OPINION
November 15, 1984 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansan USPS 650 640 is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stuffer Fint Hail. Lawrence Kansan 600 640 daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday. Sunday, holidays and final periods. A pay deposit at Lawrence Kansan 600 640 Subscriptions by mail are $1 for six months or $2 a year. A pay deposit at Lawrence Kansan 600 640 Subscriptions by mail are $1 and are paid through the Student subscrip-
tions are $1 and are paid through the University changes to the University Daily Kansan USPS 650 640
DON KNOX
Editor
PAUL SEVART VINCE RESS Managing Editor Editorial Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM Campus Editor
DAVE WANAMAKER Business Manager
SUSANNE SHAW
General Manager and News Adviser
LYNNE STARK MARY BERNICA
Retail Sales National Sales
Manager Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
JILL GOLDBLATT Campus Sales Manager
Talking turkey
Amid the smoldering news of the day is the eighth annual Great American Smokeout, which the American Cancer Society is sponsoring today to challenge smokers to give up their habit for 24 hours.
The organization and its members have used their imaginations to develop a pack of ways to encourage a day of unit cigarettes.
In Sacramento, Calif., volunteers calling themselves Smokebusters are to patrol the streets with water pistols. The weapons, however, are intended only to remind smokers of the day, not to douse their cigarettes.
On the opposite coast, "Huffess Puffless, the Smokeless Dragon" will ride a fire engine through Massachusetts towns, and "The Draggin' Lady" will hand out smokeout leaflets in another Massachusetts town.
Indeed, the American Cancer Society is even sponsoring an "Adopt-a-Smoker" program in which non-smokers can encourage smokers to quit for a day.
The result of last year's smokeout was that 2 million people succeeded in kicking the habit for one day, the society says.
The issue at the heart of these activities, health, is not a hazy concern but a matter of growing interest to numerous people. Legislation in many areas limits times and places for smoking, and public concern about cancer, a possible result of heavy smoking, remains high.
Smokers, don't choke. Thanksgiving is only a week away, and plenty of cold turkey will be available if you really want to quit smoking permanently. If you want to break away from the weed just for a day, many people are willing to help, such as those next to you who are inhaling your smoke.
LETTERS POLICY
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten and double-spaced and should not exceed 300 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and hometown, or faculty or staff position. The Kansan also invites individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns are offered or brought to the Kansan office. 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
Money buys immortality but not honor
"YOUR WILL."
The KU Endowment Association
ad begins in bold, bold-faced letters.
"Your will is one of the most important documents you will ever execute. It speaks for you after your death and directs the ultimate disposition of all the resources you have accumulated throughout your lifetime. It can be the means of projecting your name, your personality, your faith and your wisdom into the future.
"... The University of Kansas is fully worthy of your support and uniquely qualified to honor you as a benefactor for all time to come. Thus, the names of Watkins and Summerfield will live in Kansas always, and the unending stream of students who bear their names as scholars will continue to reflect honor on their lives forever..."
The ad, which I discovered in a 1987 Alumni Magazine, also states that by contributing to the association, you can take a type of "immortality on earth."
What the ad neglects to mention is that the degree to which a donor is honored usually depends upon how much money the donor contributes.
Museum of Art, for example, were named in tribute to the rich industrialist and his wife whose money built those buildings.
The structures known as the Kenneth Spencer Research Library and the Helen Foresman Spencer
The Spencer fortune, in turn,
originated from extensive coal
strip-mining in southeastern Kansas.
CHARLES BARNES
Staff Columnist
In 1948 the company, renamed Spencer Chemical Company, purchased the Pittsburgh complex from the government for $11 million. The
During World War II, Kenneth Spencer had been appointed defense coordinator for a six state area, and, as president of Military Chemical Inc., he managed an extensive weapons complex near Pittsburgh. The family coal company also turned a profit by selling coal to fuel the massive, energy-consuming complex.
complex had cost $30 million when completed in 1943 and had undergone a $2 million expansion during 1946 and 1947. Spencer Manuscript Collection documents indicate.
Missouri, Colorado, Illinois and Kentucky, and from the Spencer company acquisition of former Army weapons plants.
In addition to the Pittsburg complex, Spencer's company surveyed and then purchased or leased five other former weapons plants in Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, Indiana and Kentucky. He formed the backbone of the company and established a base for future expansion.
Spencer, whose friends and associates included presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and a deputy director of the CIA, lobbied the government for his pet products coal, chemicals and fertilizer. He also served on a Department of Commerce advisory Board for 10 years.
The large, mausoleum like structures that bear their names atteft to them.
But look across the street from the Kenneth Spencer Research Library and you'll see the Campanile, a memorial to former KU students who fought and the 276 who died in World War II.
All in all, World War II and subsequent government deals were very good to the Spencers and their company.
Do these names sound familiar?
Dean Rice. Herman Hauck and
Bernice Humphrey Rayner.
Dean Rice, 1943 graduate, was killed when anti-aircraft fire struck his plane over Italy.
Herman Hauck, 1937 graduate, and Bernice Humphrey, 1938 graduate, drowned after the Japanese ship on which they were imprisoned was hit by a U.S. torpedo and sank.
Raymond Smith, 1943 graduate was killed by a rocket bomb in France.
Why haven't you heard of these names? Perhaps their wills did not donate enough to the Endowment Association; these people only gave care. Perhaps only a millionaire can afford honor and recognition at KU.
Remember the Rices, Haucks. Humphreys and Smiths.
And when you see the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, remember the wealthy industrialist who profited from World War II.
When you see the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, remember the tens of thousands of acres of scarred and barren land that were strip-mined and put the name on the building.
These are the Spencers' other legacies.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The truth about terrorism class
Recently the Communist Party of America seems to have been responsible for distributing leaflets about our course on violence and terrorism in the modern world. If so, we would like to thank them for one thing in spite of the inaccuracies in their information on terrorism as an important problem needing to be better understood.
To the editor:
Although some elegantly simple laws of nature have been discovered, they only became evident after many complexities had been faced and analyzed. To the extent that we have the tools for understanding terrorism, these tools come from many perspectives in numerous disciplines, many of which have little or nothing to do with terrorism directly.
Understanding terrorism, like understanding any other socially significant phenomenon, must be the product of an increasing appreciation of the complexities of our world. Indeed, Adolf Hitlers and Benito Mussolini are most likely to arise when citizens begin to believe the sidewalk vendors of simplicities.
Maynard Shelly
Lack of notice
(The above letter was endorsed by 21 students of the class as well.)
Professor of Anthropology
Maynard Sheny Professor of Psychology
To the editor:
I wish to express to the entire Kansan Editorial Board my extreme displeasure with the notification system for the endorsement interviews conducted Nov. 11.
Through some lack of communication, I was never officially notified in writing about the endorsement interviews by the Kansan I feel that his clear personalism is highly regrettable.
Supposedly, the Editorial Board was to meet and review, via endorsement, the best candidate alternative to the student body. Somehow, I really wonder whether the Kansan was really acting in the best interests of the students of this University when poor communication prevented complete representation of a coalition behind the Edison Board of Object to your endorsement. I object to the poor planning on the part of individuals who planned the interviews.
My running mate, Mark "Gilligan" Sump, was informed of the interview by phone some three weeks ago. There was no further follow-up, no written notification or confirmation given or requested. In fact, had I not spoken by telephone with a Kansas reporter at 7 p.m. Nov. 11, I would have been less aware that Mr. Momentum was to have had an interview at 7:15. For all other debates or forums, Momentum received some form of written notification.
Article wrong
vice presidential candidate Momentum
The November 2 article in the I'ansan on the ASK debate was a little less than accurate and certainly less than informative.
Charles Lawhorn
To the editor:
In the debate, Tom Crisp pointed
out that the students are sick of the inequitable treatment of student organizations. He said that under the Navy Jack administration the Student Senate would perform a study of activity fee distribution methods in use at other universities and offer students several options giving them more control over their own money.
The other coalitions all have changes they want us to accept — the Navy Jack coalition will accept the changes students want make. If the students choose to leave complete control in the hands of the Senate, Crisp wants the system to have clearer guidelines to make it less susceptible to partisan bickering.
There was a vicious misrepresentation in the article which claims that "Crisp said that religious groups should not be financed by senate." What he actually said is that Christian groups have been treated very unfairly and that if we choose not to fund religious groups, we must draw a clear line and unfund all groups with any religious connotations.
Crisp proposed to change funding procedures to primarily quantitative guidelines which would take into account the funds groups raised from the previous year, the cost of their program and an accurate estimate of the number of students served by the organization aided by a well-designed polling system.
He pointed out that non-Christian religious groups receive funding under the pretense that they are cultural than Christian groups.
Greg Haunschild Lawrence senior
The MAC-1 offers cheap sleep
If you're a person that travels, and you're accustomed to checking into spacious hotel rooms that feature big beds, high ceilings and good-sized windows, you ought to read today's Life. Your life may be about to change.
A Texas entrepreneur named Charles McLaren is in the process of test-marketing "sleep capsules" cofinik-like modules designed for travelers to rent inexpensively for the night, then crawl into and snoop.
The sleep capsules are four feet high, four feet wide and eight feet long (Stop a minute and try to envision that) once a person enters the room, he turns up, but McLaren says that there is plenty of room to sit comfortably.
"You enter from one end of the module," McLaren said. "There is an accordian-type door. You crawl into the unit. You close the door behind you. Inside you will find a TV set with a control panel on the wall, a digital alarm clock, a telephone, a computer and a printer system. Your bed is the bottom of the unit. It is the same size as a standard twin mattress."
Mckaren, 40, is president of a Houston company called Intermari, Inc. He said that with the price of hotel rooms soaring, there is a natural market for his sleep capsules.
The concept is already widely accepted in Japan," he said. "Our challenge is to introduce it successfully in the United States."
The brand name for his sleep capsules is MAC1, which stands for mini-accommodation center. He said that prisons may start using capsules in fairly short order but that it may take from six months to a year for the capsules to catch on with regular travelers.
two high, with one on top of the other like bunk beds.
"We think they make perfect sense for economy-type lodging," he said. "An operator would arrange the units in any building he already owned. The units can be arranged
"The only problem, as we see it, is one of consumer education. Our society is becoming much more compressed. We need not to expand our space but to improve the space we already have to work with."
Training the American public to accept the sleep capsules may be a formidable task. Even travelers who regularly patronize economy hotels are used to decent sized rooms with
BOB
GREENE
Syndicated
Columnist
bathrooms and windows and relatively high ceilings The sleep capsules look like long, low crates, are made out of plastic and have no windows, toiletts or sink facilities.
"Look, I accept the fact that there are some travelers who will never use our product, no matter how popular it becomes," McLaren said. "The guy who is used to a suite at the Plaza will continue to stay at the Plaza. We probably won't get him."
McCaren said he expected a night in one of his sleep capsules would go for between $10 and $13. "There will be communal bathroom and shower facilities outside the units for the guests," he said. "And there's no
room inside the unit for a suitcase.
You'll have to leave your suitcase in
a locker outside. Inside there will be
a little shelf for your watch, your
wallet and your rings."
"But that same guy might be at an airport sometime, and his flight may be canceled, and he may find some of our units in the terminal. That's where we plan to market them first — in airline terminals. And he may realize that he has only about six hours until the next flight, and all that he really wants to do is sleep. So maybe he'll give us a try and crawl into one of our units for a little shuteye."
A potential problem, of course, is claustrophobia among travelers. McLaren said he was not worried about this.
"We've tested these units thoroughly." he said. "We've had clustrophobics say 'never', but once they get inside, they change their minds. The units are so well designed that, even though you have to crawl in and you can't stand up, you're very comfortable.
"I've spent the night in one of our units, and I can tell you that I had a very secure and comfortable sleep. Look, you and I can talk about it, I can illustrate it to you, I can show you pictures — but until you physically park your back in it, you won't people all come over the country start sleeping in our units, the word will spread."
Asked how the units will be cleaned, McLaren said:
He laughed. "Really, the mails will have to crawl in to clean the units," he said. "Basically it will be a process of spraying the walls and wiping 'em down, and then of pulling the sheet off and putting another in." Before we can answer your question, we will have to employ maids who are willing to crawl.
He said that once people realized that "they are not being restrained or hold captive," he expected that they would embrace the idea of the sleep capsules because of the convenience and economy involved.
"For a lot of travelers, the only important thing is to be able to sleep and be safe in a clean place," he said. "Now, would you like to do that for $10 or $15? Or would you like to pay Mr. Hilton 12 bucks?" I'm betting that a lot of travelers will go for the cheaper alternative."