UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansean editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of the editor.
DECEMBER 4,1978
Policy hurts programs
KU's chapter of the American Association of University Professors wants to know about the University's research and information on special academic programs.
AAUP isn't alone in its confusion.
The information policy, formed in spring 1976, prohibits individual University departments from sending programs to prospective students.
Questions about the policy, however, stem from its relationship to the Integrated Humanities Program. AAUP's inquiry is in response to a letter from IHP Director Dennis Quinn, who said the policy was made to restrict dissemination of materials about IHP.
HPF, OF COURSE, has come under fire from outside forces in recent years and Quinn has said the University itself had tried "to make us invisible."
Whether or not Quinn's reasoning is correct, it is true that HP's enrollment has dwindled. Fewer than 30 freshmen enrolled in HP this fall, compared with about 90 last fall. Part of the reason for a tiny enrollment could be the ban on sending information to new students.
Ron Calgaard, vice chancellor for academic affairs, has denied that HIP was the reason for the policy's implementation. He said the cost for 33 departments and eight professional schools to mail information to incoming freshman would be high and the University didn't want new students delibuled with information.
INFORMATION FROM individual departments is a solution to complains such as Quinn's, but it isn't the only one. A brochure containing information about special programs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has been available since 1977, but, for some reason, it never has been mailed to new students. Calgaard says he has no objections to mailing the brochures, but there are no plans to mail the information.
Quinn says, "They'll never mail it out because IHP is in there."
One would reasonably assume the University is not trying to destroy IHP. But KU has not recently been supportive of the controversial program. By mailing the brochures to new students, the University could show its support for IHP and other small programs as well.
LARGER DEPARTMENTS, such as English or Western Civilization, don't need special efforts to let new students know about them. But smaller programs, which often are the most effective programs in universities, do need those efforts if they are to remain effective.
The University should want to encourage enrollment in its programs, but HIP and other programs will at best be plagued by lower enrollment if incoming students aren't informed about them.
It is easy to understand the reasons for prohibiting individual departments from mailing information. Small programs shouldn't be competing with one another. But not allowing general information, such as the liberal arts brochure, to be mailed makes no sense.
It can only hurt those programs and KU students.
win the help of science fiction adventures such as "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is regaining its image as the glamor agency of the government.
NASA is now trying to use its reborn popularity to secure more money from the government.
This new popularity has put the Carter administration in a clash between Star Wars dreams and the realities of Proposition 13 tax cuts when funding the agency.
THE CARTER space policy, outlined earlier this fall, calls for no new initiatives like the man-to-the-moon program called by President Kennedy in 1961.
The Carter administration has remained rational and has taken the reality route in funding NASA. The White House announced a caveat regarding the budget, regarding the space of the program.
NASA exploiting sci-fi craze
Even without the large man-to-the-moon projects, the space program is still the biggest scientific project in the dollars. For this fiscal year the NASA budget is almost $4 billion, twice that of the National Institutes of Health, which ran out of funds last year. The National Science Foundation, which is third
THE MAIN manned project now before NASA is a reusable earth orbiter called the space shuttle. The shuttle program, which will gobble up more than a quarter of NASA's budget this year, is designed to intensely carry large payloads into space.
Building space colonies and searching for alien creatures may be fun subjects for movies, but the costs of these projects are high. The average cost is a time of governmental bail-out tightening.
NASA expects to use the space shuttle chiefly to carry satellites into earth orbit. Some of these satellites would be privately owned, allowing NASA to collect fees for
NASA is going to have to work harder, even with its wave of popularity, to make its programs practical for those of us still building new spacecraft it seems to be taking steps in that direction.
Some critics of this plan have claimed it is an exploitation of space. But making a profit on satellite transportation is about the best way to justify additional space research.
Soviet ideology change unnoticed
Another profit-making scheme for space research is a NASA plan to ease the nation's energy crunch. In this plan, a satellite would be launched from Earth to back it to earth to be made into electricity.
BY CYRIL BATISTON
N V Times Feature
By CYRILE. BLACK
This development is the change in emphasis from the literal view of Marxism-Leninism that predominated in the Stalin era to a new and dynamic appreciation of the role of science and technology as the critical factor in economic and social development.
PRINCETON, N.J.-The most important development in Soviet ideology since 1971 has taken place almost unnoticed by American commentators, concerned as they have been with controversies over detente, arms controls and human rights.
Londin I. Brezhnev formalized this theme in 1971 when he stated at the 4th Congress of the Communist Party that "the task we face . . . is one of historical importance: to fuse the two world systems into a single system, to revolution with the advantages of the socialist economic system."
SOVIET LEADERS of Lenin's era recognized the importance of science and technology, but as late as the 1960s official publications of the Central Committee continued to refer to labor as the primary factor in production.
The significance for a modern economy and society of nuclear power, cybernetics and computers had already captured the imagination of Soviet ideologues, however, and a widespread public reaction has been growing to the significance in theory and practice of these new techniques.
ALTHOUGH THE reform movement was suppressed by the Soviet Union for reasons of national security, the Soviet and Czechoslovak academies of science collaborated in publishing in 1973, on the basis of a wide reading of Western writings, one of the major treatises on the social implications of the scientific and technological revolution. In the 1970s this theme has been taken up more seriously as an example of specialized education, productivity, income distribution, the environment and social change generally.
A major role in this debate was played by Eastern European socialists, and the new ideas were influential in stimulating the rise of the socialist movement.
There are several dimensions to this significant change in the Soviet world view. Acceptance of the importance of science and technology implies the recognition that in most fields the Soviet Union is not in the forefront of research and development.
THE STALINIST VIEWPOINT saw the Soviet Union as the most advanced society because it claimed to be the most fully socialized—that is, the means of production were more completely under control control than elsewhere.
The new view, by contrast, stresses productivity resulting from the application of the new techniques as a more relevant tool.
ALTHOUGH SOME WESTERN polemicists refer to the Brezhnev-Kosygin coalition as "neo-Stalinist," it is generally and more correctly seen in the Soviet Union as reformist. Stalinism in the Soviet sense means highly centralized controls over all aspects of society, dominated by insular and narrow politicians whose ideology is a sterile repetition of dogma.
By contrast, the Soviet debate on the revolution in science and technology and its social impact has been characterized by relatively uninhibited debate, widespread differences of opinion, and intense interest in Western developments.
The new generation of managers favors much greater freedom from central controls of economic enterprises and social institutions. This pragmatic orientation is significantly closer than the earlier Marxism-Leninism to the prevalent emphasis on the advancement of knowledge is the main impetus for societal transformation within countries and for an evolving international integration.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN that Marxism-Leninism has been abandoned. It has still simply been transformed. The proponents of Marxism-Leninism have always maintained that mean those rued by Marxist-Leninist parties, are better able than capitalist countries to take advantage of the opportunities presented by Marxism-Leninism.
Adherents of these views can thus advocate peaceful coexistence and detente as providing an opportunity for the Soviet Union to draw on the new knowledge that has been developed in the West, in the West, while still maintaining that Soviet society is superior.
The need to meet the challenge of contemporary science and technology, they say, will undermine capitalism just as the rise of big business has.
Cyril E. Black is professor of history and director of the Center of International Studies at Princeton University.
SCIENTISTS ESTIMATE that a satellite, once in the earth's orbit, could create vast amounts of light.
Yes, the science fiction craze has caught on, and even though it is losing out to the tax cut craze in 1978, it may be chalking up victories sooner than we realize.
trying to figure out something to put in his rented space.
energy satellite research passed the House last session, but died in the Senate.
With today's kids tuning into "Battlester Galactica" on Sunday, staying up late to watch reruns of "Star Trek" and finally getting to sleep on Star Wars sheets and pillowcases, we might be in the interplanetary age before we know it.
Although beaming concentrated amounts of the sun's radiation on the earth sounds a bit scary, the idea is worth study. A bill appropriating research money for solar
However, the search to make space research profitable also has been taken to another level in the past with flights, beginning in 1980, NASA is offering the public a program called the "Gateway"
In the program anyone can pay $500 down and $2,500 later to rent one-and-a-half cubic feet of space on the shuttle as it orbits the earth.
One of the first persons to rent space was Steven Spielberg, director of "Close Encounters."
Wan't it Jimmy Carter who saw a UFO one stormy Georgia night?
Whites can't judge apartheid effect
To the editor:
Black leaders have maintained that South Africa is for all, irrespective of skin color. The paranoia of reprisal is understandable but not justified. It is just as in America where it was feared that slaves once set free them because the injustice perpetrated against them.
In other words, he endorses apartheid as a means of protecting the white minority in South Africa. This is his most questionable point. Racial integration is what all responsible black leaders have been preaching.
We have watched with calculated silence the mirepresentation and distortion of facts as regards apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid is the legitimation of racism and perpetuation of injustice on a group of people who appear to have a different skin pigmentation.
General secretary of the African Student Association at KU
Andrew Nwaga
Brower is also quoted as saying, "If blacks got the right to vote, the whites will have the right to vote."
At this point, we would digress to express our support for the KU Committee on South Africa.
Lampoon backfires but point was made
The world at large has denounced every once and again the shortsightedness and inhumanity of this system. It therefore demands that African universities, Jim Brewer's caliber to explain the whites' views on the South African apartheid system with racist undertones. We do not want this to happen without concern but with the dubious way by which he responded to explain his point.
He is quoted as saying, "Americans can't appreciate how the South African whites
Does Brewer appreciate how South African blacks feet? Does he have any idea as to what it is to be a black in South Africa? Obviously he hasn't given it a thought. How else could he when he spent his leave of absence as a white in South Africa, enjoying the thrill of being on the skin color and being given a psychological boost of racial突突量?
Thus in specific response to the three letters, I can easily see, you all made my愿望.
Obviously the Kansan cannot survive
When I noted a Budweiser insult in the Kansan the following Monday, I thought the insult was so absurd that I apply, with absolutely no intention of seriousness, I wrote the Nov. 16 response using much the same format and verbage of the first, not to mention questionable
To the editor:
Now, hang on a second. gang!
Some people had warned me that my letter of Nov. 16 would be taken seriously by some, and sure enough it was—three letters from a group that I didn't recognize. I think a clarification is in order.
or those who came in late: I didn't start this. Everything stemmed from Inside, a Ford insert in the Oct. 23 issue of the University Daily Kansan. My letter was the result of an earlier letter. Nov. 10, by a law student whose name was Robert Hammond. That person saw Inside as a staff sell-out to "Big Brotherism" and business propaganda.
UNIVERSITY DAILY letters KANSAN
Oh, finally to Misters Seway and Harris,
who ask who I am and why I say these things
that I say: newspapers ethics don't require
me to answer that, but you disclosed more
to me than I could tell, and also as to
you I am and why I say these things.
So much for press confidentiality . . .
I only wish the letter writers had been equally adamant in their responses to the Nov. 10 letter, rather than wait for my response; it seems, was not one to some readers.
without ads; to be sure, I'm in favor of a "balanced viewpoint in its publication"; of course, the entire student body is not anticorporate (witness these letters); and, yes indeed, the profit motive is essential to the press and free enterprise system.
Richard Burkard
Kansas City, Kan., junior
To the editor:
Armco ads political, not about job-finding
I've never been a political or social activist and I've never written a letter to an editor before. But I'm fed up with the propaganda I've been seeing passed off by Armco as "Plain Talk from Armco on Finding a Job."
recently some people have criticized the Kansan for accepting advertisements from Ford and Anheuser-Busch. Although I also disliked those ads, I defend the Kansan's right to its ad dollars. I suggest that those who are disgusted with big business, "righting anti-population preferences to queer letter to the editor, go straight after the source—the advertisers themselves. I therefore direct the rest of this letter to Armco.
Armco.
You call your ad series "Plain Talk from
mcrco on Finding a job," but you have yet to
get the job. I'll tell you what it takes.
remotely related to helping me find a job. They should be retitled, "Propaganda from Armo Design to Frighten Students into Accepting Arnco's Self-Serving Politics."
Evidently you see America's students as being paranoid of the job market. You try to push your opinions on energy, government spending, safety regulation and environmentalism on us with the not-so-veiled threat that if we don't agree with you, we will have to get a job. Your scarce tactics are so blatant that I find your ass utterly repulsive.
You complain about the expense of safety regulations, but you’ve still got money to spend on the ad campaign. You claim that you have paid for it and yet you have money to burn to try to convince me to see things your way. You complain about your pollution control expenses. But I wonder how much money you have paid for the pollution I've been reading in the Kansan.
Give it up, Armco. America's students aren't as stupid as you seem to think. We know that job safety,安全 energy and a clean environment are more important than a cheap seat. The answer is intact, my body plutonium-free and my lungs clean than have an Armco job.
In the future, Armo, I'd suggest you spend your excess money, that you have to pay more for the new political hardships, on real attempts to help America's youth instead of wasting it on unwanted propaganda. I can't believe the world is so divided and I know KU students don't need any ads.
I urge any Kansan readers who also object to Armco's ads to cut out this letter and sign it, or write your own letter and mail it to:
Armco, Educational Relations Dept. U-5
General Offices
Middletown. Ohio 45043.
Kurt Eskilson Lawrence junior
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
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