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University Daily Kansan, November 18, 1981
Opinion
Seedlings near a plant
Kansas Gas & Electric called the protest a "media event," and indeed the events that led to 11 arrests last week near the Wolfe Creek nuclear power plant site in Burlington were like other actions at Diablo Canyon, Calif. —and others around the globe.
But the similarities among the various anti-nuke protests do not dim their importance or turn their participants into publicity seekers.
The arrests, all for criminal trespassing, created an instance of civil obedience that can only further the cause of the Kansas Natural Guard, the local group organizing the action.
Civil disobedience may be the most valuable method of protest open to those who vehemently oppose the continued development of a nuclear plant so nearby Lawrence.
If the individuals did seek arrest, they didn't have to look very far for it. Two protesters were arrested Friday night for crossing barriers on a road previously open to the public. They carried no firebombs. Not even spray paint, but rather flowers and a memorial banner to honor Karen Silkwood, who died mysteriously seven years ago on her way to provide a reporter information about alleged dangerous practices in a Kerr McGee plant near Oklahoma City.
The other nine arrested had crossed onto KG&E property to plant cottonwood trees and wheat and refused to leave until after they had done so.
Despite the pacifism and symbolic nature of these actions, KG&E maintains that the Natural Guard "knowingly threatened the plant's security" in areas that had conveniently become off-limits only recently.
Unfortunately for the protesters, and perhaps for the American public, strong words on posters and in pamphlets have had little effect on the secure, protected leaders of the nuclear power industry. Those businessmen need not dance to anyone's tune but that of the president and others who share his hands-off attitude toward nuclear power.
Unfortunately for the protesters, lawful,
"non-threatening" means of alerting the
industry and the public to the dangers they
see did not get the job done. The next step
apparently was on-site symbolism. Assuming
the industry again fails to heed or
even listen to—this dissent, the Natural
guard will have no choice but to persist.
Steady budget, state's assets protect KU from fund slashes
Kansas. Those six letters misspell to many non-Kansans who can't understand why anyone would want to live here. In the two and a half years I've been at KU people have continually come in and came to school. After all, what would Kansan need to refer to make me leave the excitement of Boston?
There were always the standard answers; it is far away from home, the tuition is less and it has no online learning.
But the most important reason is just now coming to light: Kansas knows how to balance its soil.
When a student enrols at KU he or she knows the school will still be functioning years down the road. Everyone may have to tighten his or her belt but at least there will still be something to
BRIAN LEVINSON
The next time KU students or faculty start complaining about lack of funding for something, they should think of the plight of their colleagues at the University of Washington.
tighten a belt around. Students will still have a university and professors will still have their jobs. As unhappy as the faculty might be if they didn't get a 13 percent salary increase this year, I'm sure they would rather get 7 or 8 percent than be fired.
That university faces the prospect of having to reduce its two-year budget by $33 million because Gov. John Spellman ordered a state of emergency and ordered a 10.1 percent reduction all state systems.
Washington's lumber industry has been hit hard by the slump in the housing industry.
To save that much money William Gerbering, president of the University of Washington, said the institution might have to lay off 260 faculty members. The university has already eliminated 49 part-time faculty positions and canceled 147 class sections for this quarter.
The university's sister school, Washington State University, may have to eliminate 182 faculty positions to help reduce its budget by the required $19 million. The state's other university could be doing the same, the prospect of having to take similar actions. There is even talk of closing some of the institutions.
In Massachusetts, a state famous for being run
In response to the passage of Proposition 2½ last year, a measure that limited property taxes, the Board of Regents had planned to merge Boston State University and the University of Chicago in 1985. The board also approved a $6 million fiscal 1982 budget deficit sent budget menaces into panic that was only halted by action.
on an "act now and think later" mentality, the Board of Registers of Higher Education tried to force a merger of two universities in three weeks, before classes started this Fall.
The actions left many students out in the cold, with many classes canceled and many professors laid off. It was the latest fiasco in a series of its political corruption and mismanagement.
But it is not just the coastal states that are having trouble. In Minnesota, the governor has proposed that the state university system cut its 1981-1983 budget by $7 million. One hundred administrators in the system have been notified that they may not have jobs next year.
Budget problems are quickly spreading, as the poor economy takes its toll on more states. The sagging auto industry has already hit Michigan's economy, which is a major matter of time until its colleges are affected.
Both Washington and Minnesota also may be forced to cut enrollment and increase tuition.
Given the agricultural orientation of Kansas' economy, the state appears likely to avoid being too dependent on oil.
When money gets tight, people can put off buying a new car but they can't put off buying bread. And, although Wichita is now suffering slightly from a decrease in airplane sales, the engines and other parts of the plants in Wichita are not current products to cushion any inflation blows.
Joel J. Gold, professor of English and chairman of the ad hoc committee on financial exigency, cautions against being too optimistic, though. "I don't know of any reason to be sanguine that Kansas is different from Washington and Michigan, he said.
But Gold said, if federal funding cutbacks caused the state to decrease its support for higher education, there would be ways the University could "cut back fat" to avoid being seriously affected. Those ways include having fewer fractional appointments and encouraging early retirement, which Gold called "an attractive possibility."
Kansas may not have mountains or oceans but it does have deserts. The state that, over that long period, has been its heart (for the Fall)
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Supply-side heist
European neutralism threatens NATO
By WALTER LAQUER
New York Times Special Features
WASHINGTON—Superficially, relations between the United States and its European allies are at all bad. It is business-as-usual when ministers and generals meet. But below the surface a drift continues that, if unchecked, could lead to an alliance and to a "Fortress America" mentality.
The movement toward neutralism and unilateralism in Western Europe is far stronger than similar, earlier campaigns. The situation differs from country to country but in West Germany, Britain, the Benelux nations and France, as well as Greece, a generation now opposes the "American connection." They believe that in the conflict between the superpowers the United States is more to blame than the Soviet Union; that the conflict has nothing to do with Europe and that Europe is not of it. Official spokesman deny it, yet the noise of the demonstrations is drowning out their words.
Western European leaders, on the defensive, hope the neutralist movement can be contained by political and military concessions. They argue that America overrates the danger and that the Russians are so strong and Europe so exposed that they must not offend them or attack it. There is also the tacit belief that, come what may, America will in the end protect Europe.
This state of affairs will go from bad to worse. Willy Brandt and other Socialist leaders are trying to "absorb" the neutralist movement, but it is doubtful whether they will be more successful than the former leaders of the British National Front in sparingly failed. If Labor persists in its anti-NATO, anti-European line, and if similar tendencies prevail among West Germany's Social
Democrats, the electoral prospects of these parties will certainly diminish. But even this provides little comfort to the alliance, for countries deeply divided on foreign-policy goals and on national-defense issues will not be reliable allies.
Friendly persuasion will not check the rot in Europe. Such attempts will only deepen suspicion and create the impression that the independent sovereign of the泰国 is more in interest than England's.
America cannot re-educate European youth who seem to have been lost-temporarily one hopes, to the cause of freedom. But America could reverse the disintegration of the alliance by insisting on renegotiation of it, not in a spirit of confrontation but with the intention of reaching specific, binding European commitments. From the Western viewpoint, the United States must be a Union on the defensive on Afghanistan and Poland. In a few years, the balance of power may be less favorable and, in any case, the alliance will have been further weakened.
Henry A. Kissinger's "Year of Europe"—his attempt to clarify and improve relations with the continent—a was a non-starter for a variety of reasons. Yet the underlying logic was sensible. Today, there is not a common strategy, only outdated concepts going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower and Admiral Harry H. Johnson, reliance on nuclear weapons. In a prophetic article written some 25 years ago, the late Hans Morgenthan noted that with the decision to scrap traditional military
establishments and arm their remnants with atomic weapons, the West may have passed the point of no return. At the time, it seemed only natural for democracies to adopt such a seemingly painless strategy; it has now reached a dead end.
There is a way out that could lead to drastic
reductions in strategic weapons and the removal of many theater nuclear forces from Europe. But the solution, neither cheap nor painless, involves matching the conventional strength of the Warsaw Pact. In fact, it may involve a bit more, for as Walter Lippmann, not a noiseless hawk, advises, “We must be in being stronger than the other side, not in being of approximately equal strength.
Spokesman for the European peace movement claim they are not, in principle, against national defense, only against a nuclear holocaust. Unfortunately, there is no certainty about their actions and that is just as there is no certainty that there is in America the political caution to return to the draft.
Having shown the growing tendency to cooperate among themselves, the European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should be encouraged to work out together within a year or two common answers to needed American proposals to put the alliance on a new, more clearly defined, *more secure* political shape should be left if the fall America would have to reconsider its commitment to Europe. America cannot be more European than the Europeans, nor should it become a hostage to European weakness and resolution.
Such a policy involves risks, and success is not certain. It would be foolish to tamper with existing arrangements if there were a reasonable chance that friendly persuasion (or benign neglect, or a growing Soviet threat) would prevail. Unfortunately, such a prospect does not exist. The alternative to taking action and risks is to accept further deterioration and gradual defeat.
(Walter Laqueur is chairman of the research council of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.)
Letters to the Editor
Grad student teachers noble 'experimenters'
I am a graduate teaching assistant in the English department. Perhaps I should be ashamed to admit that. After all, I am, according to some people quoted in a Nov. 10 Kansan story, unqualified, inexperienced and an experimenter preying on innocent human minds. Worst of all, I am poor—paid a mere pittance for all the harm I do.
To the Editor:
Yet, somehow, in spite of my faults, I am not ashamed. I like to teach. I like my students. And, yes, I like to experiment. If I should stop experimenting both in my own work as a graduate student and in my teaching, if I should stop trying to find better ways to get my point across, then the excitement of teaching and of learning will be more enjoyable, and makes it all worthwhile, and when even one of my students shows the same excitement, I know I have done my job and done it well.
Without a doubt, I am not qualified to do my job, if a Ph.D. is a requirement. I have not yet attained that pinnacle of achievement. When I do, perhaps with the degree will come, magically, the answers to my pedagogical problems. But I do not think that will happen.
No, I am afraid I will have to go on experimenting, overcoming my inexperience with the only thing that can overcome it—experience. I hope that, while I am gaining experience, I will be able to cope with those colleagues who are full-time faculty and who think of me in other than economic terms.
The other GTAs and I might be “cheaper than professors,” but I, at least, am amputated enough to think I perform a valuable service and am not going to lose the money I am paid. I do not come cheaply.
If Dennis Quinn, John Senior and other people quoted in the story have been grossly misrepresented, as one GTA in my department certainly was in that pitiful example of cut-and-
Christopher Ryan Lecompton graduate student
paste journalism, then I hope they will respond appropriately.
If they have not been misrepresented, then it is up to those people who believe that I cause my students to "suffer" academically to prove their case. If they cannot prove their case, I ask them, please, to let me do my job without forcing me to suffer unnecessarily under the burden of their unsupported generalizations, self-contradictory compliments and absurd sympathy.
Christopher Ryan
TAs need instruction
To the Editor.
As teaching assistants in the computer science department, we read with interest the Nov. 10 story about problems with TAs at the University. We would like to draw exception to a few things reported in that story, having each taught CS 100 and 200 for five or more semesters.
The story reported that "TAs for CS 100 and 200 have a one-day workshop before classes start." The fact is that CS 200 TAs attend an afternoon meeting at which the content of the course is discussed. It is not a workshop in teaching, nor is it a workshop occasionally qualified to conduct such a workshop.
Victor Wallace, chairman of the computer science department, stated in the story that Mr. Dixon's company is on track to be
As for CS 100, there has never been a workshop of any kind, to our knowledge. The first time one of us taught CS100, he was told a day in advance that he would be teaching and was not even given a copy of the text. The other one of us was told after the class had already started that he would be teaching. We were given no instructions on how to teach, what to teach or to grade.
All we can say to this is that we are entirely unaware of any such ongoing training.
The table accompanying the story reported that the salary for CS TAs was based on degree or responsibility. This is only partially correct. Undergraduate TAs with the same or more responsibilities than graduate TAs are paid a flat $90 a month less than graduate TAs. There are a few TAs with exceptional responsibilities (teaching 600 graduate 'level courses or coordinating CS 200) who are paid higher salaries based on those responsibilities.
We are writing this letter to emphasize that the departments have an important responsibility to provide support for their teaching assistants. We cannot expect TAs to learn to teach in a vacuum.
This is not to suggest that all TAs are bad teachers, but rather that those who are good teachers may be so despite little or no help in getting there. Again, the above information is personal experiences with the computer science department and may not be applicable to other departments.
Bruce Leban
Lawrence senior and graduate student
Doug Wyatt
Lawrence senior
Letters policy
The University Daily Kanan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include the class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kanan reserves the right to edit or reject letters.