OPINION
University Daily Kansan, April 23, 1985
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Dalian Kansai UMSP 605400 is published at the University of Kansas, 181 Staffer Flint Hall Lawn, Kansei 606453, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and final periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence Kansei 606443 Subscriptions by mail are $1 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $2 a year outside the county. Student postage rates vary by location. Please contact the University Dalian Kansai 181 Staffer Flint Hall Lawn, Kansei 606453, changes to the University Dalian Kansai UMSP 605400
MATT DEGALAN
Editor
DIANE LUBER SUSAN WORTMAN
Managing Editor Editorial Editor
LYNNE STARK Business Manager
ROB KARWATH Campus Editor
DUNCAN CALHOUN MARY BERNICA
Retail Sales National Sales
Manager Manager
DAVID NIXON
Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
SUSANNE SHAW General Manager and News Adviser
Shining a light
Walk past the buses by Watson Library some night. Or saunter past Wescoe Hall after they have turned the lights out. And if you're really gutsy, try a stroll around Potter Lake after 10 p.m.
Then again, if you're wise, you'll find a safer route — one that is better lighted.
Lighting has been a problem on campus for years. Lately Student Senate has begun talking at it again. The senators should understand both the need for action and their role in promoting it.
No one questions that this campus needs more lights.
It was studied at the beginning of the year. Ronald Helms, professor and director of architecture, finished one study at the beginning of the fall semester. He completed another this semester. Both pointed to the need for more lighting on campus.
So why spend $10,000 studying lighting as William Easley, student body president, proposed April 15? It is reprehensible that Student Senate funds seem necessary to move from study to a plan for action that is long overdue already. The responsibility for campus safety and atmosphere belongs primarily to the administration, Board of Regents and the Kansas Legislature.
Robert Cobb, executive vice chancellor, said earlier this semester that the University did not have enough money to renovate or expand lighting on campus. Last year facilities operations received $25,000 to improve campus lighting, but that was only a drop in the bucket compared to the $500,000 Cobb said it would take to upgrade the lights.
It is up to members of the Board of Regents to determine financing priorities, and they have not placed lighting at the top of KU's list. But, then, they aren't the ones walking home from the library late at night.
Obviously students disagree with the Regents' decision. What isn't obvious is why the feelings of students don't seem to reach the right ears. The best role of the Student Senate is not to begin spending where others should spend. Student leaders should tell the story of what shadowy, spotty lighting does to the schedules and emotions of students.
During finals and between semesters, the need for safety — and a feeling of safety — becomes clearest. Let us hope it is clear to everyone.
Presidential goof
Any time the president of the United States blunders, people notice. President Reagan, like his predecessors, knows that presidents are not allowed small mistakes.
The arrangements for his state visit to West Germany during the first week of May have proven this truth once again. In the past week, administration officials have tried to mend the damage of an announcement that Reagan would visit a German military cemetery. Veterans' organizations and Jewish groups have denounced the plan.
Reagan has spoken of a mistaken impression about the schedule and his lack of awareness that the cemetery in question includes 47 graves marked "SS" for the troops that carried out policies of genocide. But the fact remains that Michael Deaver, who soon will leave his job as deputy chief of staff at the White House, goofed.
So Reagan has done the best that he can do to minimize the damage and improve the symbolism of his visit. Before visiting the cemetery at Bitburg as announced, he will visit a concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen.
The week of squirming and saving face coincided with the presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Commission. Wiesel reportedly considered refusing the medal because of the president's plans.
In the end Wiesel accepted the medal, speaking at the ceremony of his distress at Reagan's decision to go to Bitburg despite pleas against the visit. However, Wiesel also said that he did not believe in collective guilt of all the German people and that he wanted reconciliation with them.
Wiesel's remarks were welcome for he spoke the truth of his position forthrightly, yet he also left room for respect of Reagan's views and predicament. He did not insist on polarization simply because he could not prevail. Many who protest or seek change could learn from his tactic.
Earlier, Wiesel's group had sent a telegram stating that treating visits to SS graves and a concentration camp as a balanced schedule would mean that the president could not distinguish between war and genocide.
In these weeks of remembering the end of World War II in 1945, the lessons of political symbolism become very clear. A head of state speaks through symbolic acts, not just through words.
At the same time, the anniversary should be a time to lay aside the absolutism about interpreting such symbolic acts. The world must never forget the Holocaust, but its survivors are not the only people who can make valid interpretations about acts of remembrance.
The president is right in saying that most German soldiers were victims of Nazism. His dual visits will make the point that war, though not equal to genocide, also has lessons to teach.
15 years ago ...
Saturday marked the 15th anniversary of the burning of the Kansas Union. Those who were on April 20, 1970, will always remember a smoke blowing from the building and the James licking the night sky.
No one has ever been charged with starting the fire and no reason for it has ever been ascertained, but the fire has come to be associated with many other events that reflected the racial unrest and antiwar sentiments fomenting across the nation that year.
Fights broke out repeatedly that spring between black and white students at Lawrence High School
Abbie Hoffman and the six other members of the "Chicago Seven," who were accused of conspiring to incite riots at the Democratic National Convention in 1968, were declared innocent on Feb. 18. Grade and high schools across the country closed when orders to desegregate were met with hostility and violence. Four students were shot to death on May 4 when National Guardmen opened fire on a group of antiwar demonstrators at Kent State University. The court-martial of Lt. William L. Calley Jr., who was charged and later convicted of killing 102 Vietnamese civilians on March 16, 1968, in the My Lai massacre, began on May 18.
Hundreds of colleges and universities had ceased to function either because students had stopped attending classes as a warrior, War War or because state or school officials had closed the schools down.
DIANE LUBER
Managing Editor
Chancellor Laurence Chalmers averted a strike at KU by calling for an all-University convocation on May 8 at the stadium.
More than 12,000 people attended and voted to accept a proposal that the University Senate Executive Committee developed as an alternative to closing down the University. Under the proposal, students could choose to finish out the school year or pick from a variety of options that allowed them to stop attending classes but still receive credit. Although more than 80 percent of the students chose not to attend classes, the University remained open.
But tragedy was not averted. On July 16, a Lawrence police officer, investigating two reports of shootings in East Lawrence, shot and killed Donald "Rick" Dowdell, a black resident of Lawrence and former KU student. The officer said he had fired on
Dowdell only after he had ordered Dowdell to halt, fired a warning shot and Dowdell, who was armed, had fired back at him. An all-white coroner's jury exonerated the police officer of any wrongdoing.
Four days later, Harry Nicholas Rice, a KU student, was killed near the intersection of 12th Street and Oread Avenue. Police had been called to the area to shut off a fire hydrant and quench a few small fires when they were assaulted with bottles, rocks and tomatoes. When the crowd that had gathered turned over a Volkswagen, the police charged, saying he had not been part of the unruly crowd but his curiosity had drawn him to the area to observe the goings on. The KBI later reported, "We cannot demonstrate that he was killed by a police bullet. We cannot demonstrate that he was not killed by a police bullet."
Adding these events to the burning of the Union still does not tell the whole story of what happened here in 1970. The whole story, in fact, may never be known. But we who occupy a much quieter campus in 1985 should remember what happened here so that we can prevent it from happening again — not by repressing present and past experiences or diminishing war, discrimination and the other outrages and injustices that make such protest necessary.
The truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth (except with Nicaragua)
President Reagan, a recognized master of political rhetoric, has kept the propaganda in high gear during his fight to resume congressional financing of the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries.
For once he seems to be losing. In spite of his zealous defense of those thugs he confuses with our founding fathers, the more perceptive members of Congress. Republicans as well as Democrats now are recognizing something.
Two supporting cases were reported in a Miami Herald article, which ran on Sept. 26, 1984. It told two CIA analysts who resigned in protest of Reagan administration practices.
The first case is that of David MacMichael, who worked on Central American intelligence appraisals from 1981 to 1983. He left the agency, charging that the administration had violated its security laws. The Nicaraguan government was shipping weapons and ammunition to leftist Salvadoran guerrillas.
Just about everything Reagan says about Nicaragua is a lie.
Such arms shipments have long been a staple of U.S. opposition to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. But there is something that Reagan has never bothered to point out regarding this alleged arms
traffic — Nicaragua and El Salvador don't even have a common border. To get from one country to the other, you either have to cross the Gulf of Fonseca, which is full of U.S. ships, or pass through Honduras, which is crawling with U.S. soldiers. If the interdiction of arms shipments were truly a concern of the Reagan administration, it could easily be accomplished without financing the contras.
The other case cited in the article is that of John Horton, who quit the agency in May 1984 because of what he called the administration's "zeality" and "strong ideological clamps" on his work. Horton decided he'd had enough when CIA Director William Casey had one of his reports rewritten to better support Reagan's views.
The interesting thing is that Horton supported Reagan's goals for Central America. He just thought that politically biased intelligence anal-
sis could lead to "erroneous or uninformed policy decisions."
So the deception is being taken a step further: The Reagan administration is pressuring its own agencies to misinform its own decision-making elements. In other words, Reagan uses our tax dollars to pay people to lie to him – and this policy of high-level self-deception is enough to force even CIA personnel away in disasters.
I find this pretty disturbing. If Reagan holds the truth in such low regard in this matter, then when can we trust him to tell the truth?
Sure, there's a war in Nicaragua,
but it's nothing like the "war of
liberation" our chief executive
describes.
I've been to Nicaragua. I've met the people whose spirit is supposedly being crushed by Cuban-style Soviet expansionism. I drunk the beer, argued with taxi-drivers and read opposition newspapers in the country that Vice President George Bush said had no civil rights.
Reagan, Bush and Secretary of State George Shultz — none of whom have been to Nicaragua — all are lying about that country. The mercenaries they call "freedom fighters" are periodically exposed by journalists of every stripe as mutilation enlarged terrorists.
Contrary to Reagan's claims, the contras do not have wide grass-roots support. People who have killed and dismembered civilians just for farming state-owned land don't swing public opinion in their favor.
The point is that the war in Nicaragua would dry up and shrivel if not for Reagan's support. The most serious battles in the contra war, the ones that determine the fate of Nicaragua, are being fought in government offices in Washington, D.C., and on U.S. television.
The latter is a theatre of operations in which Reagan is an expert. However, it seems that this time neither Congress nor the public is buying what he says. Frantically falling back upon his untouchable image as a decisive leader and upon a wealth of misinformation provided by his staff and speech writers, Reagan proclaims that to abandon the contra in his hour of need would be shameful and unpatriotic.
He's lying.
But don't just listen to his glowing rhetoric. Check the facts.
EDITOR'S NOTE: John Henson Prairie Village senior, is majoring in journalism. He spent last year studying at the University of Costa Rica and traveling within Central America.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Hall of a problem
To the editor:
I was one of the original members of the Humanities Building Committee, which began its work in 1964 and served until 1970 when our plans were scraped. The plan of the current building was imposed upon us, and the committee was replaced by a larger committee charged with distribution of office space and other details.
The original committee had considered what we thought were important factors, including: Where do faculty and students spend most of their time; What are optimal conditions for an office area; What size classes could we expect for the next few decades?
The majority of our recommendations had been ignored when the plans for the current building were presented to us in the spring of 1970, including particularly the need for a human environment (windows') in the offices.
In addition to being told that there was some question as to whether the humanities should be so well housed, we were informed that the building afforded, in some strange jargon I cannot recall, visual access to the library. What would happen if the would be "state of the art," and climate control would be no problem
I submit to you that: 1) we do not have visual access to the outside; 2) current work is unfinished, on the clock; 3) climate control has been a problem; climate control has been a problem;
3) for the past two months, life in Wescoe Hall has been unacceptable.
It is not a question of whether the humanities should be well housed, it is a question of whether or not students and faculty members in any discipline should be expected to work under such conditions.
David A. Dinnene professor of French and Italian, resident of Wescoe Hall - Cell 2064
Lame excuses
David A. Dinneen
10 the class.
I find Paul Barter and Brad Kieffer's second letter to the editor in the April 19 issue of the University Daily Kansas exceptionally repugnant.
The lame attempt to exonerate themselves for their sexist attitudes did not convince me that their original motive was not, in fact, to undermine women and the hard work women have made in our society.
To the editor:
But what is worse than their disgustingly anachronistic attitude is the fact that these two don't have the guts to stand behind their original
the whole purpose of their second letter was defeated with the line saying that women "make class a hell of a lot more pleasant." I resent that disgustingly blatant sexist comment.
Instead, they tried to transfer the blame onto the Kansan for printing their letter in what I expect was an attempt at self-preservation.
In short, I reject their "apologies," I reject their excuses, and I reject their simple mentality.
Amanda L. Waters Junction City junior
April 29,1985
To the editor:
It may be of interest to the University community and other readers of the University Daily Kansan that the following resolution was passed at the Student Senate meeting April 17 — a resolution to declare April 29 "No Business as Usual Day."
it is unfortunate that this was not mentioned in the Kansan article in which there was only the discussion
"Therefore, the Student Senate of the University of Kansas hereby resolves that April 29, 1983, be declared "No Business As Usual Day" at KU and encourages all members of the University community to observe this day as they see fit."
"Whereas, the threat of nuclear war now casts its shadow over the lives of all the people of the world. As students we are preparing to take our place in a world that might not be there when we get out of school. April 29, 1985, will be observed internationally as a day to look at the ways of our mutualations our life and many other things we take for granted that contribute to the escalating threat of nuclear destruction. Every day of business as usual brings us closer to World War III.
of relatively minor matters such as athletics.
David Huet-Vaughn
Liberal Arts and Sciences senator Leawood senior
To the editor:
Women's place is not in the home, barefoot and pregnant. A woman's place is in whatever position she has at her desk. Women need dedication to make a contribution.
A woman's place
Throughout history, despite societal prohibitions, very talented women have made significant contributions to the well-being of Homo sapiens. Just a few examples are: Marie Curie, chemistry and radioengineering; Dr. John D. Rockefeller, industrial engineering; and Florence Nightingale, nursing medicine.
By removing these prejudices, we can make it easier for the rest of the women to make their own contributions. I am glad to live in an age when it is possible for women to choose the courtroom, the board room or even the engineering office for a career.
I have no problems with a woman being an engineer. It does not take away from my talents as an engineer. I also have no problems with a group of engineers forming the Society for Women Engineers. I think we need the right of free association and is guaranteed by the Constitution.
Rex G. B. Gaumer
Lawrence graduate student
V