1. a.
Opinion
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, November 20, 1981
Recent yeas and boos
Yea for the KU football team, going into its final game of the season with a 7-3 record.
Boo for the sudden return of winter,
complete with howling winds, snow flurries
and numb fingers. Double boon on gloves
that can never be found when you need
them.
Yea for President Reagan's proposal for the reduction of conventional and nuclear arms in Europe.
Boo for mistrust and suspicion—especially that of the Soviet Union—that will likely doom the proposal.
Yea for Joe Engle, astronaut and KU alum, and the second flight of the space shuttle Columbia.
Boo for KU Parking Services, which moved more cars during the past year than Ford, GM and Chrysler combined.
Yea for the local volunteers who are donating their muscles and their time to build a new home for Penn House.
Boo for the owners and managers of Jayhawk West Apartments for delaying repayment of deposits, and for not paying claims awarded to tenants for those delays.
Boo for bumbling, high-government officials who don't know the way it is.
Yea for those who voted during the Student Senate election.
Yea for knowledgeable, high government officials who tell it the way it is.
Yea for a much-needed Thanksgiving break.
Boo for professors who assign term papers that are due right before break—or right after.
Letters to the Editor
Affirmative action aids blacks
To the Editor:
The following facts will undoubtedly be of interest to David Henry in light of his Nov. 2.
; assmrative action came into being because
employers were systematically excluding
minorities from perferred jobs, both skilled and
unskilled.
One of the earliest examples of job discrimination was in the trade unions. Because of closed-shop agreements with employers, the unions closed virtually all skilled-job positions and forced employers to prove that in unskilled jobs, blacks are overqualified compared to their white counterparts.
Even with affirmative action, blacks are discriminated against at the professional level. One reason is that most recruiters who do the interviewing are white and are insufficiently trained at interviewing and evaluating. For professionals, there are no open-salary negotiations. Because blacks are primarily first-order second-generation professionals, they lack the information that could lead them to seek a more equitable pay package.
When blacks are permitted to join corporations, their skin color determines their role in the company. In many instances, they are bent to work in areas with high concentrations of or Hispanics. Often, management is skepticious of mortis or intentions of the professional black.
Affirmative action did not originate in 1972, as Mr. Henry might lead you to believe. It was established in 1964 by the Civil Rights Act under President London B. Johnson.
Although it was under the Nixon administration that Title VII of the act was passed, it was also under that administration that the affirmative action agency's hands were tied by budget cuts, administrative revisions and appalling practices. It also anti-affirmative action Supreme Court justices.
The affirmative action policy was the first genuine effort made by the nation to make the minorities full and equal citizens. The removal of this catalyst would succeed only in sending us back into the hate and frustration of the 1950s and 1960s.
All men are created equal, but until we rid ourselves of the David Henry of the world, we must endure it.
Brently B. Donaldson
Brentley B. Donaldson
Lawrence resident and KU graduate
Abnormal behavior
If David Henry would like to see unmistakable, outlandish behavior (Oct. 9 Kansan editor), he
To the Editor:
should attend a homosexual gathering where anything goes. Or take a lunch to the Kansas Union during mealtime and widen his eyes to the scene.
More than likely he will see two or more males gazing lovingly into each other's eyes or exclaiming.
Or let him walk through campus and look deep, into the crowd. He is sure to see more than one male trying to impersonate a female by wigging his rear end when walking, by talking and gesturing with undeniable, exaggerated charisma, and by showing explicit sexual behavior.
Is this not decadent, not to mention disgusting? When I see this display of weird behavior, I lose my appetite. More so, I feel like making a punching bag out of the individual.
Lawrence sophomore
I believe that Mr. Henry doesn't have an argument against heterosexuality when there is an even better one against homosexuality. His perverse stance on heterosexuality, not to be opposed by homosexuality, is a threat to not only our society but the nuclear family, but to the society as a whole.
Heterosexuality and the physical contact it entails are perfectly normal.
Kim Kiosow
To the Editor:
Band abuse shameful
I was appalled after reading Coral Beach's editorial in the Nov. 6 Kansan about the treatment of directors and members of the Marching Jayhawks by football fans at KU home games.
The high school I attend, Maur Hill Prep, has no marching band to stimulate school spirit at our home games. And although my fellow students and I have engaged in a lot of horseplay during games, the last thing we would think of doing, if we were fortunate enough to have a coach, is to participate as director and members with fruits and vegetables and abusive language.
As college students and KU alumni, the Jayhawk farn had better learn to control their librarians.
There may be many involved, or there may be only a few, but those people make the entire student body look bad. No loyal Jayhawk should conden this type of activity.
I would like to offer my sympathy to the band directors and members and to the mature students and fans who have put up with this lack of school spirit.
John O'Connell Atchison resident
Pot Shots
Good evening. Mr. Phelns.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to penetrate the mob of solicitors posted out front of the Kansas Union. You must pass through the Union without once being assaulted.
This means getting through without being confronted by Moonies, Christians, Moslems,
Hare Kristmas, Harry Balletfonne. Student Senate candidates or Gideons. Remember,
If the solicitors out front prove too strong, you may approach the Union from the back.
we suggest you try scowling and looking so that no one will have the courage to stop you. If that fails, try the Kerwin Bell approach—put on your shoulder pads, lower your legs and charge blindly into the pack of wolves. Plunge through the Zp card line if necessary.
Do not accept any literature, pamphlets, Bibles, handouts or other "information." You have been authorized by headquarters to use excessive force to penetrate the enemy line.
This Pot Shot will self-destruct with the next line.
And, Mr. Phelps, once you're inside, pick up a ham on rye in the Hawk's Nest and return to headquarters. Good luck. Don't drink the
Why can't these boys get along?
- Our top gun on defense, Maj. Goby Schweitzer, was fired for a speech that richetched off Ronnie Reagan's better view of the New Schweitzer carries about as much kick as a flintlock.
- Even whiz kid Davy Stockman had to pay
  a "visit to the woodshed" for tattling on
  everything you always suspected about
  supply-side economics—but were afraid to
- Secretary of State Alie Haig and national adviser Ricky Allen were fighting
over their toy missiles until Papa Reagan called them in for what Allen Zagadin was "a wolf"
Reagan has been calling the boys onto the Oval Office carpet, for tracking mud into his office.
Instead of such secretive mischief, why can't these grown men settle their disputes on the subject?
I remember one day in the third grade when an argument broke out on the ball diamond between Paul Wenger (a 'new' kid) and myself. Half of the boys backed Wenger and half got behind me. I called Paul "Wing-Ding" and he retorted with "Jones-Bones." But reputations remained unsullied and noses unblighted.
Now, why can't Richard Allen just call Alex Haig "Egg-Haig" and Haig just sneer back "Howlin' Allen," and both of them go back to playing ball for the "Reagan team?"
No-smoking campaign a burnout
it's over. Finally, after more than a week of publicity, culminating in 24 hours of agony for more than 18 million Americans, the fifth school bus strike was officially over at 12:01 this morning.
You smokers can now quietly go about your business for another year. Gone are the hassles from non-smoking family and friends. Gone is the sweet, clear voice of your 7-year-old daughter asking you to give up the cigs for smoking. The reader Said Nov. 19. Was smoked-dining day.
All that is left is the serenity of the calming mentholated smoke as it coats your lungs and heart.
Not until next year will smokers have a endure this unfair harassment sponsored by the American Cancer Society. Of course, those bothersome TV and radio ads condemning cigarettes and cigarette smokers will still be a daily irritant, but the full-fledged war is at a truce for 12 blissful months.
However, even taking all these side effects into consideration, the organization's prac- tices should be re-evaluated.
Admittedly, the American Cancer Society has a valid point: smoking is hazardous to one's health. It's hard on the heart, stains the teeth, plays havoc with a peaches-and-cream complexion, can eventually make the most long-winded person wheeze at the sight of a flight of stairs and is supposedly a contributing factor in most cases of lung cancer.
Granted, everyone should be made aware of the possible dangers and side effects of smoking. You need to make a choice between smoking and not smoking and left to enjoy that choice in peace.
But no. If the choice is pro-cig then the
CORAL BEACH
individual faces a life of harassment and discrimination courtesy of the ACS.
Many of the tactics devised by these non-smoking fanatics to encourage smokers to kick the habit only serve to bother the average smoker, encouraging him instead to dig in and puff a little deeper out of sheer rebellion.
The idea that one day of no smoking a year will do any real good is ludicrous. The air won't be any clearer, and chances are that those smokers who decided to participate will
feel worse after their nobile effort than before. BeFace's face it, withdrawn is no fun, even for one.
The ACS justifies the Smokeout with the excuse that if even one person kicks the habit as a result of the day, the campaign was worth it. That excuse just doesn't hold up. The vast amount of money spent on the Smokeout has have been better spent on cancer research.
Will the do-goodies never learn? If an informed individual makes the decision to smoke, let him. If he decides to quit, help him. Who died and made the ACS God, answer?
This discriminatory attack on smokers has gone on too long. What about all of the other hazardous activities Americans engage in? Don't they deserve special attention, too? Where is the annual "No Caffeine Day?" How about "Don't Ride in an Automobile Day" or "Don't Make Love in the Bathtub Day"? All three of these activities have been declared hazardous to one's health, but no one seems to have done anything except possibly Sankar aishra's Robert Young.
Could it be that non-smokers like to drink coffee while being intimate in the shower stall of a moving Wenbago, and therefore avoid smoking? Yes, such habit-forming activities? To each his own.
Europeans warn against 'nuclear madness'
Guest Columnist
By AMY HOLLOWELL
CLERMONT-FERRAND, France—Without hesitation, the rookie instructor responded to her student's query. Simple question, simple answer, and the discussion glided on.
What are Pershing II and cruise missiles? the student had asked, amid the discussion of Europe's growing peace movement. Medium-range nuclear missiles, the teacher had responded, as off-handedly as if someone had been for the time of day. Without a second thought.
It was not until later, after the French students had left the English class and the young American teacher was alone, that the horror of the brief question-answer exchange sank in. That the student had oposed the question was not disturbing; that the instructor had known the answer and so quickly, so lightly, provided an explanation, was.
Unfortunately, the English teacher is not alone in her nuclear nonchalance. Ours is a fast-paced modern world, zipping into a future doomed by man's horrific splitting of the tiny atom, and nuclear bombs have become a chilling fact of this grave new world. People simply accept the existence of such weaponry as they would the time of day, without a second thought.
do they? Thankfully, not everyone is simply accepting it. On the contrary, more and more people, at least on this side of the Atlantic, are adamantly opposing the increasingly nuclear tone of this mad, modern world. Recent pacifist demonstrations in France, in great Britain, in Greece, in West and East Germany, are testaments.
How, these European demonstrators are asking, can we accept the existence of nuclear weapons as we would the time of day, when their mere existence threatens our very existence?
Of mankind, William Faulkner said (ironically, upon accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature) that we would not only endure, but that we would prevail. Indeed, we are prevaling, but just how we are doing so is becoming more and more frightening, and Europe's pacifists want no part of this fearful superpower prevalence.
For good reason. Unless altered by
negotiation, NATO's planned deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe (medium-range missiles, as the young American so aptly explained) can suggest only one thing: nuclear war in Europe. For people who know well the dreadful reality of war in their homeland, such a suggestion is cause for more than minor protest.
After President Reagan's assertion last month that nuclear war could be contained to Europe, the continent virtually exploded with protest. Young and old alike took to the streets in demonstrations—the largest in their countries' histories—against American "warmongering." The president's swift attempt to remedy his acidic blunder meant little to the distressed Europeans: His message remained crystal clear.
"First Reagan had scripts and horses to play with," said a British student here. "Now he has buttons that can blow up the world. Our homes are built on top of a Hollywood set for a real-life nuclear war."
A similar sentiment was expressed by an elderly Dutch couple heading home after participating in the Paris peace demonstration. They were interested in what the American sharing their train compartment thought of her country's increasingly aggressive role.
His wife added, "but this time will be the last. If we don't prevent this war, there won't be a fight."
"We know war," explained the Dutchman. "We've seen it come, we lived it, and we've rejoiced at the end. Now we see it coming again, just like before."
Yet, realistically, man is unable to undeen his most dastardly deeds. Undeniably, ours is thus a nuclear world, a dangerous world, and those of us born after 1945 have never known another. For us, this is how it has always been, nuclear devastation perpetually lingering only
Perhaps it is the absence of such first-hand war experience that perpetuates American acceptance—without a second thought-of nuclear armaments. Better, perhaps it is a blatant disregard for the glass houses of others that perpetuates the incessant American stockpiling of nuclear "rocks." Perhaps we fail to realize that ours, too, is a glass house, that in fact, the whole of mankind inhabits one grand, very delicate, glass house.
an instant away. Hence, the unconscious complacency of, for example, the young American teacher. Like the time of day, like this afternoon or late evening, to tonight, nuclear weapons are, to us, inevitable.
This flow of time, wrote French author André Gide, sweeps away anyone who attaches himself to it. Similarly, the proliferation of nuclear arms in Iraq has swiped, sweeping, and eventually final, as time's flight.
Thus, unable to terminate the existence of nuclear weapons, we can at least curb the imminence of their use. "Stop" is an international expression, and people throughout the world are saying it, more often and more loudly, to the great powers of the world that the great powers do not remain immutable.
(Amy Hollowell is a graduate student and a KK direct-exchange scholar in Clemont-Fernandez.)
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