OPINION
University Daily Kansan, June 29, 1984
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansan (USP5 60460) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Fitt Hall Hallow, Kaneg. 60460, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holiday, and final weekdays. Students are required to pay $3 per semester for six or seventh six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 for a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $3 a semester paid through the student activity fee UNSTASTER. Send address changes to the University Daily Kansan, 118 StauFFER Fitt Hall Hallow, Kaneg.
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'Catch-21'
The U.S. House and Senate this week approved legislation that will effectively set the national drinking age at 21. If President Reagan approves the bill, as he is expected to do, this clumsy legislation will become the law of the land.
Legislators like to cite statistics showing that drinking-related fatalities have been reduced by up to 30 percent in states where the drinking age has been raised to 21.
This space has repeatedly denounced attempts aimed at reducing drunken driving by raising the drinking age.
Obviously they aren't aware that the fatality rate in Kansas dropped by 26.2 percent last year, and Kansas didn't touch its drinking laws. But it did enforce tougher laws against drunken drivers.
Tougher law enforcement is the obvious solution to this problem.
But stiff laws against drunken driving are, for unclear reasons, unpopular among legislators. Maybe our high-minded legislators are aware that it would be difficult to explain away their after-hours behavior from behind bars.
Raising the drinking age to 21 will virtually eliminate the problem of drunken driving for 18- to 21-year-olds.
Now how do we solve the problem for the rest of the adult population? Bring back prohibition?
Visitation policy
At first glance the new visitation policy for residence halls seems archaic, as does talk of restricting adults from making their own decisions about who will sleep where in the halls.
But face it, adult or not, some people are not always considerate of other people's rights and feelings.
And it's never pleasant to come back to your room and find your space invaded.
Nor is it fun to look for a place to stay in the middle of the night when your roommate has overnight guests.
So what is the solution?
The answer lies in the new contracts that were proposed by the Association of University Residence Halls.
With the new contracts, roommates will have to discuss and come up with rules that govern their own room, such as whether they will allow overnight guests and whether they will share personal items.
With the contracts they will have to get such issues out in the open from the start.
Some people may be reluctant to impose strict rules at first, or to be upfront about what they expect of their roommates, but the opportunity for open communication will be there for those who are smart enough to grab it.
Requiring contracts between roommates is a good idea, now let's just hope that people who need them will take advantage of them.
The right to travel
Yesterday the Supreme Court confirmed the government's power to prevent American tourists from traveling to Cuba. It is only a coincidence that on the same day, democratic presidential contender Jesse Jackson again conducted his own foreign policy, this time in Cuba and Nicaragua.
But obviously the two events are closely related.
The question is who has the right to conduct foreign policy and whether the president should have the power to prevent ordinary citizens from traveling to foreign countries and talking to whomever they please.
Jesse Jackson did not go to Cuba or Nicaragua as an official U.S. diplomat. He went as an ordinary citizen, a tourist if you prefer, conducting his own foreign policy.
He was successful six months ago when he achieved the release of Lt. Robert Goodman from Syria and he was successful this time in Cuba.
Reagan may not like it, but as long as Jackson keeps on releasing prisoners, he smiles and lets him go.
"You don't argue with success," as Reagan puts it.
You don't argue with success, as Reagan puts it. The problem is that Reagan could, if he wanted to. The Supreme Court's decision did not just confirm some minor presidential authority. It virtually gave him the power to restrict our right to travel.
The Court based its decision partly on the Constitution's Fifth Amendment, which is interpreted as giving the president sufficient authority to curtail the flow of money to Cuba.
We wouldn't deny the president's right to restrict international travel in another Cuban missile crisis.
But we do object to an interpretation of the Fifth Amendment that clearly violates our right to travel. And this right is embodied in another amendment — the First.
Take notes and never lift a pencil
Student entrepreneurs, take note.
Student entrepreneurs, take note. Better yet, take NOTES Grab that steno pad and tape recorder and capitalize on the latest cash-in-at college craze: professional notetaking.
At the University of Colorado in Boulder, three students last fall started their own business, "Class Quotes Ltd. Electronome Service." The three enterprising young men hired 16 graduate students and teaching assistants to take notes in 26 of CU's large lecture classes.
For $14 a semester, CU students could subscribe to the "Class Quotes" service and get complete daily transcripts of their classes — without ever lifting a pencil.
So while an "electronote-taker" sat in the front row of Introductory Chemistry and recorded the professor's every move, the not-so-studious Colorado freshman could sleep late, skip class and hit the slopes after lunch.
Many of the university's faculty were not pleased. Still, the Colorado Board of Regents this year voted to allow professional notetakers to attend class and sell transcripts — if they got the instructor's permission.
Has crude commercialization triumphed over academic initiative? Are these Rocky Mountain collegians shirking the responsibilities of steady
But the "Class Quotes" service is only a logical extension of such college traditions as Cliff's Notes and KU's own Western Civilization New Analysis.
Monday-Wednesday-Friday attendance for an easy, effortless "A"^2
These professional study guides may be used as supplements by the more ambitious (or confused) scholar, "King Lear" becomes clear; "Paradise Lost" becomes found -- for only $2.95 at the campus bookstore
Or, these study guides may be abused as substitutes for the true learning experience. I wonder how
many students out there actually read Saint Thomas Aquinas and how many skimmed the capsulized New Analysis 10 minutes before class.
The Colorado "electronate-takers" were smart enough to recognize that students not only sometimes skip class, but even when they do attend.
The "Glass Quotes" entrepreneurs saw a demand for their service and organized on a campuswide scale, offering a convenient answer to the question asked by countless students every day: "Hey, can I borrow your notes?"
they don't always take the best of notes.
Now that Social Psychology student who never manages to wake up for 8 o'clock lecture won't have to decipher the scribbles of a vague classroom acquaintance. She can just subscribe to "Class Quotes."
And that budding Picasso in Financial Accounting can concentrate on sketching his professor's portrait instead of absorbing all that talk about assets and liabilities. With "Class Quotes," he can buy clean, typewritten notes for a reasonable fee.
I know I could have used some "Class Quotes" a couple semesters ago when I was taking Meteorology 105. Just as a supplement of course.
All the latest crazes hit Kansas a little late. (After all, we only recently got烘dancing and yogurt restaurants.) But maybe by this fall, some money-minded KU whiz kid will open his own professional note-taking service.
If that happens, the first day of classes sure will be different:
Wescoe Hall, early one August morning. A Speech 150 class meets for the first time. The professor passes out course requirements, complains about the air conditioning, and botches everyone's name when she calls roll.
"Did I miss anyone?" she asks.
The guy in the corner with a tape recorder on his desk and six sharpened pencils in his shirt pocket raises his hand.
"I'm E.Z. Writer," he says "I'm not enrolled, but I work for the KU Cheatsheet Service. We just moved in behind the Union. Daily notes for all your favorite classes — only $20 for a semester's worth."
The students glance anxiously at the clock, shuffling their syllabi. Within minutes the classroom is empty.
Except for E.Z.
"Go ahead, professor," he says, punching the play button on his miniature Sony recorder. "What are you going to lecture about? Interpersonal communication? Impromptu speaking? Eye contact?"
The professor clears her throat, and gives E.Z. some serious eye contact. "First, I'd like to make a little revision on my syllabus. From now on class attendance will be mandatory."
Walkout highlights free press debate
At the end of 1983 the U.S. government informed the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that in one year's time it intended to withdraw from the international body and to stop its contributions.
The decision was directed against UNESCO because it has become the principal forum for the Third World's efforts to establish a new world information order. The Reagan Administration has denounced these efforts as an assault on the free press.
The American walkout highlights one of the most sharply fought diplomatic battles between rich and poor countries. Put simply, the struggle pits the West's notion of freedom of information against the Third World's demands for a redistribution of information resources and the right to control the flow of information.
Developing countries, joined by the Soviet Union and its allies, maintain they should have the right to control not only their own mass media, but also the flow of information in and out of their countries.
Western industrialized countries hold that journalists must have an unimpeded right to collect and distribute news and information.
Both sides have a point "Freedom of information" is one of the basic tenets of democracy and is embodied in the United Nations" "Universal
Declaration of Human Rights." It states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression, as well as the right to seek and receive information freely across international borders.
Third World countries maintain that this "free flow of information" exists only for the rich countries that dominate international communication and threaten the cultural identity and sovereignty of developing nations.
They ask how there can be freedom of information as long as a handful of Western-based wire services supply
WOLFGANG
DOBLER
Staff Columnist
almost all the news coverage. The Western domination of news, they charge, is nothing more than a new form of colonialism designed to meet the tastes of American and European audiences, and is ill-suited to fulfill the needs of developing countries.
It is ill-suited, they say, because the presentation of American comedies and soap operas contributes to the erosion of traditional values and cultures, and artificially stimulates
the demand for Western products and life styles that cannot be met by the weak economic and political means of a developing nation.
Even if we don't accept the reproach of a "new colonialism," we nevertheless must acknowledge that there is indeed a severe imbalance in the flow of information between the developing and the developed nations. Some 80 percent of the total news flow comes from Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Agence France Press, and TASS. We have come to a situation where a peasant in India knows more about the problems of the British Royal Family than about neighboring Pakistan.
Think about it. What do we know about developing countries?" "Riots in India," "Military Takeover in Nigeria," "Earthquake in China" That's the kind of information we get about a considerable part of the world, and that's what developing countries learn about each other.
The Western news agencies focus on conflicts and crises not because there is more unrest in those countries, but because that's what we expect from those countries.
inevitably arise in newly independent countries dominated and exploited in past centuries. The rationale is this: First comes freedom from want, and then comes freedom of information.
It's a vicious circle. What we expect is what we get, and what we get predisposes our expectations.
What the Third World demands is "responsible journalism". It is based on the idea that people need time to learn to cope with the difficulties that
The means to bring about this "responsible journalism" is believed to be licensing journalists in order to elevate the standards of reporting
Two opposing conceptions clash at this point. In Western countries the dominant opinion is that licensing automatically means control, and that a controlled press is not, and can never be, a free press. The Third World considers government control the only possibility of achieving sovereignty over the flow of information in and out of their countries.
The United States, with its decision to pull out of UNESCO, has used its powerful position as a major contributor to this international body to turn down the developing countries' demands.
What has been forgotten in the battle for a free press is that by withdrawing from UNESCO, the U.S. leaves this international forum to the Soviet Union and the more radical Third World countries. The U.S. withdrawal also threatens the very future of UNESCO and its work in spreading literacy and the advancement of science, precisely those values which are believed to be the foundation of any free press and democratic society.
Hermann Hesse would be 107-years-old on July 2. He would be. People say he listened to a Mozart sonata on the evening of August 8, 1962, retired in good spirits despite a heart condition, and died in his sleep the next morning.
Hesse made extraordinary impression
I became sad everytime at the thought of his death. Hesse died seven months after I came to life — an even sadder thought.
"The purpose of books." Hesse said in 1915, "it is not to make dependent people still more dependent, and even less to provide those incapable of living with a cheap illusion and substitute for life. On the contrary, books have value only if they lead to life and serve and benefit it. Every hour spent reading is a waste of time unless it gives the reader a spark of strength, an intimation of rejuvenation, a breath of fresh air."
This enthusiasm would make me go half-way round the world to find a book if I thought it essential to my needs because I have absolute
YASHWANT
BHAGWANJI
Guest Columnist
venervation for those few authors who have given me something special.
As with human beings, it has always seemed to me that books have their own peculiar destinies. They are drawn towards people who are waiting for them and reach them at the right moment. They are made of living material and continue to cast light through the darkness long after the death of their authors.
Regarding the above, Hesse said,
"Almost all my prose works are biographies of the soul. They are not stories, entanglements, and tensions, but basically monologues in which a single person is protrayed in his relationship to the world and to his self."
The first of Hesse's book which I read, in the summer of 1982, was "Demian." It made an extraordinary impression on me. Thus Hesse has always been more than a writer or a poet. He is a spiritual guide not only for me but for whole generations of men.
Demian is not actually a physical being, since he is never separated from Sinclair, the character who narrates the book. In fact, Demian is Sinclair himself, his deepest self, a kind of archetypal hero who exists in the depths of all of us. In other words, Demian is the essential Self which remains unchanging and untouched, and through him the book attempts to give instruction concerning the magical essence of existence.
This message is not literally specified within the book; rather it is hinted at magically. Also, this symbolic truth can only be understood intuitively, but when it appears, it enlightens the whole being. That is why for the past two years I have been able to walk through the streets of Lawrence, Kansas, feeling something new has come into my life.
pletely resembling him, my brother,
my master.
I cannot resist the opportunity to present some more of Hesse's endings:
Please, enjoy the book's ending:
I understood it all. I understand Pablo. I understood Mozart, and somewhere behind me I heard his ghastly laughter. I knew that all the hundred thousand pieces of life's game were in my pocket. A glimpse of its meaning had stirred my reason, and I was determined to begin the game afresh. One day I
Hermann Hesse
Dressing the wound hurt. Everything that has happened to me since has hurt. But sometimes when I find the key and climb deep into myself where the images of fate lie aslumber in the dark mirror, I need only bend over that dark mirror to behold my own image, now com-
whose smile reminded him of everything that he had ever loved in his life, of everything that had ever been of value and holy in his life. ("Siddartha")
would be a better hand at the game.
One day I would learn how to laugh.
Pablo was waiting for me, and
Mozart, too. ("Steppenwolf")
Govinda bowed low. Incontrollable tears trickled down his old face. He was overwhelmed by a feeling of great love, of the most humble veneration. He bowed low, right down to the ground, in front of the man sitting there motionless,
the young play hell finding anywhere else these days. And that is such a sunny explanation."
And searching for the darker, deeper explanations, Vonnegut asked a young drummer, a college dropout and an admirer of "Stepenwolf," why he thought the book was selling so well.
"Lovely" was Kurt Vonnegut, Junior's reaction to these endings. In "Why They Read Hesse," Vonnegut explains quite well the American youth's love for Hesse in the 60s and early 70s: "He is clear and direct and well translated, and he offers honour and romance, which
"The drummer said that most college people were experimenting with drugs and that "Steppenwolf" harmonized perfectly with their experiences."
"I thought the best part of the drug experience was that everything harmonized with it--everything but the police department." Vonnegut said.
"The drummer admitted this was so."
Vonnegreut declared Hesse the modern man who told tales of quest best and cited "Sidhegara" to be the most
innocent tale of seeking and finding. I have a declaration to make, too. Hesse is modern man's new Buddha
"I am a poet, a seeker, and a confessor, obliged to truth and sincerity," said Hesse. "I have a charge, albeit small and confined: to help other seekers to understand and to cope with the world, if only by assuring them that they are not alone."
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