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University Daily Kansan, September 2, 1981
Opinion
It's time for budget bill
Student Senate budget bearings are a rite of spring. They are infamous for their length, tediousness and tendency toward inconsistency and poor attendance.
A bill now languishing in the Student Rights Committee seeks to change that, and it should be allowed to. The bill would create a separate budget committee to allocate funds to the myriad clubs and organizations that receive an annual allotment from the student activity fee.
The Finance and Auditing Committee would continue to handle budget decisions for groups such as the Kansan and University Theatre that receive an assigned portion of the activity fee, but the other standing committees would no longer be responsible for preliminary budget decisions. Rather, they would be able to devote more, much more, time to studying problems and making policy.
Senate defeated the proposal last spring, when it came up for an abrupt vote, but the bill is in the works again, with much of the opposition based on the degree of nonsenator input into the committee's decisions.
If a meeting of the rights committee can be arranged, Student Body Vice President Bren Abbott intends to propose an amendment to the bill. His amendment would have the entire Student Executive Committee, composed of standing committee chairmen and student body officers, choosing the 10 non-senator members whose names would be submitted for two-thirds approval by the entire Senate. The original version provided for the president and vice president and the StudEx chairman to name the 10.
The amendment meets the student representation concern head-on. In fact, more non-senators would be on the committee than senators.
But the bill's value isn't just in soothing its opponents. Among other advantages, the bill would give greater consistency to Senate budget decisions and would give groups seeking funding less incentive to pad their requests because of the funding formula. This year of fresh starts and new appraisals is perfect for such a valuable Senate reform.
Whisk away crushed shells of empty federal regulations
Take cover. The United states is taking two steps backwards and will have to work quickly to avoid another civil war. President Reagan's crusade to reduce the number of federal officers killed in Iraq has finally targeted this country's affirmative action efforts and will set them back many years.
The plan will leave minorities unprotected against further discrimination. Even so, the plan is not working.
The government has never been a good law enforcer.
The federal bureaucracy's tremendous size makes it almost impossible for government
BRIAN LEVINSON
agencies to function effectively. Blatant discrimination occurs daily despite all of the affirmative action guidelines. There lies the hocryscus.
The guidelines were the government investigators to catch violators.
Congress piled rule upon rule, year after year, to the point where businesses that wanted to comply with them screamed bloody murder. Those that didn't want to comply had nothing to worry about because there were too many rules for few government investigators to catch violators.
The guidelines were the government's way of paying lip service to minorities. Politicians used affirmative action as a political football every year—promising progress and equality for minorities, knowing that little would really be accomplished.
So why bother? Why spend countless dollars investigating allegations of discrimination, writing reports of findings and raising false accusations. The government is unable to make significant changes?
Often, investigations find minor violations that are usually quickly corrected, and that's it. The government then uses those changes to defend itself. What an investigation can do is not an investigation did not accomplish anything.
That is the case with the government's feeble attempt to enforce Title IX, a federal law intended to prohibit sex discrimination in education. The law was passed in 1972. Since that time, only eight universities, including the University of Kansas, have been investigated for violations and only two letters of finding have been released.
In KU's case, two separate discrimination complaints were filed in 1978 by an associate professor and vice president of the department after two years to the member 1986. did the Department Education conduct an on-site investigation.
Then, a ruling was expected Jan. 17, but KU is still waiting for the results.
And, when the results finally are released, they are likely to be less than earth-shaking. The University of Akron in Ohio was found in violation of anti-bias laws but it was allowed to implement a plan to correct its programs and not lose any federal funds. The University of Bridgeport in Connecticut was found in compliance on financial aid but was forced to implement a plan compensating for other inequities.
The treatment being given the Title IX investigation is probably the same treatment a Department of Labor check of hiring practices at the University of Kansas Medical Center will receive. That investigation is scheduled to begin later this month.
The department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs is conducting the investigation. The check was originally called routine, but it probably will be more in-depth now that the agency has been informed of discrimination complaints Med Center employees filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Don't expect the OFCCP to find much either. The agency is now being attacked on Capitol Hill for its methods of investigation. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Uttah, chairman of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, recently held hearings on the OFCCP, at which strong opposition has charged changes in the agency's operations, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Nevertheless, the OFCP is going to come full force into the Med Center, at a cost of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of work. It will be a difficult task, as it has challenged because of its questionable methods
Frequently, the intent of the regulations is so ambiguous that businesses simply don't understand how to comply with them. Other times, different agencies within the bureaucracy have conflicting rules. That leaves businesses wondering who is in control and which rules they should try to comply with first. Finally, government agencies are so short of money that they can't do their jobs right once the rules are in place.
It is not enough to criticize the failure of these regulations and accept their death and the regressive move for minorities that demise will continue. The failure of them, they failed, so its next attempt will be successful.
Affirmative action proponents will scream "racists," but there really has to be a better way to achieve equality than government regulation. All that minority have gotten from these dismal attempts is a hollow effort with few resources. They are not afraid so frustreated that they are feeling angry and hostile toward minorities, which only serves to compound the discrimination problem further.
Stairs' granite grandeur inhuman
After struggling through months or overbearing jackammers, dusty books and blocked entrances, KU students are seeing pressure in the Watson Library renovation.
Instead of slipping into the library through a side door, students can use the main entrance with its flowing front steps welcoming, even beckoning, them to enter.
The front steps look more like the grandiose staircase to an 1806s Southern plantation than a stained entrance. Any minute I expect to see Scarlett O'Hara bursting through the
KARI
ELLIOTT
doors, shouting, "Captain Butler, Captain Butler."
Even with this majestic use of stone, architects must have had rocks in their heads when they designed the entrance. It's too late for major modifications, but some simple changes might make a 'step up at your own risk' 'sign unnecessary.
Wheelchair users are not the only ones who lie dangerously when using the library entrances.
The building's ramp, also known as the KU Grand Prix for the Non-ambulatory, has a steep incline and two hairpin turns to negotiate.
Adding some speed bumps or a warning track near each turn and putting thick pads on the 90-degree corners might reduce the number of injuries. (If the landing on the ramp was too high, you weren't the ramp's corners rounded?) To break a wheelchair's speed, thin trip wires, like those on aircraft carriers, could be placed along the ramp. However, these trip wires must be high enough to slow the ramp but low enough not to trip walkers.
Jutting from each side of the steps are thick walls with pointed corners and sharp angles. At the steps' base these marble razors menacingly protrude toward the sidewalk and then shoot up the stairs. For someone who can run into a wall by cutting a corner too closely, these sharp points represent a definite black-and-blue threat.
The pointed corners are about 30 inches high, which means bruises and scrapes on their skin. However, for small children, they might require a blow on the neck. Boy, would they be pitched?
Wind and weather gradually would erode sharp angles to gentle curves, but the elements might need centuries to do their job. Wind or heavy air can a heavy object could help nature immensely.
Square, sharp objects seem to be favored by designers and builders, but nature keeps up.
Even though the front steps have been used only about three months, already some corners have small nicks. They probably weren't caused by deliberate vandalism, but by some klutzy person with a thick briefcase cutting a corner too closely.
Nature has its way of fighting back, even if at the expense of a klutz.
The base of the stairs is not the only place where sharp edges jut dangerously. On each side of the stairs is a recessed area with several stone benches. On two benches, it's
possible to lean back and hit a hardstone wall But it could be worse.
On the other benches, a relaxed team backward means a painful stab across the shoulder blades. That same sharp wall has an unassuming student waiting for an unsuspecting student to relax.
If the wall doesn't *jab* students awake, the sharp edges of the stone benches will. Now students can have matching bruises on their thighs and calves.
Again, such simple modification in design
for foam padding around all sharp edges
would be more suitable.
But the best solution to structures that run against nature is for designers to think curves. Watson's designers seem to have forgotten that human beings are soft and supple, especially compared to steel and stone.
To the editor:
Letters to the Editor
Solidarity's goals soar high above PATCO
I'm writing this letter in absolute disbelief that an editorial as irresponsible, unprofessional and juvenile as "Stand on Air Strike Hides Hypocrisy" (Aug. 28) could be allowed in the primary student publication of a major university. The logic, or anti-logic as it should be called, was so flawlessly ridiculous that it is extremely irritating.
Let's examine the author's major premise: The Solidarity strikes in Poland and the PATCO strike in the United States are different in name only. To use a Tertzian phrase, I think not. The author compares the Poles' desire for liberty and their desire to feed their families with the PATCO desire based on personal greed and calls them "in essence the same."
Something the author leaves the audience completely without is facts. PATCO is not striking for freedom or even for a comfortable wage (the average air traffic controller makes $80,000 annual salary) (they initially demanded $73,000) and a 32-hour work week, adding 20 percent to their hourly compensation. The sheer idiocy of comparing members of Solidarity, struggling to put food in their children's stomachs, with moderately affluent air traffic controllers, to elevate their salaries to match those of cabin-level officials only now becomes crystal clear.
Given for a moment the ludicrous assumption that the two "causes in essence are the same," 1
Mr. Stertz tells us that a "protracted hypocrisy such as persists prove our lack of dedication to the cause of freedom and justice for all." What of protecting the freedom and justice of American air passengers from modern-day highway焚? When was it possible to have an emergency and allowed to set a precedent, imagine what would happen to the terms "freedom" and "justice" in the anarchic state of a police strike.
have one question for Mr. Stertz. What would you have the administration do to correct the supposed "hypocrisy"? Condemn the Polish workers in their quest for freedom in the name of consistency? Or better yet, yield to PATCO because of the fear of a Moscow reaction?
Michael Welsh
Topeka freshman
Nation a criminal
The white supremacist, bandit regime of South Africa is not satisfied with torturing only its own people.
To the editor:
The world has once again been forced to witness the terrorist state's contempt and disregard for international law and decency. The newly imposed invasion of Angola clearly demonstrates this.
The terrorist state of South Africa and its fascist allies in the West, who supply the weapons of terror that are being used to main us, to pillage our land and villages and to impose
In fact, time has come for the complete ostracism of these international vandals, who by their international terrorist incursion from the Middle East have turned to the laws and norms of the nation's nations.
The moral, free world will not oppose economic sanctions against these blood-thirsty hyenas whose only goal in Africa is to impede the human life of their social, political and economic emancipation.
How long then must the civilized, free world wait to take appropriate action against this cancer that assaults the world's moral standards?
I write this letter only because I'm disgusted with the failure of the so-called free press to adequately report and condemn past and present deplorable acts of genocide and violent, unjustified acts by the white supremacists, and also to publicly condemn the terrorist state.
They are no doubt a threat to international peace and social progress.
their filthy philosophy of white supremacy on us are moving Southern Africa closer to a blood
How long must the Afrikan population of the world wait before the long-overdue jihad or African crusade for the liberation of their enslaved brethren can begin?
The white supremacists are an insult to the members of the United Nations, a majority of whom are black. It is time for their prompt ouster from that body.
The time is now. Let us begin.
Phumuza Ma Zini Oberlin. Ohio. junior
( f s v t a c t d a s n l a a w w o l n s F o b p t i l g
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