OPINION
October 12,1984
Page 4
The University Daily
KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kannan, USPS 604640 is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Staffer Flint Hall Lawn, Kanegan 60453, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and six periods Second class postage paid at Lawengan 60445. Subscriptions by mail are $4 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months in Douglas County. Mail service activity for DOSTMASTER Send address changes to the University Daily Kannan, 118 Staffer Flint Hall Lawn, Kanegan 60453.
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Game exposes children's fears of war
NEW YORK — What would you do if you were "boss of the world?"
A teacher put that question to about 20 boys and girls in kindergarten and grades one and two. The give and take that followed was the first time they could draw children out about their furs and the quest for happiness.
"I'd try to make a lot of people happy," one child, Martin, said. "I wouldn't make a mouse but happy, like, make things for children and a math machine and something that can help people."
This and other responses were printed in a report by Brenda Engel of Lesley College, Cambridge, Mass., in an issue of the Harvard Education Review on "Education and the Threat of Nuclear War."
Engel says parents and teachers
can learn about children's attitudes and fears about nuclear weapons by listening to them.
She says the "if I were boss" teaser gave children a chance to use imaginative invention to sort out
Other flights of fancy by the kids:
feelings, not only about war an nuclear weapons but about many aspects of their happiness and security.
PATRICIA McCORMACK United Press International
Other flights of fancy by the kids:
Jory: "I 't wore boss I'd make a lot of toys, you know what I mean?" Like Shogun warriors and stuffed an
Cal: "Well, if I was boss of the
world, I would stop war but I would still make toys of war and stuff, because they're not really killing. They're not killing things."
Dana: "Um, I would have like, sort of you, know more amusement parks, more big amusement parks like Disneyland, and I would stop most of the pollution, and, um — I've forgotten."
Sally: "I think . . . if people were boss of the world, they wouldn't show up like God."
Teacher: "What do you mean, they wouldn't show up?"
Sally: "My mother told me he's everywhere — and he don't show up."
The teacher next asked the kids whether they thought that some people would not be happy if the world got rid of war and weapons.
Amy: "There might be two or three, but not many."
Dan: "President Reagan."
Dan: "President Reagan.
Bill: "He wants to make weapons."
Dan: "Nuclear bombs to threaten each other."
Amy: "They wouldn't want to destroy half the world."
destroy him the world. Bill: "All the nuclear bombs in the world can destroy half the world."
Engel says the children link pollution, the bomb, high prices and other events that bear some threat to their happiness and that they would do away with if they were bosses of the world.
"And essentially, of course, we know they are right." she says. The children's responses are characterization, which might be termed "logic of feeling."
Pot Shots
Those cracks that let in refreshing cool air during the hot summer months should probably be filled in with putty.
It's time to put the storm windows in place. After that, somebody better get the plastic so that we can put it up on the outside of the windows.
probably of size between the bottom of the door and the floor — does that much heat really escape in just an inch of space?
The windows rattle a bit but that's what happens in an old house. There isn't too much that we can do about them. Well, o.k. maybe a little more putty.
Tomorrow is as good of a day as any to get the house ready for winter.
If everyone pitches in we can get it done in a couple of hours.
Saturday? Get up early on a Saturday morning to winterize the house? Spend a beautiful autumn day preparing the house for winter?
it's just not that big of a deal — until we wake up one Saturday morning and see our breathe in the bedrooms. Then all of the "should've" 's that we utter will not bring back a warm autumn day perfect for winterizing the house.
Yes, but of course you have to go to the labs for a couple of hours to work on your experiments. And another roommate has already made plans to go to Kansas City for the day. Surely no one would expect me to spend the day nailing up plastic on the windows when I have a thesis to write?
If you are an undergard and can remember when the new chancellor was named Gene A. Budig, or when Mr. Bill's was a fairly popular bar, or when many people skipped class to watch Luke and Laura's wedding, then you are a potential victim of this.
Its symptoms include an increased tendency to visit the Wagon Wheel Cafe or Hawk's Crossing instead of your 1:30 class, lack of motivation and the inability of the fingers to push a pen across a paper or the eyes to focus on assigned readings.
The disease cannot be detected until it
I do know that the only way to cope with the disease is with good of' nose-to-the-grindstone discipline — at least enough to pass classes.
strikes its unsuspecting victims, and no known method of prevention exists.
The ailment is known as senoritus, and its effects might cause the victim to go through life without a college degree, or be forced to be a college student in the academic community longer expected.
Although as a second-semester senior I have had experience with this alliment, (the events listed at the beginning of these chapters) I was a sophomore. I do not know of a cure.
Grrrrrrr. dog
I have never liked stray dogs. That is because a dog as small as a Pomeranian can destroy a paperboy, a mailman, a pedestrian master, as quickly as a German Shepherd.
I was once a paperboy. In three months, I lost a pair of jeans to a Pomeranian, my papers to a Doberman Pinscher and my right leg (almost) to an Irish Setter.
What does this have to do with us? The University of Kansas has paperbacks, mailmen and pedestrians. KU also has Pomeranians, Dobramsian, Irish Setters and
Sheepdogs. Taking a dog for a walk on campus is one thing. Letting a dog run loose or tying him up outside Watson Library is different.
KU has a serious problem with stray dogs. Stray dogs should not wander on a college campus. Leaving a dog tied up in front of a building is cruel.
Moreover, stray dogs are like encyclopedia salesmen. Many are harmless; most are not. Always protect everything precious to you when you see one coming. You may no longer have it when the dog is behind you.
watching a stray dog urinate into a bush is sickening. The dog is at the mercy of the weather, the traffic and whoever decides to abuse him. I beg all dog owners: Please round up your pets and make sure that they stay rounded up.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Writers lack tolerance toward 'abnormal'
To the editor:
To the editor:
I promised myself that I would listen to both sides about the Gay and Lesbian Services of Kansas controversy and make my own rational decision. Unfortunately, my mind was made up by the letters in the Oct. 5 Kansan.
To Jackie Hirte ("Homosexuality belongs in bed, not on streets") Who made a public issue out of homosexuality? I agree with you that all this should stay in the bedroom. I do not believe that orgasm is GLOSOK because homo- wanted to form them; they bad to form them.
To David Lang ("Call for unity"):
Where do you start? I can gather, from your argument about denial of GLSOK funds, that one of the reasons you don't want GLSOK to have any of your money is because you have no use for GLSOK. What have they done for you lately, right? As for "Fag-busters" T-shirts, if people want to display their own real manliness and insecurity all over campus, I guess that's OK.
this matter to rest (for the time being), let's let it rest. Let's regain a semi-tolerant view of our campus in the world. After all, this is a free country.
Now that Student Senate has put
Letter hostile
Then again, after these letters, I'm not so sure anymore.
To the editor
Jim Williamson Topeka junior
I am distraught by the apparent number of small-minded and uncaring people at this University.
It is a real relief to know, as Greg Nelson put it, that "normal people do not like homosexuals" "Lord knows I don't want any abnormal people around me with the sensuality handicapped!" To help with the mentally retarded!'
The reason for Nelson's attitude escapes me. It is one's prerogative to be concerned with how one's money is spent, but Nelson's letter is nothing more than a hostile belittlement of homosexuals.
It is too bad that some think they must oppose, hate or oppress anyone they do not understand. What ever happened to curiosity? I know people who are about to own identity and way of life; some are not
Regardless of whether I support the funding of GLOSOK, I do not think that anyone deserves to be so heartlessly damned. Hostility and hatred are hindernees to rehabilitation. But so is ignorance.
Falwell U. view
Kevin Akins
Lawrence senior
To the editor
David Lang and Greg Nelson maintain that "regular heterosexuals" and "normal people ... do not like homosexuals" and that "the majority of people from Kansas" say, "Go to hell, homosexuals!"
How was this determined? How many people were polled for this survey, and what is its margin of error? Can these data be effectively
contrasted with the viewpoints of abnormal Nebraskans?
Surely decent and normal Kansans would not have made such claims without a shred of evidence to support them.
On the other hand, the phrases "normal people" and "regular heterosexuals" strongly remind me of the conservative Christian college I attended back home in "Falwell" County, Missouri.
On further reflection, I see dimly to recall historical precedents for the use of similar appeals to the herd instinct "loyalty party members" "true sons of the Confederacy" and, oh, yes "red-blooded Americans" and (my favorite) "real men."
One thing we did learn at good of' Falwell U. (which I think that every regular, normal heterosexual sex of Kansas knows as well) is how to detect the presence of male bovine origin. After reading the Lang and Nelson letters, I realized I done stepped right smack in some.
Elizabeth Boyce
Lawrence graduate student
Reality Coalition aims to impose moral view
The group's name is the Reality Coalition
In the next few weeks, a new conservative group will launch its campaign to gain control of KU student government.
Today's column is the first in a series of three that focus on the conservative movement at the University of Kansas.
The Student Senate presidential candidate is John McDermott, Manhattan junior.
The name of the coalition, McDermott said, stems from a desire by the coalition for "students to feel like they are in touch with reality and issues."
Pamela Rutherford, Cape Cod, Mass, sophomore, is the coalition's vice presidential candidate.
M. Dermott and Rutherford are both Maranatha Christians and both were motivated to war by conscience moral and religious convictions.
McDermott said, "My conservative views are tied into my belief in God. My philosophy deals with the Bible.
"But everybody in the Reality Coalition is not necessarily committed to Christ."
Although he wishes that everyone in the coalition had such a commitment, McDermott said, the group will try to reach out to conservatives in general.
MdCermott estimated that 25 people already had agreed to run as Reality senators; the coalition hopes that they will represent candidates, or one for every available seat.
McDermott thinks that "now is the time to take a stand." One issue on which the coalition plans to take a stand is the funding of campus student organizations through student activity fees.
The condition wants to add a new provision that would deny money to groups that do not conform to video/Christian values and ethics."
One group that possibly could be not be funded for "moral reasons" under such a policy would be Gay and lesbian societies of Kansas, McDermott said.
The coalition also plans to take a
Concerning GLSOK, he said, "We love them as people, but as far as the University of Kansas stamp of approval, we don't want that."
McDermott said that the definition of values, ethics and morality could be a subjective matter, but that if the coalition were successful, the elected members would have a student mandate to define morality and that they would have the right to distribute student funds accordingly.
Another goal of the Reality Coalition is to promote a new conservative image on campus.
stand on South African divestment, McCermott said that because of his concern for the oppressed in South Africa, he opposed divestment. U.S. companies might leave, he said, and the poor could lose jobs.
Last year, McDermott and Rutherford ran as Freedom Coalition
CHARLES
BARNES
Staff Columnist
M. Dermott said. "The KU Chapter of YAF ran the Freedom Coalition Everyone thought they were Narkists. I don't want us to be regarded."
Rutherford said that she had joined the Freedom Coalition two weeks before the election because it was conservative, but that she had not been active with the group that organized the Freedom Coalition, the KU chapter of Young Americans For Freedom (YAF).
candidates for Senate. Neither was elected.
McDermott said an incident that concerned him was the burning of Soviet flag by YAF members at nuclear arms on campus
Brian Daniel, state chairman of YAF and a third-year KU law student, said, "We became reactionary with the freeze issue."
Whoever heard of being called $ Nazi for burning a Soviet flag, Daniel said.
McDermott went in August with Daniel and a YAF contingent to the Republican National Convention
After the convention, McDermott decided that although he agreed with many of the contingent's consensual plan, he felt he wasted time tied too closely with the group. 2
Rutherford said that she agree with many of the ideas of the KU chapter of YAF.
"We don't want Communists on campus, either," she said, "but we have a different way of communicating."
McDermott and Rutherford said that the Reality Coalition wanted to make non-aggressive, conservative Christian influence a guiding force in Student Senate politics
The coalition will have to unite conservatives, some of whom have liberalism philosophies, and the coalition will have to develop student support.
One thing is clear
If KU students support the coalition and its plans, student government could be drastically changed as the coalition attempts to define and impose its version of traditional Judeo Christian morality.