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Thursday, October 13, 1977
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent only the views of the writers.
KU jobs jeopardized
The U.S. Senate dealt a serious blow last week to student employment at the University of Kansas. The Senate, in voting to raise the federal minimum wage, probably cut the number of jobs and working courses for students who work for the university.
A final compromise version of the Senate legislation still must be hammered out in conference with the House of Representatives. If the Senate version emerges unimpeded, the minimum wage would rise from the present $2.30 an hour to $3.40 an hour by 1981.
The increase will come in four stages.
next year, accession fees would be $2.65 an hour.
The decrease would be $1.04 an hour.
DEL SHAKEL, executive vice chancellor, said Tuesday the wage increase could force the University to reduce the number of students and lead to a reduction in student work hours.
Organized labor is jubilant. The Senate rejected four separate proposals providing a lower minimum wage for teenagers and proved to be more generous than the House, which approved a minimum wage of $3.05 an hour by 1980.
What is good for organized labor is not necessarily good for the University. The Kansas Legislature chose not to provide additional funding this year for employees at KU and the absence of this funding spells trouble for the University university.
student who work in Similarly, Ron Calgaard, vice chancellor for academic affairs, said the wage increase would have a substantial impact on the number of students employed by the University.
"When you have a given amount of money to pay student help and you suddenly have to pay each person more," he said, "it's obvious that you can't employ as many people. There are no magic ways to wave a wand and produce more dollars."
About 3,000 students are employed by KU About 75 per cent of them are affected by the congressional action. And if student employment at all American colleges and universities is the final effect of the new wage bill on higher education is staggering.
SMANKEL SAID he doubted whether the University could scrape up enough money to pay the higher wages. If his assessment is correct, KU faces the immediate problem of keeping working students on the payroll and avoiding a reduction in their hours.
The University probably will have to make an emergency request for additional funding to the Kansas Board of Regents, Gov. Robert Bennett and the legislature. If such a request is made, it must be acted upon quickly because the first stage of the Senate's wage increase would take effect Jan.1.
If KU lacks funds for all of its student workers, the heaviest cutbacks would be made in employment at the computer center and the libraries. The University can ill afford such cutbacks. The libraries abroad want money than the state has seen it to provide.
The best possible intentions may have been behind the minimum wage legislation. But for student workers and those who benefit from the services they provide, the effects of the legislation may be anything but commendable.
Students wearing jeans Friday will be suspect. It's national "Wear Blue Jeans if You'reGay Day."
Walk in a gay person's jeans
Although many will argue that the gays' tactics are irritating, no one should trust their scheme as ineffective.
THE PLAN ALSO will be effective because gays have a power of intimidation that other minorities don't. Unlike being a Baptist or a divorcee, belief in the gay way is currently still morally unacceptable to many people.
One "Jesus Day" spokesman said the day would show that "being gay is just as American as Levi Strauss blue jeans." Such a statement is exaggerated, but no one can argue that the right of gays to promote Christianity in American Gays are not yet a part of the American Way, but combining their beliefs with jeans, an American tradition, gives them a powerful one-two punch.
Many will resent giving up their favorite college attire, especially on a Friday. Jeans are not only a major part of the team in many sports, but are, in many minds, the epitome of American clothing.
People of all types—cowboys, freaks, Greeks, athletes—will have to give two second thought to what they wear Friday, and that's the purpose of the day, according to Cindy Treaster,
What better way for a minority to circulate its cause than by using a scheme that affects nearly everyone? By focusing the day on clothing and accessories facing the problem. Appearance is important to almost everybody every day.
skin would certainly add insights. In this case, one day in gay-associated blue jeans might do the same.
N.Y. Times Features
The North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation nuclear war
in Europe are largely an
amphibianism.
These tactical nuclear weapons, so-called because they are intended for use on or near the battlefield, now number several thousand, many of them larger than those mounted on strategic missiles and artillery. In terms of form and convoluted history, not careful analysis of NATO's current needs.
By ALTON FRYE
NATO needs nuclear guidelines
No close student of the subject is satisfied with the present situation. For years it has been necessary to improve the safety and operational control of these aging warheads. Although the firearms used in justices leave unchanged the force's toys-turvy character—
Perhaps some straight people will wear jeans on purpose, hoping to catch a glimpse of what one spokesman called the "every day of our lives." If so, the day will have more meaning than a publicity stunt or a childish, fun game. It will help at least a few humans in a situation other. Those few will know what its like in a gay person's jeans.
smail missiles, big missiles,
antaircraft missiles, artillery
rounds and gravity bombs.
THE TEMPORARY U.S. advantage in tactical nuclear weapons long ago dissolved in the face of matching Soviet deployments—whose principle targets are our own nuclear storage facilities and delivery vehicles in Western Europe. In a crisis, the precarious balance may invite a preemptive attack to begin a war and the escalation to extend one.
THE ALLIES may wonder how existing U.S. doctrine can
What is lacking is a clear principle on which to plan, organize and, if necessary, use tactical nuclear weapons. One can frame a sensible policy only by specifying which targets would be appropriate for tactical nuclear strikes.
may not change views about gay liberation, it could be a successful "exercise in empathy," as one spokesman said. The other may doubt encounter some stares, questions or confrontations. Such an experience, especially for those of us who are straight, will be a learning experience we can benefit from to condemn without thinking.
People who oppose equal rights movements such as those of the gays or blacks don't understand the groups' views, nor do they attempt to do so. Spending one day with black
Business burlesque ridiculous practice
The answer seems to be that Xerox felt its corporate meetings were too boring. The company wanted to liven up the gatherings by offering a little executive entertainment.
Outrageous sketches have apparently become an accepted part of the corporate routine at Xerox. Buzbee had previously appeared before the group in a number of productions, in-
The first question is why did Xerox find it desirable to introduce vaudeville into its business meetings?
Larry Buzbee, Xerox sales manager, opened the Monday morning meeting dressed in blue jacket with swastika armband and riding crop. In exaggerated German accents, he proclaimed Xerox's intention to "vin zen" for I.T.B.M., a Xerox commiter
The 60 salesmen present, many of them Jews, reacted in silence. Some of them said later they would have left the meeting, but they were too nervous by the presentation to move.
THE STATEMENT may have resolved the matter. But the incident leaves two unanswered questions.
Keros has, of course, issued the expected statement that, although the skit was in poor taste, the performance had no malicious intent. It was all in fun—it just went too far.
A funny thing happened at the Xerox Corporation last week.
The act was intended to attract the attention of the company's sales staff and start their week off with a smile. It got their attention, all right, but nobody is laughing.
be portrayed as "clean" or "discrete" when it permits the detection of a single Soviet tank in enemy territory, the presence of many, calling forth a nuclear artillery barrage on an entire area. Combatants may be hit by air or fire zones "of the Vietnam war were local anesthetics.
Lynn Kirkman
Editorial Writer
Didn't just one of those five dozen business executives question the image his company must have had of its sales staff to think such clowning necessary?
ADMITTELY, THE subject matter was of deplorable taste. But surely someone must have had a second thought when Buzzee's superior dressed as a Catholic cardinal for a conference. He administered a lesson in the form of his staff, clad in monks' habits, surrounded him for effect—and for laughs.
Advances in technology and changes in the military balance argue strongly for thorough combat engagement out-matched targeting guidelines.
A simple rule commends
itself: Only large, relatively
fixed installations should be on
the network; no mobile users
should be no mobile targets.
cluding a skit in which he pretended to be the hero of "Rocky."
Editorial Writer
"WE WANT TO make people stop and think, 'What if everyone thought I was gay?' and also to let the campus know that gays have a sense of humor," she said.
"Jeans Day" committee spokesman.
The trouble with outlandish ideas is that they can easily go too far. Then it's time for apologies and explanations for things that can never be fully explained.
Xerox executives should have known better, as they certainly do now
Rick
Thaemert
Editorial Writer
The other question raised by the incident is why did this particular skit arouse such a reaction among the audience?
And perhaps other corporations won't find it necessary to copy Xerox's business burlesque.
The sales staff should look at what they have accepted as the usual procedures and get their perspectives straight. No harm was intended; no real harm was done.
IF THEY ARE small enough to move, by definition targets are small enough to be attacked with conventional weapons.
Although such humorous intentions are noble, they're not likely to succeed. Those coerced into waimeing jeans
may find no humor in being intimidated by a minority. In fact, they may develop hostility that wasn't present before. For example, if the speaker's day's implications, the gay plan will be tossed off as just another publicity stunt, which, though less violent and more in-depth, still involves buildings or picketing, will still be seen as a demonstration.
Nuclear weapons should be reserved for use against major logistical facilities, military areas and growing areas and similar targets.
If one accepts this concept for the tactical nuclear target system, a wholly new prospect is presented. Targets without tempting the Soviet Union to attack preemptively, and without risking the command-and-control situation by battlefield nuclear weapons.
IT COULD DO this by allocating a minor fraction of the comparatively low-yield, increasingly accurate warheads available on Warbirds or submarines. We about 6,000 warheads based at sea, one or two Poseidon or Trident boats could handle the
NOT SO SHALLW, however,
will be the stop and think
asperse as Trenaster put it,
the wearer is wearing or not
wearing or not wearing jeans
tactical targets suggested here.
they could strike within less
than half an hour, operating as
invulnerable launching platforms
and under far superior control to any arrangements for commanding soldiers caught up in the heat of combat.
SUCH A PLAN is no panic and, for political reason, it may be useful to retain certain elements of the force. But, in military terms, recent improvements in submarine-launched missiles represent a fresh opportunity to deal with enemy flaws in NATO defenses.
Indeed, if essential, these weapons could be programmed on show notice to attack major tank and infantry concentrations assembleing for an advance. And, to the benefit of deterrence and the relief of our West German friends, this tactical war clear that the major tactical nuclear targets lie on Warsaw Pact territory, not in Western Europe.
Perhaps, when the critical questions are answered, we will find that altered circumstances and altered technologies cannot complete transformation of the tactical nuclear force.
Controversy over the neutron bomb has revealed serious divisions in both European and American opinion.
Alton Frey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is author of "A History of American Politics of National Security."<sup>1</sup>
MAYBE THIS "WEAR BLUE JEANS IF YOU'RE GAY" IDEA WASN'T SO BAD!
Humanities is not only the dusty
To the editor:
... what we are blind and deaf to within ourselves, we are also blind and deaf to in the world. We playfulness, poetic feeling, aesthetic sensitivity, primary creativity, or the like," Abra Gabbard wrote of interrelationships Between Knower and Known", "1966
Maslow best sums my philosophical disagreement with Ronald Berman's article, "Humanities could reverse decline in America and perhaps also appear in the Kansas Oct. 4., 1977. For too long the humanities as a discipline has been lead down the primrose path by short-sighted standard-bearers like Berman who can see little if any of our humanities are popular, anything contemporary, anything less than historic—old, dusty.
Clearly the humanities should have more to offer to American values or to the values of any society than just a quasiscientific set of beliefs and clearly the humanities ought to be judged (if indeed one need pass judgment on the humanities at all) by more than the "evidence . . . that . . . they are different from, in law or science."
Of course, the humanities are different from law or science: they involve studying facts or even comparing the study of law with the study of music.
KANSAN Letters
even it legal decisions might often appear as complexly beautiful as a Bach fugue; or who would ever consider the use of scientific unearthing if you will, of the DNA chain with a Modigliani painting, even though both offer a texture of complexity within their own mediums which is not universal. Leading Shakespearean scholar, a humanist I presume, consider the sole raison d'etre of the humanities as: "Their procedure is criticism, and the evidence it works on has to do with the humanities." Persuasive power of a book, idea, or object of art."7
Of course some of the study in the humanities is criticism, as is such study within the disciplines of law, of science, of architecture. No discipline can remain untainted (of its methods, of its procedures, of its fellows) and without a critical consideration of the products which that discipline sets out to study. And for the humanities, the discipline sets out to study the humanities among that organism, among that study its bellettes-liter, its art works—the products—and its environment—the incubator for
these products—regardless of whether in those environments such popular things may intrigue you. (We should not Dylan lyric, or "Hamlet."
If such a discipline that offers or claims to be about the human (hence forming a part of the name of that discipline) blinds itself to the popular of this age or of any age, and if it is not as touchstone—for its evaluation of the excellent as well as the poor—the popular products of that age, refusing to be able to define in terms of those touchstone the qualities of that age, then that discipline is no longer neglected its potential contribution to the very whole if claims to study: the human.
Criticism is only a small portion of the over-all concerns of humanism, the part least able to stand as the whole of the discipline. For humanism as it appears to me is the process of opening the vistas of human development, human potential, human agony, concern, joy and pathos, love and hate, simplicity and complexity, well formed or not for more to see. It is a challenge to see for all who care about the current as well as the historic, to know and to see and to hear and to touch as best we can the core of the human spark. Limit the humanities? No, I could not limit them without much than I could limit theaches of biological science.
To cut ourselves, our students, our discipline off from the contributions of any peoples whether "ethnic" (black, red, white, or yellow) or not, and to give them a sightedness of American society, is to cut off ourselves from the benefit of the unique experiences of such "ethics"—though surprisingly. Berman you consider the study of the novel novel somehow non-ethnic.
For me, the manifesto of the humanities has to be a resurgence of the possibilities,
of discovery, of the quest for information—knowledge, if you prefer—for its own sake, down whatever paths such a quest might lead us to. Less lessons of where we, as selves, collective and individual, have been, giving us room to explore and to imagine.
Thomas A. Sette
Assistant instructor of English
To the editor:
A better idea would have been for her to take an ad in your paper, or to have used a method that would have allowed her to screen out sureties who were not acting on impulse and out of pity, as do many who pick pups or kittens handed out on the spot. Are those soft-hearted people who commit acts of theft from Moore aware of the large commitment of time, money, and care they (or should be) making? Where will these pups be six months from now? Six weeks many others may be? They bring the world, unwanted.
Puppy disposal was mishandled
It's too late to say that Moore should have thought about her dog, her landlord and herself and not allowed her dog to have puppies. But she and others can spay or neuter their pets now, and thus reduce needless births and the suffering that follows.
Of course your picture was cute. But what it signifies is saddening and disturbing. I hope that other readers shared my reaction and will be moved to do something about it.
Everybody loves a newspaper picture of a puppy or kitten. But if the photo you ran last Wednesday shows the KU community to dispose of pets' offspring on campus in this manner, the Kansan has done a great service to them, so they care about their welfare.
Carol Hood Henderson President, Lawrence Humane Society
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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