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University Daily Kansan, July 12, 1982
Opinion
StudEx violates trust
In the event of an emergency, the Student Senate executive committee is empowered by Student Senate to act when the full Senate cannot meet. But events of the past few weeks have raised doubts about how well that trust is placed.
The executive committee is composed of Student Senate's executive officers, committee chairmen and student SenEx members. Under normal circumstances, the committee is responsible for setting the agenda for Senate meetings, approving line item changes within budget allocations and providing a liaison between the Student Body President and the Student Senate.
Article four of the Student Senate Rules and Regulations provides for emergency action by StudEx in lieu of a full Senate meeting. However, at its June 26 meeting, StudEx violated both the letter and the intent of this provision.
First and foremost, the committee took action that was neither necessary, nor appropriate, in its allocation or $8,000 to purchase a computer for its office. This allocation, which was justified by the claim that it would be nice if the computer could be installed by fail, did not meet the Rules and Regulations' standard that immediate action was needed (within a one week period).
Second, the allocation both bent and violated the rules concerning voting procedures. One committee member voted by
proxy (not allowed by the Senate), another member voted twice. These illegal votes still did not provide a quorum.
such and so on. Third, the minutes of the meeting were altered to cover up the allocation. These minutes were taken by the same person who made the motion for the allocation and who delivered the illegal proxy vote.
Furthermore, the allocation was made without taking bids and the computer was to be purchased from a company where one of the committee members worked. Luckily, to say the least, this allocation was later vetoed by David Ambler, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs.
The executive committee's attempt to allocate funds for the purchase of a computer was a horrendous gaffe. It was inappropriate for the committee to take action on such a large purchase and under conditions that were clearly not an emergency. It was wrong for the committee to accept a proxy vote, to allow a member to vote twice and to pretend those two votes provided a quorum. The manner in which the committee attempted to act and then cover up its act, smelled of pollution on a dirty level.
At best, the StudEx members at the meeting of July 26 could be called bunglers, at worst they could be accused of deliberate violation of a public trust. But whatever the charge, it is clear that some shaping-up will be necessary before the trust Student Senate places in its executive committee will be well founded.
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Letters to the Editor ERA error
To the Editor:
In his analysis of the unsuccessful struggle for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, Joe Bartos was correct to point out the negative effects on a movement that he called "the greatest goes too far in his critique.
To argue that militant tactics and ideologies are responsible for the failure of the ERA is to dangerously underestimate the strength of the forces of reaction in American society. Phyllis Schlaffl and those of her ilk do not arise only in response to lesbian separatists or yippee act clients. Opponents of the ERA (one occupying the vast majority of the AIA) are an entrenched, ascendant force in U.S. politics. To lay the blame for the ERA's failure at the feet of those who will suffer most (intolerant though they may or may not be) is to apologize for reactionary conservatism, not to explain it.
Joane Nagel assistant professor of sociology
Grateful for attention
To the Editor:
Thanks to you for printing and to Patti Hackey for writing her sensitive guest editorial about the plight of the nontraditional students (June 17, 1982).
I am a nontraditional student. Twelve years ago, I was a junior college transfer to the University of Kansas. The University refused to realize my needs then, as it does today. (I have been a taxpayer in the state of Kansas for nine years.)
Lawrence Graduate Student
Our nation expands beyond its limits
Americans have done it again! It wasn't on the battlefield or on a flight to the moon, but the rockets' red glare and bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that Americans are superior. According to the American Chemical Society, this Fourth of July Americans set off $100 million dollars worth of fireworks, more are used in any other celebration in the world.
This evidence of American success adds to a list of other great accomplishments. For example, the U.S. population is 5 percent of the world's total population and the country produces 70 percent of the world's marketable grain. Americans consume one-third of the world's energy and one-third of the world's meat, including an average of 86 percent in annual U.S. meat consumption since 1960.
John Scarffe
AMERICANS ARE also proving their ascendance by growing in number, populating the land and getting more money to buy more goods. The 1980 census records 228.5 million Americans, an 11.4 percent increase since 1970, with a substitution of 12 percent increase in the number of people in each household. The total U.S. personal income has increased by 1.9 trillion dollars from 1950 to 1980.
These increases are not just examples of success. They are evidence of the expansionist philosophy that is a controlling ideology in America. This part of our modern-day society is becoming more good and more of anything is better—more beer, more factories with more pollutants and more bombs.
Most folks know about the expansionistic lifestyle and some of the problems it has caused, and they realize that it stretches beyond U.S. boundaries and back into history. After all, civilization has always yearned to spread out and accumulate more trinkets, build more buildings.
get more land or multiply its people. Why not? To the Greeks, Romans and Middle Age Crusaders, the world seemed to go on forever. They it was without bounds, limitless.
Since the Middle Ages, however, the world has changed a lot. The earth turned out to be a round ball with a limited amount of room. Then a whole lot of people showed up to vie for the available space. In fact, many people are fighting for their corner of the earth today that scientists and environmentalists have begin to warn us of danger.
The limb's breaking point could be in Brazil's Amazon Basin. According to Ehrlich, it is likely that the rain forest's destruction could trigger global climatic changes which could destroy the breadbasket of North America's Midwest. By the end of the century the extinction of a million species in the Basin possibly cause famíies in which a billion human beings perish.
"IF ANOTHER SQUARE inch of virgin land should be disturbed on this planet, we will saw through the limb civilization is sitting on," Paul Erlhlich, professor of biologies sciences at Stanford University and author of "The Population Model," said in a speech at the University of Kansas.
The destruction of the Amazon forest has already been started by corporations competing for the rain forest's $1 billion worth of hardwoods, and the iron ore and deposits that could make Brazil the world's third largest gold producer. Large multi-national chains are also cutting down the forest for grazing areas for beef for the fast food markets.
Americans are contributing to the sawing of this limb through values expressed in their daily lives. One firmly entrenched value is the American measurement of success by the amount a person or company can produce. A farmer is successful if he produces more bushels of his crop than other farmers. If he can do that, he buys more land so he can produce more.
THE SAME SCALE works for city/dwellers who show their productivity by the amount of money they earn, and the amount of time they spend. Then they fill the extra space with more appliances and decorations.
The major problem with this measure of success is that it is an attempt to stick the square
pegs of infinite ideas into the round holes of a finite world. As we spread out from one new place to another, leaving houses behind like beached carcasses on the edge of a dead inerity, farmland and wilderness are engulfed in giant waves of metal and concrete.
Measuring success by increased productivity also comes up flat against the round hole of human physical limitations, such as the need to sleep and eat and the inability to work 24 hours a day. Expansionists believe that America must continue to increase its productivity, defined again by the number of things made, or the nation will be headed toward its downfall. Therefore, production must always increase and never appear to slide backwards.
Some examples of these expansionists are those who hirer "grade inflation" at the schools. They see the large number of good grades given in the public schools and universities as a sign that A's and B's are甩 too easily. This, they think, makes students lazy and, in the long run, decreases productivity because of poor work habits.
Actually, the number of good grades really means that people are meeting standards such as literacy set by previous generations. Since 99 percent of US. citizens are literate, many students should be receiving good grades in reading, but the standards keep going up rather than down. The result is a bigger demand on a larger number of people than ever before. This means more students are knocking their brains out in school to achieve unrealistic standards.
AND STUDENTS aren't the only ones knocking their brains out these days on unrealistic standards. The ever-present need to produce more has farmers, mechanics and corporations working harder and harder to top yesterday's production.
No wonder America appears to be in a production slump. The U.S. is discovering that all inhuman practices are not good for us.
Before these deep-rooted values lead to wear-out bodies and a turn up earth, we should take a hard look at our priorities and measurements for success. but first we had better get our eyes on the real square pegs of innumerable ideas in the round holes of a little word is really kind of short-sighted.
Affirmative action still has a long road ahead
By SEEMA SIROHI
Guest Columnist
Guest Columnist
"You've come a long way, baby," is one of the messages thrown at women every day.
be known at women every day.
BUT A MERE glance at the statistics provided by the KU office of affirmative action shows that we still have a long way to go. The figures reflect a serious lack of women in the university, 68 tenured female faculty members, compared with 523 tenured males. This makes for only 10 percent of the total faculty—a figure that surely needs to grow.
The office of affirmative action is supposed to monitor hiring practices at the University of Kansas and encourage recruitment of women in it, but not been very effective in carrying out its task.
"Informative action is more a token and a series of hurdles people have found ways to overcome," said Diane DMcDermott, director of women's studies at the University of Kansas.
or it would have been much stronger, she said. The affirmative action program is a set of rules and regulations, and the usual bureaucratic tangles give employers enough leeway to circumvent the rules. To be in accord with the program, an employer must follow four guidelines outlined in the Handbook of Affirmative Action Procedures.
THE GOVERNMENT doesn't stand behind it or it would have been much stronger, she said.
They are: Any requirement that eliminates a large population of minorities must be adequately as necessary; a position should be widely publicized to mirror the available work force for the particular job; a hiring decision must be made on the basis of illegal considerations; and a hiring decision must be made on the basis of the position advertised.
Everything fine on paper, but the statistics, national or local, don't tend to be in harmony with the intentions. There is a large number of women in the job market today. But unfortunately that is not reflected in the number if women actually employed.
According to Caroline Bird, author of the book *Everything a Woman Needs to Know*, to Get Started with Writing, you should
were 43 million women in the job market in 1980, compared with 33 million in 1973. And young women have been preparing themselves for the highest-paid professional and business careers at an unprecedented rate. In 1980, for instance, one-fourth of all law students and about one-third of the students in medical and business schools were ill. The effect is beginning to be felt in these areas.
Barbara Ballard, director of the Emily Taylor Women's Resource and Career Center, said, "Education alone can't change the situation, but at least it gives you credibility to challenge. We need women in nontraditional areas—where policy is being made—to overlook the process."
The Women's Resource and Career Center provides different kinds of information to women regarding job opportunities. Ballard called it a "change agent" and said change for women in the job market could be brought about in two ways: first, to improve women's angry, and the other is for women to get into the system and make headway. She emphasized the importance of networking among women.
"When you get there, it is your responsibility to help other women learn the ropes." Ballard
WOMEN SHOULD work in coordination at all levels and be supportive of each other, she said.
Networking alone can't help in all areas because many departments and agencies hire people they want by using in-house searches, internal promotions and by asking colleagues to
recommend friends, Judith Galas, graduate teaching assistant in women's studies, said that men who were in positions now maintained the cream jobs for other men.
The former director of affirmative action, Michael Edwards, explained the situation in very casual terms by saying that internal promotion is more important than sometimes the job didn't require advertising.
"I just have to look at what I see on this campus to say that somebody is not really keyed into affirmative action—it's a game, but not essentially played with the right spirit," she said.
"But anyone can get around rules and regulations, and the departments that tend not to hire women usually oppose affirmative action," he said.
"IN-HOUSE PROMOTIONS build merate of the department, and budget limitations often cause staff realignments that call for such actions." he commented.
Edwards, who left office July 1, 1982, is quick to point out that his office plays only an advisory role and has nothing to do with the hiring decisions. He said that the affirmative action program was not a priority and minorities into job pools, and that it was a set of procedures that increased accountability.
ONLY TIME CAN tell whether the situation will improve in the future, but as things stand, one can see that the spirit with which the program was instituted has not been kept up. Affirmative action is supposed to be forcing it up for years of injustice, according to Galas.
"It was not designed to institute fairness across the board but to give opportunities, jobs and advancement to those people who for hundreds of years have been told that they can't have it."
The workforce Analysis of Goals and Timetables, completed in mid-February, is a tool to measure the success of hiring affected classes. The efforts toward reaching the goals can be looked at quantitatively with the help of analysis. Edwards said. According to Chen, an assistant professor at the use of the program more than any of the past chancellors Edwards has been associated with.
WOMEN MAKE UP 35 percent of KU's first-year law class, a figure that would have been inconceivable a few years ago. Marilyn Ainsworth, professor of law, is optimistic about the job situation for women lawyers. According to her, women who have good grades, have published in the Law Review and have generally been active in law school usually get jobs. The things law firms told women five years ago are not true anymore, she said.
"THE KEY TO affirmative action resides in the philosophy of the chief executive officer, because the rules and regulations are not the actual thing," Edwards said.
Women frequently discover that they are more educated and more qualified than men doing the same job. Econometric studies of wage differentials show that women workers usually have more education and experience than the men on their jobs, and that women in legal aid societies than men, and until very recently, were less apt to get into prestigious law firms.
"It is not the clients who have prejudice against women lawyers, but the employers, and this myth has to be done away with," Schroeder said.
But Ellinor Schroeder, associate professor of law, is not as optimistic. She said the change was occurring only in large cities and in large law firms. The story in small towns is different because the people are still not used to the idea of a woman being a lawyer, she said.
IN THE JOB world, women still have to prove their qualifications more than men do, and unfortunately they still have to work twice as hard to prove themselves worthy of the positions they hold.
"There are individuals up there who are very quick to stereotype women, so women feel they have to be twice as good as men," Ainsworth said.
If women compete in the job world they are branded as aggressive; competitive men are merely considered assertive. All the women interviewed for this article said they believed in gender equality and that she had lished idea of femininity. McDermott said she didn't mind being called aggressive or mean because men liked to look at competent women that way. She said she didn't believe in being rude or insensitive, but she would rather come forward if the truth than try to compromise with smiles.
It seems women who haven't made it are up against heavy odds, and those who have face the hostility of their colleagues. The future of affirmative action is not rogue either. According to Edwards, this is because the current president looks at affirmative action and equal opportunity as a lot of red tape and bureaucracy. He is not favorably disposed toward it, Edwards said.
Under the proposed procedural deregulation of the program, the changes will be significant. Essentially, the number of agencies that have to comply with the affirmative action guidelines will be fewer in future. The Reagan administration's proposal that only those agencies that have a work force of over 250 and a federal grant of more than $1 million be required to observe affirmative action will allow a lot of organizations to do as they please, Edwards said.
LOOKING AT OUR national administration's attitude and other adverse conditions still facing women, a slogan such as "You've come a long way, baby!" can easily be disputed. When compared to women like Phyllis Schlafly, for women to achieve success in our society is difficult indeed.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Seema Sirohi is a graduate student in journalism from India.