OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
January 24.1984 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kannan (USP5 606-644) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Finst Hall, Lawrence, Kannan, 641-733; daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer session; excused on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Wednesday except by mail are $13 for six months or $27 if you are Douglas County and $18 for six months or $35 for a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are a $1 semester paid through the student activity board. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: USP5 606-644.
DOUG CUNNINGHAM
DON KNOX SARA KEMPIN
Managing Editor Editorial Editor
JEFF TAYLOR ANDREW HARTLEY Campus Editor News Editor
PAUL JESS
DAVE WANAMAKER Business Manager
CORTH GOHMAN JILL MUCITHELL
Retail Sales Manager National Sales Manager
PAUL JESS General Manager and News Adviser
JANCE PHILIPS    DUNCANCALHoun
Campus Sales Manager    Classified Manager
A contradiction
The advertisement in Time magazine touts South Africa as a place with "a seemingly endless variety of tribal cultures." It boasts of "a cosmopolitan population, with a wealth of traditional languages and cultures."
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
The tribal cultures are an asset to South Africa when that is to its benefit. Seeking to entice potential tourists, the country boasts of its diverse people.
Yet, the irony of the advertisement is obvious to anyone aware of the political policies of South Africa.
The country's ideology of apartheid, which holds that those of differing skin color and even those of the same color but of different tribes, must be kept apart, continues despite token changes in the system.
South African authorities have enforced apartheid policies by forcing 3.5 million people to leave their ancestral lands for other geographical areas of the country during the past 20 years.
The plight of farmers
About 2 million others are on the government's waiting list for relocation, according to officials quoted in the New York Times.
An advertisement in Time magazine can entice tourists with its claims of a wealth of cultures.
But last week, when the government said that it was time to go. 300 families at a place called Badplaas refused to leave their homes in the Eastern Transvaal. They refused to be forced out of a land that is theirs but that the government decided they should leave because they are the wrong color.
But actions convey a stronger message than any advertisement could. People will not be fooled into thinking that South Africa is proud of its numerous races when one action after another has contradicted that claim.
In this case, the government does not consider diversity of culture an asset.
After relatively little attention by the Reagan administration, the plight of the American farmer is finally starting to get the national interest it deserves.
Agriculture is the nation's largest industry and has assets of more than $1 trillion. Although farmers make up less than 5 percent of the population, presidential candidates are starting to realize that farm issues are important.
Six of the eight Democratic candidates criticized the Reagan administration's farm policies during a farm forum Saturday in Iowa.
Many of the problems mentioned during the forum have roots going back to the administrations of several former presidents. Still, many of their accusations were true.
have destroyed the livelihood of many.
Thousands have been squeezed by high interest rates and relatively stable farm prices. Foreclosures
Some people have suggested putting a moratorium on repayment of farm loans so farmers won't go bankrupt. But such a solution would be only temporary.
The candidates were split Saturday in their solutions to farm problems, but most endorsed a suggestion advanced by Gov. John Carlin that the government establish a national Food and Fiber Board to smooth unevenness in farm policies as the presidency lurches from one political party to another.
Whether solutions will be found remains to be seen. But one thing is clear — farm issues are sure to be discussed and analyzed by candidates trying to curry favor with farmers. Most importantly, the issues must not be forgotten once the election is over.
A continuing problem
Regional differences on the issue of acid rain threaten to splinter an effort to do what is right.
The issue would be a more politically easy one to address if acid rain fell evenly throughout the country, and thereby affected everyone.
Something desperately needs to be done about the problem, which is caused primarily by sulfur emissions from coal-burning power plants and factories.
Most of the damage is done to lakes and forests in the Northeast and Canada.
But most of the problem is caused by power plants and factories in the Midwest
Ah, it is the stuff of politics.
Gov. John Carlin was among five governors to urge President Reagan
The Democratic governor, however, was not optimistic about the chances of anything more than research being done this year to combat the problem.
Research, of course, is needed. But a commitment on the part of the administration to solve the problem seems to be lacking. Indeed, the president's main concern appears to be with the politics of the matter. The problem has waited this long for a solution, it will wait another year or two, so the thinking goes.
last week to endorse a strong national program to curc acid rain.
Unfortunately, the lakes and forests of the Northeast will continue to be harmed. As happens so often, regional differences will preclude the correct action. Little will be done and the problem will continue.
The University Daily Kansas 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 teachers 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
Two American values clash
A vignette from my world:
Four-thirty p.m. and I'm at work at a large lumberyard north of the river. I've been describing for a customer how to install a plumbing fixture. Finally, I see the glimmer of understanding in his eyes, and we walk, together, to the sales counter.
"What time is it?" asks the cashier, as she rings up my customer.
"Four-thirty." I answer
"I wish it was five-thirty," she says. "Then we could go home." My sentiments exactly.
in our country that threatens to destroy our very way of life. It has been creeping up on us for decades.
"wsn," says the customer, "I wish I had a job to come home from."
The cash register whirred as we noticed my customer. His clothes were worn, almost tattered. His speech simple and slow. After he paid for his purchase, holding the card strained, his demeanored fingers, he left, driving away in a rattling station wagon.
The cashier and I talked about him after he left. I don't remember what was said, but the words were laden with guilt, guilt stirred by a cold slap in the face from the real world.
Something subtle is happening
It is a clash between two values. The first is called, for lack of a better term, the Protestant work ethic. The second is mentality. The clash is not explosive. It is more like a
cancer, slowly taking over a healthy body; it leaves in its wake a carcass, a shadow of the former being.
Instead of boring you with the origins and development of the work ethic, I choose to define by illustration.
Most active during wartime (not "armed conflict" time), the work ethic is evident as a nation mobilized. Soldiers' wives riveting the superstructure of a bomber, volunteers collecting food and money from civilians and shipbuilders working extra shifts without complaint are all examples of the ethic.
But the work ethic does not disappear in peacetime. It can be found in pictures of workers surrounding the 50-millionth Chevrolet in 1953, and in an advertiser's handbook businesses which showcases a second-generation Vaughan employee who has been grinding
hammers for 30 years and whose teen-age sons work at the same factory.
And, excuse my flag-waving, it is one of the many things that makes this country unique and great.
I felt that work ethic strongly when I read an article in the newspaper about a U.S. Marine who had just finished fighting in Grenada and was being shipped directly to Lebanon. Asked by a reporter whether the soldier thought that he was being treated unfairly, he replied, "It's my job, sir. I'm a Marine."
The TGIF mentality contrasts strongly with this. The examples are countless, but it can be seen clearly in the many beer commercials: "Now (usually after work) you want to wear a MASK." We were made for Michelon, and "and it tarns tonight, Coors Light."
It's not a guiding force limited to the proletarians. The successful businessman is not a nine-to-five man. He's a man — or woman — who works without complaint until the job is done.
But where has all the hard work gone?
Hard work is certainly not exemplified in the myriad of recalled automobiles. It's not to be found in many Union halls either, as they demand ever-shorter work weeks. It's not in the values of the worker who considers time as the space
Let's get one thing straight:
Hard work should be rewarded
That reward, be it a beer or a pit
and give it back in all for rewards after hard work.
Why is this happening? Have people forgotten what the satisfaction of a job well done feels like? Or have they realized that it's a lot easier to bend their elbow at a bar than to bust their butt doing a job without recognition or appreciation?
between now and the end of his work day.
That last question has a lot to do with it. I think When people look to others for acceptance and don't see it, the triumph of accomplishment is blurred
Let us look inside ourselves for the answers and the motivation. Perhaps this statement, borrowed from the pages of Ayn Rand's novel, "Atlas Shrugged," may help: "I swear by my life and my love for it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
We, who understand and believe that statement, know that hard work is its own reward. It's not as easy to swallow as a beer, but it's countless times more satisfying.
Dear Miss Nubile
A number of my colleagues, male and female, are upset by your complaint that you have been sexually harassed by professor Pinch. They have asked me to write you this letter in the hope that I will be able to persuade you to withdraw your complaint.
The following "letter to a Sexual Harassee" was found in a campus wastebasket and forwarded to me. Dear Miss Nubile:
Let me begin by accepting without question the facts as you have stated them. There is no doubt in my mind
Professor
ROBERT OLIPHANT
that Professor Pinch behaved toward you in an offensively sexist, boorish and uncivilized manner.
in the long run, however. I am afraid that punishing, Professor Pinch may entail severe damage to our faculty as a whole, to you and your students and to the harmonious functioning of our university community.
First of all, Miss Nubile, you must understand that academic freedom today is not just limited to the mere expression of potentially unpopular ideas. Rather, it now encompasses the freedom to dramatize those ideas in the manner behavior, offensive though that behavior may be to some of us.
If we call Professor Pinch to account for his sexist, boorish and uncivilized behavior, we will also have to chastise Professor Foul for his habitual use of four-letter words in the classroom.
To smoke in class, to leave the room and blackboard in disarray, to affect the diseveled appearance and bearing of an Old Testament prophet — these and other forms of quant personal theater are today well-established as matters of professional academic freedom.
This battle for academic freedom
has brought with it some important victories for you and your fellow students. In the past, as your parents may have pointed out, students were required to dress and behave in a decorous fashion.
But today you and your friends may wear scanty, revealing costumes to class and consume various forms of nourishment, after which you are encouraged to litter the campus profusely.
As for roller skates, loud radios,
yelling and screaming, public kissing
and fondling — these are now well-established rights that you possess. Faculty rights and student
rights — they are both bound up together. And they are both worth preserving, most of us feel.
Your presence here, Miss Nubile, is part of that growth. Is mine. So is Professor Pinch's. We are all here together in response to the broad social imperative embodied in our motto, "Give us your tired, your poor, your weak, you huddled masses wearing for Ph.D.'s."
For the sake of that social imperative, for the sake of your own welfare, and for the sake of our university community, I most earl care to drop your charges of sexual harassment against Professor Pinch.
I ask this knowing full well that his behavior has been offensive and painful to but. That pain, as I have tried to point out, is part of the price we must pay for educational progress.
I can only hope my reasoning here has convinced you that the price is not too high, especially when measured against the splendid achievements of our American universities during the past decade.
Best wishes - and good luck on getting into law school.
Robert Oliphant is professor of English at the California State University at Northridge and author of a recent novel, "A Trump For Jackie."
CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY
Economic crisis nears
NEW YORK — The present recovery is preparing the way for a coming crisis in the American economy
The immediate threat is a contracting middle class, which means a contracting market for consumers' durable goods. The class that provided most of the buyers of dishwashers and refrigerators is shrinking.
MICHAEL HARRINGTON Author
Hasn't 1983 reversed that trend? Wont the tide of recovery "lift all boats"? To understand why that is probably not the case, one must grasp a difficult truth — that the recovery itself is, in part, the result of the "economic discipline" that will generate the next crisis.
Between 1947 and 1972, real income increased by 15 percent to 18 percent every five years, and there were good times. Between 1972 and 1982, real family income dropped by more than 8 percent.
The trend itself is not in doubt. It has been recognized by Business Week and Fortune and by leftist executives as being Barry Bluestone and Roh Kutten.
The Reagan supply-side strategy failed - production did not turn upward because the rich and the corporations did not reinvest into new plants the enormous tax subsidies he gave them.
His tax cuts were, in fact, followed by an investment bust, which only began to end when economic demand started to soar.
But those were not the only reasons for the 1983 recovery to turn the economy around and drive people out of the middle class.
Historically, recessions have always functioned to make business "lean" and profitable. Inefficient factories, and their公司 workers are "disciplined" by fear of unemployment to accept lower wages
The problem is that the cheaper workers of today, who have been forced to "volunteer" to help the recovery, will be the stinkier con- fronter and the most agentents of the next crisis. There must be a better way.
Michael Harrington is co-chairman of Democratic Socialists of America and author, most recently, of "The Politics of God's Funeral."
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
An eye-opening letter
To the editor:
Thank you, Mr. Wayne L. J. Johnson, for your eye-opening letter, your divine revelation of truth.
You have saved me from eternal ruin. How else would I ever have known that I was unwittingly supporting this nation's spiritual demise by wearing pants?
I really enjoyed your letter, Mr. Wayne L. Johnson. I had a really good laugh. But I didn't laugh for long, for it soon dawned on me that if they weren't funny anymore views like your own, they won't be funny anymore.
I believe deeply in the Bible, and I think that Christianity is a beautiful way of life. But in the hands of lawmakers and governments it is invariably twisted into an oppressive reign of
Especially when people like yourself take verses out of context and rearrange the wording in order to fit them to their purposes. One need to question if one is genuinely looking to see the result of this kind of foolishness.
You use Jude 6-16 to support your argument. You leave out verse five, which states clearly who the writer is talking about in the following verses. The passage is a warning against unbelievers you
out on a show of godliness; it is not a prophecy against militant feminists.
This is only one example of your foolishness. Every single verse you used, without exception, to describe your sins will be interpreted as a
Margaret Schmidt McEarland sophomore
Tampering with God's word is serious business, and if you were the God-fearening Christian you apparently think you are, you would realize this. It would seem, however, that you don't.
forbidden by the Hebrew faith of the time — he taught women. By doing this, he placed women on the same level as men and made both worthy of his teaching.
Letter is exaggerated
The Bible is God's message of hope to a hopelessly screwed-up world. It was never meant for sick individuals like yourself to use as a justification for your hatred of women.
To the editor:
In Luke 10:38-42. Jesus does something strictly
His assertion that "Jesus strove against feminism" is, to say the least, a bit exaggerated, and, to say the most, unfounded.
I don't normally get upset over editorials. After all, everyone is entitled to his own opinion. The letter from Wayne Johnson on the 17th of January is different, however.
In John 4:7-26, Jesus does an even more shocking thing — he talks to a Samaritan woman. Samaritans were despised by the ancient Hebrew, their women more so, but Jesus shared them. He and his disciples the secret of who he was. (He even swore his disciples to secrecy about his identity in Mark 9:27-30.)
Even in the Old Testament women were honored by God — two, Ruth and Esther, had entire books
I can understand Johnson's fear of those evil that seem to be the fault of women. I worry about them myself. But it doesn't seem fair to take away their rights because they've proven to be just as human as men. Jesus didn't do it so why should we?
P. S. It should be noted that the problems Johnson mentions have existed for a long time before feminism became a household word. Also, I don't know a whole lot of women who buy Playboy and Penthouse for the pictures. I do know a lot of men who do._however
1
Don H. Arnold
Wichita freshman