University Daily Kansan, February 20, 1985
OPINION
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansan (USPN 609-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Staffer Hall Floor. Lawrence, Kanon 6064, 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, Kanon 6044. Subscriptions by mail are for $15 six or month or $27 a year in Douglas County and for $18 for six months or a year outside the county. Student expenses are included in the student fee cover, which addresses changes in the University Daily Kansan. 118 Staffer Floor. Lawrence, Kanon 6064.
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
Sales and Marketing Adviser
SUSANNE SHAW General Manager and News Adviser
Opting for loyalty
Last week, State Sen. Eugene Anderson, D-Wichita, introduced a bill that would stop a bad plan before it has a chance to get started.
The bill would outlaw university athletic departments from requiring season ticket holders to donate money to keep their seats. The bill was prompted by a plan the KU Athletic Department is considering that would displace some basketball season ticket holders to make room for contributors to the Williams Fund, the department's fund-raising organization.
Anderson is right to oppose the department's plan. It's a pity, however, that the Legislature must spend time on an issue that should never have been considered.
The controversy arose in November, when the department wrote a letter to ticket holders announcing the proposal. Longtime season ticket holders complained, saying they had supported the Jayhawks in leaner years and now were being pushed aside for newer, wealthier fans attracted by the team's recent success.
In the letter, the department said donations of $750 to $5,000 might be required to keep seats in the bleachers and in some of the best sections of Allen Field House.
Private donations make up about 30 percent of the department's revenue and amounted to more than $1 million in 1984. In the past five years, the department's budget has increased by 70 percent. The need for more private funds to keep pace with this expansion is understandable.
However, the plan being mulled over in the Parrott Annex is not the answer. At worst, the plan would unfairly pressure ticket holders into making contributions. At best, it would be a rotten way to treat loyal fans.
One can understand the pressure department officials must feel when a big contributor wants better seats. Contributors to KU athletics should be rewarded — but not at the expense of longtime season ticket holders.
Loyalty must be remembered, especially in athletics, which places a premium on fairness.
Moreover, treating loyal fans poorly is bad business. All glory is fleeting; players and coaches come and go, and a team's quality changes. When losses mount, fair-weather fans will disappear. Their donations will go with them. If treated with respect, the old fans will remain. If not, the seats might be empty.
Rock Chalk review
The final curtain has drawn across the stage, and the lights have dimmed for the last time. Rock Chalk Revue of 1985 can be called a success.
The "Black Tie and Tales" affair raised about $28,000. After expenses are paid, Dave Smith, the show's executive director, hopes to give about $10,000 to the Lawrence United Fund. Part of the profits will go back into the Rock Chalk pot to pay for next year's show, and the rest will be divided among the groups that participated to help defray their costs.
However, this kind of success has not always been the case. The campus variety show began in 1949, the brainchild of business student who thought that the University of Kansas needed such a show. Before that, the Kansas Union sponsored a variety show called College Daze.
Since then, Rock Chalk Revue has been around in one form or another. But it has been a struggle. Rock Chalk has ridden out financial problems, sponsorship problems, name problems and popularity problems.
But right now, congratulations seem to be in order all the way around - to those who won prizes, to the other participants, to those who worked backstage, to those who never performed but created competition.
Congratulations, and break a leg.
Two wrongs won't make it right
U.S. aid to contras
On Jan. 8, 1985, he was walking along the road near the town of San Juan de Limay in northern Nicaragua.
Freddy was 18 years old.
A family of refugees offered Freddy a ride in its truck. The family was from Platanares, a small village nearby that was attacked by contras Dec. 27, 1984. Nobody lives there any more. The 30 or so families have since left out of fear of the contrast, or guerrilla forces.
Sister Nancy Donovan, a U.S. nur-
working in San Juan de Lima, was
already in the family's truck. She
knew Freddy and his family well.
The contra allowed the party to continue. But Donovan decided to return to town to warn others about the contra, and she unsuccessfully tried to talk Freddy into coming with her.
A ways down the road, the truck was stopped by a contra. Freddy was questioned more intensely than the others because he was carrying papers to show that he had been in contact with the people by the Sandinistas to protect farmers working in the cooperatives, or group farms.
She never saw him again.
She never saw him again.
His body was found the day before Duane Johnson, Moundridge resident, arrived in Nicaragua in January. He and a group of Kansans were members of the Witness for Peace
organization. Witness for Peace sends groups of people to the northern area of Nicaragua to observe conditions in the country.
Johnson said he had talked to the doctor who did the autopsy. He had been told that the only way Freddy could die was by a belt found with his body.
Nicaraçaua
His fingers and toes had been broken. It appeared that he had been
running even after his toes were broken, probably trying to escape, the doctor thought.
There were multiple bayonet wounds. There were two shots in his head. The body had been burned.
While he was still alive, acid had been in his face, totally disfiguring it.
The body was so bloated that it would fit into a coffin, Johnson said.
He said the contras struck at the agricultural industry as part of their policy to bring down the Sandinista regime.
"The contras affect the economy by destroying agricultural equipment, water irrigation pumps and so on," he said to stimulate the farmers." Johnson said.
Johnson said he had come back to the United States with ambivalent feelings about the Sandistai government. And he is "bubulous about
people who apologize for the Sandinista government."
On one hand, he was very impressed with the advances in health and education that he saw. He said the literacy rate had gone from 13 to 70 percent in the five years since the Sandinista revolution began.
But, on the other hand, he said,
there was no doubt in his mind that
the Sandistas allowed Cubans and
their territory to aid
Salvadoran rebels.
"The question," he said, "is not whether the Sandinistas are doing wrong. They are." The question is how to avoid them using us to do wrong by aiding the contras.
"Given the strategies the contrasts, use, how can we justify U.S. aid to them? There has to be other ways to approach the problem," he said.
Johnson's group returned from its three-week observation period in Nicaragua on Jan. 23. Its report was released at the same time that President Reagan was calling for more aid to the contrasts in his State of the Union address. Reagan calls the contras "freedom fighters."
Congress banned aid to the contrast last year. That ban ends Feb. 28.
In the world of politics, these issues are among the bigger trees. They are important, yet let us not ignore the forest — the big picture.
We have already considered the big picture as depicted by Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. Let's look at another approach at politics, an approach that combines principle with specific policies.
'Ideas for today, choices for tomorrow'
Depressed about the prospect of cuts in student aid? Getting ulcers over the defense budget?
Newt's fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives have issued a list of 212 proposals. The report, titled "Ideas for Tomorrow, Choices for Today," was compiled by a GOP research group.
The proposals range from passage of tuition tax credits for families with taxable incomes of $40,000 or less, to abolition of mandatory automobile fuel economy standards so that the government can provide servation. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the "ideas/Choices" report, however, is its background.
Not so long ago, Ronald Reagan was derided as a senile movie actor. The predominant idea was that government had the answer to everything. For example, government knew that the way to keep the
The political scene is changing. As the national Democratic party fights over its old ideas, the national
price of gasoline low was to regulate the price.
Today, Reagan is in his second term in the White House, and the price of gasoline has been deregulated — and is low.
VINCE HESS Staff Columnist
For example, the "ideas/Choices" report criticizes the Atari Democrats and their industrial policy for the use of old premises; that coercion is better than incentives and that power belongs primarily to bureaucrats in Washington.
Republican party is stepping forth with innovative, optimistic proposals.
House Republicans, the report says, see things differently. They think that "America's real energy comes not from government but from
millions of good hearts and creative minds."
Using this principle, the report lists many policy options.
The report says, "The federal government is running huge deficits because it spends too much, not because it taxes too little." Ways to reduce federal spending include a line-item veto and a requirement that a source of funds be specified for every new government allocation.
Fairness is important. The House Republicans suggest that the Democrats, who control the House, commission a study on why women on the staffs of House committees do not receive equal pay.
Compassion is important. The U.S. government should follow European practice in allowing the use of semi-pests, which are stamps with a surcharge that goes to charity, or of semi-pests would be voluntary.
Moreover, as a way to help single parents, the handicapped and the elderly, the report suggests allowing household manufacturing. People work at home as long as they were under no danger to health or safety.
All Republicans wish to deprive college students of educational opportunity, right? Wrong. The report says, "Widespread access to education represents an investment in a healthy democracy and a growing economy." The Republicans in the House — as compared to those elsewhere in the government — propose greater efficiency through a merger of the National Direct Student Loan program and the auxiliary loan program into the Guaranteed Student Loan program.
The United States should continue its policies on aid to freedom fighters in Nicaragua and people suffering from famine in Africa. This country also should establish a scholarship from the Caribbean and from Central and South America to attend U.S. colleges.
Pie in the sky, you say? Perhaps, but the writers of the report seem serious. The report even lists pertinent topics that have been introduced in Congress.
Single issues are important, but a principle is necessary to decide on the issues. The principle behind the "Idea/Choices" report is repeated in the conclusion: "Each American must be free to make his or her own future. Government's challenge is to nurture that freedom."
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Consider the cost
To the editor:
write "How to have your cake and eat it too at the expense of the students of the University of Kansas."
while CS 200 students exist do
write "William G. Bulgren,
professor and acting chairman of
the computer science
department."
set bank account to $0
Start Algorithm
read next student add $$$$ to bank
write "The students of the University of Kansas are less the money" BANK ACCOUNT "and they're none the wiser."
account and while
Well, Bulgren, I am one student who is aware that CS 200 students seemingly are being exploited.
You have increased the price of taking Introduction to Computing by almost $20 over the last semester without changing any of the course curriculum. Your newly published text "The Algorithmic Process," which costs $19.95, is partly taken from the CS 200 handbook that you put together for last semester and that costs $8.95. And now the price of the new condensed handbook sells for $6.95.
Is it right for you to do this to the students? From a capitalistic standpoint, yes; but from a moral one. I think not. Some of us have long arms and short pockets, professor, and we already have enough trouble getting by.
If every professor chose to do the same injustice you have, it would increase the cost of an education almost $100 a semester. Indeed, the quality of your book is much nicer than the handbook, but I'm old-fashioned. I would much rather contend with loose papers from a poor binding and an $8.95 price tag than a high quality hardboard that will become a KU Bookstore heirloom.
Fellow students, I urge you not to get caught in "The Algorithmic Ripoff." If possible, try to obtain a copy of the July 1984 CS 200 book. Do as I have — save money and save a boring introduction!
Ron Martin
Wichita Junior
No GLSOK funds
To the editor:
If, and I do mean if, any taxpayer's moneyes are used to finance GLSOK or the likes of it, a citizens' organization of concerned taxpayers will be formed and will not relent in its quest until GLSOK, et al., have long departed the scene and are only a bad part of KU history.
Allow me to add this to the Feb. 4 guest column by Tim Williams that appeared in the University Daily Kansan.
Others and I are most resolved in this matter and will take legal action if need be. Let them take their brand of sickness somewhere else; to California or to hell for that matter.
James D. Oss Sharon resident
Vend-O-Pain
To the editor:
I hate to always be complaining about how the University of Kansas could be improved, but I'm going to do it anyway, just once publicly.
I've got a pretty hectic day on Tuesday and Thursdays like so many other students, and 10 minutes were much time for a nutritious meal
So I turn to the vend-a-lunch routine. It seemed so easy to grab a Coke and a bag of potato chips — at least I thought so.
Have you ever tried to make change on campus for a $1 bill or a $5 bill? When you stand in line at Wesco cafeteria, they tell you that you can't get change there, but you must stand in another line to get it
And at Strong Hall, you figure you
can try something tricky at the post office. You know when you get to the front of the line, a sign will stare you in the face saying "We do not make change for vending machines or telephones." So you buy a 20-cent stamp and expect 80 cents change. But the postman has a trick up his sleeve also and sends a 50-cent piece to you in a metal tray. There is nowhere in the world that bunk of American currency will fit into a slot.
All I'm asking is that someone put a change machine somewhere to make it easier for us busy KI2 students, and if money is a problem they can take one of those shiny brass handrails from the Adams Alumni Center and sell it for a couple of bucks.
Mark Haworth Glencoe, Ill., junior