Page 4
University Daily Kansan, April 11, 1983
Opinion
A voice in the matter
It will be well worth each student's while to cast a vote at the ballot boxes on campus in the referendum today and tomorrow.
It could mean $600,000 of our money.
It could mean $600,000 of our money. That's how much, depending upon enrollment, the proposed academic services fee could bring in next year, according to the University administration. The fee has already received the endorsement of the Student Senate, and would charge students $15 a semester beginning next year for library acquisitions, academic computing and instructional materials.
The fee came about because of the Kansas Legislature's cuts in the KU budget. Those cuts would leave the three targeted areas high and dry and would hurt KU academically, if money isn't found to make up for the shortfall.
The University Senate Libraries Committee proposed only a $5 fee to take care of the libraries, but the administration advocated a $15 fee because it said the need went beyond the libraries.
There are dangers in this student referendum. Opponents to the fee argue that if students agree to pay it, the Legislature will make further cuts
and expect students to make up the difference. They argue that the fee will become permanent instead of the present plan to use it for three years or that students paying for what should be state responsibilities sets a bad precedent.
Advocates say the greater danger would be if students turned the fee down and no one responded to provide money for the needed services. It could mean the decay of KU's libraries
But the greatest danger is worse than either of those two. According to Senate rules, if at least 3,900 students don't vote in the referendum, the entire process will be voided and the ballots will be discarded, uncounted.
The administration has said that whatever the outcome of the referendum, it will be used as advice when Chancellor Gene A. Budig makes his decision about whether to recommend the fee to the Board of Regents. That doesn't give students much of a say in the matter, but if the students don't vote, they will have robbed themselves of any say whatsoever.
And if we don't care about the cost of our education enough to vote, why should the Legislature?
The 1980s and 1970s popularly are considered the decades of liberation for women. The feminism movement enjoyed a resurgence, more women enrolled in college than ever before and earned degrees that prepared them to be lawyers, doctors, professors and corporation
But women as a whole have not fared very well. As a group, women are the new poor, accounting for two out of three women who fit the government's definition of poor. Women head more than half of America's poor families, and the administration's slashing poverty care, care, and other programs low income families have relied on in the past, affect women most.
Those statistics have grown tremendously since the mid-'60s. Between 1965 and 1975, the number of poor women heading families
Women flood ranks of poor; chances to advance dwindle
KATE DUFFY
increased by 100,000 per year, a statistic that prompted the National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity to predict that if the trend continued, America's poverty population would be made up entirely of women and children by the year 2,000.
Although President Reagan's budget cutting proposals have worsened women's economic position, they are not entirely to blame for this feminization of poverty. One of the most predominate causes is America's segregated labor markets. Women are more than a year into this time, but they still are relegated to working at the lowest skilled jobs in the economy.
About 80 percent of working women are employed in only 20 out of 420 listed occupations. Most of these jobs are in the retail and service sectors, which include nurse's aides, waitresses, clerical work and light manufacturing jobs. These jobs traditionally pay the lowest wages and adjust more slowly, if at all, to the inflation rate.
For women, holding a job does not mean
escaping poverty. There are child care costs to contend with, which can be so prohibitive that they make it unrealistic for women who head families to even begin looking for work.
Women with children, who receive aid under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC), especially are hurt by the lack of affordable child care services. Women need a lifesaving, but actually cannot afford to work because of the high costs of day care and health care for their children.
President Reagan's proposed budget would make this an even more impossible situation. In 1982, only 467,000 government subsidized child care slots were available for low-income families and Reagan's budget cuts called for decreasing that number even more.
Women also are victims of the de-industrialization of the economy. With the shifting of the industrial base to a more retail and automated economy, the number of skilled and semi-skilled jobs has decreased, making it harder for women to break out of low-paying
A 1981 study of the labor market by Emma Rothschild, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that 70 percent of all new private-sector jobs created between 1973 and 1980 were low-paying, mostly women's jobs in the retail and service sectors.
Automation cannot be counted on to provide jobs for women either. As work is reorganized to use automated equipment, the medium skilled jobs demand a higher, more formally skilled job opportunities for women.
Another reason women are poorer is that there are more single women today supporting their families. The female-headed family is the fastest growing type of family in America — and the most vulnerable to economic ill winds. Whether through divorce or death, about 85 percent of American women will be on their own, supporting themselves and their children.
It is no easy task to reverse the trend that has kept women at the bottom of the pay scale, but the government has the capacity and power to make fundamental changes in the system that keeps women poor. Now, if it only had the will
The stress and worry of raising children in a two-parent family can be difficult enough, but for a single parent, it can be devastating. And for women who have to rely solely on a low-paying job that doesn't promise a better future, life is especially harsh.
KANSAN
The University Daily Kanana (USRS 68-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 66043, daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer sessions, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays, and final periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 66044. Subscriptions by mail are $1 for six months or a $3 fee for six months and $1 for six months or a $3 fee. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the student's address in the student's address book. 118 Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 66045.
The University Daily
Business Manager
Matthew P. Langan
John Oberzan
Paul Jesi
Editor Rebecca Chaney
Advertising Adviser
General Manager and News Adviser
Trembling, I said, "Who are you? Are you a thief?"
"I must talk to you before it is too late," the voice continued. "You must listen to me."
The blankets were pulled tightly around me as I tried to fend off the darkness that had settled in for the night, uninterrupted by even a single welcome flash of lightning or crash of thunder outside.
It was 3 a.m. I lay awake in my room, listening to the patter of icy rain and the wall of a bitter wind whistling through the branches of an apple tree outside my window.
no, it said, "I am not a thief, though you might prefer that to what I really am. I speak for the dead, the casualties of your wars and barbarism who cannot speak to you now. I am one of them, though I still speak in the tongue of the living.
Ideologies not worth the price
"We must talk," said a thin voice. Still I could not see who or what it was, yet it seemed close beside me. The voice was not evil, but rather like that of a weary soldier, unable to find rest for his drained body and strained soul.
Lying there, I soon became aware of a rattling at my door. I strained to see, but my eyes could not focus on what it was. I felt a presence before me now and strained to see, but again the darkness prevailed.
"I was the first of many who have fallen; with me died the voices of reason, sanity, compassion and humanity."
I pinched my arm, only to find myself very much awake.
"Let me guess — you're the voice of Christmas past," I said, "Well, you've got the wrong address and the wrong time — Scrooge lives in Washington now and this is the Easter season, not Christmas."
But it wouldn't leave.
But it should be.
"Please hear me out," it said. "You need me — you need us all. You cannot disregard us if you are to survive."
"We've done pretty well so far," I said. "Almost six thousand years of mankind have elapsed and, still here we are. No, we're not dying, we're coming into our own." But still it would not leave me to my nightmares.
"Millions are starving to death, millions more are dying for little more than lack of a doctor, and yet you insist on fighting over ideologies, any of which can be right or wrong on a given day.
"What you believe has become so important that you are no longer satisfied with just
MATT BARTEL
believing it. Now you fight over it like a pack of dogs defending their right to tinkle on another's tree or hydrant.
"And when one fight ends, you prepare for another one that will certainly be more destructive and terrible than the last one," it said. "Using today's weaponry, all of the legions in the history of the Roman Empire could be blotted out in one fell swoop. You call that coming into your own?"
I found myself wishing he were a thief.
"Look, it's easy for you to stand here and badmuth the way we live," I said. "You don't have to deal with the practical side of maintaining a just peace. All you have to do is preach. When it comes to hindsight, yours is always 20-20.
"If we don't prepare for a fight and somebody else does, we lose. Then those of us that happen to survive will be doing our believing in a
Siberian labor camp, and you'll still be free to bug insulinas with your insidious criticism
"True enough," it said, "but aren't you the least bit concerned about your methods? Aren't you the least bit concerned that the last great uniting force is actually warfare? When your people cannot agree on anything, they can still agree to shoot at each other until all of one side or the other is killed.
"Are you so morally bankrupt, is your ideology so barren that you can't do any better than that?"
I tried to explain to it again the cold facts
"you know," I said, "you may have a point with that last bit. Why don't you come down to the office with me tomorrow and we'll bang out a call this. I think you really may have something."
"All I have is what you let me take from you,"
"I said. What I am is really part of you that was
given to you."
to spread knowledge. Now that really beat all. Why, indeed? He was throwing questions at me like knives, and they were finding their mark.
"But where are your great leaders?" it countered. "Why can't you ever make heroes out of peacemakers? Why did Jesus have to die to make his point? Why do the likes of Thoreau, Gandhi or Benjamin Sassway have to be jailed for their beliefs?"
"It's us or them, that's the way it has to be," I said. "No society can give its allegiance to two ideologies. We've made our choice and they've made theirs."
"If Socrates had possessed your ability to abandon ideals for a good fight, nobody would have known who he was. Why can't alides alone do it?" The writer adds a little persistence to spread the good word."79
The patter of rain outside is drowned out by the tapping of my typewriter. My mentor is gone now, but I cannot escape the questions. Perhaps they are what I have rediscovered about myself.
Hungry University needs special fee
By BLAIR TINKLE
Guest Columnist
I feel a need to express a view that has yet to be represented regarding the $15 academic services fee that will be put to a student vote April 11 and 12.
This is not an "us vs. them" issue, as some have portrayed it thus far. It is not students against other students and it is not students against the administration. If anything, it is KU against the Legislature.
Yes, the Student Senate vote on the fee was divided nearly evenly, but those favoring the fee and those opposing the fee are not far from
Bob
Those against the fee are also against the idea of picking up where the Legislature slacks. They also feel there is a great need for the money (and in some cases are willing to pay the fee themselves), but feel adamantly enough against filling the financial role of the legislature, not much older students to pay. No student really wants to pay the fee, but the problem exists — it must be dealt with.
agreement. Those in favor of the fee are really against the idea of students picking up where the Kansas Legislature slacks but think there is a great need for the money and are willing to pay it temporarily to preserve higher education.
Some students see the students as "us" and the administration as "them." On this issue it is not so. I believe our administration and the students agree in many of the ways mentioned above. Let us not waste our energy squabbling, but rather, let us unite on our problems and find a solution that began not here, but in Topica. Then exists a problem — it must be dealt with.
The University can be viewed as a starving child. As we discover the child, do we argue among ourselves about who is rightfully supposed to feed him while the child continues to starve, or do we feed the child first and then look for the best possible long-term solution? I feel we must feed the child and then look for who is rightfully supposed to pay, the Kansas Legislature.
No one at KU is arguing that we do not need the money — that alone indicates that a problem exists and that it must be dealt with. And we do not want to create a situation in which it takes to maintain the service that KU offers.
takes to maintain. However, we must watch every penny of this academic services fee. We must watch the Legislature, and should they recognize the problem that they are creating and decide to allocate proper funds to KU, our administration
at KU must respond by lowering the proposed $15 academic services fee. Should the students pay the fee, we must watch our administration to make sure the fee is used as it has been designated thus far, and I feel it will be.
There has been some discussion regarding how the Legislature would view the academic services fee if it is installed. Some say the Legislature will see how concerned students are about their education, come to realize the depth of the problem and allocate more money to KU. Others say the Legislature is going to decide that since the students are willing to pick up the Legislators' slack, then it can allocate less money to KU. Either way, there exists a problem and it must be dealt with, and all the speculation in the world will not feed a hungry child.
in the world, but that not all of my tuition that goes to the Legislature comes back to me or my school, and that makes me angry. If I respond by paying an academic services fee that remedies the Legislature's mistake, and the Legislature again decides to allocate less money because of my generosity, then you can find me in Topeka—and I don't think I will be alone. I am worth the extra money it may cost to keep my education at a proper level, but I will not be exploited.
The point: Like the starving child, higher education is suffering today in America, in Kansas. We should keep in mind that the fee is proposed for only three years. We should pay the fee for that period only, and fight the Legislature the whole way. We should pay the fee in anger.
Equally important, each student at KU must express an opinion in the referendum on April 11 and 12. The students must vote. We must let the Kansas Legislature know that there is a spirit within this starving child.
Blair Tinkle, Chicago junior, is co-chairman of Student Senate Rights, Responsibilities and Privileges Committee and president of SUA.