OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
February 23, 1984 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kannan (USP$ 600-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stuaffer-Final Hall, Lawrence, Kan 60043, daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday in the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays, and final school days. Ken Kannan is affiliated with the University of Kansas County and $18 for six months or £15 for a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $3 per semester paid through the student activity fee. POSTMASTER Send address changes to uspresident@usp.edu
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
General Manager and News Adviser
JANICE PHILIPS
Campus Sales Manager
DUNCAN CALHOUH
Classified Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
Wolf Creek mess
Testimony about the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant is to continue today before the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Once known only to a few dozen protesters, the name Wolf Creek is sure to be familiar to most state residents within a month or two.
And if not then, Wolf Creek will certainly be familiar to them when they receive dramatically higher electricity bills as the cost of the plant is phased into the rate structures of the Kansas Gas and Electric and the Kansas City Power and Light companies.
The plant has been plagued by the same problems that have bounded other nuclear plants around the country. Protesters have cast an ugly eye on nuclear power. Accidents such as the one at Three-Mile Island in Pennsylvania have brought about increased safety regulations.
The increased safety regulations have then increased costs. Construction delays and cost overruns seem to be the rule rather than the exception.
The Legislature and the Kansas Corporation Commission now are trying to determine a suitable schedule for passing the cost of the plant through to consumers. If a
short period of time is chosen, the cost of electricity for those served by the two utilities will increase quickly and significantly.
If, however, the costs are spread out over 10 or 15 years, the total amount will be greater but the impact will be less sudden.
But whatever the time period and whatever the amount, the bill has to be paid by someone.
The key question, clearly, is "Who?"
Before that question can be answered adequately, however, several others must be answered. Among them are these: Will the utilities have generating capacity far in excess of their needs when Wolf Creek goes on line? Did they know this, when they were building the plant?
Why did the company that serves Lawrence, Kansas Power and Light, choose to build coal-fired generators? Should the utilities involved in Wolf Creek have done likewise?
These questions should be the basis for any thorough discussion about Wolf Creek. But more than that, Wolf Creek likely will mean at least one thing to the ordinary Kansan served by the companies that are building the plant.
Unfortunately, it will mean significantly higher utility costs.
Iowa votes surprising
Walter Mondale's victory in the Iowa caucus Monday night was not a big surprise. Many polls had predicted the former vice president as the victor before the votes were even cast.
But even if Mondale's first-place finish was nearly a sure bet, there were some surprises after the Iowa Democrats finished casting their votes.
Former Sen. George McGovern, despite spending less money than most of the Democratic hopefuls, made a strong third place showing with 13 percent of the votes.
Twelve years have passed since the Iowa Democrats gave him the first-place spot in their 1972 caucus. Obviously many voters still believe in the man's ability to lead the country.
Sen. Gary Hart managed to secure a place in voters' minds as a serious
contender for the top spot on the Democratic ticket by finishing second Monday night.
For many Democrats around the country, the bigger surprise might not have been so much who finished in the top three places, but who didn't.
Sen. John Glenn, one of the names frequently mentioned as a possible Democratic nominee if Mondale doesn't win, finished far down the list with 6 percent of the vote.
His finish is more telling by looking at fifth place in the caucus. More votes remained uncommitted than went to Glenn.
The Iowa Democratic caucus is just the first of many caucuses and primaries before the presidential election in November.
And though Ronald Reagan will be the Republican nominee, for the Democrats, it's still anybody's race.
The cycle doesn't end
Mittens lie forfeited, forgotten. Rock salt's abandoned in leaking bags. And firewood's intact as a tribute to winter.
We gathered our winter gear about us. The stocks of winter closets embodied our fears. Yet the spring, as unexpected as the winter's first blast, seems to have made obsolete our precautions.
Again we will retreat, unnerved and bitter for the false comfort. Our winter's defenses will cease being obstacles.
But through the cycle, we must remain steadfast. For with these changes and the taste of Kansas spring, we know as Solomon that "lo, the winter is past."
Assuredly, though, as we unfold deckchairs, don shorts and ready for tans, frost will again force us inside.
and cherish the semblance of spring.
We rush to the porches, the river and fields to watch maddeningly the life hidden during winter. We garner
The University Daily Kanans 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 Kanan also invites individuals and should post question columns, and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kanan office, 111 Staffer-Flint Hall. The Kanan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
Realizing politics is not a game
When I walked into Washington's Convention Center last week, I was hoping to experience a little grass-ocracy — democracy in raw form.
About 2,000 District of Columbia residents were holding caucuses to choose a slate of potential delegates to the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. For a trip to Hawaii, he completed to throw my name into the bat.
Representatives for each candidate were assigned a particular room for campaign speeches. The Walter Mondale campaign and the Rev. Jesse Jackson campaad had large ballrooms.
Representatives of Sen, Gary Hart, Sen, Alan Cranston, Sen, John Glenn and Sen, George McGovern easily set up in classroom-sized rooms. No one showed up for Reuben Askew.
But as I watched people anxiously pedaling T-shirts, bumpers stickers, buttons and balloons with candidates' names boldly blazed across them as I listened to the high school pep rallies and old-time revellers. (Go)
I have always found politicking rather funny — almost a game. Somewhat presumptuous of me, I guess.
LETTERS POLICY
As I watched the strained smiles and handshakes, and the people unnaturally possessed by making themselves and their candidate known, I began to wonder what their true motivations were.
Jesse Go! Win, Jesse, Wint), as I absorbed the circus-like atmosphere. I couldn't help but inwardly laugh.
But for everything that seemed funny, something else made me think that it was a sad situation.
I guess it hit me the hardest as 1
JENNIFER
FINE
Washington
Columnist
There I was, minding my own business, looking suspiciously uncommitted — easy prey, when all of a sudden ...
"Hi! I'm Jane Politician," the woman said grabbing my hand with a smile that would make Jimmy Carter envious. "I'm running for
"And you live in the second district?"
delegate from the second district.
And you're . . . "
"Well, no, but I . . . "
Ween, no one . . .
And as a flash of disgust replaced her cheery smile, she flitted off to her next victim.
"Jennifer."
She could have at least waited until I had finished my sentence. Perhaps I was going to say that I was willing to help her in her gallant effort to make sure that the best candidate was elected president.
She made me question what these people with buttons pinned in every conceivable place were supporting.
I wondered whether they were working to make sure the most qualified person — one the team to match run this country — was elected.
I wondered whether they had become so immersed in a cause — wrapped up in winning for its own sake — that they no longer knew what to bring for, so deep in the trees that the forest was no longer recognizable.
In an era when political action committees have increasing control over money-hungry campaigns, and that the hands of "the little guy," it's
But responsibility must also be used with this opportunity — the responsibility of knowing what needs to be done and not just blindly supporting the candidate who makes everyone feel good.
important that these grassroot campaigns aren't relinquished.
Getting away from Capitol Hill to our own Hill on the Kaw, I ask the same questions.
I look forward to receiving the University Daily Kansan here to learn about the continuing saga of the student elections.
I can only hope that the new candidates, as well as the remaining ones, will not become so caught up in the whirlwind of politicking that they forget about the tremendous chore ahead of them — leading a Student Senate to actually do something.
Maybe this time the candidates will forge about the one-upmanship in posters and fliers and empty rhetoric and give the students something to think about — something to show they haven't lost sight of the purpose of Student Senate in the fight to win.
Maybe it's time that 1, and others like me, stopped thinking of politics as a game.
Give all groups minority status
After disrupting the University's gay population by sifting through two proposals, the Minority Affairs office concluded that a realistic definition of minority.
committee members should adopt the all-encompassing definition so that they can get to work on minority problems.
Nearly a month after its sub-
Staff Columnist
MICHAEL BECK
committee's first proposal, the committee should decide Wednesday whether groups that are treated unfairly or not in the majority are minorities.
When the committee tried to come up with a definition before the latest proposal, it made the mistake of excluding gays. The action raised the unanswerable question of whether gays choose their way of life.
The committee's former definition would have hinged classification of
The most recent definition proposal, however, covers all the bases by saying that minorities can be so by choice.
minorities simply on skin color and ethnic and religious background.
Members of Gay and Lesbian Students of Kansas protested such a definition because they said it would hurt them from the protection of the committee.
GLOSK currently has the protection of the committee, and one of its members is on the Minority Affairs Committee. But GLOSK and a broader definition of minority to further secure its protection.
GLSOK president Ruth Lichtwardt said the homosexual group hadn't needed the committee's help since the early 1980s that and the chances were slim that it would need the committee's help again.
The inclusion of gays in the definition will not have an astounding effect on the way their affairs are handled. But it is the principle of guaranteed minority protection against just the chance of such protection.
All students, however, want more of the fruits of student government. Everyone wants beneficial legislation.
And the committee was mistaken in its attempts to impose a limited definition of minorities that brought sexual preference into the limelight.
GLSOK has called for a broad definition of minority, one similar to the most recent subcommittee proposal. In that definition, any group is a minority, whether they be left-handed people, redheads or young conservatives.
We have two extremes in this argument. But the Minority Affairs Committee cannot exclude gays from its definition without first determining how someone becomes homosexual. It is all or nothing.
Choice of lifestyle should also not be at issue, as the committee has included religious groups and religious affiliation is an individual choice.
Despite the resentment many people have toward homosexuality, we cannot exclude them any more. We can exclude blacks or women
Nearly every group should have access to the minority committee, whether they be homosexual, Catholic or out-stricken.
The Minority Affairs Committee will eventually decide what minorities are. It has wasted much time in coming to a decision
us members don't want to drop the issue, and too many people will complain if a narrow definition of minorities is adopted.
The best alternative then is to give all groups minority status, so that the committee can start fighting for minority rights.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Creative spirit?
To the editor:
It is remarkable how many people can look at trash and suddenly experience an epiphany ("The Giver") in the lives of a university Daily Kansan Feb. 20.)
I may not "understand" the controversial "Salina Piece," but anyone who can find beauty and meaning in salvage was probably in the crowd that saw "The Emperor's New Clothes."
And anyone who can see this junk pile as a “manifestation of the crucible” — man’s reaching to God — has to be an atheist or a blasphemer.
My aesthetic deprivation includes large canvases covered with a single color of paint (any house painter could do the same), childish stick-figure drawings (similar to what my children brought home in first grade) and the bent steel in front of Spencer Art Museum and the City Hall (an afternoon's pastime for a doodler).
Such "artists" must surely chuckle all the way to the bank.
"Moonlight stumbled over its steel body?" Give me a break! The "Salina Piece" is certainly big enough for every event, but moonlight over, but moonlight? That's taking poetic journalism beyond the edge.
I can't wait to see which fraternity
Or was your tongue merely planted as firmly in your cheek when you wrote as the scrap metal is on the ground on campus west?
Barbara M. Paris English department administrative assistant
However, I do agree that Potter Lake would be a better place to display this refuge from the grave and preserve it in the lake were only 100 feet deeper!
is the first to hang a wrecked train car off the "graceful steel arms" of this 'significant work of modern art.' It's probably good that you observed this 40-ton monstrosity in the darkness of a cool night."
A settlement is necessary in Indochina
Vietnam continues to occupy Cambodia with some 160,000 troops, while its principal opponents in the standoff, China and Thailand, demand a withdrawal and internationally supervised elections.
WASHINGTON — A military and diplomatic deadlock has existed in Indochina since 1979 following the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia the internally murderous and the externally aggressive Pol Pot regime.
It is unlikely that the deadlock will be broken soon, given Vietnam's formidable military grip on the insurgency and the intransigence that it represents.
The United States is a secondary player at best in Indochinese events.
China and Thailand, for their part, remain determined to reverse the Cambodian situation.
DICK CLARK Former senator
Yet, given our own dark role in Indochina and particularly Cambodia, it behoves us all the more to use what limited influence we have to work for a realistic compromise in Cambodia.
Such a settlement must include a withdrawal of Vietnamese forces, exclude the genocidal Pol Pot and insure a government that is more representative of the Cambodian political system to Vietnam's security interests.
Certainly a large part of the difficulty in arriving at such a solution is that Vietnam, through its Cambodian client regime headed by Heng Seng, has achieved an old goal — unquestioned domination of India, as only the colonial French had enjoyed in modern times.
Yet, despite this situation, Vietnam continues to have real political and economic incentives for an eventual compromise. An end to its long isolation from the West — estimated to have cost as much as $3 billion in lost aid — is doubtless in Hanoi's interest, as would be better relations with neighbors in the region.
Moreover, Vietnam recognizes its vulnerability to unforeseeable external factors, such as Chinese forces in the northern border and a cut in Soviet aid.
The ASEAN countries look to a coalition government as a basis upon which an eventual compromise will be reached. The troops withdrawn from Cambodia.
- the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Pol Pot, whom the Chinese still insist be included in a coalition, remains a large stumbling block to the process.
That the time may not yet be ripe for a solution should be no reason to sit back and join the waiting game; nonetheless, it appears that America, like China, is satisfied to bleed Vietnam into eventual submission by supporting a coalition that includes Pol Pot.
Dick Clark is a former Democratic senator from Iowa