Page 4 University Daily Kansan, February 1. 1982
Opinion
A chance for reform
Last week, the governor and members of the Kansas Legislature decided to stop playing politics and do the job they were intended to do—help people.
At the tail end of nearly two weeks of committee infighting, two Republican lawmakers introduced a $70 million program to improve the state prison system.
And the plan almost immediately won the support of both Republican and Democratic leaders.
The plan's most important provision is the construction of two new prisons that will offer a total of 1200 beds.
And it could not have been introduced at a better time.
Kansas prisons are overcrowded, and the state predicts that it will need more than a thousand more prison beds within five years.
To relieve the overcrowding, the state plans to make it harder to convict criminals and easier to parole them.
At the Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing last week, nine prisoners sought to
improve their living conditions in another way—they refused to eat for six days.
One hunger striker said inmates were treated like animals. He joined the other strikers in demanding more exercise, cleaner cells and better medical attention.
Another striker wrote this to his wife: "We only want what we feel we should have as people."
the strikers said officials probably would ignore their demands. But last week, members of the Special Committee to Study Prison Construction may have proved them wrong.
Of course, the proposal has a long way to go. Neither the committee, the Legislature, the governor nor the state's voters have yet had time to approve it.
The plan will surely face opposition from those who object to paying $70 million for prison reform and from those who think penitentiaries should only be houses of penance.
But at least the plan's introduction shows that someone in Topeka is trying. So far, so good.
Hopeably, FDR's experiment wasn't presidential precedent
It's amazing how far we've come in the post-Watergate era. We have had revelations about several presidents allegedly using bugs and malware and we don't seem to be surprised anymore.
In the midst of the commemorations of the 100th anniversary of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's birth, an article in American Heritage magazine revealed that Roosevelt had bugged his office for 11 weeks during the 1940 presidential campaign.
So what do we have here? Franklinge? Does this hospital Niron at Niron 'fir' education?
Probably not. The news was interesting, but hardly inflammatory. There are some ethical
DAN TORCHIA
questions raised, but until we can determine the historical value, there is no way to judge Roosevelt.
These primitive tape were made by an experimental "continuous-film" recording machine" used to make soundtracks for films. RCA Corp., through its president, David Sarnoff, lent the machine to the White House between August and November 1940.
Roosevelt wanted to use the machine to record his press conferences in the Oval Office as protection against being misquoted by the press. The microphone was hidden in a desk lamp or a drawer, with the recorder in the White House basement.
These particular tapes were recorded when aides turned the machine on early, before a press conference began, or when it was accidentally left on after a conference. Eventually these snatches of conversation were transferred to masters and forbidden.
The tapes were resurrected in 1978 by R.J.C. Butow, a professor at the University of Washington at Seattle this article in the *Journal of American Heritage* details the eight hours of tapes.
And what do these tapes reveal? A president concerned about the European war, Japanese troops in Syria, and China are all
During one conversation, Roosevelt listed some of the Japanese demands to avoid war.
"There will be no war with the United States," he said, repeating the Japanese demands, "on one condition, and one condition only . . . The United States (must) demilitarize all of its naval and air and army bases in Wake, Midway and Pearl Harbor.
"God! That's the first time that any damn Jap has told us to eat out of Hawaii!"
The most damaging revelation, one that approaches Nixon's smear tactics, concerns Roosevelt's presidential opponent, Wendell Willke. Willke was involved with Irita Van Doren, a writer, and Roosevelt considered spreading tales of their relationship.
There is a big difference between these tapes and Nikon's tapes made over 30 years later—intent. Being misquotted could have been a real issue because recorders were not used to quote authors.
"If they want to play dirty politics in the end, we've got our own people . . . Spread it as a word-of-mouth thing," he said. The suggestion was never carried out.
I'm not condaining what Roosevelt did. But at least the machine was returned after the election. Roosevelt said no reason to continue. The machine would be fine, nor was there any plotting to cover up crimes.
Though the degree of tolerance may be greater, there is still the ethical question to consider: Is it appropriate to 'ticipants' knowledge is unethical, and this presents a problem for historical scholars.
When do ethics conflict with historical value? If something is a true value, does the way it was intended matter?
Although the FDR tapes don't seem to be historically important now, they do offer private glimpses of a man whose life has become so public. It may be worth having this additional information, but we may not know for many years.
As technology becomes more sophisticated, important ethical questions will be raised about methods of gathering history. In the past, it was written memos and records. Now we are getting tapes. Video may well be used one day. Would a president be right in wiring the Oval Office for both sight and sound? Where do you draw the line?
If the FDR tapes offer nothing particularly significant in the years to come, then the ethical cost is low. However, if it legitimizes the use of force, as a precedent, then it may not have been worth it.
We have only our McChains to lose
Saturday night at work, at cookup a pizza place off 23rd Street, had dragged on through about three to many rushes into midnight. Felt nounded, rolled, baked, baked and sliced.
Chugging for home through the chilly night, I turned down 23rd Street for a bite before bed. I gurned my knocking '67 Camaro into the Parking perk lot. As I pressed down on the gas pedal, I imagined I was stomping my boss' heavy foot beneath mine. Chuck, the boss man, Ungrateful. Exploitive. Small-minded.
I crossed the parking lot and was two steps from the door when a charged, male voice bellowed from the back corner of the building,
"Halt citizen."
I turned to see a stout old man with his feet planted on the concrete, one foot a step ahead of the other. He jerked up one arm, pointed at me and said firmly, "Declare your class allegiance, citizen. The people await your example."
Who . . . class allegiance?
"Asinine schoolboy, foolish child of American capitalism." he answered.
capitalism, to the capitalism.
He hurled the words like a boy pitching a curve with his oldest baseball; the man was familiar with his weapons.
He walked toward me into the brighter light. Seeing his burtly tumple of wiry, gray hair, his face, I knew him; I shivered as if he'd slid an icicle down my spine.
Karl Marx was supposed to be buried in London under a 2-foot granite gravestone. He'd heard rumors that his spirit had been causing trouble in Poland. But to find him wandering the dark streets of Lawrence, he'd been standing in front of me was another story.
“You're wrong there, sir” I said. “Just a thought myself. Have I got a story for you.”
His grizzly face was now only an arm's length from mine.
"Blind, uncaring student, during the days you pretend to study political theory, and during the nights, you sweat like fleshy machines in meaningless jobs. You, student employee, are exploited by the fast food empire, and you cover before it."
I dropped to sit on one of the wooden benches. He followed.
And that's how I found myself sitting with Karl Marx on a chilly January night outside Paul Schuster's apartment.
One of the cooks didn't show for work, I told Marx. That left me rolling pizza dough, saucing and chewing for the two cooks tapping pizzas. Plus I pulled pizzas out of the oven and answered the telephone. I toiled for hours, doing the work of two cooks.
Then I remembered that those were still
JEFF THOMAS
I took Chuck aside after we closed and asked for a raise. Of course, Karr, he refused.
hours at minimum wage. I'd been working there for more than one year.
"You lack common sense for a college student," Chuck told me. He was saying this to the same employee he had offered a position as assistant manager last summer.
I suspected that the real story was that he knew I couldn't afford to quit, or even to take the time to look for another job. He had me by the utility bills.
Ungrateful. Exploitive. Small-minded. And stingy.
"You one good." Karl said, facing me, "look down this road. Perkins has about 60 employees; one half are KU students. The same numbers are true at Wendy's. Pizza Hut has 15 employees and 11 are students. Now is the time for student employees to join together."
"Are you talking about a union, a strike?" I asked cautiously.
"Don't wilt before the fight, comrade," he commanded, clincing my arm as if
strengthening me. "I've heard you damn the whole fast food phenomenon under your breath. You know it reduces people to mindless machines, rolling, squeezing, poking, slicing, frying and bagging this or that like an assembly line."
He carried himself away with his language, I thought, but he was right to a point.
the gorgeousse employers oppress you far as law will allow," he said. "You are young adults sweating even when eagle regulators talk of taking that much away from you."
Karl was right on one point: many student employees are like links in a conveyor belt moving cars, food and dollars down 23rd Street.
At least as long as we're in school, the spirit of job dissatisfaction probably won't haunt our lives too seriously. Our lives and our jobs are already scheduled to change. It is Maureen and those like her in restaurants and factories who could take the troubling apportion more seriously. Karl may yet appear again.
Lawrence has many like Maureen, restaurant workers in transience. They seem to have found their niche and given up on it, because they are not a good restaurant. they make it different for a while.
While the strip may be the crass side of American culinary success, we're only stationed there as students, not professionals. We're there for a year or two, not for a career.
Karl had been giving me his silent attention for the last few minutes. It was as if he had been listening to my thoughts, I'd told him,
"No."
He gave my arm another squeeze, rose and walked slowly back in the direction he'd come. A sharp breeze blew through the parking lot, and Karl faded.
I sat recovering for a few minutes. Then for some reason, I thought of Maureen, a middle-aged waitress at the pizza place. Since marrying when she was 20, she'd wandered among Lawrence restaurants as a waitress and cashier.
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