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Thursday, September 21, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Graduate students' boycott of Senate is irresponsible
Last week's boycott of Student Senate was an effort by graduate students to gain control of graduate students' activity fees.
Although the action may help them achieve their goal, it was irresponsible and indefensible.
James Muir, graduate holdover senator, initiated the boycott Sept. 13. Rashid Zulu, the only other graduate senator, joined the boycott later in the week.
Muir said the majority of Senate issues were directed toward undergraduates. Therefore the Graduate Student Council, of which Muir is the executive coordinator, should be allowed to control a greater percentage of the allocation of graduate students' activity fees
Since the boycott, he has met with other graduate students to discuss their demands and future actions. Muir and company want the GSC to receive 7.5 percent of the $235,000 that was freed when Recreational Services and sports clubs were moved to restricted fee status. The council now is scheduled to receive 2 percent next year.
The request seems reasonable. Formulating the request into a demand and shirking the responsibilities of the seats Muir and Zulu hold, however, does not.
If they were displeased with the way things were done in Senate, they should have consulted their constituents and had them appear before Senate. They could have lobbied for the increased control.
Muir said graduate students did not have the time for this sort of activity. That's why only two of the 11 available graduate seats on Senate are filled. They have research, higher education, and
Apparently this gives them the right to circumvent the system.
Muir said he didn't expect undergraduates to understand the concerns of graduate students. He would rather make the council an autonomous body that dealt solely with graduate concerns. He claimed that system would parallel Student Senate.
"I don't care what anybody says, Senate is an undergraduate body," Muir said.
But, unfair as it may be, that undergraduate body does make the rules and control the majority of the activity fee. Muir and Zulu are a part of that body and should follow its procedures
It is too bad that graduate students don't have more of a say in what happens to their activity fee. They are an indispensable part of our University community. However, if graduate students were concerned enough with the problem, they could find the time to confront it responsibly.
Craig Welch for the editorial board
Helms' loss boosts freedom
Freedom of expression was reinforced Sept. 13 as a worthy component of our democratic, free-thinking society. In Washington, D.C., the House of Representatives rejected North Carolina Senator Jesse Helm's bid that would have restricted government financing of sexually explicit or blasphemes art.
Kansas Representatives' response to the proposal was divided, with Democrat Dan Glickman, Democrat Jim Slattery and Republican Jan Meyers voting against the restrictions and Republicans Pat Roberts and Bob Whittaker favoring them. Representatives of this state, as well as all states, must act responsibly in government when addressing matters of individual freedom.
Although the type of art challenged in the proposal ranged from photography of homosexual acts, nude children, and of Christ on a cross submerged in a jar of urine, the National Endowment of the Arts has an inherent right to finance those forms of expression, no matter how diverse their content.
The reasoning behind the proposal is twisted and inaccurate. An unjust precedent established in this incidence could have initiated horrendous implications for a free-thinking society. What other forms of literature or religion would be deemed unacceptable in the future? Would publications conflicting with federal government policy be banned?
Freedom of expression has been awarded to all Americans, and a government attempt to censor the type of information or material that is accessible to us does nothing less than jeopardize our constitutional rights.
Thom Clark for the editorial board
News staff
David Stewart ... Editor
Ric Brack ... Managing editor
Daniel Niemi ... News editor
Candy Niemann ... Planning editor
Stan Diel ... Editorial editor
Jennifer Conser ... Campus editor
Elaine Burge ... Sports editor
Laura Husar ... Photo editor
Stephen Kline ... Graphics editor
Christine Winner ... Arts/Features editor
Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
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Margaret Townsend...Co-op manager
Eric Hughes...Creative director
Christi Dool...Classified manager
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Shifting into different gears
A couple of hummingbird feeders that had been hanging for a few weeks had attracted an occasional hummingbird, but one couldn't expect to sight a specimen on any regular basis. Until this Saturday, that is. Half a dozen of them had discovered the feeders and were contesting for sole access to the bounty.
It was the hummingbirds, however, that finally brought any productivity to a halt.
I saw right away that this Saturday would be different. I raised the bedroom shades to a fairy tale scene with clouds of orange and black monarch butterflies drifting slowly by the window.
The familiar image of tiny, pacific creatures darting from flower to flower gave way to belligerent cheeps and audible impacts as each tried to drive its competitors. Two and three at a time, they drove through the dense pear tree foliage, scarcely touching the leaves at top. In another, whisked between us or through the cracks of our ears.
Borne on a light breeze, they floated up over the roofs and trees and descended slowly again into the open spaces, then effortlessly rose and fell again. Coming from east to west, they did not fit in the usual manner of butterflies but hung beneath their wide, still wings. Watching for a even few seconds was mesmerizing, as the endless current of ephemeral bright flecks undulated through all the world I could see.
When work in the garage attic finally did get underway, there was a spring, a lilt to my crab-like maneuvering among the joists and rafters. Scalp punctures from protruding roofing nails and a comprehensive itching from the fiberglass insulation failed to interrupt my vacant, goofy grin.
This day had been charted to a host of projects such as cutting the grass and a minor garage renovation. Now, five minutes after awakening, the day and its prospects were fresh and undefinable.
Somehow, a few errands did get done by lunch time, but most of the morning seemed punctuated by trips outside, under the thin ruse of clearing workspaces and passing through quiet and mindless in the endless silent current of butterflies.
Finally, one pair grew accustomed to the contest and
Stuart Beals
Staff columnist
simply squared off face-to-face in front of us. One would jut put a pugnacious chin, its copper throat bright in the sun, and its opponent would duck or pivot like a boxer.
Once they flew straight upward, a few inches apart, until they merged to a single speck in the clear sky. Then down they plummeted and actually drove each other to the ground.
Despite the apparent hostility of the combatants, the overall scene seemed tranquil, even charming. While the hummingbirds飞躏 and collided, the delicate bright butterfly flotilla continued to waft down on us. The effect was enhanced when we gazed downward; the continuous flow of silent shadows made us feel as though it was ourselves who moved, dizzied as when gazing at a swift river current.
At one point, the spell was nearly broken by the approaching growl of an airplane engine. Yet, even as the sound came onward, it distinguished itself. Something in the imagination, or the memory, demanded that we look upward just as a World War II-vintage fighter burst over the orange paint flashed in the sun and the radial-engine nail between the wings between now, and a boy growing up below the roar of Constellations and DC-S's landing over the horizon.
Finally, the sun set. The mess in the garage was cleaned up, but half of the lawn remained uncut. The day was over, and I wondered if the two boys who spent the afternoon beside me would remember any of it. Or would they simply find that monarch butterflies or hummingbirds somehow mean something deeper to the men they'll be thirty years hence.
> Startt Beals is a Lawrence graduate student in journalism
Soviet sees baseball's passion
Familiarity may not breed contempt, exactly, but it does tend to dim appreciation. That may be why it's such a revelation to be instructed in a national pastime by a foreigner; old visitors are seen from a new perspective. With some notable exceptions, such as Daniel Boorstein, the great explanators of the American ethos tend to visiters: stuffy Lord Bryce, snappy D.W. Brogan, stateley Creuvecoeur, and greatest, of all, encyclopedic De Tocqueville. Now add Boris Morozov to the list. Ordinarily, he's a theater director in Moscow, but this summer he saw his first baseball game and his comments on the national pastime entertain and instruct.
Director Morozov caught onto the theatrical aspect of the game at once. He loved the "full stadium" and the "reaction of the audience." Next time you go to a ball game, which should be soon, close your eyes and listen to the crowd noise. There's nothing else like it — a cacophony that is both individual and en masse at the same time. If you could translate it into poetry, it would come out Walt Whitman.
"It is so enormous," says our Russian visitor in an interview with Ira Berkow of the New York Times. "Oh, what passion! I'm first seeing a very long preparation for the act ... why don't they just go ahead with it? There's walking around, there's looking here and there. And then suddenly it happens in an instant. A big explosion! And thousands and thousands of people jump and shout, 'Bravo.'"
Unlike those Americans who complain that baseball is deathly slow, that nothing ever happens, our visitor has understood the necessary role of the undramatic ("There's walking around, there's looking here and there") in creating the dramatic. ("A big explosion!") Normally, As with love and marriage, you can't have one on another without the best player would make fit fans for some more brash pastime — such as football or war. But we repeat ourselves.
At one point the Russian director uses Chekhov to describe the players, though it comes out a little like bad Hemingway: "I'm seeing in their faces very, very hard inside conflict, the readiness to fight; the emotion is true. It is obviously a strong and tough game. The players find it not necessary to use many words. Dialogue is interior. It's like the character in Chekhov who says to another only, 'You will remember me,' and then later kills himself. What power, what stress is inside, and the language is so simple."
The only false note in that rhapsody to ballplayers is the martial reference — "the readiness to fight." It is more a readiness to compete — not just with the other team, but with themselves, and with the game itself, to challenge and stretch its infinite boundries: Nolan Ryan striking out his 5,000th battie — while pitching for the Rangers at that. Dave Dravecky's saga in two games this season, DilMagio's hitting consecutively in 56 straight, triumphing over not only pitches but mathematics.
Paul Greenberg
Syndicated columnist
There's a lot of chatter on the ball field, but our friend Boris is right; the important dialogue is interior. Perhaps that's why all baseball analysis degenerates into cliche so quickly. As Boris says, it is not necessary to use many words. The language is simple. Only the possibilities are complex.
Comrade Morozov did have a few questions about the game, such as: "What is going on?" And: "Why is the thrower making movements like a plastic man, arms and legs all twisted and letting the enemy with the big stick get ready for the throw? Why doesn't he surprise him, fast!" It is explained that, according to the rules, the batter must be ready for the throw. It's like chess, no checkmate without warning.
Our visitor wanted to know how long a game lasted. "Nine innings," he was told, "but if the score is tied, it can go into extra innings. In concept, one game can last forever." "So," our visitor grasps at once, "the limitation is not in time but in scale." No wonder clocks are out of place at a ballpark. Like eternity, baseball is a whole other timeless dimension. You can almost sense the world fade as you pass through the turnstile.
"In Russia," Boris was saying, "we had a great film director named Dovzhenko. He once said that he's wishing, hoping that the theater will be like a football game, that you never know what side the ball is going to fly the next moment, and how the situation will change." Or how it will not change, which may be the most unexpected outcome of all in baseball. It is a game played in the head as well as on the field, as rich in speculation as in action. Every pitch opens a realm of endless possibility — even the possibility of the ordinary.
Our modest visitor says he's still weak at analyzing the game. But he's got the lyrical part down. Having instinctively grasped the poetry, all he needs to learn is the prose. "There is some secret about it," he suspects. Yes, there is. Despite all the bad writing and good business that baseball has inspired, its mystery endures. It may even survive abominations such as the designated hitter and metal bats. It is not a mystery to be solved but to be shared and sustained. After all the fitful attempts to explain baseball, nothing beats just watching it unfold.
Comrade Morozov may be confused about the technical aspects of the game, but he adds: "I do understand one thing; something is not simple about baseball. Or America."
You said it, sports fan
Paul Greenberg is a syndicated columnist.
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Signs mean safe bike routes
In response to yesterday's letter in the Kansan from Deb Greene, I have been riding a bike in Lawrence since childhood, including my student days 1966-1975, when I wore what seemed to be the first bike helmet on campus. I rode with the Mount Oread Bicycle Club when it originally formed. The Club asked the Lawrence City Municipality to recall attending the commission meeting where the Club even submitted a plan mapping out proposed routes.
So, Deb, during the subsequent two decades, I have found the bike route signs a useful aide to safe bicycling. I simply avoid all marked bike routes that lack a painted line as too narrow and therefore too dangerous for me to ride on.
Soon after, the city did mark bike routes with signs. However, as I recall it, the commissioners rejected the idea of painting bike lanes, as the streets they finally chose to mark were, in their words, too narrow to add a painted bike lane! My reaction then as now: "If a street is too narrow to accommodate a painted bike lane, then wouldn't it also be too narrow to ride a bike on?"
Michael B. Kelly Lawrence resident
Refugees follow dreams
In a Sept. 19 column, David White complained about the headaches caused by eastern block refugees...
Perhaps Mr. White has not been paying attention. Some years ago, many Southeast Asian refugees, people who now have a reputation for being bright, industrious enterpriser, came to the United States.
When Mr. White's "trouble makers" or agitators left their countries, they uprooted their lives in search of dreams. I would contend that idealism is genetic: parents pass on their dreams, quests and ideals. Thus, while totalitarian states breed for complacency (by getting rid of agitators), we in the West are enriched by their energy and power. Is that reason worth feeding a couple of thousand people for a month or two? I say YES! Send us more. Don't tell me, Mr. White, that you believe western Kansas is becoming highly urbanized!
The Kansan is a well-respected paper all over college campuses. Putting in things that aren't tasteful, much less not funny, like these cartoons, is the editor's responsibility. Next time please think about what you go ahead and print, before you just do it.
Kevin J. Rice Lakewood, Colo., senior
Cartoon lacks class
I am writing in response to the Sept. 18 cartoon, "Camp Unheyne," which was printed in the Kanas. The point of the comic was lost, as was the humor, during the first couple of times I suffered through it. I understand that the point about condoms needs to be made, but I'm tired of people trying to be funny with the issue and doing so without any class. The cartoon with the Campanile being covered by a condom is another example.
The Kansan is a well-respected paper all over college campuses. Putting in things that aren't tasteful, much less not funny, such as these cartoons, is the editor's responsibility. Next time, please think about what you go ahead and print before you just do it.
Rob Wheat
Overland Park junior
Only victims know racism
Deb Gruver's liberal heart may be in the right place, ("Open Letter to a Racist," Sept. 15), but with all due respect, no black person in this country has to be beaten up by a skinhead to know more about racism than Mrs. Gruver will ever learn, even if she were to be magically transported back in time to a slave auction.
An interesting variety of dogs Gruver chooses to lie down with. Small wonder she feels afflicted with fleas.
Mike Kopf Lawrence resident