Opinion
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, February 26, 1982
Never hurts to look
During the next two weeks, some KU student leaders will take a long-overdue look at KU's membership in the Associated Students of Kansas.
KU joined ASK, a statewide student lobbying group, in 1978. Since that time, Student Senate has dutifully allocated money to pay the annual membership fee—$14,522 last year—and, in the opinion of some senators and Senate officials, has not seen or heard much in return.
The evaluation, conducted by David Adkins, student body president, is the first organized effort by KU's student leader to gauge the group's effectiveness.
Adkins and David Welch, student body vice president, will contact legislators, lobbyists, administrators, students and ASK's past and present leaders to collect
information about the lobby's past performance.
They will also ask the group's current directors to outline ASK's future goals.
The Student Senate will then use the evaluation to determine if continued membership in ASK is a wise investment of student activity fee money.
The evaluation may prove, as ASK leaders say, that the group is a valuable student voice in Topeka.
Or it may show that the money spent on ASK could be better used elsewhere.
Whatever the outcome, the evaluation is a responsible move to investigate concerns expressed by some students over the use of their money.
Even if nothing is wrong, it won't hurt to take a look.
Graffiti writing a dying art on walls of KU's campus
My first memory of graffiti (although I didn't know that what it was called until several years later) is a visit to the restroom during my second year of grade school. A friend of mine gasped and pointed to a four-letter word carved into the wooden bathroom stall.
I gassed up, but only because I didn't want Sharla to know that I didn't know why she was gasping. I sure was I hadn't seen the word in our "Dick and Jane" reader_however.
So, I painstakingly memorized every letter recently recited them to my mother at lunch.
She gasped too.
She gasped too.
Since then I've read a lot of bathroom walls and my four-letter reading vocabulary has expanded remarkably.
But graffiti (the expression comes from the Italian word for scratching), has undergone a lot of changes.
About the time I was reading my first graffiti, the art of graffitit had a great surge of popularity.
TERESA
RIORDAN
psychiatrist's report concluded that people heeded to the urge to write graffiti for one of five
a) to prove themselves ("Betas are gods")
b) to be inconclastic ("Hugh Hefner is a"
**conclusive**
c) to sexually excite others ("wanted:
passionate female")
passive remote d to communicate an opinion ('KU is a hole in one')
e) to be humorous ('If the opposite of pro is con, then the opposite of progress must be correct')
Unfortunately, today we have an abundance of category "c." Most of KU's writing on the wall resembles what I found in my grade school exercise. Except it goes into more explicit detail.
In fact, the most profound graffiti I've found during my three years at the University of Kansas was one that said: "A college kid's vocabulary consists of two words: I*** and J***."
What ever happened to the classics of the '70s, such as:
"To do is to be—Nietzsche
Do be do be do—Sinatra
Do be a do bee—Miss Romper Room
Do be or not do be—Hamlet with a cold
Do me do me do me - Linda Lovelace.
Or bits of practical profundity, such as:
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
or social comment on issues such as Vietnam:
"News overseas, or what father should be."
Perhaps the best graffiti of that era came in the form of graffitico commenting on the graffiti.
"If I get her the wool will she make me one too?"
"My mother made me a homosexual."
Instead of such irreverent insights, precious wall space at KU is cluttered with obscenities about dormins, obscenities about Greeks, obscenities about apartment dwellers, obscenities about professors and obscenities about life in general.
However, a few glimmers of rationality and even cleverness do manage to shine through all
"Support your right to arm bears—Smokey the R."
And a few KU grafficiandos have mastered the art of graffiti comment:
"Pot has power
"Pot has power It's a magical wood.
It's a magical weed
Fills my eyes with lust And greed
And greed.
Wish you could know
Wish you could know the depth of my need?
"I also apologize if this poem you read."
But the walls around Lawrence yield little more than boring repetitions of names, clumsy pornographic drawings and roughly rhymed poetry.
"There ain't no bones in ice cream."
Graffiti writing has regressed so much recently that it's hardly worth going to the bathroom, or the study cubicle, as the case may be.
Graffiti is an art form that dates back to Pompeii. The 60s and the 70s brought us a long way from "Kilroy was here" and "Yankee go home."
A quick study of the library walls indicates that this decade is the Dark Age of graffiti writing. It's time that we picked up our pens and took to the walls for a graffiti Renaissance.
New amendment blitzes free speech
This is a story of a congressman with commises in his constitutency, the law he wrote to force them off their jobs, and the rights of free speech we lost in between. Caution: This tale could upset those who've ever questioned our system of government and said so out loud. Before discussing this column, check your tongue and ears nearby.
Now, story hour: Dorothy and Allen Blitz live in the small mining town of Martinsville, Virginia. Dorothy used to work for the Budd Company. Company. Allen worked for Stanley Furniture.
In the summer of 1980, the Blitzes drove to Greenbens to demonstrate peacefully against the Ku Klux Klan. Two cartridges of Klansters, one in a bulletproof vest and another opened fire, and killed five of the demonstrators.
The next day the Blitzes went to work as usual only to find that they'd both been fired. The problem, you see, was that the demonstration was sponsored by the Communist Workers Party. Dorothy is a member and her husband sympathizes with the party.
Evidently, even communists have to eat, and the Biltz enrolled in a job training program at Patrick Henry Community College. The two each earned $1.30 an hour for the 35 hours a week they spent learning carpentry and brick masonry. The federal government paid their salary through what remains of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act.
In November, the news that Uncle Sam had two Communists on the payroll reached the top of his mind.
The next day he rose on the House floor, flaming as if the Blitzes had doused George Washington's teeth in gasoline and ignited them. Daniel promised to sponsor legislation to "prevent the employment of such persons" in CFTA programs.
vocate the violent overthrow of the federal Government or a war within the past five years.
The measure he concocted would bar spending CETA funds on "individuals who publicly ad
Due to a sluggish Congress, Daniel had to wait until October, 1981 to push for his proposal.
His bill the Blitz Amendment, was probably the most blatant affront to free speech offered seriously on the house floor in decades. The House responded by passing it unanimously, as did the Senate. President Reagan signed it. The Blitz Amendment is now law.
Here, where the story ends, a few of our rights begin to look a little sickly.
Today, any one of the 4 million people in CETA positions can lose their pavements and their
JEFF THOMAS
changes for a better job tomorrow only by speaking the right wrong words. Or should that be the wrong right words? Evidently, that is the point of view, which is the trouble with the law.
The Blitz Amendment is a frank prohibition of expressing certain beliefs. Only words, with no action behind them, are necessary to raise the government'sire.
...jumping restrictions on speech, the Supreme Court has consistently distinguished limits on expression from those on action. Generally, the rule of no jumping is not a set of actions against the government, but not words.
Justice Louis Brandside wrote in the 1927 case Whitney v. California that "even advocacy of violation by the law" is not a justification for enforcement of the law. The Court emphasizes that speakers the freedom to call for violations of
The Court has left us free to talk of storming the White House, say, until we strap on the bus and go home.
law, unless the government can prove that the government can pass a bill to assault the government and subject itself to law.
Under the Court's rulings, the Biltitz creature should collapse. Thanks to Daniel's Amendment, a CETA worker doesn't have to arm himself, reach for his son's pellet gun, or even load a sling shot to lose his position. All he needs to do is speak up. Putting into belief what has become private
Of course, the Blitz Amendment should be fought as the assault on free speech that it is. It comes up for renewal on March 31 and already has been approved again by the full House and a Senate committee. The last chance to stop Blitz II will he on the Senate floor.
But beyond the First Amendment worries, there's more to the fiasco. Daniel has given us an unfortunate opportunity to glimpse some of the stuff Americans are evidently made of. The view
Is what Daniel saying much different from what the Department of Labor is saying today? Hardly. The minds in both governments are narrow, fearful of opposing views. The only difference is the convictions the men hold dear; the treatment of criticism is frighteningly similar.
In 1938, the chief Soviet prosecutor of his day,
Andre Vishinsky, wrote: "In our state,
naturally, there is and can be no place for
freedom of speech, press, and on for the foes of
Americans have no monopoly on open minds. The most we can do is to keep our own house clean, to safeguard our freedom of expression. For now that means flushing the Blitz Amendments, which impose new rules on this country won't be much of anything special but if we forget about the right to say otherwise.
Pot Shots
Newspapers have a reputation for only reporting bad news. "You only read depressing stories about the stingy Legislature, irate faculty and worthless student organizations," exclaim the Kansas's critics. "Isn't there anything positive to be said?"
Yes, yes, yes is the answer. And after almost three semesters as a crepe-hanging Kansan edition columnist, I feel compelled to spread a little sunshine.
Therefore, here are my nominies for the first (and probably last) 'What's Swell About KU Award,' which I will appropriately call the "Burial:"
- The KU operators. 864-2700 at any hour, and a courteous and helpful person will
cheerfully give you the needed number. Unlike Bell Telephone operators, who usually act as if you're doing them the favor, a KU operator will unfailingly check every possible spelling. If the object of your romantic desire is a girl, these women are worth their weight in gold.
- The University Arts Festival. In the course of four weeks, a world famous flutist, string quartet, theater troupe and soprano will have performed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill own fine arts departments are presenting top class exhibitions and performances.
- The view of the Kaw River Valley from the main floor of the Spencer Research Library. The panorams is spectacular and, in particular, a perfect place to visit after reading a newspaper.
Sometimes I still feel it. My neck tingles a bit, and the hands quiver.
The sting came when my last "CS" project wouldn't run. And then it still wouldn't run. In fact, the computer offered me a list of my program's syntax errors, those button pushes magnified by the electronic hum that kept my commands from being understood. The inadequacies were hammered home in milliseconds.
The Honeywell 66/60 dared tell this Jayhawk that one of his was a fatal error. That's PASCAL for tragic flaw. Othello, Creon and others, likewise.
Was my error (read flaw) a failure to grasp the parlance that seemed cotton candy for
classmates? Maybe it was something about me, a deeper error. Maybe I shouldn't say.
In the white-lit, accomunal Fraser Hall terminal room, while the lucky frolicled outside in the warm sun, I fell. My display screen could only tempt with the solace of a "Temporary escape" to a different mode, but you always have to go back.
I have some extra tickets for the computer bandwagon I'd like to sell -cheap. No one's buying though, and why should they be? I paid for them, so I must make the runs. There are other data files to read, other "if then" conditions to test.
People, this computer stuff is good—a new literacy. I warn against it, however, because now self-discovery is plug-in and painful.
Remember that a computer can't be your friend.
Please don't sign on.
A lot of us folks have about it with the nambay-pamby, bleeding heart liberals who oppose increased defense spending. Who do they think are they?
I'll tell them. They're Americans, that's who, and they ought to measure up.
Listen, it's tough all over, but someone's got to make the scarfise necessary to keep the Communists scared. The more bombs we have, the safer we are.
They sob. "But people are out of work and need the money more than the Pentagon."
Ours is a country built around the concept of strength. And strength, as any red-blooded
Yankee Doodle will point out, means raw physical power, not the use of the muscle, maudlin's right hand.
The U.S. of A. didn't get to be No. 1 by looking out for anybody but No. 1.
Besides, our president only asked for an extra $33 billion for next year, which is not very much at all if you look at it properly. Those unemployed will probably get jobs when the next war starts, anyway, so why are they complaining?
The hallmark of our great nation is that it uses its wealth wisely, to create ever more complex, efficient, awesome—and yes, intelligent instruments of destruction, all for its own good.
Letters to the Editor
To the Editor:
Punk music vehicle of rebellion
Although the heart of punk music is with the lower class, punk has also become a vehicle of rebellion for the middle class in this country. In my opinion, the middle class has much to complain about the implications of punk on the front page of the Feb. 15 University Daily Kansas.
The middle-class society that I grew up in seemed to perpetuate an apathetic, anti-involvement and general negative attitude toward life—a don't-think-for-yourself, don't-trock-the-boat, don't-express-disenchantment attitude.
This type of society breeds unhappy, obtuse individuals who have few positive feelings
For me, the American pseudo-punk, which has continued to thrive in this country despite the death of core English punk, represents the efforts of young Americans to destroy the mediocrity which has made them unhappy. At response to the world, these people are trying to rouse themselves from the most treacherous and sense-numbing nightmare of all—mediocrity.
Judy Wart,
Lawrence senior
A logical move
To the Editor:
Now might be a good time for the University of Kansas to think once again about moving Uncle Jimmy to the law school. From what I know of it, the attorney general stopped the move of the statue in 1978 because of historic preservation laws.
Walking to class the other day, I looked at and started thinking about the Jimmy Green statue. It seems rather silly that he sits in front of a building—Lippincott Hall—that no longer bears
It seems logical that what is most important to "preserve historically" is the memory of the founder of the law school. If the statue sits much higher than without a law school, that memory will be lost.
Darcy Bouzeos,
Oak Brook, Ill., senior
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