25. Opinion University Daily Kansan, April 22, 1983 A 'moral' minority Wednesday night, the Student Senate successfully turned back the ugliest of specters. By a 3 to 1 margin, the Senate deteated a motion to remove the $493 budget allocation of Gay and Lesbian Services of Kansas. Stepping down from his chair as presiding officer of the Senate, Jim Cramer, student body vice president, said, "We've got to start making value judgments." Ralph Munyan, graduate student senator, said, "As a student, I don't get the impression that people think homosexuality is right. And as a body we have an obligation to oppose what is wrong." Nowhere in the many and myriad rules and regulations of the Senate does it state that it is the obligation of the Senate, or any of its members, to pass moral judgments on the activities of any students. The time should be long past when differences in lifestyle were justification for treating others as something less than human, or in this case, less deserving than their fellow students. There may or may not be good reasons to fund GLSOK as an organization, such as how many students the group serves, its fiscal soundness, the quality of its services. If so, those reasons, and only those reasons, should be brought forth. The senators who proposed removing GSLOK's funding obviously believed they spoke for the majority of students about tolerating others' differences in a university atmosphere. We can only hope they were wrong. Chicago's mayoral election points up persistent problem Alas, poor Jane Byrne. Not only did she suffer the indigency of being rejected for a second term as mayor of Chicago, but she now confesses to other, more immediate worries. In a recent interview, Byrne said she feared that the racism that surfaced during the election of her successor may (gasp) harm the image of her beloved windy city. Pray tell, Mrs. Byrne, what image is that? Might you be referring to quint vagueties of Al Capone? Or possibly fine memories of Richard Daley and his buzzbucks picking the bones of the city? Could it be you were thinking about government cracking skulls in the summer of '82? Or, maybe you had in mind the Nazi rallies that occur in and about Chicago with disgusting frequency. Take heart. Mrs. Byrne. You have nothing to fear. The gilded image of your city is intact and will not be tarnished by the racism of late. BONAR MENNINGER Rather, it has been reinforced and captured naked for all the world to see. Nevertheless, it seems odd that you would be make-up about racism. After all, it was you who implicitly turned the mayoral election into an issue of black versus white. By refusing to support the nominee of your party, Harold Washington, and by launching your own insipid, self-indulgent and completely idiotic write-in campaign, you all but said, "We must stop the black man, whatever the cost." Who kindled the fires of hate, Mrs. Byrne? Still, look on the bright side! Your presence in the national political spotlight has concluded with the names Byrne and Chicago irreovely linked to one of the ugliest American elections in recent years. Now that's political immortality. And yet. It is all too easy to stand here in Kansas and stare at the hate that swept Chicago, and shake one's head in disgust. We should be so lucky that despising someone because of the way they look should be limited to certain elements in Chicago. readily, often, but not always, nuttural and barricade as they may have been, exist in every corner of America. The election in Chicago only measured their depth. And how deep do the rivers run? In the heart of every human exists the seeds of distrust, the embryo of hate. Nurtured by ignorance and fed with fear, our most primitive impulses can mushroom into a screeching mockery of the true spirit of mankind. Because that is all that racism is, fear and ignorance undermining the soul. It has no basis in fact, it is the mutated offspring of generations of fear: Fear of others, fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of the past and of the future, and more than anything, fear of ourselves. Instead of facing our own darkness, the specters which haunt our lives, it is so much easier to find a likely target on which to unload the burden, to help others cope with it and to serve as a source of strength, at least over someone else. This is a coward's way out. In the Bible somewhere are the words, "What troubles you in others, look in thine own heart to be true." Can a more accurate appraisal of racism be made? We are Americans. Not some barbaric horde in the Middle Ages, not some woolly tribe of Stone Age men, not some pack of cannibalic reptiles wallowing in the dirt. We are, as Winston Churchill said, "the last great hope for permission." As a people, we have been given the task of learning to live in peace with our fellows, to exist in harmony, to flourish without fear in the most diverse, complex society the world has ever known. We can do it. We can do anything. If everyone in this country would look at his fellow man and see himself, the good and the bad living there, then the fear and hate on which we base so much or our existence, the prisons we wake up in every day would wither and die. If we really believe this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, then why don't we act like it? The University Daily KANSAN The University Daily Kamaan (USFS 659-640) is published at the University of Kamaan, 118 Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 66045, daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays, and final periods. Second class students pay at Lawrence, Kan. 66044 Subscriptions by mail are $3 per person. County and $18 for six months. The country Student subscription are $1 semesters. The student activity fee (POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the University Daily Kamaan, 118 Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 66045). Editor Rebecca Chaney Management Editor Richard Cunningham Editorial Editor Mark Zieman Campus Editor Michael Holmson Associate Campus Editor Johnny Carey Assistant Campus Editor Sharon Appelbaum, Duncan Gummingham Assignment Editor Buddy Mangina Art Director Jan Bowecker Sports Editor Alan Larry Entertainment Editor Mike Arda, Joanna Miles, Jamar Murphy Magazine Editor Steve Cuekun, Brian Lavien, Jeannie Blackett Wire Editors Debra Ransom, Larry George Staff Photographers Paul Sweart Head Copy Chief Debbie Baker Don Krox Copy Chiefs Markham 1 Chambers Retail Sales Manager Ann Horsberger National Sales Manager Susan Cookby Campus Sales Manager Two Managing Production Manager Jeanny Jackson Advertising Artist Photographer John May Tear sheets Manager Jobbick Harma Classified Agent Laurie Samuelson Campaign Representative John Foran, Andrea Duncan, Lisa Citow Lynne Stark, Jim Phillips Advertising Adviser John Gerken Gross Manager and News Advisor Paul Jesl U.S. Latin American policy clouded By DONALD A. DAVIS United Press International WASHINGTON — There is a whiff of Saigon about the White House press room these days. In Vietnam, the daily press briefings were called the "Four O'Clock Follies" because of the incredible information the government and the military had about reporters. The taroon, at times, was amazing. jargon, at times. There was the pilot of a fighter shot down by a Hanoi missile who nurses his plane back to the coast and died when it crashed in open sea. He was listed as a "non-combat death" because his plane did not go down in North Vietnam. "Protective reaction strikes" allowed U.S. jets to raid across the border. People of several nations died in an "incursion" into Cambodia. "Search and destroy" missions were a license for destruction. "Free fire zones" meant you could shoot anyone who moved. The war was full of such terms, which provided South Vietnamese and American briefers convenient camouflage to hide behind. By careful use of the language, a briefer could stand in that hot corner room with its dirty yellow walls and lie like a thief. where you see the man and his wife. The White House press room is a half a world away from that corner of Tu Do Street and Le Loi, a property which now belongs to the other side. But while reporters sit in air-conditioned comfort on cushion chairs with feet on a royal blue carpet, the words being used by the briefers sound ominously familiar when they talk about another war — a growing battle on the border between Honduras and Nicaragua. It is not that they are telling falsehoods. But the statements are transparent. Anyone who has read accounts by newspaper reporters who have visited the scene or watched television footage showing the fighting knows that rebels fighting the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua are getting help from the United States. The fact is not even disputed. States. The fact is in question here. What is in question is the policy involved, and on that point, the administration does its best to fog the issue. Rep. Edward Boland, D-Mass., head of a House intelligence subcommittee, fathered a congressional resolution that deals specifically with two items: It forbids U.S. military aid from being used to overthrow the Managua government or to strike a conflict between Honduras and Nicaragua. The White House blithely says — day after dav — that the law is being obeyed in letter and spirit. The wording of the law is specific — the United States must not support an overthrow; it is not to provoke a conflict. Reagan himself did nothing to clarify the matter last Friday when he stepped into the press room and also declared the law was being obeyed. He followed it with a comment that "whatever we are doing" in the area is for the purpose of interdictionary action, and his remark did not clarify anything, but rather confirmed that something is being done in secret. The Boland amendment does not say anything about helping the insurgent Nicaraguans, helping Honduras or a friendly government in their conflict with the ruling party, trying to law of weapons to communist rebels in El Salvador. The spokesmen refuse to go beyond the usual statement, claiming they are not permitted to comment on "covert" actions. The United States wraps its operations in the flag and secrecy as it tipes around a Latin American quagmire that has the familiar scent of rice paddies. The new part — obviously a lesson unlearned — is that it remains simply impossible to get the Reagan administration to say, outline or justly describe what the United States is doing in the Central America. Low salaries cause teacher shortage United Press International By PAMELA MacLEAN SAN FRANCISCO - Drawn by the good pay of the burgeoning, high-technology industry, science and mathematics teachers are leaving the classroom in increasing numbers, and it's hurting the nation's school systems, an education expert says. "There are 43 states using less than fully qualified teachers to instruct math and science," said James Guthe, former chairman of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Education. During the 1981 school year, the entire nine-campus University of California system had only 22 students enrolled in mathematics teaching programs and 47 in science teaching, according to a report from the Institute of Governmental Studies by Guthrie and Ami There are nearly 20,000 science and math teachers in California's public secondary schools, but an estimated 2,200 leave, retire or are laid off each year, Gulithe said. "For the average parent it won't seem like a crisis. Their kids will be in a classroom and a warm body will be up in front. But the class sizes will get larger. The lack of qualifications of the person at the front of the room is increasing to a crisis proportion." *For the long term we're in trouble. When a school superintendent contacts a placement office to send a math or science teacher, they aren't there. Superintendents take staff teachers who are legally qualified but in fact never had sufficient background to teach math and science," he said. The largest demand comes from the new computer technology industries, from which California is expected to glean 40 percent of its new jobs in the 1980s. The lack of newly trained teachers entering the field is compounded by the number of teachers leaving to take higher-paying jobs in high-tech industry. "High tech is by no means the whole problem but it is a significant part," Guthrie said. A national survey of 1976-77 college graduates showed only 5,000 students - out of 1 million college graduates - qualified as math teachers, Guthrie said. Unless solutions are found soon the United States will be "overshadowed and dominated by the dynamic high-technology research and industrial capabilities of foreign powers," he Salaries are a big reason teachers leave The average starting pay for a San Francisco Bay Area teacher is $12,680. By contrast, a graduate in physics or mathematics who takes a fifth year of training, as teachers do, could start at $20,000 a year at the Hewlett-Packard computer component company, the Institute report said. California once recruited heavily for teachers in the Midwest and South but that labor pool is dwindling. The use of a reserve labor force of housewives called into use during the baby boom era of the 1950s no longer exists, he said. "Georgia was 5,000 teachers short last year," Guthrie said. hoops no longer exists, he said. "The fastest fix" for the crisis, he said, will come from industry sending trained personnel to teach in schools during part of the work day. Already he has received positive response from industry. "This has been the largest industry move toward a more responsible position than I have seen in decades." Second, he said, is the retraining of so-called surplus teachers of English or history to teach math and science. And third is governmental assistance for graduates. It has been used for graduates who teach math and science. "But in the long run, something has to be done about salaries." Guthrie said. The Independent School District of Houston tried giving salary increases for critical teaching areas. But math teachers received only $800 per year more in pay during the program's first two years, not enough to compete with business and industry. In 1982-84 Houston's salary adjustment for science and math teachers is scheduled to rise to To effect the necessary change, Guthrie said, people must change their perception of teaching jobs. Bob "Right now there is a wide belief that there are no jobs and pay is low. Well, they are half right. In order for pay to be different, state officials have to give more money" to local officials, he said. Letters Policy The University Daily names welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 500 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 Kansas reserves the right to edit or reject letters.