OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
December 1. 1983 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kanaka (USPS 605440) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stuaffer First Hall, Lawrence, KS 60043, daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer semester, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays, and final period. Students are required to attend classes in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 for a week outside the county. Student subscriptions are $3 a semester past through the student activity book *FOSTMATEK*. Send materials to: USPS, 222 Broadway, Kansas City, KS 66117.
MARK ZIEMAN
Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM STEVE CUSICK
Managing Editor Editorial Editor
DON KNOX
Campus Editor
PAULJESS
General Manager and News Adviser
ANN HORNBERGER Business Manager
ANN HORNEBERGER
Business Manager
DAVE WANAMAKER
Retail Sales
Manager
MARK MEARS
National Sales
Manager
LYNNE STARK
Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN
Advertising Adviser
Ridiculous idea
The mayor of Lawrence has done it again.
In one bold stroke, he has brought back images of the Yellow Brick Road, Dorothy and Toto and wheat and buffalo — stereotypes that many Kansans have tried to shake.
Mayor David Longhurst brought up, this time at the National League of Cities meeting in New Orleans, his talk of nuclear war, bringing to mind his ridiculous suggestion that Lawrence be the site of a summit between the superpowers. Encourage understanding, that kind of thing.
Great. Lawrence, to the rest of the country, will be that town at the end of the Yellow Brick Road where the mayor actually thinks that presidents Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov will come to the city for a meeting to discuss nuclear weapons.
There, on the summit of Mount Oread, the two will make peace. Not war. Grass, now dead and brown, will be transformed into waving wheat and amber waves of grain. Apples will be in season, so that a full supply will be on hand for the necessary pies. The first baseball might be thrown out early.
The citizenry, already at a fever pitch in an anti-nuke frenzy, will go
wild. Longhurst will have a hard time controlling the populace. Other U.S. citizens will flock to the area, thinking it a good place to live.
And once they get here, they will be amazed. The mayor — and hundreds, perhaps thousands of other people — will not be concerned about the very real problems facing this city.
The fear that some citizens will go without heat will be of little consequence. Some people will go hungry day after day, but enough of that, we have a summit meeting to think about.
Civic issues abound. The plans for downtown redevelopment probably should be changed again, having survived a month or two unscathed. Some people are unemployed and need more than assistance; they need a new job.
Our concern is not that people — including the mayor — are worried about nuclear war. Well they should be, its prospect is menacing.
But the mayor, as the city's leader, should try to do things for the city that can and should be done as part of his job.
Instead, he appears to be seeking only publicity and has little chance of accomplishing much.
Powolsky's dream
The chill of the day and the drabness of the East German winter landscape may have reflected present day Soviet-U.S. relations, but it did not dampen the spirits of those who gathered Saturday to honor World War II veteran Joseph Powolsky, who virtually led a one-man campaign for reconciiation between the two superpowers.
isted during the liberation
Powolsky, who died of cancer Oct. 17 in Chicago, was a private in the 1st Army's 273rd Regiment, which helped liberate Germany 38 years ago. His regiment met Soviet troops coming in from the east at Torgau, and the two forces helped to successfully fight resistance.
The memories of the two armies' fraternization and rejoicing compelled Powolsky, whose grandparents were born in Minsk, to organize Veterans for Peace, which lobbied to bring the two superpowers to the same position of fellowship and friendship that ex-
Powolsky, a Chicago taxi driver, had asked to be buried in Torgau to commemorate that spirit. Some of that spirit must have been present at his funeral service — his pallbearers were three Soviet war veterans and three Americans.
Although the East German government, which had given its permission for the unusual burial, did not publicize the funeral, a number of German residents, as well as a few Americans, attended the memorial service.
A Lawrence woman, Millie Peters, 67, attended and read a pledge "to work for a world of peace and free from the threat of nuclear war" at the small monument marking the 1945 troop linkup.
Powolsky was an an ordinary American with an extraordinary vision. More of us could stand to have a little of his dream and a lot of his vision.
A repeat performance
As part of the Yalta Agreement with the Soviet Union, the U.S. and British governments forcibly repatriated some 2 million captured or refugee Russian soldiers and other Soviet citizens — to a fate of either the firing squad or imprisonment in labor camps.
That story may be repeated on a far smaller, but just as tragic scale in the case of eight Soviet soldiers captured by patriotic guerrillas in Afghanistan and currently intered in Switzerland.
At least five of the Soviet POWs have expressed an urgent desire not to be repatriated.
Early in 1982, in a deal with the Soviets, the Soviet-controlled Kabul regime and the guerrillas, the
The IRC agreed to keep them in Switzerland for two years, then repatriate them to the Soviet Union.
One of the POWs escaped and tried to seek asylum in West Germany, but was refused. The British have also turned down pleas for asylum.
International Red Cross took charge of the eight POWs.
President Reagan should offer the eight sanctuary in this country.
Evansville (Ind.) Press
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 individ- ual students to submit guest columns. Columns and letters may be brought to the Kansas office, 111 Stauffer Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
Dropouts wasting time, money
I think of the father sitting in the living room, reading the paper or watching television. The mother is often holding herself busy to keep from crying.
Their son or daughter is coming home from college and will not be going back. The years of hope vested in their child must be sacrificed and forgotten. They search for scapegoats, but it doesn't really matter.
This situation is not exaggerated. I have seen it happen. It will continue to happen. The reasons students drop out of college vary considerably. Some can't get their degrees because they have no money, some refuse to make the grade.
What is consistent, though, is the number of students who will find themselves in a similar situation. After their first semester, around 10 percent of a given KU freshman class will quit college. After the second semester, that total number jumps to around 25 percent.
semester, nearly half of a given class will have quit college. Of the KU class of 1978, 45.5 percent quit college by the ninth semester, while 20.5 percent remained. The remaining 20.6 percent will graduate in coming semesters.
LETTERS POLICY
And by the end of the ninth
These statistics haven't changed
MICHAEL BECK
much in 20 years, but figures for the class of 1982 show a slight decline, which is a good sign.
Staff Columnist
I sit at my desk late at night — even on weekends — frantically trying make up for the time I lost while working to pay rent. Down the street, in the house that Gore Vidal built, groupies stream in and out working their way into factories or onto their parents' payroll
I realize some people enter college just to see if they like it. But others come to school and end up quitting because they haven't any foresight or determination. It is these students that I loathe. I laugh at their failure.
But regardless of that change, the figures are at best depressing, and I can't help but put the blame on me for not completing their education.
No, I am not the grasshopper I also procrastinate. But I see the wasted minds, and I realize that although many Americans have the opportunity to better themselves, many still refuse to take advantage of it. It is this I have trouble coming to grips with.
The high percentage of those dropping out of college won't change much in the future unless we make major changes in our educational system. Such change is unlikely.
At the same time, I refuse toump all those who drop out of school in the same category. There are children whose parents have because they have families to
support. It is those people who need help.
Injuriness is rampant. Waste is an integral part of our society. Those of us who see the situation must accept it, but we do not have to condite it, but we are hard on those who refuse to make use of their position and opportunity.
We have no solutions. And to be extremely dogmatic, those of us who realize the benefits of an education, are not as restful of it. This is our only alternative.
As so this semester winds down, bid some of you goodbye. You must live with yourself. Give my life to you and made sacrifices to give you a chance.
And to those who will be returning and especially to those who will be graduating this semester, congratulations I wish you the best of luck
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Studies not high priority
The Kansan's Nov. 29 sports page illuminated a side of this University which has nagged me lately.
As I attempted to park my car in order to study in New Green Hall one dark evening about two weeks ago, I discovered that all lots within a safe, accessible distance to the school were blocked. The security parking guards I "talked" with told me that the lots were reserved for basketball teams and that we must attend the pre-season basketball game scheduled for that night.
In my, perhaps naive, scheme of University priorities, academics comes first. Athletic and cultural programs, equitably administered, should complement the academic side and hopefully turn out well-rounded, "educated" graduates. Instead, I
Apparently, women's non-revenue sports have to wait longer. Marian Washington, head women's basketball coach must be waiting and wondering when the hard times suffered by the automobile industry, the explanation given her for taking away money from the students to enjoy the same healthy recovery respective to the women's athletic programs as it has to the men's.
The wives of the head football and basketball coaches get cars as do various athletic department staffers and three head coaches of men's non-revenue sports. The article attributes Frederick with the view that "non-revenue sports must wait behind the revenue sports ... for their chance at a new car."
The personal inconvenience of this incident irritated me. However, a larger question came to mind; are there the University's priorities?
The sports page tells on that question. One article updates me on the degree of hot water which the University is in with the VCAA for football recruiting. The university, then, better how the athletic department has allocated the 31 new cars donated by the Williams Fund.
The article quotes Bob Fredrick, the Williams Fund director, as saying that the cars are "essential for recruiting trips by our assistant coaches." It appears that all the football and men's basketball coaches get cars.
fear that the University's primary concern is the blind chase to be a basketball and football powerhouse.
Diana Dietrich Shawnee Mission law student
Election gripe
To the Editor
I am writing to complain about the conduct of the Elections Review Board at its meeting on Monday, Nov. 21. The meeting will be filled by three participants filed by all three major parties in the student body elections.
One complaint was that the write-in ballots that named Momentum should be accepted as valid. The issue was whether persons who voted for that party by writing Momentum actually could have meant candidates other than Kevin Walker and Mark McKee for president and vice president.
I voted at the Burge Union and was told by a poll worker that it was all right to write in just Momentum. I think it was grossly unfair to disallow my vote under those circumstances.
Yet, at the elections meeting, I was not allowed to tell my story in oral testimony. No reason was given by the board for this refusal.
Moreover, the board frequently interrupted speakers to label their comments as out of order or unclear. A speaker who had finished a sentence.
I think this conduct reflects poorly on the Elections Review Board as an administrative representative of KU students. In my seven years as a student here, I have never seen such a flouting of common courtesy and fairness.
Mark Buchanan Kansas City, Kan., law student
Need keen eye
To the Editor:
Peering through the dust and smoke kicked up by the recent events abroad and domestic "political" developments requires a keen eye. Some groups in the US are still trying to set their cries have fallen upon deaf ears.
Distracted by your own selfish slogans of "Let Lawmate Live" and "No Nukes is Good Nukes," you people ignored the
right-thinking ways of the Young Americans for Freedom and the right. right Rey Jerry Falwell
In pursuing your self-serving concept of peace and goodwill, you "Peaceenks" and "Freezeenks" have unwittingly allied themselves with evil. That's right — commutes, marmins, marists and independents.
They have infiltrated everywhere. They work for ABC, the Democratic Party and in festering scab holes like Golden, Colo. They go to school at KU and stir unrest.
I'm not paranoid - just looking over my shoulder at what you have overlooked
At least some Americans are acting Reagan has a great plan — and it doesn't include playing yeman to the United Nations, which is full of commises, or listening to him from across the nation journalists who want to blab about everything that we do as if it were some sort of right
Thank God that Ron has the firm support of simple, good, conservative Americans.
James E. Mitchell
Coeur d'Aleme.
Idaho, senior
Hypocrisy
To the Editor:
The other evening I had the questionable luxury of watching some television. A news feature was on about Cabbage Patch Dolls, the latest rage in Christmas toys. People waited hours in order to buy them, who were injured in order to buy from the limited supply of these dolls.
Apparently, they come complete with birth certificates and adoption papers, which can be mailed to the company. The owner then receives a birthday card.
About a week ago I saw another advertisement, not on national television to be sure. It carried the picture of a wooden toy soldier crying. The caption read, "Some toys will have less chili than they play with this over 1,300,000 aborted children less."
There will be no holidays and no adoption papers and no birthday cards for them. Sometimes the hypocrisy and caloosness of this nation just make me sick to my stomach.
Celeste A. Broyles
Long Island, N.Y.
graduate student
Opposing beliefs
Having graduated from the School of Business, I have left this University. I need not return but can file the experience away, list it on a resume, use it for what it is worth, and duly recall it. But I will not do that. Instead, let me use this space to make a parting comment as a friend.
There are two schools. One teaches that life for the individual — at its base — is tragic, while the other teaches that life is essentially happy I maintain that the University not so much teaches, but gives students the idea, or more sublimely, the feeling that people cannot be happy.
In the Wallace's "Ben Hur." Messala returns to Judaea full of satire and cold wit from study in corrupt Rome. The jaded Roman schools teach that eros, love directed toward self-realization, is dead. For an uncorrupt explanation, Mr. Rudolph, professor's office, introduce your self gracefully, and ask Unfortunately, we have become as
CARY
DUBOI5
Guest Columnist
decadent in the little provincial town of Lawrence as the sophisticates in declining Rome.
The chief, subtle cause of this decay is a sloppy habit of thought which prevents the consideration of the individual.
In economics, the freedom of the individual is ignored in favor of collectivist programs. In sociology, we see men as helpless, will less product of their culture. We cannot understand the nature is the product of the individuals.
History is now a trend, not the exertions of different men and women. In the arts, we begin to look increasingly for the social and political ramifications rather than the personal ones.
All happiness and dignity or "rights" of the individual are forfeit to the needs of society. Happiness cannot exist if it is out of control of the individual. We are left, at best, with a longing for happiness, a desire to be whole which is painful. Death then may be preferable if it is painless, if perchance, there is no dream.
The truth is that the school of tragedy is the intellectualism of fools and knaves. Of fools, who because of their exponential abstractions cannot see the truth. Of knaves, because it is sadly true that some people like to make others suffer.
The truth is that men are good. They have faults, but truly are a precious thing. And further, they can get even better. They can each, one lean back and laugh at the fools and rear back and fight to defeat the hares. The noble spirit of man can be. He will not suffer to be mediocre.
I am not an aristocrat. On the contrary, I am a democrat — a democrat who can see the worth of the oppressed.
This democracy encompasses the most intimate facet of an individual, his love for another individual Men cannot love society Love like a friend It cannot be shared in peace It cannot be shared en masse, but only as it touches personally.
Ultimately you can only "love the neighbor as myself," if you, first, have a heartfelt appreciation of your neighbor, second, if you love each neighbor.
Cary Dubois, 24, is a 1982 School of Business graduate living in Wheatland, Mo.