OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
October 28,1983 Page4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansas (USP$ 60-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Staffer Flint Hall, Lawrence, KS 75032, daily during the regular school year and twice weekly during the summer session, excluding holidays. The USP$ 60-640 subscription fee for students is $15 per six months or $24 a year in Douglas County and $16 for six months or $34 a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $1 a semester paid through the student activity费 FOSTMASTER: Send address changes to the Usp$ 60-640 subscriber.
MARK ZIEMAN
Editor
MARK ZIEHMAN
Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM
Managing Editor
STEVE CUSICK
Editorial Editor
DON KNOX
Campus Editor
PAUL JESS
General Manager and News Adviser
ANN HORNBERGER Business Manager
DAVE WANAMAKER
Retail Sales
Manager
MARK MEARS
National Sales
Manager
LYNNE STARK
Campus Sales Manager
JOIN OBERZAN
Advertising Adviser
Confusing times
Many Democrats are howling from the rooftops about the world situation, and about President Reagan's part in it.
The question — at any other time ludicrous — became a reasonable one on Tuesday, after the events of the past few days.
And even Republicans are bound to ask, has Reagan gone crazy?
More than 200 Americans were killed in the terrorist attack on a Marine headquarters in Lebanon. Questions about security for the Marines have not yet been answered sufficiently. Some reports indicate that two sentry posts were unoccupied.
And in the United States' backyard, as Reagan is so fond of calling anything in the Western Hemisphere, U.S. casualties are increasing because of the fighting in Grenada.
And in our front yard, so to speak, Reagan has fired three members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Not that they had done something wrong or immoral or shirked their duty. Not anything like that.
They disagreed with the President, you see. A good reason, to Reagan.
And besides that, Reagan could not have chosen a more politically expedient time to fire the three commission members.
Earlier this week, the families of more than 150 Marines were still waiting to hear whether their son, or brother or husband had been killed in the bombing in Lebanon.
And in Washington, members of Congress were summoned early Tuesday morning to the White House to hear from Reagan about the situation in Grenada.
Reagan — and his handlers — surely realize that too much is going on now: in Lebanon, in Grenada and at home.
Something is bound to get short shrift. Reasonable people would say that the United States is on the short end of the stick, because of Reagan's ill-conceived policies.
But Reagan realizes that he'll come out on top. In the struggle of views, he knows that those views critical of the administration will be lost in the shuffle.
Freedom at last
Death — of Americans — filled the dark, dismal news this tragic week. American men once again were dying far from their families and homes — the glances of their sweethearts and voices of their kin they will never know again.
But even this story has its darker side. That freedom should have come long ago.
But in the news dispatches from around the globe, shining like a pen light amid the dark tidings from Grenada and Lebanon, came this little ray: 750 people on a couple of wind-whipped chunks of rock in the Bering Sea finally know freedom.
The Pribilof Island Aleuts take control of their islands today, ending two centuries of economic and political bondage — one of the blackest chapters in American history, according to one historian. The Aleuts have been living off an annual $5 million federal subsidy. The islanders would club seals to death each summer for the U.S. government in exchange for the subsidy. But the government also controlled most of the land and the
essential services on the Aleuts' two islands. St. Paul and St. George.
And until 1964, the islanders needed a pass from the government to leave the island. Federal officials also used controls to keep the natives from diversifying their economy, which suffers from 80 percent unemployment nine months out of the year.
The government has decided to pull out and give the islanders $20 million to help finance their newly found freedom. State money also has been set aside for developing commercial fishing harbors to help expand the economy.
The changes may not make life easier on the islands, but a free poor man is better off than the poor man in chains.
So the islanders seem to believe.
"We've been under bondage for 200 years, first by the Russians and then by the federal government," said one islander. "We're being set free. One word says it all — freedom."
Although it comes late, it still says it all. And it's nice to hear at the close of an otherwise rotten week.
Election drive absurd
The way the presidential campaign of 1984 is heating up, it becomes increasingly difficult to figure out just what year we're in anwav.
President Reagan, on the Republican side, is already timing and pacing his travels and indulging in activities like the courting of Hispanics by celebrating quite extensively during Hispanic Heritage Week.
In the Democratic camp, the campaign train will be running out of seats soon. So far we have McGovern, Glenn, Mondale, Cranston, Hollings and Hart, all in contention. In the wings as possible candidates are a few more figures, and here it is only October 1983, we think.
We think this situation is bordering on the absurd. Besides, we all run the risk of being bored in the vital process of selecting a leader by the time the real season arrives.
-Naugatuck (Conn.) News
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 class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan also invites individual authors to send press 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
Happy birthday Pablo Picasso
He asked me as I walked toward the door, "Care to wish Pablo Picasso happy birthday?"
Great, I thought, another weirdo. I had Grenada and Lebanon to interpret while this Bohemian, looking as if he came from grub street or Greenwich Village, was dancing on Picassos grave.
But he countered, "Have you seen everything?" I could only stare at
I had no time for flippancy. My draft notice would come any day now and I needed no diversion. I had enough to think about. I stared at the man, lowered my eyes and went in to buy cigarettes.
What was the purpose, I asked,
thinking the man was trying to sell
some of the pictures.
the pictures scattered about and play with his meaning.
when I returned to the street, the man and several duplications of Picasso's works were still propped on the bench. Again the man mumbled something about Picasso's birthday. I had to respond.
One picture, of what I don't remember, lay on top of some others. The man turned it over, and
on the back, in small but legible handwriting, were several names.
Unquestioning, I took his pen. I didn't quite know what to write, maybe something simple.
"Picasso would be 102 today," the man said. "If you sign, he'll give you a response through a similar medium."
"He'll respond?" I asked.
He'll respond. "Tasted
"Yes, well, he's pushing daisies
now, But he'll know."
The other people had just scribbed their names down one side of the card, and although I didn't want mine to stick out, I finally caught on that the situation required more than an autograph.
So I signed near the left corner of the cheap reproduction. "We love ya, Pablo Mike".
I gave the man's pen back, turned abruptly from his bench and walked on. For the first time in months, I had done something senseless, something that didn't have to do with tests, with a job or with stocking my refrigerator. I felt great.
I haven't the daring to wear earrings or to stick a safety pin through my noirkits. My costume is a tight-fitting black jacket and I'm not decisive enough to lie on
the ground to prevent nuclear war. And even with those things there are underlying motives.
For all my studying, my fancifully keeping abreast of how many people have died oversacpi, I had forgotten something — escapism.
People become immersed in routine. Everything is important. The tendency is to escape solely through alcohol, but loss of consciousness doesn't count. You have won the battle when being strange is easy anywhere, at anytime of the day.
Do something odd, though not necessarily obvious. If you can't get it the first time, practice. But be senseless once in a while.
So watch out students. I have been inspired.
Admittedly, things are serious out there. And I may eventually receive that draft notice. But I will remembrance it for years to come, and it also a happy birthday through it all.
Duplicated efforts wasteful
During the past six months, the Association of University Residence Halls has been increasingly criticized by hall students for the neglect of matters and lack of accomplishments which plague the organization.
Although it is true that there has been considerable unrest within the Association for the past year, there are deeper structural weaknesses within the AURH that handicap its effectiveness.
The function of the association is to serve as the residents' voice to the administration and to facilitate communications between the residence halls. This year, it was given $22,360 to spend for that purpose. This money is but an introductory interest, in the Street Journal." the Progressive Women's Program and administrative expenses.
Because $5 from each housing contract is given to the organization, residents directly provide for its funding but have little opportunity to determine how it should be used. A real estate agent's portfolio of the AUHI is whether the benefits received by all the residents justify its expenditures.
Aside from the money allocated to the organization, there is also the question of fiscal responsibility within it. The Intertraternational Council accomplishes the same tasks for its constituency as well as providing other services and charities, which the AURH could not possibly undertake — all on a budget of less than half of that provided to the
CURTIS WORDEN
association. The association wastes much just trying to convince hall residents that their money is being spent effectively.
These matters, however, are only the symptoms of the real malady which cripples the usefulness of the AURH. The basic cause of the association's waste and inefficiency does not lie in the staff personnel who must volunteer their time and talents in its operations, but rather
Guest Columnist
The AURH currently performs many functions better left to the hall governments. It is too distant from the front of the building to僵化 or put on its own programs.
The solution to the problem can be found by simply returning the association to its proper function and to exercise immediate fiscal restraint in its activities. It should be recognized for its capacity to effectively voice residents concerns to the administration and promote coordination between halls, but it performs well for committee governments for committee memberships and participants in programs.
in the manifestations of the organization's duties.
Giving the hall governments back what they can do better will give residents better programs as well as lower costs. The savings on publicity and programs alone would allow the AURH to cut at least 70 percent of its budget — money badly needed by halls for food, utilities, and possibly a reduction in the growth of contract rates.
Curtis Worden, 21, Topeko senior, is chairman of the AURH Housing and Contract Committee.
Turkish election a farce
The people of Turkey will vote Nov. 6 in an election that both the Turkish military and the Reagan administration describe as a return to parliamentary democracy. I visited Turkey in late September as a member of a human rights fact-finding mission and found that it is indeed in transition — not to democracy, but to totalitarian rule.
The United States uses the prospect of elections to justify its support for Gen. Kenan Evrens and the junta that seized power in September 1980. Turkey's strategic importance — it may soon be receiving close to a billion dollars of American military aid — makes a stable government there essential to American foreign policy interests.
For this reason, the United States is loath to acknowledge that the terrorism and near anarchy that has been replaced by a new terrorism.
election campaign is a shameless parody of the democratic process. Twelve of 15 political parties that have been barred from the process, have been barred from the process.
Nor do the three parties that will be on the ballot present any real choice.
Nor has the United States conceded that the long-anticipated
ERI LABER
Helsinki Watch director
The actual number of political prisoners being held in overcrowded Turkish jails is unknown, with estimates ranging from an official 21,000 to an unofficial 55,000. Most of these prisoners are very young people arrested for terrorism right after the coup.
Professional people and institutions are also suffering. Officials of the Bar Association, the Writers Union, the Peace Association and the trade unions are being tried on charges that carry sentences ranging from five years to death. Many are charged with belonging to new illegal organizations that were legal at the time they joined.
In the minds of many Turkish citizens, the responsibility for this repression falls as much on the United States as on their own generals. At a time when Turkey's human rights policies are being censured in the European parliament and the Council of Europe, the United States remains one of Turkey's few defenders.
Our support of Turkish repression breeds anger and violence, not stability. It is driving Turkish society further and further away from the West. Western community, in which we are so eager to see Turkey remain.
Copyright 1983 the New York Times. Jeri Liber is executive director of the Helsinki Watch Committee, a nongovernmental organization that monitors human rights compliance with the 1972 Helsinki accords.
Unstable economy
WASHINGTON It's, beginning to look like we may see a rerun of the economic disaster movie called 'The 1970s'. If we're lucky, it will be in slow seats, if not, hold on to your seats.
We forget, in these days of monetarist theories and defect worries, that these problems initially stamped policymakers into the conservative, anti-inflation nostrums of budget-cutting, tight money and recession. With help from temporary food surpluses and oil gluts, and after 10 million Americans were thrown out of work, prices did drop — for a while.
The 70s began with three major price joints. Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam War builtup without a tax increase caused the first, world climatic conditions stimulated the second, when crop fields generated run off on hot and humid wood reserves, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries slammed home the third.
But only for a while. President Reagan, thinking he could forget the weather, gave farmers large quantities of grain and other
GAR ALPEROVITZ
agricultural commodities to get them to hold down production.
But the worst drought since the 1930s hit last summer, and foot prices are rising
Oil also poses a danger again. In recent years, world recession has temporarily held down demand, and it has been hard for
However, anyone who bots on oil price stability is betting on Middle East political and military stability. The chances of a major disruption not occurring are "about zero," observes James Akins, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia. A new Congressional Research Service study predicts that oil prices could leap to more than $100 a barrel.
Furthermore, we are reaching a moment of truth as the giant military contracts authorized at the outset of the administration start generating production bottlenecks in key industries. Economist Lester Thurow thinks that the resulting inflation problems will be substantial, others think that they will be moderate. Once again, we are seeing a military buildup without a tax increase.
There has been little letup in the pattern of 70s double-digit inflation in health care costs. As for housing, high interest rates remain in recent years, but they have also held back production.
10 prevent a rerun of the '70s, we must expand the oil and grain reserves, establish standby price controls for oil and strong cost-containment procedures for hospitals, reauthorize conservation and renewable-energy programs, slash excessive military projects, expand the supply of low- and moderate-income housing and encourage health maintenance organizations, which have incentives to reduce costs.
Sadly, neither Democrats who fumbled the problem in the '70s, nor the Republicans, who have greatly increased our vulnerability in the '80s, have shown any signs of facing up to the issues.
Copyright 1983 the New York Times. Gar Alperovitz, co-director of the National Center for Economic Alternatives, a public-policy organization, is author, with Jeff Faux, of the forthcoming "Rebuilding America."