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Thursday, September 15, 1977
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Ununsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansas editorial staff. Signed columns represent only the views of the writers.
KU lobby commended
The Student Senate should be congratulated for recently forming a student lobbying group at the University of Kansas. The group, Concerned Students for Higher Education (CSHE), will be open to students who are interested in writing legislators about issues and the University's group's impact remains important but its existence is a reasonable alternative to KU membership in the Associated Students of Kansas (ASK).
ASK comprises students from Washburn University and all Kansas Regents colleges and universities except KU. For four years, ASK has whined, wheeled and worn itself out in unsuccessful attempts to get KU to join. ASK's annual membership inducements invariably include a significant about the group's supposed significant track record on loan to inviting KU campus positions to a meeting of ASK's assembly and sending ASK's executive director to Lawrence for testimony before a Senate committee.
IT IS AN annual tradition that, when the induces fail, the executive director lamentes about how KU is dead wood when it comes to lobbying. Just last week, Deb Harrison, this year's executive director, said she was surprised that KU asked us to ASK. It has really gotten a free ride considering the issues we've lobbed for that have benefited KU."
that have benefited KU. In the first place, a Student Senate survey of state legislators shows that ASK is not as effective in Topeka as it appears and it is about two-thirds of the legislature responded to the survey, and only 17 per cent of the 106 respondents said they thought ASK had affected their vote on legislation. Only 26 per cent said they would advise the KU Senate to join ASK. Only 6 per cent thought student activity fees should be used to finance lobbying.
Harrison, asked Tuesday to comment on the survey, said "the survey had a built-in bias. It had a built-in fallacy. No legislator in the world is going to say his vote was affected by a lobby."
receded by a body.
PERHAPS. BUT the survey certainly isn't a glowing endorsement of a group that asserts it has been influential on issues such as landlord-tenant legislation, faculty salary increases and a student loan program.
More importantly, only a KU group can lobby most effectively for issues of direct concern to KU students. Harrison said CSHE is "simply to benefit the campus and administration, not necessarily the students. It's for buildings."
Maybe Harrison knows something the Senate doesn't. CSHE's objectives for lobbying during the next legislative session will focus on getting fee waivers for graduate students, state funding for women's athletics at the University and improved conditions — including longer hours — at Watson Library. Each of these issues directly relates to KU; each directly relates to students.
Steve Leben, student body president, used an appropriate analogy to refute Harrison's "free ride" allegation. Leben said Tuesday, "If Bob Dole introduced food-stamp legislation for the benefit of all, is that any reason to vote for a Ford-Dole ticket?"
reason to vote for a Fourth Amendment ASK CAN endorse landlord-tenant legislation or marijuana bills all it wants, but those are side issues to students. SHE's issues are not only relevant, they also avoid the pitfall of throwing a disparate group of universities into a single lobbying melting pot.
pot.
The result of such a melting pot is either watered-down lobbying that reflects too many compromises or lobbying that runs counter to the best interests of an individual university on a given piece of legislation.
As Leben said, "It's our choice (not to join ASK). They didn't form the organization to benefit KU, they formed it to benefit its members."
Even if the University were to reap actual benefits from ASK membership, joining the group would be $9,500 more expensive than CSHE will be. ASK wants $10,000 from KU students, according to figures from both Harrison and student senators, and the cost per student would average 25 cents a semester.
In comparison, CSHE stands out as a financial bargain. Leben and Ralph Munyan, student body vice president, predict the no-mortgage plan will be successful. Munyan said he thought as many as 500 students would be involved in the letter-writing campaign.
KU WOULD have to fork over $10,000 to join ASK. It would receive just one vote on the group's executive board, which dominates the legislative assembly. The board, for example, prepares and submits agendas for the general assembly's approval.
More than one-fourth of ASK's budget goes to pay Harrison's salary. CSHE has no such overhead. About 60 per cent of ASK's entire budget, $15,503 this year, consists of salaries. Again, CSHE has no such overhead.
Finally, the entire concept of having an ASK executive director lobby full-time in Topeka is open to question. The group picks a new director each year. Lobbyists need time to make contracts and time to acquire effective techniques. No student lobby can realistically surmount the obstacle of inexperience; every student lobby can realistically write effective, perhaps even influential letters.
The organizational structure of CSHE, now a subcommittee of the Senate Committee, is being hammered out. A report from the subcommittee's 15 members will be done within a week, and then the group will face the task of establishing itself as a force in state politics. The strength of CSHE is of course unknown, but it certainly will guard the interests of KU students better than the Associated Students of Kansas can.
Cuban embassy frozen in time
As of last week, the United States has a man in Havana — for the first time in 16 years.
The reopening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba took place quietly and did not receive much attention from the press. With the Born, the Burkholder Canal treaty, the events that took place in Cuba did not even make page one in most American newspapers.
When President Eisenhower broke off U.S. diplomatic relation on Jan. 3, the act was the Eisenhower action was the
The world has changed.
result of Cuban leader Fidel Castro's announcement that he was embracing the Communist philosophy.
Castro and his "26th of July" forces had overthrown the regime of the dictator Batista. Castro had enjoyed the support of many Americans in his efforts. He was a popular leader who had visited the United States and even had appeared
on the Ed Sullivan television show.
BUT CASTRO'S policies in Cuba eventually disturbed and angered many of those who had earlier supported him. The Cuban government executed dissidents and ousted moderates from its ranks. Banks and industries in Cuba, which housed money and property owned by U.S. citizens, were nationalized under the Cuban government's control.
Anti-American riots in the Havana area became common, and the presence of U.S. forces
at Guantanamo did not help the situation.
So it was inevitable Eisenhower would take the step of severing diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba. The embassy staff left Havana in early January 1961 and the building stood empty for 16 years.
TIME STOPPED at the embassy during the Eisenhower administration. Eisenhower's official portrait
had remained stored in the basement for 18 years. No portrait of John Kennedy, who followed Eisenhower. The last of his peers ever hung there, nor did portraits of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon or Gerald Ford. He had been followed by Jim Carter.
The workmen found other reminders of historical change. They discovered the head of a bronze eagle that had been part of a memorial to U.S. victims of the sinking of the ship RMS Titanic. The rest of the eagle has been ripped apart by demonstrators during a riot.
There was also a 49-star flag. But there were more mundane reminders of the past among the dust and cobwebs in the embassy. In the snack bar was a 20-year-old soft drink dispenser that bore the sign: "Coca-Cola in bottles, 5 cents."
AMERICANS still enjoyed nickel soft drinks in 1901. That intrepid treat disappeared in 1962 when President Kennedy imposed an embargo on U.S. imports of Cuban sugar.
sixteen years is a short time in history. But for those who reckon the passing of time by events, 16 years is the Bay of Pigs, the Beaches, on the moon landings, the twist, art, Watergate, Patty Hearst, art, Watergate, Woodstock and Vietnam.
Vietnam.
The world has changed. And we have changed with it.
So it is best to start with the reopening of the U.S. embassy in Havana took place quietly. The relics of the past are being crated up to be shipped to the U.S. Archives.
The United States and Cuba are dusting off the cowbwebs. It is hope that they will put the cowbwebs to use, too, and begin to live in 1977.
Lessons of U.S. past dangerous
After all, the world has changed.
By DAVID HERBERT
V. Times Features
If I teach my students what I believe to be the truth, I can only share with them my sense of the irrelevance of history and of the bleakness of the new era we are entering.
N.Y. Times Features
CAMBRIDGE, Mass—College classes have begun again, and I am once more preparing new lectures on American history when I teachers this is always a time for self-scrutiny and self-doubt, but this fall, as I begin my fourth decade of college teaching, I am even more troubled than usual in deciding what I ought to do in the classroom.
Surely my function is not to make certain that the several hundred undergraduates enrolled in my courses absorb additional knowledge in their history. Of course a great many of my students are woofty-ily ignorant of the past. If asked to estimate the population of the United States in any decade since the 1790s, most would be off by at least a percent. Few. Bismuthium *in* swab between William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison. Only a handful can unscramble the alphabetic names of the major New Deal agencies. But these deficiencies—like many similar
ones reported in last year's New York Times survey of college students' knowledge of America—do not慌常 trouble me.
Van-addiction stirred by restless minds
"It's junk," about people like me, who see the current van craze as the most incumbent activist bobbies to capture Americans in years.
1 followers of the van movement have taken a practical vehicle for laborers and persons who move equipment hither and yon and transformed it into a gaudy box, impractical for anything more than a conversation piece.
Those who call "vanning" the ideal way to travel are fooling themselves. Vans are, in general, gas eaters, anemic in proper ventilation, dingy and clumsy as a vehicle.
Rick Tbaemert Editorial Writer
MOST VAN paint jobs are a resurgence of pop, or pop art, as is the case here. Bright colors and patterns are for hippies, billboards and cheap art are reappearing on the sides of vans. Perhaps the painted scenarios are graphic illustrations of the van fantasies, so, shallow mind lurks behind the wheel.
Vanana" and "Vandal" often appear on the vehicles.
Mirrors, beds and other additions which hint at sex are an indication that too many people
DESPITE THE fact that investing in vans for recreational reasons is an investment in impracticality, some Americans spend as much as $30,000 for vans. Some common decorations include stained glass, wine racks, televisions, cruelty velvet upholstery and chandeliers. Such ornaments seem silly when the initial purpose of an automobile is to get from town to city. A rearview mirror never will be a home. Why decorate it as such?
side.
One can only hope that the days when having a hot car was associated with being cool are gone. People who drive bombs infested with rattles and ratpity-bams might agree there's more to life than grease guns and wheels.
took Sammy Johns 'hit "chev"
took "seriously, believing an
obvious van can help them
pick up a hot bird by the road.
AND, WHAT can be said of girls impressed with the same kind of motor-head madness permeated the faintest! Not much.
Perhaps the worst part of the van craze is that it aggravates a problem—it already afflicts a lot of people. Vans are a part of the "get
BESIDES BEING a traveling travesty, the van craze is also an inepht bobby for idle hands. Freudian fans can describe souping into a pair of building model cars. At any rate, both models and sans serve the same purpose: They're good for a few comical situations and aren't very useful, especially when you're considered.
S A STUDENT WHO really needs to know such facts can find them more readily, and I fear more accurately. In Richard B. Morris' encyclopedic American edition on in my lectures. And, hard as it is for me to admit, most students probably don't need to know the answers. It is entirely possible to lead a happy and successful life without knowing too much about the theories being certain whether Theodore Rosevelt preceded Franklin Roosevelt.
away from it all” philosophy as BCerns, or banners and burns. To cheerfully proclaim, “keep on truckin’ or keep on vannin’” is nothing more than traveling gibberish for people who feel like escaping but don't really have anywhere to go.
a free-wheelin', hot-dogin'
neat guy. Fixing up a van seems
little more than the product of
someone who has nothing better
to do, or who wants to be,
and that vaniates are nobodies. They're the type of people who think ceramic-
donkeys enhance a front lawn.
Vans are travesties. They are a mask in which to put on airs of
Despite their drawbacks, vans are booming in popularity. With more than 25 magazines pushing van PR and B-grade movies declaring the van no longer safe, it's not likely to halt soon.
In the meantime, wise auto hunters will get something more practical and economical. A Volkswagen, perhaps. At least Volkswagens deserve their hype.
Nor is it my classroom duty to train a future generation of historians. Most of my undergraduates already have other careers in mind. Since the job prospects for historians are somewhat bleaker than those for new students, we need students who think of making history their profession should be encouraged to look elsewhere. Since my students have no professional interest in the discipline of history, it is not important for me to explain to them how I feel about Congressional Record as a source or to introduce them to the mysteries of the manuscriptensus returns. Nor do I need to
Even more elaborate are the outer skins of vans that have been customized. Paint jobs depicting Hawaiian scenery, rugged mountains and erotic schick are not uncommon. Names like "Chihuahua"
Gun control marked by pros and cons
There just does not seem to be enough to argue about lately, other than Bert Lance or the Panama Canal, so now we write about what will surely raise the liberal wrath.
It seems obvious that fewer violent crimes would be committed if guns were banned. Crimes would be slightly more difficult to commit. The question is, would there be a
There are two sides to the issue. That is true of all issues, but it is also true that few people will admit it. Particularly in gun control, both sides can be evil but in the opposition.
Our context.
The issue is not as clear as the proverbial preacher's feelings about sin. (He was against it.)
Gun control.
Ross McIlvain
Editorial Writer
significant decrease? Antifirearms proponents like to paint this question black and white, but it is not that simple.
MEN AND WOMEN killed each other quite efficiently and profusely long before firearms were invented. If firearms were used, a state of vigilance, violence society, people would simply use other weapons.
If a person wants to do other humans harm, there is little society can do to stop him. Weapons of any sort are actually unnecessary for those bent on harming. Our fragile
envelopes of flesh are easily pierced by bare knuckles.
Another reason that outlawing firearms will cut down violent crimes by only a very small amount is the differ- ence in movement. In variably, things go on that are not supposed to be.
NO ONE SHOULD be more aware of how easy it is to buy contraband goods than someone who calls a friend, or a friend by calling a friend, or a friend it is fairly easy to get pot from Mexico, cocaine from South America or opium from Canada, about whatever a person wants.
Guns would not even have to be imported; they could be sold anywhere. Prohibition of firearms would be just about as
effective as was prohibition of alcohol.
Another asinine idea is the ban the bullet concept. No need, this theory says, to control guns if ammunition is controlled. As most low-budget hunters know, it is simple to oil your own.
Nonetheless, universal registration of firearms and lengthy waiting periods before purchase would be helpful in preventing and tracing violent crimes, while only causing a minor inconvenience to gun owners.
ANOTHER possibility is special legislation in cities having severe problems with guns and violent crimes. For example, anyone carrying a gun on the streets might be picked up for two or three days for questioning.
Limited gun control is unfortunately necessary, but extreme sanctions are not.
Such a license for police harassment is definitely undesirable. But big cities have strong problems, and strong solutions are needed. It is a matter of balancing the ill effects of violent acts against the ill effects of the curse. Inner cities need a harsher cure than do areas with fewer problems.
teach them much about the historiographical controversies that scholars discuss among themselves too much.
And the government cannot and should not have a monopoly on potential force. The last thing our society needs is one more power taken from the individuals and the government. The individual cannot trust Big Brother to take care of him.
IT REALLY does not matter whether these undergraduates know five major criticisms of Fredrick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis or whether his association with essayist Andrew Jackson with the name of Michael Paul Rogin.
What undergraduates want from their history teachers is an understanding of how the American past relates to the present and the future. But if I teach what I believe to be the truth, I can only share with them the relevance of history and of the bleakness of the new era we are entering.
Aut Kans
Fra recer
by the entra
For up to the present generation, Americans have been, as David M. Potter called us, "The People of America." In their settlements, our abundance of land, of agricultural and mineral wealth, of energy sources, shaped national identity, and we attribute that we have derived our most amable American traits, our individualism, our generosity, our incurable optimism, our self-efficacy, our extravagance, our careless self-confidence.
Ala
Nati
an a
facil
ABUNDANCE LED Americans to develop distinctive ways of coping with social problems. When the American farmer protested against exploitation by his laborer, the American laborer objected to the power of the capitalists, when the West complained about the dominance of the East, we were never required to consider any way of developing a society of American society. To all complaints that the slices of the American pie were unevenly distributed, we responded not by making pieces of the pie larger. Material abundance made it possible for everybody to receive more.
C
Now the age of abundance has ended. The people of plenty
have become the people of paucity. Our stores of oil and natural gas are rapidly running out and other natural resources will soon be exhausted. If we save what is left, we choke our economy; if we use it, we impoverish our posterity.
"Consequently, the 'lessons' taught by the American past are hotly debated and dangerous. We can no longer answer demands for equalizing the rewards of our society by cooking up a bigger
INSTEAD, AS our problems grow constantly larger, the chances of solving them drastically diminish. Unlike every previous American generation, we face impossible choices. If we have guns, we cannot have butter. If we reduce teachers' expenses, we increase inflation. If we hire women, we must fire men. If we give blacks preference in admission to colleges and professional schools, we exclude whites.
What, then, can a historian tell undergraduates that might help them in this new and unprecedented age? Perhaps my most useful function would be to disentire them from the spas of history, to help them see the irrelevance of the past, to assist in understanding what Lincoln meant in saying, "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present"
Perhaps, too, I can make it easier for some to face a troubled future by reminding them to what a limited extent humans control their own destiny.
As I begin my new set of lectures on American history, I will take my text from Reinhold Niebuhr. My favorite thing could be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope."
David Herbert Donald,
Charles Warren Professor of
American History at Harvard,
is author of a Pulitzer-Prize-
winning biography of the
abolitionist Charles Summer.
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