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Thursday, November 9, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Cutbacks in SDI financing shave validity of research
An important military option is getting the shaft.
Congress is going to reduce financing for the Strategic Defense Initiative by about $200 million. This is the first cut for the program, which began to receive financing in 1984. The cut is larger than the original 1984 expenditure.
The leaders who cut the SDI money said they were forced to cut something because there were too many big-ticket items left to buy. Many applaud the decision, thinking it is wasteful for the government to spend money on pure research.
However, not spending money on pure research means that the government has more money to spend on real killing machines. A cut for SDI, then, will be a boost to our nuclear stockpile; the defense bill includes several thousand baskets full of money for land-based nukes.
But the issue goes beyond that. A cut in financing equals a cut in the validity of the research. As the technology for SDI steps closer and closer to the cutting edge, the price tag on it increases drastically. The researchers can't go to Radio Shack to buy Star Wars parts. They need to have enough money to be able to explore all the facets of the program to make sure it is a valid option, an alternative that will function properly.
There is also the value of SDI as a bargaining chip in arms talks. It makes sense for the United States to place SDI on the table, possibly forcing the Soviets to give up some lesser nuclear stockile.
And, as was mentioned before, throwing money at SDI makes better sense than throwing money at conventional or nuclear weapons. SDI is a defense, not a weapon. The more money you spend on bullet-proof vests, the less money you spend on bullets. The fewer bullets you have, the fewer people you kill.
Thus, the government could reduce the U.S. nuclear stockpile much more efficiently by financing defense than by continuing to promote offensive offenses.
David Stewart for the editorial board
Jackson County election a model for war on drugs
Jackson County includes much of metropolitan Kansas City, Mo., including Grandview, Raytown and Lee's Summit.
The voters approved a quarter-cent anti-drug tax that could raise up to $14 million a year for the next seven years, when the tax expires. Jackson County includes much of metropolitan Kansas City, Mo., including Grandbury, Ruston and Lees Summit.
The plan will add 30 officers to both the Kansas City Police Department and the Jackson County Drug Enforcement Task Force, as well as provide $2.5 million for increased prison population, $1.5 million for juvenile courts and $2.5 million for rehabilitation programs.
By passing the tax measure by a healthy margin — 60 percent voted for the tax — the citizens of Jackson County have demonstrated that they are serious about fighting drugs. They have gone beyond the limits and delays of the federal government and tackled the issue head on.
Local officials said that if any tax had a chance of passage, it was the anti-drug tax. The tax had almost unanimous support from local councils and chambers of commerce as well as many citizen's groups A local businessman even took to the airwaves, self-financed, promoting the proposed tax in the final days before the vote.
Very few issues have mustered this kind of support, and it is doubtful any ever will. The fact that these communities acted as one for the betterment of the future is a hopeful sign.
In the future, other communities across the nation will look at the program developed in Jackson County as a model in the fight against drugs. And right so. Programs such as this could easily be implemented in other drug-infested areas of Missouri and Kansas, as well.
Jackson Countians have backed up their words and have shown the nation that they are serious about fighting drugs.
Brett Brenner for the editorial board
Members of the editorial board are David Stewart, Stan Diel, Brett Brenner, Ric Brack, Daniel Niemi, Craig Welch, Kathy Walsh, Thom Clark, Tiffany Harness and Scott Patty.
News staff
David Stewart...Editor
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Elaine Sung...Sports editor
Laura Husar...Photo editor
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Take the drop card and run
I should have known the semester was going to be a bad one . . . "Welcome, I'm Emmy Possible, you may call me Em. Introduction aside, should you conclude after carefully examining the syllabus and the load therein that you can handle this class, I'll be your teacher. However, if you find yourself intimidated by the syllabus and the work load therein, I strongly encourage you to change sections today as delaying too long may be harmful to you. You'll notice that I've stapled drop cards to the syllabus; that's for your convenience. We will have a quiz over the first 12 chapters of William Makepeace Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" on Friday. That would be this Friday, the day after tomorrow." She rattled off the lines mechanically. It had been rehearsed.
But I called her bluff. "There was no way she'd be that tough." I thought to myself, "I heard all those threats before. And this time I listened to the threats with as little regard as always.
"As you can see from the syllabus," she continued, "we'll be reading an average of 300 pages a week, including 'War and Peace,' which will be read in two weeks.
"I'll have you know, the last time a student of mine earned an 'A' for the course was . . . ah, it was the year we beat Oklahoma and won the national championship. And as you may have guessed, that as because I was in a good mood. In conclusion, unless you do not belong in this class, implying that you belong in a higher level course, and barring another national championship, don't count on this class boosting your GPA."
This teacher had the lines down pat. She loved making her students write. Fear attached itself to the faces of every student in the class. I, on the other hand, nodded, understanding that this bluff was a release for the teacher and an important demonstration course. 6 people done poorly in some graduate courses the previous semester.
Friday came. I took a seat next to the woman in the front row. There were a few new faces in the back. I estimated that 13 people were missing. Now I know better. They weren't missing. They had the good sense to drop the class, unlike myself and a handful of others. That first quit was not hard. It was impossible.
Monday came. "Well, if you'd like to know your quiz score, it was zero." A hand went up. "Yes, everyone made the same score: zero. I should not have to remind
David Hull
Staff columnist
you that the breakdown for your overall grade in this class is that 50 percent comes from essay, essay being the in-class midterm and the in-class final, 10 percent comes from daily participation and 40 percent comes from quizzes, of which there will be only three. And I shouldn't have to add that making no points on the first of those three quizzes places a rather unbearable pressure on students to perform well on future quizzes. Let this be a sign to you, add-drop while there is still time." Her voice seemed to resound off the gravel, hollow walls.
For reasons I can't explain, I failed to heed the woman's warning. The class continued . . . continued to get worse.
"A word to those who are not so diligent, apparently that would be everyone in this room: There will be a quiz over 'War and Peace' in two weeks. Meanwhile, you have the next two weeks to read and prepare for the quiz. Remember, class, you have two strikes against you on quizzes. One more, and you're all out. It is not too late to get started. We do like it," she said of the alternative." And with that she took flight out the door.
I wanted to catch her and tell her that it wasn't our fault she was an incompetent teacher. She didn't have to take it out on us by making the class impossible. I wanted to tell her that I was spending too much money on tuition to sit through her pointless lectures and never learn anything. Her standards were unachievable. I wanted to tell her. She did not fit in as a teacher at the university level, I wanted to say. High school maybe, junior high, sure. Young students haven't the discipline to study the many layers in a short novel and, therefore, are better suited to busy work. College students, however, are here by choice, not out of obligation. I am here to learn, not to be kept busy.
► David Hull is a Wichita freshman majoring in journalism and Soviet studies.
Pardon wasn't fair to Nixon
If you're just dying to have dinner with Richard Nixon, better hurry. According to the word from Hackensack, which is where this letter on my desk is postmarked, seats are going fast for the dedication of the Nixon library/reliquary on June 21, 1980, in Yorba Linda, Calif. The word from Hugh Hewitt, executive director of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace - Foundation, is that the Grand Ballroom of the Century Plaza in Los Angeles has been reserved that night for the "Dinner of the Century."
It may be of only abstract interest to those of us who are going to stay away in doves, but only 1,600 seats will be available. Hewitt adds that, "pursuant to President Nixon's direction, the Foundation will not seek to raise funds from this celebration dinner. The $250 ticket cost will cover (barely) the expenses of the dedication and the dinner. We will seek to remedy our $2 million deficit elsewhere." It is hard to know which is more impressive, the generosity of the decidedly former president or the executive director's referring to him as "President Nixon." Apparently ex-presidents are entitled to take their title with them, no matter how unseemly their exit — just as the presidents of Mexico are said to take all of the light bulbs in the presidential palace with them they depart office.
One can understand the attraction of the Dinner of the Century, even if repelled by it. a person passes from mere fame to notoriety, at least in America, the result is a peculiar magnetism. Wouldn't you rather have had a bologna-and-cheese sandwich with Shoeless Joe Jackson than have dined at Delmonico's with Kenesaw Mountain Landis? Righteousness can be a bit of an ordeal, at least for the witness. Doesn't the atmosphere surpass that of a restaurant more than the company of the pedestrian gumnies who rack them down? It might be said of Richard Milhous Nixon that only after his disgrace did he acquire the charisma that he had always sought.
The redemptive art has not been perfected in this society. One suspects it has something to do with the puturical streak in the U.S. character. Nixon's case is particularly touchy. He had the misfortune to be pardoned without going through the usual prerequisites, like trial and punishment. Pardon without atoning is a bit like a marriage license without intimacy. The formalities may have been observed, but the emotional aura is missing; indeed, it is painfully, agonizingly conspicuous by its absence.
Paul
Greenberg
Syndicated columnist
Of all the country's leaders in this century, Nixon had to be one of the most awkward and self-conscious in his public role; now he has been given a pardon only on paper and let to arrange his own rehabilitation if he can. A cruel fate. There has been much debate over the years about whether Gerald Ford did the country a service by pardoning Nixon. Whatever your opinion on that score, it should be clear to any seeing, feeling observer that Nixon
was done a great disservice. Atonement is not so much a condition for pardon as a route to it, and Ford in his bumbling, totally insensitive innocence may have forever barred the way for his predecessor. It is as if he had placed another stumbling block in the way of a man who always looked as though he carried his own with him.
How fortunate, how enviable, the conventional assumption runs, are those who are never caught or, if caught, never punished. What could be better than a quick pardon, a clean slate and retirement to a place of comfort if not honor? Socrates knew better. As he told Polus in a dialogue that is as relevant as *the day it was set down*, "he lives worst who commits the greatest crimes and who, being the most unjust of men, succeeds in escaping rebuke or correction or punishment . . ." To Socrates, to do wrong was only second on the scale of evils in this world; first was to do wrong and go unpunished for it.
None of this may be much comfort just now to someone like Jim Bakker, who faces a 45-year prison sentence and, even in these permissive times, may actually serve as much as 10 years of it. Yet the evangelist is in an enviable position compared to Nixon, who cannot earn release by good behavior, never having been imprisoned. The result is that he is imprisoned wherever he goes, as if surrounded by an invisible atmosphere of不善fulness that cannot be acknowledged, his only companion the unnessure he generates in others if not in himself. Nixon's pardon has turned out to be a life sentence.
Martin Luther King Jr. often spoke of the redemptive power of unearned suffering, but there is also something to be said for earned suffering; it, too, cleanses and heals and redeems. Brother Bakker may or may not come to see as much. He may emerge from ten years in one of those federal prisons with tennis courts and whirlpool baths all ready to resume his fund-raising career, this time as a professional penitent along the lines of Charles Colson. But, who knows, he could also go on to live a life of goodness in obscurity. The model is the strangely sainted Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment," whose response to his guilt was not to take to the lecture circuit. Meanwhile, Nixon is sentenced to "freedom" and to a date with the Dinner of the Century on the night of June 21, 1990. It is too harsh a punishment.
▶ Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor for the Pine Bluff (Arks.), Commercial.
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Sports column too critical
I have a couple of questions for Elaine Sue. Why did you come to the University of Kansas in the first place? And if you don't like it, why don't you leave? You must feel so deprived, like all of us Kansans do, that we don't have buffalo chicken wings. Come on.
First, in another column you questioned Kansas City's loyalty to the Royals and now you criticize Kansas and Kansans just because we don't have a hockey team. Have you ever considered that the population and geographic location of a city play a role in the survival of a sports franchise? Or, that its survival may be a matter of tastes, marketing or other factors. What do you think so. Perhaps that is why Kansas supports the Comets and New York has been unable to keep three different Major Indoor Soccer League franchises.
How can you justify defending an underpublicized sport like hockey by slamming another one like bowling, I, and the members of the KU bowling team, don't think that it is stupid. Don't notice a bowler in your care? Don't do care? Edit them so but as sports editor it is your responsibility to cover it regardless of your personal feelings.
Also, using your column to take pot shots at KU's football team, "... watched in miserable fascination," and "... no good football season." But it seems to be long on criticism and short on solutions. I think the arctic winds of New York have frozen your thought processes.
John Percival Overland Park senior
Teach with enthusiasm
Before I can focus my thoughts on my next English 101 composition, I must address those teachers who teach freshmen. You have earned more than my single expression of thanks through your patience, courage and sacrifice. But this is nearly all I can offer. I wish I could give you every freshman's greatest amount of respect, but this is obviously out of my power.
I don't exactly understand your choice to return to a basic and perhaps dull foundation from the depths of graduate studies and beyond. The return may only last an hour each day, but you face a group of giddy youth who seem more excited about their newly attained freedom than their newly accessible higher education. Lecture halls are especially prone to private audience discussions about parties, dates and "boring" lectures. The minute hand on three, by now, is probably an unconditioned stimulus for you to crine.
Forgive us for these little quirks of our freshmanhood. Most of us are trying to create new identities and shed old ones — skins of memories about old friends, parents and high school days, I hope that you will continue teaching with as much enthusiasm and understanding as the swelling anxiousness for the holidays grows.
Lori Hollan
Austin, Texas, freshman
KU extras lack character
Shine in stardom? Apparently some people are so desperate to get their 15 minutes that they will abandon any small amount of character that they may have and jump at the chance to portray a figure of bigness and fascism.
The Kansan's Nov. 6 description of KU students who were extras playing Ku Klux Klan members in a recent television movie makes it sound like a real neat thing. Gee, isn't it neat that some KU students were able to portray figures of hatred and ignorance. Sure, it was only an act, only a portrayal. Let alone doing actually it, the mere thought of putting on a white sheet and a white, coined headdress is enough to make most people cringe.
Don't some people think about what they are representing? The attention that NBC paid to the members of the KKK only seems to justify their existence. The all-mighty dollar for NBC, and a T-shirt for some, is apparently more important than dignity. A portrayal of these people represents a lack of conscience and character that should not be taken so lightly by those who only wear the outfit for a short time, as well as by those who report the event.
Michael Grossman
St. Louis Junior