaine Greer, "The Female Eunimie.") The only possible washer from the fetters of succubious abjectivism is basically submerging herself in a water body then able to view the whole of th
inequities of her sexist society from an unsecured consciousness and thus choose her lifestyle and course of action freely, for, as Nora Helmer says: "I believe that before all else I am a human being who can suffer and become one." (ibn Sibas. "A Doll's House.")
Mr. Moffet, what do you mean by 'Another example (of the problem, of course):' Most acts a sexual intercourse on this plane require rape. Rape she would define as sexual intercourse not initiated by a sincere desire on the part of a problem or a problem problem? It seems to state simply a position, which is perfectly legitimate given the context. Perhaps she are perplexed. Perhaps you are ignorant, in which case we can excuse you, but, believe it or not, Mr. Moffet, as a sincere desire it is, a sincere desire it is, the hand man doesn't; whereas, if a man feels that 'sincere he may never know if his mate has been woken by women,' contrary to the
"Viennese witchdoctor," do not have "penis-envy."
I would suggest that you radically yourselves, Mr. Moftet and Co. for then perhaps you can learn to be careful with the inequities you perpetrate.
Beth Greisen, 327 Maine, Lawrence
By demanding that the proposed child-care center be staffed exclusively by women, it has reduced Sisters are bolstering, instead of abolishing, one of the norms in our society of inferior status of women in our society through rigid sexual definition of acceptable male roles perpetuate the stereotype of preschool educators as strictly female? Do we all (especially the women) desire diversity in gender diversity along with
For the Kids
To the Editor:
varied racial, socio-economic, and ethnic representation in the staff.
—Henry McCarthy, Boston grad student
Holy Words
To Robin Morgan and all other women who are called women's liberationists:
- Ecclesiastes 7:26
2. While even he has man Christ for his head, man he... and woman man . . . and woman man was not created for woman's sake, but woman for woman of God's sake.
To the Editor:
Hear the words of our Lord:
1. The worries of our Lord.
2. The worries of women find mistiger than you, heart is a trap to catch you and her arms are fetters.
—1 Corinthians 11:8-9
Bryce Kresie Topeka senior
Tom Chester Topeka senior
Letters Policy
Letters to the editor should be typewritten, doubled and exceed 500 words. All letters are subject to editing to ensure that space limitations and special dents must provide their name, year in school and home town; faculty and parent; name and position; others' name and position; their own name and address.
Griff and the Unicorn
By Sokoloff
"Copyright 1972, David Sokoloff."
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