Page 4 University Daily Kansan, March 12, 1982
Opinion
Our senators' Senate
Student Senate calls itself the representative of the students.
Its leaders and senators eloquently coo about what the "average" student wants and needs.
But Wednesday night, the Senate proved that it did not care about what at least one "average" student had to say.
The student, Carl Shepard, came to the meeting expecting to ask the Senate for some of its excess money to pay for the printing of a leaflet about El Salvador.
His request probably would have been denied. Many of the senators at the meeting have little interest in El Salvador, or anything else outside their microcosmic concerns.
But Shepard didn't get that far. The Senate would not allow him to speak.
The Senate has a rule. It requires a two-thirds vote of the senators present before it will yield the floor to non-senators.
The Senate took a voice vote, and the student body vice president ruled that the motion to allow Shepard to speak had failed. A senator called for a division—requiring a hand vote—but the student
body vice president apparently didn't hear or care.
Obviously, the senators, who had been meeting for less than an hour, wanted to go home. Or maybe, when they heard that Shepard had something to say about El Salvador, they conveniently heard their homework calling.
This action was shameful. The country club Senate moans and wails because it can't find active, concerned students to participate in student government.
But when such a student turned up on their doorstep, most of our elected representatives rudely slammed the door in his face, denying him the right to be heard.
After the meeting, one senator suggested a bill that would change the rule and required the Senate to listen to those they are supposed to represent.
It will be interesting to see if this uncaring, unrepresentative Senate will pass such a bill—a bill that should not need to be written.
Student senators should consider it a privilege, not a nuisance, to listen to their constituents.
Yes, the Senate represents the students. As long as they are mute.
EVidence JUST RELEASED BY SECRETARY OF STATE ALEXANDER HAIG INCLUDES THIS ACTUAL, UNRETOUCHED PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN BY SPY SATELLITE SHOWING GROUP OF NICARAGUANS EXPECTING GUERRILLA WAR IN EL SALVADOR.
Reagan's economic actions betray his stance on Poland
In case you haven't noticed, the Polish crisis is over.
The American people, tired of the steady media diet of Lech Walesa, Solidarity and marital law, turned their attention last month to the Reagan administration's new crisis.
Yet while Alexander Haig conferred with Mexican leaders last week about Salvadoran guerillas, on the other side of the world, he and his team have met with Urzelski, prized in Moscow to a hearty welcome.
The Soviets praised Jaruzelsk's "timely"
imposition of lawm martial last 13. December
DAVID HENRY
Polish officials called the trip "a great political success."
The trip also pointed out what all but the most naive in the West now realize: Poland under Wladimir Putin is a threat.
- Last week, a priest was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for "slandering Poland's system and its authorities" in a sermon. The church stood by helplessly.
- More than 4,000 people have been imprisoned, uprooted from families and jobs (or "detained," as the American press now calls it) for their previous involvement in Solidarity.
- The martial law regime will temporarily free Lech Walesa for the Christening of his daughter, whom he yet to see, later this month, according to Walesa's wife.
These events, now buried in the back pages of newspapers, should be old news by now. Similar prison sentences, detainments and out-of-the-bind "kind gestures" follow in the wake of nearly every Soviet-inspired takeover. In Angola, in Germany, now in Poland, we witness the same mind-control efficiency that brings an entire population under totalitarian control.
However, indeed of taking meaningful action to counter Soviet-imposed tyranny, the Reagan administration simply lit a candle to protest martial law in Lithuania. And if actions in past weeks are any indication, Reagan will allow the lonely candle to burn itself out, snuffing with it the freedoms which the Polish people were demanding.
Three months after mortal law began in Poland, the Reagan administration still is ignoring its most effective weapons against the Soviet Union and its satellites. It refuses to impose a gunge embargo, and thereby continues to solve Russia's farm crisis. It continues exporting the technology the Soviet Union desperately needs. And importantly, Reagan refuses to declare Poland in default on its debts.
Declaring default would send the overburdened Soviet economy reeling; the Soviets already are asking for extensions on their own debts (more than $80 billion) to Western banks. Importantly, Poland's bankruptcy would greatly boost the Russian blooc, slowing Soviet militarism in the future.
Unfortunately, Reagan appears to be listening to his pocketbook, not his heart.
Less than one month after the Polish takeover, Reagan approved one of the largest industrial sales in U.S.-Soviet history. Under the $300 million deal, International Harvester will supply the technology and blueprints and the Russians the factory able to produce 30,000 combines a year.
Not only can the factory be converted for military machinery, but, according to one administration source, the combines might boost Soviet grain yields by 25 percent.
The irony in the International Harvester deal is extreme beyond measure. The lure of profits, and the overriding desire to preserve them, has led a Michiganagan to underwrite the very tyranny he opposes.
Many in America, blinded by fear or greed, refuse to accept the Soviet government as the titularitarian tyranny it is. Reagan, however, has consistently done so in the past, making his present lack of actions toward Poland all the more hypocritical.
"This administration evidently loves commerce more than it loathes communism," George Will, nationally syndicated columnist, concluded recently.
Will is right on the money in his assessment.
The Reagan administration shakes its fist at Cuba, frets about Nicaragua and El Salvador and condemns Polish martial law—in short, it takes a stardent anti-communist stand. But at the same time, the administration feeds the enemy, the US and approves massive business deals with it.
You have to think that they're smiling about the contradiction in the Kremmlin: behind a facade of detente and cooperation, the Soviets want to move to eastern aid while continuing their own interests.
Many conservatives saw the Reagan presidency as a new opportunity to contain communism. But Poland, a country guilty of a struggle for simple freedom, is being crushed by Jaruzelski-Soviet government that receives financial support from the United States.
Not only have Americans been betrayed by the Reagan administration but, more tragically, the prison sentences, the imprisonments and the martial law regimes in Poland still continue.
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When a Princeton student was charged this week with building up his private library collection with $250,000 worth of more than 3,000 bookstores from area bookstacks, most people probably marveled at the absurdity of the case.
Only in New Jersey,they thought.
Maybe they should think again. Lawrence has its own edition of the bibliomallic thief
Pot Shots
JeresaPiirden
lurking in the stacks of Watson. Except that
he'd never read a periodicals pillerer
than a book snatcher.
Not only has this thief mastered the technique of getting the pirated material past the elaborate detectors at the Watson entrance, but he also knows how to strategically pilfer only the most-needed magazine issues and articles.
Invitably when I do research I discover he has either lifted a crucial issue of Newsweek, carefully extracted all the important pages leaving only razored stubs, or made off with a few pages and put them to be found in the maze of folio numbers. (He must have sneaked out a viewer as well.)
The librarians are on their guard for the thief. They've even nailed all the windows shut so he can't drop periodicals out the window anymore. Nevertheless he remains at large.
I hope they catch up with him soon. In the meantime, I'm keeping an eye out for someone with big pockets who carries an exacto knife in hand.
Rich man, poor man, beggerman, thief,
Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief.
Job decisions don't come easy,
When I graduate, what shall I be?
Drafter, chemist, tool designer, nurse,
Forester, counselor, drive your own hearse.
Pharmacist, technologist, lab worker; cook;
To make a decision, where should I look?
Economist, psychologist, historian, cop,
Dentist, osteopath, work in a shop.
Art director, set director, pilot, beautiful,
Sound mixer, case aid, video operator.
Novelist, publisher, dress designer, poet,
If I made the right decision, would I know it?
Podinistrat, hygienist, academic dean,
Director of admissions, operate a Teleline.
Columbist, critic, editorial writer,
Newscaster, reporter, casework supervisor.
Actor, dancer, singer, buyer;
If I said I'd made my choice, I'd be a liar.
Urban planner, pursuer, data typist, collector,
decorator, collection, and exchange tabelle
Decisions, decisions, What shall I decide?
'It'll be my decision for the rest of my life
John Belushi's unexpected death last
painful week as machine types in new
newsroom across the country.
Newspapers and broadcast stations rushed to issue the startling announcement: John Belushi, 33-year-old actor-comedian, was found dead today in his $200-a-day hotel room.
Then the speculation began. A barrage of "latest developments" suggested and
discarded explanations of how Belushi had died.
He was first believed to have suffered a heart attack. Later reports indicated that he was struck by a bullet while playing basketball.
Inevitably, the word came out. A powdery,
white substance was found in a nightstand in
one of my bathrooms.
Even as his fans awaited the latest news, they expressed self-righteous disgust at the attack.
There they go, those dirt-digging reporters with their poised pencils and their long-lens cameras. Like Elvis Presley and Natalie Adams one is easier to exploit than a dead celebrity.
But the readers and viewers who lambaste a scandal-seeking press will scan the headlines and listen for Belushi's name until their curiosity is satisfied. Distasteful as discovering the truth may be, they want to hear it.
Most people are fascinated with celebrities. Everyone wonders about death. When those stories begin to occur, it's often too late.
U.S. homogenizing cultural program
New York Times Special Features
By FRED WARNER NEAL
CLAEMONT, Calif.—As a scholar often in Yugoslavia doing research or attending academic meetings, I have frequently responded to requests from the U.S. foreign cultural community, as known as the International Communication Agency, which lectures there on various facets of American life.
Although such activity is not very remunerative, helps, as least partly, defray tax.
When, some months ago, I was invited to a conference in Belgrade, I reported this to the ICA in Washington and asked if the agency would live to have me do something.
Yes, I was told, by all means. Please send details at once.
Weeks went by, during which I had no response.
Then, in early September, I received a call from an ICA functionary whose name was unknown to me. My name obviously was not known to him. He was, he said, considering my role for assistance in the Belgrade." There was no response. Would I respond to the Reagan administration foreign policy?
When I recovered from my astonishment, I asked the obvious question: What foreign policy? Could he tell me what it was? I was going to ask him as an independent scholar, not as an advocate.
I would never attack our foreign policy in a foreign country, I added, but as for supporting the "Reagan administration foreign policy," I wouldn't if I wanted to, because I didn't understand it.
Would I, for example, support or oppose the idea of a trade embargo on the Soviet Union? Or would it be supposed to be for cooperation agreement between the military buildup? For or against AWACS to Saudi Arabia? For or against WA
Perhaps, I suggested, my caller could enlighten me on these points. What exactly was the problem?
To these questions, there was no response. The ICA man stated only that there was "now a policy of not sending anybody abroad who would not support the administration's foreign policy." He would have to consider the matter in that light and get back to me.
He never did.
Soon after this conversation, I mentioned my dismay to a friend in the ICA. "Well," he said, "this is happening all over around here. I didn't know they had gone that far, but we are being politicized all over the place. Cultural relations are fast becoming political."
Since that time, instructions have gone out that the political litmus test must be applied to ICA support for any scholars participating in meetings abroad, even those only remotely concerned with foreign affairs, economic policy or anything else on which the administration has indicated a position. All inquiries about such matters are referred to a "public liaison office." And there, an ICA acquaintance told me, "they are instructed to stonewall it."
Our foreign cultural relations play an important role in how the United States is understood abroad. Traditionally, a wide variety of scholars has participated in them, with positive results especially when visiting American professors in the language of the host country.
In the past, American cultural-relations programs were not seriously affected by the vicissitudes of domestic politics or changing administrations. Participating scholars,
When there have been ambiguities in our foreign policy—a not wholly unknown state of affairs—such lectures have helped clarify the complicated, sometimes arcane decision. Washington. Foreign audiences, in my experience, appreciate not being propagandized.
reflecting the pluralism of American life, were not selected on the basis of whether they were born in America.
The current head of ICA is Charles W. Wick, a Los Angeles friend of President Reagan. He has directed preparation of a new "mission statement," soon to be released.
The statement makes it clear that the mission is primarily one of political propaganda geared to maintain power and control.
The institution's name, as if to cover up its new directions, is soon to be changed back to U.S. Information Agency. The change, a staffer commented wryly, "is unlikely to fool many people, at home or abroad. What we are now engaged in doing is just too blatant."
(Fred Warner Neal, professor of international relations and government at the Claremont Graduate School, has written two books on Yugoslavia.)
Letters to the Editor Eldredge backs salaries
My support for faculty salaries has not cooled or waned, as stated in your headline of March. 21.
To the Editor:
Last year, the Legislature lessened the faculty salary money below the level recommended by Gov. Carlin. So far this year, the Legislature's decision has not been supported in the Legislature.
It is vital to provide adequate support for higher education. I pledge my efforts to that end. I also support a severance tax, because I do not believe that we can adequately fund education in this state without an increased source of revenue.
While I appreciate the coverage your newspaper gave to my remarks, I strongly object to the conclusion of my headline. My best approach for adequate faculty salaries has not cooled.
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State Sen.Jane Eldredge R-Lawrence.