Page 4
University Daily Kansan, January 26, 1982
Opinion
Promises soon broken
How quickly campaign rhetoric is forgotten.
If last Saturday's committee chairman elections were any indication, those promises have fallen by the wayside.
David Welch, student body vice president, told a reporter and others who were not committee members that they would have to leave during the elections of the chairmen.
Welch would do well to read the funding philosophy governing groups receiving student activity fee money.
Those affected by Welch's order refused to leave, and the matter was dropped.
This document, adopted by the Student Senate, states that "The officers of all Senate funded clubs must be KU students, and must be elected at fair, open, and well-publicized elections."
Student Senate committees may not qualify as clubs funded by the Senate, but the Senate and its committees should be concerned about the example they set for these groups.
Elections of committee chairmen are not to be confused with appointments made by the student body president and vice president in the privacy of their offices. Students are often directly affected by the actions of the committees, and the election of chairman is a matter of their concern and interest.
According to the University Senate Code, Student Senate and its committees can close meetings, but only after following the proper procedure. In order to close a meeting, "an affirmative vote of two-thirds of the members present and voting," is required.
No such vote was taken last Saturday.
Noble vice was taken back officials. It's disappointing when elected officials forget the purposes for which they were elected.
Student government was established to serve the students, not to shut them out.
Tragedy, horror, heroism unfold in Washington drama
The "Airport" movies of the 70s each staged a spectacular predicament meant to outdo the previous "Airport" in suspense and danger. The films' protagonists displayed bravery and daring that always averted the enemy by a margin as slim as an aliener.
But two weeks ago, hazards depicted in two "Airport" movies—a winter storm and a plane setting into the sea—loomed in real life, and heroism cannot reverse the calamity. A passenger plane plunged into the water of her 1icy waters, and four score people died.
The Reaper's scythe was long enough to cut 78 notches in the plane's rippled fuselage, but the number of dead pierced our consciousness is so much greater that we correctly matched by the best devices of fiction.
In a world where disaster has stalked us in a permanent plot on newspaper front pages, human woe rarely can touch us through our accumulated calluses, hardened by hard news. Despite this, the Washington crash penetrated through layers of dead sensitivity. The impact of the news jarred us. The horror numbers numbed us. The blame lurks within us.
The scene was set in the heart of the capital city, at a busy, dangerous airport used by the
No doubt the tragedy will be made into a film. She was characterized in every way by high drama.
BEN JONES
nation's highest officials. National monuments crowded so close to the line of flight that they served as obstacles, like rubber vulvons on a test-driving course.
The Potomac flowed broadly near the runway, like a laelet, tempting alternative to the short airship. The 14th Street Bridge at runway's end gave the pilot a blurry goalpost, which spanned the frozen river with a lifeblood of commuters.
if the setting was striking, the timing was climactic. The city was in the midst of its first big snowstorm. The plane underwent at least two diections during an unseasonal wait. At last the bush rush-hour traffic brought on by a shortened workday forced by the worsening weather.
The crash occurred close enough to the evening news to have the impact of a breaking story. It was too soon to telecast time to prevent chaos from seeping into the media coverage, which carried it to living rooms across the country. There, people felt the same confusion rescue workers did, marked by unfallted death tolls.
The event itself must have been horribly spectacular: A plane pulls its icy wings achingly off the ground, groans under the desperate weight and impulses itself on a bridge crammed with cars. Its nose and tail sever and plunge off opposite sides of the bridge, shattering the ice below. One can see the water splashing up slowly, like a gigantic badminton shuttlecock catching on the top of the net and tumbling over.
one remaining metal torso flips off the bridge and scoops a belly full of water. It makes no difference; its hold of passengers is already dead from impact.
The snow and ice provided the epic theme of man's struggle against nature. The unrelenting weather not only contributed to the erosion, erasure and salvage efforts irritating dangerous.
It is necessary to appreciate the intense drama of the catastrophe to understand the human heroism that came forth to meet the chaotic challenge. Epic events invariably prove great and most powerful presidents, men such as Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt,
humbly confessed they felt themselves merely swept along by irresistible events. Their power came from their ability to go with the flow.
The same modesty was present in the rescue heroes. It is unlikely they had time to consider whether to be brave. Often at crisis moments there appears no course but one to follow. One's action is finished before one can reflect. The supreme nature of a tragedy unleashes forces that transcend our sense of identity. It takes us outside ourselves, and we lose self-consciousness in the importance of the outcome.
it is in the crucial moment we find our measure. Either the proper course of action never occurs to us, or it is so evident we don't think to look for another.
Lenny Skutnik, the "sixth man" and others did what they ought to have done, and their courage was exemplary. Their bravery lay in having a presence of mind not daunted by fear. We can never know whether we contain that kind of courage until a crisis is upon us. But if we meet the lesser challenges with a selfless sense of duty, we have done all we can to prepare, should we ever be called upon for ultimate courage.
Just as the heroes were reluctant to take credit for the transcendent forces of bravery at work, we find it distasteful to lay blame in a tragedy of such great scope. The fault was one shared by all of us at times, that of neglecting precaution to carry on with life.
All of us live more or less by the mailman's creed in making our appointed rounds. In this case the line between controlled risk and uncontrolled risk often approached was tragically trespassed.
Certainly there were errors of judgment by airport officials, flight controllers, the pilot, and the proponents for continued heavy use of the airport. But the passengers also failed to place prudence above expense of time and money.
The compulsion to see a bad-looking situation through to the end is symptomatic of two attitudes: First, that to disrupt one's schedule matters a very great deal, and second, that it causes me to tell that tells a person. "These things will never happen to me. It's always the other guy."
This illusion was displaced somewhat by the acutely personal nature of the Boeing 727 crash. One account described the sight of bodies still strapped in their seats, earily shimmering below a few feet of water but fading rapidly as dusk closes in, to a survivor holding a compressed concentration a man separated from him by the shell of the tail section. The man said he could not free himself from his seat. He sank with the tail section.
These very human elements are contrasted against starkly by the inhuman nature of the blinding snow, paralyzing cold and concealing water. The effect of it all is to make one shudder, since it from mind, overlooks a horrion that silences, dulls, transfixes and sickens.
But the tasted-tinged emotions return, this time made immediate by the fear that Washington friends could possibly have been on the plane or the bridge. The thought is too painful to bear. Two phone calls go out to D.C. The voices on the other end of the line are familiar and reassuring, and the caller feels both foolish to have let sily fears conquer him and both brave to have received the only explanation he can produce is, "I had to call to make sure.
A blurred photograph shows the agony of a woman who did survive, as she hooks a strengthless arm into a lifebuoy. Her mouth is empty and her soaked hair drags in the cold water.
Ironically, though, one of the friends had taken that very flight—Washington to Tampa—before. She says she uses National Airport because it serves cities of intermediate distances the other Washington airports do not. She uses it, she says, but it is difficult to tell when she lands when the plane veers to avoid the Washington Monument. The maneuver makes the plane dip toward the Potomac, and, for a moment, all she can see through the window is water.
UIZ:
WHAT FAMOUS REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT HAS SIX LETTERS IN HIS LAST NAME, ENJOYED THE REPUTATION OF BEING A VERY NICE MAN AND TOLD AMERICANS NOT TO WORRY ABOUT HIS ECONOMIC POLICY BECAUSE THE SYSTEMWOULD WORK IF THEY GAVE IT THE CHANCE?
HERBERT HOOVER
Justice's madness shows little method
The annual three-month gathering of the Kansas Legislature usually manages to cull a posturing legislator or two from the disparate districts, and deal with the state's clutteredocket of issues.
Last winter's designated demagogue was undoubtedly one State Rep. Joseph Hoagland, ROverland Park, whose characterization of the KU School of Social Welfare as a potential "seedbed of malcontents" blew like an icy January gust through the Kansas House.
Hoagland was irritated with Norman Forer, KU associate professor of social welfare, who had led two delegations to Iran in an apparent attempt to mediate the American hostage crisis Forer, Hoagland charged, had abused his tenure privileges by making the question but, when introduced by Hoagland languished in committee until Hoagland himself gave up on them.
Professorial tenure, although undeniably crucial to a university's role in promoting ideas without fear of popular retribution, isn't a subject likely to move many to the protest barricades. Racial discrimination in the Kansas university system, however, is a different matriarch—and it's an issue that State Rep Norman W. D-Kansas City, is attempting to saddle.
Sadly, he's also doing it in rather clumsy fashion, one that gives the impression that he's carrying a political football rather than sinister attempting to improve an unjust situation.
Justice alleges that discrimination's cancer is present throughout Kansas' seven Regents institutions, and he singles out KU, the KU fraternity system and the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City for particular reprobation.
A glance at complaint records kept by the Kansas Civil Rights Commission in Topeka only partially buits out justice's claims. According to Roger Lovett, chief legal counsel for the Mid Center, KD and Kansas State have been targets of recent discrimination complaints.
Four. Med Center employees, one KU technician and one clerical employee at the K-State Student Union have filed grievances since April, according to Loveitt.
The commission gets an average of 80 complaints monthly at its offices in Topeka and Wichita, Pittsburg State, Fort Hays State, Emporia State, Wichita State and the Kansas Technical Institute at Salina have gone unmentioned in the commission's files since April.
Not that the lack of a preponderance of hard evidence matters to Justice. He has said that,
DALE WETZEL
even if the civil rights commission could not uncover any new evidence, he would pursue his own investigation against discrimination in the state's university system.
It isn't difficult to imagine what the results of such an inquiry would be; those who are convinced of the existence of bogeymen don't believe in the claims of evidence to substantiate their claims.
What is especially disturbing about Justice's crusade, however, is his attitude toward KU's fraternities, an outlook that threatens to severely damage the university's right want to establish as a civil rights crusader.
"There's got to be some way that they (fraternities) can be removed," Justice was quoted as saying recently. "I'd like to see their butts kicked off campus."
While the image of Justice applying a booted foot to the collective backside of the Izod-and-imported-car set may be appealing to some, it's also a powerful reminder of human rights and freedoms. Justice's anti-
discrimination sword is two-edged; hisick the
trascals-out solution is hardly a sophisticated
This is not meant to take sides on the question of whether fraternities actually practice racial discrimination in their selection process. I've heard that fraternity, nor have I ever had the desire to join one.
But it seems to me that any search for underlying racial motives in a fraternity's acceptance-or-rejection process is a search for the will-o-the-wisp, Fraternities and -sororites, for that matter—are discriminatory by their very nature. Aside from prying open the heads of individual Greeks, how are their motives to be reliably determined?
More interesting is Justice's objection to fraternal advisers' salaries coming out of state funds. KU employs both a fraternity and a sorority adviser, both of whom spend the majority of their time dealing with their respective groups, and who will cost the state $20,300 this year, according to the University budget.
KU's residence halls, of course, received a healthy chunk of state money as well. But the "discrimination" present in choosing hall residents falls almost entirely on those who procrastinate in turning in hall contracts until the halls are chock full. This state subsidy of living expenses is a long-standing arguing point, and one that justice should try to drive home.
Justice's battle to eradicate what he sees as discrimination in the Kansas university system is notly intentioned. Yet it is a task to be taken subly, based on painstaking gathering of information on posturing and announced intentions to exchange a discriminatory eve for an eye.
And as for KU's Greek system, surely Justice's constituency would prefer that he devote time to more pressing state issues, such as the severance tax and school and highway taxes. Justice's own fraternities is not only to ignore the large picture, it is to tilt at a windmill made of air.
Letters to the Editor Supporters to mourn
To the Editor:
The ERA cartoon that appeared on the Kansan's front page on Jan. 20, poignantly captured the helplessness that ERA supporters feel as we prepare for our amendment's certain defeat.
Time is truly slipping away, carrying with it our opportunity to finally, after decades of struggle, be included in this nation's Constitution. A legal battle that began in 1923 will come to a sorrowful close this June, and we are forced to take decisive action under the laws of this land will grieve on June 30.
On that day we will be forced to face the fact that our rights have been dashed, not because our cause for equality was unjust, but because we were fighting the overwhelming prejudices against our sex.
Most likely the feminists of this land will declare June 30 a day of national mourning and we will grieve, and our mourning will be bitter and hard. It will be made all the more painful by those who will not understand why we feel so betrayed and broken. Inithit Galas.
Judith Gale,
women's studies
teaching assistant
Letters Policy
The University Daily Kanan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kanan should also be the right to edit or rewrite letters.
Kansan Telephone Numbers
Newsroom--864-4810
Business Office--864-4358
The University Daily KANSAN
USPS 56546) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Thursday during June and July except Saturday, Sunday and holidays. Second-class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas for subscriptions in the county and for mailing to the county is $8 a year outside the county. Subscriptions are $8 a semester; through the student activity fee. Postmaster: Send changes of address to the University Daily Kansas, Flint Hall, The University of Kansas, Kansas City, Missouri.
Editor
Vanessa Herron
Managing Editor
Editorial Editor
Campus Editor
Associate Campus Editor
Assistant Campus Editors
Assignment Editor
Sports Editor
Associate Sports Editor
Entertainment Editor
Makeup Editor
Art Director
Photo Editor
Staff Photographers.
Head Copy Chef
Chead Campbell, Tracey Thompson, Mark McDonald
Brea Grepsman, Tracey Thompson, Mark McDonald
Jane Bryant
Cindy Campbell, Craig Coller, Gregory Folek
Columbians
Bren Abbott, Danowers, Chris Coller, Dan Torchier, Jolymne Waz, Lia Ballon
Tom Bontrager, Jeff Thomas, Teresa Hirden, John Williams, William Andrews
Jerry Barton, John Jones, Wendy
Jan Bryan, John Keeling, Lerrange Lraing
Am Alaway, Keith Harrison, Jann Gunn,
Carl Sailor, Robbie Thurston, Wendy
Retail Sales Manager...Ann Hurterberg
National Sales Manager...Howard Shalainky
Campaign Sales Manager...Perry Sullivan
Classified Manager...Sherwin Roden
Production Manager...Larry Harden
Teacher/Master Teacher...John Egan
Retail Sales Representatives ...Barb Baum, Larry Burmatter, Susan Cooke, Richard Dugdon, Jorge Grinn,
Amy Jones, Matthew Langan, Philipp Marchilao, Li McMahon, Kathryn Myers, Robin O'Klany, Mike Pearl, Susan Snyder, Jace Wenderson
Campus Interns
Sales and Marketing Adviser ... John Oberman
General Manager and News Adviser ... Black Musser