OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansas (USPS 650-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer-Final Hall, Lawrence, KS 60482, daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer session, excluding weekends. Students for who register for the summer session by mail are $15 for six months or $27 in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $35 for a year outside the university. Student subscriptions are a $13 semester payment through the student activity page. FOSTMATER: Send address changes to UsPS at usps@uakron.edu.
DOUG CUNNINGHAM
DON KNOX
Managing Editor
SARA KEMPIN
Editorial Editor
February 2,1984 Page 4
Business Manager
JEFF TAYLOR ANDREW HARTLEY Campus Editor News Editor
DAVE WANAMAKER Business Manager
General Manager and News Adviser
PAUL JESS
CORR GORMAN JILL MITCHELL
Retail Sales Manager National Sales Manager
JANICE PHILIPS    DUNCAN CALHOUH
Campus Sales Manager        Classified Manager
U. S. legislators seem to have belatedly acquired a sense of responsibility for their misdeeds, but the taxpayers must pay the price. The nation should not stand for further negligence.
The government authorized use of Agent Orange, and now, taxpayers must make up for governmental negligence.
Paying the price
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
The House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would give $5 million a year to veterans who suffer from the effects of Agent Orange and radiation from nuclear explosions.
And although critics of the bill complain that too little is known about the effects of Agent Orange, the defoliant used in Vietnam has caused thousands of veterans to contract chloracne, a skin disease directly linked to exposure.
The compensation to veterans who suffer from the effects of the defoliant is to last for about four
The House has shown its willingness to act for the people in these two areas, and because this is an election year, the Senate and Reagan will probably give their consent to the measure.
years, or a year after the Center for Disease Control wraps up an investigation into the matter in 1987.
The bill may ease the nation's conscience as to the horrible effects of the dioxin-containing chemical until evidence is found to the contrary. This help to veterans is late and costly, but it is also necessary.
And although the spending bill seems destined to pass — as it should — the nation should keep a better eye on its government to prevent having to pay for such mistakes in the future.
Just lines on a resume
The responsibility for Agent Orange also extends to its responsibility to the men who helped conduct atomic tests in the 1940s and 1950s.
But student leaders themselves last week leveled what might have been the harshest attack to date on the state of KU student government.
Last semester's election problems have made it easy for many to criticize the present Student Senate.
Jim Cramer, student body vice president, said at a forum in Stauffer-Flint Hall that the Senate was run by "only eight or nine hard-working senators." The other 52 senators, he said, merely are spectators who use the Senate to gain lines on their resumes.
number of people getting involved and staying involved.
David Ambler, vice chancellor for student affairs, attributed the Senate's problems to a decline in the
Present student leaders, he said, do not cultivate their successors, so the only experience some students have before becoming senators is "assistant scrapbook chairman in their housing unit."
Presidential candidate Loren Busby, who two years ago called the Senate "a bunch of mindless idiots," said that senators were not experienced in the spirit of compromise necessary to accomplish anything.
Cramer, Busby and Ambler seem to underscore what may become one of the Senate's biggest concerns this term. For whatever reason, student representation at KU is weakening.
Four years ago, the Senate dealt with absenteeism problems by halving its membership. The move appeared to be drastic at the time, but the Senate actually was able to deal more effectively with its agenda.
It's too early to advocate another reduction in size. But the integrity of the Senate must be revived before its crumbling system finally collapses.
Near-misses frequent
Walking, riding a bike or moped, or taking the bus are also choices for getting from here to there.
One of the characteristics that makes Lawrence such an attractive University town is being able to get around without a car.
But there are several extremely dangerous intersections in the city that make those who are not in a car vulnerable.
With cars and trucks whizzing by, those on foot or riding a bike or moped have an even harder time dodging traffic.
The report cited several one-way streets in the Oread neighborhood that have dangerous intersections because they are extremely busy. Near misses are frequent.
The seriousness of the situation was recently dramatized when the victim of a traffic accident died, although he had been driving in a car.
TrafTran Engineering conducted a study and determined several hazardous traffic intersections in
Lawrence. Nearly all of the 10 most dangerous intersections are in an area of the city that has a significant amount of foot traffic.
According to the engineering firm's information, improvements suggested in their report would decrease the number of accidents at any of these dangerous intersections by as much as 80 percent.
This is a significant reduction for those on foot or driving. Safer traffic patterns would benefit everyone, whether on foot or in a vehicle.
The engineering firm's report has been submitted to the Lawrence City Commission for review. The next step needed is action.
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 town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan also invites individuals and groups to submit guest columns. 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.
LETTERS POLICY
The battle against overt discrimination continues. Government units on the national, state and local levels spend a phenomenal amount of money and time helping the nation's minorities.
Rampant discrimination
And although our government has exceeded its duty on this issue, discrimination is still a problem, because of obvious sense, but in a covert sense.
Lawrence, for example, suffers from rampant covert discrimination.
These neighborhood organizations seem to think themselves sacrosanct, beyond integration. And they must abandon this attitude if we are to end discrimination.
The Lawrence Board of Zoning Appeals will hear one such case of this quasi-discrimination today. It is the case of the proscribed building
Within the last year, several neighborhood organizations have denied residence to some people of different socio-economic backgrounds. And although the neighborhoods excuses for protesting themselves, they wonder whether the reasons in most instances simply are bigotry.
MICHAEL BECK
of a Catholic Church at Engle and Cresent roads.
Staff Columnist
The church, however, has demonstrated that its plans for parking will be in accordance with city ordinances, which stipulate that the church provide one parking space for every four seats.
The request to move into the neighborhood was properly filed, and the proposed building seems to meet city guidelines. Yet residents remain obstinate about the center and have refused to negotiate with church authorities about the building.
Residents of that neighborhood, claiming that their "cultural environment was in danger," convinced the Board of Zoning
Another instance of this trend of discrimination is the Breezedeale neighborhood's refusal to permit a house at 2343 Barker St. to be used as a counseling center for students at Haskell Indian Junior College
other roads.
The neighborhood organization argues that the number of people attending the church, chapel and student counseling center the Catholic Center plans to build will create a traffic hazard and that the area cannot handle the parking needs of the church.
Those same residents also complained that their neighborhood would self-destruct when the Lawrence City Commission voted to allow Lawrence Indian Center to move to 22nd and Massachusetts streets.
One resident of the area said, "They are taking a chip here and a chip there. As they start adding up the chips, I am surprised the re segregation of our neighborhood."
Appeals not to allow the zoning variation for the center.
Some reasons stated for not wanting the Indian Center rang from traffic problems to the unsightly garbage that residents knew the Indians would throw about the neighborhood.
Such vague and unfounded reasons for stopping expansion of effective programs is not new. This summer Cottonwood Inc. asked the City Commission for permission to build three homes for the mentally handicapped in residential areas around Lawrence.
Residents of that neighborhood then gathered enough names on a petition to keep the Indian Center out.
tonwood's requests, but not before hearing complaints by residents. Some said that the mentally handicapped residents would create traffic hazards after they entered the neighborhood's children.
The commission approved Cot
Cottonwood, however, pointed to its track record with regard to its housing programs, and the city approved its request.
The agency will now have a total of eight group homes in Lawrence, the first one being about seven years old.
Such integration in neigh borhoods is at times inappropriate, but in most instances, neigh discrimination is an intolerable evil.
And the resistance to change should be forfeited. Most of the groups wanting to move into residential neighborhoods have proved their community spirit; they are not adversaries.
They do not want to destroy the homogeneity of Lawrence's neighborhoods; they want to capitalize upon it.
Our governments cannot cure all our ills. We must attack the menace discrimination on our own:
Health union without unity
It underpins the sense of shared purpose on which Lane Kirkland relies to keep the AFL.CIO united in a crucial candidacy of Walter F. Mondale.
NEW YORK - Solidarity is the glue that holds organized labor together its global stretch makes it possible for workers in Poland's suppressed free trade union.
But it is deplorable absent in what for a quarter century has been one of the few exemplars of dynamic growth and social inventiveness in a sagging labor movement, the National Hospital and Health Care Employees.
Its logo, 1199, has become a magic number for tens of thousands of bedroom emptiers, operating-room staff and nurses in hospitals all over the country.
The battle between 1199 and its parent revolves, as do many destructive intra-union squabbles, over issues of money, power and ambition, with all the disputate, hastily proclaiming their own virtue.
The parent organization seeks to cancel a decade-long agreement under which 1199 keeps for use among hospital workers three percent of the $5 million in dues it would otherwise pay to headquarters.
What makes this fight different is the danger that it will stifle the drive and resources it has used so effectively to lift out of degradation
a group that has long ranked among the worst exploited of the working poor.
When 1199 refused to bow to a rule by a temporary trustee, the international union dragged it into
federal court, only to meet a fresh rebuff from Judge Leonard Sand. He rejected the parent union's plea for an injunction and urged that the row be resolved inside the labor movement.
A.H. RASKIN
Journalist
Under AFL-CIO rules, the hospital workers cannot move into another AFL-CIO union if they leave their present unhappy home. The teams will have to ask the Teamsters, cast out of the federation in 1957 for corruption, is
already extending its tentacles as a potential protector.
The intractability of the internal dispute is heightened by a falling out between the national leadership of the hospital union and the head of the big New York local from which it grew — a local embracing fully half of the 135,000 unionized hospital workers.
Intervention by the AFL-CIO might revive a peace formula that had seemed on the lip of acceptance in 1981 and one that could benefit all factions. It called for a merger of the parent union and the much larger labor union, which is also strong representation among hospital workers.
The parent union broke off the merger talks after a letter bomb exploded in the office of its president, Alvin E. Heans.
Now the stage seems set for a verbal shootout among all the disputants at a meeting in Heaps' headquarters today. All labor would be the loser if the chief casualty was the national hospital union.
A. H. Ruskin was for many years chief labor correspondent of the New York Times
A realistic solution is needed
WASHINGTON - Wishful thinking is a powerful force in shaping American perceptions of the Middle East.
Recent talk about negotiations between Yasin Arafat, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan are no exception.
Every hint of Palestine Liberation Organization temperance, Syrian flexibility or Jordanian willingness to join negotiations with Israel is misread as a promise of imminent breakthrough.
The political situation has changed significantly in the last 18 months. The P.L.O.'s weakening, its internal schisms and conflict with radical Islam — all open prospects of possible war and possibly P.L.O. cooperation in negotiations over the Reagan plan, proposed in September 1982, for a
BARRY RUBIN
Author
West Bank-Jordan federation and real Arab recognition of Israel.
Yet these hopeful developments are only part of the story. The obstacles are created by divisions among Arabs. They include:
- The P.L.O. still hopes to rebuild relations with Syria. Arafat's meeting last month with Mubarak showed Damascus that the P.L.O can move toward Syria's enemies, and Jordan and Japan may make an alliance with them unless巴基斯 macus will open a chance for reconciliation.
- Syria will oppose the Reagan plan with all its might for one simple reason: Damascus will never counterance giving the West Bank and the Palestinian card to its rival, Jordan.
- *Arafat must deal with three opposing or potentially dissident P.L.O. factions; the pro-Syrians, the so-called "neutrals" tilt toward Damascus, including those who claim to be "Marsik" and the "loyal opposition" so far still in his camp.
- Close Soviet ties with the “neutrals” and the “loyal opposition” leader Abu Iyad — who favors offering Moscow a base in any Palestinian state — suggest that the Kremlin has abandoned Arafat or may do so if he accepts an American plan.
- King Hussein's brave call for Arab decisions by consensus rather than unanimity is unlikely to change the basic fact of Arab politics — the radicals' ability to block any moderate initiatives and arouse the Arab public through demagoguage and subversion.
Those who believe that an act of American will is sufficient to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict often call on Washington to press Jerusalem.
Certainly, the Israeli government wants to keep the West Bank, and it enjoys considerable popular support for this policy — largely because the security and permanent occupation are skeptical about Arab intentions
Nothing that Washington can do will change this attitude. Only a clear and unequivocal Arab commitment to peace can move Israel toward the possibility of compromise.
What are the chances of that? Neither American aid nor Israelt withdrawal from Lebanon can push Jordan to make such an offer — and the King Hussein and Arafat will be hostage to the politics of the Arab world.
Barry Rubin is a senior fellow of Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of the forthcoming "Secrets of State: The State Department in U.S. Foreign Policy."
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Raising the roof
To the editor:
As an invidual KU basketball fan, there is an nothing more enjoyable than venturing into tradition-rich Allen Field House to support the Jay-Z exception when teams such as Kentucky and Kansas State visit Lawrence.
During these games, seats are set up directly in front of the student reserved section, which is located behind each basketball goal.
Students, who are mainly responsible for 'raising the roof' of Allen House, are being cheated! Fans are being indicted by inconsiderate people who are
Let the students see the game instead of the back of someone's head. Tickets should be allotted in proper sections of Allen Field House or not at all!
determined to stand throughout the entire game.
Give us students a break; it's we who wait outside in frigid temperatures and wait up to three hours with gametime to see the Jay hawks.
We should at least be able to see the game for all the time and effort put forth.
Mike J. Cannon
Lawrence junior
How are students expected to see the likes of Coach Brown and Mark Turgueon, who don't exactly tower
-
above the Dreilings and Knights.
That was news to me.
To the editor:
Need more taste
"What is that thing?" I asked to ask myself and others. Now I have finally found out. It is "art."
Bravo to the author of the Jan. 11 editorial "Scrap iron." I have lived in Salina most of my life, and since it was displayed near a large thoroughfare, I have seen "Salina Piece" countless times.
Well, I thought, at least it was donated. At least no money was spent on it.
Well, I guess I was wrong. I just don't see how people can take money out of their own pockets just to support the construction of that piece of trash when they could donate it to some departments in this University that could really use the money.
It would be nice if someone donated money to something the students could benefit from rather than vandalize.
I appreciate abstract art, but I agree that the line between "art" and "scrap iron" has been crossed. I remember when Kansas had a little more taste.
Katherine M. Allen Salina freshman