Page 4 University Daily Kansan, February 12, 1982
Opinion
Better than nothing
Student sports fans who are disenchanted with the rising price of student football and basketball tickets may be offered a break next year.
The Ticket and Ticket Policy Committee of the University of Kansas Athletic Corporation is recommending a package deal for students who buy season tickets next year. The package may not be the year's biggest bargain, the price per game is still increasing slightly, but it at least tries to give students a little more for their money.
The ticket package, which includes both a football and a basketball season ticket, would cost $45. Individually, the basketball ticket would cost $22 for 11 games and the football ticket would cost $25 for six games.
This year's football season ticket cost $25.50 for seven games, and the basketball ticket cost $28 for 16 games.
A $2 saving for the package may not sound like much of a bargain, but the package includes 14 basketball games,
three more than the number included in next year's individual basketball season ticket.
The committee is sending the recommendation to KUAC for consideration at its next meeting.
At $2 a basketball game, the ticket package represents an $8 saving for students able to attend the vacation games.
The three extra games are the exhibition game played during Thanksgiving vacation and the two games scheduled during Christmas break.
The committee's motives may not be entirely altruistic. Rising season ticket prices have not done much to fill the stadium and field house and it's no secret that the athletic program needs more money.
It was inevitable that ticket prices would increase. But it is comforting to know, that, in the process of rounding up more money for athletics, KUAC may be able to offer students a little something extra too.
Religious beliefs somersault when students leave home
Memories and 2-year-olds are somewhat alike. Just when we want to be left alone, they start making trouble. Wednesday, as I was crunching down the sidewalk in front of Watson Library, one of the old thoughts of its tiny, dark crib and blared in my head.
A hymn, sung by a chorus of my boyhood,
echoed between the ears: "Hills of God, break
four in singing. Gleam, white luster of the
heart, wings by angels stirred from sleeping."
I chased off the wandering choir and thought on my own: Whoever wrote about
JEFF THOMAS
those holy hills probably did not have Mount
Olympus and did not thunderbring
fear among KU students.
KU students aren't too special in their indifference toward the spiritual; it seems to be a state of the age group at most times at most schools. A study in 1974 of about 2,000 students at the University of California at Berkeley concluded that their most frequent spiritual trip was "experimentation with no religion at all."
Of course, we may have brought our family's religion with us as freshmen, but only for a visit. On about the second trip home with dirty laundry, many of us happened to forget to bring the flare-legged jeans and much of the religious habit back to school.
Nearly 70 percent of the seniors surveyed had been raised as Protestants or Catholics; about 20 percent held those convictions by the time they graduated.
Of course the numbers would be a bit different for a university in Kansas in 1982. Still, the point of the study is probably as true for us today. "The college experience, as might be expected, seems to be a time of 'making up' with others in a religious, 'religion,' the survey's authors concluded."
For students at Berkeley in the '70s and in Lawrence in the '80s, the decision for many is that religion isn't going to be the main tune in their lives.
For several years, I've been one of those
students who is confidently uninvolved in religion. Or, at least, most of the time.
As I wasmailing my last application to a graduate school this week, a quick, silent prayer played through my mind. "Please, let me see this one." "I caught myself and pulled back.
I was speaking to a deity I didn't even pretend to believe in. I've heard friends do the same. Evidently, even the hardcore uncle of my uncle knew that he should right stress, whisper a prayer—just in case.
It's not that we begin believing again. It's a dislohence with ourselves, a sin of insincerity. It is a dislohence with ourselves, a sin of insincerity.
But in a deeper shadow of the anger is fear. We feel our convictions slip and our uncertainty frightens us. Many of us have already seen our religious beliefs sasomersault since leaving the hometown. Now, once in a while, we catch ourselves wavering back into the old ways. We catch our hearts and our minds rrowing out of sten with each other.
The statistics say that eventually the two will settle down and join each other—on the old side of the tracks. If we were raised in a church, the chances are that within 10 years we'll be thinking closely along those lines again.
Whether we like the prospect or not, it appears that the religious feelings we have have that shape our behavior.
Many of us will probably go through two broad phases of religious commitment. The first, as children, was a time when adults were responsible for us. The other, independent adulthood, will be a time when others raise us and children, will be our responsibility.
College is a unique passage in the flux. These are the years when our prime responsibility is to ourselves and only to others, so we need time for many when religion isn't as crucial.
We should wonder whether the changes in our spiritual beliefs will be more the result of our situation in life than of careful thought. Will only the weight of others depending on us matter? Do we really have faith in ourselves? If we do return to the fold, will our convictions have honestly and thoroughly deepened?
But those aren't questions for a columnist to answer for anyone else. The answers can only come from each reader. Our belief or unbelief should mean more than convenience. Somehow they should be related to the truth as we see it.
Literary slight unforgivable
Letters to the Editor
My writing of this letter is an endeavor to convey my superlative dismay—nay, my extreme rage—at having all human sensibility rent asunder by the incoherency concerning Ken that you were benevolent enough to present to your inquisitive reading public on Feb. 2.
To the Editor:
Feb. 2, in fact, happens to be the 100th anniversary of the birth of James Joyce, of whom even individuals of your own exquisite tastes have quite possibly heard.
An article concerning James Joyce (an august individual to say the very least) and his estimate contributions to literature would have been a presentation worthy of much laudation. And when one considers that this memorable work is actually a public publication of the first copies of his "Ulysses" and "Finegans Wake," works of a rather significant stature, it becomes quite obvious that there has been a blatant and incompetent miscarriage of priority by the individual or individuals responsible for the article cleverly and unassessed "Kaesey's 'Cuckoo's Nest' hatchedera."
The knowledge that Kesey was a devastatingly overrated "acid-prompted" "jester" of little "depth, breadth and insight" does not excuse the excruciating lack of breadth, depth and insight. and sense in the printed column by W.J. Andrew, who, I think, conceals his first two names in order that we may encounter difficulty locating his listing in the telephone book, for the
Who could possibly imagine that even a writer of Kesey's meagre capability would be so "deftly" deal with in such an incohesive display of the strivings of an inferior candidate for the long dead Beat Generation? Who would be capable of believing that a newspaper affilitated by James Joyce, with a utmost certaintypletely ignore James Joyce, a personage of the utmost genius, and his works, which have each meant so incredibly much to us and to literature?
Andrews' piece moves ploddingly from one nonsensical "insight" to another: "Kesaw is a jock ... you get manhandled in time." Cassady and Jack Kerouze don't last the trip, but their relationship has the nervous system? Or perhaps the malformed child of one striving to impress through a bit of hilarious alliteration. I shall not continue my discourse concerning this prosaic incoherency, for its creator, in all probability, already feels overwhelmed by overwhelming embarrassment of his ramblings.
purpose of an oral chastising for his ridiculous, preposterous posturing.
Oddd J. Newman
Topeka freshman
And what university newspaper would flant and dangle this ignorance in our saddened faces by replacing a feature on Joyce with an essay by Clayton H. McGraw, a stupenyfingly inferior writer? I do much wonder.
Pot Shots
Lucrative career opportunities flourish in the back pass industry, filled magazines in the background hospital wards.
“Fix lawnmowers for fun and profit!” beckons one ad in bold, black type. A drawing of a man, beaming as the crouches beside a lawnmower, illustrates the “fun” part. For only $9.55 plus 95 cents tax, you, too, can learn to repair small engines.
Those who yearn to work with nature can
raise earthworms, grow ginseng or make up to $40,000 a year from an herb farm—even in a rural area.
The industrious person can earn up to $40 a day tying fish files at home and up to $60 a day molding concrete fence posts for a company in Excelsior, Mo.
For only $10, the professionally inclined can become a doctor of Nutripathy.
A fast-learner can master upholstery, auctioneing or piano tuning in just a few easy lessons. Musical knowledge is unnecessary.
Last Wednesday a forgotten part of my past came back to haunt me.
It is clear why enrollments are declining at institutions of higher education.
Enterprising high school graduates know that a college degree no longer ensures success. Instead of making the emotional and financial investment demanded of a college student, the smart ones are clipping newspaper items for fun and profit.
You see, I had a bad habit of collecting parking tickets on campus. I knew I was guilty so I would go to Hoch and pay my $7.50, each time swearing that I would never park on campus again. Of course, I did and I got ticketed . . .
However, there was one time I knew I wore
innocent and I wasn't about to fork over $7.50.
R. Brom Abbott
so I went through the process of filling out my anomation for anopeal.
That was more than two years ago.
After a year I assumed the entire incident had been forgotten. After two years I knew it to be. But last Wednesday I got a notice from the traffic court that my appeal was denied.
Needless to say I was shocked to learn the same court that has been catching a lot of heat lately because members wanted to be paid $4 an hour was two years behind.
I cast my memory back to my parking ticket days to remember the circumstances behind my innocence. The more I thought about it, the worse those pseudo-judges would enjoy eating me alive.
They'd eat me alive, not because I am guilty, but because I simply cannot remember that one day over two years ago enough to say the ravenous curiosity of those law students.
"That face, those eyes, that smile!"
That is hardly a fitting greeting for a sleepy-eyed, just-awakened kook of a KU student.
But every morning, while I flake for my toast to pop up and my corn flakes to get deliciously soggy, I confront that message as my first piece of literature for the day.
I appears on the back of the cereal box as
the punch line for one of those "special offers."
For an investment of $3.50 (and two boxed
pictures) of the company is offering a
mirror with its logo.
By looking into the mirror, I could, presumably, emulate the images that appear regularly on the front of the box. You know, the loving couple, the cute little kid with dimples, the macho cowboy—all American people with corn-frank flakes on their faces.
As I sit at the breakfast table in a groggy daze, the offer is not too appealing.
After just being coldly awakened from my treasured slumber, with baggy eyes, messy hair and an uncompromising disposition, it's hard to imagine myself on the front of a corn flakes box. Sorry, Madison Avenue, no sale this time around.
Cable TV gobbling up best of viewing diet
Bv DESMOND SMITH
New York Times Special Features
TORONTO—The three major commercial television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, which have dominated the United States' viewing landscape, are slowly back out of over-the-air broadcasting.
Like corporate "asset-strippers," they are taking the most saleable aspects of their programming—sports, news, women's programs, the performing arts—and repackaging them for the new cable television audiences.
So far, the parent corporations that own the three networks have announced the formation of six new cable networks, and there will be more to follow. Moreover, in search of programming, developers can schedule of the punitive public broadcasting system with potentially devastating effect.
The implications for non-cable viewers are deeply disturbing. Cable television now reaches only 27 percent of U.S. homes. Already there are millions of impoverished Americans who literally cannot afford cable television at any price. And there are millions more—those who live in sparsely populated regions—who don't have and will never be offered cable service because the costs of wiring these areas is simply too orobitative.
Only a year or so ago, Arthur Taylor, then president of CBS Inc., warned that if nothing was done to stop the spread of cable television, the public would soon by paying for programs they received "free" from the networks. Times have changed.
Last year, Taylor attended the cable convention in Los Angeles as the new head of RCTV, a cultural cable channel jointly owned by RCA, parent company of NBC, and Rockefeller Center Inc. Taylor announced that British Broadcasting Corp. programs similar to the acclaimed "Masterpiece Theater" would form the core of RCTV's schedule. Thus, viewers will quite literally be paying for what they had previously seen for free over public TV.
Almost overnight, or so it seems, all that is "cultural" in the performing arts has left commercial broadcasting. Yet as we look closely, we can see that Leonard Bernstein, who once graced the CBS television network's prime time, is busing tapley of Beethoven's symphonies with the Philharmonic for CBS Cable. Twenty years ago, more than 1.6 million people in the New York City area saw a two and a half-hour performance of "Vienna" on WCBS-TV. This year, Joseph Papp's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" will be seen only by CBS Cable subscribers.
The networks might argue that Walt Whitman had it all wrong when he said, "To have great poets there must be great audiences, too." Much of the new cable programming is aimed at "class" rather than "mass" audiences, at the "up-scale" viewer rather than the audience-at-large. The television universe, nobody wants the South Bronx; everybody is competing for Fairfield County.
But what about sports? It is here that asset-stripping will have a profound impact. ABC and Getty Oil, which owns the Entertainment and Sports Network, have announced that they will develop a cable sports television service that will offer subscribers "blockbuster" sports
Most Americans now get their basic news service from television. What happens as the networks shift into cable? ABC recently announced that it would begin in the around-the-clock Westinghouse. Roone Arledge, head of ABC News and Sports, suggests that ABC correspondents will be able to provide longer reports on cable—hour-long interviews, for
How do the network moguls propose to do that without impairing their present network schedules? National Hockey League games without the playoffs? U.S. tennis championships without the finals? A capsule of the World Series on regular TV, but entire games on cable?
Will the already overworked network news team stretch themselves even thinner, or will it continue to grow?
junked? The silent dismantling of the antiquated national television system has begun. It will cost viewers money to enter the new TV world. Of course, there is no "right to view" in the Constitution. But as America shifts into the new rich-and-poor TV world, someone ought to be asking the hard question: Do we really want a television system that offers a feast for a privileged minority, a famine to the rest of the nation?
(Desmond Smith, a producer with Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, writes frequently for the New York Times.)
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