OPINION
August 31,1984
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kanran (USP5 650-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Staffer Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kanran, 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 Lawrence, Kanran 6044. Submissions by mail are for $15 or $20. $2 a year in Douglas County and $15 for six months or $3 a year in Dallas County. Mail to Postmaster: MOSTRETMA. Send address changes to the University Daily Kanran, 118 Staffer Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kanran, 6045
DON KNOX Editor
PAUL SEVART VINCE HESS Managing Editor Editorial Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM Campus Editor
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
Athletic reform
The University of Kansas Athletic Corporation again is attempting to strengthen programs in both revenue and nonrevenue sports, and it hasn't forgotten to note that participants in athletics are students as well as athletes.
In a 26-page report released this week, KUAC said that although academic performance among athletes was reinforced within the "inspiring context" of the academic excellence of the University, the low academic standing of some athletes in revenue sports was a source of "apprehension" within the University and the community. The present academic support program, the report says, is inadequate.
It appears to be the same old song — and the tune is becoming increasingly familiar.
becoming increasingly famous. In fall 1981, after a year of research, a University committee decided that academies would be given increased emphasis, and that the reins would be tightened on the athletes to make sure they weren't shirking their responsibility to academia.
The previous spring, KU athletics were under fire when area newspapers reported that the University was violating NCAA rules and that athletes were being shuffled into easy classes.
Apparently the reins were not tightened enough, because the academic standards for athletes again were questioned last year with the much-publicized dispute between a KU history professor and a KU coach about an athlete's grade. Again, new methods to monitor academic performance were proposed.
proposed.
Now it's time to take the monitoring and advising seriously, and to decide which is more important — offering a scholarship to the athlete who shows sports potential, or offering one to the athlete who can make it through a degree program.
Shuttle launch
After three unsuccessful attempts at the latest space shuttle launching, the spaceship — called Discovery — finally took off into the heavens yesterday, marking yet another advance in space technology.
The shuttle launchings are fun to watch, even on television, yet they now seem to be taken for granted. Whereas past milestones in space technology — such as Sputnik in 1957 and the men on the moon in 1969 — caused great excitement among the general public, today's advances are greeted with an attitude of "what else is new."
The commonplace loses its interest to many. The space program has succeeded, and now attention tends to shift to other novelties.
The latest shuttle launching, however, merits some of that old feeling of wonder and awe. Two launch attempts in June — brought to failure by a broken computer and engine trouble — and a try scheduled for Wednesday — delayed until yesterday by other computer troubles — show that the picture on television is not just another ho-hum event.
Indeed, the launch yesterday had to be delayed several minutes when three private planes violated the safety zone around the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Even a seemingly mundane matter, a toilet that can function in space, cannot be taken for granted; the model on the shuttle is the latest product of five years and $12 million worth of engineering work.
During its orbit of six days, Discovery will launch three communications satellites - yet another technological marvel now virtually taken for granted in popular forms, such as satellite dishes.
such as satchel bags. Discovery might not represent one giant leap for mankind, but it is certainly one of the many relatively unglamorous steps necessary for the luxuries mankind enjoys.
Wealth in politics
The Geraldine Ferraro figures have finally hit the fan.
The Geraldine Ferraro figures have finally hit the ran. At least we know one thing — Ferraro is among the well-to-do. In spite of the touching scene of Ferraro coming out of the corner store with a purchase of laundry soap, there are still several homes, various other properties and sufficient cash in the bank. Her running mate (remember Walter Mondale?) lives in an exclusive neighborhood and doesn't worry about such details as paying the monthly rent.
doesn't worry about being well-to-do. Such status reflects the culmination of the dreams of many Americans...
Americans . . . However, let's cut out the talk about the Republicans and the party of the rich as opposed to Mondale, Ferraro and the party of the hungry and downtrodden. In view of the Democratic candidates' well-to-do status, such talk is hypocrisy.
- Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader
If the adage that you become more critical in your old age is a true one, then I truly must be getting old.
Critical eye finds less interest in bars
Perhaps all the college psychology courses have made me more painfully aware of cultural behaviors and body language interpretations. Maybe I've been told that I don't claim to be a psychologist, but the wise old eyes of a senior sometimes see things they never have noticed before.
When you stuff a multitude of people with a beer in each hand and a gleam in each eye into a space, people become strange. I mean, why do we all go to bars, anyway? Why do we preen before our reflections in the mirror, slap on the肌和舞动 over what clothes we "right" ones to wear? Is this the modern of some primitive mating ritual?
Men and women act peculiarly in bars. After purchasing the mandatory beer, we stalk. Perhaps the particular object of our desire will come into this bar and we shall flirt with it. Or perhaps the object of our contempt will come into this bar and so shall ignore it.
Suddenly our excuse for remaining enters the bar. The blood quickens with the thrill of the chase. We stand a little more straightly, smile a little more sweetly. We try to radiate innocence and devastating sexuality at the same time.
we shan't ignore it.
So we stand with the others we have brought along for security, and we watch. And wait. Maybe we'll go home early if the turnout stays poor like this.
What do we want from this person, anyway? One touch, after all, bears a thousand quivers. Maybe the real question is, what does this person want from our articles as well and will know what we're up to.
will know what we are up to
The most horrible fear is being left
atone in the bar while the others are flirting. If you are left alone, someone you don't know who is stalking you is bound to approach. Stalking in a larger group is one solution to this problem. Leaving the bar altogether is another.
Once we've made the initial contact with the "stalk-ee," what do
we talk about after the "how-are-ya-doin", I'm-great, how are-you?" There's always the proverbial how-was your-summer topic. And then we can always buy another beer.
I've touched on some of the weirdest topics of conversation while I was in a bar. After a few drinks, anything goes. I recall contemplating why no one ever chooses orange when taking a Popsicle out of the freezer, and why we don't get the neat kind of toy surprises in Cracker Jacks any more. Another night we tried to find the ugliest word in the English language. "Pus," I think, was the conclusion.
disappoint me. I can assume that the bars are still the same ones I left behind in the spring, but now I'm looking for something else.
looking for some help.
I suppose I should never have begun to watch what goes on around me. Now I find that the stalk is less enchanting and the beer always gets warm before I finish it.
These days I find that the bars
I guess the time has come to hurt my last hurrah and head for the real world of bars after working hours. We can contemplate the meaning of rush hour and marriage and the coffee break, and we look back with misty eyes on our weird and wonderful days here at college before we knew too much.
I don't believe I just told her that!
I'm here to tell them that it's an acquired taste.
No. love of Kansas blooms, I think,
only as a result of a conscious effort
to find something lovable about the
state.
Appreciation of Kansas demands exertion
"The state of Kansas ranks 31st in population, and there is no longer any reason — if there ever was any reason — to think that this bleak prairie state represents the American spirit." - Otto Friedrich, former managing editor of the Saturday Evening Post.
Welcome to Kansas.
"Kansas That's where Dorothy lives, right?" - Anonymous
I realize that many of you need no such welcome. Many of you have spent a good portion of your lives here.
But some students among the hordes that have assaulted Mount Oread recently are getting their first taste of life in the Sunflower State.
Why bother, you ask?
I bother because I am a little envious of people in other states who proudly claim to be Native Texans or Native Coloradors or Native Cajun.
Even though I plan to return to my adopted home. California, I want to
be proud to be "from Kansas."
be proud to be "from Kansas"
It's easy to hate Kansas. Negative characteristics are obvious to the most casual observer.
A few of my favorites:
- Homogenous Population. Kansas has an abundance of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant inhabitants. Too much similarity breeds people who have narrow viewpoints, or worse, are Republican.
A new way to learn about
• Lack of Dramatic Physical Beauty. In the inspirational geography competition, the Fruited Plain loses out to Purple Mountains' Majesties just about every time.
- Crummy Weather. My eight grade science teacher used to say that the average temperature in Kansas was 50 degrees. That is true, of course, only because 50 is the average of 5 below zero and 105 above.
That was easy. Learning to love Kansas is more difficult. Only by looking beyond the obvious can one hope to find the treasures this place
Here are some that I have found:
- Abundance of Subtle Physics, Beauty Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But the wheat fields of the western high plains, sunsets over the Flint Hills and the view from Mount Oread all begin to grow on you after awhile.
- Easy-going Population They
may be clone-like conservatives, but Kansans are some of the most likeable, most honest and most unflapable people anywhere.
- Crummy Weather. Please note that this is a double-edged sword. The variable Kansas climate also serves to keep the population at a comfortable minimum by warding off an influx of sun-worshipping itinerants.
internets.
The ones at the outset of this course represent the utterings of infidels, of unenlightened outsiders. Very possibly they have never set foot in Kansas, or they have seen it only from an airliner seat at 35,000 feet. Perhaps they have seen only from one of those impersonal interstate highways that make every state look alike.
Such people probably have no need for Kansas, and they may never make an effort to learn the truth. They should merely be ignored.
To appreciate Kansas, one must make an effort.
But it's worth it.
Dallas underpass stirs memories of Nov. 22
The first few times, I didn't realize why I was feeling that way.
I had arrived in Dallas last week for the Republican convention; each morning I would get into a cab and head for the convention center. All the way down the freeway nothing would seem amiss. Then we rode through an underpass, and I got this uncomfortable sensation.
It was so curious; every time another cab drove through that underpass, I experienced a wave of nausea. To tell the truth, I felt a little
This happened for three or four days, and then I figured it out. It wasn't just any underpass we were riding through; it was the triple underpass from Nov. 22, 1963. And the parks and buildings around it weren't just any landmarks in any city. There they were: the grassy knoll, the Texas School Book Depository.
like I wanted to cry. The fact is, I don't think I've ever been as affected by being in a particular place.
My generation has been accused of acting as if history did not exist
BOB
GREENE
Syndicated Columnist
For millions of us, however, there was one day that divided the hemispheres of our lives. The world seemed innocent and tranquil and full of trust, and then on that Nov. 22, it didn't seem that way any long
petore we came along; we have been accused of being short-sighted.
There is a tendency to overanalyze the legacy of that Nov. 22.1
know that when I think of that day, it is not in broad, monumental terms.
is not in school, monumental terms.
Sixth period English class, Bexley
High School. A bright fall day in
Ohio, Mrs.
A disc jockey's voice over the loudspeaker: "This is your country music station..."
Then the sound of other stations bliping in and out, as an unseen hand twists the radio's knob. And Dallas — words of the gunsbots — words of the gunsbots.
I remember walking home. I sat on the tr front stoop until the paperboy arrived with the evening Columbus Dispatch
I remember going out that night and walking the streets. I had not been one of the young Americans who were fanatical followers of the man who had been president. But inside it seemed that something had been cut out of me; nothing that had happened in my life had ever made me feel this
way, and I was scared about it. It was cold that night; later I would meet up with my friends.
In later years we would learn things aabout that president and that administration that would have surprised all of us on the November night.
What really matters is that there was a time when things felt different
Which is why, riding through that underpass, seeing that red brick building and those plots of grass, I didn't feel like a grown man on his way to work. I felt like a 16-year-old kid sitting out on a cement stump, reading a front page story that somehow didn't seem real. It was cold in Ohio that November afternoon; in Dallas last week, with the temperatures exceeding 100 degrees, I rode through that underpass each morning and the chill came back from over all the years.
Candidates pin hopes on Hollywood magic
WASHINGTON — Whenever protesters greet the president at a campaign stop, you can count on hearing "Reagan, Reagan, he's no good; send him back to Hollywood."
Reagan, who played down his Hollywood background early in his political career, is now recalling it with gusto, exhorting U.S. Olympians to "do it for the Gipper." (He had the gall to say that on the campus of the University of Southern California, the school beaten by Notre Dame in the game that was won for the Gipper.)
What they fail to understand is how deeply entwined the movie industry is with the business world.
As politicians belatedly recognize what Reagan knew a long time ago, that acting skills are necessary not only for campaigning but also for
IRA R. ALLEN
governing, it was no surprise that Democrat John Glenn pinned his hopes on last fall's release of the movie "The Right Stuff," invoking nostalgia for the bygone patriotism of the Kennedy presidency.
United Press International
"The Right Stuff" was followed by "Uncommon Valor" and the newly released "Red Dawn," both movies appealing to the political right.
Two of this summer's biggest movie hits have been appropriated by Reagan supporters. At the GOP convention, Republican youth assumed the identity of "Fritzbusters," a takeoff from "Ghostbusters," in
Except one.
which a quartet of brash con men, fighting City Hall and the federal government all the way, rid New York City of an unearthly menace.
EXCEPTION
The runaway hit of late summer portrays the angst known by almost everyone in high school and college.
Moreover, a magazine columnist has gone so far as to declare Reagan no less than the 1980s incarnation of Indiana Jones. Vice President George Bush has called the site of the Democrats' convention "The Temple of Doom."
Say what you will about Mondale,
he just is not the dynamic man of
action celebrated in so many modern
moves.
everone in it is not
If ever there was a movie for the
beleaguered Mondale campaign to
start identifying with, it is "Revenge
of the Nerds."
of the nerds.
Laugh at the nerds of this world if you will, but when they seek their revenge and justice triumphs, as it always does in Hollywood, it is based on the one undeniable truth of this world — there are more nerds than golden boys.
Ask former Sen. Adalai Stevenson III of Illinois. When he was running far behind James Thompson in the 1980 gubernatorial election, he was somehow branded a "wimp" Stevenson spent valuable time trying to deny the charge, but the fact that he came within a hair of defeating Thompson proved undeniably that a large wimp vote exists.
Things don't look so good for Mondale right now, but he still has time to see the movie and wip himself in the banner of the nerds