4 Thursday, September 16, 1971 University Daily Kansan KANSAN comment The recent tragedy at Attica Prison is a horrifying barometer of the frustrations stirring in U.S. prisons and similarly a grim glimpse of what may be the rule rather than sad exception. Tragedy at Attica The riot began with an insignificant incident and raged out of hand from there. The social order, guard harassment, poor living and working conditions all add to the frustration of being imprisoned. When touched by such a seemingly insignificant incident the whole climate can, and as at Attica, will blow apart. These factors do not justify, by any stretch of the imagination, wholesale executions. They are important, though, in examining the final situation at Attica—and all prisons, for that matter. As long as inmates see no other alternative to solving their problems, short of open riot—the same scenario may be acted out again and again. Unfortunately, the majority of discussion concerning the riot seems to hinge on whether the inmate's demands should have been met, or whether prison officials should have conducted the assault on the prison, knowing the lives of the hostages would be in grave danger. Will it happen again? Where? How soon? These questions are of little significance. Forty-one persons skied eighty degrees. These are questions that should be answered immediately. Rather than debating the propriety of the force used—the nation should turn its eyes to the future. The causes should be understood before fairness to prisoners and guards—before the entire prison system comes apart at the seams. —Tom Slaughter Sabbatical Rules Questioned Readers Respond To the Editor: I find it hard to sympathize with former K-State professor, Victor Greene, whose letter about the Regents' sabbatical policies appeared in the Sept. 9 Kansan. However mean the policy of requiring persons taking sabbatical leaves to return for two years afterwards may strike one (and it is unengender; many universities require only a one-year return), Prof. Greene knew the policy when he accepted his leave and payment. Any attempts to break that contract, freely entered into, appear lacking in honor and dignity and reflect adversely upon all Kansas faculty members applying for such leaves. It is however most disturbing that Prof. Greene was "warned . . . not to publicize this issue as the discussion topic." I don't discard the 'fringe benefit' altogether. One hopes this was merely an empty threat. If the Regents indeed were to make policy affecting Kansas faculty members on such a petty and punitive level, they would not be fit to hold their positions. A far more serious injustice regarding sabbatical policy is the "4 per cent rule" which permits faculty members who have an approved research project to take a semester's leave with pay or a year's leave at half-pay after six years of service provided the number absent does not exceed 4 percent of the total faculty. During the years of the depression and the war years when the great European libraries were inaccessible, this presented no problem, but in recent years cheaper transportation and relatively greater affluence have enabled more faculty members to request in fact the privileges they were offered on paper when they chose KU. And because six, seven, and eight years ago the university had plenty of money and needy of professors, massive hirings occurred. Now comes the crunch: the large numbers of young faculty hired in the mid-sixties apply for a first sabbatical, and older professors who have served here for years request a second or third one. The numbers exceed 4 per cent, and deserving people who have legitimate research aims and who have taught at KU for the required number of years (at lower pay than they might have received elsewhere) have their applications turned down, all because they happened to join the University in the wrong year. The sabbatical policy needs reforming, yes, but it is the 4 per cent rule that should concern us, Greene's questionable grievance. —Nan C. Scott —Nan C. Scott Teaching Assistant Department of English AP Features Women Nix Girl Watching LOS ANGELES (AP) - Girl watching - is it a sport or "organized peeing Tomism"? That question has brought the Century City chamber of Commerce eyeball to eyeball with a touch of irony. The chamber for this shining cluster of students, a 30-student week each year "Girl Watchers Week" to "acknowledge in a formal way one of the biggest natural resources we have, our community." The lunch hour brings a colorful parade of secretaries and other office workers to work. The climax of the week of organized oging is a luncheon at which a panel of celebrities chooses "Century City's Most Watchable Girl." This year's "Girl Watchers Week," which runs through Thursday, however, has seen resistance emerge in the ranks of the watched. "Degrading, distasteful, childish, warped, The women have plastered the walls of ladies restrooms with posts urging rebellion against 'being inspected', reviewed, appraised, accepted or rejected, affronted, complaining to salability and desirability, conditioning on graded, annoyed and W-A-T-C-H-E-D-*I*' The opponents have organized the "A$D Host Committee of Century City Women opposed to a law that would allow members group have done little so far except splitting. One segment favors a counterwatch, with girls owing the men. Others may not feel委屈, or take action, talk of consumer boycott and petitions. disconcerting, outrageous, exploitive and infantile," are some of the epithets women use when describing a man. So far, their efforts have failed to turn the tide. They have won one concession. The chamber decided not to put up bleachers for the watchers as it did last year. Trickling Down with Tricky Dick Garry Wills NEW YORK-Last fall President Nikon campaigned for its new welfare program, calling it the nation's number-one domestic priority. But when he announced his new economic program, the number-one problem became the number-one priority. it is offering to the rich, in uniform of a 10 per cent tax credit for business. This is supposed to be a prerequisite for employment, and pump wealth in at the top, when it will trickle down to poorer levels of the economy. Why? Because of the need for government economics to fight infiction. Yet the money that government cannot give the poor like saying you must force-feed the obese before enough scraps fall off their table to feed the starving. This "trickle-down" approach to the economy is a classic American attitude. It can be taken before or after making the poor less poor. It is The reasons for this approach are multiple. rooted in our whole culture, is important. It is wrong to "give" livelihood to people; but we can "increase" their livelihood by providing their own livelihood. This means, in effect, that we can arrange for them to earn more. terprise” but not of free men—on the grounds that a “dole” would make men less free, but it does not affect the freedom of our citizens and that “free enterprise system” is actually a subsidized system, the subsidies directly benefiting big business, and only indirectly (if at all) providing human assistance. The irony of the too often escapes us that the very men who complain most about “big government” and subsides are those most blessed by government, mentally subsidized to voice their complaints against government. The old arguments for these anomalies are themselves anachronistic, but such was made in the name of all. passage through Washington departments than through corporation boardrooms. In the first case, we are away the moneyes that are finally distributed. In the second, we are be achieved at all, since it depends on a prior task, the making of profits; and if bad planning leads to insufficient (or non-existent) funds, we are down to the second priority objective. Instead, government has to rescue and adds, to higher-echelon lower-echelon failure, the inevitable bureaucratic costs. We are paying, in other words, for our poor, instead of one. A final argument is that we Garry Wills says that Nixon's economic philosophy for the relief of the poor is that ... you must forcefeed the animals enough scraps fall off their table to feed the starving." ficiency—and looks rather sickly in this age of the Lockeck rescue operation. If business is no effort, it's probably bungling, why does the successful businessman come h-in-handle to the dithering bureaucracy? We don't want to waste dollars in wastes dollars in bureaucracy paper-shuffling; it is better to let them create jobs and prosperity through the infallible working of the market. But most businesses suffer a dollar's suffer the attive must grow if the poor are to be helped—i.e., that they can have some of our hypothetical future goods (what we want to get) but not of our present goods (what we eat today's cake, we will give you some of tomorrow's cake—if there is any cake tomorrow." Mr. Nixon tells us this is the competitive spirit, and that it has made us great. Maybe. But only a good great means being Mr. Nixon. Copyright, 1971, Universal Press Syndicate Letters Policy Letters to the editor should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 500 words. All letters are subject to the judge's judgment on space limitations and the editor's judgment. Students must provide their name, year in school and home town; faculty and staff must provide their name and address. James J. Kilpatrick Second Look at Air Bag WASHINGTON—A couple of months ago, back in July, I delivered myself of a lightweight car, the new safety devices that have been proposed for 1974 model automobiles. It wasn't a 'naughty thing,' and I pretended to be; its purpose was to summarize the government's response to the well-publicized Ford Motor Company. The column stirred up an astonishing mail, almost all of it harshly critical of the government's position. In recent weeks a group of Americans and American Automobile Association has stepped up its furious opposition to the air bag regulation. Leading automobile magazines have joined the cry. The federal Council has launched into the act. Perhaps as a result of all this, the Department of Transportation last week did wrathfully delay another year delay in its requirement for passive restraint devices. Apparently the air bags—or whatever—will not now be required on the market in August of 1974. are on the roads. More than 50,000 persons die in them every year. Any regulation affecting the auto acts automatically affects almost everyone. The topic is important, not only on its merits but also in terms of its larger implications. More than 90 million passenger cars The proposed regulation would not require air bags as such; it would require only that new cars be equipped with seatbelt devices to protect persons in the front seat from the hazard of head-on collisions. For all practical purposes, this has been shown to be true: Lap-and-shoulder belts admittedly are better, but these are not "passive" restraints; passengers have to buckle themselves and have only 5 per cent of them do. To the Department of Transportation, the air bag has seemed the next best weapon for the most sensitive mission. It is intended to protect against the bag is a nylon affair. On sufficient impact, sensors are fired and the bag is released in air under heavy pressure; the bag inflates in 40ths of a second to the size of two pillows forming a cushion inside the bag's windshield-instrument panel. In repeated experiments with dummies and baboons, according to the results, the bag proved both reliable and effective. Conservative Klipatrick thinks that the baby addition of restraints in American automobiles would be a ceilent case. The arguments are well summarized in the Sep tember issue of the AAA's American Motorist. The device, a wheelchair equipped with "extremely complicated." It would add perhaps $100 to the cost of a car. The AAA is not at all persuaded of the air bag's production over a period of years. The research has been "shoddy." But the critics make an ex- Other critics also have emphasized that any work of any kind would experience with the device. They are just skeptical of the industry's ability to achieve spaceship perfection in a limited way, a point out that the bags, even if they worked on initial impact, are too small to protect against secondary impacts. They cite some gruesome studies conducted in Germany that show that babies are only three hours dead, which indicates dinners not revealed in these studies. These are not captious criticisms. Whatever Ralph Nader may say through his “Center for Auto Safety,” the experience and the expertise of the AAA speaking simply as a one observer, after hearing both sides, I am persuaded that the proposed requirement is an error. The larger question ought to be considered also. Government sure has both the power and the ability to govern a public at large from highway risks. But it is highly doubtful that government should involve requirements aimed at individual protection in this costly and difficult task, or on what government ought to do, and another limit on what government can do well. The air bag requirement, among others, defines (C) 1971 The Washington Star Syndicate THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN An All-American college newspaper Kansan Telephone Numbers Newsroom--UN-4 4810 Business Office--UN-4 4358 Griff and the Unicorn Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mail admission rates: $6 a semester, 100 per month. Offer only for eligible students in good, services and employment advertised to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin. Optionally, not necessarily offered by the University of Kansas of Repatriate. 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