September 21, 1984
Page 4
OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansas (USPK 626-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stuaffer Fint Hall, Lawen, Kansas 6045, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and final periods. Second class postage paid at Lawen, Kansas 6044. Subscriptions by mail are $1 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 a year outside the county. Student addresses should be addressed to Stuaffer Fint Hall, Lawen, Kansas 6045. Address changes to the University Daily Kansas (USPK 626-640) are
DON KNOX
Editor
PAUL SEVART VINCE HESS Managing Editor Editorial Editor
DAVE WANAMAKER Business Manager
DOUG CUNNINGHAM Campus Editor
SUSANNE SHAW
General Manager and News Adviser
LYNNE STARK MARY BERNICA Retail Sales National Sales Manager Manager
JILL GOLDBLATT Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
To sleep or not
Sleep easily wins out over breakfast on Saturday mornings for many students. The chairman of the Association of University Residence Halls Housing and Contracts committee said that out of 400 residents in his hall, only 20 to 30 showed up for breakfast on Sundays.
The recommendation of the AURH general assembly to discontinue the meal in an effort to reduce rising housing costs was a reasonable one in the search for cost-cutting measures.
Residents who do want to eat at what seems to many an unreasonable hour of the morning will find continental breakfasts or sack lunches available.
The change was one of several recommendations approved Tuesday by the AURH assembly after four hours of debate.
The Saturday breakfast recommendation seems to be one that should need little discussion before adoption. Such changes are the kind that are most useful. Costs can be cut and only a few people face minor inconveniences.
Although housing rates will still probably increase for the 1985-86 school year, changes can help keep rate increases to a minimum.
A wise move now is to examine closely all operations within the halls and see whether other money-saving changes can be made.
Election reform
Article Six of the Student Senate Rules and Regulations concerns that most important of Senate happenings: the election of the student senators and officers. But Article Six took a beating after the November election last year when complaints were filed, ballots were recounted and the election was finally thrown out.
Now it seems that something good may finally come of it all. Earlier this week, the Student Senate Rights Committee approved a package of amendments that add to and clarify the existing election rules.
The amendments include candidate eligibility requirements; guidelines for election oversight; rules governing coalition, independent and write-in candidates; mandatory campaign audits and penalties for election violations.
The amendments don't cover all of the issues faced during the fall election, such as the problems with the ballot system. Those questions need to be pursued.
This package, however, is a big step in the right direction, and the Senate should endorse these reforms.
Whitewashing
An error appeared in the "Huck Finn at 100" editorial yesterday. The editorial mentioned "Huckleberry Finn, a poor boy, and Tom, a runaway slave." Jim was the slave; Tom was Tom Sawyer. The negligent editor will follow his own advice and read the book.
Change occurs, in spite of resistance
I have an old photo of my parents as KU students, taken during the 1947-48 school year. It serves as a reminder that life in can play a major role in change, do change.
The photo shows my mom and dad as college sweethearts. They are sitting among close fraternity and sorority friends at a table in their favorite nightclub. The group is celebrating the fact that my dad had just given his fraternity pin to my mom. Everyone is smiling.
Today, the Dynamite is just a memory along the fast-food wasteland that is 23rd Street. My mom's sorority house is now a KU office. My dad's fraternity house burned down several years ago. The store where I lived was my pen is now a tavern. My parents have been divorced for 11 years.
In time comes change.
Change, however, can be frightening. It is human nature to resist change, but that is silly because change is so much a part of our everyday lives.
I doubt that, at the moment the photo was taken, my folks suspected that their little world would change so much in the future. I keep the picture so that I will recognize the inevitability of change in my life.
There are changes in the weather, changes of heart and changes of seasons.
Change can take place swiftly
the dermine of a snowman on a warm
day. Change can be very gradual
the altering of the face of the Grand
The point is that change is inherent in life. We are born, we grow old, we die.
You can change your mind, change partners or change your socks.
Still, people resist change in some things. Change in a way of life is unsettling. There is comfort in living when life remains the same. There is confusion in unfamiliarity.
The problem is that as people live their lives, they bring about change in the world. As the world changes, the way we interact with change the way life increases.
"Change means the unknown," Eleanor Roosevelt said. "It means too many people cry insecurity. Nonsense! No one from the beginning of time has had security."
The great lady was right. But before the 20th Century, people did not have to deal with change as rapidly as they have during the last 100 years. The technological advancements made in this century have enhanced the necessity for changes in day-to-day living.
We Americans, however, continue to resist change as much as we can. We live in an age of toxic waste that threatens our environment, of world hunger that could kill millions, of nuclear weapons that could destroy
the earth. We are faced with a future of more of the same.
Yet we elect leaders who appeal to our reluctance to change. They tell us there is no danger, that everything will be all right. No need to worry about the 1990s; let's live as we did in the 1950s.
So we make our money and we buy our toys and we live the good life. We keep our women in the kitchens and bedrooms and our minorities in the slums. We pound the Bible and chastise society's sinners. And we talk touch to the rest of the world because America still knows best.
When will we realize that we are just a small part of a huge world? When will we decide to address the people? When will we face the future? When will we face the future?
We need to loosen our grip on our past. We should not let go entirely; continuity is important. But foresight is more vital than tradition.
A famous social critic, Henry George, wrote. "There is danger in reckless change, but greater danger in blind conservatism."
We need a change.
Trip dispels teen's Soviet stereotypes
The column about Margaret Hosti, the 17-year-old girl from Chicago who joined the Army National Guard, provoked a lot of response. Margaret said she had joined the Guard because she feared an eventual ground war with Soviet troops on U.S. soil; she said she wanted to be prepared to defend her neighborhood.
Some people reacted to the column by backing Margaret; some thought she was going way overboard. The most interesting response, however, was from Michelle Goldberg, 18, of Wheeling, Ill.
"I'm almost the same age as that girl you talked to." Michelle wrote, "but I couldn't disagree with her more. And I think I know what I'm talking about — I just got back from a trip to the Soviet Union."
want to invade our country, that's just not the feeling I got over there at all. I know this sounds like a cliche to say — but they're just people like we are. There are good ones and bad ones and medium ones.
She said that she had visited the Soviet Union with a group of about 20 other young people. Now that she was in the United States by the attitude of young Americans.
"I get this real feeling of 'bomb the Russians' from people my own age," she said. "The sentiment I'm picking up is that people are thinking, 'Get the Russians off the Earth.' It's as if they believe that the Russians are all walking around with guns, just getting ready to attack us."
She said that she was far from pro-Soviet, or anti-American: "Look, I'm not a communist. God bless America. I love capitalism."
business America. "I hope you
"But if that girl you wrote about is
under the impression that the RUS-
sian people hate all Americans and
"We went to the circus in Lening-
grad, and all of us in our group sat in
BOB
GREENE
Syndicated
Columnist
one row. There were a couple of seats at the end of the row, and these two Russian girls sat there. As soon as they found out we were Americans, they became so friendly much friendlier than strangers in the United States are. They were giving us pins to wear on our shirts, and they were asking us all kinds of questions about America."
She told about a time when she and her group were walking along the street. "This guy came up to us. We were wearing Nikes and jeans, and the guy said, 'Oh, man, are you Americans?' He was a musician; believe it or not, he was wearing an IPhone. Then he got it. We were talking about what Americans and Russians think of each other, and he said he didn't want to blow anyone up. he was just interested in American music."
She said that in the resort town of Sochi, her group talked to some teen-agers on the street. When the conversation had ended, the Russian teen-agers were approached by men who asked them official officials, who escorted away.
"I feel so sorry for them, living in a country where something like that is a way of life." Michelle said. "Obviously, they could get into trouble for something as simple as talking to Americans. I get the impression that the people there feel totally helpless to contradict the government in any way. I feel that they're trapped; visiting the Soviet Union made me feel much more patriotic toward America
"In Leningrad there was this school behind our hotel. We played soccer with the Russian students there every day, and we talked and we laughed together ... they said that there was no way that they wanted to invade our country.
"I was really sad to leave those people, because they had become my friends. And when I hear people my age talking about 'killing the Russians', I guess I think about it a little differently." The other person in the Russians, I think in terms of them killing those kids I was playing soccer with."
Michelle said, "I guess once you know people, it's hard to stereotype them quite so quickly."
Apartheid is day-to-day reality for manv
It is a pleasant, sunny Wednesday afternoon in Lawrence. Earlier today, a few hundred people gathered here on the lawn in front of Watson Library. They engaged in protest, speeches, consciousness raising
Most students walked by without paying much attention. Just another protest. Boring
But in a place far away from here,
It is dark and late almost midnight.
And life is not so boring for
the more than 20 million blacks who make up 72 percent of South Africa's population. They live under a system that is literally killing them.
This week is South Africa Week, so designated to encourage people to learn more about apartheid, the system of institutionalized discrimination that is a way of life in South Africa.
For years, a group of students has been trying to convince the Kansas University Endowment Association
To the Editor
As a Nicaraguan citizen, I would like to respond to Art Thomas' objections to the appointment of Mariano Fiallos to the Rose Morgan professorship of political science
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Fiallos' background justifies appointment
pictures. I am proud to have someone with the background of Fiallo as president of my country's Supreme Election Council. He earned his doctorate in political science at the University of Kansas in 1968. He also studied in Paris, and in countries in the Western Hemisphere.
To the editor:
in Nicaragua
Thanks to people like Fiallo,
Nicaragua enjoys, to some extent,
political freedom. Maybe Thomas
would like to confirm what I say
by reading recent editions of the
independent Nicaraguan newspaper La
Prensa in Watson Library. In this
paper it is easy to find articles oper-
ticizing the Sandinista regime.
the West Bank.
It is a relief to know that the architect of our electoral process was not educated in the Eastern bloc. Maybe Thomas is questioning the political science department at KU
Fialios is a moderate in the Nicaraguan government. His position is difficult and delicate. He struggles every day to keep Nicaragua from becoming a totalitarian teetifist country. He defends freedom of speech and fights for a free press in Nicaragua.
appointment with that of "a member of a Nazi puppet government" is absurd. It would be interesting to find out how much open criticism and freedom of expression the Nazi government tolerated. Thomas might also be interested in finding out who really installs and supports despotic rightist dictatorships in Latin America, such as the Somoza and Pinoctet regimes, and would be regimes that do resemble Nazi puppet governments.
By accepting his appointment to KU, Fiaulos is showing an interest for our alma mater and its educational system. Otherwise, he would probably have gone to an Eastern blocation.
Thomas' comparison of Fiallos
Leonel Aguilar
Political reform
Leon, Nicaragua, senior
We build authority on morality, and so, too, morality has its foundation. This foundation of morality is the respect towards and recognition of ultimate order river, who has the authority to establish right and wrong.
As we listen daily to the persuasion of our candidates, we do well to remember that government, civil society and others have their foundations in morality.
To the editor:
We must resist looking for scapegoats. Corrupt institutions are simply made up of individuals like ourselves. Genuine reform needs to begin in individuals. We can reform if we are reformed. The sovereign government or self-reformation. Read the first five chapters of the Gospel of John.
Morality, then, is shaped by the respect and recognition of God, who, if ignored, leads us to ignorant morality, and finally to incompetent government. Incompetent government ultimately leads a nation to decline
Chuck Vanasse '84 Lawrence alumnus
Campus planning
to stop putting its money in companies that invest there, but a lot of people disagree.
To the editor:
Of course, the statistics are no secret:
It was好去 to see that you printed Doug McKay's gentle rebuke to the athletic department (Sept. 12 letter). Most of the readers would not realize the background to some of the concerns that McKay identifies.
- Average monthly pay for a black in the mining industry is $250, for a white. $1,395.
As 1 understand the situation, a car park has been constructed with 75 spaces on the southwest corner of 11th and Maine streets. The area designated for parking north from the area designated in the proposed parking development
plan (Campus Plan, 2.3.0.6, revised December 1977), and I, estimate, intrudes 180 feet north into the area designated "to be preserved" (Campus Plan, Open Space Plan, 2.2.0.8, revised December 1974).
This original, that is, 1974, decision obviously has not been superseded as can be seen through an examination of the two maps.
I wish to make two points. First, our University should be bound by its own published guidelines on matters of campus planning, and not the special needs of a few. In this case, the need for overflow parking that will be used, at most, eight or times a year should be the general neighbors, students, faculty and visitors. The missions of the 1974 Open Spaces Proposal recognize the landscape importance of this space as similar to the intentional gaps left between buildings on Jayhawk Boulevard.
- Blacks earn 29.7 percent of total wages, whites, 38.7 percent.
The second point is that there does not appear to be adequate public notice about proposals of this magnitude so that the larger community can be certain that the published plans are being followed and the sensible intentions with regard to open spaces are being properly implemented.
Assistant professor of architecture & urban design
MICHAEL
ROBINSON
Staff Columnist
- Per capita spending on education is $170 for blacks, $1,115 for whites; pupil-teacher ratio 39 to 1 for blacks. 18 to 1 for whites.
- Infant mortality is 90 deaths for every 1,000 births for blacks. 13 for every 1,000 for whites
- The list goes on and on, but opponents of divestiture counter with a list of their own.
- Blacks have no voting privileges, and after age 16 must be fingerprinted and carry pass book identification cards.
But those companies are fighting a
They point to the good things that U.S. companies are doing there to the equal employment opportunity follow in their South African factories.
bill in Congress that would require all U.S. firms to follow these guidelines. The truth is that South African investment is very profitable — too profitable to go very far out on a limb.
U. S. investors and policy makers say that economic boycotts and sanctions would at best be unproductive, and would at worst underline South Africa and drive it into the Soviet camp.
But that didn't stop America from boycotting Cuba, Poland and Nicaragua when we disapproved of those countries' actions. And we used the military in those years our eventual detriment is in places like Iran and Nicaragua.
The final argument of the antic
divestment forces is that we
shouldn't pick on poor South Africa
when there are major human rights
violators like the Soviet Union
around.
But this point of view simply defies logic. It's like saying we shouldn't taste our time arresting rapist and still have a few still murderer running around.
Now, it is getting dark in
Lawrence, too. The crowd that was in
front of Watson has left, the students
have gone home.
But in that far place, they will be facing in a few hours to go to work, if aren’t unpleased with their area or in jail for being a union organizer or protestor.
They can't walk away from apart- heid.
LETTERS POLICY
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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 includes members and groups to submit guest columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.