OPINION
October 29,1984
Page 4
The University Daily
KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansas (USPN 602440) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stuart Fell Hall, Lawrence, Kansas 60643, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday. Sunday, holidays, final periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas 60454. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 a year outside the county. Student postage must be paid in Douglas County or Kansas address changes to the University Daily Kansas (USPN 602440). 118 Stuart Fell Hall, Lawrence, Kansas 60643.
DON KNOX
Editor
PAUL SEVART VINCE BESS Managing Editor Editorial Editor
DAVE WANAMAKER Business Manager
DOUG CUNNINGHAM Campus Editor
LYNNE STARK MARY BERNICA Retail Sales National Sales Manager Manager
JILL GOLDBLATT Campus Sales Manager
SUSANNE SHAW
General Manager and News Adviser
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
Congratulations
Congratulations!
Homecoming is special every year, regardless of the result of the football game, because it is a time for alumni to visit their alma mater and their classmates from those glorious days of yesteryear. The numerous activities make homecoming something to remember.
Homecoming Day 1984, however, will retain a special place in the memories of many Jayhawks because of the game. For the first time since 1975, the University of Kansas beat the University of Oklahoma in football. Moreover, OU was ranked the No.2 team in the nation by the Associated Press entering the game.
Sorry that the game will likely cost you your high standing in the rankings, OU, but you had it coming, sooner or later.
Indeed, the game was not just a victory over the Sooners; it also was a chance for a beleaguered football team to show that its season was more than just a formality. The Jayhawks began the season on probation and were banned from television appearances. Then problems with academic eligibility cost the team 10 players, among whom were starters. A loss to Kansas State University was nothing to boast about. The homecoming victory will be remembered long after the problems of the season have been forgotten.
One somber matter deserves attention, however. After the football victory, a goalpost was torn down by the crowd amid confrontations with security forces. Exuberance is to be expected after such an unexpected victory; officials might want to reconsider whether the cost of replacing a goalpost is worth the risk of injury to security personnel.
Congratulations should go also to KU tennis player Mike Wolf, who defeated one of the top collegiate tennis players in the country in the first round Thursday of the Fall All-American Tournament in Los Angeles. Wolf's victim, Danny Goldie of Stanford University, has beaten players ranked in the Top 10 in the world.
GLSOK petition
The second round in a continuing slugfest the worth of Gay and Lesbian Services of Kansas already has begun, but this time GLSOK members at least know what they're fighting.
Some students last week began passing a petition that would disband GLSOK, a support group for homosexuals. The petition is similar to one circulated earlier this year — except for one thing.
The latest petition is straightforward, frank and honest: It calls for a campus vote that would ask the University to rescind recognition of GLSOK because the group violates the state's sodomy law and because it serves as a political lobby instead of a service organization.
The petition says also that many of the group's functions are done with the intent to offend others.
In truth, however, GLSOK in no way violates the law; it merely counsels homosexuals, and neither sponsors nor promotes sexual activity. In addition, it is important to remember that all students, including homosexuals, have the right to express themselves openly - a concern voiced Friday by the University Senate Executive Committee.
Nevertheless, the petitioners could succeed in getting a campus referendum if they collect about 2,400 signatures and if Student Senate's Elections Committee agrees that the intent behind the petition is clearly stated in it.
Still, the point might be moot. David Ambler, vice chancellor for student affairs, said student groups had a right to register as campus organizations regardless of whether the administration agreed with their purpose.
Reagan retirement
Walter Mondale has personally shied away from use of President Reagan's age - 73 - as a campaign issue. A group of ladies around the country are not so reluctant, and they have formed a national Committee to Retire the President.
Their purpose, said Jean Komaiko of Durham, N.C., president of the group, is to help Reagan enjoy his golden years free from the pressures of his job in Washington.
These gentle, humanitarian souls speak from a great deal of experience. Their husbands are 73 years of age or older.
experience. Then husbands are 15 years of age or older. Komaiko said, "I am married to a 73-year-old man who is darling, charming and fun. On the other hand, we spend a lot of our retired time searching for lost keys, misplaced lists and glasses."
She said that she had to jog her husband's memory frequently, and recalled that Nancy Reagan had prompted her husband, too.
"If his knees are like my husband's, he'll need two sentries to lift him on his horse and a woodsman to help him lift his axe." Komaiko said.
A little humor is always welcome in a political campaign. Are you smiling, Mr. President?
The GC column of the GC step
Bare truth of baldness not so terrible
people are sometimes angered by what they read here, though I can't imagine why.
When this happens, they will often respond with an insult.
I try to keep track of the variety and quality of these insults, and in recent years one of their favorites is "Look at this: 'Look, you bald-headed.'"
For one thing, those who are without cranial hair have no control over their condition. The hair just starts falling off their heads, and that's that.
If you think about it, why should thinning hair or a total absence of hair on top of one's head be a matter of reassurance or even mild concern?
The purpose of any insult is to wound someone's feelings, and some insults can be highly effective. I remember being depressed for days after someone had said, "Have you ever considered running for alderman? You have all the qualifications."
Beyond that, there's the question of why it would even occur to anyone that something is wrong with not having hair in bed, writing. I think that something is true.
It's not the same as making a conscious decision to do something that opens one up to ridicule and shame, such as becoming a disc jockey, a registered Republican, a Chicago judge or a resident of a suburb.
Whenever I see a grown man with a lot of hair on his head, I think, "Wow, that really looks weird."
MIKE
ROYKO
Syndicated Columnist
Consider this: What if you saw a man with a mass of razor-cut hair growing out of his nose? You would
be revolted, or out of the back of his hand? You would be repelled. or if a man smiled and there was a luxuriant smile in his mouth? You would be disgusted.
If you went to a beach and saw a man with thick, neatly groomed hair growing out of his knees, you might think he was odd.
I've never understood it. On a practical level, it isn't very sanitary. All that hair provides a natural hiding place for tiny wildlife creatures. If you ever stuck the average beak in your mouth, you'd have a scope, you'll be horrified at the kinds of multi-legged beasties that are crawling around up there.
So why should it be desirable to have the stuff growing on the top of one's head?
Then think about Boy George,
Michael Jackson and David Bowie.
They don't exactly bring John Wayne
to mind.
I hope that this doesn't offend anyone, but an abundance of hair on a man's head looks effeminate. Why? Because Brynner, Telly, Savalas and Mr. T.,
Some people might not believe this, but ever since I was a child I looked forward to the time when my hair would begin to fall out and I would have the kind of neat, uncluttered scalp I prefer.
So I am going to reveal an embarrassing secret. It never happened.
Much to my disgust, as I got older, my hair got thicker. It was so heavy that Max, my barber, had to use gardening shears to trim it.
It was so thick that after I combed and plastered it down and put on a hat, it would eventually spring up
with such force that the fly would fly skyward like a blown, machete cover
skyward like a clown mannequin cover. So when I joined the Chicago Tribune, one of the first things I did was go to the art department and look at my collection with my column. I said, "I would like a favor. Would you airbrush out the hair in my picture so that I will appear to be bald?"
After a serious debate on journal-
istic ethics, the reluctantly agreed to
leave.
However, that created another problem. Strangers would walk up to me and say, "I don't understand this. In your picture, you look bald, but you have enough hair for three turtles in an ape. How do you explain that?"
It was too difficult to explain, so I took the next logical step. I went to Max and told him to hack all of it off. Wielding a machete, he took several hours, but it was finally done. Max, with his hair woven into it, 8- by 10-inch rug.
So to those who write to sneer that I am a baldy, you are wasting your stamps. If anything, I take your jeers as a compliment.
Just so you won't be at a loss for words, I will reveal another secret. I have six toes on each foot. Make of that what you will.
Hart solidifies position within party
WASHINGTON — In the days between the end of the presidential primaries and the beginning of the national convention, Sen. Gary Hart, D-Colo, became a matter of deep concern to the Democratic Party.
Some Democrats felt genuine fear, not totally without foundation, that Hart would decide to play the role of a Democratic president. Mondale's presidential campaign.
Not even his strongly wored pledge to do everything he could to elect Mondale — made personally to Mondale at a summit meeting in San Francisco, to the entire convention and in several news conferences — fully allayed all of the fears.
Hart's heralded breakfast meeting with Mondale in New York City failed.
Moreover, his dogged decision to carry the campaign to the convention floor, as he looked to the very end for some miracle that would devy the crowd and finally fussed the skepticism surrounding Hart's plans after the convention.
Much of that stemmed from Hart's remarkable attempt to capture the nomination. A total outsider, though he has been visible on the Democriteic scene since 1972. Hart was — for most of his claims — a puzzle to the establishment.
He was never a part of it, and maybe never will be. He ran his campaign against him. He suspected about him and his plains probably was justified.
However, there can be no question now, and maybe should never have been, that Hart would stick to his word. He may still feel that Mondale was not the best candidate, but his overriding aim, even from the
beginning, was the defeat of Ronald Reagan.
Hart's support has not been the type that former Sen. Eugene McCarthy offered Hubert Humphrey late and tidal. Nor he has tried to
STEVE GERSTEL
United Press International
distance himself from Mondale even in the most down days of the campaign.
Instead, Hart has been on the road. He has acted as a surrogate candidate in states and areas where his
message is the loudest: in California, which he won overwhelmingly, and among the independents, the young governor, "whom he made household word."
As of mid-October, Hart had made more than 50 separate appearances on behalf of the Mondale-Ferraro ticket. Before the campaign ends, he expects to hit more than half the states in support of the national ticket as well as Senate and congressional candidates.
Hart kept his word, and he has done it without the demands the Rev. Jesse Jackson kept imposing on him. He had seen that have been filled, others unfulfilled.
What this surrogate campaigning
means for Hart's personal and political future is impossible to gauge.
Hart has some immediately pressing problems, namely a large debt from his presidential campaign and a tax increase another term in the Senate in 1984.
However, if Hart, in or out of office once again seeks the presidential nomination in 1988 (if Mondale loses), the Democrats owe him something. He still might not talk the language of the establishment and he may want to prod the party reluctantly into a new generation, but his credentials are more solid than they were in January.
In case of nuclear holocaust, give me shelter
WASHINGTON — The Air Force, as reported in news stories, is preparing to spend $50 billion or so to dig a big hole in which to hide nuclear missiles from the enemy.
At some point after an attack, the weapons could be brought to the surface and fired as a counterattack, or so the theory goes.
At first, this plan sounded suspiciously like a continuation of the MX missile bashing mode flap. Then my attention, which was languishing below the minimum speed limit, was arrested by a salient point.
Why, I asked myself, dig a $200 billion hole when the nation already has in existence a network of tax shelters?
The underground 'missile base, defense officials noted, also could be used to preserve 'critical assets,' the tax records. That was when it hit me.
Put a missile in each tax shelter
First, during the current fiscal year, the Defense Department is expected to spend almost $220 million on new hardware MXS mills. Rein-
and everyone would be happy the
Pentagon, Internal Revenue service
the IRS.
DICK WEST
United Press International
forcement of tax shelters surely would be a lot cheaper than that.
Third, the Pentagon would be relieved to have a MX bashing system that didn't involve (a) the shutting of missiles among hidden launching pads. (b) the beeping up of existing
Second, work to make tax shelters sturdy enough to withstand nuclear attacks would please taxpayers who have been using them to withstand KSA incidents.
Minuteman silos or (c) the digging of
a huge new note in the grou
Let's consider 3(c)
The original MX basing proposal called for the construction of tracks in Utah and Nevada along which 200 missiles could dart in and out of 4,600 different bases.
I don't know how many different tax shelterers exist — 4,600 in Utah and Nevada might be on the high side. There are no federal tax credits enough to accommodate 200 missiles
It simply is a matter of making the tax shelters strong enough to withstand nuclear attacks — see 3(b).
As for 3(c), the account I read did not make clear whether tax records preserved in the missile hole would belong to the government or to individual filers. I presume the latter.
Although individuals are supposed to keep records that justify deduc
tissues at least three years after the filing of Form 1040, no provision I am aware of requires the keeping of the records safe during a nuclear attack
You have heard about the "nuclear"
winter" and other dire consequences;
of atomic warfare? Well, loss of one's
tax records could make the holocaust;
that much worse. [ ]
Imagine the horror of surviving a nuclear attack and then not having any records to present in the event of an IRS audit.
That possibility, which is almost too dismal to contemplate, gives us extra reason to make tax shelters a part of the defense program.
The switch might have to be approved by Congress but that should be no problem, especially if the enabling legislation is introduced; continuing resolution" budget bill at the end of an election year session
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Debate coverage neglected campus group
To the editor:
On Oct. 21, more than 60 members of the College Young Democrats went to Kansas City, Mo., to participate in a rally surrounding the presidential debate.
During the day, we were involved in such activities as rallying in front of Walter Mondale's hotel, greeting the vice president upon his arrival, and attending a rally in the downtown area and attending a rally at the Liberty Memorial.
That evening, we watched the
obtain from the ballroom of the hotel with more than 3,000 prominent members of the party. The most exciting moment of our event-filled day came when Mondale addressed the crowd at the hotel. Members of our group were no more than 12 feet from Mondale. Later, in the lobby, we met such prominent figures as Gov. John Carlin, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Jane Fonda and Sen. Tom Eagleton, D-Mo. The whole experience is one I am sure no one in attendance will ever forget.
Despite the fact that two reporters
Many organizations depend on the coverage of the Kansas to inform the student body of activities in which
and a photographer from the Kansas were in Kansas City to cover the debate, this newspaper did not give the activities of our organization any coverage. We think that by overlooking this event, the Kansan has failed to meet its main obligation to the students of this University. We think that this newspaper is charged with the responsibility of providing information about the activities of various campus organizations.
students are invited to participate. By overlooking the activities of the College Young Democrats on Oct. 21, the Kansan did a disservice to KU students.
In the future, we hope that the Kansan will strive to provide complete coverage of campus activities to enable students to experience the wide variety of services and organizations that are available to them.
Martie Aaron Wichita junior
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