UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
NOVEMBER 20,1978
Audit necessary evil
A request by the Kansas Legislative Post Audit Committee to delive into student records is a potential invasion of privacy. But it apparently is a necessary evil in this case. If the audit is carefully conducted and the privacy of student records closely guarded, students and the state will end up ahead.
The committee is responding to reports that classes taken at the state's community junior colleges are not transferring to Regents universities. Because the state subsidizes both junior colleges and Regents schools, the state pays twice for classes if students have to repeat them.
The Regents universities are required to accept credit hours from all the state's community colleges. However, state officials worry that the classes are not applied toward fulfilling requirements for a degree.
Regents and members of the State Board of Education say the auditors probably won't find a large number of credit hours not transferring from junior colleges to universities. But reports of the non-transfer of hours apparently are prevalent enough to
And if hours aren't transferring, not only the state, but also students, are losing money by paying twice. Junior college students need to know exactly how the classes they will take will be counted.
To get to the facts, the Post Audit Committee has requested an interpretation of the Buckley Amendment—which protects the privacy of student records—from the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act office. The committee wants to use university and juco transcripts in the audit, which requires written permission from the privacy office.
Although there are potential abuses in the use of student records, the auditors say they will be using only aggregate information—no individual information will be released.
If the auditors honor their pledge to provide strict confidentiality—and if they report on how they handled the records as part of their audit results—the request to use records should be honored.
Whatever the facts, clearing the air will benefit both students and the state.
Leaders of future need education about inner city
To the editor:
Concerning Kathine Conkey's series "Urban Plunge" - Excellent! The article was a real experience for me both because it is a subject matter and journalistic quality.
Naturally there are those of us who would bomb those areas of the city and "be rid" of them, and there are those of us who close our eaves while driving through them.
prompt the audit, which, it is hoped,
will finally get to the facts.
Still others accept them, not passively, but unwillingly, with the idea that all change takes time and even though it "shouldn't" exist, poverty, hunger, hopelessness in the community work toward change, not change in the reality that exists in the inner city, for that would probably end in frustration, but change in and education of those people who will be taking possession of that inner city in order to mean, us, in case you didn't catch my drift.
Once again, a pat on the back and a supportive cheer for the efforts and goals of Kathleen Conkey. Keep those feelings up and keep them in mind. But deliver us from straight thinking. Amen.
John Vici
Resident Director Hashinger Hall
Bloodshed inevitable in racist S. Africa
TO the editor:
Actions can and have to be taken against the policy of racial segregation in South Africa, and asking the divestiture of industries in the country to remain one solution in tueses in South Africa is only one solution.
The efforts of the people striving to that end should be praised for they at least have the courage to take a stand, and do what they think is right.
KANSAN letters
Two weeks ago in the University Daily Kansan, Jim Brewer talked about "whites being forced out of South Africa" if blacks got the right to vote.
To you, Mr. Brewer, and to the people who share your views, I'm saying that what you assert is actually what may happen to the president. I expect the "seventen" for this race minority are:
- Being militarily powerful, the whites in South Africa may choose to exterminate the blacks—didn't Huler try to do the same with Jews more than 30 years ago?
- The white minority may decide to maintain its status quo.
- One may even dream of a democratic South African state.
A study of the above hypotheses, and the ones left aside, however, shows that in each case, a confrontation (a bloody one) will surely take place.
Sooner or later we all know that the worse will happen in South Africa, for in that country a white is still earning six times more than a black. The Job Research Act prohibits the access of qualified jobs to blacks. At least 75 percent of the GNP goes to 4 million whites compared to the meager 23 percent that goes to 18 million blacks. Of the total 10 percent who are black to the white minority, while the other 13 percent is divided into several "Bantoustans," where blacks have to live whether they like it or not.
Sooner or later blood will spurt in South Africa because only blood can appease the horror, the terror and the blood that has flown for many years. Simon Monsard
Coming fast on the heels of President Carter's less-than-inspiring infiltration message was the announcement last week that Carter is now planning a public drive against waste and corruption in government.
Bold strides needed to fight waste
Never let it be said that the president is donging the big issues. But unfortunately, taking waste and corruption out of government is a bit like taking the chocolate out of a Hershey's bar—it's damn near impossible.
Reportedly the Carter administration is worried that the public won't undertake the sacrifices called for in Carter's voluntary inflation-fighter program unless the government shows that it is also willing to put its own house in order.
WHILE THAT IS probably correct, it is still doubtful that the public is willing to undertake the sacrifices needed for the new anti-inflation plan no matter what the government does with its own house.
Nevertheless, Carter's drive against waste and to keep the White House busy. There is no shortage of large
Another one popped up just the other day when the New York Times, showing no signs of rattness after a 3-month layoff, exercised its omnipresent powers and repelled the mob. The city's government had discovered that as much as $20 million nationwide might have been squandered through corruption and mismanagement of advances to minority-owned businesses.
THE MINORITY provision of the small business program was begun in 1968 as a way to allow minority businesses to obtain government contracts without facing competitive bidding. Since a construction company, for
John
Whitesides
example, might need more trucks or equipment to fulfill their government contract, the government simply advances the companies the money they need to fulfil the contract. You will have to send that contract, that it will be paid back when the contract is fulfilled.
While the plan looked good on the drawing board, problems soon appeared. It was discovered that many blacks and other minorities were being used by white business owners to receive money that. He minority businesses never touched.
An investigation of the problem was soon launched, and that investigation has found that $50 million of the $137 million that has been advanced in the program has been wasted or is unaccounted for.
IN ONE INSTANCE, $200,000 of the agency's funds was used by a businessman to buy a throughbred race horse that died of a cold before its first race. In other instances, bookkeeping was so bad that the agency lost track of the names and addresses of those who had received advance payments.
These, then, are the kinds of problems that face Carter's quixotic quest for purity in government. While the Nixon Administration wasted no time in bringing corruption to the nation, Mr. Obama has long said so far managed to contain the agents of corruption in
smaller outposts of big government like the General Secretary and the Small Business Administration.
Isolated in those obscure agencies, governmental corruption has failed to infuriate the population to the degree it did when it had invaded the Oval Office, even though it is certainly costing the taxpayers just as much or more now.
AS FOR WASTE, well, hardly a government agency worth mentioning manages to avoid wasting at least a few million dollars annually. It's almost a prerequisite for being part of the bureaucratic club.
"people are not going to for any bold, new ideas until they are persuaded that some effort is being made to cut waste in the existing programs," one presidential aide said. "The problem is that there is no commitment, that sentiment is going to take some time to change."
But Carter wants to ship inflation now, and he wants to wipe hair and corruption to prove that he means business. He is planning a major speech in December to draw attention to his newfound passion, and will then continue the anti-waste and corruption theme during his State of the Union address in January.
And given the present levels of waste and corruption in the federal government, Carter's new program is going to need a lot more than the toothless measures his inflation-fighting program provided. Carter needs to take some bold, new strides if he hopes to gain any headway in fighting governmental corruption and waste.
It should be interesting to see if he has the desire or the ability to take those strides. It could say a lot about whether he is truly capable of doing so.
Winter's approach not appreciated
I suppose it was inevitable.
I hate winter. I can't help it, I do. During the first few weeks of autumn I try to avoid thinking about the months ahead, but I'm not sure how much a lack of harshity occurrence like the first frost or sleet
October ended and took with it all the leaves on the trees and the green in the grass. It left behind a drab-colored ground and naked-looking trees. But mostly it took warm weather and fall and left behind winter and all of its miseries.
If I sat down and tried to think about it, I'd ask what winter had to offer. But the answer was not that cold.
H T I S H N SOFT for skiers and children, but
if you're not a kid anymore and you don't
know how to ski, the prospect of a winter full
of snow isn't too inviting. More than
and last week as I dug out my heavy coat or the first time this semester, my companion felt like I was
anything else, winter has cold weather. A lot of it.
Maybe winter is really a child's season. After all, who looks forward to the first snowfall of the year more than a child? He has plenty of reasons to like the snow, including building snowmen, falling on the ground and making snow angels, building snow forts, having snowball fights and even getting mom to make some snow ice cake. And if it雪 really hard, there’s always a way that snow will be canceled for a couple of days.
FILL BE THE first to admit that the ILL BE the beautiful a freshly fallen snow is hard to reach.
me. And even then it must meet certain restrictions.
I like snow when it falls on Christmas Eve and begins to melt soon after the holidays. But those aren't the only regulations. Snow must be deep enough to completely blanket the grass—when stems of brown grass stick out through the ton, it ruins the effect.
And when that snow melts, it must melt completely. Gray slush mixed with sand along the streets isn't any more attractive than a muddy street after a spring rain.
I know I'm difficult to please. I can remember only one white Christmas in Kansas and I don't even remember that one snowfall my family did, if that snowfall metal my requirements.
THE WINTER holidays are probably the best part of the whole season. I can't think of any day I like better than Christmas, and New Year's Eve also is near the top of my list. But I could like the week from Dec. 25. Jan. in any type of weather.
THEN, CONSIDERING America's cultural
Party system reflects ethnic politics
By ROBERT KELLEY
N. Y. Times Feature
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - A new way of seeing American politics is emerging among historians.
For generations they described political history as the product of economic forces, that is, class conflict and geographic factors. Now they teach Englishmen, chicanos against WASPs, moralists against free thinkers, blacks against whites, Catholics against Protestants, testotakers against drinkers and Yankees against white Southern whites.
Ethnic identity, religion, styles of life—these figure prompts us to contemplate how we give us a new, slightly new picture of the American past, appears in a fresh perspective, arising from conflicts almost tribal in nature, and often centuries old, between
HISTORIANS OF' ideas have recently shown that European republicanism is a common ideology; republicanism. For centuries republicans was the radicalism of European politics because it gave the vote to the people, separated church and state, and created a form of government.
recognizing too, that colonial Americans were also an outgroup in the empire, despised by the English at home, we understand better how it was that republicanism flowed easily across the Atlantic during the Revolutionary crisis to become the American ideology.
Now we see that it was the special ideology in Britain of the religious and ethnic outgroups: the Scots, Irish and non-Anglician religious dissenters in England (Concreterealists, Presbyterians and Baptists).
geography, it becomes clear that republicanism had four different modes on side of the Atlantic.
New Englanders were pious and moralistic republicans who wanted to build a Christian Sparta in the new United States. Government should be, like the Calvinist God himself, strong and active, guiding the nation toward moral as well as economic health by direct and continuous intervention.
In the Middle States, however, there were also large non-English ethnic groups: the Dutch, German and Scotch-Irish. Made by the English to feel inferior, they were egalitarian republicans. They hated anything Anglicized, which in the American context meant a lack of cultural self-awareness, unwillingly English in ethnicity and anguishly Aboriginal.
THE ELITE of the Middle Atlantic States were national republicans. Focused in the Anglicized cities of New York and Philadelphia, they wanted to open the nation's vast resources to investment and commerce by a vigorous use of the central government. England was the wealthy, aristocratic and burglary capitalist.
White Southerners were primarily libertarian republicans. They wanted a nation of white persons free to live as they saw fit—that included the ownership of all private, government should be locally controlled and small.
Moralistic Yankees and nationalist followers of Alexander Hamilton joined forces to create the Federalist Party—Anglophile, elitist, friendly to liberalism. The federalist purity, as conceived by Yankee Congregationalists.
LIBERTARIAN WHITE Southerners and the
eglaborian ethnic minorities upled behind Thomas
Jefferson - Anglipobe, libertarian and unceasing advocates of culture as well as economic laissez faire
Everyone, in faith and in style of living, should be free to do his own thing, guaranteeing that the ethnic minorities would be left alone. Puritan moralism, as it is called, Subantaritism and slave-holding, was to be fended off.
THE FEDERALIST Party and its Whig successor took its strongest inspiration from traditional New England. Spreading westward into the upper Middle West, Yankees carried the activist, moralistic developmental and progress-oriented tradition with them.
The ethnic minorities dominated the Middle States; they delivered their votes to Jefferson's Republican (and Andrew Jackson's Democratic) Party; and thus forced the White House to declare the federal government from 1800 to the Civil War.
Southerners, moving westward, took the small government, localistic, anti-moralistic tradition into the western South and the lower Middle West. An even balance ensued.
In the 1840s, Irish Catholics flooded into the country. Suddenly the basic cleavage in Northern politics was not between Protestant Britons (the Scottish-Irish against the English), but between Protestants and Catholics.
OBSERVING the Irish Catholics flocking into the Democratic Party (which, with its doctrine of cultural laissez faire, promises to preempt them from participating in the faith and drink their whiskey), Scotch-Island flocked to the other side. Baptist and Methodist Yankees, who had also been Democrats because they defeated the supercilious Puritans, did the
sanje.
IN THE 1850S, the American ("Know-Nothing")
Party received these political refuges from the Democracy. Then, as the slavery expansion neared its conclusion, the party resisted.
Abraham Lincoln was elected; the South seceded, and was thereafter crushed. New England had finally won. It was the Yankees' version of moralistic republicanism, joined to the entrepreneurial nationalism of Pennsylvania and Middle Western industrialists, that took over Washington.
A new Republican Party sprang into being that abandons Catholicists and Southern Republicans as pre-advocates for the federal government to encourage business enterprise by erecting protective tariffs and encouraging industry growth.
SO IT REMAINED thereafter. Democrats continued to be the home of low-status, white outgroups, of egalitarianism (save for blacks) and of cultural liberalism.
In FDR's time, black America would shift to the Democrats; in Kennedy's time, brown America would surface politically on the Democratic side; and in Carter's time, gay America would be the same.
Republicans continued to be the party of British America that after 1900 expanded with the adhesion of Protestant Germans, Scandinavians and British Canadians to WASP America. Intensely nationalist in economics as well as foreign policy, and centrist in politics, they themselves as the host culture and disliked "aliens."
Robert Kelley is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
in its broadest cultural patterns, the party system remains that was founded in Jefferson's time.
There are a couple of more things that aren't quite so bad about the winter months. Sitting in front of a warm fireplace is one of my favorite things, and they're usually built because it's so cold outside.
Another thing I like is sleeping in winter. Piling three or four blankets on a bed in winter makes the thought of sleep very inviting on a cold winter's night. But, given the choice, I'd choose sleeping without any blankets in 70-degree weather anytime.
Winter wouldn't really be so bad if it could just be a little warmer. When I think of winter, I tend to think of ulessness attempts at trying to drive up an icy hill or trying to start my car when the thermometer hasn't been above zero for three days.
AND BEING SICK. The Russian or Asian or Hong Kong or London or some other type of flu hits every winter. Almost as bad is that terrible disease called the common cold, which leaves you coughing and sneezing and wishing you were dead, but knowing you can cough, you are not a good fit of sniffing students is no fun—especially when you're one of them.
There's only one really bright spot about winter: knowing, or at least hoping, that it won't last forever. Sometimes the cold begins to go away. A warm day in February or even early March is enough to brighten anyone's spirits.
But February and March seem to be ages away right now. I know I can't enjoy winter, but I have to put up with it. I get through it. I will tilt the lamps up now and wait for...spring.
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