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University Daily Kansan, August 28, 1981
Opinion
Giving credit where due
That's what we like to see, a student body president who actually thinks about the everyday problems of his fellow Jayhawks and tries to find practical solutions.
Bert Coleman has announced he is working on a proposal for a KU student credit union that would provide free checking and possibly low-interest loans. As he points out, no Lawrence bank offers free checking unless the depositor has a minimum of $300 to $500 in a regular account. In other words, we let banks keep our money, using it for investments and loans, then we have to pay them whenever we want any of it. At 20 or 25 cents a check, that adds up.
So a student credit union makes sense and is at least as valid a cause for Student Senate funding as some of the obscure groups that come before that body during each year's budget hearings. If Coleman and the Senate went just a step further, they would see that a very real possibility is waiting to be stumbled upon.
According to Janet Price, manager-
treasurer of the KU Federal Credit Union.
getting a charter for a new credit union would be "next to impossible," given the current economic situation and high interest rates. However, the KU Credit Union already grants limited privileges to all students.
Every student is eligible to open a savings account and to take out a loan against his savings. The catch comes when we talk checking accounts and borrowing without collateral—only students who work at least 20 hours a week for the University are allowed access to those services.
But chances are, Price says, that the credit union's Board of Directors would be receptive to the idea of changing union policy and allowing all students to be full members. The only conditions would be that the union have firm control over accounts and loans and that students not abuse their privileges. That would mean a boon for students with checking accounts—no charges, no minimum and dividends of 5 percent.
Price suggests Coleman write a letter to the Board of Directors and explore these possibilities. So do we.
Southern hospitality lingers on, but so do long-held prejudices
The Southern half of the United States is a different country. The sky is blue. White-tailed mockingbirds sail through the damp morning air. In the South, the summer saunters in early and stays late and the trees are a lush, dark green.
Southern people are different, too. Most draw out their vowels as though it were too hot to talk. Southern women wear crisp, cotton sundresses, and they hold out unit cigarettes until Southern gentlemen offer them lights. They usually don't wait long.
And southern hospitality really exists south of the Mason-Dixon line. One afternoon, in a
VANESSA HERRON
crowded restaurant in Kingfisher, Okla., a girl motioned me to her table, just at the moment it was seriously considering sitting on the floor. We talked, and by the time we finished our hamburgers, the girl had invited me to her family's farm. First, she wanted to convince me that there actually were black farmers—her father and brothers were living proof. But she also invited me because being friendly to newcomers was just her way.
Southern hospitality does exist in the bottom half of the United States, but like many other Southern institutions—night clubs, private neighborhoods—hospitality is segregated.
Living three months in Dallas taught me that there were places blacks could not expect to find many of the best jobs. "Papa Guayo" night club in north Dallas, or any country and western bar in any part of Dallas.
Of course, segregation is not a written policy, but in many parts of the South it is a very quiet, civil understanding. And it isn't hard for Northerners, even those from a tenuous northern state such as Kansas, to run afoul of this Southern understanding. For example, one black petroleum engineer says whenever he wears his work clothes—usually a neatly tailored suit—to men's clothing stores in Midland, Texas, other shoppers assume he works there. Why else would a well-dressed black person browse in a swanky clothing store?
And two years ago, another black KU student learned a lesson about the difference between North and South. While on vacation in New Orleans, the student ducked into a red-carpeted grand hotel on Bourbon Street. In the hotel's ladies room, which was dripping with marble and chrome, the student met a few hard stares. The waiter came from the washroom attendant, a middle-aged woman. "You don't belong here," the attendant hissed after her well-coiled customers had stalked out.
The student hurried back into the crowds on Bourbon Street, embarrassed and strangely ashamed. She couldn't forget the attendant's face, or the way she held out towels for the students. The teacher, she remembered the tip the women tossed into a porcelain dish on the sink—about 35 cents.
"I remember thinking," That woman sold out,
just as she could work in their bathroom and take
it home.
During her week in the South, the student said, she watched blacks who worked in stores or carried her baggage, or bussed the tables after she ate. And she says she almost believed they accepted the preconceptions of where they belonged and where they did not.
But another, more plausible explanation is that most Southern blacks don't accept that they are inferior; they simply ignore the people who think they are, and live their lives.
Blacks in every part of the country have adjusted to their region's own set of problems. In the Midwest, for example, open hostility is uncommon. But blacks also have to adjust to being a rarity; the only black student in class, or the only white student in class, is some Western Kansas village. And every black woman in Kansas has friends who continually ask why she needs to straighten her hair.
In the Southern states, in which blacks make up from 17 to 36 percent of the population, they usually don't have to worry about being African-American. Prejudice is more overt in the South. But in spite of that, Blacks perhaps because of it—Southern blacks have learned to ignore prejudice, and to rise above it.
Mary Townsend, director of KU's minority affairs office, said she discovered a good piece of the special resilience many Southern blacks had developed when she visited a Houston restaurant.
Townsend she watched she disbelief when the waiter pacified his customers by running through the room with fresh drinks. On his way across the room, he shuffled steps and cried out "yah-huh, yah-huh."
That day, two corpulent, slightly drunk businessmen were complaining loudly at a lawyer who did not good 'wasn't hot enough, their drinks weren't cold, their waiter, an aging black man, wasn't fast enough.
Soon, thewalk waister stiffly to Townsend's and speaking normally when she was enacting the show and being
"I didn't know that was going to happen, but the tears just started behind my eyes and I couldn't stop them," she said. "That waiter could have been my mcle, or my brother."
Townsend said the waiter told her not to cry. At a businessmen were gone, said he, would he find someone else?
To be sure, not all Southern blacks are poor and not all are waiters. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of the Census estimated that about 14 percent earned more than $23,000 in 1978. And more than a half million Southern blacks have college degrees. There also are countless others who never make it to college, but are smart enough to hold onto their self respect.
“But I’ve since realized that waiter had something that I don’t have—happened I almost envy,” she said. “He can take the indigency, then forget it and go on to home for his family.”
Townsend said the memory of that restaurant still disturbed her. And she still does not believe that a man should be forced to play "step n fetcit" for any other man.
The ability to shrug off indignity and still retain a feeling of self worth, is a lesson that the South teaches. Because in that half of the country, the idea that skin color determines personal worth fills the air, right along with the scent of wildflowers and the hum of cicadas.
The South is a different country. And the black people who live there are different too. They
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Rick Munsen
Stand on air strike hides hypocrisy
Shield the rockets red glare, tone down the din of Americans triumphantly parading the victories of the Polish works over their task-masterly Socialist system and find the ideological dichotomy that exists in America today.
It is wonderful, the fanfare suggests, to see the Warsaw of the Warsaw Pact shaking internally as workers, farmers and mothers unite to show Communism that they really don't have to fear the West. It is a worry of the creeping advance of the Red Peril, the thought of Communism, especially Soviet
BRAD
STERTZ
Communism, on the brink of disaster is welcome indeed.
Fine, I say, do all that can be done to further the Polish workers' cause and simultaneously lessen the threat of the Soviet invasion. But for the sake of consistency, let us find a quick solution to the American strike that has left the skyways crippled and has found a group of workers initiating their own illegal action for what they believe.
Yet this is where the contradiction takes now. Yes, it is fine to encourage the Poles, unhappy with a regime that cannot deliver bread to the table, to find a system that will work freedom into the Eastern Bloc. But as all eyes eagerly lay labor reaching for a better way in Poland, these nations ignore a similar, but no less bandit, development found in the air traffic controllers' strike.
After all, isn't this the stuff that made Pravida famous? I can see the headlines now as the Soviet press parades the strike by the
Professional Air Traffic Controller's Organization as the latest example of American
What should be important to the Reagan administration as it maintains its hard-line stand with the air traffic controllers is not the Pandora's box of other illegal strikes that a quick compromise could open. No, what should matter to the White House is the hypocrisy inherent in the two-faced encouragement of the Poles and denunciation of the PATCO strike.
Recent surveys have shown that over 60 percent of the public thinks Regan's stand on the strike is appropriate. Americans, it seems, are against a strike that illegally strikes against the federal government. Yet, they encourage the Poles.
"Sure, we support the Poles," they say, "but it's different over here. After all, it says in black and white that PATCO cannot strike against the enemy. They knew that when they signed their contract."
all," they say, "the Polish workers are striking out against a government that is oppressive, that couldn't function."
In Poland, the constitution used to say in black and white that all strikes were illegal. But today that has changed. Polish workers, after their world-shaking strikes last summer, have now become able to form independent unions and the right to bargain with and strike against the government.
Granted, PATCO's strike is hardly an effort to shake the foundations of our republic. But where the two strikes do strike common ground is in their defiance of a rigid government.
What we need to ask ourselves in this contradictory bind is, are the underlying philosophies here any different? Is it different for the Poles to stick up for what they believe than it is for the air traffic controllers to stand up for what they believe? I think not.
And Americans make other arguments. "After
What also should concern the Reagan administration is how the outside world is viewing our stand. In the world of credibility, when the Third World nations seem to be shifting more to the right, couldn't a protracted hypocrisy such as persists prove our unreliability and a lack of dedication to the cause of freedom and justice for all?
Certainly the air traffic controllers' strike cannot be fully commended, for it is indeed an illegal action. And equally certain, the cause of the Polish workers has to be heralded as a crusade for the meaning of freedom. But what does this as a nation is to end this curious schizophrenia of nature of condemnation and approval for two causes that in essence are the same.
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 address and phone number. If the writer wants permission to use the letter should include the class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters.
Samuel Morse wouldn't believe it. As the inventor of the telegraph in 1832, I'm sure he'd be amazed at the evolution of the ordinary Western Union telegram.
Today, city dwellers have their choice of todays telegrams, balloon-a-gram and now, on the mobile, SMS. But they don't know what to do with them.
Pot Shots
where the recipient gets more than a slip of paper with "Happy Birthday" on it.
While some folks here in River City might enjoy these advanced announcement, I propose that other mutations would sell far better. For example:
- Research paper-a-gram. Imagine the thrill of opening your door the week after Thanksgiving vacation to be handed a 20-page typewritten report on "The History of Blacksmithing in South Central Kansas," complete with footnotes and free of charge.
- Grass-a-gram. Just right for those post mid-
blue blues, one ounce of the finest Colombian
camibis is delivered in a complimentary Zip Loc
box and labeled "Of The Best of the Greatest
Dead" is optional.
- Clam-a-gram. Remember the last erudite AT or special roommate? Try this personalized, custom-fitting muzzle applied by our delivery boy (with longa Italian name).
- Class notes-a-gram. This one is perfect for early lectures that are just too tough to handle on for winter mornings. For an additional fee, you can obtain and outline, organized in a loose-leaf binder.
DAVID HENRY
The battle is over. It's a sad day for Kansas rock-and-rollers. We fought long, and we fought hard, but the Rolling Stones passed us by, opting instead to perform in St. Louis.
Personally, I'm outraged. Surely there's an explanation. The Checkerdome holds several thousand more people than Kansas City's
Kemper Arena, but that seems like a petty reason to deny us loyal Stones fans a performance. Sure, the Checkerdome has never caved in, but Kemper's roof has held for over a year now. Besides, what are the chances of something like that happening again?
Besides, Kansas City is in the middle of a concert boon. Journey had to announce a second performance in September because the first one sold out so quickly. Even Old Blue Eyes, yes. Frank Sinatra himself, has set an Oct. 12 concert date in Kansas City.
I mean, what does Cedar Falls, Iowa, have that Kansas City doesn't have? We have plenty of multi-million dollar hotels for a big rock band and a million-dollar hotel for a million-dollar hotel that are already destroyed.
CINDY CAMPBELL
Let's be reasonable. Los Angeles gets the Stones for five days, Cleveland for two and Chicago for at least three. Won't one of these fair cities give us even a hand-me-down Tuesday if we get to play at home? Can we be expected to thrive on Kelly Hunt and the Kinetics and the Blue Riddim Band?
What I hate most about college is dealing with pens. Like most males, I don't carry a purse and hence, I have no safe place to store my writing between classes. I'll leave the house in the morning or evening. I'll six in my pockets, three in my mouth since I smoke, but rare is the noon-hour that finds me
with even one. I cannot further expound; the pens simply disappear. I once tried tying one pen, and it got caught in a Xerox machine and nearly pulled with it. One of me, I decided, is more than enough with it.
This problem with pens, I once thought, would be solved if teachers toed a healthy supply to class. But then came Reagan and the realization that there's no such thing as a free pen. And well there shouldn't be. For pens, I've decided, are harmful as well as elusive.
This conviction fully became mine just yesterday at the store shoe when a saleswoman, while fitting me with sandals, studied my bare foot and said, "You're a writer?"
My toes commenced wriggling in her hands, so tickled was I. She's heard I've planned a novel, I thought. But, to be modest, I said, "You read feet, do you?"
"Son," she said, "you've ink dribbling down your ankle."
I had sat on a pen in my back pocket and now my pants, as well as my pride and the chair at the shoe store, were ruined. I'm glad I don't carry guns.
KEVIN HELLIKER