September 17,1984
OPINION
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Day, Kannan. USPS 660 640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stairfrant Flint Hall, Lawen. Kannan 660 640) 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. Kannan 660 434) Subscriptions by mail are $1 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $1 for six months or $3 a year in Elgin County. Mail to USPS POSTMASTER. Send address changes to the University Day, Kannan 118 Stairfrant Flint Hall, Lawen. Kannan 660 640)
DON KNOX Edito.
PAUL SEVART VINCE BESS Managing Editor Editorial Editor
DAVE WANAMAKER Business Manager
SUSANNE SHAW General Manager and News Adviser
DOUG CUNNINGHAM Campus Editor
LYNNE STARK MARY BERNICA Retail Sales National Sales Manager Manager
JILL GOLDBLATT Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
South Africa
The issue is one in which the odds are long, but the needs are great.
are great. Apartheid in the Republic of South Africa — a nation in which 4.5 million whites control economics and politics for a population of 30 million — is a way of life.
population of 30 million. Recent elections in that country gave Asians and people of mixed ancestry a role in government that they had not had before. Even that minor concession, however, was just one of including those two minorities in the rituals of government. They didn't acquire any power.
Meanwhile, the blacks, 22 million of them, still do not have the right to vote, are forced to live in designated areas of the country and face a life of segregation and discrimination.
The government of South Africa is a racist one.
Today begins a week of activity at KU intended to focus attention on the conditions of the people forced to live under this system.
As part of the activities, the Student Senate Ad Hoc Committee on South Africa, a sponsoring group, plans to examine the connections between the University of Kansas and South Africa.
The idea of South Africa Week, giving people the opportunity to learn in greater detail some of the specifics of the issues involved, is good.
However, a related issue, divestment of KU money in South Africa, requires much more thought and discussion before the idea, as it has been currently proposed, can be acted on.
U. S. direct investment in South Africa exceeds $2.6 billion, and more than 300 American firms do business in the country, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
The political clout of these companies with South Africa is significant in economic terms.
However, the solution is not as easy as the sale of all KU stocks that are invested in companies doing business in South Africa.
One factor that must be considered is exactly which companies are considered tainted for their business dealings
Then other questions follow: What about companies that supply fuel to such corporations or are subcontractors? Should only those companies with direct investments be targets in the quest for a South Africa-free portfolio?
Who will be able to trace the companies if their involvement is anything less than obvious?
Other universities, cities and states have made the decision to divest in South Africa, each one participating to a different degree.
The impact of their divestments versus the benefits of having American companies continue to operate in the country must also be considered.
Some of the U.S. companies there have made concerted efforts to implement the Sullivan principles, a set of voluntary guidelines on equal employment opportunity.
The issues involved are complicated ones. The United States, because of its own grappling with civil rights, has some understanding of what is involved.
A week is hardly sufficient time to understand the complexities of South Africa, with its internal divisions between rural and urban blacks, tribal and language groups, and whites and the rest of the country.
But South Africa Week should provide an opportunity to understand at least the basics of a situation that cries out for change.
Ma Bell's imagery
Despite newspaper, magazine and television coverage, despite commercials with Cliff Robertson and Andy Griffith trying to sweet-talk us, despite the monumental efforts of Madison Avenue and public relations people, some of us aren't convinced.
Down-home Andy and clean-cut, dependable Cliff have done their best to persuade us that we are no longer dealing with The Phone Company AT&T has owned the natural market and didn't give a damn what we thought, into our friendly neighborhood communication giant. Old reliable.
We keep hearing about how tough it is to be a phone company these days, about how things just aren't the way they used to be. But for Ma Bell's kind of children.
It hasn't worked
time was when they were the only kids on the block. They got all the toys, all the marbles, all the candy.
And if "the more you hear, the better we sound" is true, that's only because AT&T has the volume turned up so land we're going deaf.
She shed no tears over Ma Bell's demise; at least one of her kids is doing fine without her.
MICHAEL ROBINSON Staff Columnist
And they never had to say "please" or "thank you," because they were the only place to go and they knew it and everyone else did; too.
But this is the same AT&T that does those next New Wave "Watson" commercials. You know, the ones in which they show all the wonderful new communications systems that AT&T now offers.
It's no wonder that Ma's kids became spoiled.
And we want to believe. We really do.
one phone company hasn't changed. It has just, like a politician with a new image, gotten smarter
But now the Federal Communications Commission breathes down their necks every time they need a few pennies to stay in business, or they want to tack on an itty bitty old access charge.
See, in return for giving up all its regional telephone companies, AT&T got permission to enter the lucrative and expanding telecommunications field. They're into stuff that makes the telephone look like a pair of Dixie cans with a string between them.
$ ^{14} $Only when AT&T is allowed to operate under the same rules as all competitors will customers realize the full value of this new competition in the industry . Morris whined
Just the other day, at the Texas-Oklahoma Telephone Association convention, poor Morris Tannenbaum, head of ATKT Communications, was decrying the state of what's left of Ma Bell's long-distance monopoly. It's hard to blame Morris for taking on such a plan. Morris is against antigreedy treatment ATKT was receiving at the hands of the Texas Public Utility Commission
Morris and ATKT would have us think that after all these years they are now eager for the customers to reap the benefits of competition
Stress Sakharovs' freedom
MARLBORO. Vt. The U.S. scientific community must ensure that the issue of freedom for Andrei Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner, is high on the agenda when officials of the United States and the Soviet Union meet later this month.
(Secretary of State George Shultz will meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko sept 26 at the United Nations; President Reagan will see Gromyko Sept 28 at the White House)
The Sakharov's freedom depends upon our putting pressure on the Soviet Union in public forums and private channels.
The Kremlin is embassaried by the portrait of Soviet "justice" that is emerging as sporadic reports on the Sakharovs mental and physical health are leaked by friends to their tormented family in the United States. Soviet officials concern that the affair will concern scientific exchanges with the West and are making their concern known to their leaders.
So far, however, we have failed to capitalize on Soviet fears. In July, the United States renewed trade and cultural agreements with Moscow without a hint about a concession – no questions, no pressure.
Teen-age girl prepares for Soviet invasion
There is a lot of talk these days about renewed patriotism among young Americans; one of the big movie hits of the season is "Reed Dawn," a film about high school students in a small Colorado town who fight Soviet and Cuban troops that land in their area.
So it was interesting the other day to meet Margaret Hosty, 17, who lives in Chicago. While other girls her age are hanging out at shopping malls and watching music videos, Margaret has done something quite different. She has joined the Army National Guard.
"Everyone talks about nuclear war," Margaret told me, "but it war comes. I don't think it's going to be that bad." I will be seeing hand-to-hand combat
I truly hate communism. I think it's terrible, just awful. Some people say it's not so bad, but they don't really know about it."
She thinks that Soviet troops might someday launch a ground war in the U.S. Midwest, and she wants to be ready to defend her neighborhood
really believe in something, you can do it — and if I had to fight the Russians hand to hand, I would do it in a minute."
She said that 17-year-olds were allowed to join the National Guard if they had their parents' authorization
She has been going to monthly Guard weekend meetings at an armory in downtown Chicago, and soon she will leave for eight weeks of work.
margaret said that, although the U.S. military does not use women in combat roles, she thought the policy might change some day soon.
"My father said, 'Oh, congratulations, and did you bring the socks and handkerchiefs up' but now both of them said my father are thrilled about it."
tight change in my life.
"I don't consider myself all that tough a person," she said, "but if
"I'm really looking forward to that," she said. "I think boot camp will make me a lot tougher person; a
signatures. She was doing the laundry the day she informed her father that she wanted to join the Guard.
BOB
GREENE
Syndicated
Columnist
She said she was serious about her concerns that the United States could be the site of a Soviet landing: "The Soviets could be attacking my neighborhood, my friends, my school, the places where we had our high school dances. Those are the people and places I care for."
"If I ever found out that a
"What do I want to learn? Well, I want to learn how to use my rifle better. I want to learn how to use hand grenades; now right I'm terrible at even throwing snowballs! And I hope to learn how to drive a tank, though I don't have a driver's license yet."
let more aggressive. It will give me confidence and make me not be afraid.
"My friend and I rented a cassette of the movie 'Hair' to see what young people were like back then," she said. "I was really sickerened. It's like the whole generation was a pack of idots."
"They all said, 'it's against my religion to go to war.' Well, hey, it against everyone's religion to go to war, but if the Soviets start it, we'd better be ready to do something about it.
She said she had done some research into the anti-war generation of the '60s.
say, "I don't consider myself a violent person, but when you're a soldier, sometimes you have to be violent. And I'm proud that that's what I've decided to be. I am a soldier."
Margaret said that camouflage outfits were in style among girls her age right now. Once she made a negative remark when she saw some of her friends wearing them, they said to her, "At last I didn't join the Army."
Communist was living next door or on my block. I'd almost like like smuggling my M-16 rifle out of the armory and telling the people. 'Get out of this neighborhood.' And for the people who go around saying how much they hate it here — well. I wish they'd leave before someone like me takes the initiative to make them leave.
However, she said, she thinks that they respect her.
they respect "other girls my age might not be joining the National Guard," she said, "but I don't know anyone of my generation who thinks it's a bad idea to have a strong national defense.
to have a brave face.
"When I'm in my uniform, I feel like a different person. I feel like I'm invincible. I think about the possibility of war being very real, and I say to myself, 'This is not a movie.'"
We shouldn't forget that Western pressure won the free emigration of more than 100,000 Soviet Jews
The scientific community has the power to raise the issue and to put pressure on Moscow. In 1975, the president of the American National
JOSEPH MAZUR
New York Times Syndicate
Academy of Sciences sent a telegram to the Soviet Academy, saying that future scientific cooperation could be built. The report should happen to the Sakharovs.
that telegram helped frighten the Soviet authorities into granting an
Rome for badly needed eye surgery. Little on the agendas of U.S. scientific societies now suggests that cooperation is in jeopardy. Many U.S. scientists still meet with Soviet scientists, ask the embarrassing question and then get down to cooperation.
exit visa for Bonner to travel t Rome for badly needed eye surgery
It has been 4 $ _{1/2} $ years since Sakharov was detained, and four months since we have had any contact with him he is mentally and physically healthy.
We in the scientific community must not allow the lives of these promethean human beings to be suandered.
Joseph Mazur is professor mathematics at Marlboro College.
Rhyming on politics
The English clerhew, a verse form, can be easily adapted to the U.S. presidential campaign.
To quote Webster, a cleverer is "a light verse quattra in lines usually of varying length, rhyming AABB and making a statement usually concerning a person whose name typically supplies the initial rhyme.
Political debate seems especially suited to quatrains this year.
Some poetic analysts may find antecedents of America's Ogden Nash in the verifications favored by England's Edmund Clerkess Ben
Whatever emulations they might have inspired, the following selection from "The First Clerihews," published by Oxford University Press, appears more or less typical.
Rather against his will.
Cecil B. deMille.
Was persuaded to leave Mose Out of 'The War of the Roses
Although the significance of that quatrain may be lost on some of the younger movie goers, the clerk, as you can see, is no stranger to grand themes. That quality makes it all the more apt to be named the official verse form of the 1984 presidential campaign.
Let us begin making statements at the White House.
But the term 'Reagonomics' Relates to the comics
But the term 'Reaganomics
Ronald Reagan
Now, cutting across the political spectrum
Given a name like Walter
Among Republicans, however. Fritz
Ronda Reagan In the business section might strike liberal economics as pagan.
Is really the pits
This verse form is pliant enough to
be applied to the bottom half of the ticket as readily as to the top half.
For a running mate
Although Geraldine Ferraro May be straight as an arrow Communion loans
Campaign loans Sooner or later usually bring groans.
Or:
The next step up is up to fate
United Press International
DICK WEST
But Democrats are trying to give fate a push
By claiming one woman veep we worth two of Bush.
Clerknews can even be used to delineate current events
Is a missile with the capacity to perplex.
The latest basing mode disguise
From the Middle East comes inspiration for:
Yasser Arafat
Is usually photographed in the same old hat.
It might help if the PLO leader als
behind the camera.
trapped on its coat
In a towel from a Syrian Holiday
Inn
Although the final clewberry may not make a statement about the presidential campaign, the subject matter was pretty pastic in its
Thinks porn stars are dandy
Britain's Prince Andy
But to the Queen, it's increasingly plain.
They're a royal pain