University Daily Kansan, April 26, 1985
OPINION
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kannan, USP$ 650.640 is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Strauffer Flint Hall, Lawen, Kanagus $650.640 daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holiday and final periods Second-class postage paid at Lawen, Kanagus $644.003 Subscriptions by mail are for $15 six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $32 for seven months. Mail orders to PostMASTER Send address changes to the University Daily Kannan, 118 Strauffer Flint Hall, Lawen, Kanagus $644.003
MATT DEGALAN
Editor
DIANE LUBER SUSAN WORTMAN Managing Editor Editorial Editor
ROB KARWATH Campus Editor
LYNNE STARK Business Manager
DUNCAN CALHOUN MARY BERNICA Retail Sales National Sales Manager Manager
SUSANNE SHAW General Manager and News Adviser
DAVID NIXON
Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
Vote of courage
After the dust settled in Congress this week, the Reagan administration had suffered its worst foreign policy defeat since the president took office.
The House, controlled by the Democrats, refused to give any aid, direct or indirect, to the "contras" fighting the Nicaraguan government.
House members stood firm in their opposition, despite tremendous presidential pressure.
They are to be congratulated. Even the Senate, controlled by the Republicans, could not accept Reagan's original proposal to finance and train a guerrilla army to fight a government that the United States is not at war with.
In a rare show of moral courage, Congress rejected the argument that war brings peace and division brings unity. This type of Orwellian thinking has prevailed in the past. But this time Congress stood firm.
Some of the critical votes against the president's policy of financing thugs and terrorism came from those who took the time to visit the region and seek a broader understanding of the conflict.
This is something few members of the administration have taken the time to do.
The president vows he will go back to Congress again and again until he gets what he wants and undoubtedly he will.
But in the mean time, Congress' vote gives reason and negotiation a chance to bear fruit.
A dangerous precedent would have been set if this country decided it had the right to finance the overthrow of governments that do not practice democracy.
If this was the case, we would be financing "contras" around the world and the Sandinistas wouldn't be very high on the list of offenders.
Congress finally told the president that after four years of financing death and destruction with no visible results, enough was enough.
Bravo.
Final dilemma
Finals. Even the word is unnerving. The final chapter. The final game. The final decision.
For many students, final examinations are unnerving. For some, they are unmanageable. Still, most students know the common wisdom for studying for finals. Study without ceasing. Clear out your schedule. And on so.
As those portentous days approach, some uncommon wisdom could be just what some students need — not to disparage other ideas. And so, from the world of final deadlines, here are some pointers for taking finals:
The best preparation, of course, is to prepare throughout the semester. But at this point, that's like telling someone how they should have kept last year's tax records.
Remember what finals are, what they mean. Keep them in perspective. They're important, but they're not the whole world.
Keep eating well. Or start eating well. It takes a lot of energy to work the way many students do through finals, but many also neglect meals at the same time.
Sleep. The most basic fact of taking tests is that you have to recall and use knowledge. It makes no difference how much you know if you're too tired to remember it. Go into tests rested.
Further, don't wear out your mind. Studying for six hours before an afternoon final probably means exhausting your capacity to deal with the subject.
Allow some diversions. Switching gears into a virtual two-week overdrive is asking for burnout. Good time management includes time for recreation.
Think big picture. Try to understand what the course is about, why its boundaries are defined as they are. Anticipate the contours of the exam, not just specific questions, even though that is helpful also.
Finally, be considerate of others. Everyone is under pressure. Nothing beats kindness for relieving pressure. And besides making finals more livable, kindness can create a better attitude toward exams themselves.
Good luck. We hope this helps. It's not quite as good as your mother's concern, and it can't replace hard work. But we're pulling for you.
LETTERS POLICY
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten and double-spaced and should not exceed 300 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and hometown, or faculty or staff position. The yankees also invites letters and groupings to submit guest columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 111 Staffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
A letter from Chancellor Budig
Members of the University Community;
Because of the recent action of the University Council, I feel compelled to offer some observations. I share the deep sense of outrage of my colleagues on the subject of South Africa. That system is a blight on our world. It must be eradicated, and sooner rather than later.
Like many others who have agonized over the matter, I am convinced that the only chance for sweeping change resides with the president and the Congress of the United States. They have the power to bring about early and lasting reformation.
that have operations there. Bishop Desmond Tumt, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has asked American interests to remain in South Africa for at least two years and work toward the dismantling of apartheid.
Until our federal government acts, the lone opportunity for any meaningful improvement in South Africa rests with the American corporations
GENE A. BUDIG
I believe that the well-intentioned American corporations should be
Chancellor
encouraged to take a much more activist role in South Africa. I do not believe that total divestiture is the answer.
As many of you know, the chancellor does not determine the investment policies of the Kansas University Endowment Association. The Endowment Association is a legally independent entity. It exists solely to help the University of Kansas.
The members of the Executive Committee of the KUEA are able and honorable human beings. Their record of service to this institution is truly extraordinary. Through their efforts, the University of Kansas has received nearly $130 million for academic advancement during the past decade. They have been especially sensitive to the needs of minority students and minority faculty in recent years.
I must add that I have never used
my position as the head of a public university for political purposes, nor do I intend to. It is essential that I use my office to help insure that the University remains, at all times, a forum for open debate and for the discussion of important issues. I further believe the University must be a place where the major issues can be investigated freely and without institutional coercion.
My observations on South Africa and the campus forum are consistent with those expressed by most members of the Association of American Universities at their spring meeting in Washington last week.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Chancellor Gene A. Budig presented this letter at a meeting of the University Senate yesterday.
Reagan plan has veteran vehement
Jerome Glickman is part of a most remarkable generation of men— those who scraped and struggled through the Great Depression, then went off to fight World War II.
When the war broke out, he was a substitute teacher in the Chicago schools. That's how he thought it was, the rest of his life — teaching kids.
Only a few months later, he was sweating in the dust and heat of a different kind of school — an Army camp — learning to be a foot
MIKE
ROYKO
Syndicated
Columnist
soldier. He learned. He went up through the enlisted ranks to sergeant. Then to officers' school.
By 1945, he was a company commander in the 5th Infantry Division, dashing from the Normandy beaches toward Germany. He was ordered once more two weeks recovering, then went back to his outfit.
Now his unit was supposed to take a German town. The Air, Corps hit it first. Then the tanks and foot soldiers moved in. Glickman was leading his company across an open field, toward the rubble of the town's buildings, when the Germans opened fire.
The fighting was fierce. Men began dropping in that open field. In Glickman's company, 20 young men died. Glickman felt something slam into his chest, his stomach and his leg. He was barely alive when the medics dragged him away and the doctors worked over his wounds. Then he was on his way back to the United States for a long stay in a hospital and a 40 percent disability pension.
That was a long time ago. This week, Glickman turns 68. He lives in a Chicago suburb and he's back in the field of education, working at the Great Lakes Naval Base. But he sometimes thinks about the day when he and the other young men moved across that field near a small town in Germany and 20 of them died.
"If you give me time, I think I could give you every one of their names," he told me recently. "There was my driver, Korchowski, a nice kid from Chicago And Bedell, he was from the East, And Gallant."
He thought about them this week, when, for the first time since that day in 1945, he saw the name of that little town in a newspaper. Bitburg. That's the name of the town where Glickman was shot,
where 20 of his men died, and the suddenly famous German military cemetery is maintained.
That's the cemetery where President Reagan is going to lay a wreath in a gesture of "reconciliation."
It's the cemetery where about 50 members of the Waffen SS, the elite guard of the Nazis, are buried.
And that's a gesture that has Glickman in a cold rage.
"Damn it, I got my butt shot off there," he said. "All those good kids in my outfit died there. And they are going to lay a wreath?
Listen, any of the SS and the rest of them buried in that cemetery would have been there when we came. And that means
they could be the ones who killed my men."
At that thought, he spit out a choice cuss words, then said, "If he does that, if he lays a wreathe at me," and I'll tell what I'm going to do.
"I'm going to return my Silver Star to him, and my Purple Heart, and all the other stuff I got over there. I'll give it all back to him."
"And he can take it all and shove it."
Before breaking off to phone a U.S. senator's office to protest, Glickman said. "And one more thing. It's not because I am Jewish. I don't give a damn if he ever goes to Dachau. But I just don't want any American president laying any wreaths at Bitturg. There's too much of our blood in that ground."
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
To the editor:
In the middle of an article on Reagan's Nicaraguan aid proposal that appeared in Tuesday's Lawrence Journal World, the reader will find an interesting term: non-lethal aid.
This term will lead the reader to think that there is another type of aid we can send the Nicaraguan nation, lethal aid. I'm writing to question the reality of the second type of aid because of the juxtaposition of the two incongruous terms - lethal aid.
I will argue that death and destruction are hardly of much aid to the world. If you do happen to think there is such a thing as lethal "aid," then I will say that we will never be able to kill all the Russians, and they will never be able to kill all of us, although we might try. So now you have to live with, share the planet with your enemy. Logically, if you kill your enemy, you won't be helping the situation any, unless your enemy was about to kill you. Which is to say that if you want to aid the situation, you must do something non-lethal. Therefore, the adjective non-lethal wasn't necessary before the noun aid because there is only one type of aid.
But, obviously I'm wrong because professional journalists don't make mistakes like that, do they?
Tim Hamilton
Wichita freshman
No place like home
The feature, "Many foreign students prefer U.S.," that appeared in the University Daily Kansas on April 23, I am afraid, presented too much of a right-wing view of what many of our countries preferries are of the United States.
To the editor:
I wondered about the total number of students interviewed to arrive at
I, for one, and I am sure many other foreign students, felt that the feature unfairly implied that many of us abandon our homes for the sole purpose of having a good life. Sure we all want a good life; but the feature was blamed that I failed to expand on other reasons for the willingness of foreign students to remain in the United States.
such an obvious generalization.
Taking the views of fewer than 10 students, 50 percent of whom are Southeast Asians, as being the views of many foreign students can hardly be regarded as representative of the 1.691 foreign students now attending KU. I would much rather have had the reporter take time to interview representatives of all 99 countries represented here. This would have made the feature more believable.
"There is no place like home. Home is where your heart is." These sentences say it all. I am sure many students who remain secretly long for home and hope that someday they may return, perhaps only for a visit.
I have no problems in saying that the United States is a wonderful country – indeed she is. She will always have a special place in my life, but I dislike when she is engaged as the “center of the universe.”
I am a South Sea native, and I find the United States overflowing with opportunities; however, many as pects of the society discourages me from growing roots.
Luddy Salonda
Mandang Papua, New Guinea, senior
Isolated learning
To the editor
Indeed "they" come here from many countries abroad, hoping to gain an education in this Almighty Land of Opportunity. And sure, some foreign students stay for various
A large percentage of U.S. natives, I fear, hold a haughty opinion of this country and its people when considering foreigners. I'm afraid many citizens of this country think foreigners come to these states just to sap resources — not to offer anything to our culture.
reasons. But whether they go or stay, all of them learn something about us native citizens that, in the light of Tony Cox's April 23 article, needs to be recognized.
I sensed that opinion in Cox's recent article.
On the contrary, thank God some foreigners choose to stay in this country. I can safely vouch that through "them" there is a broader education than any university can provide.
I think the majority of foreigners who come to the United States quickly realize that many of its native citizens are blindly ignorant of other countries and other cultures. If we appreciate foreigners, through them we could learn about the world around us and that this country isn't necessarily where all Opportunity rests.
Mark Twain once wrote that travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness — all foes to real understanding. He wrote that broad, charitable views of mankind cannot be acquired by vegetating in one corner of the earth for an entire lifetime.
My myellow Americans, let us travel and learn through our foreign friends.
David Scafford
David Swafford
Overland Park senior
To the editor
Boycotting Grace
The National Treasury Employees Union, or NTEU, has called for a nationwide boycott of all products and services of W.R. Grace and Company to protest J. Peter Grace's
slander of federal employees NTEU's Kansas Chapter fully supports the boycott of Grace Companies in Kansas and the rest of the nation.
Grace, through his Grace Commission, has painted a distorted picture of federal employees claiming that the federal retirement system is wasteful and bloated. Nothing can be further from the truth. His facts and figures are wrong, but they play into the hands of a president who would scapegoat federal employees to find simple reasons for his complex deficit. Even as Grace goes about the courtney spouting his rhetoric about how to sacrifice federal employees to reduce the deficit, we learn from newspaper articles that the Grace Company earned billions of dollars and did not pay one nickel of income tax.
It is time that the U.S. public is given the facts instead of the myths. It is a myth that the federal retirement system is more generous than private sector retirement plans. Recent studies have shown that private retirement benefits are more generous particularly among Fortune 500 companies. The federal retirement system pales in comparison to Grace's own company's retirement plan in that the Grace plan replaces more than 90 percent of an employee's earnings at retirement. Grace also claims that federal employees make their retirement system and that annuities are non-taxable. This is simply not true. Federal employees contribute 7 percent of their pay to the retirement system and their pensions are fully taxable, while it is interesting to note that most private plans require no employee contributions.
Grace's distortions and myths go on and on, and the facts keep refuting his claims
Gary Hedrick
president of Kansas chapter
National Treasury Employees Union