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University Daily Kansan, October 16, 1981
Opinion
Reform needed now
"What we want is to take control back," a corrections officer at the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing said earlier this week. "We're tired of being walked on."
In fact, the officers, guards and other employees at the prison probably feel as though they are wearing well-defined boot marks these days. Two recent events, the escape of seven inmates five weeks ago and the murder of a guard last Sunday, have combined to intensify the feeling that the employees are at the mercy of the aging security system of an aging institution.
Guards are acutely aware of the danger they face each time they enter the maximum-security prison. Despite precautions, prisoners still manage to get weapons; the communications system is notoriously inadequate; the physical setup of the 11-acre institution makes the separation of the hardened and dangerous prisoners difficult, if not impossible. Considering these factors, along with a low starting pay, it's not surprising that the turnover rate for Lansing prison guards has been nearly 50 percent a year.
Now, however, the fear experienced by the guards, and usually discussed only among themselves, is being projected at full volume to the Legislature and to Gov. Carlin.
Carlin, in turn, is making predictable noises about wanting to give top priority to the concerns of the guards.
He also wants to make sure the voters know he is working for prison reform. Carlin has already announced that he will ask the 1982 Legislature to move up the timetable for building medium-security dorms at the prison and to appropriate $300,000 early next year for a new telephone system.
Oddly enough, when Carlin was speaker of the Kansas House in the 1977 and 1978 sessions, the Legislature rejected Gov. Robert Bennett's $13.3 million proposal to build a new prison in Osawatomie or Leavenworth. Carlin supported that move on the grounds that the proposals were too expensive. Now, it will cost at least $13.5 million just to build the addition for the existing prison.
Maybe it took the recent tragic incidents at the prison—or the pressure of an upcoming election—to jolt Carlin into his current action. But whatever the reason, he had better live up to his promise to keep pressing for prison improvements and to keep communicating his plans to the employees there. The Legislature must also continue to take the problems of the prison seriously and to search for real solutions. If the old building is all we have to work with, it will at least have to be made safer.
Next time, an escape might turn into an uprising, the death toll might go higher than one and the guards, instead of continuing to feel walked on, might walk out.
Dreams become nightmares when phone solicitors call
Bed has never felt better, and dreams of sunny Bahaman beaches have you smiling pleasantly in your sleep. A beautifully decorated beach, bearing two luxurious tropical drinks.
Just as your pleasant smile changes to a luscious smirk, the lush tropical scene dissolves into the dripping grayness of a Saturday morning in Lawrence, Kansas.
The phone, beckoning from the other room, has not only dampened your dreams, but has confirmed that you are awake and awake and have no chance of regaining blissful slumber in the near future.
A quick glance at the clock and you think you are still dreaming. It only 8:30 a.m.:
CORAL BEACH
On the long journey from pillow to receiver, you deduce that the call must mean one of three things: A) Mr. Goodwrench has finally come up with an explanation for the noise under the hood; B) Your roommate's family cat has finally gone to that great litter box in the sky, and her mother is calling with the sad tale of Fluffy's last hours; C) The world has come to an end and the newsroom is calling in extra recruits to cover the story.
none of your friends come to life before noon,
so the phone can't possibly be ringing. But it is—about seven rings by now. You convince
the caller that you are going for eight. Of course, it rings again.
You are hoping for B as you reach for the phone because A and C would require action on your part, and you want to hit the sheets again as soon as possible.
But the early-morning caller does not greet you with news of Fluffy, or your alighting vehicle or even a doomed world. Instead, your girlfriend is answered with a chipper "Hi!" from Jo Ann.
While you begin searching the memory banks for references to Jo Ann, she asks if you have steed sliding on your house. Still preoccupied with the memory search, you politely ask Jo Ann to walk with the memory search, you conclude that you don't know anyone named Jo Ann.
Then the truth comes out. Jo Ann says she is a representative of ACME Siding and has she got a deal for you. You, in turn, explain that you are a college student and couldn't afford to buy siding for your little sister's Barbie house, much less the fire tran you live in.
But what about our handy installment plan?
she asks. You sigh and hang up, wondering what kind of slimy moron would work as a telephone solicitor for ACME Siding.
More than one Saturday morning's sleep,
not to mention many a week night's dinner,
has been similarly distrubed by the most
male of all creatures: the telephone soliciter.
This nasty pest has been invading people's homes and privacy for years. Like its fellow insects, it is becoming more and more effective in controlling it that used to be effective in controlling it.
With the number of pesticides dwindling and the adaptability of the telephone solicitors ever increasing, the changing species and the changing species advanced almost beyond mankind's control.
Rather shy and unobtrusive, the telephone solicitors of yesterday would ask for their victims by surname only. Their unfamiliar voice and formal manner were immediate clues to the victim's identity. The victim could then slam down the receiver, thus squashing that particular pest. The solicitors have since developed more advanced offensive techniques.
Although they still aim their calls for the most inconvenient times of the day, the sophisticated solicitors of today have thrown off the old formal approach and now use false familiarity to catch their victims off guard. Using their first name only to identify themselves, they also ask for their victims by first name.
Once the victim is on the line, the solicitor still refrains from tipping his hand until the last possible moment. Small talk concerning the weather or the victim's health is often used now to lull the unsuspecting soul into a false sense of security. With the stage thus set, the telephone solicitor makes his play. Only the most wary can totally avoid this neat trap.
Of course, there are at least two fool-proof methods of combating the dreaded telephone solicitor. The less drastic of these measures is a silent phone number. But, for many people, a silent number is more of an inconvenience than the botheres solicitors.
The other option is to rip the phone out of the wall. Although effective in combating the telephone solicitors, Ma Bell probably would like it if her equipment were damaged.
Aside from these two deterrents, it seems there is almost nothing the public can do to rid its telephone wires of these leaches. Unless the government finds it in its heart to declare telephone solicitation an invasion of privacy, no one will be safe.
Unless, of course, he lives in a KU residence hall, where telephone solicitation is illegal. I knew there was something about the dorms I actually missed.
KANSAN
The University Daily
(USPS 5894) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Thursday during June and July except Saturday, Sunday and holidays. Second-class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas on Monday and Tuesday through Friday. Postmaster agrees to keep $5 a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $a semester, paid through the student activity fee. Postmaster: Send changes of address to the University Daily Kannan, Flint Hall. The University of Kansas
Editor Scott C. Faust
Business Manager
Larry Leibengood
Jason C. Faust ... Larry Lesbengood
Managing Editor ... Robert J. Schaad
Campus Editor ... Tammy Tierney
Retail Sales Manager ... Terry Knoebler
Campus Sales Manager ... Judy Caldwell
Sales and Marketing Advisor ... John Ohrersan
Legend Manager and Senior Advisor ... Rick Mauze
Sadat: 'lucky soldier' and gambler
Bv FOUAD AJAMI
New York Times Special Feature
NEW YORK—The journey that began in the army was endured by the army.
'Anwar el-Sadat, once a conspirator and a plotter, had become king of the land. From humble origins in the delta, he had climbed to the summit; the world had become his theater. He came to Islam by playing on the banks of the Nile would dream of being he would go places for them.
He would see his way to great decisions; to war in 1973; to peace in 1975; to offensive to his Arab nemesis in 1979.
The man who once looked at the outside world with awe and resentment—the awe of the villager, the resentment of the bitter nationalist—would storm and charm distant capitals. Men and women in them would read into him what they wished. Not really knowing him, they turned him into a great myth. He, in turn, seen himself in their acclaim, would become what he had never dreamed of becoming.
The army, which he joined in 1936, meant everything. He was one of the very first poor boys to enter the military academy. But now the rebellion and pillar of his power has reclaimed him.
Oct. 6, 1973, when the last Arab-Israeli war began, had his been day in its own way, too, his great beginning, for earlier he had merely been Gamal Abdel Nasser's successor. The assassination, eight years to the day, closes the circle.
One can go only so far from home. One can leave behind poverty and limitations. One can live a decent life.
Sadat did, leave behind the men with whom he went out on July 23, 1952, to topple the monarchy, cleanse the country, inherit the world. The world from which men come serves its own warrant.
Along the way, in his fantasies he became another pharaoh, father of the Egyptian family. It was, as he came to say, "his country" and "his army" and "his Parliament." It was not always so. But in a land where the overwhelming major subunits and comes to terms with remote, capricious authority, and where now and then a man with luck and guts goes out and reaches for it all, he had been another lucky soldier.
Deep down, lucky soldiers know that there are others out there with fantasies and ambitions, that dangers await them at every turn. They know that their power is in large measure a function of the weakness of others. There is no way of knowing whence the challenger will come—at what point the challenger, too, will risk it all.
Lucky soldiers can try to obliterate memory. They can, as Sadat did, try to reconstruct history—their own and the history of great deeds.
They can poncify devour and marginalize men who knew them "back then," when they were merely mortals. They can gloss over, as he did in his biography, a less glamorous first marriage, keeping the children from that marriage. He may have lost the biological score with mighty predecessors, as he did with Nasser, cut down the previous delay, and proclaim the beginning of a new world.
The symbols of power are of supreme importance. Others out there have to be dazzled, kept off balance, kept guessing. For beneath the surface of coolness and serenity, there is a nagging certainty that the whole act remains a gamble. One got to the top—but there is, by the
logic of the system, nowhere else to go. One is everything, or one loses everything.
It was the world outside that Sadat recently came to worry about. He had secured its respect, he needed its help, he coveted its attention, and it had given him awards and recognition.
But in time he became increasingly indifferent to the sensibilities of his own world. Outside approval seemed to give him the courage to defy. Born into a culture where men are told to live within all kinds of strict limits, to mind what neighbors and "brothers" say, he violated codes. He was a secular Arab lover who has been doing in private for so many years—meeting with Israelis.
It was an awesome trapeze act. Where some saw courage, others saw him defiming himself, sultying the integrity of his country, swimming against the currents of his region.
His enemies—he had been accumulating them for some time—will say that he had it coming, that his country had given him rope and that it was now time for the act to end. His admirers will understand the tragedy and will miss his courage and style.
The old, skeptical land from whose depths he rose, and which applauded him so many times and tolerated him at others, has taken him back and will utter the judgment that matters. It will grieve for him in its fashion, for such is its fidelity. It will grieve because it knows what some detractors choose to ignore—that journeys for men, for countries, are always hazards; that purity, that innocence, is not the world of the earth. Anwar Sadat, as he came to call himself, may have been only acting out the yearlings and traumas of that burdened soil from which he came.
Found Ajam is director of Middle East studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAI) in Dubai.
Pot Shots
For instance, as with most items related to apparel, a great diversity of colors and shapes may be found among the umbrellas of the room. For example, I would say about the woman who carries a petite
I swear I've never seen so many umbrellas in my life as I've seen this week. I'm thinking of becoming an umbrella-ologist (you've heard of graphologists, haven't you?) Certainly at least as much can be learned about the different sizes of umbrella he carries as by his handwriting.
The battle between you and the workers who are sworn to eradicate the miles of witty verse and obscene drawings has escalated into all-out war.
Grab your indelible pens and felt-tipped markers, graffiti writers.
The eradicators are a step closer to winning the war with the help of a new petrochemical solvent, Graffiti Gobbler. This product is designed for painting and paint destroyer this side of sandblasting.
umbrella in a solid color, as opposed to a flamboyant plaid umbrella, an Adofo signature umbrella or a clear plastic bubble umbrella.
And why is it that most male professors carry red and blue KU umbrellas? Or that so many female professors wear hats that they can stand in a moustache and carry beige umbrellas, if any?
And what, for goodness sake, prompts some people to carry broken umbrellas that merely direct water flow to the back or front of the building? No, that's not right. The person, who have no time to shop for a new umbrella.
nestate to attach any Freudian significance to the tendency among men to carry umbrellas, usually black, with long metal tips or a trigger-release in the handle, while women seem to prefer smaller, rounded umbrellas with blunt tips.
Of course, nothing need be said of grown men and women who walk about in the pouring rain with no umbrella at all. These often squish around in canvas sneakers, too.
I
It's abhorrent to think that graffiti soon may be gone from public walls. With a few strokes of a pen, graffiti writers combine art, culture and social comment.
Imagine how sterile the walls of public bathrooms, school buildings and subways would look without graffiti scrawled all over them.
The scribblings of graffiti writers are a social institution that needs to be preserved.
Otherwise, how would our ancestors know what we really cared about?
Besides, graffiti help readers spend their idle time more usefully. Instead of counting cracks in the lineau, they can catch up on recent political and social issues, and maybe add some fuel to the controversies.
For students who can never find SUA movie schedules when they need them, there is now a movie database.
Those walls of institutional green and deadbody beige are bland enough as it. Now the eradicators want to take away any excitement and sparkle that graffiti contribute.
Using the following index, even the most unobservant student can determine what kind of movie SUA is showing, by watching the crowd that trickles through the Kansas Union lobby after the 7 p.m. show. In general, there are four kinds of movies:
Type A—Movie patrons wear men-
grammed seats and khaki shirts. Men have
to wear a hooded jacket.
**SPOILERS:**
tastefully restrained by genuine, plastic tortoise-shell headbands. Comment overheard: "Geeyed, that was a great movie."
Verdict: The movie is either Animal House or stars Goldie Hawn.
Type B—Patrons wear sweaters that come either from England or from the classifieds in the New Yorker. Comment overheard by a friend, “I certainly wasn’t one the best of that genre.”
Verdict: The movie is French, or it was made before 1935.
Type C movie -Patrons wear fatigue jackets and Uniroyal-sold sandals. The men have long hair and the women have short hair. Comment overheard: "That was comical."
Verdict: The movie was either a samurai epic or a Bette Boop film festival.
Type D movie -No patrons. The movie was made by Werner Herzog, the first director in history to show a conquestador punching out a horse.
Verdict: Go home.