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September 20,1984 Page 4
OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daly Kansan, UNSP 660-640 is published at the University of Kansas, I18 Stuifter Fint Hall, Lawen, Kanze 66045, 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, Kanze 66043 Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or a year outside the county. Student postage paid at Lawen, Kanze 66043 Address changes to the University Daly Kansan, I18 Stuifter Fint Hall, Lawen, Kanze 66043
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
Freedom
The right to learn from people of a variety of political orientations is fundamental to a society that claims academic freedom, and any university that chooses its faculty on politics and doesn't consider the potential for learning is wrong. So it was heartening that the University had the courage to appoint to a professorship an official of a communist government the United States is actively trying to depose.
That official is Mariano Fiallo, president of Nicaragua's Supreme Election Council, who has been appointed Rose Morgan professor of political science in the Center for Latin American Studies. Given today's political climate and the controversy over the election planned for Nicaragua in November, here is a man from whom we can learn much.
Or so it seems. Arthur Thomas, Arthur Young distinguished professor of business, indicated in a letter last week to the Kansan and to Charles Stansifer, director of the center, that he would have the University put on political blinders.
Contrary to what Thomas wrote in his letter, the appointment of Fialios does not constitute "the center's support for totalitarian Latin American regimes and would be regimes," about which he is so concerned. Would he have us turn down a semester with Andrei Gromyko or Fidel Castro, because their governments don't get along with ours?
Perhaps Thomas thinks the students should be protected from Fiallos, that they will somehow be poisoned by his rhetoric. Students are not so naive. If they have hard questions to ask of him, they should get their chance. Those members of the University community who want to exercise their academic freedom should also have a few questions for Thomas and others who would deny this opportunity.
Huck Finn at 100
Ernest Hemingway once said, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn.'"
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a poor boy, and Tom, a runaway slave.
One of the few giants in U.S. literature, Twain penetrated the human soul through the eyes of innocents, children who could see what adults could not. Huck's "unformed" conscience realized that Jim was not a piece of property, but a human being and a friend.
Twain's literary works are now causing controversy because they are said to contain language offensive to blacks. Such arguments are hard to swallow, yet a public school in Waukegan, Ill., has removed "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" from the school's required reading list.
Tragic is the only way to describe such events. In the face of such narrowmindedness, the important place Twain occupies in U.S. literature must be kept in mind.
Thomas Werge, a professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, writes;
"Mark Twain recognized America's central place in the moral drama of modern history. He castigated his country out of hope and love for what it should be, and anguish for its failure to fulfill its promise."
As the centennial of "Huckleberry Finn" approaches, do yourself a favor; pick up Twin's classic and read it.
'Save the Kleenex for the alumni'
Guess what! KU has more academically ineligible football players than any other Big Eight school!
So what? Life goes on
No tears, please.
Hotshot architects, journalists and pre-meds come to school Hotshot architects, pre-meds and journalists hire a title in college It happens everywhere.
That is why I'm not going to er for football players. Save the Kleenex on
I'm certainly not going to cry for any athlete anywhere who attends a large university on a full scholarship, eats training table food, gets paid more in a year — at some schools — for playing than I'll ever see in one place in my lifetime and still can't pull a 1.6 GPA.
For four years, I've eaten pressed turkey, barely cooked spaghetti; soggy green beans and badly baked chicken slung at me by residence hall cooks and my own culinary talents. I've worked 30 hours a week at various jobs for the duration to feed many of the students, many as 17 hours and worked 60 hours a week one semester as a Kansan reporter.
And I have the beginnings of an ulcer, but that's another story.
MY grade point average is 2.62. It isn't pretty, but I'm practically assured of getting my degree, which
is more than I can say for 10 KU football players right now.
the taxpayers of Kansas didn't build Cis University as a memorial
BRUCE F.
HONOMICHI
Staff Columnist
to dumb pampered jocks. No university was founded as a memorial to any dumb jock
College athletes should be attending class to get their degrees because most of them have no future in professional athletics. And because the future is so bleak in professional athletics, most of their athletic careers should be no more than extracurricular activity.
And that puts them in the same boat as the rest of us wimps who beat our brains out collecting baseball cards, playing Dungeons and Drags.
Truth: Most high school football players, if they are lucky enough to find their way into the uniform of a team, will never be trapped by a tackler to find their way into a game.
ons and bowling. Not too many of us are going to make a living on the pro bowlers' tour, no matter how much we practice.
And that brings us back to why we, and they, go to college. We go to college not only to get our degrees, but to grow up. Growing up means to pay the bills on time and learning to take care of one's own affairs.
And growing up means discipline. Thousands of us who work as hard and sometimes twice as hard and put in as many hours at our work as the average college athlete are practicing that discipline without being led off a training table, without a nightly bed check, without being within earshot of a guiding whistle 24 hours a day.
Sadly, most big college programs deny their athletes the opportunity to experience college life, the burned oatmeal, the accidentally bleached laundry, the all night study sessions.
Many, or most, of them will have to wait until they reach the real world to eat that burned oatmeal. I can say from first-hand experience that it tastes a lot more burnt in the real world than it does in college.
Hey, journalists and engineers and geologists have to eat their own burnt out meal. And if a football player can't get to bed on time, he can't get to bed on time on his own
and can't get to class on his own time,
he doesn't have any business in
the city.
The KU Ten — more than half of whom are juniors and seniors — are just another flock of academically drowning students to me. I'm not going to shed any tears. Monte and Mike can share the crying towel.
AND NOW FOR some unfinished business
Several people, including a Christian friend very dear to me, have expressed confusion, disagreement, and displeasure over a passage that appeared in my last column. The passage was a one-sentence paragraph that said: "God made us to be beautiful."
Even columnists who choose their words carefully sometimes sleepy edit their columns
The literal meaning of that sentence was not what I intended to say. If I had polished the column properly, that sentence would have said something like "Every man, even under God's gudging hand, is sinful."
I did NOT mean that God put us on earth to sin. I neither meant that nugel believe that I believe that God put us on earth for perfection everything we do. ≦
I take full responsibility for the error.
He also made us to be humble.
Pass the etymological sum.
General Motors janitor offers advice
As automakers make contract negotiations with management, the prevailing slogan among the more vociferous rank-and-file members is: "Restore and more in 84." Those who take up this call are union officers, the union-appointed lackeys, the shirkers and the complainers. I know, because I work alongside them.
Earlier this year, after the Big Three companies earned record profits, top managers awarded themselves extraordinary, multimillion dollar bonuses. Seeing that, auto workers vowed to get their fair share of the bonanza - a result of restrictions on Japanese imports
Do autoworkers deserve a large raise this year? I think not.
My wages (for 1984 are uncon-
flicted) are $27,500 per year,
of General Motors. I will earn more
in the next contract. But
companies are often
salaries are diagonal. The question is
John F. McCarthy
than $30,000 this year if I am not laid off or hit by a bus. My annual base wage is more than $24,000 I am truly ashamed to tell friends and relatives that, even though I sweep floors for a living, I hold an American Express Gold Card while they do not. The job requires neither skill nor education. And, despite a college degree and business experience, I am regarded
General Motors employee
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Reactor rebuttal
I cannot understand the reasoning of Charles Barnes' column concerning the decommissioning of the KU reactor. It is true that the reactor has outlived its usefulness, but so what does it inherit the cost of its decommissioning?
- in the short term or long term
Barnes' approach is that the reactor is somehow costing the taxpayers of Kansas too much money.
Nowhere in his column does he mention any health threat to KU students or other residents in the KU area. He knows that there are not any
To the editor
Clearly, the cost of decommissioning quoted by Barnes could easily pay for the continued maintenance of the facility with the interest such an expense could generate. Twenty thousand dollars, the cost of "baby sitting" the reactor, is only two percent of the one million dollars quoted by Barnes and a little less than four percent of the amount of the 1980 KU assessment
I, for one, do not need the protection that Barnes would have for me by spending Kansas funds for putting a little feather in the cap of the anti-nuclear movement by the removal of this "financial one bone."
Come on, 'Boog'
Paul Longabach Lawrence senior
Re: the veto by Carla Vogel student body president, and Dennis "Boog" Highbender, student body vice president (Sept. 13, "Sense nips beer boycott," ends burger debate). Well, "Boog" said it this time
To the editor:
There is only one thing that remains unclear. If he is against capitalism, how is he above it by how? Not why let us the students, decide.
Well, "Boog" sure did it this time protecting us from capitalism.
Does he think we are his subjects and he is the king? Why doesn't he put it up for a vote by the students? Or does he feel it is fair to have it his
way? Is he not doing the opposite by burying the question in red tape, using loopholes and making the students pay for his concerns?
Well, "Boog" can do to us what he will, but I am not going to sit here and let him bad mouth the United States. I will go get it my way.
Is this not a criticism of our
colleges all over the country and
everywhere?
come on. "Bog," haven't you and
Carla ever had a big Mac or gone for
a burger?
Neither are my fellow workers. A "skilled trade" person was called to our department last week for a small job. He showed up four hours later, explaining that the delay was caused by his politicking for union office. He also remarked that the plant was a great place to work, since "All you have to do is show and hold out the door and they pay you." Then he had the temerity to ask for a wrench. He is not typical of the people with whom I work, yet there are many like him who hardly work at all.
Thomas O. Mangold
Overland Park senior
Look both ways
as well fitted to the position I work hard. But in my present capacity, I'm not worth 30 grand a year.
To the editor:
After reading the Kansan article about bicycles, autos and pedestrians (Sept. 5, "Bicyclists may receive fines for violating state statutes"), I decided to be especially cautious on my bike ride to campus.
I obeyed the frequently ignored stop sign on Crescent Drive I rode cautiously through the intersection in
front of the Jayhawk Book Store, and peddled carefully around the Chi Omega fountain onto campus.
At last, there were fewer cars and less traffic; safer riding was mine. Suddenly, a pedestrian, without looking, walked into the road. There was no crosswalk or warning signs, so we rolled over bike crickets, and steered to avoid the walker. I flew over the handbells, and swan dived onto the pavement.
The pedestrian continued his jay walk across the street oblivious to the accident. I picked up my bike, disguised as a dog and drove. Suffering only scraps, and finding no bike damage, I remounted my two wheeler.
Paul Barter
1. too, walk on campus, but I check before I cross a street. With 22,000 students on campus, special caution should be taken by everyone. Luckily, no one was hurt in my attack. I'm wearing a steel带耳鞋 walkers. Just a re minder to everyone: Look both ways before you cross the street.
Paul Barker
Shawnee sophomore
A year ago, at a convention in Texas, a right-to-work state, the United Automobile Workers chose Owen Bieber as its president. He is plodding, unimaginative and convinced that the rank-and-tile are being ripped off by Roger B. Smith, chairman of General Motors, Philip Caldwell, chairman of Ford, and their ilk.
are not heir to the same fate as their parents — could not care less about what a chairman of the board earns. That is a specious, political argument.
The man or woman on the line who has bills to pay, a family to feed and children to educate — so that they
Bieber's constituents are indolent, ignorant and those who would be personally aggrandized by a hard line union position in the coming talks: U.A.W. officials themselves. It is these people who complain about management bonuses.
The mission of Biober and his negotiating team should be to gain modest increase in pay, to 10 to 12 percent in a three-year contract, in conjunction with more liberal profit-sharing benefits. Paid personal holidays, business travel throughout the year in the 1978 contract, were unpopular. It neither cut absenteeism nor created jobs, as we had hoped.
What workers really need and want is a firm, long-term commitment to job security, less "outsourcing" (such as placing plants in foreign countries) and more training in the plants to help workers advance and grow professionally.
Auto workers have about as much interest in the contract negotiations, as in the Iranian war; they are interested, but for all they care the two sides can blow each other up, as long as the job and the paycheck are
Auto workers want a little more money, but they aren't willing to strike for an egregious raise. Many of us feel, to borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, that seldom have so many done so little for so much.
John F. McCarthy has worked for General Motors since 1977. $\frac{2}{3}$
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 inquiries and comes to submit five columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office. 11) Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.