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University Daily Kansan, March 28, 1983
Opinion
Poison center needs aid
Last Saturday marked the end of Poison Control Week, a fact that probably meant little to most Kansan readers here in Lawrence.
This indifferent response, however, is an uneducated, unfortunate — and perhaps understandable — mistake. KU students, faculty and administrators can be proud that this University offers one of the finest poison control centers in the Midwest — the Mid-America Poison Control Center at the University of Kansas Medical Center.
Although poison control may not have meant much to most of us last week, it has meant a great deal to the almost 10,000 callers who have contacted the center since its inception in July 1982.
That response, though overwhelming, is not enough, according to
Wayne Snodgrass, the director of the center. A budget crunch has forced the center to operate only 12 hours a day — half its planned service time.
Thus, instead of taking 10,000 calls — and in so doing perhaps saving the lives of hundreds of people — the center could have taken 20,000 calls. And instead of saving callers an estimated $50,000 a year in emergency room fees, as Snodgrass estimates, the center could have saved them more than $100,000 a year.
In about two weeks, the Med Center's budget — with additional financing for the poison control center — will go before the Kansas House of Representatives. If the budget passes, the legislators will have done more than just aid a valuable state institution.
They may have saved some lives.
Thanks for seasons past
For years he managed to dodge the bullet, producing winning teams almost on cue after lean years. But this time, Ted Owens, dean of the Big Eight basketball coaches, came up one year short.
Athletic Director Monte Johnson said that it was the up-one-year, down-the-next cycle of basketball teams that caused him to fire Owens, but one can't help but believe that if Owens had somehow managed to pull the rabbit out of the hat again — a big win over a Missouri, Kansas State, Kentucky or North Carolina — he would still have his job.
Some think Owens' firing makes no sense, others believe it was long overdue and still others question the fiscal responsibility of the move.
But whether one is a fan or detractor of Ted Owens, no one can deny that his basketball teams have provided years of entertainment for students, alumni and area residents.
Beyond the statistics — the 65 percent winning percentage, nine postseason tournament appearances, seven in the NCAA, two times in the Final Four — Ted Owens gave us something more.
He gave us Jo Jo White and Dave Robisch; Norm Cook and John Douglas and Ken Koenigs; Wilmore Fowler and Paul Mokesi; and many more. And, of course, there was Darnell.
Even as he leaves KU, he does not leave us empty-handed. Whatever success the team has next year, and for the next several years, it owes a large portion of it to Ted Owens.
To be sure, some of the big ones got away. There were disappointing years, teams that never quite lelled.
But for nearly two decades, the name Ted Owens meant KU basketball and for that we owe him our thanks, our gratitude and a large place in the history of sport at our school.
Adelman should withdraw, work outside of government
By MAXWELL GLEN AND CODY SHEARER
Field Newspaper Syndicate
WASHINGTON — The embattled arms control chief-designate, Kenneth Adelman, ought to take a lesson from his former boss, Ernest Warnock. He also can be effective working outside government than in.
Adelman, 36, might appreciate such fatherly advice now that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee may release documents that indicate the Reagan nominee misrepresented himself at a confirmation hearing Jan. 27. Though the committee has already sent the nomination to the Senate floor with an unfavorable recommendation, Sen. Paul Tsongas, D-Mass., told the committee he "had no reason" to Arms Control and Disarmament Agency personnel on Jan. 17 — 10 days before he told the committee that he "had not addressed the personnel situation at all."
Regardless of Adelman's qualifications, which some senators say are insufficient for the ACDA job, the new inconsistency can only further jeopardize his chances for confirmation.
No nominee in recent memory can perhaps understand Adelman's plight better than Ernest Lefever. The controversial 63-year-old author, theologian and foreign policy consultant endured a confirmation process in 1981 that lasted nearly five months, only to withdraw after the Foreign Relations Committee rejected his nomination as assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs. Like Adelman, Lefew was accused by senators of misrepresenting himself and opposing the office for which he was nominated, charges Lefew denies to this day.
Almost two years later, Lefewer seems to be prospering. He now is back on voyage on a variety of issues and, by any reasonable measure, no business than a State Department bureaucrat
Since he withdrew, Lefever's chief instrument
of influence has been his Ethics and Public Policy Center, a seven-year-old think-tank that publishes neo-conservative tracts on a wide range of topics. EPPC recently received a $190,000 grant from the U.S. Information Agency to train an intern in information technology on the ethics of nuclear weapons (seminars that Lefever insists will present a diversity of views and not simply toe the USIA line).
More recently, EPPC published a book of 31 essays on nuclear arms — with authors ranging from George Kennan to George Will — to quell what Lefever calls inordinate public fear about the arms race.
Lefever has also consulted at the State Department since 1881 on, among other things, the public's tax attitude toward international terrorism. Meanwhile, as an ethicist, he recently authored Maryland's new list of "desirable values" for incorporation in public school curricula. And sometime soon, Lefever predicts, the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops will revise some of its trends on nuclear war as a result of lobbying by him and other theologians.
Meanwhile, one of Lefever's oldest projects — exposing the World Council of Churches' financial support of Marxist groups — was recently picked up by CBS's 60 Minutes and created a small furor. Among the key sources for that story was "Amsterdam to Nairobi: The World Council of Churches and the Third World," a 1979 book written by Lefever but roughed out in a first draft by — would you believe — Kenneth Adelman.
Rather than force the Senate to choose between full rejection and narrow confirmation, Adelman might stand to gain more from following Leah. She will have the chance to think-tank and consult as needed. Rehabilitation comes quickly. Eventually, friends in government will toss grants your way.
As Lefever will attest, it's a far, far better thing to do, and less hassle to boot.
City bosses had useful purpose
When Lawrence votes go to the polls next week, they will be voting in an election that has roots in the turn-of-the-century municipal reform movements.
The commission-manager form of government that Lawrence and many other communities now operate under was conceived in the early 20th century to put a stop to what reformers considered a politically dirty and inefficient style of government.
The reformers, usually the wealthy and business leaders of a community, viewed the powerful political ward boss as the perpetrator of this undesirable system. The bosses had very successful grassroots political organizations behind them, but were rightly accused of their complicity in offending rigging elections and often raising their cities' debt levels to precarious highs.
To rid the cities of these machine boes, the reformers lobbed for numerous changes in city government. They shortened the length of the vote ballot, required independent audits of the city accounting books and instituted at-large elections in which voters chose candidates on a city-wide level, rather than at a district or ward level.
This latter action was especially aimed at breaking the backs of the bosses' powerful machines that were based in the mostly ethnic and lower-class neighborhoods.
The returners did a good job making city governments more efficient, but they were not really interested in extending democracy to the lower classes or limiting the great amount of wealth the upper classes were accumulating. By contrast, the bosses, who were also wealthy, worked to increase their lower-class constituents' power.
existence with the wealth of the nation owned by the remaining 20 percent. The 80 percent included millions of immigrants — Irish, Polish, Italian, German and others — who had settled in the heart of America's cities with no job on the land and sometimes little or no knowledge of English.
The city bosses took care of them. They found their jobs and houses, enrolled their children in schools, gave them food and taught them English. They were a combination of fairy godmother and social worker. Consequently, they held the loyalty, and votes, of thousands.
The great wealth had left most Americans behind by the turn of the century. About 80 percent of Americans lived on the margin of
On the other hand, reformers found most of their support for change in the upper-and-
middle-class neighborhoods. Some went so far as to recommend that those who did not own property should not be allowed to vote.
The city bosses were no saims, but they deserve credit for building up America's cities at a time when few city administrators were able to. The bosses built road systems, schools, parks, police and fire protection — all aspects of city life that we now take for granted.
Because their constituents were so poor, the bosses worked the system for all it was worth to take care of them. Boss Tweed, the notorious New York city political boss, got himself elected to the New York State Senate in 1868, partly for his own ends but also to push through legislation setting up welfare programs for the poor. Earlier in the century, his Tammany Hall
society, known as the "poor man's club," lobbied against imprisoning debtors.
City bosses have obviously outlived their usefulness in assimilating millions of immigrants into America and representing their interests in a confusing maze of city bureaucracy. But we may be entering a time when their usefulness could help solve some of our deepest problems.
With unemployment sky-high, especially in the central neighborhoods of our older cities with large concentrations of low-income residents, there may be a need for a new generation of political wizard bosses who will represent the poor employed in city halls, statehouses and Congress.
Contrary to what many American history books argue, the city bosses were well loved in their day (There is a reason for that. The bosses, often from immigrant families themselves, were colorful and responsive to what their supporters needed.
Even my grandmother, a very law-abiding, lace-curtain Irish Catholic "woman," would hevishly defend Toni Pendergast, who was named a donor for beds for almost the first 40 years of this century.
To tease her, I would remind her that Pendergast had been sent to prison for some of his many just this-side-of-the-law activities. She would starchly answer that he was a good man who had given him grandfather, among others, a job when he needed it most.
Pendergast and the other bosses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were effective leaders who delivered what they promised and were responsive to groups in American society that others ignored. They helped integrate them into a political system that was reluctant to include them.
That kind of leadership could still be valuable today.
Letters to the Editor
KU can't afford dismissal of coaches
To the editor:
Well, Monte Johnson has done it again. He has fired yet another coaching staff. This time the victim was Ted Owens. "What was his crime?" you may ask. He had, heaven forbid, two losing seasons in a row. Forget that the man has come out with a winning career record. Forget all of his other honors as KU's coach for the last 19 years.
While I think Owens was unjustly fired, that is not the point that disturbs me the most. After hearing so much talk about financial problems at KU, I simply cannot understand why the University is wasting so much money. Johnson may not realize it, but neither Don Bambrough's nor Ted Wenzels' contracts had expired before they were fired. For this reason, we will be paying these two men, who do not work for us
any more, somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 and perhaps more.
One must ask, then, who is going to pay for this action. The students will, of course. Ticket prices
I can look in the Kansas any day and see how the libraries do not have enough money or how scholarship funds are being cut. Yet, I can see the athletic department paying fired coaches because they "just couldn't wait." It doesn't seem fair when I know that students in some classes must pay for the class syllabus, that there are fewer sections of most required classes and that the sections which remain are becoming larger.
Perhaps we should act more slowly in such matters. I can say, honestly, that I did not choose KU because of its sports programs. I chose KU for its academic reputation. As an alumnus, I hope to continue to support KU, but what convince me to make contributions to the field is the work I have done at team. It will be a commitment to the continuation of that fine academic reputation which drew me here in the first place. Actions such as the firing of Ted Owens, however, are
beginning to convince me of where the University's sentiments really lie.
Douglas Stallings
Coffeyville senior
Higher foreign fee fair
Alicia Sutton has shown her own ignorance by presenting illogical arguments against the foreign student tuition bill (March 10). At state universities, our education are an investment by state and federal governments, in that schools are supported by these governments. We also support institutions in the form of societal contributions (monetary and otherwise) throughout our lives.
To the editor:
An education exported provides for no such direct returns and therefore represents a lost investment. The bill in question simply provides for foreign students to bear a more representative share of the costs, $1,100 in no way covers the expenses of the universities in providing an education.
Bob
Robert S. Coleman.
DeKalb, Ill., graduate student
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