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Tuesday, October 4,1977
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent only the views of the writer.
Senate rejects chance
Last week's decision by the Student Senate not to support a change in the process by which campus organizations qualify for activity-fee funding seems overly fatalistic and unusually trusting of the University administration. By worrying too much about whether controversial organizations such as Gay Services should be funded, student senators may have missed a chance to increase students' control over their funds.
Under current policy, student groups can't approach the Senate to ask for money unless the group has been officially "recognized" by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs. And groups won't be recognized if they are oriented toward "support for or opposition to (a) particular religious institutions, activities or beliefs; (b) particular political party activities or programs; or (c) particular personal and customarily private activities, habits or proclivities."
WHAT ALL that has meant is that groups like the KU Young Democrats, College Republicans, Hillel and Gay Services are eliminated from the funding process without student opinion on whether they should be allowed.
And what the Senate's vote means is that a majority of the senators present thought it fine that the administration continue to eliminate organized student opinion about these matters. True, the day the Senate passed the $1.5 trillion three StudEx members will consult with the vice chancellor for student affairs on recognition—but the vice chancellor retains all his power.
One argument against changing the recognition process goes along the lines that student-initiated decisions on all funding requests are useless if the administration
After Atty, Gen Curt Schneider's decision this summer that student fee money is, ultimately, state money, it is understandable that the University is reluctant to shelter groups that espouse particular political or religious issues. But students should be able to review on a case-by-case basis whether groups like Hillary example, actually pursue legislation or are a cultural group qualified for funding. Students should be able to review the Young Democrats and College Republicans and determine whether all or part of their activities are nonpartisan educational programs worthy of funding.
And denying any group funding because of high-fluge euphemisms such as "personal and customarily private activities, habits or proclivities" defies any reasonable explanation except for fulfillment of misguided public relations goals.
The Student Senate should not hide under the shelter of the administration's recognition regulations just to avoid tough questions about controversial groups. For student senators to avoid issues in such a roundtable meeting, they must represent themselves and allow more student input is for senators to avoid their duties as elected representatives.
Student senators should fight for every chance to influence decisions on student issues.
The Republican Party is apparently going to remain the Republican Party. The party's Rules Review Committee, at a meeting in New Orleans last month, asked the party to change the party's name as a way to bolster the Republican's saging public image.
It is refreshing that the Republicans rejected the name change play and turned down the Madison Avenue idea that a new name should identify the identity in the eyes of the public. This is a gimmick that represents the easy way out — when the problem is far too complex by itself, or when a catchy new name more appealing to the voters.
WE SAW the same type of maneuver take place on the state level recently, when the Board of Education changes for several colleges, and the institutions at Emporia, Pittsburgh and Hays state colleges became state universities. The schools made their own programs to merit the name change. Their argument was that adding "University" to their titles would enhance the degree attainment they attract more money and prestige to their campuses.
Some of the committee members said they considered the name "Republican" a baffling name. Republican candidates at election time. However, the committee voted to table a motion have given the name a long-year change question.
John East of North Carolina, who offered the motion to initiate the name change study.
Men wait for aggressive women
When the first shrieking slogans of the women's liberation movement began to echo across the land, I can recall the sadness of my buddies (witened and worldly junior high school boys) in the back of woodworking class, rubbing our hands together at the prospect that their dating tables would be turned.
GOP pushes name game aside
WEEKLY, WE hear rumblings from esteemed publications of the East Coast that the dating trend is reversing and that more and more women are approaching them, even in bare with propheths involving more interaction than just dancing and drinking. But like so many fads that originate on the coasts, it is usually some sort of conspiracy way to the Midwest. As Kansas women, we are still waiting.
Now for a change, the girls could go through the agony of asking the guys out and scrounging up the money for their new car. It was only fair, we reasoned, if women wanted to be equal.
Well, we've gone from marching and bra-burning to affirmative action and the Equal Rights Amendment, and we know this sexual inversion has made great strides (some will say half-steps) toward achieving parity with their male counterparts in the professional world, but like us, we need to dismantle the inequalities existing in the dating game.
Dave Johnson
Editorial Writer
Even on college campuses where inhabitants are ostensibly more enlightened ("hep") than the general populace, the women seem only slightly more aggressive than anywhere else. For the lonely guy who sits home alone on a Saturn with popping popcorn and watching TV, there's a phone call from an unabashed woman would be a welcome change. But it rarely happens.
Women, I have been told.
would like to be more aggressive. But their upbringing tells them if they aren't more subtle about their desires, a once-approachable man can become one of two things that come on faster than Oklahoma's after a ball carrier or retreat from her aggression like an ant scurrying from a light matched. Either way, she is afraid a man wants someone when perhaps all she was interested in was conversation.
After all, college women are probably on the same economic level as college men. Because of these factors, they need the basis of merit and need
MEN. ON THE other hand, have had to face rejection or even ridicule since Adam really looked at Eve. It seems only fair that if women are demanding the opportunity to enjoy the same experiences that men experience, that they should be willing to do so. One of those risks is calling a relatively unknown classmate of the opposite sex for a date.
not sex, and most part-time jobs around Lawrence pay only minimum wage, women can work in the building and foot the bill as men do. Men have dug in their pocketts too long amid cries that "women are getting dug in" All right, then let them put their money where their mouths are.
If women think they can hack the rigors of construction work or compete with men as doctors or lawyers, they should be able to withstand the anxiety of facing possible rejection when asking a man out for a date. Sometimes the hardest part is wording "no," but "no" has been shrivling men's ears for years. Somehow the callous never grows thick enough.
For men, the prospects of aggressive women mean not only reduced economic and emotional costs in the dating wars, but also an added bit of pleasure in their lives. Being taken out can be fun but it also comes from being excorted by in a sports car to pick you up. As Kurt Vonnegut said in "Slapstick," "HI-HO."
Suspected agents split Chinese groups
To the editor
Chinese students in the United States are being surveyed by some Taiwan students acting as government "spies" who report "disloyal" or "subversive" activities to the government. These spies are KMT agents. They are sent by the Taiwan government to many campuses in the United States. Their job includes gaining control of the Chinese student associations on many campuses and disrupting pro-government activities, damaging the reputations of pro-mainland China students.
At KU KMT-agents are present. However, they act a little bit different from those of other campuses. Because the KU students here for the past several years, KMT-agents can't take control of the KU Chinese Students Association non-political cultural organization here at KU for 20 years.
They then formed a club called the "Free China Club" to split some of the members from CSA and promote conflicts between these two clubs among CSA's leader, scaring Chinese students away from joining CSA, etc. They also organized social activities to "compete" with CSA. For instance, they have their welcome new student parties, so that they have a movie showing at the same day that CSA is going to picnic. But most of all, they reserve the Kansas Union for Oct. 9 to have a
"China Night" which has exactly the same menu as CSA had at their last annual banquet. There are two reasons for this: First, China Night on Oct. 9; First, they know for sure that they will have their banquet before CSA has theirs. CSA used to have late October, Second, Oct. in late November of Taiwan.
KANSAN Letters
Being a Chinese student away from home, I feel very sorry about the splitting into factions among Chinese students here due to some political motivated indifference. Some of them bring rumors and conflicts into a non-political, Chinese students organization. For those of you who don't know why there are two Chinese organizations here, I should tell you that if they think you might understand what is really behind the beautiful word," "free."
Shek-Lean Woo Hong Kong senior
Crowds block hall elevators
Shek-Lean Woo
This is not a letter complaining about the architecture; it's been done all too often already. Neither is this a letter complaining about the architecture, sure that has been done too. This is a letter that is reflecting a mildly desperate attitude I have
noticed in myself lately. I work on the fourth floor of Fraser, thereby necessitating daily visits to keep least twice and sometimes four times a day. The elevators are relatively slow, so often many people are waiting for the car at the door. But they are that floor. Ah, therein's the rub.
Why, oh why, dear fellow inhabitants of this noble institution of higher learning, do you clump yourself solidly into the elevator, rendering the exciting people nearly helpless?
The massed bodies remind me of nothing quite so much resembling the backfield of the Kansas City Chiefs! If I were
To the Editor:
two feet or so tall, I could dodge artfully between your ankles and make my escape that way. Sadly, is not the case, and I am reduced to attempting end runs and engaging in pushing matches, all to get out of the way and make space for some room. Is it possible that if they do not get their own personal bodies onto the elevator instantly that it will clutch) leave without them.
Patience, all. How about leaving at least half of the entrance for the use of us poor people to get out and get on with life?
Betsy Settle
Beaty Suite
Psychology Department
secretary
Lynn Kirkman
Editorial Writer
sand the Republican label was a massive burden for southern candidates to bear in an area where it was just as important to be anti-Republican as it was to be a Bastian.
However, East's idea that southern Republicans were the only ones to bear such a stigma has been denied by Dennis Dunn of Washington.
"Every Republican candidate in the state of Washington starts with a deficit of five to 10 percentage points."
Dunn said. "It's not just a southern problem."
THERE CAN BE no argument that the Republican Party is a strong public image. Fewer than 30 percent of registered voters list themselves as members of the Republican Party, and some candidates have scored some striking victories and have made recent inroads into traditionally Democratic politics, still till the extenctions to the rule.
In most parts of the country, a Republican candidate has an uphill struggle to victory. He will be perceived as a spokesman for the rich, a politician insensitive to the needs of the average man and a supporter of the status quo. The
York made the motion that tabled the name change idea.
"What I feel," Rosenbaum said, "is that changing the label doesn't change the product."
Republican Party is traditionally seen as a roadblock to progressive thought — despite the fact that the party has among its ranks a growing number of candidates and potential candidates who are working hard to alter these widely held views.
THE IDEA OF a new name is probably an outgrowth of the frustration to today's Republicans must **see** when their fight against these images. But a new name would not, in itself, solve the problem. The idea is too transparent to appeal to the voters. New Republicans are trying to attract to the party.
Rosenbaum's 'feeling is correct. The Republicans have a problem with the image of their party, an image of their image if they are to remain a viable force in U.S. politics.
The Republican National Committee is working on ways to improve the public's perceptions of the party. It is commendable that it did not choose the easy road. A name change would have been merely a problem and this is a problem that is too deeply rooted to be solved with a coat of whitewash.
Richard Rosenbaum of New
- BOY, I SURE PICKED A ROUGH NEIGHBORHOOD TO RUN OUT OF GAS IN... I. HOPE I LOCKED
THE GLOVE COMPANY *
Humanities could reverse decline in American intellectual status
By RONALD BERMAN
N.V. Times Features
EVEN THE academic world is reluctant to consider the question of quality. Many things are taught in the nervous expectation that they attract students; the issue of what they mean or are worth is not very often taken up.
WASHINGTON — The recent report on the decline in Scholastic Aptitude Tests is providing a fresh perspective on history. What it implies is that there are differences in quality and usefulness between ideas; how we recognize and interpret them; and what kind of good deal to do with our future.
One reason for intellectual decline is the belief that all ideas are somehow equivalent or assimilate from the counterculture is not only good for credit but means as much as anything stored up by libraries experiences about human nature.
Another reason is the belief that we should study what pleases us and corresponds to our sense of self — this embraces drugstore psychology and the varieties of "ethnic" studies that students and others good for them and there is, in mutual entertains us, which accounts for the otherwise astonishing presence in the schools of astrology, science fiction and other distraction.
Even the academic world is reluctant to consider the question of quality. Many things are taught in the nervous expectation that they attract students; the issue of what they mean or are worth is not very often taken up.
When it is, we hear that a movie like "Star Wars," or the one with Jennifer Aniston in value that is not only redeeming but places these things in some real relationship to Homer or George Washington touchstone we have in mind.
As for the humanities on the whole, it is increasingly common to apologize for them on the grounds that they make us better people or citizens, entertain us, are pleasurable, etc. None of which makes the slightest sense when we consider two things: Many of the works that we think important like Rimbaud or de Sade is not terribly moral; they depend upon the power to convince us that they are true to life.
The humanities really ought to be judged by evidence, and in that respect they are not much different from, say, law or science. Their procedure is criticism, and the evidence works on the basis of the instrument or persuasive power of a book, idea or object of art. For example, we are told now and then that a pop novel or movie deserves to be taught in the schools. Those who oppose this are thought to have fogies and misguided beliefs. But how would you go about making a place in the curriculum for something?
SUPPOSE IT were "War and Peace"—what would you ask about the evidence for its value? Would you justify reading it because it was agreeable? Napoleon was caught out right? Because it revealed the Slavic Soul?
I don't think so. A reasoned argument might suggest that "War and Peace" has a psychological or psychology than alternative sources. It would suggest that we learn from this book more about the human nature of events than we do from most textbooks. It might
even say that the view of Russian historical experience it provides is without parallel. It would certainly assert that knowledge of Russia and the reader's own mind would be incomplete without knowledge of this book.
The same kind of argument would apply either to Charles Darwin or Jane Austen. She did not travel and became a traveled little and died young. How did a writer with these disabilities who never addressed herself to any one issue become necessary to our own lives?
I THINK because of her scientific clarity and precision. Jane Austen wrote about a small world, a microcosm, but her examination of it took place with an intellectual microscope. What we know of history inductively has been "Prejudice" has more to say about middle-class life than do many historians.
Her language is about as clear and descriptive as the articulation of thought can get. Her characters are human to the degree that, as in the greatest art, we can see not only
ourselves but observable truths about human nature.
In short, she is convincing, accurate and evidential — all of which terms are not so often used in the case of the humanities as they should.
when we ask how "Star Wars" or pop novels can compete with someone who never went anywhere except to see their art, the answer is fairly plain. They depend on spectacle.
They caricature human desires without making them understandable. They are not, finally, about mind or society in a way that makes either intelligible. In short, they are without the scientific values that they pretend to have.
There is one, suspects, more room in education for what the student feels, ideas and relationships in ways that are more persuasive even in fictional or other forms of statement.
That is why they develop intelligence and convey the knowledge of self and society. All of which makes the College experience Board happy, and gives the rest of its something of value.
Ronald Berman, a Shakespeare specialist and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
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