Page 4 University Daily Kansan, January 21, 1982
Opinion
One down, three to go
Today is the first day of President Reagan's second year in office. And according to one White House aide, the President is the "Happiest he's ever been." .
Earlier this week, in a pre-anniversary press conference, Reagan said the country was in pretty good shape, too.
Interest rates are down, taxes have been cut and a new economic program is firmly in place. And everybody is happy, right?
Well. almost everybody.
As the president so defyly put it in his press conference, the nation's "bothersome unemployment rate has reached 8.9 percent and is still increasing." Some economists predict the rate will reach its highest level since the depression.
Reagan assured us that help is on the way, though. For example, this week, he suggested that the unskilled unemployed in his city turn to the Washington Post classified ads—a 26-page list of engineering and computer programming jobs.
In Reagan's first year, civil rights and the Voting Rights Act were under constant siege. And two blatantly discriminatory schools in the Deep South were awarded fat tax exemptions.
Today, a year after Reagan's
inauguration, a half million more people have lost their jobs.
And in Europe, Reagan's grandstand play for a mutual U.S.-Soviet disarmment turned out to be a foul ball.
To be fair, most of the world problems Reagan now faces are perennial. And even those who think the Laffer curve is laughable, realize that no administration can cure the nation's problems in a year.
The president's crackdown on news leaks in the White House sounds disconcertingly like a news shut down.
However, many of the administration's problems are of its own making. And as Reagan's second year begins, there seems to be more trouble ahead.
And next month, Reagan will unveil his plan to hand over administration of welfare programs to state governments. The plan could open the door to the benign neglect and not-so-benign discrimination that existed during the good old days of state rights.
According to a New York Times-CBS poll, about 50 percent of Americans think Reagan and his programs have hurt the country. And a few more think the programs just might help in the long run.
But even though many Americans have their doubts, Reagan seems to have enough optimism for everybody.
Let's hope that's all it takes.
Government puts new kick in tale of Compound 1080
There's a traditional Navajo story about
Coyote and Rabbit:
One day Coyote was out walking.
He was walking in the forest.
He saw Rabbit.
He started to chase Rabbit.
Rabbit ran in a hole.
"I'll get you out of that hole.
Coyote sat down to think
As the Navajo storyteller knew, coyotes prey on rabbits. They are one of the chief reasons why rabbits haven't overrun North America, though rabbits reproduce, well, like rabbits.
Coyotes used to roam across the western United States, but as man en-
JOLYNNE WALZ
But the sheepherders started an extermination campaign against the coyotes. They shot coyotes, poisoned coyotes and killed coyote cubs in their dens. However, the coyote has managed not only to survive, but has spread its natural range to cover not just the western United States, but all of North America.
croached on their wild hunting grounds some coyotes were forced to prey on domestic animals, mainly sheep. Not all coyotes eat sheep, and the ones that do prey mainly on cattle.
"Now I know.I'll get vou out.
I'll get weeds.
I'll put them in the hole.
I'll set fire to them
Then you will come out," said Coyote.
Rabbit laughed.
"No, I will not come out, my cousin
looks weed. I am not the words."
In sheep raising zones, there are fewer coyotes than there should be because the
There, rabbits have multiplied because there aren't enough coyotes to keep them in check. Rabbit outnumber sheep, and 12 rabbits per square mile. They can strip a green field bare in one night.
Rabbits have become such a pest in Idaho that farmers there have banded together for six rabbit roundups this winter, in which they clubbed to death 55,000 rabbits.
"I know," said Coyote. "Pinyon pitch."
Animal protection groups protested the
Maybe what the farmers need are more coyotes.
roundups because clubbing rabbits to death is unharmy way to keep the population in chess.
"You will kill me. I do not eat pinyon
pitch." said Rabbit.
Rabbit looked sad.
Coyotes are not only valuable for keeping rabbit populations in check. They are also excellent mousers, better than cats, and they scavenge carcasses from rivers, streams and ponds, helping to protect human water supplies.
Coyote was happy.
Coyote was happy.
He gathered pinyon pitch.
He gathered pinyin pich . . .
He set the pinyin pitch on fire
He set the phony on pitch on fire.
He bent low. He blew on the fire.
When coyotes do dine on sheep, they usually eat rock animals that have no genetic value to the predator.
Occasionally, though, a coyote does become a problem sheep killer and has to be killed. The problem of coyotes killing sheep is one of the most important farmers to poison the entire coyote population.
"Come closer," said Rabbit
"I'm nearly dead," said Rabbit.
"Blow a little harder!"
However, the Reagan administration is trying to lift a ban that the Nixon administration placed on a poison called clorazole for the wholesale slaughter of coyotes.
In the long run, the poison may not be effective in killing coyotes—the name "el coyote" comes from the Spanish for "the clever one." Naturalists have seen them in the wild teaching their cubs what is poison and to be avoided.
Coyote came closer.
Compound 1080 does kill wildcats, wolves, eagles, bears and mountain lions, all of which are on the endangered species list. If 1080 is killed, those animals may go the way of the dodo.
The coyotes, the clever ones, will continue extending their range and will manage to avoid sheep land. Rabbits, mice and deer will move to sheep land, sheep land, competing with sheep for food
Rabbit turned.
But that's an old story. What I'd like to know is Margaret's story, who's going to kick her in the face.
The fire flew in Covote's face.
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He blew a little harder . .
Rabbit ran away
He was laughing very hard
He kicked hard
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Forbuntos '82
Let me share a secret with you.
The University of Kansas has a mechanism for students to express their concerns and ideas. Don't laugh, I'm serious, and what is even more important, one that has been around KU since 1969.
This well kept secret is called the KU student government. For the almost 24,000 students who have never participated in, but have been afraid of, the KU government, let me give a brief explanation of it.
It starts every November just before Thanksgiving when about 10 percent of the student body fight, about as hard as the candidate do, through paper mountains of campaign posters, lectures and soon-forgotten promises, to mark the ballot for a new student body president, vice president and student senators.
Why the low voter turnout? It is quite simple. Students do not realize the everyday effect and impact the Student Senate and its executives have on them.
For instance, they are recognized by the administration as the voice of the student body. David Ambler, vice chancellor for academic affairs, has repeatedly said that even though the Senate and the top student executives—the student body president and vice president—are elected by a mere 10 percent of the student body, he and the chancellor recognize them as the voice of the students and treat them as if they were elected by 100 percent of the student body.
In addition, the administration thinks it is appropriate to ask for student response—and the new chancellor has already demonstrated his intention to do so on every issue that affects students.
Every semester, each full-time student pays a $14.50 fee through his tuition. This fee is directly controlled by the Senate and is called the student activity fee. The dollar amount might not seem that great to some, but collectively it represents that much $80,000 the Senate can do with as it wishes.
To illustrate the Senate's impact, let's talk
about being close to every student's heart.
He spoke about
Some of the activities this fee helps pay for are The University Daily Kansas, the University Tampa Bay, and many others.
BREN ABBOTT
As a matter of fact, it is pretty darn near near that no one uses the Senate and not use a service funded through the Senate.
legal service program, KU' Bands; Forensics,
ASK and the graduate and student unions.
Another fee the Senate controls is the campus privilege fee. This fee represents $117 of each student's tuition or, collectively, more than $4.2 million
Although the Senate doesn't directly control this money, it does have the power to request that the chancellor and the Kansas Board of Trustees take a greater amount, and usually such requests are successful.
This fee pays for the service of Watkins Memorial Hospital and the bus system, as well as paying for the student unions and paying off the bonds used to build Wescoc Hall.
To put it all together, the Senate controls $131.50 of your tuition.
However, none of this can be done without the students' help. Although there are more than
24,000 students attending KU, rarely more than 20 students actively participate in the many activities offered by the university.
I once present, as well as the past Senate leaders find this situation appalling, and rightfully so. After all, it is not uncommon for them to spend 20 weeks a week working for their fellow students.
This being the case, it is easy to understand their frustration when they cannot enlist students to donate a few hours a month to better the University.
True, students aren't confronted with the exciting and emotional issues of the late '60s and early '70s. That doesn't mean they should avoid confronting the issues that affect them today.
Senate has demonstrated its importance in the past and under the guidance of the new student body officers there is hope for a new direction—one that will broaden its responsibility to the students will find it tackling such issues as the evaluation of the quality of undergraduate education, early enrollment, a universal teacher evaluation plan, an add-drop policy, beer in the football stadium, student rights, minority and graduate concerns and much more.
Of course, the Senate does have its faults.
The elected officials often make promises they can't or won't keep. Appointments are made as political favors, even at this level of government. Groups of elected student officials sometimes alienate those new to student government. Senate members tend not to favor the more mature tedious and trivial. Perhaps the Senate's biggest problem is its lack of communication with the students.
But these faults are not irradiable. A concerned student body working with receptive student leaders could make student government as a legitimate vehicle for student concerns.
Communication 'messageizing' us to isolation
Even this typewriter hums. As I sit and write, the typewriter vibrates my environment with its incessant sound and does a Pavlov-number on my brain. It tells me yes, yes, this is the time of day you have to sit and write. When it turn it on for the duration of my creative session, leave in it as up-and-down my way from the 'can' to the 'fridge',它 clings to me noisily.
It supports a behavior pattern that I have
learned for the first time, to start steppin',
and fesshlin' and head to the typewriter.
If you consider this technology (this typewriter), and the writing I am doing with it, then you could consider this a modern print medium operation. And this is the "message" according to Marshall McLuhan, the operation itself. The medium is the main functioning component in the media operation and is itself the message. The "medium is the message" in that the message is the "change of scale, or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs."
The typewriter beckons me subtly, but thoroughly, and it is not necessary that I answer this beckoning. It requires only that I am here at this time, my writing time, in the press. It is important only that I am a present appended to the media source, almost interacting with it, if you will.
In this most simple example the media source is clearly the message, having no content. There is no language or image to distort the true message of the medium. We do not have to search between the seriised units of meaning for the nature of the carrier.
Here we see the feeling of the technology, its continual purveyance. With its functional lighting it draws me to the typewriter's edge; when it is turned on I become 'messageized.'
rooms, factories and even schools use piped-in
music on a daily basis.
This McUahan-penged phenomenon is more and more apparent in the 1980s. Modern technological communication is tapped into the daily function of individuals lives at more modern times, with technology America can admit access to television and radio. In many lives, the television has become a companion for the better part of the day. Television has turned into a morning orienter for the hard to eat, an evening tramper for the kind of kids who may half the country's lovers. Elevators, shopping malls, rest-
The newest of the technology has produced clip-on your-belt, cigarette-pack-sized stereo radios, with lightweight -less than two ounces -stereo headphones attached. This step is publicly available high technology has made McLuan easier to understand.
For not only is the medium the message, but you are fringely becoming a part of the medium: not an extension of the medium, but you are perceptually harnessed to it.
And what does this say about personal communication, gossip and the daily yin-yang of
W.J. ANDREWS
semi-conversational contact between individuals. The tune-out associated with the new technology pre-empts some of this. If you shut out your awareness of potential conversation, you can limit your branches of input and inhibit your personal growth. At the very least the user has a diminished possibility of personal communication.
If you've tuned-in, and tuned out of the moment, you leave yourself and others little chance of bridging the self-consciousness of the '80s. You can barely hear someone talking somewhat loud, let alone a murmur of shy interest. If you choose a stereo conversation rather than a normal one, you have funneled your awareness.
The more the information pool is extended and the more simply the connections made, the more apparent the "medium is the message" will be. When pushbutton technology is applied liberally
On a small scale the personal communication missed out on or un-passed-on may be relatively imminent, and in fact, the wearer may alienate himself. But on a larger scale, widespread use of self-alienating communications technology could have a greater effect. It's quite a paradox, alienated by communication.
to the home, individuals may be forced to stay there, and stay connected.
When movies, magazines, newspapers, libraries and other sources are readily available over the screen, the reading of the after-dinner newspaper will become a pastime involving each family member at his terminal, calling up his individual information preference. The kids will be able to "play" with the technology—besides video games they can page through high resolution graphics in the system, probably high resolution graphics for the pictures. The budget call-up will reveal decreased transportation outlays and increased expenditures for communications.
If we allow ourselves to stretch our imagination far into the future, the evolution of man might produce a being consisting of only a large head with enhanced eyes and ears and long arms with multiple fingers to dance across the floor. To do that, the keyboard, and screen of his existence.
Far-fetched to say the least? Who's to guess. Should we read McLuhan's theory as a warning or a reminder? Is he warning us of the pendulum swing of alienation that is bound to occur when future technology pervades society, or reminding us that through the change we must concentrate on the nature of the carrier and be careful of its possibly undue message.
Probably both, for as I finish my session I feel a need to separate myself from this humming machine. Though, its comfortable entrapment 'messageizes' me into procrastination. I linger, my self still connected, and find it difficult, finally, to turn it off.
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