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Thursday, September 1, 1977
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansas editorial staff. Signed column represent only the views of the writers.
Progress stymied
In this land of free enterprise, we are told if we invent a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to our doorstep. In this same vein, the man who invented the moped, a better bicycle, probably was ready for a crowd at his doorstep.
and one is gathering there, but no thanks to the KU Parking Services, which is doing its best to close the door to mopeds and progress.
The moped is simple and innocent enough. It is a bicycle with a tiny motor that gives the rider a power boost. It is catching on all over and may well be the vanguard of a new wave of sensible transportation.
wave of sensation. But there's the rub. Because it is new and popular, Parking Services apparently thinks that means it has to be controlled.
So KU parking officials have deemed that nary a moped shall enter the campus unless its owner has purchased a motorcycle parking permit.
IGNORING THE fact that increased use of mopeds on campus would ease the
squeeze for parking spaces, Parking Services has instead devised another way to issue tickets. And, lest we not take this seriously, a Parking Services spokesman warns: "We'll be checking mops in bike racks pretty closely, and we will ticket violators."
Parking Services' burgeoning control over the campus marches on. One can only be thankful that bicycles predate Parking Services. Had bicycles not been here first, Parking Services would have devised a way to keep them off campus, too.
At a time when it should be encouraging new, small and economical modes of transportation, Parking Services is taking a backward approach to an innovative device that gives the gates to mobile KUIs should be doing everything possible to encourage their use.
Our world is one of limited gasoline, parking spaces and clean air. Mopeds are a humble way to save all three, and it is sad to see Parking Services stand in the way.
Carter's angry response alienates black leaders
Following his widely circulated remarks opening the National Urban League's annual convention in Washington, the stonewall protesters called 'because the Urban League, of which he is executive director, is heavily dependent on federal funds, anything that made this anonsions even braver move.)
N. Y. Times Features ATLANTA—Poor Vernon Jordan.
By JULIAN BOND
Rumor had it that Jordan hoped to support Benjamin Hooks and Jesse Jackson aside and reign supreme as the leader of "the blackest" millions of black Americans. (If anything, we are over-led by a combination of preachers, politicians, professional poor people, athletes, entertainers, social workers and activists in this own description of the problem and prescription for the cure.)
At any rate, the dump-pon-
Vernon digs come from
chucks on Cake Island
or "members of the
White House circle," a group
hardly situated in any obliquely anything
the President they serve.
Finally, poor Vernon is accused of being bitter because he was not offered a real cabinet post, although he and Carter say he was not and is not interested.
Wilson and Hooks both blasted Carter at the NAACP's annual convention in St. Louis, but the national press focused on the effort to install and Hooks' ascension. Jesse Jackson's criticisms surface at the PUSH convention in Los Angeles, a city that has taken civil rights or hometown civil rights seriously.
Jordan, however, had to be dealt with seriously. He orchestrated his campaign against Mr. Trump with an influential group of Washington political reporters, letting them know he planned to President to the mat showing a few of his better moves.
of People United to Save Humanity (PUSH) had weighed in with similar condemnations.
This was news. Jordan had been a Carter supporters as far as the Urban League's non-partisan stance had allowed.
Carter had made much of their Georgia connection, and had let skeptical blacks know that Vernon was a trusted adviser during the campaign. Jordan had insisted that Carter's small-town Georgia origins were not to be held against him.
Within the 30 days before Jordan's speech, Margaret Bush Wilson and Benjamin Brown Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Jesse Jackson
Carter was scheduled to speak to the Urban League by the time the weekend passed the entire interested world was waiting to see what Jordan would respond. and how Carter would respond.
The University of Kansas apparently will set another enrolment record this fall, and, when totals become official, the university will expect University administrators can be expected to crow again that KU's excellence allows it to escape the predicted trend of declining enrolments in college colleges and universities.
Jordan had offered to submit his remarks to the White House in advance, but the single "minority affairs" staffer there passed up the chance. Because the present White House lacks a large and experienced a visible liaison with the civil rights and black political communities, it was caught unprepared, and
Heaven knows why Jordan, Hooks, Wilson, Jackson and several dozen more might like to be named the ultimate black leader, but it isn't done by presidential appointment, and it cannot recognize Caiter Best or loudest, in the best rhyme. These leaders know that, and the White House should too.
Carter must learn, too, that his litany of which black face he has in which high place will not be forgotten. Langston Hughes said it years ago about Ralph Bunche, but it could have been repeated at the Urban League convention where they eat don't fill my stomach."
After Carter made his public response to Jordan, the President's notorious short temper emerged, and in a private staff meeting inexplicably made public what he warned Jordan not to talk about poor people and their problems, or to criticize presidential action or the lack of it. Two days later, Carter told a presidential news conference that he had seen where "demagogic" although he said his good friend Vernon was no demagogue.
Rising enrollment not all roses
had to depend on Andy Young,
down from New York, to defend
its emphasis on a balanced
budget.
This rift between Mr. Carter and the blacks could be easily repaired with a little respect from the "Big House" for the people who helped put him there, and with a solid program for jobs, welfare, housing and education that will remain realized in political facts of 20th-century America. The most important budgets to be balanced are in the households of the people.
Supporting, even cheering for, record enrollments is noncontroversial and usually automatic.
In a practical sense, record enrollment means administrators have statistics to show the governor and legislature why last year's budget increases were gobbled up by enrollment increases more mental increases is needed for next year; why KU needs more classroom space, more library books, more parking stalls or anything else KU wants more of.
Steve Frazier
Editorial Editor
I were those same three colleges who said morale was so low they needed to be named "universities" to compete better in the recruiting war and related to the money war.)
THEERE WERE Fort Hays State, Emporia State and Pittsburgh State asking for more money even though the best guess was that their wager would continue to slide.
Julian Bond is a Georgia State Senator. He spoke in the Kansas Union last fall.
FOR PUBLIC RELATIONS'
sake, record enrollment
means—rather, the public will be told it means—that KU is getting better because it is getting bigger and it is getting bigger because it is getting better.
As much asku might have wanted the legislators to take an individual look at KU's needs and enrollment, any legislator
Ways and Means Committee members a tour of crowded Robinson Gymnasium and Mallott Hall, a tour complete with plenty of sweaty bodies and jumbled hallways.
At budget time in the legislature last spring, the Regents schools presented a perplexing picture.
There was Pittsburgh State, with its faculty embroiled in a salary dispute partly caused by the department's drop from decreasing enrollment.
There was KU asking for multi-million dollar building programs and giving Senate
Kansas State University enrollment increased 2 per cent and KU enrollment, already the largest in the Board of Regents system, increased by 2.7 per cent.
But beyond these complaints of crowded inconvenience there is another reason to be cautious that the unpleasant KU for not conditioning its swell.
Of course, there are the perennial grips that accompany the increased number of students. Bookstore lines are too dam long, housing is hard to find and expensive in a sellers' market and classroom masses already teem too much.
The reason is that KU's enrollment success is conspicuous in a state with some struggling state-supported universities. In fact, KU's enrolment record is so conscientious that KU someday itself penalized for its popularity.
LAST FALL, ENROLMENT dropped 5 per cent or more at Wichita State University, Emporia State University and Pittsburgh State University. The University enrollment increased, but only by 0.7 per cent, after steady decreases since 1969.
who stopped to realize that money for all the Regents schools came from the same school. The students of the Regents system as a whole.
What such a legislator saw was the apparent folly of supporting the smaller, empire-controlled schools asked to relieve crowding at KU. The taxpayer's investment at the smaller schools was less unimpeded while the investment at KU was increasing.
CARDS? GODFREY DANIELS! WHAT OTHER CARDS?
AND WHAT SUCH a legislator would suggest, as several state senators actually did suggest, was a drastic change in Kansas' longtime policy of low tuition college education for any graduate of a Kansas high school at any one of the state-supported schools. They suggested that Formula Pittsburgh become branches of KU and K-State and admittance to KU be limited to juniors, seniors and graduate students.
To some members of the Board of Regents that suggestion was an unacceptable denial of the taxpayer's right to send his children to a school he supported.
To those of us who radically changed our career plans in our freshman or sophomore years because of our exposure to the big university's diverse offerings, the suggestion seemed to mean many missed opportunities.
TO KU, IT could mean stagnant funding while money is pumped into the newisy freshman-sophomore schools.
But to legislators who soon will be asked to spend over $200 million of state taxpayers' money and authorize total expenditures of over $350 million for firefighters in 1979, the KU admittance restrictions may seem wholly practical.
KU's record enrollments make the University an easy target for such plans.
short-sighted praise for another KU record should wait until enrollment statistics are in the rest of the Regents system.
Elvis' life was more myth than music
So Elvins Aaron Presley is dead at 42. So what? The "King" couldn't handle his weight any more than he could handle his guitar. Aficionados of bad music will miss him, but their slavish loyalty is misguarded.
Pelis became an instant legend during the mid-1980s, a time when mediocrity plagued everything from music to house. Pressley belonged to the Mickey Mouse generation. Memphis may mourn; let it. The greasy ducktail叫声 didn't borne heavily from America's black rhythm and blues artists.
"Heartbreak Hotel" was raunch 'n roll hype. Presley's manager, "Colonel" Tom Parker, carefully packaged and crafted an Elvis image with a blue bowtie. A rival pitchman could have mustered. America fell for the manipulation.
THE MANIPULATION lay in the use of gyrating hips to create a ruffled appearance, blunt and bite. Presley stole the style but not the soul. Little
John Mueller
Editorial Writer
Rock was feeling the fury of racism in 1967; Presley was raking in royalties from songs like "Don't Be Cruel."
He was either maudlin or risque, a protector who confined his protests to below the belt. He contributed little, if anything, to the music of the 1960s. The Beatles and Rolling Stones admired Elvis' success, after all, success is success, but their musical influence were Rock Berry and Little Richard. When British music invaded America, its roots were obvious.
"Race records" somehow had bounced back to their origins. Early in the 1960s, he abounded with the Motown sound. The Pelvis, meanwhile, had become addicted to making lukewarm movies
"He was white, but he sang
CHET ATKINS, RCA producer, frankly admitted why Presley succeeded.
black," Atkins said. "I wasn't socially acceptable for white kids to buy black records at the time."
Evis was a blue-collar hoax. The macho tough guy's songs were the loudest of all the truck driver he once was. The images, of course, ignored Presley's brocaded gold suits, and he'd wear them on prematurely gray hair.
After he left the U.S. Army in 1960, Presley grew fat. Obesity haunted him to his grave. He loved to gulp a dozen cheeseburgers a time. The one that didn't know how to take care of himself.
The drive-in crowd worshiped him. Teenaged girls carved his name on their forearms with chisels and painted it in his mansion, Graceland, amusing himself with a steady parade of starlets while informing women fans by radio that he was the perfect Teddy Bear.
A REPORTER once asked
him whether he wanted to get
married. The Pelvis replied,
"Why buy a cow when you can
SAT failures traced to classroom
A recent study by Washington education officials attributed a 14 point decline in Scholastic Aptitude Test scores to, among other things, the use of sashs, such as Watergate and the Vietnam War.
The panelists—drawn from such institutions as the Ford Foundation, universities and high schools, and headed by former Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz—also named television as a cause accron to the two-and-one-half-hour test given to more than a million high school seniors annually.
The findings seem a bit bogus. Instead of finding concrete reasons for the sagging scores, the panel came up with "circumstantial evidence," which merely dubs one domestic problem as the cause of another. Attributing an ailing foot to a sore ankle does little to relieve pain.
THE DECLINE in those first years was due to "notable extension and expansion of educational opportunity in the United States." A national atmosphere of better education has become more important in more of these types taking the test, which is required for entrance to some colleges and universities. Because
In the 18-page study, which took two-d-and-half
years, the panel divided the 14 years
102 into 2-year groups.
Perhaps bandaging the relationship between the school and the student would help. There lies the problem.
Rick
Tbaemert
Editorial Writer
However, the decline in the second seven-year period was left to the four winds. It appears that, having run out of education-based explanations, the panel kicked the dogs which already were down, namely Watergate and the Vietnam War. Thus, the trauma theory is born.
minorities and low-income students traditionally test-takers could have lowered the overall scores.
The study also stated that more women began taking the SAT, and women traditionally score lower on mathematics sections. That may have accounted for some of the drop in math scores.
One way to tie low senior scores to the Vietnam War is to comically explain that senior men, sweating with the fear of the local draft board, just want to have the brain power needed to concentrate on the test.
Similarly, Watergate stands as a long shot as the culprit. A mistrust in the men governing students is not likely to choke out the desire to learn.
Granted, the two incidents were episodes of political hack-jacks which planted a seed of apathy in local residents.
TELEVISION DOES NOT fare as a likely cause, either. Though statistics have shown that students do no doubt spend more time soaking up Stinky and Fudge cop show than they do the finer hair on their heads, they still find in a nearby cupboard may lure the nostril, a boob tube nearby may entrance a mind wandering from studies. But, such temptations can be resisted, and do not constitute a cause for sick test scores. If the distraction were not evident, it surely would be something else in house.
movable roots in high school seniors and cause them to misunderstand the English and math, the two best tested on the SAT.
Since the youth rebellions of the early Sixties, students have been freedresses in school and at home ever before.
Perhaps the real cause of the decline in scores is the relationship between the student and the school's function.
Students began pulling away from the societal norms which related success to good grades and failure.
SLOWLY, THE good *ol* three RS submerged beneath a set of fun classes and "pud" As. It no longer was how the education game was played, but whether the student won the A. Even in the college ranks, students would crawl through hot coals at enrollment to get the easy A classes.
Enter educational freedom. Exit proficiency in
the subjects like math and English, which once were stressed adamantly. Journalism schools screening today for high school seniors trained in grammar is only one instance of classroom
If they do lack those skills, the test offers little reward. Doing well on the test will not help the student quiz out of classes, nor will it have much influence on exam results. Will he be seeking National Mertl Finalist status or is required to take the exam by the college he wishes to attend, the test will not mean much. More than likely, he will succeed in the exam he would have had, had he not taken the test.
Although students coming from high school today are, in general, more mature and academically well-rounded, they often lack those skills which the SAT tests for.
In short, the test just is not enough carrot to urge the young horse on.
That will happen only when education officials quit blaming the ghosts of American screw-ups for student's ailments, and begin diving into the softball
Fortunately, the exam is only a tool by which to judge a student's future academic success. If it is an accurate tool, it is clear educators need get back to the basics and supply the math and English proficiency college entrance people are asking for.
He eventually married. Five years with Elvis were enough for Priscilla Presley, who divorced him in 1972. "Love Me Tender" always had been an illusion of originality. It was a 19th-century West Point ballad, "Army Blues."
Elvis was more than blue during the 680s and '70s. Tales of bizarre behavior leaked out in Graeland, Presley reportedly told to lure limousines. Once he wielded a gun and shot an expensive color TV set because a program by Robert Goulet.
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THE EXCESSES WERE bound to catch up with him. He followed a lackluster 1974 tour of Hilton hotel in New York, the session. In the summer of 1975, he collapsed on stage in Las Vegas. Often the swivel hips were too fat for the tight pants that the King split on.
Presley weighed 210 pounds the night of his death. He gulped three Dilaudid tablets and two sleeping pills to help him sleep, and ease his insomnia. He later was found face down on the red shag rug in front of his toilet, green palm jabbs around his wrist. Investigators later determined that the sex symbol had died from a heart attack
caused by what they termed "straining at the stool."
But the royalties will continue while the Colonel figures out how to handle Presley's estate. No pop star ever sold its assets to the king at the time of his death, the total had reached a staggering 500 million. Fueled by radio 'Best of Elvis' wings, the legend seems dead and frozen in time, even though the legis is 99 per cent fraud.
MOTORISTS SOON may have the thrill of driving on the Elvis Presley Memorial Highway. The Mission Hospital in October for a special occasion to consider reapportment, but it also will consider more pressing business—a bill that would name Marmalade between Memphis and Tupelo, Miss., in honor of the good of boy.
Presley is dead, but his presley will live. he invests in a private plane to sell $10 jewelry containing minuscule parts from what used to be his wife's wedding dress undoubtedly succeed; there's one born every minute.
People are getting tired of hearing "Hound Dog" six times a day. The jailhouse rocker appealed to many who themselves were one step short of the jailhouse. Why applaud the resurgence of primitive chords 20 years old?
As Presley himself once said, his guitar style "sounded like somebody beatin' on a bucket lid." He used the same nickname and the *reputation*, but the reputation rested more on myth than on music.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas daily August 27, 1984. Free to all students and July except Saturday. Sunday and holiday. All subjects are free. Subscription by mail are a $15 member or $18 fee for each subject. A year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $100. Subscription from Kansas is $125.
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Jerry Selb
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