I
OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
August 26, 1983 Page 4
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Dayak Karen (USPS 600-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Flint Hall, Lawrence Kane, 60043. daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer sessions and Friday through Saturday for the regular school year and Tuesday through Saturday for the summer sessions. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 for a year. Subscriptions by email are $13 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 for a year. New changes to the University Dayak Karen
MARK ZIEMAN
Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM STEVE CUSICK
Managing Editor Editorial Author
MICHAEL ROBINSON Campus Editor
DAVE WANAMAKER      MARK MEARS
Retail Sales           National Sales
Manager              Manager
ANN HORNBERGER Business Manager
PAUL JESS General Manager and News Adviser
LYNNE STARK
Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Advertising Adviser
Unfair increase
Students at the University of Kansas have a finite number of nickels, and each time a campus service raises prices, more of those nickels come flowing from their pockets.
KU on Wheels has raised the cost of single-fair bus rides from 35 to 40 cents. A nickel may not seem like much, but nickels turn into dimes, dimes into quarters and quarters into dollars.
Besides, the increase wasn't needed. The bus system now has a surplus of $30,000 from last semester.
Former transportation coordinator David Adkins said the increase was supposed to encourage more students to buy student bus passes, which cost $30. He also said the move would help stabilize income and improve service.
Using the nickel increase as a means to coerce students into buying bus passes isn't fair, especially to those who don't take the bus regularly. Dropping a dollar off the price of a pass would be fairer than adding a nickel to the price of a single-fare ride.
If the transportaion officials were the federal government and the fare increase the same as a tax increase, they would have a hard time selling such an increase to the American people. Imagine the response if Congress and the president decided to up taxes in a year when the federal coffers were more than full.
However, Adkins did say that plans were being considered to reduce the $6 transportation fee paid by all students in the future. That'd be good. Students could hang on to some of those nickels a little bit longer.
A landmark program
Tuesday was a landmark day for St. Louis. And it may have been a landmark day for the nation.
Black children from the decaying inner-city boarded buses for the mostly white suburbs ringing the city. They were going to school in the suburbs as part of a voluntary school desegregation plan.
finally insured that white and black will sit side by side in the classroom.
One suburban school Tuesday enrolled about 300 black students. Other schools will open their doors this fall to 15,000 black children.
Officials said no incidents were reported during the first day of the program. Maybe St. Louis, which has been the site of bitter wrangling over school desegregation, has
The suburban districts have agreed to accept blacks until their enrollments are 15 percent to 25 percent black. Educators and legal experts from across the country say the plan is unmatched in volunteer big-city desegregation.
Opponents say the program will cost the state too much money, and others say desegregation won't improve the quality of education.
But in these days when it seems as if a wider social and economic wedge is being driven between whites and blacks, it is refreshing to see St. Louis trying to solve the problem.
Park would help city
The city will be saved by a research park, to hear some Lawrence City Commissioners tell it.
A research park for hightechnology and similar companies won't save the city, but as envisioned now, such an area for research-oriented companies could hardly hurt.
The commission approved Tuesday evening a key step in starting a research park when it directed the city staff to draw up an ordinance to rezone almost 300 acres near the Clinton Lake Water Treatment Plant.
The ordinance will come before the commission Sept. 6, but that should be just a formality, judging from the reception the commissioners gave the proposal earlier this week.
The park, proposed by local developer Bob Billings and by an investment group, also has drawn the attention of KU officials. Some city commissioners mentioned the importance of the University as part of a team effort to attract firms to the park.
Although the park could be a plus for the city, the commission, should proceed with caution regarding utilities to the area, residential development nearby and the future growth of the city.
Another concern is that the park would attract offices and similar businesses instead of research firms. The park's benefits would be considerably reduced if that were the case, as development of offices or similar firms in that area would only splinter the already fragmented office development in the city.
The vote Tuesday was 4-0, and Commissioner Naney Shontz abstained. She said the city needed some assurance that the park would be devoted to research firms, rather than strictly offices.
Still, the park would be a benefit to the city, as firms would have a place ready for them to locate should they decide to move here. And the research firms would bring jobs, ones that would keep more Lawrence and KU people in the community.
LETTERS POLICY
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 includes his class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan also invites individ- ual students to submit their columns, Columns and letters can be brought to the Kansas office, 111 Staaff-Finl Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
A solution to acid rain
WASHINGTON — Acid rain clearly is a pressing environmental problem, as a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences and other groups states. What is not so clear, as the Academy's report also confirms, is how best to solve the problem.
Neither science nor politics will support the popular approach of laying the burden for reducing emissions of sulfur and nitrogen
RICHARD LUGAR
Republican Senator from Indiana
The first of these conclusions is that existing models of the effects of acid rain are scientifically uncertain. It is stated in the text that, even with the consequences of emissions from such a region as the Midwest, for
oxides on the utilities of the Midwest. We must move toward a broad, national cost-sharing formula that involves all states responsible for the problem, while also encouraging research into cost-effective means of reducing oxide emissions.
The widely publicized conclusion of the Academy report is that reductions in sulfur and nitrogen oxides will bring about corresponding reductions in acid rain. Less well reported, however, have been two other conclusions that could break the legislative stalemate that now exists on the acid-rain issue.
deposition in another region, such as the Adirondacks or southern Ontario."
In addition to these costs, the bills now before the Senate would force between 36,000 and 45,000 Midwestern and Appalachian coal miners out of work by encouraging utilities to switch
The second conclusion is that the closer a source of emissions is to an affected area, the greater the benefits that can be achieved from a given reduction in emissions.
Yet the cost to the Midwest of the approach advocated in these bills would be staggering.
The report is thus as much an indictment of proposed acid rain legislation as it is a call for action. Until now, the focus of debate has been on legislation sponsored by several New England senators and congressmen. Their bills call for a 33 percent to 50 percent reduction in sulfur and nitrogen oxides.
But despite the fact that most U.S. acid-rain damage exists in New York state and New England, only 3 percent of the required reductions are to come from this region. Fifty percent of the required reductions are to come from six Midwestern states, including the own state, Missouri. The Academy report suggests that these bills, which focus on sources far from the affected areas, may not produce any big benefits for the Northeast and Canada.
from high-sulfur Midwestern coal to low-sulfur coal from the West or to alternative fuels.
Indiana has established a commission whose task in part will be to explore new ways to burn Midwestern coal more cleanly. Plans are under way to install an experimental "dry" scrubber on an Indiana power plant. Congress also has appropriated $5 million to build a demonstration model of a limestone multistage burner, a promising new technology for reducing sulfur and nitrogen oxides from power plants.
Another legislative imperative is to devise an approach that will not interfere with regional coal markets. This can be accomplished by making coal made through coal washing, scrubbers and new technologies.
Although Midwestern emissions are undeniably greater than those in the Northeast, reductions in the Midwest may have a lesser effect because they are farther away miles from the affected areas.
Solving the acid-rain problem in a way that is acceptable to both the Northeast and the Midwest will not be easy. But if we put aside polarizing arguments and focus on the scientific evidence, we can develop a solution that is reasonable in its costs, fair to all regions and beneficial to the environment.
Copyright 1983
the New York Times
Lessons that we didn't learn
She told us we were lucky.
She was my third-grade teacher, and she was trying to teach us the metric system. She told us we would be better off for it.
That system was to make world dealings simpler. And we, because we were learning it as children, would be prepared for the change, unlike our parents, who knew only inches and pints.
It's years later, and about all I remember about metrics is that a meter is a little bigger than a yard and an inch equals 2.54 centimeters. Even my parents could tell you that.
Maybe it's not our fault that we failed at metrics; the United States didn't institute it as the national system. But we failed at more important challenges — ones we could have controlled.
We couldn't have known that the future we saw then was not the future we would get. We thought we had so many advantages, for we were born in a country that was making huge advances. An ill-founded complacency was being erased as America changed. America was realizing it could not continue to abuse the disadvantaged at home.
We were weaned on jingles about living in harmony and we decorated our notebook with flowers and peace signs. We thought, as much as third graders could, that we would create a world without injustice.
It was a nice thought, and we believed it. Our teacher told us it would happen.
Of course, she was the one who said we would learn the metric system.
We of the "enlightened" generation have made some progress. As a group, we're openly racist less
often than past generations, and often celebrated like crazy when Sally Ride invaded space, formerly male territory.
But progress has been slow.
When I was in third grade, I crined when people said "colored" instead of "black," and my classmates thought that identifying people by skin color made about as much sense as judging intellect or social worth by eye color. Our
favorite president that year was Abraham Lincoln.
Most people of that generation still cringe at racist remarks, but often don't notice more subtle forms of discrimination and racial separation.
College students segregate themselves voluntarily in campus cafeterias and bars, apparently comfortable with homogeneity.
Unfortunately, we can't blame the slow progress only on previous generations. In Dallas, the Ku Klux Klan marched this summer. That wouldn't be so bad if the Klan were a slowly dying group of bitter old men
Extraordinary success of a black still surprises the white world a little. When it happens, whites usually know better than to mention the person's blackness. But they're tempted
clinging to fear. But in recent years the Klan has grown, and it is fortified with youth.
Racial discrimination, at what ever intensity, is only one wrong we naively thought we would eliminate.
Back in third grade, the girls stopped choosing from among only three answers — mommy, teacher and nurse — when asked what they wanted to do when they grew up. Answers were scientists and scientist to their repertoire.
They are becoming those things, and many others. But they still find men beating them to the top of corporations and law firms because the boss can't take them quite as seriously as men.
Other lessons not learned:
- Vietnam didn't teach us to stay out of civil wars where we don't belong
- The Surgeon General couldn't convince us to stop smoking. We smoked the most in 1979, and although fewer adults smoke now than in 1965, more women and young girls smoke than ever. Smoking is responsible for 83 percent of lung cancer cases in men and 43 percent of lung cancer cases in women. To American Cancer Society's '1982 Cancer Facts and Figures.'
- We became aware of our abuse of nature in the '60s, but in 1980 voted in a president who loosened factors' restrictions that were designed to protect our water, soil and air. And we're still building nuclear plants despite our inability to protect ourselves from possible devastating effects when they pop a bolt.
We haven't taken advantage of our advantages. Maybe this year's class of third graders will.
Maybe theyll even master metrics.
Behind the wheel back East
Driving there sure is kicks
To a Kansan, life on the Eastern seaboard — that fricken, frantic stretch of civilization running from Boston to D.C. — leaves a lot to be desired. Still, there is one redeeming quality.
Forget the horror stories you have heard about driving "out East." Put a local from Massachusetts or New York behind the wheel and he is an artist, with highway for canvas and lightening reflexes for a brush.
Eastern drivers are the best in the world.
I say this because I have recently returned from a summer there, and the mountains of midwestern and Eastern driving is so treme. No offense intended to
anyone. I just think we could learn from their style.
Unfortunately, Midwesterners still cling to the idea that driving is the modern equivalent of hitching up the buckboard and heading into town for calico, salt pork and a shot of whisky.
People motor around here. They don't drive.
Watch the idiocy at a four-way stop sometimes. Rampant indecision followed by — oh no — simultaneous gas pedal assertiveness, too often ending in the gut-wrenching sound of metal on metal . . .
Of course, Easterners have wrecks. But when they drive it seems they take it a bit more seriously then we do. They get down. Anyone who has been to Boston knows the rattling, high speed anarchy of those streets. And yet if you back it, it is not really anarchy at all.
Cars fly past within inches of each other; people jockey for better positions in the flux of traffic. More or less, anything goes, as buses, cars, automobiles and 18-wheelers turn the streets into a symphony.
What appears to be madness is actually a lot of people fine-tuned and playing for keeps.
A fellow Kansan, also finding himself far from home and somewhat amazed by the controlled around him, summed it up best.
"People don't drive by the laws around here, they drive by each other."
As laws are nothing more than crude attempts at making people cooperate, it seems reasonable that if people are cooperating better out of the law, then law becomes obsolete. Do laws exist in any book in Green Hall, though?
Anyway, driving is safer back East. I'd rather be "diving it up" at 75 with aware, alert individuals whom I know I can trust with my life than creeping at 40 with a herd of automotive Neanderthals.
So, keep it civil, but keep it going. Kansas. Remember rhythm's the thing.
Those Easterners should have nothing on us.
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