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Opinion
University Daily Kansan, April 19, 1983
Closer to unionization
KU faculty will move one step closer to unionization next week. An organizational meeting to open a chapter of the Kansas branch of the National Education Association is scheduled for Wednesday, and if there is enough interest among faculty members, the chapter could become the collective bargaining agent for KU professors in two or three years.
Just what does that mean? Really nothing, yet. Any talk of unions, particularly as bargaining agents, is very tentative. According to two professors who have been behind the move to organize a local K-NEA chapter — Art Skidmore, associate professor of philosophy, and Clifford Griffin, professor of history — it has taken about five months of meetings with K-NEA officials simply to prepare for the initial organization. Anything beyond that will depend on University-wide faculty response.
As with any new organization, it will probably take time to build support for a faculty union. Assorted attempts at
unionization have been talked of and then dropped through the years, and some are sure to predict the same end for this attempt.
But the infant K-NEA chapter will have something going for it that previous organizers have, fortunately, lacked: a state legislature that seems determined to bring Kansas' Regents schools to their financial knees.
The latest news from Topeka is that 1983-84 University faculty salary increases could be delayed until January if the Legislature does not increase state revenues with additional tax measures this week.
Professors are no more likely to be ecstatic about increased taxes than anyone else and, given the state budget crisis, might be less upset about the delay if the increases had not already been cut to the bare minimum. And this on top of University budget cuts that make it near impossible for some departments to function.
The Legislature has made unionization and K-NEA very attractive.
Top Ten recognition for KU within reach in some areas
Hey, everybody, maybe the bloody war at the University of Kansas is finally over.
You know what I'm talking about: the war that has strewn eyes across Mount Oread, has fostered battle cries of conquest and has sent faculty scurrying to man the posts vacated by
After four years of fighting, here is the count of casualties and victories. Gone are Archie "Pick up that leaf" Dykes, Bob "No Fire" Marcum, Jim "Green Pastures" Lessig, Don "Dollcoaster" Fambrugh and Ted "He was Only Here 19 Years" Owens, here apparently to stay, are Gene "Gene the P.R. Machine" Budg, Monte "Hacksw" Johnson, Mike "Who?" Gottfried and Larry "Wham-Bam-Thank You-Ma'm" Brown.
Not only have we been blessed with new leadership, but we also have been blessed with
DAN PARELMAN
new proclamations of greatness for the University. Budig announced that KU would develop one of the top libraries in the country. Funny, but I still can't find anything on the stacks when I need it.
Johnson declared that his goal was a basketball team that would consistently reach the NCAA tournament. Maybe so, maybe not.
NICKSON. But who really cares if we get a great library or great tests? Wasn't the Hall of Fame Bowl enough glory? It sure sold a lot of bumper stickers. And how about the New York Times Selective Guide to Colleges giving us four stars? I still hear people say, "Hey, budy, how many stars did the New York Times give your school?"
What could top the New York Times, anyway?
The Washington Post? The Wall Street Journal?
People magazine; maybe
No, with the new generals leading the way, it's time to go for the big one. Let's really dedicate the new era to excellence.
new era to excellence!
I submit this challenge to all Jayhawks: Let's
make sure we have 10 top bathrooms by the end of the decade. No more soap dispensers that don't work. No more faucets that shut off the water before you're ready to rinse the soak
What this University needs are bathrooms as good as those at Harvard, Berkeley and Yale
one of those at rih womens bathrooms, we can work on marmalade hats and stadium war yellers. I have wished I had gone to the University of Arkansas after seeing these awesome hog hats that they wear to football games. And I bet more than one of you prays at nights for a yell like the University of Texas "Hook'm horns!"
This touchdown "Beak'm hawks!" just didn't cut it. What we need is a yell that flaunts Lawrence's rich heritage. So, the next time Nebraska is beating us 50-0, and KU scores its first touchdown, we can all put on our Kansas Union hats and yell, "Burn'm hawks!"
Union hall and ample, but what we're all here for is football. Authority, right? There is one academic area that we won't have to work hard at to become great in — faculty salaries. Let's help out the friendly boys in Topeka and guarantee having the lowest paid faculty in the nation.
It would be lots of fun. Professors could do little jobs around campus to earn extra money. How relaxing it would be to be entertained, for a fee, by a political science jazz band. The realignment phase. The English professors could write and the law professors could have a bake sale.
If a office sale,
And, of course, we definitely want to be in the top 10 in high technology. It's time to convert Wetzel Hall into a high-technology research center. Who needs the wimpy humanities, anyway? Didi'n Alvin Toffler say we're all going to become computer scientists by the year 2000? Maybe he said we're all going to become computers.
We have nothing to bear but fear itself and the next edition of The New York Times Selective Guide to Colleges. We can do it. The '80s can be a time of greatness. With the new leadership charting the waters, we should leave the Second 10 forever.
But we will never be a great university until we have a great alumni building. The one being constructed is nice, but it isn't enough. What the times demand are alumni condominiums.
Natural gas decontrol best solution
easily people froze in unheated rooms. Schools closed because of lack of heat. To save fuel, factories laid off workers and restricted output.
Yes, the natural gas situation today is terrible,
isn't it?
But wait. The above items were reported in the January 31, 1977, issue of Time magazine.
And if many people and politicians have their way, Time might have to report similar problems in January 1987.
The economics of natural gas is confusing. The politics behind the problem is clear.
politics behind the problem. The winters of 1977 and 1978 were disastrously cold. Adding to the tragedy were ill-advised government controls on natural gas. The result was an acute shortage of natural gas at the very time it was needed most.
The shortage was caused by government price controls, not by greedy gas barons who would allegedly freeze their own grandmothers for a dollar of profit.
dollar of profit.
In 1978, the price for natural gas from the wellhead was fixed at $1.46 per thousand cubic feet of this price, producers could no longer afford to meet the demand. Only the cheapest gas found its way into the pipelines. Deep gas from existing wells was too costly to sell at that price. Exploration for new gas ended because of costs.
costs.
The illogic of trying to impose an artificially low price on a profit-motivated industry was obvious. Congress had to do something to eliminate the shortages. It passed the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978.
The act worked. Plenty of gas is available today.
If you can afford it, that is.
If you can afford it, use it. It also accomplished something that must have them dancing on the steps of the Capitol. It turned public opinion against deregulation.
turret public openings.
Even though gas was never deregulated, people are convinced that deregulation is the cause of today's skyrocketing gas prices.
Shoddy legislation and shortsightedness are what really caused this mess.
Because of the shortage, everything in the
Natural Gas Policy Act was geared toward increasing supplies. The price ceiling continued for old gas fired before 1977. New gas fired after 1977 would be priced according to the expense of producing the decontaminant. Only deep gas fired in 1000 feet was decontrolled immediately.
It was a bill unsurpassed in economic illiteracy.
What happened in the five winters since its passage was no surprise. Producers abandoned
JON BARNES
the old, cheaper gas because the more money it sunk deeper into the ground, the higher price they could charge and the more money they could make.
The infamous "take or pay" contracts aggravated the problem. The pipeline companies were just as worried as everyone else was about insuring adequate supplies of gas for future. They signed a contract that would more expensive new gas from producers, even if cheaper gas was available.
as oil prices declined, large natural gas users, like the University of Kansas, decided they could save money on their fuel bills by switching from gas to oil.
gas to oil. The pipelines and distributors were being squeezed by skyrocketing costs on one side and reduced demand on the other.
reduced demand for them, a lenient regulatory commission allowed them to pass on ever higher prices to individual consumers and small businesses that could not afford to switch to alternative heating fuels.
An economic paradox developed. The natural gas market is now glutted but the average price of natural gas has tripled to $4.30 per thousand.
cubic feet. The deadly irony is that some people are cold while all that old gas just waits to be burned.
buffed.
We hold telephones, disrupt city council meetings and command Congress to reimpose the controls that caused the problem in the first place.
Way not just lift the caps from those old wells? The best way to do that is to decontrol old gas. The effect would not be to raise gas prices even higher, as politicians contend and the public believes, but rather to decrease prices by making old gas more competitive.
Old gas, because it is cheaper to produce, could become profitable at a price much lower than new and deep gas. Producers of old gas could then charge a lower price than their competitors who produce the more expensive gas.
The average price of natural gas would come down.
Congress should be trying to figure out ways to facilitate this kind of competition among producers.
A proposal of President Reagan would do just that. It would decontamold gas, allow pipelines to break "take or pay" contracts and allow distributors to buy directly from producers
Some other good ideas:
Some little design pipelines as "common carriers". They would force them to carry gas from rival producers. Instead of operating as middlemen by buying the gas from the producers and selling it to distributors, pipelines would be paid a fee just as any other transportation service is.
Or, how about tax breaks to consumers so they can switch to alternative fuels more cheaply?
Hated, Congress is more likely to pass a stupid proposal, like those of Reps Glickman of Kansas and Gephardt of Missouri. They would freeze natural gas prices at the already high levels of October 1982 and postpone decontrols of new gas until 1987.
So, keep calling in your pledges to those telephones. Keep arguing for your rights at city commission debates about lifeline rates. And, please, keep writing your congressman.
Letters to the Editor
U.S. policy in Central America aids repression
To the editor:
Dan Parelman's column, "Latin Americans seek self-rule," mirrored the way I have felt for a long time. His points that the United State's foreign policy makes the world safe for repression and a favorable trade were echoed in the New York Times recently. Anthony Lewis, writing on the same subject had this to say: "The place is Central America with eyes to see on the Reagan administration there. It is carrying on a war. It is deepening our involvement in problems we cannot solve. It is identifying the United States with oppressors and killers."
There is not enough discussion of the invervention the United States directs in Central America. We hear far too much about supposed communist conspiracies to destabilize the region. We forget that it is exactly our intervention which makes the United States necessary. The American revolution of 1776 has a lot more power with the American Guatemala of 1983 occurring in El Salvador, Guatemala and other parts of Central America than the policy coming out of Washington.
Let's write those letters to our representatives. Let's tell them that our consciences demand that we no longer allow our money to be used to further the aims of multinational corporations. Let's suggest that it could be used more fruitfully in literacy campaigns, in clean water supplies and in rebuilding economies ran by years of foreign market domination.
John P. Blatz,
Brooklyn, N.Y., law student
State work-study alive
To the editor:
To the cell:
to clear up what may be a misunderstanding over the fate of the proposed
state work-study program in the 1983 Legislature. This program is ASK's top priority in this session.
Several stories in a recent Kansan may have implied that the program has been killed for the year. This is not the case; the $562,000 approved by the Kansas House was removed by the Senate from the university appropriations bill, but both House and Senate leaders have pledged to consider the funding as part of the omnibus funding bill when the Legislature returns. All other salary increases for students, faculty and classified employees have also been delayed.
This does not mean, of course, that the program is guaranteed passage. Although Gov. John Carlin has endorsed the program and a number of legislative leaders support the idea, the two biggest obstacles before us now are the state's serious funding crisis and the problem of defining which schools should be allowed to participate.
We believe this would not only provide much needed employment opportunities for students next year, as tuition rises, it would also set an important precedent in providing greater state support of student aid programs. Students can help assure passage of the program by writing their state senators and representatives about the program. For more information, contact Scott Swenson, ASK campus director, in the Student Senate office, Kansas Union.
Minister's broke rules
singer Tumaini,
executive director, Associated Students of
Kansas
To the editor:
10 the teacher.
I am hurt deep inside as I think about the
plight of Julian Rush, the gay minister whose story was told in the April 11 Kansas. It is a tragedy that a man whose life was evidently blessing to others had to be removed from a position from which he could do so much good. It is tragic that such great loss — income, position, pride in service — should come upon such a man.
But an even bigger tragedy is in the suggestion that homosexuality must and can be accepted, affirmed and celebrated openly. It is high time that we开 our eyes to the principle of cause and effect God deigned within the universe. The plight of Julian Rush is the problem of unrepented sin, not inhuman structures. Even as gravity has its effect, such that we cannot jump off a cliff without injury, so also one cannot flagrantly disregard the moral boundaries God has placed around us without expecting to suffer the consequences.
The deception of Satan, the destroyer, is to hide from us the certainty of the penalties for sin. The results of sin are delayed — sometimes just long enough that we can miss the cause. Instead of recognizing our sin as the cause of problems, we blame God for it ("or his will") or in his interest ("for Jesus Christ, for inference of improper behavior. Somehow, protecting blame seems to relieve guilt."
projecting on the screen. One does not need the Word of God to recognize the impropriety of homosexuality. The fact is that the union of two men (as well as two women) is unfruitful biologically as well as spiritually.
spiritually.
I could not agree more that homosexuals should come out of the closet. Rush said, "Closet sexuals not only hurt themselves but others by hiding within existing structures, such as Christianity." Indeed, homosexuals are "doomed to stay imprisoned by their fears and hopelessness." The blame is placed on intolerance of the character of the Living God. To reject his moral standards is to reject His holy character. The answer is not in the total perversion of the ethics of this great nation and her people, to accept, affirm and celebrate our defilements. The answer is in confessing sin as being coming to the Lord Jesus Christ for cleaning and restoration to wholeness, to let him fulfill our humanness. In Christ, there is release for the captives, freedom for those who are bond, liberation for those caught up in fear and despair and hopelessness — not only homosexuals but all of us who keep our sins "in the closet."
No doubt as long as homosexuals resist nature and nature's God, they will experience problems as has Julian Rush. But as long as God lets time continue, Julian and others welcome to find complete freedom for living life to the fullest by the grace of God through Jesus Christ.
Glenn Kailer,
Lawrence junior
Letters Policy
The University Daily Kansan 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 Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters.
The University Daily KANSAN
Editor Rebecca Chaney
The University Daykan Kaisan (USPK 606-460) is published at the University of Kansas, 1189 Hall Flat, Lawrence, Kansas 72083. It is available on Sunday and Thursday during the summer sessions, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays, and weekdays. Mail resume to USPK 606-460. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or £7 a year in Douglas County and $15 for six months or £9 a year in Birmingham County. All reserves are $3 a semester paid through the student activity fee. POSTMASTER: Send address please to USPK 606-460.
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