OPINION
University Daily Kansan, June 5, 1985
Page 4
The University Daily
KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
Published since 1899 by students of the University of Kansas.
The University Daily Kansan (USPS 60-640) is published at the University of Kansas 118 Stairway, Lawrence, KS 66045. Published on Saturday, Sunday, holidays and finals periods, and on Wednesday during the summer for second-class payment post at Lawen, Kanze. KAN 60445. Subscription costs $35 per month and $54 a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $3 and paid through the student activity fee Hall, Lawen, Kanze. Student subscription changes to the University Daily Kansan, 118 Stairway-Fin Hall, Lawen, Kanze. KAN 6045
Jeff Craven's Editor
Michael O'Telly Managing Editor
Chris Lazzerino Editorial Editor
Andrew Hartley News Editor
John Egan Campus Editor
Matthew Nilsson General Manager, Newspaper
Brett McCabe... Business Manager
Mark Schick... Retail Advertising Manager
Eric Scheck... National/Campus Manager
John Oberzan... Sales and Marketing Advisor
Conduct of crowds
The incredibly horrible human carnage that took place one week ago today at Heysel Stadium in Brussels, Belgium, has left all of us agast. The finals for the European Champions Cup between Liverpool, England, and the Juventus club of Turin, Italy, was the place of death for 38 people.
We saw graphic coverage of the deaths of innocent people. But the horror was not the same for Americans as it was for Europeans. For us, the tragedy was something that happened on another continent to people of other nations.
The dampened effect on us is unfortunate. We should realize that a similar tragedy could easily occur in our own nation, our own state and on our own campus.
Every crowd contains the possibility of mob violence. A crowd of youths at a sporting event or concert is like a bone-dry forest waiting to be ignited. Add alcohol, drugs and intense loyalties and gasoline is being spread in the bone-dry forest.
At that point, all it takes are the actions of very few people to light the spark. Once the spark has been lit, the forest will be engulfed. Nothing can be done about it until it has burned itself out.
With the exception of Kansas basketball, major sports have seen little success over the past few years at KU and KState. Victories are precious. When we lose, we realize it is just a game. That rationality is often lost in victory. Lawrence and Manhattan have both been the scene of uncontrollable fans after football games.
Surely nobody at KU or K-State has the intention of killing anyone in post-game celebrations. But surely nobody at Brussels had in mind for 38 people to lie dead that day. Once panic begins, no one can control the outcome. In Brussels, panic set in and a wall collapsed. Death came that easily.
When a team from KU or K-State wins a big game, it is time for celebration — celebration that could easily get out of control because of alcohol, drugs, intense loyalty and the psychology of people who are part of a crowd. Add to that the possibility of a structural or mechanical failure induced by the crowd, such as a wall collapsing, and death will strike.
We must not assume that carriage of the sort that claimed 38 lives in Belgium cannot occur here. It can, all too easily. And if it happens here, the people being killed will be our family and friends.
Political price tags
The price of politics in this country is outrageously high. Anyone hoping to secure a national political office must be able to generate substantial monetary backing, largely through political action committees. Backing must also come from one of the two major political parties.
These basic facts of the current political environment will most likely be the death of any substantial tax reform reform that is desperately needed.
When the powerful PACs think they will be hurt, they are going to call in their chips. They finance a large part of countless campaigns, so they will be heard. Corporations, many of which get away without paying a dime in taxes, will also have a loud voice.
If it is to be successful, tax reform must be largely bipartisan. But the risks are simply to high for the tax package to escape without huge party influences.
If the Republicans are seen as being responsible for a popular tax reform, the Republican party could lose its reputation as being the party of the rich country-club set. Republican control could extend into the next decade.
If the Democrats get a version they like through Congress and past the president's desk, they could bite a large chunk out of current Republican popularity.
This issue will most certainly not be settled until at least next year, so it will have a dramatic effect on next year's elections, probably even the presidential election in 1988.
We are the ones being hurt by all of this.
We are the ones who will pay the high price of politics.
Summer more than just a season
Welcome to the University Daily Kansan, which comes out weekly during the summer. Now that we have all the basics out of the way, we can get down to some real business.
The dawn of summer is a beautiful thing. Images abound like memories of an old love. Each mirage of the moment warms feeling to the pit of the stomach.
Like ice cream melting off the cone and onto the fingers, and not being able to get the adhesive sensation to leave.
Bare feet on a sun-baked sidewalk, or on a torrid beach.
Wanting to buy a Popsicle from the ice cream man and not finding the change until he is a half-mile down the road.
Looking for a favorite movie and finding it pre-empted by the NBA Championship Series.
Dressing up for a formal occasion and starting to sweat while you are getting dressed.
Going to a bar for an "ice cold"
beer and finding it warmer than your bath water.
The vinyl on your car seat scalding the back of the thighs.
That pleasant, massaging feeling in the eyes after spending an afternoon in a pool that has too much chlorine in the water.
Getting free box seats to the Royals on the night of the greatest tornadic activity in the state.
Having a runny nose when it is 9 degrees outside.
Taking a shower after spending too much time in the sun the day before.
Trying to go to sleep with no air
conditioner, temperatures in the 90s and humidity to match.
Beautiful weather during the week and rain from noon Friday to midnight Sunday.
Going to the Royals for the seventh of the summer and watching their playoffs.
Needing to find a professor from the spring only to learn that he is on a sabbatical in Tunisia.
Opening the grade sheet and finding that finals did not pull up any of your classes.
Going swimming in a lake and stepping on something that moves. Sitting down on your new pair of sunlasses.
Finding the only clean clothes you have are jeans and sweat shirts, and hearing on the news about a record high temperature.
Watching your dependable fan catch on fire.
The climactic feeling of relief when the pre-game show for the USPL championship game jumps out of your television.
Hearing little kids at the grocery store with their mother, especially after she tells them they can't by that third bag of cookies.
Opening the refrigerator door and tipping out the power has been off for several minutes.
Buying a pop out of the vending machine that is empty because of a defect in the can.
Finding out in enrollment that the one class you needed to take during the summer is full or canceled.
Awaking to the sound of a lawnmower outside of your window. Getting sunburn blisters on your life.
Watching a pleasant rain shower and then remembering the windows in the apartment and your car are wide open
Buying books and attending classes again.
These are only a few of the wonderful and enchanting feelings of summer. It's a wonderful time of the year.
We'll miss cool days, old friends
Before I decided to enroll in summer school, I checked with some people who had survived previous summers. Then I wanted to know what I was getting into.
As I had expected, they told me of summer days when a mudgy heat lies over the land like a heavy blanket. Even the wind fails to bring relief from the blistering temperatures.
COLUMNIST
They will come, those days when every minor effort has you break out in sweat and you feel like taking a cool shower 24 hours a day.
mought of the lakes around Lawrence, rubber rafts, drifting on cool waves, ice-cold beer in hand, surrounded only by the sounds of nature and the musical selections of the inevitable car stereo enthusiasts.
The idea of exchanging this idyllic scenery for a classroom where the air conditioner doesn't work or a room where frostbite in July is a possibility didn't seem very appealing at first. But after having spent more than 75 percent of my life in school, I have developed somewhat of an urge to get done with school and put in at least a few years of honest work before enjoying the pleasures of retirement.
**What reason you might have had to go to school during summer, you are here now and you better be prepared for all climatic adversities. Nothing too unlikely to happen around this part of the country. I haven't even dared to pick away you more safely yet. Just to be on the safe side.**
But apart from these inconvenences, there is also an emotional side to summer school. It took me almost until now to realize that going to summer school also means spending a summer without old friends, drinking buddies or whoever you are going to miss.
It is also wise to stack up on cold medicine, vitamins and Kleenex. You'll need it. Overheated and sweating, stepping from the tropical climate outside into arctic temperatures inside is a sure-fire way to catch the sniffers. If you're lucky, you'll suffer from the flu or pneumonia. At least they know how to cure those.
For some students, this will mean at least a fair chance of getting some studying done this summer. But for many, these months will be an isolated environment from their usual social environment, of being isolated and lonely.
Now, I know that in theory, school is supposed to be great place to meet with friends.
In reality, weeks will usually pass before people begin to overcome their shyness in front of the threatened, threatening group called class
The furious pace at which professors rush toward fullfillment of set course objectives even during regular semesters often leaves little time for socializing in or out of class. Now, with only eight weeks instead of 16, we'll all be zooming through our
course materials at twice the speed of light, leaving even less time to reach the surface.
It is an old wisdom that the pressures of life in general and of school in particular are best endured when shared with a friend. With old friends out of town, finding new ones will be of vital importance to our survival in the daily struggles of the academic jungle.
As if the circumstances weren't adverse enough, we choose to hamper initial contacts by hiding our own little insecurity behind an image of being cool, just as Hollywood and Madison Avenue have conditioned us to do.
Being cool not only keeps us from making contact with others, it also inhibits them to contact us. As a result, the world is full of people who
learned to like each other only after weeks and months of appearing as cool as possible.
We all will have to battle the same adversities, the same situations. We have the choice to make it easy or hard on ourselves.
Is it really so much harder to be friendly than to be cool and unaproachable? Is it so much harder to give a smile to someone than to walk around with the perfect poker face? Can anyone afford to pass up a because he or she is afraid of being vulnerable in front of strangers?
The answers to these questions will have to come from within.
To put it in the words of a once popular song. If you can't be with the ones you love, love the ones you re with.
Hippies of'60s now criticized as Yuppies of '80s
I don't know if you're getting as sick as I am of the constant sniderness and sniping toward the so-called Yuppies.
Yuppies — as everyone knows by now — stands for "young urban professionals." The term is several years old, but for about the last six months — ever since Newsweek magazine devoted a cover story to them — the entire country has been taking target practice at the Yuppies. They are criticized for being superficial, materialistic and selfish; to be a Yuppie is to be a loathsome, undesirable creature.
Well, first of all, I don't know a single person who would willingly define himself or herself as a Yuppie. It is a sneering, purposefully insulting term, it's a tarn design for looking down on someone. You will never find a person going around saying, "I'm a Yuppie," the term exists for others to use to put certain people down.
And who are those people who are being put down? Who are the Yuppies? They are members of the baby boom generation — people now in their 30s (and a few years on either side). They are in large part the people whose jobs have changed later, and early '70s — many of them used to be called humbles.
Let's get something straight much of America has always hated this generation. Much of America hated this generation when the generation was being lumped together as hippies, and much of
America still hates it now that the generation is being lumped together as Yuppies.
What have members of this generation done to so anger the rest of the nation at this late date? The socalled Yuppies have become serious, achieving, goal-oriented, financially responsible, well-dressed, clean-cut men and women. In short, they have become everything that the rest of America wanted them to be back when they were in school. But the rest of America still manages to despise them.
I am a member of the so-called Yuppies generation. Like any other sane person, I would be very reluctant to categorize myself as a Yuppie. In my case, the criteria really aren't there. In an era of fashion-conscious men, I generally dress like a BMW, but I don't own any car at all; and I can't recall ever having had brunch.
But I will tell you something: I am rather proud of my generation. I think that my generation displayed a social consciousness during its youth that will serve as a model for Americans for decades to come. And now that we are growing older, I think my generation is displaying a desire to do well in the world of commerce mixed with a desire to live meaningful and happy lives that is very hard to fault.
And yet it is faulted, constantly. Part of the problem is that there are so many of us; through an accident of demographics, my generation is huge, and other people somehow always seemed to resent that. The reason they resented it is that everything we did always was subjected to an inordinate amount of attention, precisely because there have always been so many of us. When we were schoolchildren, the national media obsessed on whether the public education system was good
When earlier generations were "gaily" of the things she so-called Yuppies are being accused of today, it's hard to imagine having to buy nice things for themselves
Those Americans who aren't a part of our generation got tired of constantly reading and hearing about our concerns, which is understandable. But I repeat: I am proud of my generation. If I had to choose any generation to be a part of, I think I stick with this one. We've made a lot of mistakes, and some of the things we done and believed in have turned out to be stuped — but basically I think we're all right.
enough. When we were in college, the national media obsessed on our political and social styles. Now that we are in our 30s and 40s, the national media are obsessing on business. Undoubtedly when we are in our 60s and 70s, the national media obsess on the problem of old people.
—they were merely, and applauding, called ambitions. The rest of America can't seem to accept the idea that our generation has turned ambitious. What could kindly be called "maturing" is instead called "selling out."
This whole syndrome is likely to continue, others will keep sneezing at the people they call Yupkins, and then another decade will pass and someone will have to invent a new term to throw at the men and women who were born during the baby boom
and their families, being concerned about their future financial security
But if this generation's current sins — working hard, trying to acquire property, endeavoring to find personal happiness, laying down a foundation for the future — are going to be held against it, so be it. The sneakers will continue to call this generation Yuppies, and mean it as an insult. Somehow I think we R manage to get by.