OPINION
University Daily Kansan, January 24, 1985
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansan (USPK 650-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Flint Hall. Lawrence, Kanok 6604, daily during the regular school and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and final periods Second-class postage paid at Lawrence, Kanok 6604. Subscription by mail are $15 for six months or $24 in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $34 a year outside the county. Student subscription charges apply. Address changes to the University Daily Kansan, 118 Stauffer Flint Hall. Lawrence, Kanok 6604.
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
SUSANNE SHAW General Manager and News Adviser
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
Classified pay
It is time the Kansas Legislature stopped balancing the state budget with the salaries of its civil service, or classified employees.
The current classified employee pay plan was implemented almost five years ago. Although the plan provided for raises based on job performance, only in 1981 did the Legislature provide enough money to reward state employees for work well done.
The application of the plan during that year alone was enough to raise serious doubts about the fairness of merit pay. Employee evaluations varied from agency to agency. An employee who received a satisfactory rating in one agency might have been considered outstanding, and therefore deserving of a larger raise, in another.
Since then, no merit increases have been granted. Employees with years on the job and skills to match have been getting paid the same salary as newly hired people.
The governor's office blames the suspension of raises on fiscal constraints. But the Legislature has repeatedly failed to allocate money for classified employees' salaries until the final days of each year's session. That has put more of a pinch on those workers than on other state programs and employees, whose funds are approved earlier.
Whatever the cause, the result has been a decline in the morale of classified employees.
Gov. John Carlin has proposed a new pay plan that would eliminate the inequities of merit pay and provide raises to classified employees who perform satisfactorily for specified periods of time. But the plan needs some polishing. Some classified employees have criticized it because instead of rewarding the long-term employee, it provides no additional raises after 20 years on the job.
But once the kinks are worked out, the Legislature should act quickly on the proposal, making classified employees a priority in the coming year's budget and giving those workers the raises they have long deserved.
It seems only fair
As the federal deficit rises, the debate over how to bring the monster under control has become the nation's most important and talked about issue.
Senate Republicans — including Kansas Sens. Robert Dole and Nancy Kassebaum — have proposed a freeze on all government spending with one important exception military spending. Even with the freeze, it would be allowed to increase by $20 billion.
Total military spending would reach more than $300 billion. The figure is staggering, and the Reagan administration wants even more.
At the same time, both the administration and Senate Republicans want to trim $50 billion from the projected $200 billion deficit. In addition to freezing non-military spending, the deficits would be reduced by further cuts in social programs. The latest proposal eliminates the cost-of-living increase in Social Security for one year.
Once again, officials in Washington have confused the nation's priorities. Enormous amounts of money have been spent in the past four years to strengthen the military. Combined with deep tax cuts, this spending has created record deficits.
Republicans point with pride to the recovery but sometimes fail to realize how the policies that ushered it in have created deficits that threaten to destroy it. The structure of the economy has been renovated, but it rests on a shaky foundation.
The foundation must be restored. Cutting the deficit is the only way to accomplish this. And to cut the deficit fairly, all areas of government must share the burden. Military spending accounts for about 30 percent of federal spending. If such a large chunk of spending is exempt from reductions, little progress can be made.
If the administration and Congress continue to allow military spending to grow while cutting important programs like Social Security, they will lose what credibility they still have as a government of and for the people.
Quite simply, it just isn't fair.
Any plan to freeze government spending should freeze military spending as well.
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 of the university. The Kansan also invites individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office. 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Dana G. Laird and Paul Maddock are both students in the department of chemical and petroleum engineering. Laird is a Topera school, and Maddock is an Overland Park senior.
Ode to 'technocrats and specialists'
As two "technocrats and specialists," we read the Jan. 18 article by Dave Morrison titled "Humanities Need More Emphasis," and we feel he has no concept of the relative technical vs. a liberal arts education.
department of chemical and petroleum engineering to complete credit hours in humanities in order to receive a degree, we feel we are more competent than a technical between the merits of a technical and a liberal arts education.
We have a question for the student body in general: How many technical classes have you taken lately? It seems to us that those who think that a liberal arts education is better than a technical one do not have enough experience in technical courses to comment intelligently on the value of those courses in today's society. Since we are required by the
If you say engineer, most people envision the nerd-type, complete
with slide rule and pocket calculator. Such people do exist, but they are in the minority.
Because of the prevalent stereotype of engineers, most people picture us as socially incompetent and lacking personality.
If this is true, we doubt that the
Chicago Liberal Arts and Sciences
can correct it.
The chemical and petroleum engineering department requires 132 credit hours to graduate. Out of those, we take 18 hours of math courses, 8 hours of physics, 27 hours of chemistry, 9 hours of English and mathematics or social science. That's 77 hours outside of Learned Hall.
DANA G.
LAIRD
Guest columnist
How's that for being well-rounded? Because of this type of education, most "technocrats" can go into a wide variety of fields. Chemical engineers are not stuck working for Standard Oil Co. They can be doctors, dentists — a chemical engineering degree fills the pre-med requirements — or technical salesmen. A large number of them go into
management positions after four or five years in the field.
It has been argued that with such rapidly changing technology, what engineers are being trained for today might become obsolete tomorrow. Even if the field does become obsolete due to the people do. Because we work with technology, it is part of our job to keep up with it.
We agree wholeheartedly that we are facing a "knowledge explosion" and the ability to think independently is becoming more of a necessity. Perhaps no education better prepares us in these areas than a technical one.
Studies that we have read indicate that average ACT scores in the School of Engineering are the highest at the University. This means that some of the bristhest minds are going into engineering or some kind of specialized field. We doubt that money is the sole motive for this.
We promise that if you invite us to
our next party, we'll leave our
calculator.
Pressure, pressure, pressure
Last summer, I had the pleasure of riding across the scorched Mid-western plain on a Greyhound. After 14 hours and twice as many stops, I was getting up to step off the bus in Marathon, Texas. I hadn't talked much to the stranger next to me, but when I was getting my suitcases together, he gave me some good advice. "You should leave yourself," he said. We hadn't spoken much during the trip, but he hit the nail on the head for me.
Everyone feels pressure in their lives. Students are certainly no exception. We walk a tightrope, trying to balance schoolwork, jobs, sweethearts, friends, checkbooks and a hundred other things. Attempting to blend all these elements within the finite limits of hours, days and weeks results in frustration and tension.
There's always too much pressure. We can keep only our top priorities, and we must teison the rest.
There are those who exist here at the University of Kansas solely to parry or "find a man" or fulfill some need. Many people breathe stereotypes are rare,
though. For most, the balance weighs heavily toward getting a good education.
We shell out exorbitant numbers of clams to gain pearls of wisdom, fat
DAN
CROCKETT
Staff Columnist
resumes and degrees. Earning a degree — that's the bottom line. And the pursuit is laced with pressure.
College life, as the student handbooks assure us, is a rich and varied experience. A giddy adviser once suggested to me that most of the learning done at universities comes from the experiences Well yes, the other things are important, but they are not the primary reason that we are here.
the student who fails to deal with the pressures may end up gibbering about them.
by an army of cunning psychologists. Usually the situation doesn't go that far. Most students just take their classes and do everything averages and self-esteems lowered.
Cut through the rhetoric and the fact remains: in about 17 weeks, most of us will be reduced to quivering lumps of paranoia. We'll grind through all nighters, cramming in facts and churning out papers and projects. Finals time is not the exclusive domain of pressure, though. Most of us feel it throughout the semester.
Resolutions and ideals are still fresh in January, but I know that in a month, I'll be unhunched grimly over my calendar, slashing off days until spring break. Pressure is low for a few more days, though, and now is the time to develop better strategies to combat the stresses of college life.
We all need ways to vent this pressure.
Go to any bar on Friday night. I prefer Louse's Bar unless there's a decent blues band playing at The Blues Club in New York, refuge for sots with literary pretensions. The relaxation is great but there's always a manic undercurrent, just beneath the surface. I can almost see a week's worth of pressure being released and ricocheting off the walls.
While drinking remains the overwhelmingly popular method for dropping the pressure level, other options exist.
But like the stranger said, don't take it all too seriously. And if nothing else works, you can find me at Louse's Bar this Friday.
Physical exercise is an excellent, outlet. Run, swim, lift weights, ride a bike, do Jane Fonda contortions, whatever. Daily exercise offers great physical activity and also boost self-confidence, which is invaluable in dealing with pressure.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Variety is essential. Read something that isn't assigned, call an old friend, go to the lake. It's far too easy to fall into monotonic drudgery and be a lifeless drone. There are already countless instructors and perpetual students sulking about the campus. Don't join the ranks.
Fiallos unworthy
To the editor :
I read with great amusement the front page story (Jan. 17) about Mariano Fiallo, the former president of Nicaragua's Supreme Election Council who is now teaching at the University of Kansas.
Both Nazis and Communists favor a strong centralized national government. This is exactly the form of the Sandinista's Marxist regime (the Sandinista's so-called junta, which Fiallo is so fond of, is very much Nazi-like.
Arthur Thomas, professor of business on leave, was exactly right when he said that appointing Fialios to a professorship was "comparable to having appointed a member of a Nazi puppet government to a KU visiting professorship during the late 1980s".
The intellectual dwarfs who defend Fiallos' appointment do so in the name of academic freedom. Yet Fiallos and the titularitarian governors for seek to still academic freedom as well as all other freedoms.
It cheapens KU to offer a teaching position to one who seeks to disin-
David Graham
David Graham
Overland Park third year law
form rather than educate.
I hope that those who take a course from Fiasto recognize what he attempts to foist upon them for what it is: "publish!
q. year law
student
student
GLSOK charade
I guess I shouldn't complain too much. Even if GLSOK has won a clear-cut victory; even if they have been laughably (if informally) elevated to the sacred cow status of a celebrity, he has raised the whole homosexual "civil rights" charade has taught me many things about ol' KU.
To the editor:
With the signing of the peace treaty between Steve Imber and the Gay and Lesbian sexes of Kansas, the homosexual issue at the University of Kansas appears dead. Perhaps it is. What a pity.
First, I've learned that the University administration's hasn't an ounce of moral integrity in the controversy, not one administrator, not one professor has
had the guts to stand up and insist that homosexual practices are socially and morally evil. Not one! Instead, our open-minded defenders of free thought consistently have pandered to GLOSK's sophistry and have chastised people like Imber until they give up or make concessions because of lack of support. Like mogg attracts to rotten fruit, the homosexuals are feasting on this University's perverse cowardice.
What a sight it is; GLSOK president Ruth Lichtwacht parading her title belt around the ring, the undisputed conqueror of KU's intellectual and spiritual giants; manager Tuttle taunting the audience, threatening to annihilate all challengers; and the rest of us, Chancellor
Second, I've seen the words intolerance and bigrydage in new ways. In the name of tolerance, William Tuttle, professor of history, has proposed that we suppress all anti-LGSOK activity on campus. And in his condemnation of "bigrity," the good professor was at his Archie Bunkerish best when he labeled all opponents of GLSOK as "homophobics." Even though 1984 is over, "Newseak" is not dead!
lor Gene A. Budig included, cowering in our seats, fearful to say a word.
Yes, something is rotten in Lawrence. Perhaps the legislators in Topeka who control KU's purse strings will get a whiff of this and cut off our financing. We should be so lucky.
Joe Vusich Lawrence resident
Shivering shower
To the editor:
It may be possible to understand the deep wisdom behind having extremely cold showers in the faculty locker area during the winter. The University is, after all, tenured in the shock of very cold water may be able to tolerate this attrition of the gray-bearded population and that would help.
I cannot, no matter how hard I tried, figure out the reasons behind ice-cold student showers. I mean, if students were to die off, would that not reduce the need for showers? No, I believe that dropping dead sort of implies dropping out?
Mohamed El hodiri professor of economics