OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kaman (UNPS 600-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 181 Stuart Friar pln, Lawrence, Kan. 60042, daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer session, excluding holidays and final periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 60044. Subscriptions by mail are £15 for six months or £19 for a year. Student subscriptions are £8 per semester paid through the student activity fee. POSTMASTER. Send address changes to: UNPS 600-640, Lawrence, Kan. 60042.
March 5, 1984 Page 4
Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM
DON KNOX
Managing Editor
Editorial Editor
JEFF TAYLOR ANDREW HARTLEY Campus Editor News Editor
PAUL JESS
DAVE WANAMAKER Business Manager
General Manager and News Adviser
CORT GORMAN JILL MITCHELL
Retail Sales Manager National Sales Manager
JANCE PHILIPS   DUNCANCALHoun
Campus Sales Manager   CLASSIFIED Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
Nonvoters speak
Nearly 21,000 students — or 90.5 percent of the student body — did not cast ballots in last week's election. Not since 1974 has the non-turnout been so impressive.
In a magnanimous gesture of voter responsibility, KU students responded to the call for a new Student Senate presidential election by flocking from the polls in near-record numbers.
Certainly many students became distraught with the Senate when Chancellor Gene A. Budig ordered a new election after the University Judiciary ruled the first one to be "fraught with ambiguities and inconsistencies."
We had hoped to to attribute the substantial increase in non-turnout to huge gains in apathy, bewilderment, confusion, despair and distress.
Most KU students, like their government, probably were feeling ambiguous and inconsistent last week. Perhaps that's why so few voted.
The election actually was long-awaited proof that representative democracy can fare just as well on campus as it can off of it. Judging from last week's non-turnout, KU elections should be considered models to which all other democratic governments should aspire.
Among those whose hopes were momentarily rejuvenated by the Senate's electoral reformation was Roy Golberg, chairman of the Senate's revamped Elections Committee, who eloquently proclaimed after the balloting, "I'm happy with the turnout."
It's easy to thank those people who did their part last week in making student government work.
But don't attribute the increase in non-turnout to the three gleaming voting machines that the Senate so strategically placed throughout campus.
Think of it. Carla Vogel and Dennis "Boog" Highberger were swept into office with a whopping 4.6 percent approval from the entire student body. Former Kansas Gov. Alf Landon had almost as much of a mandate when he lost the U.S. presidency to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the biggest electoral landslide in this country's history.
Go ahead and thank the 90.5 percent of us who took five minutes out of our otherwise busy schedules last week and didn't vote. That's what makes student government at KU work so well.
Private prayer is better
Proponents of a constitutional amendment to allow prayer in public schools have tried unsuccessfully for 20 years to "allow God into the classroom." Let's speak that their new attempt, which the Senate is to confront today, will also fail.
The philosophical dispute in the Senate over the amendment will be passionate. Opponents say the Founding Fathers intended to avoid repressive religious tyranny by erecting a legal barrier between government and religion.
Proponents argue that America was founded on a belief in God and that the Supreme Court's rulings in the early 60s against state-sponsored prayer and Bible reading in public school have weakened the nation's Christian foundations.
But no matter what the evangelists and fundamentalists say, religion is a personal act, not an official one. As one legislator recently said, the Bible tells people, "When you
pray, go into your room, shut the door and pray to your Father in secret."
But there is no substitute for self control or for the support and guidance of a child's family and minister. Teaching religious values belongs in the home and in the church; but it should be kept out of the schools.
By saying that schools cannot lead children in prayer, they are not denying children the right to religious expression. A young person can pray silently to himself whenever he chooses.
Many people who favor the amendment, including President Reagan, think that prayer in public schools will take care of problems resulting from a breakdown in strong family units and abuse of alcohol and drugs by young people.
They have enough to do just teaching children about math, science and English.
EPA official mistaken
William D. Ruckelshaus, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is mistaken when he thinks it might be a good idea to put off until after the election consideration of "meritorious ideas" dealing with environmental legislation, lest their consideration become politicized.
statutes such as the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, which is but one of eight large laws the EPA administers, will make their consideration less of a political dogfight.
The EPA boss thinks postelection consideration of reauthorization of
Putting off potentially controversial legislation is more likely to intensify the debate.
The Salt Lake City Tribune
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 address. The Kansan also invites individuals and groups to hold guest columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansas office, 111 Staffler-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
LETTERS POLICY
From the White House... to the Outhouse
Gaffes and tense laughs
What thinks Wayne Newton is more wholesome than the Beach Boys?
What prefers the words "liberals and Americans" as substitutes for "Democrats and Republicans"?
What alienated Indians, Jews, Arabs, American Nazi, conservatives, handcrapped in less than three years, a member of the Reagan Cabinet?
James Gatus Watt, who resigned as Secretary of the Interior in October, is touring the land many think was endangered while he was in office. He spoke last week at Washburn University in Toneka.
Watt's what.
Watt's mission, now that he has fulfilled his duties as the nation's steward and as the Gigper's gaffer, is to defend his Cabinet performance
— to explain that he was maligned unjustly by the liberal media and the politically motivated conservation movement, did not snuff out Smoke the Bear.
He cannot rest upon his laurels, for the trees from which the boughs would have been snapped have been sold to lumber companies.
He can, however, cherish the trophies he earned: Ronald Reagan gave him a bronzed foot with self-inflicted gunshot wounds, and Rep. Tom Downey, D-N-Y, deemed him worthy to receive "The Earl Butz Racial and Religious Sensitivity Award."
A skilled speaker. Watt is clever and quick-witted. He also lacks sensitivity, despite what Downey might think.
He lightly touched upon his more unfortunate and oft-quoted remarks before his detractors could dredge them up. He told the
television people to be sure to film the lone picketer standing off-stage "That man needs attention."
And over the clcks of shutters he said the reason photographers always snapped so many shots was to cause the first one turns out good.
JESSE BARKER
Staff Columnist
With his bald head, bottle-bottom glasses and wolfish grin, Watt is somewhat less photogenic than a
The vacuum tentatively has been filled. The torch has been passed. Pending Senate confirmation, presidential adviser Ed Meese will assume the position of attorney general.
Watt created a gap in the gaffe department when he left the government to deliver $10,000-an-hour speeches. Whose countenance would grace cartoonists' panels? Who would captivate columnists? Who would succumb to succumb to fool-in-mouth disease with unhealthy regularity?
B-movie star. Cartoonists across the country sighed when he resigned, for officials with such easily lampooned features are not com
Meese resigned recently as secretary of hunger. In that role he captured national attention before being shot and killed whether hunger really did exist in
Cartoonists had a fine time portraying "Soroge" Mews in all his joyly chubbiness, often depicting him wiping his mouth after a sumptuous meal.
America
He has already demonstrated his enlightened attitudes toward the nation's hunger-striken. By some quirk, those who are hungry are often poor. The opportunities abound in the Justice Department for some choice words and actions affecting the poor.
Meese enjoyed the nickname "Billy Club Ed" as a deputy district attorney in Oakland, Calif. His propensity for prosecuting marijuana students in student protesters in the 1980s came at the attention of Gov. Reagan.
Unsurprisingly, Meese wants to abolish the federal Legal Services Corp. the program that provides legal representation to the poor.
He would also like to see the exclusionary rule, which forbids the introduction of illegally obtained evidence, cast out. He favors preventive detention. Judges who "deliberately" thwart police disobedience has thus branded the American Civil Liberties Union "acrimonious" jailers.
The value to cartoonists of Watt and Meese is outweighed by the danger they pose to truth, justice and the American way.
When a public official knows beyond any question that his programs have divine approval, worry is warranted. Before his resignation, Watt said. "There are some people who don't come around to my philosophy. And I pray I never yield to their positions. They are wrong."
Paul Nitze's word theory is fallacious
WASHINGTON — Since the Soviets walked out of the medium-range missile talks in Geneva, Paul Nitze, the U.S. negotiator, is a man without an occupation.
Nitze does not think the chances are good for an early resumption of
The Soviets stalked out when the United States began distributing its medium-range missiles on schedule in December.
With nobody to talk to in Geneva, Nitze has returned to the United States.
JIM ANDERSON
United Press International
the Geneva talks, although he is willing to return on 24 hours' notice.
In 1979 congressional hearings, Nitze summed up his view of how the Soviets operated when he said of the U.S. soldiers, "They negotiate like shesters."
Nevertheless, or perhaps because of these attitudes toward the Soviets, Nitze was tapped by the Reagan administration in 1981 to handle the medium-range missile talks in Geneva.
Nitze, who does not speak Russian, points out that the Russian word "mir" has several meanings; it "mir" is the word "the world"; it "the environment".
The secondary meaning of the Russian word "mir" is "peace" or, more precisely, "the absence of conflict."
Nitzue says that the two meanings of the Russian word can be directly contradictory. The first stage of the conflict is as viewed by struggle, not by "peace."
It is an interesting theory, which fits with Nitsel's well-publicized views about the Soviet character of American children. Right eyed Americans to be duped
Unfortunately for the Nitze theory, Russian language experts at the State Department and the Voice of America say that it is total nonsense.
They say that "mir" clearly means "peace" to any Russian speaker when used the way Nitze suggests, such as in conjunction with the 1955 "Spirit of Geneva" or with the word "Druzhba" or "friendship."
Nitze's theory says something about the Reagan administration's view of the Soviets, since his openly expressed views of the Soviets were well known to all when he was chosen for the key job of trying to negotiate an important agreement with the Soviet government.
Stricter high school standards needed
Joe just got out of high school and he's wondering what he should do with his life. For the past four years he's really had a great time.
Even though Joe isn't much of a student, he's decided that he's going to go to college. There nothing else to do when you're an unkilled high school graduate. And besides it, you might — even more fun than high school.
High school gave Joe the opportunity to indulge his interests to the fullest — in auto tech I & II. Loving, working and of course, study hall.
Joe considers himself lucky to be as
But already Joe has fallen behind his classmates, because he has not been able to pass his English 101 and 102 courses. He was attempted to get beyond math 002.
He enrolls at the University of Kansas, and struggles for two years in math, science and English classes.
At the end of his sophomore year, Joe drops out — and joins the other 40 percent of his classmates who not make it past their sophomore
year. More than half of those people did not make it past freshman year. But so what? At least Joe had his chance
Recently, the Kansas Legislature has been talking about creating minimum entrance requirements for Regents universities.
A bill approved by the House Education Committee would require that all Kansas high school graduates complete four units of English, three units each of math, science and social studies, and two units of foreign language before being admitted to Regents universities.
In the words of one legislator, the bill would prevent free access to our state's institutions. And that means I would like Joe not get to go to KU.
But Kansas Regents universities — like public libraries, parks, highways and drinking fountains are supported by Kansas taxpayers. And if any resident can use those libraries also use the public universities?
For that matter, it seems a bit restrictive that students at Regents universities should be required to have a high school diploma at all. The universities were put here to educate; let them do their job.
The Education Committee of the Kansas House should wise up to the real purpose of four years spent in high school.
High school is for cheerleaders and football stars; it's for growing up and dating and going to senior prom. High school, basically, is a
HELAINE KASKEL
Staff Columnist
structured environment where students can meet their peers and learn to interact while enjoying low-key, like classes like auto tech and sewing.
And even though people like Joe come to KU with no real academic training for the classes they must take, it should be the job of coaches to start with the basics and make high school graduates into students.
Let's face it, all that the Education Committee is trying to do is to keep the undesirabes out of Regents
universities and to make the schools into ivory towers for the academic elite
And where does that leave people like Joe?
in the house was really concerned about what type of students the Regents admitted to universities, they would start at the high school level and create a statewide standard for all students; they would automatically guarantee college admission to all Kansas high school graduates.
But a strict academic curriculum at the high school level would make life a real drag for people like Joe, who is unable to time their lives in high school.
It's just too bad Joe couldn't cut it when he got to KU.
Maybe a stronger high school curriculum would have been good preparation for Joe's college career. That same curriculum would also eliminate the need for minimum requirements at the university level.
But in the long run, Joe had his chance, and he blew it. It's his own fault, isn't it?
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Uses for 'Salina Piece'
To the editor:
Because the University Daily Kansan is our university's main newspaper, it has important responsibilities. Recently it was gently reminded to support KU's athletic programs and ideals.
Similarly, it should support our "Salina Piece" against carping critics. John Hanna's editorial, (Feb. 20, 1984), was a fine first step, but the Kansan should do more.
Why not run an annual contest to celebrate the artistic and spiritual contributions "Salina Piece" has given to our community? Here are just a few of the many possible challenges:
*Design an arcade style "Salina Piece" game to run on KU'S Zentih Z-100 microcomputers.
- Tell how to adapt "Salina Piece" into a thing of practical utility without diminishing its aesthetic qualities — for instance, by converting it into a suiald.
- Describe civic, social or religious functions that might appropriately be conducted beneath "Salina Piece" — for instance, Student Senate elections.
- *Construct a scale model of "Salina Piece" from unlikely substances.
- Design a small replica of "Salina Piece" that also serves a useful purpose — for instance, as an inhumane mouse trap.
- Write a poem about "Salina Piece" (under appropriate restrictions as to length and vocabulary).
- Choose suitable landscaping for "Salina Piece" — for instance, kudu vines.
- Convert an elephant, Aggie, or dead-baby joke into a "Salina Piece" joke.
- Select a "Salina Piece" Look-Alike, or a Ms.
and Mr. "Salina Piece."
- Choose some local object of similar size and quality that KU could donate to Salina under the name "Lawrence Piece."
Arthur L. Thomas professor of business