UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
OCTOBER 16, 1978
Fear of ideas wrong
The refusal by University of Kansas administrators to allow Jonathon Kozol to speak at the Higher Education week banquet in November is only the most recent indication of a growing fear in Strong Hall of controversy.
Kozol, who has frequently been critical of the American educational system, was originally asked to speak at the banquet by a student steering committee. But the committee's choice ministerators who reportedly feared that Kozol's speech would not be supportive of higher education.
THE BANQUET audience would include many state legislators, and the administration apparently thought Kozol's speech could serve as fodder for arguments by state legislators to cut higher education funding.
The student steering committee had been told when it was formed that students would have input in the week's activities and would be able to recommend the speaker for the banquet. But when the recommendation was submitted the administration immediately rejected it, choosing instead Stephen Bailey, a member of the American Council on Higher Education.
The administration's move seemed to imply that student input was great as long as the students say what the administration wants to hear. If not, then the administration imposes their will anyway.
IT WAS the third time in recent months the administration has shown concern over public relations and rushed in to quell possible controversies before they could start.
In early April the administration announced it would take disciplinary action against students who could be identified among those who had disrupted a speech by the former prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin. But in early summer, after many students had left town for summer break and the public outrage over the speech had subsided, the administration announced that no disciplinary action would be taken after all.
Later that April the administration postponed an exhibit of Nazi memorabilia the morning it was scheduled to open. Del Shankel, executive vice chancellor, cited the timing of the exhibit as the reason for its cancellation, explaining that it would coincide with the celebration of Passover and the showing of a television drama depicting Nazi persecution of the Jews. Its opening under those conditions, he said, would be in "poor taste".
IN BOTH cases the administration moved swiftly to try to stave off any possible criticism before it could arise, and the Kozol incident is another example of the same method of operation.
The radical days of the late '90s and early '70s, which gave KU a reputation as a hotbed of radicalism and resulted in a balky Legislature when funding time came, have apparently made an impression on the administration. It is doing everything it can to promote a wholesome image of KU as a place where controversy and heretical notions are a thing of the past.
Of course, the fear of budget cuts by the Legislature is a legitimate one. But that fear underestimates both the tolerance and intelligence of legislators, and it certainly should not drive KU to the suppression of new or different ideas.
As for Kozol, the student committee has given him a chance to express his ideas at an open forum to be held in the Kansas Union the day before the banquet. But the very idea that the administration will not allow him to speak before legislators and alumni for fear he might deliver something besides a pep talk for higher education is a sad idea indeed.
A university is intended as a place for learning and the open exchange of ideas. It is highly ironic that the administration fears Kozol for providing those very things.
Student government is often a laughing matter
What games they must be playing. And what crazies they must have for student
What fun they must be having at the University of Wisconsin-Madison these days.
Unclear?
There's no other word for them--Jim Mallon, student body president, and Leon Varjian, his vice president, are Steve Martin-like crazy.
Mallon, Varjian and 29 of 36 student senate members were elected last spring on a "Pail and Shovel" platform—a platform made of no舔 sticks.
They proposed converting student funds into pennies and dumping them into a campus fountain so students, armed with pails and shovels, could die in.
They want to flood the football stadium and use it for mock naval battles. They'd like to stuff and mount all deans, convert parking meters into gumball machines and run classroom clocks backwards. That way, they say, classes would end before they
They can't be serious?
WELL, THAT's what they'd like to do. What they have done is use student funda for a toga party, which was attended by 12,000 and a marijuana smoke-in, which drew 5,000.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Editor
Stave Fratier
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But it gets better. Earlier this month the student senate, which Mallon governs with a bureaucratic rigor, has changed the name of the university. Nothing drastic—now it's the University of New York.
"That way kids from Wisconsin can say they graduated from a prestigious Eastern school," Mallon said in an Associated Press story last week.
Mallon is in office largely because of an apathetic student body at Wisconsin. But to get the job, he had to
APATHY IS what? What can you expect from a man who bases his administration on the theory that "All the average student is sex and drugs and rock 'r'oll." In that order.
But he and Varljan, who at 27 in his 10th year of college, just came at the right time. They say students are just less concerned with the world nowadays.
Serious or not, Mallon has to be given some credit. He has to be given credit for twisting student government as it has never been twisted before.
"We're happy that students are apathetic.
If not, we'd be out of office."
MIKER HAPER, student body president at KU, said he didn't know about student government at Wisconsin, but that it must be a pretty week for such a change to come about.
He can't be serious. Not really.
But KU is just not ready for that. Student government is too stable.
Thousands of football fans pack Memorial Stadium on a beautiful autumn afternoon.
the University of Kansas marching band plays the rousing alma mater and the crowd is tingling with anticipation.
He hopes the chances for such a change at KU are slim.
But at any rate, such a change would be refreshing—temporarily.
Violence, injuries taint football
With all their confusion, however, they also have created a lot of laughter and merriment, something KU could use a dose of.
Although football players seldom face death as the gladiators did, the injury rate in organized football makes one wonder if he would get to make a same direction as those in the Collegiate.
As KU football fans learned from the 1976 season when Nolan Cromwell was disabled, injuries can break a football Team. And injury rates are rising in
Harper said, "I'd like to do that for a couple of days—go on a tauten. But who does it?"
A RECENT SURVEY in Sports Illustrated estimated that 70,000 college football players would be injured this season. a drastic increase over last year.
Pennies in the Chi Omega fountain? Meek navies battles in a newly renovated stadium?
Football has always been a physical and violent game, but the early rulersmasters probably never realized the violent sport they were inventing.
For a couple of days? Make us laugh.
Particularly in the professional ranks, football violence has become more acute. Already this year for presession play, a tight end for the New England Patriots
Dirck
Steimel
In only a few minutes the stadium will erupt with cheers for the modern day gladiators that take the field. These men in their brightly colored uniforms will sacrifice their bodies to please the fans, just as their predecessors did to please the Roman citizens more than a thousand years
was paralyzed by a tackle from the Oakland Raiders' Jack Tatum. Last year, Lynn Swann, wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers, suffered a concussion on a illegal blow to his head by another Oakland alder. George Atkinson
These two are not isolated examples. Some type of severe injury occurs in nearly every football game—be it high school, college or professional. But why?
JOHN HADL, assistant football coach and former professional quarterback, said the size and strength of the players today is a primary cause for the rise in injuries.
"I played for 16 years and you could see the guys getting bigger, faster and stronger every year," Haid said. "This is probably going to happen there is obviouslyrho chance for injury."
Another reason for the rise in the number of injuries, Had said, was the use of artificial playing fields instead of natural turf.
"About the only thing you can do would be to make the field bigger so there would be more room to move around, but that would hardy be possible."
"The artificial turf doesn't give like the
The hard plastic helmet, which was introduced to the game in the 1940s as a tremendous safety device for head injuries, has almost evolved into a weapon.
MANY TIMES it is the safety equipment itself that causes injuries in football.
grass and the guy's foot has nowhere to go when he gets hit. You so get a leg of law, then you get a gun.
Helmet tacking, or spearing, is a bonchancing way to get the opponent off of his feet. Spearing was outlawed by the British in the 18th century, often used as sifism called by the referrer.
Bottles, cups and even a wild punch thrown at a referee by spectators at the KU-Tex & A M game, show that officials will worry about than looking for illegal heals.
Professional players know that outstanding hits, the kind that put the opponents on a path to victory or a salary increase. Even known violators of the sportsmanship rule, like Conrad Dobber formerly of the St. Louis Clippers, have huge salaries because they get the job done.
Perhaps the rise in injuries can be attributed to athletes themselves. It seems the rise of professional football and the last decade has corrupted the idea of sportsponging.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL players are also known to have dollar signs in their eyes and bonejarring hits attract attention from the press and pro scouts.
For example, LeLoy Irvin, free safety for the Jayhawks, was quoted earlier this fall saying that he would have to knock the ball away. This action will be noticed for all-conference honors.
But probably the biggest reason for the continuing rise of unnecessary violence in football is the attitude of the fans themselves.
So just like the gladiators of ancient Rome, football players go out each weekend to please the fans with their violence.
The biggest cheers heard at the game seem to no longer come for a game win, so he got back on his bike and tackle on the one yard line. His that knuckle on opponent's helmet off or that put him down was not involved.
And with bigger and more aggressive players, injury rates keen up.
The injury problem does not lie solely in the rules, officiating or the equipment used in the game. The problem lies in the spirit in which the game is now played.
Starting from the high school ranks, coaches have to change football tactics to remove the emphasis on violence.
If the violent remains in football, fans might as well come dressed in their togas, ready to point their thumbs down on the brutal gladiators.
Football has always been billed as the game to build a man's character. But today the game seems to be breaking more bodies than building character.
To the editor
I would like to answer and engage upon Kenneth Mitchell's recent letter in which he addressed the hot issue of nuclear energy use. Particularly interesting in his nuclear power research, is that the nuclear power as "safe" and "clean". Further, he states, "there is no smoke, no ash, no carbon monoxide, no sulfur dioxide. There is also need for giant coal strip mining or excavation to recover the signature not recognize is that this serves also as an apt description of the solar energy alternative. With solar power, neither is there the problem of where and how to store radioactive waste, a drawback of nuclear ignored by Mitchell in his efforts to praise.
At the end of his letter, Mitchell declares that he is "convinced. that those who understand both nuclear power and its alternatives will favor nuclear power." Although some of us are not so convinced as to whether nuclear power is realism in what Mitchell sees. Already, there are operating in the U.S. a large number of nuclear reactors. These reactors add daily to our collection of radioactive waste material, which can be "safely" stored for but a small portion of even its own half-life. Proliferation of nuclear energy is a challenge for Boehmeon. Even Burlington, Kansas, will likely host a nuclear plant in the near future.
So, perhaps, the current move against nuclear energy is a hopeless post facto effort. Perhaps, Mitchell and other "convinced" individuals will serve our
generation in the roles of social rationalizers.
In the face of water pollution from the heat of nuclear reactors, in the face of ever-increasing amounts of crippling radioactive wastes, in the face of every negative result of the nationwide rush into nuclear energy in recent decades, they may be said that they are 'convinced of the safety' of nuclear power: small consolation, indeed, for the future generations who will be left with the tragic effects of this power; consolation enough, perhaps, for us whose entire span of life will but cover minute portions of the infinite half-lives of our
Robert B. Scott Lawrence junior
Fort Hays students call for referendum
To the editor:
According to Fort Hays State statutes, a "referendum shall be called when a petition of 10 percent of the eligible voters of the Student Senate" is presented to the Student Senate."
On Oct. 5 the Fort Hays State University Student Senate voted 20 to 5 allow KU to join the Associated Students of Kansas. Just minutes before that vote, a petition bearing the signatures of 893 Fort Hays State students was presented to the Senate
UNIVERSITY DAILY letters KANSAN
The Senate ignored the petition saying
any student vote would only be an advisory statement. Their action is now being protested in the Student-Faculty Court. The decision is to be handed down later this
Debt Schumacher
Fort Hays State University
student senator
The purpose of this letter is to inform University of Kansas students of the importance of giving the petition originators, are trying to give Fort Hays students the best possible representation and the best student government possible. Your support is
To the editor:
Regarding your recent article on the poll being taken by the Unification Church Study Center. We make every effort to be courteous and comply with all University regulations.
Poll taken to give true view of church
Unfortunately, a few people have been irked by our enthusiasm in soliciting responses to our survey. To those in distress, we apologize for any impropriety on our part.
I would also like to point out that the article that appeared in the Kansan concerning this issue was a little unfair. Considering the nationwide controversy surrounding the Unification Church and the Rev. Moon, I don't feel that three compulsory students who were polled deserves the headlines that annoeed on one one.
The book table and survey were set up for the purpose of increasing the public's awareness of the activities of individuales are. In addition, our efforts are directed at presenting a true picture of the Unification Church which sharply contrasts with the distorted image presented in the media.
In fact, hundreds of students who had previously been an unfavorable impression of the Unification Church have responded with praise and literature and have become our friends.
James Stephans
Director
The Unification Church of Kansas