September 6,1984 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, UNPS 604-640, is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Staffer Flint Hall Lawrence, Kan. 6045 daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, and final periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 60044 Subscription by mail is free. A year in Douglas County must be paid through the county. Student letters are paid through the student activity fee *POSTMaster* Send address changes to the University Daily Kansas, 118 Staffer Flint Hall Lawrence, Kan. 60045
DON KNOX
Editor
PAUL SEVART VINCE HESS Managing Editor Editorial Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM Campus Editor
SHAW
DAVE WANAMAKER Business Manager
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
Register to vote
It is no secret that the college students of today are more conservative than their counterparts of 10 years ago. Studies show that today's students are preoccupied with more personal concerns, such as getting jobs and making a decent living.
To some people, that also means that today's college students are apathetic about the political leadership of their nation as well, but as someone once said, "It ain't necessarily so."
necessarily so. The young people of this generation, at least the ones at the University of Kansas, have a good opportunity to prove their critics wrong when several voter registration drives begin later this month on campus.
Three organizations - the Associated Students of Kansas, KU College Young Democrats and Delta Sigma Theta sorority - are sponsoring campaigns to get students registered to vote. Delta Sigma Theta hopes to register at least 100 people. College Democrats are aiming for 3,000 new registered voters and ASK's goal is 4,000. The groups will be working from Sept. 10 through Sept. 28.
the efforts of these organizations are commendable, but no amount of hard work or conviction will alter the fact that only one thing will determine whether the drives succeed or fail
That intangible aspect is the students.
That malignable aspect is the students.
"It's really a guess as to the percentages or even the numbers of students who vote," says Sandra Binyon, coordinator of the ASK efforts at KU. "I can assure you that it can't be enough."
Unless college students - liberal and conservative, here and at campuses around the nation - reverse that trend and register to vote, they will shut themselves out on what could be a watershed election.
be a warrior.
Students should register and vote, not only because it could make a difference on issues that directly affect them, such as financial aid, but because as citizens, they are at least generally affected by all important issues. And as responsible citizens, they are required to act on those issues.
Truly green acres
Encouraging news for the heartland came this week when the Census Bureau reported that the number of small farms had increased between 1978 and 1982.
The number of small farms increased from 543,000 in 1978 to 637,000 in 1982.
The growth kept the decline of the total number of farms to less than 1 percent.
less than 1 percent. Although the study indicates that the increase might have been caused by part-time farmers on the edges of towns who earned most of their income in other occupations, it's good to know that farmers are not a dying breed.
know that farmers are not afraid. Moreover, it's nice to learn that some people were not afraid to take a risk amid reports of farmers who were suffocating in debt and inflation.
The number of small farms, those of 50 acres or less, increased in every state but South Carolina.
increased in every state but Boston Now maybe the entire country will hear what Kansans already know that farming is not so bad, and that a state in which farming is an important industry is nothing to be embarrassed about.
Abuse of children
Newsweek magazine reported in its May 14 issue that an epidemic of reported sex-abuse cases is occurring.
Parents must remember that they, not the state, are primarily responsible for the protection of their children. Parents should thoroughly check day-care centers, talk to other parents, be involved in the centers, and, perhaps most importantly, listen to and understand what your children tell you about how they spent their day.
One other important consideration: Are our criminal laws reasonable in dealing with molestors of children? What should be done with a sleaze who rapes a 3-year-old? Should it not be a capital offense?
The Montgomery Journal (Chevy Chase, Md)
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 individuals and groups submitted abstracts or written letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 111 Stauffer-Flixt Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
The jukebox in the Jayhawk Cafe belted out a blissful rock number that no one in the crowd of young beer drinkers appeared to recognize
Awareness comes slowly to students
I leaned against the bar with my good friend, Scott, and took in the scene before us.
Young men and women stood about or sat in crowded booths and talked above the din about summer jobs, cars, dating and parties.
Scott shook his head, endorsing my doubt that not many did know who it was.
"I wander how many people in here know who this is?" I said, rather smugly, nodding at the jukebox.
Scott and I shared a common interest in that particular song because it represented another era to us. It had been popular in 1971, the year we graduated from high school together.
The America of our high school years was an America of turmoil. In those four years, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy died violent deaths, riots tore cities apart, Richard Nixon was elected president, thousands of American soldiers not much older than we were died in Vietnam, four college students were shot to death by National Guardmen at Kent State, and many more students staged campus demonstrations against the established mainstream American society.
Those events and others touched us and helped shape the cynical views of the world Scott and I shared when we went off to college he to a venerable Eastern university I led to Kansas college — in the fall of 1971.
Materialism was "out." Social awareness was "in."
Thirteen years later, we were both married, living in Lawrence and pursuing advanced degrees.
And on this night, in a tavern our parents had patronized as KU students of the late 1940s, we were recalling the early 1970s through the haze of several beers.
We remembered that we had had much more awareness of and concern for the future of our country's society than the 20-year-old reveling around us could ever hope to have.
Before us, the college students of 1984 appeared to be the personification of the current Republican message to America: Materialism is "in." social awareness is "out."
JOHN
SIMONSON
Staff Columnist
After all, we were concerned now,
so we certainly must have been
concerned then, when it was fashion-
able.
And we had documentation. Throughout our undergraduate years, Scott and I maintained a long distance correspondence.
We got them out last weekend and began to read. What we read in those letters was something a bit different from what we remembered.
Oh, we had made note of important current events of the time, including the hostage crisis at the 1922 Munich Olympics, Nixon-MeGovern and
But mostly what we wrote about, what we apparently were most concerned with, was girls, old movies, girls, football games, girls.
music, girls and drinking.
Maybe one of the most revealing passages was from one of my letters, dated May 4, 1972.
"I refuse to involve myself in political discussions andor activities. I have developed interests in things which will, I hope, lead me away from the state of the union, as much as possible."
It bathers me now that I thought that way then. But the fact that I eventually woke up and developed a strong interest in U.S. government and science, that the same awareness can, and probably will, take place in others.
At least, that's what I'm hoping.
Athletes' academics require cooperation
The problem is getting through the student athlete stigma that exists at the University. Instead of "Us vs Them," the theme should be "We"
The University of Kansas Athletic Corporation presented a startling revelation last week by saying that college athletes who were also good students.
What a novel idea
Although an average football player is putting in 60 hours a week to achieve peak performance on Saturday afternoon, many teachers and advisers are not willing to help him find a way to handle the load.
Really I'm sure no other institution around the nation has cultivated such a thought. A 4.0 student who runs a 4.3-40 yard dash and can bench press 400 pounds is as common as a KU Orange Bowl team. Those players want to go to an established football program, not KU.
Actually, the KUAC means well, because there is a problem with athletes and academics at KU. But that cannot be solved by a report that says intelligence is the key ingredient for a recruit.
One weak area in the recent past has been that the academic counseling provided by the athletic department has not been successful. That is why some players have run into problems.
But both football coach Mike Gottfried and men's basketball coach Larry Brown have said that quees-
JEFF CRAVENS Staff Columns
Granted, these jocks are all 18 years old or older, but the fact is that some aren't familiar enough with University academics to understand what it takes. Someone needs to tell them.
tionaires sent to instructors about athletes' academic progress have gone unanswered most of the time, leaving them helpless unless the student tells them about any possible problems.
Communications between the two factions are not the rule, and that is a tragedy. It's actually amazing, considering the reputation that KU buys.
In the athletic department's "master plan," the goal is to have a football contender that is full of great thinkers. To be realistic, it just doesn't happen like that.
Sure, guidelines can be set about recruiting better students, but so many variables exist. Many players are recruited before their transcripts or ACT scores are made available to the coach. And even when they are, a 2.0 in an inner-city school doesn't always mean the kid can make it at KU.
There are all kinds of reasons that athletes do not make their grades. Some athletes just are not responsible enough to juggle athletics and academics. Heck, some students can't handle just academics.
but there is a definite friction between the academic and athletic worlds.
Just ask Brown and David Katz
man, professor of history, who had a misunderstanding last year that would never have gone public at another school.
The coach does expect — and should expect — at least some cooperation, but there are teachers who think giving an inch to an athlete is a sign of weakness.
"People want to say that athletes aren't different, but they are and always will be," Gottfried said. "Just like I think the guy who holds down a job at Zarda is different, too."
triedred is not saying to push the athletes through, but that they need to be shown some understanding. The athletic department can take some of the blame, and the academic people need to get their act together because the goal is to have people, including athletes, earn degrees.
no master plan will accomplish that. Just a lot of hard work and understanding from both sides will. Until that happens and the relationship between the athletic department and the University can be improved, KU athletes, and the University in general, will suffer.
Elvis videos can still excite TV audiences
Intriguing news is coming out of the music business.
Executors for the estate of the late Elvis Presley have announced plans to put together a Presley video. The specifics of the video have not been revealed, but a spokesman for the Presley estate said that it would be updated for 1964.
Oh, dear. One can only imagine what this modernized Presley video will consist of. Elvis' voice will be singing "Blue Suede Shoes" — "Well, it's one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, now go, cat, go" — and the visuals will consist of walls, rails racing through graveyards, masked men driving spikes through caskets.
If that happens, the "Blue Suede Shoes" video will look pretty much like most other rock videos; it will be calculatedly shocking and designed to titillate teenagers and persuade them to buy the records.
I hope, however, that the executors of the Presley estate realize that the original rock videos consisted only of Elevator videos in front of an Elvis and singing
You talk about danger and drama and sexual overtones; the mere sight of Elvis singing a song stirred young America and frightened older America in ways that all of today's purposefully nasty videos can never be imagined.
The executors of the Presley estate have the right idea. A whole generation of young music fans has not seen Presley perform. Millions of others recall him only as the friendly, bland, homogenized singer who appeared in Las Vegas in the '80s and poked gentle fun at his own image.
That was all that was needed.
But the early Presley was so
arrangely new and threatening, so alien to what older Americans had come to accept in a singing star, that the very sight of him on television
BOB
GREENE
Syndicated
Columnist
was enough to cause a national case of apoplexy.
No other musical phenomenon can rival that amazing, thrilling, almost
chemical combustion that happened when those two new forces — Elvis Presley and the network TV camera — met each other.
the executors of Elvis' estate really want to produce a successful Presley video — if they want to come up with something that young people will talk about in school the next morning — they should forget about special effects.
They should merely use unedited footage from the television shows on which Elvis made his first appearances.
Elvis will appear skinny and sneering, dressed in a big sport coat over baggy pants.
"Um . . . first of all we want to thank you for all our success . . . uh
and we want to sing our new single for you . . . uh . . . and it goes something like this."
But Elvis '56' Elvis '57? Those are performances that have not been viewed in years. Millions of us will be saying that we sure appreciate seeing them. Ma'am. Ua, thank you very much. Awopbopaloobopalop-bamboo.
And then he will hit his guitar and break into the first words of "Don't Be Cruel."
Films and videotapes of Elvis in the 70s are plentiful.
Observance stresses infant safety
WASHINGTON — Sept. 9 is Expe ctant Mother's Day in America.
Something symbolic may be intended in the scheduling of such an observance on the ninth day of the ninth month, but the significance is utterly lost on me.
What I do find meaningful is that the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association is sponsoring Expectant Mother's Day to point up "the need for safety alertness with new babies inside the home, outside the home and while traveling."
It also might be noted that some of the 25 tips the association has prepared to help new parents avoid accidents are valid regardless of whether you have a baby in your arms.
**Rule 21, for example, admonishes:** "Don't carry a baby up or down stairs without first checking for loose objects that could throw you off."
United Press International
balance."
DICK WEST
What I consider the most ominous threat to life and limb is not
ballerina is a good rule to follow all the time, especially if baby is old enough to leave roller skates or other wheeled toys on the stairs.
Some of the baby carriages you see weaving along the sidewalk are 1 regret to report, pushed by drunks
mentioned at all, however. I refer to the menace of erratically steered baby carriages.
baby carriages Baby carriages veering down on unwary pedestrians have become, next to jaywalking, perhaps the No.1 peril associated with urban peregrinations
Having seen no recent statistics, however, I am not going to explore in detail the need for a crackdown. I'll leave that crusade to members of ENRAGE (Expectant Nannies Ranting Against Guzzling Employers)
My main concern is the enactment of laws that require new parents to obtain operators licenses before they venture out on the sidewalk at the helm of a baby carriage.
All too often, new parents receive only cursory instructions before they take baby for a spin.
I comment the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association for its efforts to provide infants with a safer environment, including transportation approaches; however, let us not forget those of us whose expectations already have been more than adequately fulfilled.