Page 4 University Daily Kansan, August 25, 1981
Opinion
Madness sans method
Good Lord. Just when you thought it might be safe to give a notoriously unstable Third World leader the benefit of the doubt he turns around and does something that only reinforces world-wide conceptions of him as a madman.
When the press reported last week that two U.S. Navy F-14 jets had shot down a pair of Soviet-built Libyan fighters in the Gulf of Sidra, the initial reaction of many Americans was anger at having been violated and smug pride at giving the audacious Libyans exactly what they deserved. But after they thought about it, the folks at home had to admit that the decision to order the U.S. Sixth Fleet to conduct maneuvers in waters claimed by
Libya had been made with a purpose. President Reagan was clearly testing Col. Moammar Khadafy, Libyan leader and radical ruler extraordinaire. Part of the president's predictable risk buticky get-tough policy, no doubt, the pros and cons of which are still being debated.
But three days later, Khadafy exploded on the front pages of every newspaper with threats of World War III and a vow to defend the Gulf of Sidra to the hilt. There will be no end to "American fanaticism," he cried, until there is another Vietnam—which he obviously is willing to provide, even if it involves the death of every last Libyan man and woman.
Pardon us, but who's being fanatical here?
Budig's strong, silent start must now give way to action
I first met Gene A. Budig on the eve of the Regents announcement that he was to be KU's 14th chancellor. He had agreed to be interviewed by the Kansas, represented by me, during the only spare time he had that March weekend. I found Budig a difficult person not to like. He was personable and warm, but without the greasy guile of many public figures.
Five months later, my original perception of Budig stands. Personally, I like the man. However, I'm sure the two of us will disagree about certain KU issues.
Thus far, I can't fault his actions much. While most of us were hustling hamburgers this summer to pay for that 22 percent tuition in college, we are still bringing the University to the people he said.
Budk needs that the public support generated from this tour will help greatly the next time a state legislator like Joe Hoagland, D-Dover Park, tries to submarine the University budget and find ways to reward wins points with the alumni, who contributed more than $13 million to the University last year.
Our new chancellor is an old pro at this type of public relations. Using the same bring-the-university-to-the people technique, Budig received enough support to create 70 faculty members who are not affiliated with Virginia and to put UWV in the top 7 percent of all schools in attracting National Merti Scholars.
Okay, it's obvious that he be's an "A" student in PR and that he gets results, you say, but what about issues and answers? Well, that's hard to say. Frankly, Budig has made a practice of趾停膝 the more specific questions about KU'S problems.
From the start, the excuse has been that he's new to the job and the University and can't be expected to speak definitively on every issue. In the beginning, that was enough for me, but let's face facts: Budig has been speaking on behalf of KU since July, when he began his trek through the state. He officially took office Aug. 1. It's about time he addressed our questions.
This is what we know so far:
- Budig supports the 13 percent faculty and staff increase proposed by the State Board of Regret.
- He believes student tuition should reflect 25 percent of the cost of education at KU.
- He does not believe the Kansas University
KATHY KASE
Endowment Association's investments should be a matter of public record.
- He wants an 11 percent increase in the KU Other Operating Expenses budget.
- Whether Budig will recognize the KU
Classified Senate.
- Whether he will inquire further into the tactical altercation in the Kansas City Times in a stoic story told by
- What his views on faculty unionization are.
- Whether he thinks the women's integra-
tional athlete is more currently
integrated, he notes that the NCA
- How he plans to kee KU faculty, especially in the science and engineering fields, from leading universities.
And the above list doesn't include upcoming issues that Budig will have to address, such as financial exigency, early faculty retirement and expansion into possible Title IX violations in athletics.
To be fair, this is quite a list of issues and Budig has had to spend considerable time acquainting himself with the University and its programs. That's quite a bit of work, but not too much that he hasn't had time to set some goals for us.
One of Budig's goals is for KU to become one of the top 10 state universities in the United States. (Currently, he thinks, we're in the top 25.) Our chancellor has another goal of seeing Kansas' universities cooperate to improve higher education in the 1980s. And he has pledged to fully support and advance higher education in Kansas.
I am told by his former students and colleagues at the University of West Virginia that Gene Budig is a conscientious administrator. I have been told by Budig that he will address these issues—that it's just a matter of time. I believe him.
But the time to begin is upon him.
Library censors muzzling free choice
Once again, parents are trying to protect their children from the sinful literature in our nation's libraries—books such as the dictionary.
A survey released last month of almost 1,900 school officials throughout the country showed that censorship was widespread and increasing in the public schools.
The American Heritage Dictionary has been banned in schools in three communities in recent years and five standard American dictionaryaries have been published in the mid 70s, according to the Washington Post.
Among the most objectionable literature on a recent censorship hit list were Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Sports Illustrated magazine and magazine, Love Story and Brave New World.
More frightening is that censoriship is also being attempted in our public libraries—one of the largest.
This latest wave of censorship threats does not surprise Bob Malinowski, associate dean for library services at KU's Watson Library. He attended a meeting of the American Library Association in June and said that censorship was a "primary concern of (the association)."
Recently, in Great Bend, residents labeled three sex education books pornographic and unsuccessfully tried to have them removed from the public library There. Luckily, the wisdom of the Great Bend Public Library Board prevailed and the books remain.
What is surprising is that the report showed the majority of the censorship challenges came from parents acting on their own, not the Moral Majority. (However, the report could not show how many of these parents acted that way primarily because they believed in the Moral
BRIAN LEVINSON
Majority.) The sad fact is that by their behavior, these parents are acting as a catalyst for the problems they are trying to prevent.
People who think sex education books are pornographic are probably the same people who think sex education encourages promiscuity. But while there is very little formal sex education in this country there is a great deal of pornography and violence on the way, is it any wonder why their children are having such adult problems as alcoholism, drug abuse and unwanted pregnancy?
Censorship is a dangerous tool that parents should not be so anxious to use. It threatens our constitutional rights of free expression and free choice. As the anti-censorship forces in Great Bend pointed out, libraries are for everyone and therefore should strive to provide literature representing as many different views as possible.
And to even consider censoring the dictionary is ludicrous. When threats of censorship reach this point, it is time to step back and re-evaluate the possible damage they represent and why pro-censorship forces are making them. Every country faces such challenges in the education of the future leaders of this country.
A great deal of damage has been done already by censorship proponents. The study said half of the incidents have been perpetrated by lawyers.
form of censorship. It is time to stop this madness before the proponents become more powerful, because it is impossible for so much information to be censored without the quality of our libraries and our educational system being affected.
Censorship is a crime because it deprives people of the chance to intelligently consider all the information and views concerning a problem and to reach an informed decision.
Censorship is not the right way to keep genuinely offensive and pornographic materials from getting into our children's hands. It is just another example of the "Band-Aid" approach so often used, an approach that has a cosmetic effect but which does not solve the real problem.
Establish rules and guidelines regarding the checkout and use of these materials is a saner solution to the problem. This method allows individual parents to censor what their children see, while not infringing on the rights of those parents; but they do their own censoring realize that it is ignorant not information that causes the problems they hope censorship will prevent.
Libraries are one of this country's most important assets. To allow them to be victimized by adults who are still living in the Victorian era is dangerous.
We at KU are fortunate that no one has made any effort to censor the materials at Watson Library. Librarians and school officials must take a tough stand against censorship proponents to protect their educational institutions.
Many of those systems and institutions are in deep trouble and censorship in their libraries can only be a step in the wrong direction.
Summer-long search ends where it began
When some years ago I read a column by a KU journalism student called "Summer in Lawrence," I failed to appreciate the challenge posed by this topic. Who knows how many Lawrence summers have been recorded in the Kansas, but when the tradition dropped into my lap, I nearly dismissed it on grounds that nothing more than students' summers, spent wherever, differ as much as their individual college hopes and aspirations.
This summer in Lawrence began one late afternoon near the end of May while I swept the Massachusetts Street sidewalk in front of Miller Furniture. Traffic in town had died down considerably in the last week, and thus I was surprised when a procession of cars appeared noisily out of nowhere, aiming to cross the river. As each car passed by, I took note of the items in the windows: winter boots, old chairs, guitars, frisbees and, of course, books. From out the windows of the last car Neil Young sang, "Rollin' Home to You."
When the parade had passed, the owner of the hardware store across the street lit up a pipe, leaned against his storefront, and nodded at me across the empty街. In the silent wake of the last students leaving Lawrence, I knew that summer here had begun.
Lawrence then, like a host once his party is over, appeared to relax, although it was only an illusion. From the cab of the furniture-store delivery truck, my partner and I bore witness to Lawrence's success in America's property: the people of Lawrence were diligently employed in leisure-season tasks.
Then school began and summer students proved no exception; they had to be serious. The difference between summer school and the two longer semesters is like the difference between running sprints and running long distances. Every step on the short run is intense.
Landlords were having roofs repaired, apartments painted, trees cut down. Every improvement imaginable was in the process of being installed somewhere on campus or throughout Lawrence.
And so it is that, concerning the eight weeks of school, I can say little. I had no time for
KEVIN
HELLIKER
reflection, the luxury of less desperate, often pond-fishingmen.
When the campus whistle blew on Friday, July 11, I felt the surprise of having arrived at the journey's end with no recollection of the journey itself. But once I'd left class and started across campus, I was forced into reflection by a student whom I hadn't expected to see until fall.
She quickly fled, and I immediately realized that I hadn't lied. As I gazed down Jayhawk Boulevard which, white under the midday sun, was barren of any living creatures but birds) I had a sudden sense of loneliness, as in one of those dreams where we find ourselves in the classroom, on the floor or in the classroom or the stands at the balcony, but looking about we discover we are, eerily alone.
"How's your summer been?" she asked.
He nodded. "Lonely." I said, perhaps hoping for a smile.
I retreated down the hill, and being a great believer in geographical cures, decided to take a trip. After packing some clothes into my truck, I bore mady east out Interstate 70 enroute to North Carolina where I spent four good days with a friend.
My host was a writer, a man whose talents are great and aptly appreciated; though I found that, unlike many writers, his life is managed as artistically as his work. Whether I was with him in his home, at the beach, or in the rolling Carolina forests, I felt that this was where my own journey should end - in serene celebration of life itself. And I felt too a sense of peace that is uncommon among the painful contingencies of college life.
As my vacation developed, then, I entered North Carolina with a nightmare close at my heels, and departed with a renewed faith in God. After a few weeks awaiting me somewhere along the road ahead.
On my way home through Tennessee a young woman in a small, blue car passed me with a smile. Cordiality uncommon on the interstate, I smiled too, and at the next exit we pulled off for cokes and an exchange of stories. Once she'd discovered I wasn't local, she delivered a series of gestures designed to assure me that I was welcome as her guest. Despite my native Midwestern distrustfulness, I felt strangely free to accept.
She led me down rolling country roads into a small town, a classroom where she had a night course in English literature, a Pizza Hut where I was invited to spend the day at apartment, where I was invited to spend the night.
I had no place else to go. In the black hours of that night, as I lay 70 miles from the interstate and more than a half day behind schedule, I saw that my loneliness at home—like most people's—was due to my inflexibility, my reluctance to stray from an imprisoning routine. Come sunrise, when I wearily continued on my way home, I felt like Odysseus sailing from the island of Circres—lucky to be leaving, yet luckier to have been there at all.
Lawrence, meanwhile, had not yet been invaded, though when I crossed the river 12 hours after leaving Tennessee had, I had no way of escaping. Well, well-deserved night's sleep was to be my last.
Summer in Lawrence ended the day next day I swept the sidewalk in front of the furniture store. What looked to be the same line of cars I'd seen three months earlier appeared on the horizon, southbound now, and as they passed I heard Neil Young sing, "I look Out, Mama."
Over the next few days many summer residents exclaimed, "They're here," and gasped, though not from dread. It was candles on a cake; breaths of expectation. And then all over Lawrence signs went up telling of great sales; on campus, signs of welcome. And the residence halls, with row upon row of windows flying open, began to look like giant bingo cards being cleared for a game. Summer in Lawrence is good, I thought, and always will be as long as there are young people willing to chase their dreams here in the fall.
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