November 27,1984
OPINION
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University, Daly Kannon, UCNP5 605-640 is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stuart Flint Hall Lawen, Kansas. Kannon 605-640, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and final periods. Second class payment帖位 Lawen, Kansas. Kannon 6044 Subscriptions by mail are $1 for six months or $6 for a year at Douglas County, and $4 for six months or $3 a year outside the county. Student memberships cost $20-$30 per semester address changes to the University, Daly Kannon, 118 Stuart Flint Hall Lawen, Kansas. Kannon 6045
DON KNOX
Editor
PAUL SEVART VINCE HESS Managing Editor Editorial Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM Campus Editor
DAVE WANAMAKER Business Manager
LYNNE STARK MARY BERNICA Retail Sales National Sales Manager Manager
SUSANNE SHAW
General Manager and News Adviser
JILL GOLDBLATT Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
Humanities
Quality in education is making headlines again after the release of a report from a committee convened by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The report, "To Reclaim a Legacy: A Report on the Humanities in Higher Education," declares the decline in education in the humanities that graduates from U.S. colleges and universities receive.
The theme of the report is "a steady erosion in the place of the humanities in the undergraduate curriculum" over the past 20 years. In light of the accusations made in the report, the University of Kansas can be proud of its relatively rigorous requirements. KU administrators and faculty members have said that many universities have weaker requirements but that KU has not experienced as much of a decline.
"By and large, when other schools were dumping requirements and cheapening their degrees, KU held the line pretty well," said James Seaver, professor of history and former director of the Western Civilization program.
For example, the report points out that less than half of all colleges and universities require a foreign language for a bachelor's degree, but KU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences still requires four semesters of foreign language for a bachelor of arts degree.
However, other statistics cited ought to raise some eyebrows at KU. For example, 75 percent of all colleges and universities do not require a study of European history for a bachelor's degree — this includes KU. Seventy-two percent do not require U.S. history or literature — this includes KU. And 96 percent do not require a study of the civilizations of classical Greece and Rome — this, too, includes KU.
KU comes clean on many of the charges made. Indeed, administrators can justifiably feel some vindication; work on a core curriculum began two years ago, long before the report came out. Other charges stick, however. To the extent that this report has anything to say about the quality of education in the humanities at KU, administrators ought to be listening.
GUEST COLUMNS
The University Daily Kansan invites individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns should be typewritten and double-spaced and should not exceed 625 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. Columns can be mailed or, brought to the Kansan office, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject columns.
Vote confirms realignment of South
WASHINGTON - It probably didn't have a great deal to do with President Reagan's landslide, but the 1884 election did bring political realignment - a basic shift in the two-party system - in the South.
Southern politics has fascinated political scientists since the Civil War. For generations the South voted solid Democratic. The region thereby gained a disproportionate share of electors, and because its Democratic senators were invulnerable to defeat and seemingly vulnerable to old age.
Age and politics seem finally to have caught up with that generation at the same time. As the old-line senators are replaced one at a time, some of the new faces are Republican.
True, most Southern states that elected senators this year sent back Democratic incumbents by large margins - Howell Helfin of Alabama (62 percent), Sam Nunn of Georgia (59 percent), Johnston of Louisiana (unopposed).
However, in North Carolina, Republican Jesse Helms, the kind of
senator once guaranteed a lifetime term in the South, was nearly ousted by Gov. James Hunt, one of the most successful senators who ever operated in the state.
In Mississippi, Republican Sen.
Thad Cohran, who had been on everyone's list of most vulnerable
CLAY F. RICHARDS United Press International
incumbents this year, won re-election with 61 percent of the vote. His victory didn't come over an unknown but the state's outgoing governor, William Winter, instead
in Texas, where Democrats thought that picking up the seat of retiring Republican Sen. John Tower would be as easy as defeating Cochran in Mississippi. Rep Phil Hamilton won for the GOP with 30 percent of the vote.
Although Reagan's contacts may have made the difference in North Carolina, it's hard to present such an argument in Texas and Mississippi.
In the only governorship at stake in the South this year, Rep. James Martin, a Republican, won in North Carolina.
The shifting political tides in the South were even more obvious in house races. No Southern Republican incumbents were defeated, but seven Democrats were — three each in Texas and North Carolina and one in Georgia. Among those going down to defeat were six ninerter Ike Anderson, four nineerterers Jack Hightower in Texas and Elliott Levitts in Georgia.
In open seats, Republicans lost
in Democratism in the South,
and gained in TEXAS.
One could argue that Republicans, who gained a net of 14 seats nationwide, did not do poorly anywhere. Nationwide, they lost one open seat, and the two incumbent GOP congressmen who were involved in scandals that probably determined the outcome of the election.
Democrats in Southern states have seen the handwriting on the wall. That is why Rep. Andy Ireland of
Florida switched parties and became a Republican in time for the 1964 election. Gramm, the new senator from Texas, was a Democrat as a House member, but changed parties after he had voted for Reagan's economic programs in 1981 and 1982
Gramm probably couldn't have reached the Senate had he stayed in the Democratic Party. Fellow Boll Weevil Kent Henton, also a Texan, remained a Democrat and lost in the Senate primary.
The rising Republicanism in the South also reflects that black voters, though larger in number, are not enough to make the difference. Nowhere was this more evident than in Mississippi, where GOP Rep. Webb Franklin was re-elected, even though he was running against a black Democrat in a district that was more than half black.
A new pattern of Southern voting seems to have been established in the past two or three elections Democrat incumbents who had close ties to time are going to have to look hard at whether it is time to light or switch
Idea of inevitable war is dangerous
Controversy recently arose over a theory of Armageddon attributed to the "religious right" and possibly held by President Reagan.
An article in last month's Kansas City Times said that a group of 110 Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish religious leaders had called on both presidential candidates to repudiate the theory of Armageddon as an exodus of scripture and as acceptance of inevitable nuclear war.
These religious leaders are affiliated with the Christic Institute, a Washington group critical of Reagan's nuclear policy. Public attention was drawn to the issue at the time of the presidential debate in 1982, when Republicans repudiated the theory in response to questioning at the debate.
News reports say that the Christie Institute has references from Reagan over the years that indicate he thinks that the world will end in a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East such an event might occur at any time.
The institute says that in 1980, during the presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan said on a religious program, the Jim Bakker show. "We may be the generation that sees Armageddon."
The institute issued a statement in October that said the Armageddon theory identified "our nation's enemies with the enemies of God" and seemingly justified nuclear war "as a divine instrument to punish the wicked and complete God's plan for history."
A statement from another group also expressed concern over the
The statement said the institute thought that Reagan "either shares this perspective with the new Christian right, or he is pandering to them. And in either case it is very dangerous."
matter. This statement was signed by officials of the National Council of Churches, American Baptist Churches, the Washington offices of
RICK
SHERIDAN
Staff Columnist
the Presbyterian Church, the Uni-
tarian Universalist Association of
Churches, the Luthery Council in
the U.S.A., two canons of the Washington
Cathedral, the president of the United Church of Christ, three Roman Catholic bishops and two rabbis.
The statement said, referring to the New Right, "It is profoundly disturbing that religious leaders would use their influence to promote this ideology of nuclear Armaqeddon.
"We are in serious opposition to the ideology of nuclear Armageddon because it is predeterminism, it is fatalism, it is hopelessness and it is using the scripture as a road map for global chaos and destruction."
It is indeed unfortunate that the issue needs to be raised in the first place. An attitude of predestination could only frighten some and force
others to be apathetic about the world situation. It would bring back the use of "being on God's side" to justify military adventurism, and would lead people to think that a nuclear accident or use of nuclear weapons was all part of God's plan
A fundamentalist belief in the Armageddon theory could possibly cause a shift away from organized religion on the part of many Ameri- cans to dislike the theory and blame their churches for helping to support it.
Various religious leaders could certainly acknowledge the threat of Armageddon and use their influence to help prevent it from ever happening.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Talk of discrimination conceals issue that campus must consider
To the editor:
There is fraud of epic proportions being worked upon the University community. I refer to the buffoonfery of those who would use position and influence to squelch debate on the funding of Gay and Lesbian Services
It is inferred that to argue against GLSOK is to advocate violence against its members. Propaganda placed around the campus goes so far as to suggest, in a vague and threatening manner, that opposition to GLSOK is prima facie a tactic endorsement of Adult education or a revelation to their feemed brows. So boors must be no Nazis. Let us divert attention from the real issue with a watch hunt for bigots.
A few pontificating poltroons of academe, sermonizing on the rights of man, declaim that to dissent to being forced to finance GLOSK in some mysterious manner violates some undefined right of some unidentified person and hence will not be tolerated. These devious tricksters attempt to misrepresent choice as victimization. They dissemble with a selective appeal to Christian ideals. The latter has been hardened and have endured all the pious cant and sinfulness for fairness and tolerance that I care to.
An examination of the reasoning involved reveals several curious relationships. To be opposed to funding of G/LSOK is to favor persecution of homosexuals. Any person who takes such a position is automatically held party to the gaucherie of Steve Imber.
I witness this most basic fallacy of
logic, cum hoe erg proper bho (false association), being per捉erten en masse and wonder whether the University of Kansas is filled with idiocy and sinking into decrepitude. As I watch this exchange of absurdities passing as an exchange of ideas, I begin to suspect that GLOSK is less concerned with liberating homosexuals as with liberating dollars from the student treasury. This hoax must be exposed.
Now we have several scamp mountebacks on the faculty and in the administration who design to tell us that the use of our money to promote sodomy as a way of life is no longer a debatable issue at KU. Such vulgar and dangerous interference in the democratic process must cease, and such situations are as far as they can in their attempt to curtail intellectual liberty speils ill of KU as an institution of higher learning.
These masked politicians hope to disguise substance as procedure, foist it upon an unexisting student and pronounce the issue settled. These poseur of social injustice has threatened the sexual orientation to the level of a philosophical and political imperative.
I will not present the cons of the argument here, only aver that logical and rational positions against such funding exist. These arguments need to be presented and debated. If a consensus is reached, it then be followed by a refutation or action be taken. Then, and only then, can the issue be considered settled
Such open debate and participatory decision-making are the key.
stones of a free society, and we must not let them be stifled by a horde of academic parvus hiding behind the rhetorical humbug of an implied violation of some perceived right.
Richard P. White Franklin Square, N.Y., senior
Campaign review
Richard P. White
To the editor:
I'm a strong believer in the words of a great American philosopher, Vince Lombardi: "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." So it was with great reservation that I chose to run a last-minute, low-budget student body presidential campaign with a handful of senators, knowing I would be labeled as a one-issue candidate.
It wasn't the first time I was foolish enough to get myself into a conflict with unlikely odds for winning and subsequently, it wasn't the first time I got my posterior kicked over my big mouth and excessive gall, though you consider votes per dollar, we really got a pretty good deal.
The campaign was a lot of fun and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Additionally, we got some attention to issues that might otherwise have been ignored, such as funding of political groups — Latin American Solidarity and Franxis, not to mention violation of the rules and regulations.
I'm going to leave politics alone now and concentrate on my profession, which should please just about everybody. One thing I'd like to say is
that despite all the harsh words I had for the political views of the "liberal" opposition, I found some of my strongest opposition, such as Chris Bunker, Ruth Lichtward, Dennis "Boog" Highberger and Carla Vogel, to be among the most sincere and dedicated people I've ever met.
The Fresh Vegetables had some very good ideas that intellectually set them apart from vegetation. Reality was very sincere and really did have a lot of heart, but unfortunately these are not properties to be found in successful politicians. For Momentum, I'd like to quote the Beautiful Day Commission candidate on campus traffic safety. "Cars are bigger than Nathan, cars move faster than Nathan, Momentum kills!"
Had anyone but Easley and Polack won, I'd have been a better sport. I'm not going to congratulate the Frontier presidential and vice president candidates because I still think they're resume-padding jellyfish.
"I like to point out that I made an incorrect inference during the campaign. Chris Coffelt's hair is naturally curly; it is not a perm. I must admit, with renewed Greek domination of the political system, despite the only Greek candidates being the equivocates of the former. Tao's idea of representation by living looks more appealing all the time.
Tom Crisp
There's nothing more disgusting than a good loser.
Lawrence graduate student,
Navy Jack candidate
for student body president
To the editor:
The Student Senate elections were recently completed after months of tedious preparation. By implementing the new elections rules and maintaining the strictest control over the ballots, before and after the voting, the Senate has an election that can stand to any appeal. This election will be administered by administrators, senators, the Senate Elections Committee chairman, the Elections Committee, student poll workers and paper ballots.
The editorial that condemned the use of paper ballots (Nov. 16, "Paper ballots") was shortsighted and uninformed. Paper ballots are a fact of life for the elections for senators, because of the separate elections for each school. The Elections Committee attempted to borrow or rent voting machines from nearby counties for the presidential elections, but all were tied up in the national elections. (Remember those?)
It has now been proved that, with a few dollars for paper balloons and a few dedicated individuals, fair Senate elections are possible. Paper balloons don't work. What is inherently bad is an editorial that taken uninformed pot shots at an Elections Committee chairman and an Elections Committee that busted
The suggestion that the Senate should buy the machines, or implement a more accident-prone electronic process, is absurd. The cost for the many machines would be more than prohibitive, but the Kansas wished to donate the money out of its inflated Senate allocation.
their butts to put the students' choice of candidates in Senate.
To the editor:
John Buzbee
John Burbee
Hutchinson freshman
member, Elections Committee
I was just wondering whether those of you who voted in the Student Senate elections to cut ties with South Africa saw the "60 Minutes" report on starvation in Ethiopia, which was broadcast Nov. 18.
Africa drought
Africa has just suffered its worst drought in 100 years, and the West has been very slow in responding to the terrible conditions that exist. The "60 Minutes" report spent most of the time deploring a lack of caring by the United States, and about 30 seconds referring to Ethiopia's recent expensive military display and Africa's soaring birth rate.
It seems appropriate to look at the current conditions in South Africa. Although South Africa has been hit by the same terrible drought, to my knowledge it was the only African country that was able to export food and aid last year to its starving neighbors.
What's worse: to live in a country that spends $100 million on an extravagant military parade, yet cannot feed its own population, or to live in a country that denies blacks their presence, is able to maintain better living conditions and health care than any other country in Africa?
Rich MacDonald
Rich MacDonald Leawood senior