Opinion
Page 4
University Daily Kansan, June 8, 1983
The boss comes to town
when the professors watch their students file into the classroom this summer, they may notice a few out-of-place faces.
Beginning this summer, the Kansas Board of Regents will launch a five-year review of programs in the six state-funded universities. Regents members will travel in teams, probing the colleges for weaknesses and noting their strengths.
In effect, the boss is coming to town, seeing how his money has been spent. In one hand he holds a checkbook; in the other, an ax, sharpened and ready to chop off the useless excess in the overgrown forest of the universities.
We don't doubt that this forest needs clearing. Duplication of courses and dwindling enrollment in some courses abound. Some programs are economic bottomless cups, with money pouring in and never reaching the top.
and never teething in it. Meanwhile, many programs lack the
funds to continue operating under bearable conditions. Faculty salaries are low - professors migrate away from the ivory tower to the steel and glass towers of industry and technology.
We hope they like what they see at the University of Kansas. Moreover, we hope they take their time and observe with painstaking care.
This summer, the Regents begin its valuable study with a review of the engineering, engineering technology physical science, architecture and library science departments.
The universities' share of the Kansas budget has fallen from 24 percent in fiscal 1974 to around 19 percent in fiscal 1984. That's a 5 percent drop that runs deep in the heart of higher education in Kansas.
For the sake of higher education, we hope the boss wields the ax with caution.
United States increases aid; harvest of death may begin
The dreadful game is beginning to take its toll. The playground is Central America these days and the game is called "We shall intervene." Uncle Sam has taken upon himself to straighten things out in El Salvador and Nicaragua and his fingers are gradually getting deeper into the bloody mess.
One would have thought that the recent unfortunate killing of Navy Lt. Cmdr. Albert Schaeulberger, a U.S. military adviser in El Salvador, would provide enough of a jolt to the foreign-policy makers here to look at the problem more realistically. But that was not to be. Instead, the Pentagon confirmed plans to administer more of the old medicine to the gaping wound. Some 100 military advisers are to go to Honduras where they will teach 2,400 Salvadoran army troops to fight the guerrillas better.
Popular Forces of Liberation, the second largest of El Salvador's five major guerrilla groups, claimed responsibility for Schaufeberger's murder as "an answer to the criminal intervention of Yankee imperialism. This is only the first time such a danger could be found." The guerrillas have warned of a "harvest" of dead American military men if U.S. involvement continues.
The involvement is not only continuing but it is being stepped up. President Reagan and his
SEEMA SIROHI
band of men are determined to continue the military aid to El Salvador, and the murder of the adviser seems to have made no difference.
insistence on a military solution when the problem goes deeper only spills failure as past interventions have sadly shown. But Reagan has taken the recent mishap as a reason to come down harder on the left in Central America. Two days after the murder, a white paper on the region was issued by a administration. There photographs and maps showing Soviet and Cuban presence in an area that is supposedly America's backyard and therefore no one else has a right to play there.
is it beyond imagination to think that the conditions in El Salvador might be appropriate for a revolution and that the Soviets and the Cubans don't have to necessarily invent them? The United States has claimed for nearly a year that there is a Salvadoran guerrilla center in the outskirts of San Antonio when Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, asked for more exact information by the Sandinistas in order to stop the flow of arms, the administration refused. The reason given was that Managua did not share the right kind of relationship with Washington.
How can any solution be reached in Central America if the United States insists on such non-cooperation? President Reagan says the national security of this hemisphere is at stake along with the credibility of the United States. During his speech before a special joint session of Congress this April, he made a dramatic appeal for more aid to El Salvador and stressed that saving Central America was a bipartisan responsibility.
The Democrats are scared that if the Salvadoran government falls before the 1984 presidential election, the Republicans will blame them for not giving President Reagan enough support. So the question isn't whether the United States can really turn El Salvador around to a peaceful, moderate solution. It is only whether a leftist victory can be held off until 1984. Some people predict the Salvadoran army will fall apart before the end of this year. But optimists in the administration say that with continued military aid and training, and continued harassment of Nicaragua, more time can be bought.
In the meantime, every effort is being made to "save" this domino from falling. According to a newspaper report last week, the United States has plans to spend $6 million to underwrite the cost of holding elections in El Salvador. At an additional, undisclosed cost, the CIA plans to intensify collection of intelligence information about guerrilla military plans thus helping the Salvadoran army to keep better control of the voting procedures.
Every such move in Central America means deeper involvement. The great shuffle of diplomas that took place recently also points in the same direction. The hard Reagan-Clark-Kirkpatrick line forced the removal of Thomas Enders as assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs and Dean Hinton, the ambassador to El Salvador. Both men were supposedly mellowing slightly and thus atating from the official line. Governments in favor of talks between the Salvadoran government and the guerrilla bloc this obviously made him a guerrier onboarding on radical in the eyes of the hawks. Hinton earned the wrath of his superiors when he publicly criticized human rights violations by the government of El Salvador.
"The State Department shake-up brought millionaire and former senator Richard Stone as a roving special envoy to Central America. Stone's past work as a paid jobbist during 1981 and 1982 for the right-wing government of Guatemala under General Fernando Garcia, a regime with an abysmal record on human rights abuses, does not seem to hurt the hard-liners. You could shrugged off such concerns, saying, "It just adds to the experience he'd had down there."
Sadly enough, such an attitude does not help matters. The administration needs to pay heed to the changing reality of Central America and end the actich act.
New enrollment is a guessing game
Gary Thompson, director of University student records and registration, told me recently that this summer's enrollment process was "one oddball enrollment."
He hit the nail on the head — to say the least. Because the University of Kansas last fall implemented an early, computerized enrollment system, students who wish to enroll in classes this summer and fall are finding they must enroll in the fall classes first.
If that seems a bit backward, it should. And it gets worse.
gets worse.
Summer timetables are not available until long after the fall enrollment has been completed.
completed.
The student has several options in this guessing game, none of which provide an absolute solution.
He can enroll in a class for the fall, taking a chance that it will not be offered in the summer.
enforce that it will not be too late if it is offered during the summer, the student always has the option of using the University's dropout system. Of course, there is no guarantee that the student will be able to add the class of his choice.
Or the student can take a "wait and see" approach of what will be offered during the summer. He still has to enroll for the fall, but may fill his schedule just to fill his schedule, and
then again, rely on the dropadd system to adjust it later.
In either case, a great inconvenience is being placed on the student, the University and the dropadd system.
This is not to criticize the new enrollment system. The University was in the Dark Ages for too long in maintaining the Allen Fieldhouse system of enrollment.
What is in need of change, however, is the timing of summer enrollment.
The University is aware of this needed change.
WARREN BRIDGES
and Thompson said he hoped a plan could be developed that would eliminate the problem and continue this summer's enrollment confusion to only this summer.
That plan, according to Thompson, would be to conduct the summer and the following fall's enrollment simultaneously.
Although he emphasized that no decision had
been made yet, and that his office was "still looking at it", Thompson did say that conducting both the enrollments at the same time would increase the efficiency of the enrollment process.
That sort of plan deserves the University's attention.
attention.
But it cannot and will not happen by itself
But it cannot and will not happen by itself. Setting up an early summer enrollment system obviously includes Thompson's office putting out an early summer timetable.
Apparently, 'mart' means:
University department determine the courses that will be available during the summer session. Those decisions are made based on what instructions will be available to teach the classes.
It is a fact that some instructors each summer receive research grants, or leave on sabbatical and thus, are unavailable to teach during that session.
session.
However, commitments could surely be made earlier than a couple weeks before the summer session begins.
session begins.
Increased communication among the different departments and those instructors who will not be available to teach and the University's registration office would create a more efficient and convenient enrollment system for both the University and the students.
Two-way cable TV signals coming of 1984
New York Times Syndicate
By JOSEPH L. LIEBERMAN
HARTFORD, Conn. — In "1848," George Orwell writes, "With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end ..." Orwell's vision is coming true. Two-way cable television is a reality, with the mixed potential of convenience, economy and large-scale invasion of privacy.
The pilot program in two-way cable TV that has begun in six Midwestern cities is a significant technological advance that is sure to expand throughout the country, creating a small revolution in our life styles. Subscribers will be able to use their cable systems to do shopping and banking, answer public opinion polls and protect their homes against burglaries and fire.
To receive these benefits, however, subscribers will have to share a wide range of personal information with the cable television
system's computer. Indeed, the cable companies could soon have more information about individual Americans than anyone — including the federal government. If you are overdrawn on your checking account, the cable company will know it.
With two-way cable, every time you order a product electronically, or transmit your opinion on a political or moral issue, the cable company will be amassing more and more bits of information about the way you live and think. The temptation to misuse all this personal information for commercial, political or criminal ends is too great to be ignored. In fact, the misuse of information gathered by TV companies already has begun.
In Columbus, Ohio, the first city to have two-way cable television, a movie theater owner who had been charged with showing pornographic films subpoenaed the records of the local cable TV company. He wanted to demonstrate that many people in Columbus were watching pornographic movies at home, including some of the city's leading citizens. A
judge ruled that only general statistics and not specific names could be released. Without that ruling, however, no Ohio law would have protected the privacy of television viewers.
Legislation is now being considered in the Senate that would provide privacy protection for cable subscribers nationwide, although the bill as a whole could work against the interests of consumers by severely limiting the power of the states to regulate cable TV franchises.
Some critics have called such legislation premature and accuse cable-privacy advocates of unnecessarily frightening people. But some 180,000 people, who live in places such as Cincinnati, St. Louis and Dallas, where the pilot program is under way, have been living in glass houses, subject to the gaze of electronic peeping toms.
The eyes at the other end of the cables are likely benign, but real security cannot be insured without cable privacy laws in force. Only then can we all feel free to enjoy the magic of two-way cable TV — in the real privacy of our own homes.
Letters to the Editor
Truth of Bahai persecution shrouded in lies
To the editor:
To the editor:
Sohla Nasseri in her letter of April 20, would believe that believers believe that the Bahais of Iran are being imprisoned, executed, and otherwise oppressed because of powerful connections with the former regime, because of having been SAVAK agents or accomplices and because of atrocities directed at undermining the present government either through espongeation on Western powers or through joining outlawed subversive organizations. These allegations, despicable by the evidence of support evidence, are the only claims by which the Iranian authorities disguise the true nature of their brutal repression of the 300,000-member Bahai community of Iran.
munity of nature of the persecutions is freely admitted by Iran's own newspapers, which have reported Bahais being executed for the crime of "heresy." In other cases, the few Bahais who have recanted have been released. The whole Bahai communities are threatened with the destruction of their homes, businesses, crops and livestock if they refuse to recant. If Bahai are indeed being imprisoned and are undergoing of subservience and past connections with the late Shah and SAVAK, it is rather strange that such "criminals" can go free simply by denying their religion and converting to Islam.
england and converting to Islam
The accusation that the Bahais were accom-
peaces and agents of the SAVAK is entirely false. In fact, the government of the Shah, in league with some of the same Moslem leaders who sit in positions of power today in Iran, incited occasional programs against the Bahais; this was in addition to banning the publication and distribution of Bahai literature, to outlawing Bahai meetings and activities, to outlawing the Bahai faith, to outlawing the Bahai faith. SAVAK was also a party to the persecution and harassment of the Bahais. In January of 1979, SAVAK guided the looting, burning and destruction of hundreds of Bahai homes.
To claim that the Bahais were intimates of the Shah and accomplices of the SAVAK, as does Ms. Nasseri, is to pervert the record of history. The statement of the president of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Shiraz, reported in an Iranian newspaper article on the 22nd of February 1983, reveals the true nature of the persecutions. The statement read, absolutely certain that the Islamic Republic of Iran then "wrote whissoever for Bahais and Bahaians." It also said, "before it is too late, Bahais should recast Bahiaism which is condemned by reason and logic, otherwise the day will soon come when the Islamic nation will do with them in accordance with its religious obligations like it has dealt with other hypocrites . . ." It is chilling that the speaker of these words
prisonly anger.
Bahais are forbidden by their religion to partisan politics and are strictly enjoined to be obedient to the laws of the land and its government no matter where they reside.
All allegations that Bahais have been spies or have joined subversive organizations has no basis in fact. If it were true, one would expect to see evidence in support of such charges rather than press reports of Bahais executed for practicing their religion. It is all too obvious that the Bahais of Iran suffer solely because their religious beliefs do not suit the passions of the fanatical and bigoted elements of the Iranian government that would see that genocide of this innocent and peace-loving people. The facts speak for themselves.
is none other than the president of the Revolutionary Court in Shiraz, which has sentenced 22 Bahais to death, three of whom have already been executed. His words leave no doubt that this judge would not hesitate to condemn to death scores of other Bahais who are presently languishing in the prison of Shiraz.
Lina Zeine,
Missoula, Mont., graduate student
Tim Williams,
Tulsa, Okla., graduate student
Tahirh Thompson,
Burr Hill, Va., junior
The University Daily
KANSAN
The University Daily Kaman (USP5 60-60) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 60042 during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer. Subscription Saturday, Sunday, holidays, and final periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 60044. Subscriptions by mail are $19 for six months in County and $18 for six months or $85 for seven months. POSTMASTER. Send address changes to the university daily kaman. 118 Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 60045.
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