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Tuesday, September 27, 1977
University Daffy Kansas
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kanan editorial staff. Staged columns represent only the views of the writers.
Open meetings a must
The Student Senate will consider a bill tomorrow night that is fraught with danger. If passed, the bill will do irreparable damage to the Senate's credibility and strike a blow at the principle of open government.
The bill would allow any Senate group to close its meetings with the agreement of a three-fourths vote of those attending. The bill comes from the Senate Rights Committee, which rejected an original proposal for the Senate to open all its meetings.
STUDENTS HAVE paid the admission price to Senate meetings. They pay student activity funds every semester, and the Senate decides how to pass the fees out. Students have a right to know how the Senate is dealing with their money, whether they find out by sitting in on meetings or by reading the newspaper the next day.
It is hard to imagine how a governing body that cries for openness in the University of Kansas administration, clamors for the KU Athletic Corporation (KUAC) to open its budget hearings and pleads for student participation in government can seriously consider a measure that would allow them meetings to be co-organized, and allow any reason to give students a visible, accountable voice on campus.
Just last week, the Senate Communications Committee considered a bill that would have required the Kansan to run a Senate-produced column about the Senate. The reasoning behind the bill? Its proponents said the Senate's own column would guarantee that students know what the Senate was doing and would tell students how the Senate functions. The ill-conceived bill was killed.
This week the Senate considers a bill that could allow its doors to be closed, ensuring that no one would know how the Senate functions in crucial situations. There seems to be some uncertainty about Senate vote outcomes. But one can conclude that the two bills side by side and conclude that the Senate wants students to know what the Senate wants to tell.
THE SENATE reasoning is shaky ground on which to build student trust. Why should students believe a Student Senate that closes its doors any more than the KU-Missouri football game? It lambasted a year ago for secretly considering moving the KU-Missouri football game to Kansas City?
The arguments used by senators favoring a closed-meeting option are understandable, but they are not acceptable. The senators say there is little protection for the senators' discussions. Likewise, the senators want ballot-counting sessions closed to avoid outside influence.
But some senators also want budget hearings closed, and the bill would give them ample chance to close them. It also gives the Senate a chance to close meetings at which any potentially touchy subject is discussed.
The time when students most need to know what the Senate is doing is when important or controversial subjects are under discussion. Student senators are elected officials, and they must not shy away from making public their stands on difficult decisions. If criticism ensues, they must accept it as part of their jobs.
Tomorrow night, the Senate will consider both the closed-meetings bill and the original bill, which calls for all open meetings. If only for their own good, senators must opt to keep their doors open.
The myth of the student athlete permeates university life. The mystique of the young man or woman who values the trying more than the reward filla college stadiums and fieldhouses, keeps sports enthusiasts on their toes by raising a high rate of alumni contributions used to recruit more student athletes.
By definition, a student athlete is one who considers athletics secondary to academics. He is the finest player the university has ever produced, but that's not as important as his 4.0 average in speech communications. He may be married, but he must beside the fact that he is the shining light of the biology department. He may even be Heisman material — but what does that matter when he has a surseum ahead of him as a surseum?
IT'S NOT CONSIDERED seemly for a student athlete to hunger for a career with the pros — at least not until his finished his final year on the field or the court. Then if great and powerful talent scouts knock at his door, bearing offers and contracts and promises he has made, he consider forgiving his dream of insurance — for as long as his knees hold out.
University athletes are, after all, students first and athletes second. They play for the thrill of victory and the greater glory of amateur sports. Their efforts are expended without thought of reward and they look forward to professional athletes, but as bankers, teachers and insurance representatives.
That myth has outlived its usefulness to society and to the student athlete.
Somewhere in the legend it $ ^{i o} $
Traditions, lack of preparation block women business owners
By JUANITA KREPS N.Y. Times Features
WASHINGTON — Early this summer, a day-long conference was held at the New School for Social Research in New York for women interested in starting their own business. Five women attended, by 790 more had to be turned away for lack of space.
The evidence points to a strong desire by a significant number of women to become entrepreneurs and to take their chances in the free-enterprise economy. But what are their chances?
The New York experience was repeated in other cities around the country where women are represented. The group held under the sponsorship of women's business groups and local advisory committees in New York administration.
WHAT THE BUREAU of the Census found then, using the latest available data, was not encouraging:
Total receipts for all companies were nearly $2.4 trillion; women-owned firms took in about half of a per cent of that amount.
Although business statistics abound, what we know about women business owners is woefully inadequate. It was only last year that the number, composition and revenues of some women-owned businesses were compiled for the first time.
Jock degree would end myth
The typical woman-owned firm was small — usually fewer than five employees — and these firms represented only 4.6 per cent (402,025) of the 8.73 million firms in the United States.
Seventy-one per cent of the women-owned businesses were
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission found that even the federal government did not promote full participation by women entrepreneurs .
in retail trade and selected services. In these categories, annual receipts average less than $21,000.
Missing from the 1972 data were net earnings in the bottom line'—but obviously must have been very small.
Recognizing the special problems of women entrepreneurs, President Jimmy Carter recently set up an interagency task force on women business owners. Led by the Commerce Department, it is charged with recording thatitions that place women business owners at a competitive disadvantage.
In 1975, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission found that even the federal government did not pay more than $200 million for women entrepreneurs in the award of federal procurement dollars. Women-owned and minority-owned business organizations accounted for per cent of the more than $130
WOMEN'S PROBLEMS included those faced by any small-businessman: lack of capital, lack of management and technical assistance and lack of marketing and procurement opportunities. But these problems often are avoided by traditional attitudes that prejudice women business owners' chances of success in a male-oriented 'business world'.
The task force, representing federal departments and agencies with a special interest in business and procurement practices, will conduct data on women business owners and identify obstacles that discourage women from entering business. Evidence of discrimination, including federal practices, will be reviewed.
billion then being spent annually by the government.
The report to the President also will propose changes in our business and design designed to encourage entrepreneurship among women and to enhance the government ability to assist business women.
Early in 1978, the Census Bureau will sponsor a conference on statistical needs relating to women, including business women. In addition, the feasibility of a 1977 census report on women-owned business is being studied.
IN THE MEANTIME, the Commerce Department is taking specific remedial steps.
The department also is making special efforts to include women owners and managers in the briefings on domestic and international business matters. And a "women's perspective" statement of the management's procurement conferences that are held
out throughout the country to explain how to do business with the government.
But statistics, loans,
technical and management
assistance and psychological
encourage will not produce
black ink on the bottom line.
Women need to be better prepared for business ownership.
**wonout business training,**
women are at a disadvantage.
When one adds to this short-
coming the traditional sex
barriers, the small numbers of
women in business are not
surprising. What we need
in attitude and a concerted
effort from all quarters
if we are to achieve a better
balance.
THE NUMBER OF women seeking business degress still is small. Many are reluctant to set such educational goals; many others are turned away by secondary-school counselors still focused on "traditional" roles for women.
Juanita Kreps is Secretary of Commerce.
Lynn Kirkman Editorial Writer
written that the student athlete must have a 'real' degree. After all, the professional leagues can't take all the pressures and those who can't make it might have a career to fall back on.
It's too bad somebody doesn't write that into the legends for the law student who doesn't get the job he wants with the prestigious law firm, for the education major who isn't offered a teaching post at an Ivy League college, for the med student who is not expected to be dreamed of — even for the journalist student who's still waiting for a call from Ben Bradlee.
OTHER STUDENTS take their chances in the career
game. Their education are never financed for efforts in one area while they study in another. They graduate the university to quit kidding around and make honest men and women of our student athletics by creating a new interest in Science of In Sports (BSA).
A candidate for the BSA degree would complete two years in Liberal Arts before applying for admittance to the School of Athletics. Entrance requirements would be based on the applicant's demonstrated ability in sports, his career plans and the interest he has shown. He should possess certain degrees of skill and aptitude and present references attesting to his determination to succeed in the pursuit of his goal.
to provide a solid foundation for entrance into the professional world. Subjects for study might include the history of sport, business classes geared toward teaching him how to work with agents and set up tax shelters, diction and grammar courses to help him in talking with reporters and making news through television broadcasts. Maybe he would even be a course or two in ethics — heavy stuff like "Is winning everything?" and "How to lose gracefully."
AFTER ENTERING the School of Athletics, the student would complete a core curriculum of courses designed
enrolled in practicums would make up the various teams and participate in intercollegial competition against other teams. They could be selected for an internship or a professional semester that would permit them time at a pro training camp or as boys. They could get a look at that it is like out there in real life.
Proposals like this may seem cold and cruel to people who think that athletes are a cut or two above their fellow students. The myth of the student athlete be just too hard to part with.
The student then would select a sequence, a group of courses within the school that would give him mastery of the sport he had beaded to pursue. These skills should also be the rules of the game as well as special skills courses to help him perfect his playing.
Upon graduation, the holder of a BSA would prepare a resume, write letters and knock him out. He'd like his fellow athletes. There'd be no guarantees, no promises of a second career if his dream didn't pan out. He'd be out there with chances with everybody else.
Reality is often hard to take.
In addition to this, the student would also enroll in practicum, a course that would allow him to practice in a real job. The sport of his choice. Students
Numbers-worship abuses people
KANSAN
To the editor:
There is no denying the precision of numbers and of number work done right. What is conveniently (notice the understerness pointing to a conspiracy) forgotten is that such
Letters
It is not about houses of gambling that I write this, although a racket is indeed involved. Nor is it about business concerns that enshroud (kinky) a program that employs sampling in a mist of health care, although a lot of massaging goes on. This is about our latest form of holy writ; the computer printout (holey write if I is in the form of IB cards, if I couldn't help but add). Not really the writ per se with an IBM mouse, but on devouring crooks of it and favoring the rest of us with the fruits of their labor.
precision is intrinsic. It is the number work which is precise but not at all necessarily the objects that the numbers presume to quantify. Lady raccoon gets pregnant then goes into the oven and cooks a cake, which, though they do come out of the oven, are not cakes. The numbers come out of the computer. They are, with a grain of salt, consistent. But they are more kin to the person who put them there in the first place. The axiom of choice (example constitutes an under-the-belt hit for it hints at the fact that mathematics itself, even
though it is our closest step we pure truth isn't all that pure after all.)
People forget that, in describing real life phenomena, someone has to define and measure these things. Then someone has to prove the validity analysis. And then, and then someone has to use the results to recommend action. There is a long and dangerous road between beginning and end. If you make a mistake about an unmanned aircraft, you can get a couple of dollars. How can you reverse your decision when people's lives are involved?
Story: Didi was a clever
Disco monotony massacres art
Disco music is thriving.
Dance instructors, deejays,
bars and music-related
businesses all are picking the
fruit from the disco tree. In
short, disco is money.
From a social standpoint, disco has resuscitated a pastime many thought died in the swing era — dancing. That in itself is a credit to those who gave birth to the trend.
On a musical level, however,
disco is trashy. It has caused
demonstrations of disruption
uniformity in the music and
musicians who promote it. For
that reason, I can wait to see it
on the airwaves and into obscurity.
Perhaps it's the nature of the music itself that breeds rottenness. The emphasis of disco on the beat. It has to conform to the dance style. Maybe that's why the tempo never change. And because the beat is the same for all such minor formalities as melody, structure and originality.
ITS HARD TO find a live musician who doesn't resent playing second guitar to a band and is not willing to chords and one set of get-down lyrics 13 times. There is no attempt to be original, constructive, or be a musician. Music is an art, and to crank out such rigidity
Rick Tbaemert Editorial Writer
uniform songs as commercial cheesecake is a travesty of that art.
Even more disturbing is that the disco scene has been flooded with medico-recording musicians. With the exception of some experienced disco groups Average White Band, Average Wine Band and Earth, Wind and Fire, most disco players don't cut it. They don't have to. The music industry has provided a beat-based music — simple and repetitive doesn't need to be appertise, disco is a haven for stagnant musicians. Wealthy, but nevertheless stagnant.
Such laziness is reflected in some of today's disco hits. A prime example is the group that plays another brother to write its own songs.
THE RHYTHM HERITAGE,
a mish-mash of studio
musicians, has capitalized on
redoing movie and TV scores,
spicing up the tapes and
sweetening their music.
Pete Nichols, choreography, Disco reattres from "Baretta",
"Rocky", "Three Days of the Condor", "S.W.A.T.", "Young Frankenstein" and "Lipsick"
all have appeared on recent Heritage albums. Meco has added his two cents worth with a disco version of "Star Wars."
Even less original are those that steal oldies but goodies and transform them into newbits but badies. The Wing and a Prayer Band, for example, are credited on its album as doing "Popeye the Sailor Man," "Rhapsope In Blue" and "Blaise," among other cludes. "Zip-A-Dee-Do-Da," "Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho" and "When You Wish Up a Star." Such a song list is sain against the history of music. Dragging musicians from one niche in time, crucifying it musically and taking money for it aren't the actions of musicians, but decadent song rapers who wear viva shirt cymbals would be a fitting punishment.
GRANTED, REDOING songs has been around since music itself. But it's usually practiced out of admiration for the song. The same can't be said of disc versions of "The William Tull Overture," "Baby Girl" and "A Fifth of Boutownth." Bucks, not admiration, are the only motive behind such musical massacr.
Disco may have gotten people dancing on their feet again, but it has been a slow walt backward for musicians.
sincere musicians trying to express themselves through competent playing and composing originality are shooting up the charts. They're also deaf listeners buy disco'bums containing sounds, not music.
Perhaps when the monotony of disco begins croding on people, it will fade, and the creative art will resurface. The competency of jazz musicians, the soul of rhythm and blues musicians, the cowpoking fun of rock roll, the rhythm of funk, all will take a place alongside disc, not behind it. Then listeners won't have the wool pulled over their clothing, commercially, contrived fad.
T
Until that time, I'll choose music not in such an underserving nightlight. I'll choose classical artists, not rip-off artists.
magician with fame that reached far and wide. All the way up to the pharaoh's court, to which Didi was summoned, Didi, it was said, could put back a head and a body together and restart life. Bring forth a condemnation from God, and let that head and let Didi show his magic. "A goose would show, your majesty," said the artist. "No magic is good enough to be tried on people."
Fact of life: "Enlightened" social scientists think a lot of their computer printouts.
Sporting their scrolls they appear in committee hearings with recommendations based on "scientific" knowledge. Haven't they the numbers to prove it? In Italy and Egypt, for instance, people died in the street because of the World Bank and the International Monetary Commissionvised the respective governments about how to straighten the path of the economy.
Fact of life: A Ph.D. dissertation at one of the better Big Eight universities. Student felt he should sex up thesis. Use computers. Run a correlation. Variables: violence and health care. Correlation negative. Must explain how you lose trust, you proclaim their misery, they hate you for it. Wham. Next Junta. Real reason: sign error. (More facts of life available upon request.)
All manner of Skinnerian behavior modifiers are set loose upon us. They know what people are like. They have the numbers to prove it. They wear ties and dress up, but they are extremely certain of their truth. No. Clods ought not be allowed to use computers. Only artists should. But then, nobody would let them. Because they don't have enough com-munication of the purpose. They don't believe.
Mohamed El-Hodiri Professor of economics