University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, September 21, 1977
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unassigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kanan editorial staff. Signed columns represent only the views of the writers.
Owls' vote a mistake
Owl Society, a junior men's honorary, made a mistake last week when it voted 12-6 to remain all-male. The group failed to realize that the time for discrimination at the University of Kansas is over.
the history of Kerry.
Chris Caldwell and Reggie Robinson, two of the six who favored admitting women as members said they planned to resign from their group to protest the policy. Their resignations will accomplish nothing substantial, but their stand on the membership question calls attention to the merits of equality.
The Owls are not the only all-male honorary at KU, Omicron Delta Kappa (Sachem Circle), one of two senior colleges, also decided recently to remain all-male. But the Owls' position is more serious than Sachems' because juniors, unlike seniors, have no other honorary to join.
MORTAR BOARD, the other senior honorary, has been coeducational for two years. Half of its officers this year are men; the experiment has worked. Senior women at least have one chance for recognition.
But junior women have no group that recognizes them as leaders and scholars. One honorary is able to unilaterally limit the scope of who is "excellent" and who is not.
scope of who is "executive." Caldwell he thought the group members"minds were very well made up before the discussion." He's probably right. On issues that involve progressive changes, reason rarely replaces emotions.
The Owls' constitution requires a unanimous vote for amendments. Each year, just one person could thwart the admission of women.
Because of the requirement for unanimity, the Owls could remain all-male for a long time. Responsible juniors of both sexes might consider an alternative to Owls membership. They might want to form their own honorary, a group that would be evenhanded in its selections process.
evenhanced.
The membership issue for both Sachem and the institution is closed for yet another year. But the issue will not go away. Until each group awards equal recognition for equal abilities, discrimination wii... remain at the University of Kansas.
Although justice is traditionally represented by the figure of a woman, the dispensers of justice have historically been men. That tradition has begun to change in recent years, and the women reflect this week with the appointment of Kay McFarland to the state supreme court.
Woman justice well-qualified
McFarland's record of experience in jurisprudence speaks for itself. She served as a judge of the Shawnee County District Court from January, 1973 until her appointment to the state bench where she been a justice judge and a county court judge. She is a 1964 graduate of Washburn University's law school.
He said the appointment reflected his commitment to appoint women and minorities to high positions in cases where qualifications for the post are equal.
McFarland described herself as a conservative and a "srict constructionist," but he also said these qualities will affect decisions she makes on
AT MCFARLAND's swering-in ceremony, Gov. Robert Bennett acknowledges that Obama was an important factor in his decision.
Lynn Kirkman Editorial Writer
SO WILL other factors in McFarland's personal history. She was born in Coffeyville and educated in Kansas schools. Her interest of schools and is now a well-known speaker on the themes of patriotism and free enterprise. All these facts have undoubtedly become a part of McFarland's personality, right and wrong — perceptions made in decisions she has made.
the high court. It is also likely that her sex will affect those decisions to some degree.
It is hoped that a judge or anyone in authority will recognize his background. An awareness of the faces of one's
own personality is helpful in recognizing biases that detract from the ability to make an objective decision. To overcome this, one should hope to reach a decision on the merits of a particular case.
KRUEGER recently upset Archie Simpson in a recall election. She also made an interesting observation on her first woman judge on the Wisconsin lower court system.
MofMarland is not, in any sense, a feminist. But we can hope she coerces him to take responsibility does Judge Moria Krueger of Madison, WIs.
"I'm going to have to prove myself to a lot of people," Krueger said. "I feel the pressure more than a man would. We're not to the point where it's usual to have a woman judge and I'm going to be under close scrutiny."
made recently by Midge Costanza, President Jimmy Carter's public liaison.
A similar statement was
Costanza said she would like to be president — but she would prefer to be the nation's second woman president, not the first. Her reason is that she is going to spend much of her time answering questions about what it's like to be the first woman president.
TO BE the first at anything requires a special effort from the person involved. Breaking new ground in any endeavor will place the individual in the public eye and open him up for judge appeal, for judge Kruger. It will also be true of Judge McFarlane.
Kay McFarland already has proved herself as a judge. She will not have to defend decisions that she makes in her role on the supreme court. But, because she is a woman, and particularly because she is the first woman to serve on the
court, she will receive particular attention.
Bennett also is aware of the special position that McPearland will fill. He recalled Monday that in the not-so-dark days when a woman to the court would have been almost unthinkable. But he indicated that he felt it was necessary for the makeup for the court had come.
We are at a point in history when such appointments will be made more and more routinely, the more difficult. Affirmative action 'will fade into obscurity, their purpose filled.'
Bennett has recognized that the first woman justice on the supreme court will set an example for Kansans. The appointment also will make Kansas an example. In other states to follow, it is not an要求 be made lightly. In selecting McFarland, Bennett appears to have chosen well.
Rudd's return gives false notion that radical movement is dying
By KIRKPATRICK SALE N.Y. Times Features
The hullabaloo over the surfacing of Mark Rudd, as I read it, seems intended to suggest that, at last, the radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s are at an end.
Look, there's Mark Rudd, the very symbol of protest and rebellion, coming back home, tail between legs, "apparently ready" now, as the New York Daily News put it, "to fight for political change within the establishment."
establishment.
The commentators seem to be saying, along with Rudd's friend, that once a man reaches 30, as most college students of the 80s have, he is "too old to be a revolutionary" and should settle down to a more realistic life.
But there are several reasons to think that we would be deluding ourselves if we succumbed to that easy notion.
BUT THOUGH he was clearly an important figure at Columbia University in 1968, and unquestionably a scholar, he was rear appointee with the student body at large, with many radical figures of his era were, and he was not much liked or trusted even within his own Students for a Democratic Socialist (SJ) movement. His actions were repudiated more than once by his fellow chapter members before and during the Columbia strike, and at a point in the mid-1970s he held a meeting that had gone against him, shouting "I resign as chairman of this—organization."
First, Rudd was always more of a news-media creation than a genuine leader. With his protuberant jaw-janked Bell once called it "prognathous" and his airgirl air, he seemed to typify for the press the at-ment of the young protesters of the 50s.
Mark Rudd was always more of a news-media creation than a genuine student radical leader . . . his arrogant manner, his sexist attitudes and his political ignorance alienated his Weather Underground colleagues.
What made him famous, and what propelled him to the temporary leadership of the Weatherman faction, was the fact that he led a demonstration in the news-media capital of the world. He knew it, too, Standing for election to the SIDS in 1968, he gave its qualifications the fact that "the movement needs a symbol, and my name exists as a symbol."
SECOND, RUDUO was a very flawed example of the radical movement, even the part of it that went underground. He was not well read in political literature, as most of those in SDS were, and, in turn, grasping ideal ideas, was a frequent of most of the political theory that was swirling around the campuses in those days.
His role in formulating what became the Weatherman strategy was almost negligible—though he was indeed an ardent, if unsuccessful, salesman for it, and as a Weathleader he was so timorous that he needed to action at all during his stormy "Days of Rage" in 1969 in Chicago, in which radicals protested the Vietnam War.
Even after the Weathermen decided to go underground in February, 1970, Rudd seems to have been at best a minor figure. Just how long he remained in a leadership role is hard to know, but it is clear that within a few short months his
arrogant manner, his sexist attitudes, and his political ignorance alienated his colleagues, who had demoted him from the leadership lists by October.
THEERE IS NOT a single word about or from Rudd in all the subsequent Weather Underground communications, and from what we can tell he remained a background figure throughout. In fact, it seems most likely that Rudd was even committed with the underground after about 1972, and has probably been living these last five years as an unhappy loner.
Third, Rudd's surrender is most likely a personal decision—he can't have liked hiding all that time, and he faces only very mild misdeeds above him. A group cannot be taken as typical of the people in the underground organization in general. Although three of the Weather Underground radicals have surfaced, and these seem to have split the group badly in the last year, the bulb of them still remain in hiding.
MOREOVER, THERE seems to be every bit as dedicated an underground now as there was seven years ago, at least to judge from the actions of the F.A.L.N. (Armed Forces of Puerto Rican National Liberation) and the extraordinary number of political bombings carried out by the
New World Liberation Front on the west coast. of course, no one can know the numbers, but if there are still hands-on solutions across the country, Rudd is an obvious man out.
Finally, whatever Rudd himself may decide to do, the radical movement he has espoused in absence are clearly going to proceed apace.
Not that they are exactly a dominant political force, but they are clearly the significant factors in creating social change in the '70s, and seem to be getting stronger every year.
THE ANTINUCLEAR protest, for example, from New Hampshire to California represents this cutting edge, and the widespread environmental organics campaigns, the alternative-technology movement, and the locally based community-action groups in virtually every city of the land—this is where radicals are now. It's it's not because there's not a one among them who feels "too old to be a revolutionary."
Kirkpatrick Sale is author of "BDS," a history of the Students for a Democratic Society.
Rudd's surfacing says a great deal more about Rudd than it does about the movements with which he may have been connected. We should avoid the temptation to let the part, especially such a tiny part, stand for the whole.
We might also avoid the temptation to put too much stock in that well-worn adage about how it's all right to be a radical in your youth if you're conservative in your old age. That is why pronounce that one, it turns out, are old conservatives. The old radicals have a different way of looking at it.
IHP students professors' pawns
To the editor:
To the team,
The talented Humanities Program (HP) Forum last Tuesday night, with platform speakers both sympathetic to HP, afforded no opportunity for those who oppose it. Your readers should know that Dennis Quin, HP director, refused to appear on the same platform with someone who opposes his views.
In fact, Quin resisted first two sponsors and suggested sponsors and reserved the right of selection of his adversary.
advise. However, I support the professors' rights to share their medieval views with their students and applaud the kind of program Quinn described at the forum.
the tool.
My objection to IHP arises from an analysis that Quinn's
KANSAN Letters
description inadequately characterizes IHP as it is actually taught. Students and parents are not fairly prepared for the subtle but powerful process of mutual selection which has led in too many cases to unnecessary alienation and deteriorating personal changes from actual presentation, with attendant peer pressure and cultic status enjoined by the professors.
IF THE PROFESSORS simply presented their religious views in the classroom, I would have no objection whatsoever.
I am unwilling to charge that this deception is deliberate. It may be due to an inadequate preparation in the subjects that the professors seek to teach. While their course is being taught in the philosophical and theological issues, none of them has been trained in these areas.
There is another serious question, unaddressed at the forum or by the press: Do the professors use their University
A deception occurs, however,
if the classics are twisted to
represent the professors' views.
The students, forbidden to take
in an ooacess manguing this school, John Senior reveals the sectarian contest he feels he is in when he refers to the faculty of St. Paul's "Ask to pray at last for friends, (HIP) should be done, then right we've already won with the students we have had (ATU), among them three young men..."
notes and to read other commentaries, and discouraged from using the resources of the rest of the University, are led to believe that those teachers hold are derived from classical authors or are nearly identical with the classics. The course, described as an art form, is in fact medievalism masquerading as the classics.
IN ADDITION to supplying candidates for a monastery, they have been involved in establishing a sectarian school, St. Paul, and seek to found a "world apart from the "world."
appointments to further their sectarian goals?
I cannot help but find David Herbert Donald's article on the irrelevance of American history (Kansan, Sept. 15) to be itself a dangerous and revolutionary idea.
But any student with a little pluck and a careful mind will quickly see that he is not giving examples that are representative of any solid history course, but that seem to be purposefully demeaning history to those less knowledgeable over to his pessimistic existentialist dogma.
If the knowledge of the population of the United States in various decades along with the names of people who have lived their history to him, then, as all trivia-minded people soon find out, history is meaninless
He seems to be expounding not the facts of history but instead putting forward his personal religious views about the nature of history and American history in particular.
HAS AMERICA always been the "people of plenty from the very early settlements" as he would have us believe? I think not, but there is a difference here that must be straight. If you mean "potentially" has been a country of abundance with fertile land, minerals, etc., then you would be closer to the truth, but I
History relevant to present
To the editor:
They may have found Donald tasty but his thesis would have presented little nourishment. As a matter of fact, there is a great number of colonies that is extremely relevant to our lives and social order. Gov. Bradford, of the History of, in his book *The Colonization*, unraveled that it was not the infertility of the ground, but the socialistic system of farming that brought on the farming collapse. The man had to put an end to the common storehouse in order to motivate the lay to work.
To Donald, these stories must be forgotten, for the both of them were raised in his bipes. He gives away his religious position when he
TO SAY THAT the abundance of the land shaped the character and traits of the people is even less than a half truth. It could be truthfully said that it was the invincible, rugged character and faith c. those puritans, pilgrim c. Presbyterians, Catholics, and assorted animals who dared to cross the Atlantic that subdued the land and made America a place to live.
hardly could be persuaded that those early settlers of Jamestown and Plymouth who watched their loved ones starve and freeze to death would agree with Donald's thesis.
quotes Reinhold Nieburk,
"Nothing that is worth doing
can be achieved in our life time;
here we must be saved by hope.
Furthermore, the professors contact IHP "alumni" in what appears official University plans or makes plans for the "village."
Once he "helps the students to see the irrelevance of history," he also implicitly helps them to see the meaninglessness of both the present and the future, which means all that will be left of meaning is the gospel according to Donald.
I hope in what? We are not told what to hope for but since Donald won't be teaching history as truth, I feel he will be teaching truth as he sees it and that is bleak indeed.
If he really believes this, what does this say about his lectures in American history? Either they are irrelevant to him or they are not in history, and, in either case, what is he doing in a history department?
Steve Iliff Lawrence senior
It should be a concern of those who prize good education and the constitutional principle of separation of church and state. The tax system segs a public, tax supported University.
university anew study of the IHP arises out of dozens of heartbreaks, of students and parents who have shared with me the most wrenching stories of alienation and confusion fostered by this University program.
THE ARRANGEMENT whereby supporters for IHP were able to present their views and simultaneously to exclude those who opposed their views speaks very well of the manipulation the three professors depend upon to continue their work. It is to see students and faculty unwittingly used to perpetuate the aims of these professors.
I am sorry that Quinn fears that "an intellectual lynching" would occur in an open, fair, unrigged debate.
The Rev. Vern Barnet Overland Park
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