University Daily Kansan, February 22, 1985
OPINION
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansas (USPK 60:440) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Staffer Flint Hall, Lawrence Kan. 60:445, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday. Sunday, holidays and finals periods. Second class postage贴住Lawrence Kan. 60:444 Subscriptions by mail are $19 for six months or $24 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 a year outside the county. Student addresses are addressed to the Student Postmaster address changes to the University Daily Kansas, 118 Staffer Flint Hall, Lawrence Kan. 60:445
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Aiding rebels
President Reagan has launched an offensive to get Congress to approve $14 million to aid rebels fighting the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.
In some of the strongest language used to date, the president, called those fighting the Sandinistas "our brothers" and said support for them was consistent with the United States' support for freedom around the world.
The president is badly mistaken. Waging a "secret" war against an elected government of a sovereign state is not a way to promote peace and stability in Central America.
In addition, the "contras," as the counterrevolutionaries are called, are a mixed bag at best. Some may be disenchanted democrats, but many leaders are also ex-National Guardsmen, whose record of torture and abuse was one of the worst in Latin America.
There is no doubt that there are many failures in the Nicaraguan revolution. Censorship of the press and the mistreatment of the Missuito Indians are obvious examples.
But this does not give the United States the right to arm people to carry on a brutal campaign against the government.
And yet the United States would not tolerate another country's meddling in its internal affairs to correct these injustices.
The president's concern for human freedom does not seem to extend to U.S. allies, including Chile, South Africa, South Korea and the Philippines, who carry out more repressive policies than the Sandistas do.
The issue of funding the "covet" war against the Sandinistas is finally out in the open, and Congress must now decide whether to appropriate the money the president wants.
The United States does not have to like or support the Sandinistas.
But Congress should not allow this country to finance the killing of men, women and children based on the misguided notion that it can control social change in Latin America and that this violence will promote freedom and peace in a very troubled region.
Civilized ideas
The Western Civilization Advisory Committee is considering revisions in the program that could revise its discussion option and bring more faculty members in its classrooms.
The committee intends these possible changes to be part of the normal process of adjusting curriculum, not a sign of dissatisfaction with the overall program.
Likewise, the Committee on Undergraduate Studies and Advising, the University Core Curriculum Committee have affirmed the program. They have asked for consideration of changes to maintain the program's centrality during changes proposed for the entire University curriculum.
Two features of this attention to the Western Civilization program are particularly good. First, the restatement of the University's commitment to education in the humane tradition of the Western world is valuable. Second, the program is receiving the careful attention that a central part of the curriculum deserves, and the attention is public knowledge.
However the reading-discussion program may change, the use of professors should increase. Some graduate assistants may be as effective as some professors in discussion sections, but the knowledge and perspective of professors is important. Any changes should not decrease the number of graduate positions in the University.
One reason for the review is the perception that students lack the background to understand the readings. The advisory committee has several ideas to shore up that background. It likely would prove useful, for example, to sample fewer authors and instead aim at building ability to read for depth.
The Western Civilization program is a strong, important and in some ways unique feature of KU. In a rapidly changing era, education in the Western philosophical heritage may matter more than ever. The effort to strengthen the program is time well spent.
The University Daily Kansan invites individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns should be typewritten and double-spaced and should not exceed 625 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. Columns can be mailed or, brought to the Kansan office, 111 Staffuar-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject columns.
GUEST COLUMNS
Castro shows why U.S. loses friends
Those who watch the "MacNeil/Lehrer Newhour" received a special treat last week — lengthy excerpts from a four-hour interview with Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Like him or not, the old revolutionary still knows how to communicate. There is no doubt he dodged the questions on human rights, political prisoners and other points for which there is no reasonable defense.
But he also eloquently pointed out why President Reagan and others in his administration have failed so abysmally in winning friends in Latin America.
Castro said Cuba could not export revolution because the political, economic and social conditions in each country were different. But the converse is also true. There is no way on God's green earth the United States can stop revolutions either.
And herein lies the problem with U.S. foreign policy, at least in Latin America. The United States assumes it has a divine mission, another incarnation of manifest destiny, to play in the world.
And it does not. What is good for the United States is not necessarily
good for Latin America. Reagan assumes the U.S. interests should dictate Nicaragua's internal policies, not Nicaraguan interests.
Nowhere is this cultural chauvinism more evident than in talk of Central American countries as "our back yard." Maybe if we saw the
DOUG
FARAH
The Reagan administration assumes it has been given a divine right to mine the harbor of a sovereign nation or finance a covert war against it because these actions suit "U.S. interests."
United States as Nicaragua's front yard, we would understand a different perspective.
Staff Columnist
Many people with whom I discuss and debate issues are surprised by the appeal Cuba and the Soviet Union hold for Latin American nations. Do people in Latin America, they ask, not know of Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan? Don't they know of the
suppression of dissent in those societies?
The secret is very simple. The Cubans, when they offer aid to other countries, ask each country what it wants, then attempt to meet those needs. If the country asks for military aid in going to war, it asks for schoolteachers and doctors, they get schoolteachers and doctors.
The Cubans respect the intelligence and sovereignty of other countries.
What does the United States generally do? It tells these countries what they want. Do they want schooleachers? Uncle Sam knows that school teachers are doctors? Military airstrips are really more suited to their best interests.
It is this arrogance that loses the United States countless friends and allies.
President Reagan and others are echoing the idea that somehow the United States is a second Israel, is blessed by God to be blessed abundantly.
The other day, the president, after quoting Scripture to back up his claims of innocence, asked
inspired, said, "I don't think the Lord that blessed this country as no other country has ever been blessed intends for us to somehow negotiate because of our weakness."
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Vessey Jr., reportedly has been going to prayer breakfasts around the country urging audiences to "enlist in God's army."
The implication of these statements is that the cause of the United States, blessed by God, is God's cause.
Does this mean Bolivia, because of its economic crisis, is cursed by God? Is Brazil's foreign debt the result of its leaders being infidels?
It is this type of mentality that can justify mining the harbors of a sovereign nation the United States is not at war with. It is this thinking that can justify writing handbooks telling others how to kill the leaders of another country.
And it is this arrogance that makes Castro and the Soviet Union look so good to so many people.
I ASKED HIM WHAT HE WOULD DO IF CRAZY FUNDAMENTALISTS STOCK THE GREETING GLOBE
Need that perfect word? Try a sniglet
Forget about nickel cigars, what this country needs is a good introductory course in sniggle.
What's a sniget? A sniglet is any word that doesn't appear in the dictionary but should. Sniglets were first put forth by Rich Hall on the Home Box Office comedy series "Not necessarily the News." Hall encourage viewers to send in words that don't appear in the dictionary but should. The response was overhealing.
Hall later published a book called "Sniglets" containing the words and definitions his viewers had sent him. Why not use Hall's book as the textbook for an introductory course in French? What about Kansas? The course — let's call it Sniglets i01 — would require students to master words such as:
-Telecrainstation: The act of always letting the phone ring at least twice before you pick it up, even when you're only six inches away.
blogesturers first determine that a sufficient number of other people have also raised their hands, thus enabling the likelihood of actually being called on.
- Bobbologsture: the classroom activity not knowing an answer but knowing a question.
- Bobbologstue: the classroom activity not knowing an answer but knowing a question.
- Optionistion: The kid in school who can turn his eyelids inside out.
Once the sniglets in Hall's book declared sniglet literate. But being declared sniglet literate.
GREG
DAMMAN
taff Columnist
An intelligent conversation between a fluent speaker of sniglet and a sniglet literate person could not take place. The conversation would be similar to one that might take
singer literate is not the same as being fluent in singlese.
place between someone from France and a student who has taken only an introductory course in French.
For that reason, an advanced course in sniglets, Sniglets 240, would need to appear in the curriculum. Such a course could teach students the sniglets that don't appear in the curriculum. Sniglets 240 would teach slang sniglets that would be useful to KU students. For example:
--Comparilitis: The fear of finding yourself sitting next to the Tan Man after spending spring break in Fort Erie audderdale, Fla., working on your tan
- Whistlebit: A sudden jumping reaction exhibited by some students at hourly intervals when the whistle denoting the end for a class period blows. The reaction usually occurs in the loftarea.
Joltarea: The 100-foot-long stretch of sidewalk between Stauffer-Flint Hall and Watson Library. Students who have severe cases of whistlejoint tend to avoid the joltarea.
—Grole: The hole in a piece of notebook paper caused by a pencil or pen falling into deeply carved desk graffiti.
- Gradulate: A student who purposely delays graduation for two years by changing majors more than twice.
- —Distinellon: A theory first put forth by a first-semester freshman claiming that whenever a professor's signature is needed for enrollment, that professor's office will be at the frontier of earliest from where you are standing.
- Halfway: The ability of some students to appear to be listening to a professor's lecture when in fact they are not. The inability of ability are susceptible to magnipack
- —Magnipick: The mysterious magnetic force that causes an instructor, after asking a simple question, to a student practicing baltic.
- Snacker: Not to be confused with a hacker or a hungry person. A snacker is someone who wastes valuable time dreaming up singles.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Bad balancing act
To the editor:
This plot to reduce student loans is only the latest in a long series of setbacks suffered by students under Ronald Reagan. Draft registration, disbandment and the reduction of minors' rights all occurred under this administration.
Having William Bennett, secretary of education, question the benefits of a college education carriage as quite a shock to me. It would be easy to make a lot of money in "Bennett go to hell." T-shirts, but people getting old and underlings and not Ron himself is the reason he won the election.
All students, from junior high school on up, are seeing the rights and privileges that were gained in the 1960s and 1970s being removed by the federal court that fought them. The student radicals are now the establishment, but there is no new strong student movement in this country.
Many young people who voted for Reagan (and there were a lot) presumably did so to assure themselves, they thought, of material wealth. The remarks by Bennett that students may have to divest themselves of stereos, cars and three-weeks-at the beach vacations are simply asinine and they infuriate me, while at the same time giving me a grim sense of "I told you so."
The student, who may or may not be depending upon the family for support, should not be punished because millions of people take advantage of a complex tax code for their personal gain. If personal and corporate taxes were equal, perhaps the budget reduced, there would be a reason to balance the budget on the backs of those pursuing an education.
To the editor:
The president knows that the military must recruit people from an ever-shrinking young population. The recession forced millions into the armed services, and a reduction in student loans would have the same
Jon DeVore
Stilwell sophomore
I've got it. He can join the military and invade small islands, and if he makes it to admiral, I hear there is a great sideline in AK-47 rifles.
effect. I would say stopping freeloaders is low on the administration's set of objectives.
I am no philosopher, but I attempt to see education as a worthy goal in and of itself, and I twitch when I hear aerospace majors talking about degrees like they were at a checkout stand. This attitude, that of simply being concerned with the monetary value of a degree, is reflected by Bennett. He claims that if his son wanted to take the $50,000 needed for a small business, he would let him. But wait, isn't the administration cutting back small business supports? Maybe the young Bennett could work at McDonald's. Didn't Reagan want to cut the minimum wage for teens, too?
African message
Allow me to send the following message to all the African students at KU for the occasion of African Cultural night coming up on Feb. 23.
BACKWARD AFRICA
BACKWARD'AFRICA
What were we going to do?
Is what we shall become
Those days shall come
When unripe apples shall become
And the ripe shall drop out
Those days shall surely walk in
When mountains shall ask the seas
Is Africa also among the greatest?
Now listen, listen to the sky
Whispering to the ignorant Earth:
Ears have not yet heard
Nor have the eyes seen
What the Wise time has prepared
For this backward Africa!
Anthony A. Aiya Nigeria graduate student