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Friday, September 1, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
University not sympathetic to desk assistant parking
It's time for the University to abandon the old excuse, "Well, it's been that way for years."
It seems everything that goes wrong at the University of Kansas is excused because of tradition. But if something isn't working, it should be evaluated. And, if necessary, it should be changed.
It doesn't seem fair.
Student employees who live off-campus and work in halls must buy yellow zone permits, which cost considerably more than stickers for residence hall parking lots.
Desk assistants in residence halls have a legitimate gripe that they've had for years.
Those who make the rules seem to know it. Their answer is either "It's been that way for years," or "I didn't make the rules."
Call Parking Services, and they'll tell you that Ken Stoner, director of housing, made the decision. Call him and he'll say, "It's not my rule."
Some of them have to work graveyard shifts, which means juggling a part-time job into their busy schedules and getting off work at midnight or 4 a.m. Many of these workers are women.
Then whose is it?
Desk assistants would sure like to know.
Either way, it's at least a five-minute walk in the dark.
The nearest yellow zones for workers on Daisy Hill are near Pioneer Cemetery, south of Irving Hill Road, and by Jayhawker Towers.
Either way, it's at least a five-minute walk in the dark. Pioneer Cemetery doesn't exactly have a good track record. It's been known to be a popular place for peeping toms and flashers. The yellow zone near the cemetery, known as "East Topeka" by students, isn't the safest parking lot on campus either.
For a University so concerned with safety issues, putting state employees in a potentially dangerous situation seems ironic.
The debate over whether employees should even have to pay to go to work is also a valid one.
It would seem that special requests could be granted for employees who serve the University's customers: students. Maybe desk assistants could park in the employee parking lots at the residence halls. They're not exactly at 4 a.m.
Or maybe workers could get valid passes to attach to their rearview mirrors, like visitor's permits. A small fee for these wouldn't be out of the question.
Having to buy a permit that puts your car five minutes away from work, sometimes in the middle of the night, is unfair and potentially dangerous.
But then again, it's been that way for years.
But then again, it's been that way for years.
Deb Gruver for the editorial board
New post office curbs cost
The postman may always ring twice, but not at Strong Hall. The postal substation at Strong Hall was replaced Monday by a new postal center in the Kansas Union. The U.S. Postal Service pays the University to operate the center, which is on the fourth floor of the Union, next to the information counter.
The center offers most services that were available at the Strong substation. But post office boxes no longer are available on campus, and multiple overseas parcels must be mailed from Lawrence post offices.
Bill Reynolds, Lawrence postmaster, said the center would save the postal service about $1,000 a month and would bring mail service in line with other universities.
The arrangement is the best that can be hoped for as the post office seeks to cut costs to hold down postal rates. Postmaster General Anthony Frank announced Monday that the price of a first-class postage stamp would likely rise to a price of 28 to 32 cents in 1991. Through contract arrangements such as the one with the Kansas Union, the post office can at least slow the increase in the cost of delivering mail.
Unfortunately, when costs are cut students also lose some services, such as on-campus post office boxes. Undoubtedly it will be an inconvenience for those who depended on the boxes, but market forces determine the need. The cost of maintaining the boxes and the substation outweigh the willingness of most customers to absorb increased costs.
The contract arrangement is the best compromise. Students can go to the Union for most of the same services and the U.S. Postal Service can keep a lid on rising costs.
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 Corser...Campus editor
Elaine Sung...Sports editor
Laure Husar...Photo editor
Stephen Kline...Graphics editor
Christine Winner...Art Features editor
Tom Eblen...General manager news
Business staff
Business start
Linda Prokop ... Business manager
Debra Martin... Local sales director
Jerre Medford... National sales manager
Ric Hughes... Creative director
Jill Lowes... Marketing manager
Tami Rank... Production manager
Carrie Slaninka... Asst. production manager
Margaret Townsend... Co-op sales manager
Curtis Doolittle... Cashmiser manager
Jeanne Hines... Sales and market manager
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"THE NO-SMOKING FLIGHT FROM NEW YORK TO LOS ANGELES NOW ARRIVING AT GATE 12..."
Campus needs action, not a button
A box of Celebrate Diversity buttons was shoved in my face at a meeting I attended last week.
People were grabbing the buttons as if the buttons were the best find of the day at a flea market.
Freshmen and select students also had their hands in the box, selecting a button, but at the same time asking someone nearby why they were nabbing the novelty.
How could the newcomers to the campus have known that the buttons were part of a short-lived but well-intended program initiated by Student Senate to denounce racism and the lack of cultural sensitivity that seems to be making a comeback on campus? How could they have realized that taking a button was a symbol, a pledge to build a stronger university community with members from all ethnic groups?
In the game Chinese Checkers, the object is to move all of the same colored marbles to different points on the playing board. In Wescoe Terrace, on the bus and in classes, students appear to subconsciously play this game. Different cultural groups are pulled together by the diversity that they have in common. At the same time, they are permanently pulled away from the rest of the student body.
Tiffany Harness Editorial board
The first priority of a university should be to ensure that each student, foreign or not, has an equal opportunity to earn an education. But more than learning about engineering or literature, each student should walk away from this campus with an advanced knowledge of people. Each student should know that it is not an acceptance, or at the very least, a toleration in cultural differences. We cannot leave this campus fully educated if we remain secluded in our own safe pocket of friends.
Consider how many people you know from another ethnic group. Then, think about your friends. Are they not essentially carbon copies of
yourself? Do you own one of those buttons?
Celebrating diversity should mean more than pinning a button on a shirt for all to admire. To celebrate diversity, a person must come in contact with people who don't share a common first language, religion or culture. Do that a person must often take the chance of getting to know students who have different cultural backgrounds and who they might not otherwise meet.
We call the United States the Great Melting Pot. I really don't know why. I can see the pot, with everyone thrown in together. But I have not observed much of a melting process yet. We are here together, but just bumping awkwardly into one another.
To the new students who took a button and threw it away or pinned it to a bulletin board for extra decoration, I'm sorry someone did not take the time to explain why you were taking one in the first place. And to the KU students who have a button, take it out of the box of stuff you just didn't have the heart to throw away.
But this year, make it mean something.
► Tiffany N. Harness is a Hutchinson junior major in journalism and African-American studies.
Peace, honor sought in C. America
To stop smoking is the easiest thing in the world, a sage once testified, adding that he had done it hundreds of times.
To make peace in Central America is a snap, too. Look at how many times Nicaragua's little red junta has agreed to grant freedom in return for peace. This history of retractable promises stretches back a decade — to when Jimmy Carter and the Organization of American States were assured that Nicaragua'a new rulers would bring democracy in their wake. That's why the United States gave these clowns more foreign aid in a couple of years than it did the Somoza dictatorship in 40.
Free elections were to have been conducted in Nicaragua as soon as the Somoza regime was overthrown by the revolution, but once the revolution was overthrown by the Sandinistas, elections were postponed, and postponed. That led the new regime to censor the press, indoctrinate the young, stifle the economy, create the usual surplus of refugees, take in American glibers, and set up their own network of informers, mobs and secret police.
> The El Tesoro agreement specifies that the "Government of Nicaragua will form a supreme Electoral Council with a balanced participation of representatives from the opposition political parties." But the Sandistas reserved the right to appoint three of the electoral commission's five
In February of this year, the five central American presidents met at El Tesoro in El Salvador and agreed that, in return for free elections, the contras would end their war, come home, and all would be forgiven. Managua has proceeded to plan free elections for February of 1990, but Gentle Reader may judge wether they could be called free:
No wonder the major opposition candidate withdrew from the stagemanaged elections when they were finally conducted. The minor ones who remained were mobbled, denied a free press and crushed by a party that made little distinction between its resources and the state's. The result was as predictable as any other Stalinist plebiscite.
Paul Greenberg
Syndicated columnist
members. Daniel Ortega, the Sandinistas' Numero Uno, promises that one of his appointees will be neutral. (By now a promise from Comrade Ordea is worth about as much as Nicaragua's currency) ▶ Formal censorship has been abolished, but the government retains the option of punishing the press if it reports anything that might threaten "state security, national integrity or public order." Newspapers can be shut down for three editions, radio stations for four days, television programs for three days.
The Sandhillers are to receive a hungry lion's share of public campaign funds based on their strong showing in the last rigged elections.
Nicaragua's military, numbering about 12,000 constantly indoctrinated troops, will probably vote from their barracks. (Nicaragua has conscripted the largest army in Central America,且 its rulers have won 60,000 contras across the border. They are not well positioned in their country, principally because they are not living near them.)
An estimated 8,000 to 8,000 militant prisoners.
> An estimated 6,000 to 8,000 political prisoners remain in Sandinista jails.
It all adds up to the kind of free-and-open election that would make Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago look like an amateur.
Now the Central American presidents have met at Tela, Honduras, and agreed that the contrast — the one force that has moved the Sandinistas this far toward freedom — should be disbanded before, not after, Nicaragua's elections. The usual gulls in the U.S. Congress and the U.S. press think this is a splendid idea. The Tela agreement is going to bring peace in our time, to borrow a phrase from Neville Chamberlain. A phrase from Tacitus might be more appropriate: They make a desolation and call it peace. It is emphasized that the Nicaraguan elections are to be supervised by a
team of international observers, headed by Jimmy Carter, the very first U.S. president to be suckered by the Sandistas. This is supposed to be a great assurance.
What should this country's position be on the agreement as it now unsatisfactory stands? Some argue that we should rush to abandon the contras, who have been a headache since we organized them. Here we given them so much support, when Congress would allow it, and all they contributed is their blood. Others suggest that the United States should make a show of supporting the agreement, or at least not openly oppose it, in order to the Sandistas for as free an election as possible. We are against Department's current position, if it could be said to have one. Still others, increasingly out of place in the situational ethics of the time, are squeamish about abandoning an ally.
Note how Sir Winston described honor: not as idealistic and indispensable but as a helpful guide; Thinking to buy peace at the cost of honor, Mr Chamberlain lost both. Not very useful that was; Disbanding the contras will surely cost honor but it will not buy peace; it may only delay war until these have learned not too to trust America. We will have sacrificed not only an ideal but a helpful guide.
To borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill there is "one helpful guide" when confronted by such a decision — "namely, for a nation to keep its word and act in accordance with its . . . obligations to its allies. This guide is called honour." The emphasis is Churchill's, of course. No contemporary statesman would think like that.
Appeasing the Sindistas in Nicaragua will do as much to assure freedom in Nicaragua as the much-heralded Panama Canal treaties did to smooth relations with Panama. Abandoning the contras can only strengthen the developing Castro-Ortega-Noriega axis in the Caribbean, which wouldn't be any service to peace or freedom.
Instead, let us pursue peace in Central America by all means, including honor.
Paul Greenberg is a syndicated columnist.
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Homeless don't go away
I was appalled to discover a strong prejudicial slur against homeless people in Brett Brenner's Aug. 28 opinion page article. The Kansan is supposedly a newspaper published by students of an
institution of education. Prejudice is not based in knowledge but in ignorance. Comparing coupon vendors to "bums" (homeless people) is ignorant.
"Ignore them. Maybe they'll go away," Brenner wrote. This is not an educated way to deal with the complexities of homelessness. Where will they go Mr. Brenner? Homeless people will not go away until government aid is made accessible to people without addresses. They will not go away until the recent, massive deinstitutionalizations in many cities, including New York City, are
Apathy weakened election
Kate Hawkins Newtonville, Mass., freshman
accompanied by proper outpatient placement, monitoring and care. And lastly, they will not go away until the ignorance of the educated people of this country is eradicated.
I fail to see how Jake White can take his position as student body president seriously. How can he
claim to represent the student body, when of the 12,599 students eligible to vote, only 2,575, or 20.4 percent, voted? Of the eligible voters, only 1,346, or 10.6 percent, voted for his coalition. These numbers show the state of Student Senate in recent years and the rampant apathy that exists on this campus. It is time for people to wake up and understand what is going on around this campus so they can elect a group that appeals to all elements of the student body.
Paul Fambrini Washington, D.C., senior