OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
March 30, 1984 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
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DOUG CUNNINGHAM
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Hurrah for the Kansas Senate.
Consumers win
On Tuesday the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that would protect consumers from paying for the "excess generating capacity and any imprudent management" resulting from the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant.
The bill was necessary because cost estimates have risen alarmingly at Wolf Creek since construction began.
The original definitive estimate was $1.05 billion. That estimate has grown to $2.67 billion.
The utilities that each own 47 percent of Wolf Creek, Kansas Gas and Electric and the Kansas City Power & Light Co., would have preferred that consumers picked up the tab. But the Senate has told them that the responsibility, past a point, is theirs.
The bill states that all plant costs that exceed 200 percent of the original estimate will be presumed to be a result of management
inefficiency and could be excluded from consumer rates.
The utilities shall now rightfully be penalized for overspending.
Leaders of both parties in the House predicted that the bill would get final approval by today.
Michael Swenson, the governor's spokesman, indicated Carlin would sign the bill into law.
Senate Minority Leader Jack Steineger, D-Kansas City, reflected an apparently widespread feeling in the Senate when he said, "It's an attempt to lock the barn door after the horses got loose because we don't want rate shock."
Nevertheless, the legislators should be applauded for acting on behalf of consumers before the estimate at Wolf Creek goes up again. Applause should also go to the consumers who recognized the financial inequities and spoke out.
"Had the public not been aroused," Steineger said, "we wouldn't have been able to do this."
Hurrah for the people of Kansas.
Surveys can be wrong
How effective are opinion surveys? Rank your answer from the lowest of one to the highest of five.
We give them about two and a half.
Some aspects of a person such as height, weight, age and hair color can be collected, tabulated and analyzed.
But trying to gauge people's values is similar to measuring the distance to the moon with a ruler — counting every inch would take forever, and a good guess will always have some error.
A recent survey prepared for the National Association of Secondary Schools, for example, concluded that American high school students share many of their parents' values.
"80s," Janis Cromer, an educator who conducted the survey, said.
"If there was a generation gap in the '60s, it narrowed to a crack in the '70s. It's barely a hairline in the
Perhaps this is true for some parts of American society. At the same time, increased crime by the young, continuing problems with legal and illegal drugs and rising domestic violence indicate that children and parents still have their differences.
Clearly, opinion surveys are not the complete truth. If done properly, they only reflect general trends. If done carelessly, they can be misleading.
Some unmeasured factors are not computed into the statistical margin of error: the demographic characteristics of the group, the subject areas chosen to survey, the wording of the questions and how the students perceived the survey.
Opinion polls are a great way to test the waters, but they can't be depended upon to float.
Consensus is needed
French President Francois Mitterrand's statement that common sense dictates resumption of a direct East-West dialogue is positive.
We don't know what, if any, policy splits have developed in the Soviet-dominated Eastern bloc nations, but the countries of Western Europe and their leader, the United States, might need a few months or longer to get their nuclear arms and conventional-force reduction talks in order . . .
But a working consensus which is ardently supported by at least the Defense and State departments and our most important allies is fundamental to successful bargaining with the Soviet Union.
Complete and constant agreement is too much to hope for, in this or any other administration or alliance.
Although public opinion in the U.S.S.R. eventually comes to bear on Soviet actions, the Kremlin's negotiators are not burdened with election-year politics, public squabbling among the leadership and poorly defined or non-existent long- and short-range foreign policy objectives.
The [Salt Lake City] Tribune
Some things I've learned about partying since I asked readers the other week what they meant when they said they "liked to party":
Hot time in the old town tonight
- You might not be all that interested in the Democratic primaries, the situation in Lebanon, the nuclear freeze issue or the state of the national economy, but you sure are enthusiastic about so-called nartving.
The response to the column was so heavy that there's no way I'm going to be able to write back to everyone individually. I've read all the books, so everything that was said got taken into consideration.
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, 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 home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan also invites individual correspondence to submit postal 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.
- In the column, I quoted a teenage girl as saying that "partying" means drugs, sex and alcohol. A lot of you disagreed. You said that parting was simply a party for smoking marijuana — period.
- Curiously, a lot of you seem to equate vomiting with having fun. A significant portion of the letters reported that you knew you were having a great time partying if you threw up at some point during the event. Of correspondents thoughtfully advised me to "party till you puke."
Quarters seems to consist, basically, of to try to bounce a quarter off the surface of a table and into a beer glass; if you make the shot, you can then command someone else to drink a full glass of beer.
'About the highest compliment you can give a friend is to say that he or she is a "party animal." You seem to confer this title with great affection and pride.'
- A lot of you seem to have a different definition of drugs and alcohol from the rest of the world's population, but with you something like this.
You: "Partying doesn't mean drugs and alcohol." Me: "Then what does it mean?" You: "You know, you might go out with some friends and have a few beers and dance, and then later you might smoke some pot, which is as far as it usually goes unless someone has some cocaine." Me: "But you don't consider beer and marijuana and cocaine to be alcohol and drugs?" You: "Well, not really . . ."
About the highest compliment you can give a friend is to say that he or she is a "party animal." You seem to confer this title with great affection and pride; to be a "party animal" appears to be the '80s version of having a Phi Beta Kappa key.
*Not only do you cling to the traditions of the '60s; you seem to
cling to the paraphernalia of the 60s, too. A large number of your letters mentioned that you won "bongs," which, 15 years ago, were popular items designed to pull marijuana smoke through a liquid.
More than one high school student reported that he or she enjoyed
BOB GREENE
Syndicated Columnist
smoking marijuana through a bong filled with Jack Daniel's whiskey. This is probably as good a place as any to mention that I am simply reporting the facts of the response to the column.
- Close to 100 percent of you said that "partying" has nothing to do with sex. You said that when you went out, sex almost never took place.
*To the teachers who assigned their classes to write essays on what the students thought "partying" meant, and who then forwarded these essays to me! I’m not sure that we appropriate response to the column.
- However, a few of you pointed out that "to party" may have originated among prostitutes, who often approach potential customers with the question, "Do you want to party?" So it can be assumed that at parties, girls are paid to work as partyers are, indeed, having sex although they may be paying for it.
*To give you some idea of the mindset we’re dealing with here, the following is a verbatim except from one of the responses：“To party mean fun. Dance till you drop and we will come back.” “We AINT LEAWN’ TILL WE ARE HEAVIN’ You! Can’t explain ‘to party’—you just have to party.”
*Seven young men from suburban Illinois sent me a booklet they had written, titled "So You Wanna Be a Party Animal." If you are the parent of a teen-ager and you want to browse through something that is intended to depress you to the point of despair, I highly recommend it.
- When I said that "partying" seemed to be a phenomenon confined to teen-agers and people in their 20s, it seems that I was right. Of the hundreds of responses I got to the column, only three or four were from people 30 or over — and they weren't talking about the same things as the younger correspondents.
- If it's all right with everyone, I think I'm going to take a nap.
The Kansan welcomes Bob Greene to its lineup of syndicated columnists. Columns by Greene will appear regularly on the opinion page.
LETTERS POLICY
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
To the editor:
Paying tribute to a poet
Before William Burroughs read his poetry Monday evening at the Kansas Union, the gentleman who introduced him had a few words to say.
He said something to the effect that Burroughs had been criticized in the past, his work labelled "poisonous."
People have even accused Burroughes of being a nihilist. Even if this man seems to exhibit the trappings of a true pessimist, one may have difficulty believing it.
This man, with his 70-odd years of incredible experiences, is clearly a survivor. In spite of his caustic remarks about everything from the disloyalty of domesticated dogs to a citizen's right to ingest illegal substances, Burroughs must be a believer in life.
We, as students at the University of Kansas, are lucky to have the opportunity to hear the wit and genius of this writer as a visiting professor and lecturer.
Nancy L. Payne
Prairie Village, junior
There has been much criticism of college students in 1984. We supposedly lack spirit, vitality, and generally any interest beyond getting a degree and making big bucks out in the "real
Maybe old Bill could teach us something about enthusiasm and activism.
Nancy L. Payne
Clarifying movie story
To the editor:
I was one of the group of protesters at the Saturday night showing of "Emmanuelle." I attended to express my view that rape is a violent — not sexual — crime against women, and that it hurts.
My intentions were to try to get people to think
how rape is tolerated and promoted in our
society.
Unfortunately, the University Daily Kansan article accompanying the front-page picture was remarkably inaccurate. I can state unequivocably that no one spat on Tim DePaepe.
Perhaps he sputtered on himself as he attempted to justify the showing of the film. In addition, I "harassed" no one. I find it ludicrous and irritating quietly with a sign is interpreted as "harassment."
Why did the Kansan not report the taunts we received — comments such as "Hape has been caught!"
I was, in the words of the Kanas, expressing my "legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights" against this form of regulation.
Mr. DePape's comments in Friday's Kansan
that the movie was an attempt to appeal to male,
gender, and race differences.
It is precisely such a combination of factors that lead to violent crimes such as rape, battery, and assault.
To the editor
Holding my sign on Saturday night infringed on the rights of no one. It did. I hope spark some thought and discussion on the issues of women's rights, rape and other violent crimes.
Adrienne E. Christiansen
Cherokee graduate studen
Causes without rebels
To the editor:
Neglecting the U.S. role
Lest we start patting ourselves on the back too easily, I would like to respond to Matthew Levi's letter in the March 21 University Daily Kansan. While I agree with Matthew that Kiaa Harris' column was oversimplified, his own letter needs some points addressed.
"Why should the Americans be criticized?" That is what Mr. Elechi stated in his letter in the March 7 University Daily Kansan.
I can say that if there are 'greens, freaks, evangelists, blacks, whites, pacifists, feminists and radical activists' on Wescoe Beach, they are concerned because, because they have rarely stood out I walked by.
Maybe these aren't the '70s, and we don't need
rebels "spumping up the dreams of the past
Yes, there was a rather dramatic protest against nuclear destruction in front of the Kansas Union last fall. It's a shame that most students chose to ignore it or refused to take it seriously.
And the candlelight vigil following "The Day After" was as shallow a protest as I have seen. When the speeches were over and the TV lights were on, we gathered敬畏 except for a small group by the Campanile.
generation" But the United States recently invaded a sovereign nation at the request of its neighbors, and nobody complained.
We consider 7 percent to 8 percent unemployment to be some sort of achievement. No one seems to think there is anything wrong when the government can say we are entitled to an education regardless of financial ability only if we will register our availability to kill people.
Joe Reichlin
Seattle, Wash.. junior
In his article, Mr. Elchamli focused on the issue in Lebanon and neglected the American rule.
I think the United States is responsible for most of the damage that has taken place and is now under control.
With the use of American-made weaponry, the Israelis invaded Lebanon. The United States did not take any action against Israel when the Israeli government demanded the death of 30,000 civilians, as Mr. Elmirah said.
Moreover, the United States knew about the invasion six months ahead. The United States did not do anything when the Israeli helped the Palestinianists commit the Sabra and Chatilla massacres.
The role of the United States' Marines as a peacekeeping force was violated when the American ships off the Lebanese coast fired gunshots at Druse and Muslim areas around
Furthermore, the American Marines are giving some military training to the Christian Pharisees.
If we go back deeper in history, we see that the U.S. government is responsible for many disturbances that have occurred in Palestine, and the Mid East in general during the past few decades.
1
Mofeed Alawami
Qatif, Saudi Arabia, sophomore