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University Daily Kansan, April 5, 1983
Opinion
KU Relays running low
What's the matter with the Kansas Relays?
Nothing, according to the Russians; they're sending two world champions and a field of world-class athletes to compete here this year.
Nothing, according to track and field history. The Kansas Relays have showcased many of the world's finest athletes: Jim Bausch, Glenn Cunningham, Bill Nieder, Al Oerter, Jim Ryun, Wes Santee, Charlie Tidwell, Clifford Wiley, Deon Hogan. Seven KU athletes are honored in the Track and Field Hall of Fame, more than any other school in the nation.
So, what's the matter with the Kansas Relies?
Only this -most of us at KU are letting them die.
Gone are the days when students, faculty and alumni packed Memorial
Stadium to watch our athletes compete against the world's best.
Gone are the days when 2,000 people would join 30,000 other fans just to see Jim Ryun run one race.
We're what's the matter.
What's the matter with the Kansas Relays?
Gone are the days when KU considered the Relays important enough for support — real support, not the current $25,000 KU budget (about one-seventh the amount some relays set aside).
If we don't help Timmons and his athletes by going to Memorial Stadium April 20-23, volunteering our time to help stage the separate events, budgeting more money, finding or becoming sponsors, or at least telling them we appreciate their hard work, we are responsible for killing the Kansas Relays.
Reducing population of fish a worthwhile, relaxing task
A mist gently puffs across the water of Lake Pomona. A mile from shore two men in a small steel boat huddle over a charcoal grill. Waves crash threateningly against the side of the boat.
Four fishing poles bob up and down in time with the frantic, rolling motion of the diminutive craft. "Tica-tica-tica..." sounds the rain against the steel frame and the boiling water. The fishermen pay no attention to their poles. They are attentive on surviving.
They shiver.
After six hours of punishment from Mother Nature, they fight across the lake to the dock.
MATT SCHOFIELD
neary, freezing, soaked, but glued to be alive, they unload their gear from the boat. The entire process doesn't take long. They no longer need their oxygen tank, and that they had at the outset of their expedition.
They are certainly not encumbered by fish. Fiction perhaps? But perhaps not. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what the scene would have looked like to an observer. But enough of this bothersome cold weather, it’s time to get on with the senseless massacring of little fishes.
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against the little finedarlings. In fact I love fish, just as long as they're on the end of my line and fighting for their lives as I reel them in.
my talk of reeling 'em in is a bit of false bravado at this stage of the year, though. So far I haven't done much in the way of contributing to the massacre.
I have caught one catfish, more like a kittenfish, and a friend caught a carp. The tiny catfish I tenderly put back into his element after giving him a small morsel of shad for good relations, and obtaining a promise that he would remain in the general area. We put the carp on a fish line and played walk-the-dog with it until he had to leave, at which point we maliciously wapped the unholy creature to death against a concrete wall.
I have spent a total of 20 hours in pursuit of the elusive bass fish, or any fishius filumtumium for that matter. I have also spent about $100 on these trips. When the magical moment in which I finally land a "real" fish comes, I figure that fish is much more valuable. Moby Dick or have me cost about $50 a pound.
But who cares? Any fisherman knows that the thrill is not in the catch, but in the catching. The electric moment when one notes the bend in his pole and sits tensely on the bank mattering, softly so as not to disturb the fish, "Take it you bastard, take it." The ecstatic instant when the reel hums as the fish thrashes away upstream trying to escape the steel hook, the euphoric fight to bring the fish in. And, finally, the exhilarating feeling of seeing the fish in the net, as one says quietly in reverence to the noble beast, "Hats off."
Actually the tranquil atmosphere of the places where fish lurk is at least as compelling a reason to spend a day with a line in the water as the possibility of catching an errant fish. Whether I believe that or not, and I think I do, I have found an attitude necessary, because fish much prefer nibbling away the generous hunk of bait to biting the hook.
If nothing else, cool streams, or cold streams,
provide an excellent opportunity to break away
from a workaday existence and join Nick Adams
in his search for peace.
And that’s worth something. But $50 a pound?
Letters to the Editor
Morrison smeared in story
To the editor:
in the article.
In reply to a March 30 Kansan article about alleged campaign misrepresentations by David Morrison, a KU student who is seeking election to the Prairie Village City Council, we wish to inform readers of the reasons behind this article.
We feel the Kansan has been unwittingly used as a political pawn in a deliberate effort to influence the outcome of the council race. The accusations leveled in the article against Morrison: 1) were part of a personal vendetta, 2) were untrue, 3) confused the issue itself, 4) came out as disguised and only motivated smear campaign to discredit Morrison before today's general election. The timing of the article couldn't possibly have come at a more inopportune time for Morrison.
Such "news" is not reflective of an award-winning newspaper and belongs, if anywhere, on the editorial page. Why the Kansan would give such weight to personal accusations and defamatory comments from two men who obviously had an ax to grind is beyond us.
The Kansan relied primarily for its information upon opinions issued by Kevin Yowell, a disgruntled senior Ku College Republicans, and Bill Knoth. Morrison's defeated primary opponent.
Owens' firing unwise
David Granary
Overland Park sophomore
Karen Gustafson
Lewood sophomore
David Granly
To the editor:
On March 21, the announcement of the firing of Ted Owens as head basketball coach put a huge damper on my enthusiasm for sports at KU. I strongly oppose this decision and feel it was not in any way made in the best interest of the University and the students. I am not alone in this feeling, although I may be among only a handful of students who choose to go so far as to write in protest. I have talked to personally and obviously the consensus student population as witnessed by conversation on campus and in classes and in my friendess feel the same way.
It is a shame that an athletic director, especially the new athletic director, Monte Johnson, has the sole power to act as dictator and eject a man from such an important and prominent position in the University without any checks or balances. But that is only an
To let Monte Johnson continue his reign of terror in the athletic department could be dangerous. He undoubtedly wishes to develop a consistently strong basketball program and financially sound athletic department, but he is mainly developing a bigger financial burden for the department, creating dissension among the ranks of present supporters and students, while possibly seriously injuring the explosive capabilities that next year's team possesses. Besides this, he has upset the well-planned future of many of the members of this year's team who wished to play only under the coaching of Ted Owens at the University of Kansas.
underlying factor in the situation at hand. The mere fact that an athletic director such as Monte Johnson is allowed to act as he did, obviously cutting the string between Ted Owens and the basketball program partly because of a personality conflict, is an outrage. Ted Owens has head basketball coach at Kansas State University, said "his record should speak for itself."
Now, with this foolish action by your athletic director, the wish for a new sports complex for the athletic teams is quickly fading away and the wish for a fiscally sound budget is almost nil. The financial burden on the athletic department for the next year will be too great to be made up because of paying for the services of four coaches and only getting the services of two. Because of increased percentage of adamant feelings from the students, even a slight increase in ticket sales generated from the excitement of the new programs will not be able to cover up all of the damage. Also, by severing the ties with Ted Owens that were made during the last 19 years, Monte Johnson has consequently broken connections on the East and West Coast with scouts who will not work for the Kansas basketball program without Ted Owens at the head position. This will hurt recruiting to an extent impossible to measure.
On top of all this, Monte Johnson has lost the respect of the many students who support athletics at the University of Kansas, especially mine. This decision is obviously all wrong for the basketball program, the department, the University and its students. Hopefully in the future, more careful and wise decisions and not haphazard and unintelligent decisions will be made. This one was definitely not wise or intelligent.
Gregory Falen,
Hinsdale, Ill., sophomore
Women dying to look good for men
A young woman died recently after struggling to stay thin.
The death of singer Karen Carpenter is a tragedy not only because she died young, but because the cause of her death, a heart attack that may have been caused by anorexia nervosa, symbolizes the grotesqueness of a society that demands that its women physically beautiful.
The most frequent victims of anorexia are young women who diet until they lose their appetites and stop eating.
At first it seems strange that a woman living in a country as rich as ours would die of starvation. But when we consider that our advertising, television shows, movies, newspapers and magazines are splattered with perfectly proper advertising, the key to social success and acceptance, fame and fortune, then it is not an oddity that women die trying to attain that ideal.
Our society shoots women with the drug called vanity by dangling the rewards of love and sex before them until they become clothed exhibitionists. Male fashion designers make slit skirts, high heels and tight-tight jeans under the design of fashion, but actually for the pleasure of men.
Sexual exploitation is not only pleasing to the eyes of men, the public voyeurs, but it also makes millions of dollars for Madison Avenue, the networks and Playboy, and Penthouse magazines.
Maidenform girl who shows up in public places dressed only in bra and panties and from the Pepsi girls who jiggle on beaches, CBS and ABC reap the profits from the women who strut on Dallas and the women who fulfill fantasies on Fantasy Island.
Corporations reap the profits from the
While the corporations collect the cream they make off of flesh, the image of women, despite
DAN PARELMAN
the great strides of the women's movement, is denigrated to wet t-shirts and bikinis. For every Mary McGryn and Sandra Day O'Connor, there are at least 10 Suzanne Somers and Bo Dereks.
So, despite the women's movement, women carry on the time-honored traditions of masking themselves with perfume and make-up, ornamenting themselves with male-pleasing clothes, and dieting even when they don't need to — when it is unhealthy.
Obviously, women have no monopoly on vanity. The advertisements with Jim Palmer and his wife in their ads are the best examples.
growing preoccupation among males with being attractive.
But if more men are slaving in the bathroom for as long as women have previously, it only shows that material pleasure, narcissism and vanity are infecting both sexes.
Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with men and women trying to look good for each other. But it is another thing altogether to become a slave to physical beauty.
And traditionally women seemed, in part, to have been slaves to physical beauty, while the intellectual domain had been left to men. Across cultures and for thousands of years, male dominated society has held women as the symbol of beauty.
We no longer live in ancient Greece or Elizabethan England. We now acknowledge that women are intellectual equals of men, not more on women than men, and on women; Be beautiful and you will be happy.
And some women die trying to look pleasing.
Yes, these women who die represent a very small minority, but only a few deaths are too many.
Only a cruel person would say that Karen Carpenter killed herself. No, Madison Avenue, ABC, NBC and CBS, Playboy, Penthouse and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue killed her. All of us who willingly accept the subliminal messages of their exploiting media and corporations killed her.
It is time to stop the killing
French seeking limits on sexual ads
BY MAXWELL GLEN AND CODY SHEARER
Field Newspaper Syndicate
Yvette Roudy thinks she knows the best way. Mitterrand's 53-year-old minister for women's rights is the central force behind a legislative proposal to forbid "degrading and debasing women" in advertisements and publications. If passed by the National Assembly, the bill would affect anyone from J. Walter Thompson to the publishers of Ernest Hemingway.
WASHINGTON — For years, sex has been routine fare in French advertising. But now, Francois Mitterrand's government wants to change the menu.
For Roudy, whose French translation of Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" in 1963 launched her own feminist career, the measure derives its logic from the egalitarian premises of socialism. It also reflects both the increased influence of women's groups and an intense national debate about the French knack for fleshy commercialism.
That debate began in earnest last summer, when Avenir, a billboard company, plastered hundreds of its properties in Paris and other cities with a photograph of a bikini-clad woman. "On September 2, I'll take off the top." Avenir's model promised, indeed, she not only followed
through on that pledge, but two advertisements later, finished the striptease.
More recently, a conservative mayoral candidate in Nice employed the image of a naked woman on a campaign poster. "As expected, after 21 months of socialism, I have nothing left," the caption read.
As they have in America and elsewhere, women in France right fear the documented parallels between violence against women and the often not-so-suitable use of sexual imagery in television, magazine and newspaper articles, knowing whether the models or the products are for sale, some men can be expected to treat women as objects to use or abuse.
whether or not the latter incident precipitated Roudy's anti-sexism law (as it turned out, the Nice conservative won his race handily), it was only a more extreme example of what French women's groups have long denounced as commercial exploitation.
Moreover, commercial exploitation undermines the image that women have of themselves. Even if Madison Avenue has often substituted the harried housewife for a more up-to-date career-type, is the balance nurtured by a provocatively posed model in Calvin Kleins? In France, where the line between art
When the abuses of advertisers and publishers become excessive, Yvette Roudy wants "organized citizens" to have the means to prosecute the culprits.
and life is fuzzier, the distortion is only more severe.
Even if her bill wins the approval of France's Socialist-dominated parliament, Roudy and her supporters would probably accomplish more by encouraging groups to identify companies and advertisers that insult public sensibilities. Such a private campaign must have a spillover effect on consumers who fall prey to sexploitation ads. That, in part, has been the strategy of the French government, which recently issued well-publicized awards for the best and worst in American advertising.
"The government does not wish to put itself in the role of judge" she insists. Nora, adds one of the judges.
Yet, the dubbing of Roudy's proposal as the "Gstring Law" by the progressively inclined tablid "Liberation," underscores an obvious problem with Roudy's law. It would effectively beg government censorship. In democratic countries, as the Moral Majority has discovered, any attempt at government control over social matters inevitably becomes the issue itself.
After all, when the palates are as numerous as the offerings, it's better to stick with a la carte than to hit them with prix fixe.
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