UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorialist. Signed columns represent the views of the writer.
OCTOBER 26,1978
Oread questions vital
The factionalism that threatens to diffuse the efforts of the Oread Neighborhood Association merits more interest from students than would mere political infighting, which the association's current disputes might appear to be at first glance.
Since a landlord-supported slate of candidates swept the association's officers elections earlier this month, determination of the entire philosophy of the group has been in question. Although some of the bitterness over the election has subsided—outwardly, at least—the association's direction remains in question.
The Oread Neighborhood Association, in existence for about a year, formed to fight some of the pervasive problems of the "student ghetto" area east of the University campus: congestion, poor maintenance and a lack of serious attention from city government.
Since this month's elections however, progress in fighting the neighborhood's problems appears to have been impeded.
EFFORTS TO rezone the Oread area to hold population density at its present level are being fought by Oread landlords, many of whom don't live in the neighborhood.
One landlord, Marie Lynch, said, "I
think the present zoning has worked fine, and I don't think it needs to be changed . . . I think the whole thing is idiotic."
Indeed the present zoning has "worked fine" for those trying to cram more rent-paying bodies into a fixed amount of real estate. Tenants, however, would dispute Lynch's assertion that "... people like it just the way it is."
LANDLORDS ALSO have branded an $85,000 anti-crime grant obtained by the association as unneeded—apparently because it gives the area a bad image—although Lawrence police statistics indicate the Oread area suffers far more than its share of local crime.
Students comprise a heavy percentage of Oread area residents and pay the rents that are the economic incentive for damaging exploitation of the neighborhood.
KU students, who often don't seem to realize that their sheer numbers in proportion to the total Lawrence voting population represent real power, would be wrong to dismiss the Oread dispute as irrelevant city politics.
Students should realize their potential to contribute to preservation of the area's remaining integrity and to reversal of its problems.
Free choice guaranteed under right-to-work law
Right-to-work firms in Missouri won their latest battle over organized labor recently, but the showdown comes in two weeks and labor isn't about to give up.
The real issue of right-to-work was ignored in the attempt to get the amendment off the ballot; labor will go to great lengths to make sure the amendment fails.
The right-to-work forces deserve support. In the latest clash, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled against an effort by labor to stop the state's Nov. 7 vote on the right-to-work amendment. Organized labor argued that petitions for placing the amendment on all state workers were violated, the court quickly ruled against labor, clearing the way for Missouri's right-to-work.
THE AMENDMENT, number 23 on the Missouri ballot, is fairly simple. It gives workers the freedom to decide whether they want to belong to a union.
Twenty states already have right-to-work laws, including Kansas, which has had such a law for 20 years. But Kansas was the last state to pass a right-to-work referendum. Most of the other states' laws have come through acts of state legislatures.
Missouri, however, may be a different story. In other right-to-work states, industry is not nearly as strong as it is in Missouri. In the South, at the South, and the others are Plains states.
LABOR UNIONS have been good for american workers, but membership should not be ignored.
Understandably, union leaders are afraid that if the amendment is passed in Missouri, it could clear the border. Although it would be fought in other states just as fiercely as in Missouri, the idea behind the amendment just as good and would merit passage.
Opponents of the amendment have cried that the right-to-work slogan is ambiguous. And what they say is true. They argue that a judge's law would not guarantee jobs. It wouldn't.
But the law would guarantee people the right to hold a job without joining a union. The door would be kept open to many jobs because only cannot be held by non-union members.
in states that permit closed shops, the individual who doesn't belong to a union can get a job in such a shop. The union does not have to close the shop. In closed shop, the state would prohibit a company and a union from signing a contract that would require company workers to work there.
And despite what some union leaders have said, right-to-work would be a disaster for them.
MILLER NICHOLS, a Kansas City area real estate developer, thinks the lack of a business to leave Missouri to escape the strong influence of organized labor. He thinks passage of the amendment would increase the businesses and could even attract new industries.
But those fears can be done away with. The unions won't lose strength. Statistics of the United Auto Workers union show that in right-to-work states are union members.
Union leaders, however, oppose nearly everything about right-to-work. They fear it would be more difficult to get people to join a union if they were a voluntary act.
But they don't have to be and that's the point. They've joined the union because of them.
And few people are arguing against unions anyway. They're arguing against being forced to act just like they would be forced to act just like they would join a church or any other organization.
Vanity evident in new Senate palace
Speaking in Michigan earlier this week, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said that representative government was in the worst shape it had been in during his 16 years in the Senate.
"The heart of the problem is that the Senate and the House are awash in a sea of special interest campaign contribution and the media are right. Congress consistently favors the wealthy and powerful, and special interest lobbies never have been more powerful in Washington. However, the American public seems closest to its heart is—no surprises here—Congress itself.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the Senate's new office building, already going up on Capitol Hill. The Senate has placed a minority $135 million price ceiling on the office building, which will be its third.
AND ALL THIS in the year of Howard Jarvis.
But certainly the money will be going to good use. It would be embarrassing to find the U.S. Senate without an indoor tennis court or a top-floor restaurant, both of which will be provided in the new office building.
And the building's defenders have some good points to make. Sen. Richard Schweicker, R-Pa., pointed out that in these days of computerized mailling lists Senators have to use computerized mailboxes, though apparently, to justify the 16-foot ceiling in each office.
It has been a little bit tougher for the Senators to explain the $3 million outlay for marble-lined walls, but those silly fiscal conservatives don't understand. It just wouldn't be the Senate if it wasn't done in marble.
LUCKILY, THERE have been some lonely voices rising
from the Senate floor in opposition to the building. Sen. John Chafee, R-R-L, proposed in August to cut off all funds for the building, but his Senate colleagues reacted as if Chafee had manage.
Sen. Dale Bumpers, D-Ark., was particularly effective in his Respite to Chafee, telling the Senate the jer-kier tale of his poor boyhood days spent working in a canning factory back in Arkansas. Apparently a poor childhood entitles a Senator to any physical comforts he can muster, the taxpayer be damned.
Of course, that is the real issue involved with the building. After much huffing and puffing and self-righteous speeches about providing tax relief for the overburdened little man, the Senate has turned right around and stuck it to him again. A new tax bill cut bills doesn't disguise the fact that the Senate will turn back on the spending only if it has no direct effect on the Senate's own operations.
IN OPPOSING the building, Clafes argued that Senate staffs will almost certainly increase in order to fill the new space. Given that there are already almost 7,000 staffers on the floor, it would be wise to employ a 1958, the increase is not a pleasant possibility.
building, its members have offered some prime examples of its typically obtuse logic. One Senator explained that, although the building might be "to too expensive," it would cost about $80 million to abandon the project now. He didn't mention that it would cost about $80 million to go ahead and complete the project.
The Senate's unwillingness to part with its new office building in the midst of a national craze for reduced federal spending and subsequent tax relief is a distressing sign that the Senate is losing its own desires on the needs of its constituency.
HOWEVER, THE HOUSE of Representatives is not gullible in this affair, either. Although it refused to approve the Senate's recent appropriation of $25 million for the agency, any bowls for its efforts to cut wasteful federal spending.
MARNELEY THEREMONDENELEAER @NYBG WILLIAMS HOREAC
But none of that matters to the Senate. In defending the
The current main office building for the House cost $101 million and stands as the most expensive structure on Capitol Hill—at least until the Senate is finished with its new building. Also, six of the 11 building projects currently planned by the Capitol architect will be for the use of the House.
So, in these days of heavy reliance on political symbolism, perhaps this new office building, rising nine stories above the Capitol in an architectural style one observer dubed "nee-Mussolini," can become a new symbol
It can become a shrine to the Senate—conceived by the Senate, planned by the Senate, approved by the Senate, and paid for by the taxpayers, who were never asked if they would believe it. It would be the perfect symbol for a self-serving Senate.
'shackled' by Harper, not Shankel
To the editor :
I do not think that you can fault the administration, more particularly Del Shankel, executive vice chancellor, for the failure to implement a motion mitted by Mike Harper, student body president. Harper's legal services proposal should not have been sent to Shankel without its first having been cleared by the governing board appointed by the university. So the proposal was final and the proposal it was only appropriate that it respond formally. I am confident Shankel acted properly in response to a request by the student government. I do not believe the governing board nor has he "short-circumfellow" legal service programed.
He did not appear before the board to discuss the program because he was not asked to appear by a board that didn't know that anything had been submitted for comment. Moreover, it was, and is, not the governing board's role to negotiate with the administration; that is the student body president's retained obligation.
Any "shackling" or "short circulating"
occurred when Harper did not consider
the utility of his appointed governing board and
which he might attempt an unauthorized
proposal to Shankel.
Laurence Rose associate professor Director, Legal Aid Clinic
Corporations can't help. They are legally bound to maximize investors' profits, so
Energy problem demands boldness
N. Y. Times Feature
By Gerald K. O'Neill
NEW YORK—Both challenge and opportunity are greater than in many decades. Energy is our great challenge; space is our great opportunity.
Our dollar, blled by staggering charges for imported oil, has shrunk by 35 percent in just 15 months against the yea. It has been estimated that our balance-of-payments deficit will be a hundred billion dollars annually seven years from now.
There is no way in the world we can turn that situation around merely by conservation and tinkering with the economy. We desperately need to find acceptable and permanent low-cost solutions to our energy needs. It is important to aggressively exploit new export industries to replace those (cars, electronics, etc.) in which we can no longer compete.
GOVERNMENT CAN'T help. It is tied to time scales of two, four and six years, and our biggest problems will take a generation to solve.
Foundations based on the gifts of wealthy individuals can't help. They used to support society's necessary lengthy ventures (Carniegne libraries, the Rockefeller's agricultural Green Revolution, the Bambergers' Institute for Advanced Study, the Bayer's Institute for Food Science) now threaten their existence and prevent their making vital long-term commitments
economic discounting limits their time-horizon to five years.
AS OBIEDENTIAL automata, we Americans are failures, but our traditions of irreverence and the free transfer of information enable us to lead a leadership that will be priceless in the decades to come. We bucked the "Oxbridge" tradition by instituting the land-grant colleges, because reversible over the succeeding decades, the best way to economize economic sector we have: industrialized
Yet we need not give up. We have got a lot going for us if we use it; it a lure, and aware and alarmed us. In Vietnam War, began the environmental movement, and with California's Proposition 13 showed how quickly it could governmental action into its own hands.
agriculture. It is time to invent, beg, borrow or steal ideas again.
HERE IS ONE approach: Take just one percent of the Energy Department's five billion dollars a year and put it into 10 small independent institutes, each free to go for-leaf on a different non-nuclear alternative-energy technology for 20 years, with no need for proposal writing, grant renewals, reviews or learning all the name of the department of Energy will pass through in that time.
In energy, we have got to understand that nobody is wise enough to know what technology will turn out best. Competition and exploitation are more for us than any massive centralized bureaucracy. We already have a huge network of people who do business, but we dilly-dally on other alternatives.
This approach will benefit us in several ways. The competition will sharpen up the enterprise level of our businesses, and other 99 percent. It will convince OPEC that we will lick the energy problem. Holding down an OPEC oil price rise by even one cent could mean more money than the all institutes will spend.
As for opportunity, history shows us where to look. A century ago the automobile, air travel and electronics were all mere gleams in the eye. Now they are among the world's biggest growth industries. Similarly, the great economic opportunities of the next hundred years are today's "laboratory curiosities."
LAST AND BEST, it is very likely to show us where to put our heavy investment and give us an energy export market that will earn billions. If the Manhattan and Arch projects are good historical guides, we are up and with two or more successful solutions.
The biggest opportunity of all is beyond our biosphere. Outside earth's shadow there is eternal, unvarying solar energy going to waste. In the asteroidal debris of the solar system there are thousands of minerals mined and never ever obtain continuing our present despoilment of the earth. The nations that use those resources most effectively will lead this next century.
Gerald K. O'Neill is professor of physics at Princeton University.He won the Phi Beta Kappa science award for his book, "The High Frontier."
UNIVERSITY DAILY letters KANSAN
To the editor:
Use of wire copy too heavy in Kansan To the caller:
I've noticed that this semester the Kansan seems to be relying more heavily on wire copy to fill its pages than it did in previous courses. The characteristic is disturbing for several reasons.
The Kansan is a student newspaper. As a graduate of KU's journalism school and a former Kansan reporter, I know that it is important for students to get writing experience, as well as the ability to be one third to one-half filled with wire copy not much room is left for student work.
Also important, because it affects not only journalism students but the entire University, is the fact that students and faculty are not being kept informed of what is happening at the national and international news he or she can subscribe to the Lawrence Daily Journal-World or the Kansas City Star. Because the Kansan's space is limited it cannot cover these areas thoroughly, anyway. The Kansan's space is supposed to cover—the students, the faculty and their activities. There is a lot going on at KU that is never
Furthermore, the wire copy is often outdated. For example, the AP capsule "UFO called cause of damage," which appeared in Monday's paper, is an old story. I read the same story in Time magazine a year ago. "I was thinking that Nor do I think that the Gig Young suicide story was important enough to take up space in a student newspaper."
mentioned in your pages or, at best, is given brief mention. These activities, of course, are not intended for reference.
National and international news is important, but in a student newspaper it should be made clear that the students will given it this semester. Let's see more local reporting; there's a lot let on around KU.
LeRoy Johnston III
LeRoy Johnston III Lawrence law student
Editor's note: The Kanan publishes APIS and UPI stories as a service to its readers. For many of them, the Kanan is the first or only news source in our net "relying" on wire services news to fill its pages. In the past week, for example, wire service news occupied about 20 percent of the news space. The same report in APIS story speaks made Saturday in the Soviet Union.
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