OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
November 17, 1983 Page
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansas (USPK 600-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Staffer-First Hall Lawrence, Kansas for the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer sessions. Subscribes to mail are $15 for six months or $2 a semester at Saturday, Sunday, Monday or Tuesday. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or $2 a semester at Sunday, Monday or Tuesday. Subscribes to mail are $15 for six months or $2 a semester at Saturday, Sunday, Monday or Tuesday. Address changes to the University Daily Kansas (USPK 600-640) are published at the University of Kansas, 118 Staffer-First Hall Lawrence, Kansas for the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer sessions. Subscribes to mail are $15 for six months or $2 a semester at Saturday,
MARK ZIEMAN Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM STEVE CUSICK
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Campus Editor
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Warm welcome
Amid the doom-and-gloom events that tend to attract the news spotlight comes a beam of hope and good will. Two ailing South Korean children have come to the United States to undergo heart surgery not available in their homeland.
The children — a 7-year-old girl,
Ahn I Jook, and a 4-year-old boy,
Lee Kil Woo — entered a New York
hospital Monday. The children are
scheduled to be operated on next
week.
The case of the young Korean pair merits recognition because of the special circumstances that led to their entry into the hospital.
First, the children's flight costs and medical fees are being paid by Gift of Life Inc., a non-profit U.S. corporation, and the hospital, St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, N.Y.
In addition, the children's trip and treatment were made possible in part by an American living in South Korea, Harriet Hodges, who has helped other Korean children find treatment at U.S. hospitals.
Finally, Hodges alerted U.S. officials to the children's plight, and the officials secured permission for the children to fly with President and Mrs. Reagan on the Reagans' return from their trip to Asia.
Some may say that the Reagans' gesture was nothing but a convenient publicity stunt, but no one forced the Reagans to pay attention to the children. Moreover, no one forced Gift of Life or St. Francis Hospital to donate services to the pair. The Korean children are recipients of old-fashioned American hospitality.
Huck an' Missus Allen
Those who don't think that ignorance and censorship are two sides of the same coin need only look at a controversy in Pennsylvania involving a parent and the State College Area School District.
Parent Margot Allen is objecting to the teaching of Mark Twain's great novel Huckleberry Finn on the grounds, she asks us to believe, that it is racist.
"I read the book 25 years ago and hated it," she says open-mindedly. "Why, 25 years later, are we still passing this off in the name of good education?" Allen seems mainly to be concerned with the experience of her son, the only black in his class, who she says was told by his teacher to read the part of Jim "because he had the perfect voice for it."
"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn," Ernest Hemingway wrote — and he
This, if true, shows great stupidity and insensitivity on the part of the teacher, but is in no way the fault of poor Mark Twain.
wasn't too far off the mark. Writes Clifton Fadiman: "Huck reflects the tensions still vibrating in the national conscience; and if you don't think so, reread the chapter in which Huck debates whether or not he shall turn in Jim, who is that criminal thing, an escaped slave, but who also happens to be a friend."
Just to jog Allen's memory: Huck declares, "All right, then, I'll go to hell" rather than turn Jim in. Hardly the words of a racist.
Regardless of Margot Allen, it seems fairly certain that the novel will not be banned from the school district, so there's no use getting too worked up about this episode of ignorance. Maybe it's best to just laugh it off, as Twain would have, and point to the novel's introductory paragraph:
"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
Dangerous cutbacks
Passenger traffic on the nation's 21 large and medium-size airlines was 9.1 percent higher in September than it was a year earlier, according to the Air Transport Association. And this figure doesn't cover the
More Americans are flying on more planes belonging to more different airlines than ever before. At the same time, the Federal Aviation Administration has fewer inspectors in the field than it did three years ago. That's not a good combination.
The nation's air-traffic controller system is still in the process of being rebuilt after the mass firings prompted by the 1981 strike. For the FAA to cut back on inspectors — and more cuts are scheduled in the next federal budget — is a grave and potentially dangerous disservice to the flying public.
Newsday, Long Island, N.Y.
scores of smaller companies that have sprung up since deregulation.
The University Daily Kansas welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-space 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 submit guest 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.
Germans show will by protests
LETTERS POLICY
The most remarkable week in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany is over. It was a week of peace demonstrations, of demonstrations against the scheduled distribution of 108 Pershing 2464 cruise missiles in Western Europe, especially West Germany.
An estimated three million people participated in a series of demonstrations, which included the blockade of U.S. military bases, the forming of a 67-mile long human chain and several "die-ins." This was exacerbated by German and other authoritarian controls temporary climax in the growing opposition of the German people against these new missiles.
I call this week remarkable for a nation that has been taught for years that disobedient and striking workers were responsible for it losing control for 1, and then having to suffer three another. Many people around the world learn from them in humility with increasing suspicion for the changing conduct of its people.
The same German people, who have been taught to fanatically obey the orders of any given authorities, and who have followed the directions of American politics for almost 40 years like well-trained police officers, would develop their own will. They have begun to ignore their master's voice.
The German people are opposed to missiles and weapons on both sides of the conflict and they demonstrate against all nuclear arms. The peace movement is not a communist movement, but the government tries hard to label peace demonstrators as such to scare people away.
There are several reasons for this change and the most important one
lies in man's culture. fear. The fear of the German people that they are helpless victims in a macabre and perverse contest of two nations for the dubious honor of building more and deadlier weapons.
It is this tremendous fear for the lives of their families and friends that urges the German people to overcome their "conditioning" and practice nonviolent civil disobedience.
Now there are about 6,000 nuclear warheads distributed in West Germany. These warheads are in a
Guest Columnist
JUERGEN HOEDEL
highly populated area, only 15,000 square miles larger than the state of Kansas. This is the highest concentration of nuclear weapons in the distribution of the new missiles would bring this figure closer to 7,000.
Reagan's plan to hide his MX missiles in Utah had Americans worried and protesting against the danger of such a high concentration of nuclear weapons in one place. And yet, the concentration would have been far less than what already exists in Germany.
In an effort to justify the distribution of the new missiles, Reagan repeatedly informed his allies about the necessity for and peacekeeping efforts of the missiles, which represent state-of-the-art war technology.
While the Germans listened to Reagan, they watched the U.S.
military practice the latest techniques in mass burials during NATO's latest maneuvers. The official explanation for these rather morbid exercises was: "We have to clean up after every battle."
There is only one feeling worse than fear — feeling both fearful and helpless. For years Germans have suspected the existence of chemical and biological warfare weapons on their soil. Even though West Germany has outlawed these weapons, the United States has confirmed that they are not capable of a thoughtout German. The German government has no idea where the depots are and how many weapons are stored in them.
Now consider the aspect of legality. Are these demonstrators outlawed, misguided idealists? We have back in history to find the answer.
After World War II the German people looked at what was left of the world and what they had done to mankind. When the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, the German people wrote in their constitution: Never again will there be a war starting from German soil.
It looks as if they are about to break this oath. Pershing 2 and cruise missiles are first-strike weapons. They are not only unnecessary, they are inadequate for retaliation. Their only purpose can be to strike first. This means that these missiles are not only in contradiction to the Christian belief, but they are also unconstitutional.
These weapons are supposed to guarantee peace but the opposite is true. The Russians will have to react to their deployment and they will react in two ways. They have already announced the distribution
Their second reaction is much more dangerous. Because of the missiles' shorter flight time to their target, the Russians will depend solely on a computerized alarm system to alert their own missiles.
of even more missiles if the Pershing 2s are distributed.
This computer will be programmed to react immediately to the threat of attack and will not be monitored by humans. There would be no way to stop the launch on attack missiles. Our lives will depend on computers, which have been known to trigger false alarms.
The Reagan administration has devised a strategy called "deciptation," a fast deadly strike designed to destroy all Russian nuclear warheads. And another plan describes how U.S. forces could win victories by fighting on the Central European battlefield, in the Middle East and with tactical and regional nuclear weapons, as well as chemical weapons.
These same planners have also figured that a global nuclear war would kill 130 million Americans. For these planners the life of a human being is reduced to a bit of information in a computer. The death of 130 million people in the country alone is past the erasure of 130 million names from a computer tape.
The peace movement wants disarmament on both sides. But as long as we keep sending negotiators who think and act like businessmen and are only interested in getting a good deal as possible we will not reach agreement. The world will keep balancing on a razor's edge.
Juergen Hoehel, 23, is an Estibrarian Filx, West Germany, graduate student studying journalism.
On the other hand, such shakers as Sens. Lowell Weicker, R-Conn., and
Telling a senator by his signature
WASHINGTON — The second annual "celebrity dooole auctions" are being held this month to raise money for worthy causes.
Without taking anything away from these charitable endeavors, permit me to point out that mencatching is seen in the U.S. Senate much more frequently than once a year.
Only instead of doodles, they are called cloture motions.
Take a look at the celebrity
DICK WEST
United Press International
The movers — Sens, Bob Pack wood, R-Ore., Strom Thurmond, R.S.C., and Robert Jepsen, R.lowa, among them — usually sign their names in a manner that requires no translation.
signatures on any cloture petition — a parliamentary device to break up impostor filibusteres — and you get a list of who the movers and shakers are.
Johnston's signature consisted almost entirely of squiggles that seemed to loop back on themselves in the manner of a snake swallowing its own tail.
On a similar petition the previous day, by contrast, the name of Sen. Jennings Randolph, D-W Va., took out in pristine clarity.
On clout motions sent to the press gallery, fortunately, some helpful soul usually prints the last names of the signers after the signatures. Otherwise we might never have known that one of the signatures on a Nov. 2 petition to the governor had been added to the consideration of the natural gas deregulation bill belonged to Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, D-La.
Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., affix signatures that are totally indecipherable.
It is possible that Randolph, who first came to the Senate in 1984, has been around so long he no longer feels motivated to write illegibly. He is now opposed to the congressional arm of government, careers have been
stymied for less.
I recall talking several years ago to a federal official who had been passed over for promotion because he formed the letters of his name so plainly even half-literate in English could read his signature.
"I just couldn't get the hang of it. I even tried writing my name with my eyes shut. It still came out recognition, nobody took my memos seriously."
"Once you are important enough to have your own secretary, the executive squiggle becomes imperative," he explained. "It shows you are too busy making vital decisions to waste time writing your name."
Recently, that same bureaucrat was on Capitol Hill testifying before a congressional committee. It being apparent that his star had risen, I asked how he had managed to overcome the legibility handicap
"Simple," he replied. "I quit signing my name to inter-office memos and began marking them with an 'X.'"
If senators tried that technique on cloture petitions, the debates might be much shorter.
Historic pearls
CHICAGO — Greatly stirred by the newest heroic naval rhetoric from an American admiral, I felt to musing on the great antecedents in this gallant line. At once, I was startled to realize that none of these historic gems has been translated into English, and so a whole generation of children have been denied access to this part of their heritage.
The utterance that so moved me,
of course, was that of Adm. Wesley
L. McDonald, in the Pentagon on
Oct. 28, 1983: "We were not micro-
managing Grenada intelligence"
until about that time frame."
Thus inspired, I have translated a small selection of earlier admirals'
BRUCE L. FELKNOR
heroic prose for the edification of our young, for whom the original language lies undeciphered
John Paul Jones, off the English coast Sept. 23, 1779. Rejecting surrender, he said, "I have not yet begun to fight." What he meant was: Combatwise, the time frame is upcoming.
Oliver Hazard Perry, after the Battle of Lake Erie Sept. 10, 1813, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours." What he meant was: Area accessed in combat mode; mission finished.
David Farragut, on Mobile Bay Aug. 5, 1984 "Damn the torpedoes Go (full speed) ahead." What he meant was: Disregard anticipated structural damage. Continue as programmed.
George Dewey, on Manila Bay May 1, 1988. "You may fire when you are ready. Gridley" What he meant was: Implementation of aggressive action approved; time to be selected by fire control officer.
In fairness to senior citizens, who remember the old language, what should a man meant was "Up to them, we need that attention" to spying on Grenada."
Copyright 1983 the New York Times.
Bruce L. Falknor is director of yearbooks for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Senate proposal lessens participation
To the Editor:
A current proposal before the Student Senate, if passed at the next meeting, would eliminate living group representation. This proposal was the Senate's solution to the issue of housing in the institution, a long neglected and ignored
The standard argument used to justify this proposal is that living group senators constitute "double representation." By eliminating the living group senators, all students would be solely represented through their school senators, and therefore everyone would have an "equal"
voice in the Student Senate. The logic of this argument, however, rests upon the assumption that all students on campus are equal in number.
Common sense tells one that a "minority" group of limited number, spread throughout the total KU student population, has little or no chance of acquiring enough votes in one school to win a Senate seat.
Is there a better alternative? A bill to be considered at the next Student Senate meeting would reauthorize the Act and add an appointed seat for Black
Great Bend sophomore Richard W. Miller Topeka freshman Budget problems To the Editor:
PanHellenic Council. This solution would not be a perfect one, but it could be the first step in a series of legislation making Student Senate representation equal in reality, not just on paper. Denise K. Fujikawa
In the Nov. 10 Kansan, it was reported that Victor Wallace, past chairman of the computer science department, resigned "of du frustration after dealing with the department's budget problems."
In the Nov. 11 Kansan, it was reported that the firm chosen, to design plans for the University's $2.5 to $3 million indoor practice facility had not been selected "because new options were being looked at."
If I may suggest, the "new options to be looked at" should be the infusion of some of this money into the computer science department, instead of building a $3 million structure to keep athletes from eating cold. H.T. Rogers
Lawrence senior