Opinion
Universitv Daliv Kansan, September 8. 1981
Students, meet the profs
At a school the size of KU, students often find themselves getting lost in the vast expanses of crowded lecture halls and classrooms. Many students never get to know the people who sit near them day after day, much less become personally acquainted with their professors.
This last fact is especially unfortunate, because although KU's size limits the amount of contact between faculty and students, it has helped attract some of the nation's finest instructors in their respective fields.
Fortunately for the students, small steps are being taken to correct this situation. For instance, the University started a "Faculty Associates" program last spring that is designed to enhance faculty-student relationships. Right now, the program involves only scholarship halls, which vote on professors they would like to meet and work with for a semester. Administrators hope the program eventually can be expanded to include other groups.
Schol hall students say the program gives them confidence to approach their own professors, and some have used their faculty associates to meet other faculty
members. Moreover, the students learn that teachers are people, too, with likes and dislikes, interesting hobbies and theories and plenty of useful advice.
This fall, Mortar Board, the senior honorary society, is sponsoring a "Freshman Welcome," in which professors and administrators host small groups of freshmen in their homes. This "faculty open house" is a chance for KU's newest students to meet faculty members in an informal setting and talk about coping with college classes, planning a major and any other concerns the students may have.
These kinds of programs can be the first step toward building greater communication and—dare we think it?—friendship between students and teachers. One day, this friendship may develop on its own. We can't return to the days of the Greek philosophers, when a handful of students gathered around a teacher to discuss scientific and ethical theories, but we can try to put some of that personal touch back into our own classrooms. If we don't, both professors and students will be missing a great deal.
Campuses may be targets for Taiwanese informants
By RICHARD M. CYERT New York Times Special Features
PITTSBURGH-It was this July 18. Wen-chen Chen, a bright 31-year-old Carnegie-Mellon University statistics professor, was being memorialized. It was, mysteriously, a service where the guests wore tattered paper bags with clumsy eye holes over their heads. Remembering our professors who had died and been honored in memorial services at the university before, I was struck dramatically that this service was like no other.
Chen was born in Taiwan in 1950 and received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from National Taiwan University. He received his Ph.D. in statistics in 1978 at the University of Michigan. Later that year, I met Chen when he was a Carnegie-Mellon University to join our faculty.
He was a brilliant young man with a future full of potential. He gained stature in professional roles as a member of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the Biometric Society. From what we have discovered since his death, he was not an outspoken leader. People who knew him best called him proud, reasonable and courageous. He was not cowardly, foolish, selfish or stubborn. He definitely was not a revolutionary.
His political views obviously bothered someone enough to report them to the Taiwan government, the Kuomintang. He had no fears about that government when he returned to Taipei on May 20 to celebrate the first birthday of his son Eric. This trip was Chen's first to Taiwan since coming to the United States six years before.
The Taiwan Garrison General Command said it picked up Chen for interrogation at 8:30 a.m. on July 2 at his brother-in-law's apartment. That was the last time his wife and relatives saw him alive. After 13 hours of interrogation about his political activities—not in Taiwan, but in the United States—he did not return to his wife. In a 7,000-word report the Kuomintang said the National Taiwan University found behind the library the body of Wang Yu, who the report he fell or jumped from the building's fire escape, five floors above. We consider this conscious and amphibious
We, his colleagues at Carnegie-Mellon University, have trouble believing that if Chen had been released by the secret police after his interrogation he would not have gone to his home
to see his wife and relieve her anxiety. Because Chen was not a cowardly man, we do not think he recanted, then committed suicide because of remorse for having believed in democracy and freedom. To the contrary, he was a happy person who had received many indications from his colleagues that he was doing well in his profession. The future looked bright for him.
The government report, the memorial service and the circumstances of Chen's death are unusual enough to suggest that there may be agents from Taiwan in the United States watching Taiwanese and reporting to the Kuomintang Rep. Stephen J. Solarz, D-N.Y., called a hearing by the House Subcommittee on July 30 in Washington to investigate the matter. Only one anti-government witness, a close friend of Chen's, would testify. The subcommittee staff could not find anyone else who would complain or even comment.
Taiwanese in this country have told me in letters and conversations of many incidents that leave no doubt of the existence in this country of informants for the Taiwan government. As an example, after the memorial service for Chen, a student, identified as a Kuomintang supporter, took pictures of the mourners. These mourners were hooded because of their fear of government retribution against them or their relatives in Taiwan, who are supposed to be members of Taiwanese students being maimed or killed in automobile accidents in Taiwan in retaliation for the students' political activities in the United States. We have evidence that at social and political gatherings of Taiwanese students in Pittsburgh, there are two or three people who act as informants.
The threat of retribution, real or perceived, is an infringement on freedom that no university can afford. Fear has no place in free discourse. We need to find a humane way, one that does not lead to a witch hunt, to determine whether the various events that have taken place on several campuses over the years indicate that the Kuumintang has agents on our campuses. We do not want a replay of the hearings of the House mittee on Our American Activities, but neither do we want foreign students of freedom of speech. As an educator and as an American citizen, I say that hoods shielding these mourners' identities must come off.
Richard M. Cyert is president of Carnegie- Mellon University.
KANSAN
The University Daily
(USPS 580-64) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Thursday and Thursday June and July except at Saturday, Sunday and holidays. Second-class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas 5864. Subscriptions by mail are $1 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $1 per month or $3 on demand. Postmaster's send address to the University of Kansas, Flint Hall. The University of Kansas,
Editor Business Manager
Scott C. Faup Larry Leibengood
Managing Editor Robert J. Schaud
Campus Editor Terry Hermay
Editorial Editor Katy Brunsel
Editorial Editor Racy Pummani
Assistant Campus Editors Kate Pound, Gene George
Entertainment Editor Karen Schlutter
Sports Editor Tracey Hamilton
Associate Sports Editor Henk Gragatson
Makam Editors Cindy Campbell, Amy Collins
Copy Chefs Jane Bryant, Kelly Manga
Assignment Editor Cynthia L. Currier
Art Director Scott Hooker
Head Copy Chief Joan Munkey
Wire Editors Pam Howard, Vanessa Herron
Retail Sales Manager Terry Knoebler
Sales Manager Crazy Caldwell
National Sales Manager Marcee Jacobs
Production Manager Laura Menezes
Tearshets Manager Ann Horberger
Staff Art John Reagan
Wire Photographer John Keeling
Skiff Photographer Cory Houch
Retail Sales Representatives Melissa Rader, Jan Johnson, Kelly McCarthy, Beb State,
Lenzie Ditch, Renee Yowse, Susan Causey, Diane Thomas, Barb Shaw,
Howard Shalken, Jerry Barnett, Tracey Campbell, Larry Burnmaster
Campus Sales Representatives Marsha Kobe, Lisa McMahon, Tracey Campbell, Larry Burnmaster
Sales and Marketing Advisor
Staff Instructor James Newberry
John Oberzan Rick Musser
Reagan's 'New Deal'
Workaholics wired for destruction
If you have time to read the Kansan you obviously are not one of them. Be grateful! Their problem: they are workaholics, and the disease is contagious.
There have always been workaholics; they are the people who won't stop working until every detail is finished, yet take on more than a couple of jobs so that it is impossible for them to finish.
Those of us who have lived with
workaholics seen the effects of this self-
perfection disease
Workaholics have an unusual set of values that allows them to destroy their minds and bodies as long as they 'get the job done.' Says Richard Rundquist, director of KU's University Counseling Center. "Some people who work with students still get good grades. But that (schedule) would cause problems for someone who is not aware of his needs and capabilities."
If the problem is not dealt with during college, student workaholics become corporate workaholics. Their destructive tendencies are compounded by businesses that demand a "job-first-and-everything-else" attitude from many of their employees.
Whether the workaholic syndrome is caused by an individual, a boss or a company philosophy, the employee and his family all suffer. I know; my father is a workaholic. He travels two-thirds of the year, trying to accomplish more than is humanly possible.
For the past 25 years he has been living out of suitcases and adopting airplanes as his home, all in the name of his job. He enjoyed what he was doing and no one could stop him.
Friction finally developed when the family realized that his job came first.
As often happens to workaholics, who commonly suffer from stress, high blood pressure and ulcers, health took its toll on them. Some were so forceful that forced to set more realistic goals for himself,
We tried, all four kids and Mom, to change my father's ways, but we were never very successful. I don't think any of us were ever able to communicate our feelings about the problem or manifestation of the problem. The parent could closeness never developed until recently.
BRIAN
LEVINSON
He had to slow down, take a day off now and discover life after work.
He also had the chance to ponder the effect of working with a family. Unfortunately, he was 25 years old when his
But material goods are not a substitute for that precious, and now rare, commodity called family life. All the money in the world cannot replace the countless times when other kids' fathers were in the stands and mine wasn't, or when other kids' fathers went
Sure, there were benefits from all of his hard work. There were many good times we all enjoyed. I lived comfortably in a Boston apartment had most of the luxuries anyone could want.
on camping trips with them and mine didn't.
It wasn't right that my childhood took a backseat to my father's job.
Now that we have celebrated another Labor Day, we should reflect on its meaning and its relationship to the workhole. The holiday originally was intended to provide workers with a day they could spend with their families. Like most of our holidays today, the day is open yesterday and many people worked. And as many of them worked their families, many of those who had yesterday off went shopping. Do store owners still remember what a family is?
It is tragic that the workaholic syndrome still pervades this country. I thought (naively) that business leaders had been taught the importance of a balanced employee life.
It takes a great deal of courage to say 'no' to a boss, but it is time for employees to start doing just that. Bosses need to be reminded that slavery ended over a century ago.
Workaholism is a tough problem to cure, but it is time to start. To cure themselves workaholics need to develop better judgments what they can realistically accomplish.
As a management consultant said in a recent interview in Knight-Ridder newspapers, "I had a couple of ulcers by the time I was 30. I made a judgment that when I recovered, the job would not be everything to me. I had a goal—to do my best."
That is a sound philosophy, to which college students, and future parents, should adhere. I only wish someone had given my father that advice 25 years ago.
Letters to the Editor
To the Editor;
Criticism of economic program unfair
In the Aug. 31 issue of the Kansan, Coral Beach admits that it "will understandably take some time for the (economic) situation to be corrected and that only a long-term plan will solve the problem
Yet, in the same article, she cries that the inflation rate was 15.2 percent in July and dubs the Reagan economic recovery program a failure, even before the budget and tax bills have taken effect. It seems that even though she prescribes a long-term recovery plan and admits that some of its failures will wants immediate results from the Reagan program without giving it a fair chance to work.
The economic program that President Reagan advocates is indeed a long-term plan and in no way is designed to completely restore the American economic system in one presidential term. It represents a fundamental change in the course of the U.S. government, which should serve the people, not enslave them. I believe the voters knew last November that sacrifices would have to be made in order to bring about economic recovery.
Moreover, Reagan's program is unique in that it is designed to "clean up"—not just "paint over"—this ugly, economic mess that developed after the Great Depression and hinder to help not the American people.
We have a true leader in Washington now and it is quite time that we have a president who is not just another politician looking for immediate political glory and making quick, easy repairs while avoiding the real solution—an overbush. Every person is within his rights to criticize economic government but impose it label it as "not sound" even before giving it a chance to work.
Dan Young Lyons junior
To the Editor:
Iran coverage biased To the Editor:
If the reporter who wrote the report had investigated the issues, she would have come up with more accurate information. If she simply had contacted the Student Senate, it would have informed her that the Muslim Student Association (Persian Speaking Group) is not funded by the Senate, whereas the Iranian Student Association has been funded and, according to the allegation that the Student Senate had brought against them, the ISA has in the past even misused its funds for purposes other than what the ISA had proposed.
As a concerned Iranian student at KU, I find myself morally obligated to respond to the article published in the Sept. 2 Kansan about the division among the Iranian students.
This is only one example among many in which the Kansan has falsely reported not only about the MSA (PSG), but also about Iranian people as a whole.
Is the primary function of the Kansan reporting the truth, or is it discrediting our revolution? Have your reporters ever mentioned the millions of Iranian citizens demonstrating in Iraq? Have they been fighting revolution and their leaders? If the Islamic Republic is as repressive as your reports indicate, then why is this government backed by a majority of Iranian people in Iran, who clearly know of repression after living under the Shah's rule, and whose articles covered such facts? The answer is no.
Isn't it about time you let Iran alone and let its citizens decide on their own destiny, no matter how dark this destiny may be portrayed in your articles? Isn't it about time your reporters started doing their job of "unbiased reporting" instead of putting their opinion in the form of a report?
Unfortunately the U.S. media as a whole and the Kansas as a part have very little excuse for it.
If you are so concerned about humanity and human rights, then why don't your reporters start writing about other news, such as the U.S. veto of the resolution that has called for the immediate withdraw of the troops of the racist North Korea from Angola, or the consequences of the direct involvement in El Salvador, is helping an aggressive regime that is killing its citizens by the burglar.
Let's start an honest and open-minded task. we reporting rather than promoting the views of one side. Let's have a clear conscience about the reports that are provided in the Kansan, instead of a guilty conscience due to the misleading reports.
Reza Zoughi
Tehran, Iran senior
Letters policy
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the letter is addressed to the University, the letter should include the home town or faculty or staff position. The reserves the right to edit or reject letters.