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Wednesday, September 1, 1993
OPINION UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
The Issue
Each year the Organization & Activities office holds a fair designed to attract new membership for student groups.
The Background
Because of budget restraints and the remodeling of the Kansas Union, the fair has been moved and reorganized each of the last several years.
Union accommodations inadequate for activity
The Opinion
This semester's Activities Fair failed to attract the attention necessary to provide new KU students with information about student groups on campus.
To student organizations, the Activities Fair at the beginning of each semester provides the single largest opportunity to inform students about their organization. Without this opportunity, many campus groups fold because of lack of membership.
Alarge percentage of students have no reason to go to the Union after the first of the semester, which is what makes the Activities Fair so important.
This semester, however, all the tables were squeezed together in one area that the waves of traffic flowed easily around. Because no signs in the area explained the event, many students followed the crowd past the tables without ever knowing what purpose they held.
In addition, the wait to claim a table for an organization was as long as 45 minutes at times. This was partially because of the new facilities and area for the Union staff to work with; however, this does not reduce the impact on student groups.
From clubs promoting literature to those supporting religious beliefs, student organizations are a comfort, an outlet and a necessity to the KU student body. As such, they need to have help from the University to stay accessible and keep the new student body informed.
College life is more than simply an education. It is also ideas and friends that will last a lifetime.
DAVID BURGETT FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Fighting racism should be responsibility of all
Another life is over because of the color of a person's skin. Amy Biehl, a Fulbright scholar studying in South Africa, was killed Wednesday by an angry mob of township youth. Biehl had been working since 1991 to improve the racial situation in South Africa. Her friends and colleagues said that she was a leading activist in bringing harmony and democracy to the racially-torn country.
Biehl's senseless death brings home that racism is a worldwide problem, not just the one of the U.S. It also illustrates that despite all the strides made toward equality of people there still is a long way to go. Her death marks one more in the long, irrational persecution because of skin color. Whether it was a white American Fulbright scholar, a Black South African township member, a L.A. Korean store owner or a Japanese foreign exchange student, any death from racism is one too many.
Resolving racism is everyone's personal responsibility. Biehl's death should remind us all the burden we carry. Biehl had one wish for the world — that all people would work together as individuals and racism and violence would not be issues. This dream was something she would never see in her lifetime, but a dream that we all should strive to realize.
TERRILYN MCORMICK FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
A QU12:
FIND THE MOST DANGEROUS, HEINOUS
TERRORIST ROAMING THE STREETS TODAY...
U.S. needs protection from 3rd World weapons
After the collapse of the Soviet Union most Americans felt secure in assuming that the prospects of a nuclear attack against the United States had significantly diminished. Such optimistic assumptions, however, are extremely premature and disregard the serious threat posed by the increased demand and availability of nuclear weapons throughout the Third World. Currently, nations such as North Korea, China and the republics of the former Soviet Union possess the technology to manufacture crude nuclear devices and have demonstrated a willingness to profit from their sales without regard for the intended purposes of the buyers. Russia has further complicated this precarious situation by selling, to any buyer, the missile systems needed to deliver a nuclear payload.
STAFF COLUMNIST
Despite the best efforts of the United States to control the spread of nuclear weapons, a nation like Iraq requires only 15 pounds of plutonium to build a nuclear device. With millions of pounds of plutonium scattered throughout the world, it is virtually impossible to safeguard all of it.
In February of this year, the Clinton administration canceled the proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, which would have provided global protection against nuclear strikes. Clinton cited budget restrictions as his rationale for discontinuing the program. At the same time, Clinton proposed a pork-laden $15 billion "economic stimulus package," costing roughly the same amount as the proposed space-based missile defense systems. The expense of a
strategic defense system seems almost inconsequential when compared with the number of lives it could possibly save. If government's most fundamental responsibility is to safeguard the lives of its citizens, then Clinton defaults on this responsibility by failing to provide even minimal nuclear protection for America's cities.
The United States should renew its commitment to strategic defense by endorsing Boris Yeltsin's program for a "Global Protection System" against limited nuclear strikes. Such a system is not only technically feasible but also should be available for deployment by the year 2000. The type of system proposed, called "Briliant Pebbles," would consist of 1,000 desk-sized orbiting satellites that would maneuver into the paths of incoming missiles and effectively destroy them before their warheads could be released and targeted at American cities. The advantage that a single space-based system would have over the multiple ground-based systems that Clinton did support is that it would eliminate redundant components, making the missile
defense cheaper and easier to maintain.
The arguments used against strategic defense in the 1980s have almost no validity today. Keith Payne, professor of national security studies at Georgetown University, said "The arguments against missile defense that it would set off an arms race, destroy the future of arms control, cost too much, prove to be technically infeasible, require violations of the ABM Treaty — were all based on the assumption of Soviet opposition." Now that the Soviet Union has disintegrated, these arguments carry very little weight. Strategic defense must be reconsidered in light of the threat posed by hostile Third World nations with nuclear weapons.
The greatest threat to international security lies in the increasing number of countries seeking nuclear weapons coupled with an increasing number of cash-starved nuclear powers willing to sell them those weapons. The solution to this problem is the deployment of a global protection system. Until this universally beneficial program is implemented, the U.S., along with the rest of the world, remains vulnerable to the potential vengeful actions of Middle Eastern and other Third World leaders. Clinton recognized the urgency of this situation when he stated, "The United States can't afford to wait until a host of Third World nations acquire arsenals full of First World weapons."
Lance Hamby is a Wichita junior majoring in political science and journalism.
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Russia going the way of
Ann 24
underdeveloped nations
La Republica, Rome, on changes in Russia and China:
Those who say that Russia is drawing closer to the West should think again. It is actually becoming much more like the world's underdeveloped countries.
How is it possible that a country that boasts the best balance in the world between its population and its resources is beginning to resemble regions that never have developed
from extreme poverty? And how do you explain the fact that China, which has an unfavorable proportion between its population and its resources, seems to be flourishing?
It is tempting to attribute everything to the fact that, while China is becoming capitalist, Russia is still trapped in socialism's stranglehold.
Since the death of Stalin, the former Soviet Union has produced the worst ruling class imaginable. Not one ruler is exempt, least of all Gorbachev.
They were all Communists, but so were the successors of Mao. The group of rulers that emerged after Mao's revolution have produced much better results for their country than the statesmen that came out of the school of Lenin and Stalin.
Russia is growing away from the world in which we live, and it is not at all clear where it is headed.
This explanation seems too simplistic, but one fact is certain: the majority of industry in China is state owned and works, as the economic indicators testify. On the other hand, in Russia everything is under threat of paralysis.
KC TRAUER, Editor
JOE HOER, CHRISTINE LAUE
Managing editors
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
Well, I didn't shoot anyone yesterday. I'd decided at breakfast that I should try to go at least one day without firing any shots. It wasn't as easy as you might think.
KC TRAUER, Editor
Then there was the professor who gave a pop quiz two classes in a row. I know where he lives, it could have been an excellent drive-by opportunity.
Random violence has become so commonplace that it no longer even makes the front page of the paper. instead we find it in small stories in sections tabbed "local interest" or "metro."
We used to think of drive-by shootings as things that happened in inner cities, between rival, mostly minority gangs. It seems that the problem has outgrown our stereotypes of it. In late July, Time magazine ran a cover story feature on violence and teen-agers. The main interview was with a 15-year-old named Doug.
Doug it seemed had not long ago purchased his first weapon, a saewed-off shotgun, for $25. He and his buddies would drive around the neighborhood shooting up cars, houses and basically anything else that caught their eye.
You don't have to go to Omaha to find Dough though. He's also in Topeka, population 250,000. He's even been seen recently in Lawrence, population 65,000.
So what are we going to do about Doug? What will Doug be like when he's 25? What will today's 5-year-olds be doing when they are 15?
There were so many opportunities. First there was the woman who whipped her subcompact into the last parking stall in the lot next to the art museum, while I was attempting attempting to dock my boat in the same place. This forced me to park all the way down by the stadium. She was a very tempting target.
Doug doesn't fit many of our stereotypes. He's white His parents are still married. The family isn't poor, they're well-fed, warm and dry. His family isn't perfect, but whose is?
I sense that you're not very impressed with my achievement. Maybe I should add that I didn't shoot at anyone the day before either. Still not impressed? Well, I have a confession to make. I've never actually shot at anyone. It seems that there are fewer and fewer people today who can make that statement.
Somehow in less that a decade something has gone terribly wrong. Human life has lost its meaning for an entire generation. They're teenagers now — what happens when they become adults?
KANSAN STAFF
JIM KIMME Guns have permeated suburbs via today's kids
Editors
Assistant to the editor  J.R. Claiborne
News  Stacy Friedman
Editorial  Terrilyn McCormick
Campus  Ben Grove
Sports  Krilet Fogler
Photo  Kip Chin, Renee Kneeber
Features  Erra Wrofe
Graphics  John Paul Fogel
As a society we have been either unable or unwilling to deal with them. Eventually we will have to deal with them. We'd better be ready.
One more thing about Doug. He doesn't live in a poor inner city, he lives in a working class neighbor in Omaha, Neb. Population 350,000.
We can only hide in the suburbs for so long. Omaha didn't use to have a problem. Will all of our doors have to have a bullet hole before we respond?
BILL SKEET, Systems coordinator
AMY CASEY
Business manager
AMY STUMBO
Retail sales manager
JEANNE HINES
Sales and marketing adviser
Jim Kimmel is a McCloth junior majoring in history and sociology.
STAFF COLUMNIST
Campus sales mgr Ed Schager
Regional Sales mgr Jennifer Perrier
National sales mgr Jennifer Evenson
Co-op sales mgr Blythe the
Production mgr Jennifer Blowey
Marketing director Shelly Macintosh
Creative director Michelle McFarland
Classified mgr Janice Davis
Business Staff
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by Jeff Fitzpatrick
For the Birds
Fitz 1993 Univ Daily Kansan