OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
September 20,1983 Page4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kannan (USP$ 605-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stuart-Flint Hall, Lawrence, KS 60926, daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer sessions. Subscriptions are $15 for six months or $27 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 for a year in the county. Student subscriptions are $3 a semester paid through the student activity fee. POSTMASTER.Send us the contact information.
MARK ZIEMAN
Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM STEVE CUSICK
Managing Editor Editorial Author
MICHAEL ROBINSON
Campus Editor
PAUL JESS
General Manager and News Adviser
ANN HORNBERGER Business Manager
DAVE WANAMAKER MARK MEARS
Retail Sales National Sales
Manager
LYNNE STARK Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Advertising Adviser
Soviet scholars
Perhaps one of the saddest repercussions from the Soviet attack on the Korean jetliner is the return to the Soviet Union of the 20 Soviet scholars who were studying at American universities for a year.
The Soviet government ordered the scholars home on the grounds that anti-Soviet feeling could expose them to danger in the United States. The scholars were here under a special exchange arrangement that has a similar number of Americans studying in the Soviet Union.
This is the first time in the history of the 25-year-old exchange program that scholars from either country have been called home so abruptly. When the Soviet scholars leave, there will be no Soviet citizens studying under such a long-term agreement in this country, according to State Department officials.
American students in the exchange program are welcome to continue their studies in the Soviet
Union, a spokesman for the Soviet Embassy in Washington said Friday. But with the turbulent relations between the two superpowers, it's conceivable that these students may feel some pressure to return home also.
Throughout the years the exchange of American and Soviet students has introduced citizens of both countries to the other's culture and beliefs. Exchange programs, such as the one handled by the International Research and Exchange Board that administers scholarly exchanges with Eastern European countries, have helped make friends for the United States that the more formal diplomatic routes simply cannot.
With the current anti-Soviet feeling in the United States, the Soviets had no choice but to call the scholars home. It's too bad because the two superpowers need all the help they can get in keeping their relations cordial.
Premiere poorly done
The Lawrence premiere of the film "The Day After" has brought much excitement and back-slapping boosterism to Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau officials and others involved in the project — thus it's a shame that most KU students won't be able to attend the event.
The film is scheduled to be shown to the public at noon and 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 12, in Woodruff Auditorium. A private showing is scheduled at 8 p.m. that day for specially invited guests.
on Nov. 20, the night it is nationally televised.
Why the film is to be shown on a school day afternoon is not clear. Perhaps the organizers felt that the film was important enough to compete with class, just as ABC feels that it can compete with an NBC mini-series on John Kennedy that runs against "The Day After"
But even so, Woodruff only seats 536 people. Therefore, at most, only 1,072 members of the public will get a chance to participate in the premiere. That means that not one in 20 KU students could attend, even if no other Lawrence residents bothered to show up.
If the film is of such importance that it demands a Lawrence premiere — and promoters obviously believe that it is — why not hold the showing in Hoch Auditorium, which seats 3,700 people, or perhaps move the Woodruff date to a weekend and increase the times the movie will be shown?
If not, it is clear that most of us must be content with viewing "The Day After" the month after.
Sickening incident
Water torture and strip searches along a deserted roadway should hardly be normal police tactics.
But perhaps we are insulated here. Or perhaps we live in a different time.
The former sheriff of the Texas county of San Jacinto, James Parker, and two of his former deputies were convicted last week of charges that they violated the rights of citizens by using water torture to force confessions from them. Other people were strip-searched along the roadway, according to prosecutors in the trial. The federal jury returned its guilty verdict Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Houston.
The indictment against the three men had alleged that Parker, 47, and his deputies arbitrarily chose vehicles to stop along U.S. 59, which runs through the rural part of the county 60 miles northeast of Houston.
Parker resigned as sheriff in
March from a position he had held since 1969. Shortly after he was indicted, he pleaded guilty to the charges that he and his deputies had violated the civil rights of jail inmates by using water torture to extract information and confessions.
According to the indictment, the deputies stopped cars bearing bumper stickers of a rock-music radio station in Houston, and vehicles driven by "hippies" and blacks.
He withdrew his plea when a U.S. District judge rejected a plea-bargaining agreement with prosecutors as "most inappropriate."
Why should citizens have to worry about police harassment because of the color of their skin, or because of their clothing, or their bumper stickers?
They shouldn't. We hope that the Texas case is an isolated one. And we hope that such a thing could never happen in Lawrence or anywhere else.
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. The Kansan also invites individuals and groups to submit college 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
War memories etched in marble
The names go on and, on, all of them etched in black marble and some of them burned into my brain. The toll, 57,939, is just a number, except for the tiny fraction of that toll who fought and died beside you, until you stand at the apex of that long wall, its inscribed black wings spreading out on both sides to carry the burden of all those names.
Then one begins to grasp the enormity of the sacrifice that Vietnam demanded of us as included in our war, and recognize that our leaders have learned that
D. C., to tell the Vietnam veterans from the other visitors. They are the men, once 19-year-olds who had fought America's first teen-age war but now solemn-eyed and grazing into their late 30s, who go back time and again to the guidebooks at both ends of the monument to help find the names of their dead buddies on the wall. They are the men who have five or 10 more names to look up, instead of the one or two searched for by the families or hometown friends of the fallen.
our government never again commits us to a conflict without first carefully weighing the possible costs and consequences.
into consequences It was easy, standing there in that hot August sunshine of Washington,
They are the men who are not just tourists gazing at another monument in a city of monuments, but pilgrims taking a symbolic journey back to their youth and innocence, back to a place and time where they irretrievably lost both. They are the men who stand longest before the monument, seeing not just names and touching more than just black marble. They are looking back at a long march and a longer year and are touching emotions or moments that have long been buried for many, or for many others, have never left them for a second even after the passage of a dozen years or more.
I had 126 names from my division, the 101st Airborne, to look up in that directory of the dead and then to find on the wall, Kathy, my wife, had one. He was a boy she had grown up in school, with in high school before he went to sent to 'Nam in 1969. He was killed by a booby-trap mine two weeks
GUEST COLUMN
that they had fallen in 1965, 66, and early 167. Lt. Earls, Stgl. Banco, Spec. 4 "Rocky" Goddard, Pfc. Tommy Morales and all the rest—nine gun apes from the artillery battalion that I had served with for a year and 16 men from Charlie Company, 2/502nd Airborne Infantry, with whom I had fought in the bush for another five months.
The directory did reveal to me a piece of good news. Pfc. Kanopa was a 17-year-old infantryman who had lied about his age so that he could serve in Vietnam (you had to be at least 18 to be allowed to die in 'Nam) and then had tried, unsuccessfully, to convince our first sergeant to ship him back home once he discovered there was more horror than glory. I thought he had died in a helicopter accident. When I arrived at the book or on the wall, I so assumed that Kanopa had made it to his 18th birthday after all.
after he got there and two weeks before his 21st birthday.
If all those Screaming Eagle paratroopers, ages 18 to 22, except for one "old-timer" who was 28, had died for anything, it was for their buddies or for their own sense of themselves. As I stood there and sweat under a hot sun — as I had sweat under that Southeast Asian sun so many years ago, carrying a burden in many ways heavier than the 60-pound ruckscack that I had staggered under in 'Nam — that black wall made all those young men, who could never accompany me into middle age, live again for just a moment. They are enshrined forever on a monument to a mistake and on a memorial to all those who paid dearly so that we might profit from that mistake and learn by it.
But the rest of them were up there, staggered and clustered in the order
Micheal Clodfelter, 36, is a KU security officer and a Vietnam veteran.
Regan rebuts theories that deficits are the cause of interest rates.
Staff Columnist
"The claims are just a smoke-screen to try to hide the deficits," he said.
Regan's words spark squabble
Kennedy further vindicated the banking industry by saying that the spread between interest rates and inflation percentages was unusually small.
MICHAEL BECK
And until those savings percentages decline, he said, interests on loans will remain where they are.
investors' and savers' distrust in the stability of the economic recovery and the future of inflation
William Kennedy, president of the American Bankers Association, said in reaction to Regan's blunder that banks must pay more than 9 percent interest to cause the lack of confidence.
The limb broke for Treasury Secretary Donald Regan last week when he stepped out to declare that the nation's banks were the cause of recurring high interest rates.
Regan's finger-pointing proves that in some instances devoutly held political positions are concerned with an inopic view of national events.
In blasting the banks, Regan said that interest rates didn't follow inflationary trends and that banks had no reason to ask borrowers for such high interest rates.
But Regan forgot high unemployment and huge federal deficits, which contribute to
Although Regan is trying to wish away blame over the federal deficit, the rapid pace of government spending makes one wonder whether the Regan administration can find the handle.
Denying the relationship between federal borrowing and high interest rates is difficult. On the other hand, keeping interest rates high is probably unfair. It's time to encourage investors.
Concession is the key. Cooperation is imperative. As Regan's statements prove, economic tunnel vision seems only to incite squabbling. The time has come for all concerned to accept some of the guilt and take some of the responsibility.
Political and professional bias must be cast aside.
But the combination of a $200 billion federal deficit, high unemployment and memories of double-digit inflation cannot help but shake the confidence of American investors.
Taking such a simplistic and one-sided view of the situation, though, allows Regan to take some of the credit with others in the Reagan administration for recovery that may be taking place.
Shortly after Regan's simplistic analysis, Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., a member of the Senate Banking Committee, said Regan was only trying to make the administration look good in the face of lower inflation and prime interest rates.
Proxmire blames Regan for much of the federal deficit, and said that using the banks as a form of taxation was "politically convenient."
Others have jumped on this bandwagon, slinging stones at the administration because of the federal deficit, but with the flurry of juvenile accusations, no one has offered any concrete solu-
WASHINGTON — The government uses the term "most favored nation" to describe the special tariff arrangements it has with its best partners. Or more simply, "They scratch out our back, she擦 their hands."
President stalking votes of Hispanics
In the political arena, a similar phenomenon appears to be developing: Hispanics are becoming President Reagan's most favored minority.
The president's affinity with Latino audiences is not new, but for the last month or so he has
ARNOLD SAWISLAK United Press International
noticeably stepped up his attention to Americans whose first or second language is Spanish. He capped the effort last week by announcing he had chosen a Hispanic woman, Katherine Ortega from California, to be treasurer of the United States.
One obvious reason for the GOP effort to build support among Hispanics is that they are a large minority group that is on the way to becoming the largest single group in the United States, is that Reagan got an estimated 30 percent of the Hispanic vote cast in the 1980 presidential election.
The Republicans have spent much money in recent years to try to recapture a respectable percentage of the black vote. They probably haven't earned a nickel on a dollar invested.
The Hispanics also are strategically placed in political terms. The largest concentrations of Hispanics are in Sun Belt states that are gaining electoral power — Florida, Texas, California — although some of the cities in the older states with declining population, New York, for example, have large Spanish-speaking populations as well.
The unspoken premise behind the GOP effort to woo the Hispanics is that they don't want to lose the Mexican vote. They did the black Republican vote.
Despite all the talk about the Democrats taking the black vote for granted and the long years of black loyalty to the party of Abraham Lincoln before Franklin D.
Roosevelt came along, the GOP hardly gets enough black votes now to make it worth trying.
During the first two years of the Reagan administration, the polls indicated Reagan's Hispanic support was eroding The recent efforts to build a strong republic have brought Hispanic support back to a point near that level.
The core of GOP Hispanic support is in south Florida, where Cubans who fled the Castro regime have concentrated and settled in. Many of these new Americans are made-to-order Republicans — skilled middle and upper-class people with a firm belief in the entrepreneurial spirit and a strong distaste for communism.
The GOP will have a somewhat more difficult task in gaining support from Hispanics in the West, where the predominant national heritage is Mexican, and among the Puerto Ricans in New York and other big cities. These Hispanics have a record of voting Democratic.
But the president and his political advisers feel they have enough chance to win a sizable percentage of this bloc of voters to justify a strong political effort.
In a close election, a good split in the Hispanic votes of Texas and California could easily tip the electoral vote of those states, and they are two that any presidential candidate wants desperately in his column.
6