OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
April 9,1984 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansas (USPS 60440) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffar-Flint Hall, Lawrence, KS 75209. You may visit the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer session. If you are in need of a substitute for any day of the week, mail by mail are $15 for six months or a year in Doyles County and $1 for six months or $3 for a master outside the county. The students are $2 a semester paid through the student activity pay. POSTMATER: Send address changes to the University Daily Kansas (USPS 60440).
DOUG CUNNINGHAM
DON KNOX
Managing Editor
SARA KEMPIN
Editorial Editor
JEFF TAYLOR ANDREW HARTLEY
Campus Editor News Editor
DAVE WANAMAKER
Business Manager
CORT GORMAN
JILL MITCHELL
Retail Sales Manager
National Sales Manager
PAUL JESS
JANCE PHILIPS  DUNCAN CALHUNO
Campus Sales Manager  Classified Manager
PAUL JESS
General Manager and News Adviser
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
Going overboard
KU housing and residence hall officials were the first to go overboard. They proposed a policy that would have banned overnight guests of the opposite sex in the University's eight residence halls.
Now, the Association of University Residence Halls, the group that is supposed to represent the affected students, has followed the offending officials into the water.
The problems seem to be these: Some hall residents have guests stay overnight or late in the evening and the resident's roommate is offended or inconvenienced. Also, unsorted people sometimes are in the public areas of the halls, which officials say constitutes a security risk.
James Jeffley, president of the association, presented a counterproposal that is less restrictive than the one under consideration. Not counting the two cover sheets, it runs to five typewritten pages, single-spaced
Jeffrey's proposal, luckily, is not as restrictive as the one from KU officials. And the spirit of compromise exhibited by AURH is laudable. The AURH proposal, however, would result in reams of paperwork and hours of inconvenience.
The steps a resident and a guest of the opposite sex would have to take before the guest could stay overnight are probably too many to be committed to memory.
For example, the resident and guest are to present a picture or hall I.D. They shall sign a registration log. The resident will sign a statement accepting responsibility for the guest's actions. And so on. Fingerprinting, presumably, will not be required.
What next? KU officials could ask that a written excuse be required whenever one of the several thousand residents stays out past midnight or returns to the hall inebriated.
And then, in a move to protect the students' rights, AURH could propose that a written excuse should be required only under limited circumstances. To require one for each infraction would, of course, be ludicrous.
Think of it. Pages of information and hours of discussion from both sides — KU officials and AURH — about something that really should be left alone anyway.
-
Healing a severed land
For almost 50 years, the Korean peninsula has been severed in two
Still, after all those years, tension between North and South Korea remains.
Despite this latest incident, negotiations continue at Panunjom, the truce city on the demilitarized zone between the two countries
Officials hope that the North and South at least will be able to get along peacefully and perhaps unite into one country.
Relations between the two countries were strained most recently by a bombing in Rangoon, Burma. The bombing, which killed 17 South Korean officials, was an apparent assassination attempt on South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan.
Last week, North Korea proposed
that the two countries form a joint sports team to compete in the 1984 Olympics and other international events.
Chung Ju-yong, head of South Korea's National Olympic Committee, accepted the proposal in a letter, and was awaiting further response from North Korea.
But the letter also condemned North Korea for the bombing, urging them to apologize.
So far, only lofty proposals and tentative replies have been exchanged. Bringing a joint Olympic team will take time, effort and, most importantly, cooperation.
It won't be easy to overcome a half-century of differences. But it is worth a try.
A sensible debt rescue
The intricate deal to ward off an immediate Argentine debt crisis was a notable stopgap.
Four heavily indebted Latin American governments pooled funds temporarily to rescue a sister republic, with an assist from major banks and a backup commitment from the United States Treasury.
The package is sensible, good politics and good public relations. But it doesn't solve the debt problem.
Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia lent Argentina $300 million. The United States promised to reimburse Argentina when it commits itself to undertake a basic
economic recovery program with aid from the International Monetary Fund.
In addition, 11 large banks lent $100 million, and Argentina dipped into its own reserves for $100 million
Especially useful is the fact that the pressure to reform Argentina's economy will now come also from its four new Latin creditors.
Where there had been a fear that the debtor nations would join together in refusing repayments, they have instead joined to reinforce reform.
The New York Times
LETTERS POLICY
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten on one sheet of paper, double-spaced and should not exceed 200 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 home and home town or location and position. The Kansan also includes individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 111 Staffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
Americans must have courage to transform outdated world view
We're finished. The last generation of the human race rolls gently toward oblivion. Listen, look around at an epoch in its death throes — the shattered dreams, they mock and echo . . . all that might have been.
And so. We will go quietly. We will betray the past and future. We will whistle in the blackness or run hot and scared from that long, long nuclear night. Kiss it all, honey. Kiss it all goodbye.
Wait . . . there is a way out. One chance. Listen:
"A leaderless but powerful network is working to bring about radical change in the United States. Its members have broken branches of Western thought, and they may have even broken continuity with history.
"The great shuddering, invocable shift overtaking us is not a new political, religious, or philosophical system. It is a new mind — the ascendance of a startling worldview
Facts from physics, biology, psychology and brain chemistry are all converging, pointing to one inescapable conclusion — our present understanding of existence is archaic and grossly inadequate.
mythological, religious terms, pictures stumbling through a world in which he has no control. Instead, the new paradigm offers a sophisticated and much more realistic interpretation of reality.
that gathers into its framework breakthrough science and insights from earliest recorded thought."
The implications of this shift of consciousness are as positive as they are enormous. When individuals intuitively understand their true physical, mental and emotional relationship to the much greater whole that surrounds them — namely the human race — and in particular whole or surrounds that — the natural world — then a level of harmony will develop the likes of which the world has never known.
So begins the 1980 book, "The Aquarian Conspiracy," by Marilyn Ferguson. In this, the most accessible of recent, similar works, the author details forces working to bring about a second, final revolution in America — the transformation of the human mind.
Whether we realize it or not, we are a transitional form between the remnant mentality of the Middle Ages and a new, enlightened mode of understanding and interaction.
This is not a cult movement or some twisted religious dream. This is the future.
Right now, the information explosion is kicking our interpretation of knowledge up to a cumulative, qualitative level. All we have learned is turning back on itself. Larger patterns are emerging. Old models of the nature of man and the world are being tended to be being tensed aside, new born ones
No longer is man being defined in
Synergy is a term in physics used to describe the bonus energy available to a system working in harmony. We and our society could be, should be, will be transformed to produce the synergistic effect.
Honesty, respect, autonomy and responsibility of the individual will be the new norm.
As individuals, this means an enormous increase in power; power to love, to work, to create, to think and to understand. And God only knows what will happen when the entire country, and eventually the world, is thinking and interacting at the synergistic level.
Why now? What is it about the 1980s that makes the world ready for a change of this magnitude? The answers are obvious. Ours has been the most wicked and destructive century in the history of the world.
Two horrific wars and the attempted mechanized destruction of an entire race have left common people dumb-founded and disillusioned by the mentalities and attitudes that brought us here. Old answers have become obscene.
They knew that in the 1960s. An entire generation refused to continue basing existence on destructive ideas and attitudes.
But the hippies only went so far. They settled into the comfortable lap of hedonism and abandoned their beliefs. And they alienated too many people with their self-righteous and anti-American rhetoric.
How much more effective they could have been had they appealed to a recommitment to the true American ideals and values.
This is not to say that the values were wrong, or that man had forsaken God. On the contrary, it was the implementation of those values that was ineffective and often bitterly destructive to the psyche of man.
Which brings us to 1984, albeit in a slightly better place than anticipated. Yet your cynicism and doubt hang on.
As well, during the 60s and 70s, the tyranny of Christianity waned. Too many years of suppression, hypocrychy and pointless indoctrination combined with an inability to deal with complex problems made organized religion irrelevant to many.
You CAN change human nature,
unless of course, you consider
yourself an ape. And if it is survival
of the littest, let's all get fit and all
work hard to be the best.
Just what do you think God wants,
for us to continue slaughtering each
other like morons? He always said grow up. So here's our chance to make him proud.
You are right about people not wanting to change. But that's only until they have to. Then watch how fast they scramble.
Always be evil? With proper education and widespread self-awareness? What is evil? Selfishness? The new age appeals to selfishness because it is beneficial in the long run for an individual to cooperate and reach a higher state where reality works out for everyone. Wham! Evil neutralized. And if that's not the case, we deal with evil just like we always have. We destroy it.
But time is short. We have to lead this revolution, to push fast now toward a more perfect world As Americans, it is our legacy and our
Granted, to begin to think in an entirely new way is unsettling, even frightening. You don't break 10,000 years of bad habits overnight. But it will be hard until the seconds until the detonator poses of and the fire storm sweeps in.
Name your poison: vodka or "Star Wars."
Name your poison: vodka or "Star Wars"
"Good will and sincerity," Reagan said, "will get them a smile and a glass of vodka."
That choice, according to President Reagan, is one of the differences between himself and Democratic rivals who oppose his plan to help him but want an arms reduction agreement with the Soviet Union.
This theme, which Reagan tried out last week and will use again in his re-election campaign, provokes questions. Obviously the president would not be elaborating on the reasons for this, if he thought it superior to his own
Reagan must see a flaw somewhere along that platform plank. Since coming out against good will, sincerity and smiles would be like denigrating motherhood, apple pie the flag, he must fault the vodka.
He must have an extreme distaste for vodka.
The latest item added to the
JESSE BARKER
defense budget is called "Strategic Defense Initiative" by the Pentagon and often referred to as "Star Wars."
The program, proposed a year ago, is an effort to develop uses for lasers and other high-technology instruments to defend against Soviet
Staff Columnist
missiles. The goal is a network of satellites that would pinpoint and destroy Sigma missiles before they exploded, providing an umbrella of protection.
The director of the space shuttle program was selected last week to lobby for "Star Wars" in Congress. Reagan wants $1.8 billion next year
The Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that favors a nuclear freeze, fears that the development of a missile defense system would upset the nuclear balance. Both sides are now relatively susceptible to attack. If the United States were to lose control of the Soviet Union might feel pressured into attacking before the defense was perfected.
to begin research and $26 billion over the next five years.
These fears are not new. A 1972 U.S.-Soviet agreement limited the development of antimissile systems. Soviets say Reagan's planned system would violate that treaty and be sent to the already offensive race.
The 1972 treaty was the product of talks that began when President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary Robert S. McNamara disagreed with Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, who had argued that antimissile systems were "human weapons" that "defended people."
Now the tables have turned. Soviet leader Konstantin Cherenkov has suggested a ban on space weapons as one way the United States could demonstrate sincerity about advancing toward arms control.
Good will, sincerity, smiles and Godwild. Nevermind the ultimate cost of implementing "Star Wars," or even the five-year tab of $28 billion for the film, beyond comprehension, consider the $1.8 billion requested for next year.
Brand preferences aside, $1.8 billion would buy 122.7 million gallons of vodka and 10.2 million gallons of vermouth. And an olive.
Ovid, a Roman poet who has been paraphrased by dozens of generations of generals and couches, wrote that he defenses always a good attack?"
In this case, the best defense would have been for neither side to have any offense at all, and adding a defense now merely aggravates the problem.
Martini, anyone?
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Editorial off-base
With regard to the "ideism炎" forsaken" editorial April 3, it is clear that the archvocab of violence. Tom Hayden — or at least nameless lackeys — is alive and well, preparing for the University Daily Kansas.
To the editor:
While admittedly there are apathetic students at the University of Kansas, the active participation of such organizations as Latin American Solidarity, Young Americans for Freedom and other college political organizations on campus prompts students to citizens, yet — who do know their duty" in making the world more equitable.
This letter is addressed specifically to him.
Their protests may start small, but keep in mind that 20- some years ago, civil rights activists began what were then "small" protests
Thanks to men like Jesse Jackson,
the deplorable state of civil rights in
the 50s is being corrected today . .
with the confines of the law.
that today are hardly ignorable.
This brings up the point that equating disagreement solely with rioting, as the editorial inferred, is, quite frankly, dangerous.
1969. Tom Hayden presented such an argument to the Weathermen in Chicago that led to the Weathermen going on a three-day rampage of destruction known as the Davs of Rage.
Paul Campbell
Paul Campbell
Tucson. Ariz.. freshman
Whatever their political beliefs were is beside the point; what matters is that they caused several hundred thousand dollars in property damage and injured 75 innocent people.
In all honesty, nobody wants to get hurt — or even killed — just so that someone else can disagree with something. What if it was you?
can hardly wait for the inevitable graduation piece.
To the editor
Dear Helaine
Humor is lacking
Regarding your April 2 column on USA Today, haven't you heard the one about people in glass houses?
It's not that I don't agree with your comments — I think USA Today is the Kwik Shop of newspapers — but is the University Daily Kansas much better?
Even your own editorials in the humorous vein are sadly lacking — "Why do people look down," "What I did over to spring Break," etc. 1
Most people I know read it for the editorials, Bloom County and the personalists and not necessarily in that order.
I am not alone when I say that this paper has neglected the great potential of "light news" and humor that exists on the KU campus.
I realize that the press has a responsibility to inform, but it should also provide something extra that would make our days a little more fun.
Widen your repertoire. Helaine
Risk offending some of the all-too-
self-important junior conservatives
and liberals who abound on our fair
I am sure that the vaulted Kansan reputation for outstanding (ahem!) journalism won't suffer too greatly. Save us from stuffiness!
Oh, by the way. Helaine, the last time I saw you walking on campus I noticed that you, too, were diligently looking down. Yeah, you gotta watch those sidewalks. They're tricky little fellows. Take your eyes off them for a minute and who knows what they'll do . . .
Andy Lamers Derby senior