Opinion
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, October 13, 1981
Fair winds are blowing
Everyone knows you can't fight city hall, and here at KU, pretty much the same thing goes for Strong Hall.
But one student here just fought and won a skirmish at the bureaucratic battlefield, and with surprisingly little trouble.
Scott Jamieson, Lawrence graduate student, had a personal dislike for the campus steam whistle's habit of blowing every weekday morning at 7:20 and every Saturday morning at 7:20, 8:20 and 9:20. Actually, Jamieson said the problem was not his alone. Many Lawrence residents who live near campus have been rudely awakened by the shrill blasts of the more-accurate-than-ever whistle, he said.
Jamieson circulated a petition at the Kansas Union and collected the names of 253 people who wanted the whistle's Saturday toots silenced. Last week, he presented his petition to Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Cobb for consideration.
Chancellor Budig and the four vice chancellors took up the matter and agreed with Jamieson; there was no real need for
the whistle to be sounding on Saturdays,
when the vast majority of students and other residents are getting a little extra shut-eye. The decision to quiet the whistle was made last Friday and went into effect the next day.
What? No committee? No Chancellor's Blue Ribbon Special Task Force? No committee to study the report of the first two committees? No drafting of several alternative proposals to be carefully considered before a recommendation is made? No legal counsel? Doesn't someone at least want to sleep on it?
Just like that.
Well, what do you know. Maybe the system can be worked with, after all. At least it's nice to see one of the more quixtic among us win out in the end.
Of course it should be noted that nothing will be done about the early-morning whistle on weekdays. But then, it's probably best not to press one's luck in such matters.
Half-empty stomachs do little toward easing world hunger
Having just eaten lunch, however scant, and looking forward to supper in a few hours, we can begin planning for World Food Day Oct. 16 with minimal discomfort.
We are told that more than 500 million people in the world are suffering from "severe unemployment."
We get a sort of satisfaction from such statistics, as though by having a handle on the exact number of humans who will not be eating us. We have the situation somehow under control.
Yet for most of us, 500 million could as easily be 100 billion or five trillion—any comprehension of the vastness of such numbers comes from imagination rather than real understanding.
Our understanding of hunger comes much the same wav. We are "hungry" an hour after
REBECCA
CHANEY
dinner; we are "famished" when our stomach starts to grow; we are "starving" after missing a meal or two. We know the pangs of children in Bangladesh or some other such faraway place are much more acute, but as to how much more acute, we can only imagine.
And so one day a year we eat wild rice for supper and try to spend a few moments thinking of the living conditions of 500 million. Twenty-four weeks, we have done our part for the next 364 days.
One day—just enough to ease our conscience without upsetting the daily routine too much. We review the lists of suggested donations that charitable organizations promise to deliver as needed—or as allowed, in the case of aid to foreign countries.
From the back of the cupboards we pull a few canned goods. Does anyone actually go to the grocery store and buy food that a starving person might need or want? Not when there are two 3-year-old bags of beans on the shelves, already know we detest. Not when there are two 3-year-old bags of beans on the shelves.
Thank goodness some people are more generous. To help provide perishable foods to the hungry—foods such as milk, bread and fresh foods—some people offer cash. Although sincere in their generosity, these people often do not realize that charitable organizations have little or no say in how, or how much, currency will be distributed in foreign countries.
Perhaps for this reason, two local organizations, KU-Y and East Central Kansas Community Action Program, have decided to organize a community-wide food drive for Lawrence residents Oct. 25 in observation of World Food Day.
Indeed, even the distribution of food commodities is strictly controlled in many foreign countries.
Or perhaps the food drive was organized because of a belief that we should take care of our own neighbors in need before we try to solve the problems of the world.
Either case, considered in proper perspective,
could be considered valid.
According to statistics from KU-Y and ECKAN, about 1,200 people (300 families) in Lawrence applied for food through the Emergency Services Council Food Bank last year. Food collected during the group's drive will help repenshethe Shelves of the ESC Food Bank.
Instead of wild rice for dinner, the groups have planned two films and other entertainment to remind us of the plight of the hungry, to be held on Monday of the drop site, Spring Park Gazebo, from 1 to 5 p.m.
Still, one may expect many of the donations to be aging cupboard rejects. And those of us who set aside this one afternoon will probably experience a success having done our part in combating world hunger.
We can all hope that enough food will be collected during the Lawrence drive to supply less fortunate families in the area with enough food to get to the winter in good health.
We can be thankful that there are such organizations as the Emergency Services Council Food Bank and the Salvation Army, who are to return to for emergency provisions in time of need.
However, keeping in mind that KU-Y and ECKAN are promoting their food drive as an observance of World Food Day, we should understand that although we may be helping neighbors in Lawrence as well as we are, the law in Lawrence is hardly the same scale as hunger in Third World nations.
We are most certainly not combating starvation in Douglas County. As any student, particularly any independent student, can attest, eating meat only three times a week or living on hamburger does not constitute either starvation or severe malnutrition.
By taking care of nutritional needs in Lawrence, we must not allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking we have taken care of the hunger problems of the world.
France's icy blade falls silent at last
By AMY HOLLOWELL Guest Columnist
CLERMONT-FERRAND, France-Carton seen in a recent edition of the New Yorker: three attentive executives are cocktailing with a fourth, who confidently declares, "As they always say in French, 'while the ladies do it themselves,' What the hell DO they always say in France?"
Only a cartoon? Hardly. There is most definitely truth in this state-side humor, or better, perhaps there is humor in this French truth. That is, one can safely say that nearly all definite trait in the French character is that of unpredictability. One just never knows.
An ideal case in point is the recent abolition by the French National Assembly of France's unique brand of capital punishment, death under the gullotine's icy blade. Who would have ever guessed that the French would ban a form of torture fancy for this savage means of execution?
With more than 60 percent of the French population supporting the death penalty, it seems the odds would not have been in Justice Minister Robert Badinter's favor when he brought his decade-long battle against the死刑。但 The Socialist majority voted 163 to 117 for the termination of capital punishment, approving the bill that became law last week.
Although there were two days of intense debate in the Assembly, Socialist President Francis Mitterrand had vowed upon taking office last May that no heads would fall until the election. He made his majority in the law-making body, a victory over death-penalty supporters,
Yet, the French population remains generally in favor of the gullpool. Herein lies that curious franco-unpredictability: a people of refined palette, delicate cuisine and well-established heritage, whose nation houses some of the world's most magnificent cathedrals and gracious chateaux, whose delightful capital is perhaps the world's artistic and romantic heart, a people who know how to treat Americans, for example—such a people also possess a fascination for this grusome instrument.
predominantly right-wing Mitterrand opponents, was imminent.
Perhaps this death zeal is not really out of character. Though. Since the French Revolution in 1789, the guillotine has been a most French institution. It has been, like wine and month-long August holidays, a fact of French life.
Among others, Mrs. Antoniete and Louis XVI, who, ironically, legalized its use, were decapitated by the guillotine at a time when such executions were public affairs. In fact, it was not until 1939 that public beheadings were banned, and only now has the guillotine been all but abandoned. The French are not easily parted with their traditions.
But Badminton and his supporters argued in the Assembly that this was an issue that transcended tradition, as well as political party lines. The fight against capital punishment, the justice minister contended, "marshal" crusade against a 'justice that kills.'
This deadly razor takes its name from a Frenchman, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, whose advocacy of the blade as a "sword" and of his death in 1782 under fierce as Badinter's present-day con-
dermaction of it. Although Gullotin did not invent the guillotine, it quickly became a form of capital punishment peculiar to France. It gained particular notoriety after the revolution, during the Reign of Terror, when members of the Committee de la Concorde were quite commonplace.
Since 1970, however, there have been less than 10 gullotins in France, and today there are only two gullotines in existence here, one of which is to be placed in a national history museum. Moreover, at a party meeting following passage of the bill, the ruling Socialists agreed to develop a reformed penal code before next fall.
"France was the first to abolish torture, the first to abolish slavery, but it is the last, or nearly the last, in Western Europe, to free itself from capital punishment." Badinier said in his opening debate. Indeed, considered a contender to the page of people deceived载ed violence and cruelty, it specified that it took the French so long to forsake the death penalty.
But in sheathing the guillotine forever, French political leaders have baken a commendable step forward. Although an alternative has not yet been officially offered, at least France, perhaps unpredictably, has altogether eliminated capital punishment as a penal option, which is more than the United States can sav.
For while the guillotine may seem more barbarous than our gas chamber or electric chair, in reality the use of each is simply institutionalized murder. Each is a beastly, highly psychotic, form of punishment; simply gruff variations on a most uncivilized theme.
(Amy Hollowell is a graduate student and a
direct-exchange scholar in Clermont-Penn-
sylvania.)
Letters to the Editor
To the Editor:
Convention for blind may open public's eyes
Some readers might be interested to know that the annual convention of the National Federation of the Blind of Kansas will be Oct. 16-18 at the Virginia Inn in Lawrence.
Visitors are welcome at the sessions Saturday morning and afternoon, and on Sunday morning. The Douglas County chapter, now in its second year, is host for the sessions.
The organized blind movement began with the
The blind constitute a small minority, but it is not a closed minority; anyone may become blind. That is why public recognition of the essential normality of the blind is especially important. It is extraordinarily difficult when a person with the wrong ideas about blindness becomes threatened by the loss of his or her own sight.
founding of the NFB in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in 1940. Today, with affiliates in every state and a membership of 50,000 people, it is a strong force for the betterment of the lives of the blind. Members argue that blindness need not be the crushing tragedy it is often thought to be, and that with proper training and equal opportunity, can become nothing more than a mere nuisance.
On our campus, there are blind people engaged in all phases of University life.
so-called "trust walks" that some courses promote. On these walks, students pair off—one blindfolded and the other his guide—nethers of a person anything about how to get along as a blind person.
In fact, what is being taught is how it feels to be totally dependent and helpless, and to have to place all of one's trust in another person who has sight. The fortunate consequence is to promote erroneous ideas about blindness and the lives of blind people. I hope all persons of good can recognize the negative aspects of this classroom gimmick and refuse to participate in it.
There are also some people who are encouraged to "role play" being blind by taking the
Come to the state convention next weekend and get to know the genuine article, instead of reinforcing erroneous stereotypes that are based on the use of us who are blind, as well as to you who are not.
T
Charles E. Hallenbeck Professor of psychology
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