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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
February 16, 1979
Foreign center needed
A proposal for an international student center at the University of Kansas now is resting on the desk of Chancellor Archie R. Dykes, awaiting his approval.
The proposal was endorsed and sent to Dykes on Wednesday by the University Senate executive committee. It recommends that the United Miniestries building, 1204 Oread, be bought and used for the center. The center would function as a place for meetings and social activities held by foreign students, and would house the KU International Club and other international student organizations.
IN THE PROPOSAL, a University Senate subcommittee estimated that the building would cost more than $200,000 and an additional $400,000 endowment fund would be needed to run the center.
That money would be obtained by soliciting donations from countries that send students to KU. All fund raising efforts would be made through the Kansas University Endowment Association, and countries making donations would have no control over the activities of the center.
Nevertheless, there are some roadblocks to a final realization of the center. Negotiations for the building will be lengthy, and several SenEx members expressed a concern that the center might isolate the foreign students from the remainder of the University community.
BUT THERE is apparently an option of renting the building if it cannot be bought, and the possibility that the center would prompt increased isolation on the part of foreign students is small when compared to the possible benefits the center could offer.
For a campus that has 1,452 foreign students from 99 countries, there is very little effort to blend the foreign community with local students.
A foreign student center, while serving the needs of foreign students, also would enable those students to initiate more programs that would bring them into closer contact with American students. And that contact, of course, should be a vital part of foreign study.
Ooften the needs of foreign students are overlooked or ignored by the University, and that is an oversight that Dykes can help correct by approving the plans for the foreign center.
News that the federal government is being sued for its overabundance of interwoven rules, regulations, guidelines and red tape is the kind of news that should make every citizen feel safer.
But when such a suit appears to be a cover for the discontinuance of affirmative action programs, the intent of the suit takes on a new dimension.
Motive for Sears' suit questionable
Sears, Roebuck & Co. has filed a lawsuit charging that government equal employment laws, regulations and policies are confusing, conflicting, inconsistent and sometimes "arbittary" or "capricious". The suit contends that federal laws and regulations are unfair to businesses business, have led to the creation of a white, male-dominated executive class.
The suit accuses 10 federal agencies—from the Justice Department to the Census Bureau—of violating the government's own equal opportunity hiring laws and asks that the department force antidiscrimination measures until it clarifies its own priorities and procedures.
As an example, Sears contends that by following the veteran preference laws of the 1940s and 1950s, it is heavily stocked with white males and therefore in an awkward position when confronted with later ambi-tionation laws favoring women and minorities.
SEARS CONTENDS that since the days of the Depression, government and private business have been subject to different and more stringent guidelines. These guidelines drafted by various agencies of the federal government. These guidelines have had a notable effect on today's labor market.
through the suit names several government agencies as defendants, the suit's chief target appears to be the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an agency which Sears has not gotten along with very well over the years.
SEAR'S PERSONNEL practices are being challenged by the EOCG, and the SECG.
retailer to court with a charge of discriminatory hiring practices. If found guilty, Sears would be forced to pay millions in damages to aggrieved job seekers.
Sears conceded that 1,500 discrimination complaints have been filed against it since 1965, but denied hehemently that was why it filed the suit.
The suit has been filed as a class action on behalf of all general merchandise retailers with 15 or more employees. In principle, a victory for Sears could halt nearly all enforcement of equal employment opportunity laws.
If the intent of Sears' suit is to show that
the web of governmental rules, regulations and guidelines have actually hindered the progress of women and minorities in the job market by the action by the retailer should be applauded.
Activity fee legitimacy questioned
To the editor:
Earlier this week, the Gay Services of Kansas asked, and received, an endorsement from the candidates for Student Body President which puts each one of the candidates on record as supporting the efforts to achieve some form of funding.
UNIVERSITY DAILY letters KANSAN
Although one must read and reread the statement to make any sense of it, and while the statement does not make clear what the source of funding would be, one can only assume that the student activity fee would, however indirectly, provide the money.
In my view, this raises three questions: How much should a student pay in student activity fees? What groups of activities should be funded with the money? How is it that all of the candidates so readily accepted a statement that at worst offends the students' well-being? In population, and at best is ambiguous that it (hopefully) becomes meaningless?
Should a student pay anything at all in student activity fees, particularly if he doesn't use the services? After all, maybe those who receive the services should pay them. I'm reminded by some that one pays taxes which pay for services someone else receives.
While this is true, I would remind those persons that a university, unlike governments, is charged with providing a very specific service—education. Governments are charged with providing much more general services. When a student is asked to work in the classroom and faces activity costs, it seems to me we should rethink what we here for.
Ironically, the activity fee would have the paradoxical effect of providing services to children who were not at risk.
cant afford $220 a year, and thus never become students
Assuming for the purposes of argument that the activity fee is proper, the question then becomes, who should get the money? it would maintain that only those services required by the general student population, such as the Kansen, should receive funds from the Kansen.
William R. Halvorsen
But the presidential candidates remind me that we should be liberal about this. Does being liberal mean, then, that one must totally ignore what he believes to be right or wrong? Does a sense of morality or justice matter more, or does that go with leaving the 1506s?
Let me be direct about this. The gays offend me, and I will be very upset if they are funded with my money. Further, we are insensitive to their messages, so insensitive to my feelings deserves my vote. We must remember that it is our money and our education, and I submit that we should respect them.
Bottle bill necessary
To the editor:
to overcome waste
On Jan. 30, 1979, the Kansan ran an excellent editorial by Jake Thompson supporting the bottle bill. To stir your memory, Thompson was referring to House Bill 2111
and the identical Senate Bill 94, which place a minimum of $3 cent deposit on beet and soft wood.
The bottle bill would encourage recycling and reuse of precious natural resources, discouraging wastefulness and littering. Something many people overlook is that the bottle bill is not only an anti-litter bill, but it also promotes the use of consumer raw materials and creates jobs.
For example, Oregon, with a bill similar to the one in Kansas, has seen a savings of $60 million for 48 percent of the secret gain of 530 to 400 jobs and an 88 percent reduction in container litter. The president of Coca-Cola has stated that coke in the United States is the consumer 33 percent more than in refillables.
Clearly, big beverage companies and bottlers are making a sizable profit on throwbacks and they are afraid the bottle bill will cut back the profit. The opponents are fighting hard to kill the bill in committee by using a strategy familiar to every other state that has passed or tried to pass a bottle bill. It's called the litter tax.
Opponents claim that taxing manufacturers, distributors and retailers of "litter-prone" items would solve the litter problem. But experts said they would be used to clean up and educate. When one considers that Washington, a littar tax state, has 7.5 times more beverage container litter than Oregon, a bottle litter can hardly be called successful.
Currently the bottle bill is before the House Energy and Natural Resources committee. The hearings were held Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, and the vote will probably come later. We are working with the committee need to hear from the majority of Kansans, those who favor the bottle bill.
We urge this majority to write to their legislators, asking for their support of HB2111 and S4A. The bill needs this support to insure passage this year. Let's speak out for a clean, safe, energy-efficient environment. Write today.
Carla Hyde
Prairie Village senior
Jean Stramel
Hays senior
To the editor:
Restricted smoking a common courtesy
I was pleased to see Catherine Matthews' letter in last Wednesday's Kansan. As a nonsmoker who is allergic to tobacco smoke, I fully agree that there should be a prohibition against smoking and private privilege, not a right, and it makes life exceedingly unpleasant for those of us who do not indulge. It is only common courtesy on the part of the smoker to refrain from smoking in areas of limited air circulation or when windowsillow classrooms and eating places.
I hope that a growing awareness of the dangers of tobacco smoke to non-smokers will prompt courtesy on the part smokers toward their fellow human beings.
David C. Merkel
Blacksburg, Va., graduate student
Death penalty kills with false honor
"An honorable murder, if you will; for naught I dill in hate, but all in honor."
Those are William Shakespeare's words from the play Otello, written nearly 400 years ago. The words and the play were received in the mind of the playwright.
But Shakespeare is one of history's finest playwrights because his appraisal of society reflects the turbulence of the century.
The relevance of those particular words is harshly clear in light of the recent passage of the death penalty by the Kansas House of Representatives.
Simply stated, the house wants the state to have the legal right to kill a person who was convicted of murder.
Jake
Thompson
PROPONENTS OF the bill argue it will serve as a deterrent to potential murderers by frightening them from committing the crime.
And on the surface, the House's death penalty bill, which is before the Senate, appears to represent a cautious and rational solution to a public request.
wants the killing to be as burne, sterile and invisible to the public as possible.
Robert Frey, R-Liberal, sponsor of the bill and House majority leader, said, "The objective of the bill is to reduce crime and to increase public safety in victims of premedicated murder. Believe me, it's not pleasant for me down here to consider whether we ought to hang somebody or do it some other way. But it's important to keep up with the demands of the people of Kansas."
Under the bill, a jury trial would be held to decide whether the defendant was guilty of first-degree murder. If convicted, a second jury hearing would be required to determine whether to impose the death penalty or life imprisonment. A death sentence would require review by the Kansas Supreme Court, which could veto the sentence.
bill, with all its precautions, checks and bureaucratic procedure, is frighteningly more premedicated in its form of murder than the original act which sets it in motion.
The Senate should, as it has in the past, defeat the death penalty bill. Legal sanctions for killing a defendant do not murder. The state does not have the right to perform that act, regardless of public cries
THE BILL ALLOWS the state to spend months, perhaps years, planning the new infrastructure.
An 'eye for an eye' is not the ultimate solution. The Senate should recompense that.
Let's hope Shakespeare's forebodings of an honorable murder are never realized in
Vietnam and Rhodesia not the same situation
By RICHARD WEST N.Y. Times Feature
LONDON—The Irish writer Connor Cruise O'Brien once remarked apopropos Africa that when people do not understand any political situation, they try to explain it by an analogy; hence the Rhodisia and Vietnamese between Rhodesia and Vietnam.
On the face of it, there would seem to be a resemblance. In Rhodesia, as was once in Vietnam, a largely white army is fighting local guerrilla forces who indeed want to use them against them and like to use Marxist rhetoric. The Rhodesian government, like the old government in Saigon, continually warns that victory for its enemies will lead to communist rule over neighboring parts of continent—the domino theory revived.
American volunteers in the Rhodesian army have lent a flavor of Vietnam to local slang, so that killing guerrillas is now generally known as "wasting gooks" rather than "slotting ters," or "revving floppies," the phrases of a year ago.
AN AMERICAN officer whose troops had been given the freedom of Shamaua, a backdrop to the invasion of Iraq and imposition speech comparing Rhodesia's struggle to the American War of Independence and quoting liberally from the book "War." The would probably think a dangerous Red.
The analogy is at most a half-fruit. For one thing, the white Rhodesians are not an alien army but settlers who feel that America lacks fully as Americans belong in America.
NOR CAN they be compared to the French in Vietnam who were, for the most part, transient businessmen and not the typical country as home, a place to grow old and die. Nor is there much resemblance between the guerrillas of the Patriotic Front and the communists in Vietnam, nor are they doing anything or conventional troops of Hanoi.
Although Rhodesia's prime minister, Ian D. Smith, likes to frighten us with talk of a Marxist danger, few of the guerrillas are Marxist except in the limited, African sense of somebody who gets paid by the Russians.
a white Rhodesian left-winger, who calls himself a "pseudo-Marxist," said mournfully that, "In Marxist terms what is happening here is an attempt by the young people to escape from the white bourgeoisie, using the young peasants to fight for them."
pennants to fight for elem.
A GUERILLA victory might result in
the kind of mindless savagery that occurred in Cambodia in 1975 but it would not produce the disciplined no doubt severe socialist system that now controls
Of course the character of the Rhodesian war might be abruptly changed if Cuba intervened with tanks, heavy artillery and political commissars, but in that case the analogy with Vietnam would be still more misleading, with Cubans being compared to Americans.
Perhaps because they feel they belong there, the whites in Rhodesia enjoy an incarcerably higher morale than did the Americans in Vietnam, although the Americans once thought they could win, and most Rhodesians know they are afraid.
IN VIETNAM, even before the Tet offensive of 1968, there was a kind of uncertainty, uneasiness, even guilt over whether they really believed that they could build a worthy and stable government in Saigon. Idealism was flawed by self-doubt. Then came disillusionment, in the army, after their abuses and loss of will.
"WHAT A TIME it's been..." . . . "goes one popular ballad among the whites,". . . "with so few friends to help us." The once-lazier and spotted Rhodesian whites have become through adversity, and fighting with the police, fighting force of touchiness and ferocity.
The Rhodesians, by contrast, do not pretend to be fighting for some altruistic principle but to defend their families, their land, their jobs and way of life. Few probably think they can preserve all the rights they yet consider them worth a fight.
The crack American troops in Vietnam, the Special Forces and the Marines, for example, maintained high morale, at least until 1980, as a result of discipline and a belief that they were fighting for a worthy cause.
The Rhodesians are disciplined and believe in their cause, but they are also fighting to preserve their small nation. The rest of the world may condemn the Rhodesians for having so long maintained white supremacy over the blacks, but unlike the Americans in Vietnam, the white Rhodesians themselves have been successful. If morale finally breaks, this will not be because of a liberal conscience.
Richard West is a correspondent for the Spectator of London.
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A DEATH PENALTY bill is nothing new in Kansas. It has appeared in the Legislature almost annually since the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed it in 1972. Last year the House passed a death penalty bill, and eventually tabled in a Senate committee.
If passed, the bill would go to Gov. John Carlin, who has said he opposes capital punishment, but has also said he would not automatically veto the bill.
But in the final analysis, what right does a state have to kill someone that any single
First-degree murder may be seen as the ultimate form of irrational aggression against society. It violates basic human rights.
Yet, the death penalty allows a rational society to legally kill someone convicted of murder. It can be argued that it is wrong.
STATE U.
BY T. M. ASLA