Opinion
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, April 27, 1982
Taking a critical look
Tomorrow night, when the Student Senate meets for the final time this semester, some Senate leader will undoubtedly stand up and thank everyone for a job well done.
Has the past few months really been a success for student government?
But along with a pat on the back, senators and Senate officials need to take a critical look at the semester.
As of today, the student body president has yet to present a student organization's budget for the coming fiscal year to the administration.
The Senate has not adopted, or even considered, a plan to spend the $74,000 that is collecting dust and losing real value in its unallocated account.
The Senate committees, freed from the hassle of budget hearings, met more often, but with the exception of the Culture Committee and its support for the Swar-bout Society, have nothing new to show for their meetings.
Perhaps it is asking too much to expect the student government to take a leading role in University affairs.
And even though this Senate avoided bickering over internal legislation—a curse for past Senates—it failed to come up with any innovative legislation to improve the quality of student life at KU.
But next year, just maybe, with some imagination and dedication, Senate can become more than a funnel for student activity fees.
History lessons incomplete without first-hand accounts
Auntie, my grandmother's aunt, will be 99 in July. She has written faithfully from her daughter's home in Massachusetts since moving from Kansas eight years ago.
I used to ask my aunt childish questions and later asked how growing up in turn-of-the-century small-town towns affected her.
My last letter asked college studentish questions. I wanted to know what she did and thought when she was my age. And as always, her letter came bearing memories.
Auntie also sent a booklet of inspirational scripture and verse compiled to comfort the reader after the death of a loved one. It was a gift to her from a friend, and now, she wants me to
"Keep it, my dear," she wrote. "Your answers, when you wonder, are in this book."
I suddenly saw the significance of such a gift coming from someone nearing her 100th birr
LISA BOLTON
thday. Auntie won't be sending many more letters.
In contrast, our grandchildren will have no dearth of information about the '80s.
She is one of the oldest of a generation whose perishable memories are the best account of what life was like before our generation was born. Besides the memories in the heads of her children, she has only diaries, followed newspaper clippings, have only governmental and legal documents.
early years of the art, it is hard to guess what the somber-faced subjects were really like.
In the future, thanks to e-communication and computer technology, the present will become a well-recorded past. Instead of dog-eared books and flashcards, we can watch movies and video-taped television programs to provide, if not an accurate picture of our society, at least accurate pictures of us.
Our grandchildren will flip through volume after vinyl-bound volume of snapshots showing people at work and at play, plausibly, grimming wildly and making faces at the
In our enthusiasm for entering everything we know into a computer, we'll zap literally lots of printed paper —newspapers, magazines, catalogs, posters, fingernail-sized silicon chips. We are amazing.
put when our grandchildren punk the keyboards of their inevitable home computer with an old PC.
Certainly, television sit-coms, such as "Eight Is Enough," don't realistically portray the typical American family today any more than "Leave It to Beaver" did in the 1950s. But television does reflect the fads and issues of the times.
readly accessible information will not give them the whole story of our world today.
Newspapers and magazines sift through the daily activities of millions of people and pick out what seems to be important at the time. The resulting stories and pictures aren't the last word on the state of society, but they do keep a running account of its progress.
This incomprehensible volume of historical documentation will be at a kid's fingertips to be displayed in glowing green letters to be flashed on the home video screen when the child becomes to be society as a whole, this information will give our grandchildren only a stylized impression of life today.
Suppose a child of the future wanted to learn more about the Reaganomics era that he was studying in school. The computerized account would include copies of the federal budget at every stage of its development, accounts of its economic demographic effects and months of explanation and criticism from the press.
A videobook would include documentaries on the effects of welfare cuts on the single-parent family, and prime-time television programs would glorify the assembly-line worker who
The curious child could spend many Saturday afternoons in front of a computer display terribly messy.
But to hear about everyday life in those times, what would he do with his grandmother—or maybe with a teacher—to tell him?
And Grandmother, smiling fondly, would recount the anecdotes and trivia of her own lifetime, stories that wouldn't be stored in any computer and that would be meaningless if I told them.
In my grandmother's stories of her courtship in the early 1900s, her dates with my grandfather and her children have been lost.
Olin Church, a long-time friend of my grand-father's, recently published a small book of his memories of growing up in Lone Elm, Kan., a town his father helped found.
Church tells stories of helping to harvest wheat with the newly invented threshing machine, of bidding for a certain girl's box supper at a town picnic and carrying a buggy ride behind her. Good good goods.
Someday, our stories of driving gasoline-fueled cars may seem equally old-fashioned and quaint to our grandchildren. But how else will they know how it felt to drive one?
History is most vivid when told by someone who lived it. Ask anyone who grew up before you
Women's achievements nothing new
Strange, but more than half the people who were women, and history accounts much the same.
That leads some people to conclude that women are second-rate. Even some feminists have problems dealing with their lack of role models. After all, how many women artists work as writers? How many writers never as great as male writers? Have they ever been any women philosophers at all?
I can still remember the disappointment I felt when one of my junior high school teachers informed me that there had been no female philosophers who had founded a school of feminism. I remember how bad any kind that women were doomed to exclusion from the sphere of higher thought forever.
It's time to put women into their proper place in history. They were there from the beginning, actually, but they somehow got out of the textbooks.
Prejudice is evident in a 1965 text, E.J. Lemonn's "Beginning Logic," in which one of
First, I would like to lay to rest the myth that there are no women philosophers worth mentioning. Name one? Adn狄思桑. And Alison Ajagger. Adn Sandra G. Harding. and Marilyn Fry. Adn Jane Moulton. I could on, but lists are boring. Works by these and other female philosophers are currently in print, for anybody interested in reading them.
Unfortunately, there is an unconscious assumption that female philosophers aren't worth reading because women are inherently illogical. So far, no philosopher has succeeded in proving that assumption, although philosophers have been among the worst of its enforcers.
*Exhibit the logical form of the following sentences by translating them into the notation
(a) Susan is featherbrained
(a) Susan is featherbrained.
(b) Janet is featherbrained.
(c) Some women are featherbrained.
(d) All women are featherbrained.
(e) None are featherbrained.
(f) No man is featherbrained."
Get the picture?
Besides trying to denigrate women's ability to think, people trying to prove the basic inferiority of women also point to the dearth of great women artists. Challenged to name two female artists, many people would answer, "Mary Cassat and . . ."
Major art texts also have problem naming two female artists. Janson's "History of Art" doesn't name one in its 500 pages. Hauser's "Art" pages are more.
The sociat History of Art" names one woman among the 450 artists it mentions. Also, references to Cassat usually include comedian and writer George Impressistic portraits of women and babies.
They don't mention that a major mural she painted. "Modern Woman," was penned by
critics and later destroyed because of its
passion for pursuit of fame,
knowledge and participation.
Other female artists have been written out of the history books, and their works attributed to male artists, which means their painting must have been worth viewing.
Following are some examples of great female artists who should be in the textbooks, but aren't. The list is not complete, although it should be enough to pique your interest.
- Maria Sibyla Merian left 17th century Amsterdam to paint exotic wildlife in South Africa.
*Artemisia Gentileschi, a Renaissance painter, was raped by the man who was hired to teach her perspective. Her family then married her off quickly to a much older man, whom she left to live on her own and paint in more freedom than any woman knew until the 20th century. Her subjects were often heroic women.
Levin Teirling, an Antwerp painter, came to England at the invitation of King Henry III.
He paid her more than he paid Holbein, who painted the famous portrait everyone identifies with Henry. After the king's death, Teirling was court painter to Queens Mary and Elizabeth.
- Catherineina van Hemessen was the court
  lawyer of King Charles I. Hungary and
  followed her into exile in Spain.
*Sofaena Anguissola, one of five famous wives of King Philip, once was courtier to the Spanish court at Toledo.
Besides painting, another area of the arts where women excel is writing, though their works are often classed as "women's" or "female," and they can be taken as seriously as the "great" classics.
A student teacher I was talking to the other day mentioned she was appalled when she learned that Emily Dickinson was the only woman writer whose works were required reading in the high school where she was teaching.
When she found that out, she compiled a list of female writers, such as Charlotte Bronte. George Elliot, Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing, Sylvia Plath and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, telling her students they were required to read and comment on at least one of those women's works.
Some boys in the class objected to being forced to read books by women, but the teacher simply told them women had been forced to work as teachers for years, and it was time the tables were turned.
It is time to turn the tables. Before you graduate from college, you should at least have a familiarity with the scholarly and artistic contributions of half of humanity.
Read the works of a female philosopher with an open mind, especially their writings about the philosophy of the feminist movement. Learn about women's contributions to politics, science, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, anthropology, architecture, must art and literature.
Get copies of books by female writers and read them.
You've made a good start. I'm a female writer, and you've just read my column.
Letters to the Editor
KU should avoid 'morally bankrupt position' on athletics
To the Editor:
The most disheartening aspect of the reports of a possible NCAA investigation into the KU football program has been the response of the officials, including one pair with the stonewalling tactics of Watergate.
1, for one, have no sympathy with the argument that a humiliation for Coach Don Fambrough is a humiliation for the University of Kansas. The University can distinguish itself in this situation by refusing to take the morally bankrupt position of asking the UCLA team to win the national ouratic success. Winning football games should be the very least of a good university's aims.
If Chancellor Gene A. Budig has a commitment to the reputation of the entire University, why doesn't he pursue a vigorous, internal investigation of the athletic department immediately, instead of making the standard "no comment" reply?
More than cooperation with the NCAA is required. The chancellor must make it clear publicly and privately that college athletics at KU will not be run as a fiefdom independent of the ethical restraints that are at the heart of a university's purpose.
Fingers and public humiliation of offenders—Coffees and alumni—are the only way to return college sports to at least a semblance of amateur status. The NCAA cannot take for obvious reasons.
that is why it is the task of the college administration to police the athletic department.
- the responsibility in this case lies with Budig and not with the NCAA, assuming that responsibility will ultimately benefit KU, if only because it will at least demonstrate that our University does not accept the status quo in college athletics.
The NCAA is powerless to bring about needed change when it is constantly obstructed by the unwillingness of universities themselves to take action against the excesses of athletic programs.
President or puppet?
Doug Greenwald,
Lawrence law studen
He certainly does not represent my opinion and probably does not represent the majority of students at KU in stating that he supports a 20 percent increase in faculty, but suggests that half the increase be funnelled back to the students for financial aid. Why increase the tuition by so much in the first place? A 20 percent increase in faculty burden, a 20 percent decrease in co-state students, and it will discourage many from attending KU.
This letter is to question whether David Adkins really is still the president of the KU student body or just a puppet for the Kansas Board of Regents.
To the Editor:
I am also dismayed that there has been little, if any, organized protests or campaigns against
the hike. Even the student newspaper has done little.
Why are KU students so apathetic as they watch the Kansas Legislature allow the University to deteriorate when, at the same time, they ask the students to pay a greater share?
Perhaps it is because academics cannot compete with the sports program, Greek houses and other "more important" things at KU. After all, what is a college education for?
Take a look at the periodical section at Watson Library and you will see how many magazines the library has had to cancel of a lack of funds. Compare KU faculty salaries to those of other universities and you will realize, for example, that business is losing a few of its top professors.
David Dingee,
Walkkill, N.Y., graduate student
Story inaccurate
To the Editor:
recently, we were very fortunate to have a Festival/Symphony on Latin American Theatre at the University of Kansas. As co-director of that event, I was very pleased with the enthusiasm of the University Daily Kansan paper and with the space the paper allotted for her story.
However, I must note that I was often misquoted in that article, especially regarding
This is a far cry from saying that the play has its original language (an ab-abbreviation of what it means).
the play "Miss Margarida's Way", by the Brazilian javelin player Wright Athieade.
I never stated that the play had no Portuguese version. I did say that at the festival, there would be no production in Portuguese, but rather, there would be ones in English and in Spanish by actresses who have made the play famous in their respective countries.
Also, I did not say that the play had never been produced in Brazil, but rather, that it had had censorship problems in that country. I said that I assumed that censors would have complained about the play's obscene language, although its political implications are not all that hard to see.
It has since come to my attention that Athyde revised the play and that it then had a very successful run in Brazil. I stand corrected on his statement, but the confusion surrounding my other statements.
Kirsten F. Nigro,
co-director of Latin American Theatre Today
Apologies already have been extended to Athaedy and to Estela Parsons. I would like also to apologize to the Brazilian community in Lawrence who might have taken offense at my seemingly outrageous statements. I would hope that you would not only only a very confused and ill-informed person could have made them. I consider myself to be neither.
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