August 29,1984
OPINION
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University, Daily Kansas (USPS 650 640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Fint Hall, Lawen. Kansas, Kan 6051, 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, Kan 6064. Subscription by mail are $15 for six months or $2 per year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 per year in Dudley County. Mail to: Postmaster: SEND ADDRESS changes to the University Daily Kansas, 118 Stauffer Fint Hall, Lawen, Kansas, Kan 6051.
DON KNOX Editor
PAUL SEVART VINCE HESS Managing Editor Editorial Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM Campus Editor
DAVE WANAMAKER Business Manager
SUSANNE SHAW
SUSANNE SHAW General Manager and News Adviser
LYNNE STARK MARY BERNICA Retail Sales National Sales Manager Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
JILL GOLDBLATT Campus Sales Manager
Pornbusters
Law enforcement officials were in Wichita earlier this week, raising a hue and cry for tougher laws. The wolf among the sheep that they were referring to this time was pornography, in both shops and adult movie theaters.
pornography. Sedgwick County District Attorney Clark Owens complained that state laws governing pornographic material were weak, and that, as a result, law enforcement officials could not do their job. The importance of that job is becoming more obvious as sociologists and psychologists learn the possible dangers of the exposure of children to obscene material.
The problem with trying to limit the distribution of objectionable material is one of definitions. What is "objectionable" to some is "literature" or "art". or "entertainment" to others.
entertainment to others. There are those among us who would, and, indeed, have banned works by D.H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut on the grounds that such books are obscene and objectionable and have a detrimental effect upon the nation's young. That is the same kind of language used by some who want stricter pornograph laws.
by some who want stronger protections. A difference does exist between "The Grapes of Wrath" and Hustler magazine, but any law that applies to one will also likely apply to the other. If the laws are vague, then the books we are able to read and films we are able to see will depend upon the whims of the people who interpret and enforce those laws — the courts and police.
enforce those law. Kansans should be concerned about pornography in the state, especially child pornography, which consists of the misuse and abuse of children. Angrily lashing out in the statute books at such filth, however, would be improper and dangerous.
dangerous.
Attorney General Robert Stephan was right on target when he said that current laws were not specific enough. Only specific and exacting language in the obscenity laws can begin to separate the artistic wheat from the chaff and limit, though probably not eliminate, the spread of pornography.
Fight for change
Once again, racial oppression has erupted into violence. And once again, the place is South Africa.
This time, the catalyst was the recent elections for two new houses of the South African Parliament. Under a new constitution due to take effect Monday, a legislative house for Asians and one for South Africans of mixed race, known as coloreds, will be added to the present house, which is made up of whites.
Until now, the 870,000 Asians who live in South Africa have had no voice in the government. Neither did the 1.5 million coloreds. Those two groups will now have chambers with 40 and 80 members, respectively.
But effective control of the nation's government will remain with the 178-member House of Assembly, in which only whites can participate. The country's largest ethnic group, 22 million South African blacks, will continue to have no representation whatsoever.
Complaining that the new constitution is merely a cosmetic change, and that participation in the elections would lend credibility to apartheid, multracial opposition groups, such as the United Democratic Front, have urged South Africans to boycott the elections.
During the Asian vote yesterday, violence erupted between protesters and police at several polling stations, and some demonstrators were arrested.
Chris Heunis, South Africa's Minister of Constitutional Development, has said the boycotters supported "those who want revolution, not peaceful change." But one thing is clear from the response to the elections: Many of South Africa's minorities want more than window dressing.
Positive changes
Two seemingly small changes on campus should prove significant.
Maybe not this week or next, but sometime during the semester, many people will benefit from the return of phones to the offices of English department professors and from new office hours at many offices in Strong Hall and in some deans' offices.
The first change, to replace phones in the English department, may seem like no big deal. Anyone who has attempted to reach a professor by phone, however, knows the inconvenience of being able to call only the main office.
Here is to the sound of ringing phones in the offices.
Here is to the soho business. Another positive change is a policy to keep many offices in Strong Hall as well as some deans' offices open during the noon hour.
A complicating factor was that normal business hours varied among offices, but now most will have uniform hours.
Remaining open during the noon hour and establishing standard office hours mean greater convenience for those who have business to attend to on campus.
The "big, white school on the hill" looms in the eyes of a student at Haskell Indian Junior College who has recently arrived in Lawrence from a South Dakota reservation.
KU should seek closer ties to Haskell
The KU freshman from Johnson County tools down Highway K-10 into Lawrence, catching a brief glimpse of Haskell Indian Junior College as he speeds by.
Both students will live in the same two-university town.
But will the two students go through their college careers without knowing each of her?
Or will they take full advantage of the rich cultural resources and educational opportunities that exist in Lawrence?
For too long, most students from both schools have been unaware of or disinterested in what the other school has had to offer.
has had to offer. Haskell, celebrating its 100th year, is the only federally financed higher educational institute for American Indians that offers courses in liberal arts and applied sciences.
about 15 principal Indian languages are spoken on its campus.
its 750 students represent more than 52 tribes from 30 states, and
Students travel from as far away as Alaska, Florida and Maine to attend the school, and about 45 percent of the students come from reservations.
CHARLES
BARNES
Staff Columnist
Through utilization of Haskell's human and cultural resources, the KU community could be enhanced
Similarly, Haskell students could benefit from increased contact with KU.
People from the KU and Haskell communities should not live in two separate worlds, but should strive to bridge the gap.
Fortunately, some people already have formed strong and lasting bonds between the two communities.
Haskell graduate Sara Tubby began working at the University 31 years ago, when very few Indians were on campus and Lawrence diners had a policy of refusing service to Indians, blacks and Hispanics.
Tubby took a job with Watson Library and learned book repair and bindery skills. She worked her way to the top of her department and has become the KU library system's expert on book repair and bindery.
She has shared her culture with KU students and taught a Choctaw language course.
Tubby has maintained ties with the Haskell community, and two of her sons have attended that school. Her younger son is currently a KU senior.
She is a person of whom both the KU and Haskell communities can be proud.
Unfortunately, despite the success story of a few individuals, most Haskell students have little prospect of becoming a part of the KU community or attending KU.
They come from families that have
an average yearly income of $8,000
Average yearly income of $6,000
Against this backdrop, the
majority of KU students for
vertical training and never
consider what KU has to offer.
A Haskell administrator has suggested that a long-term solution to this problem would be to strengthen Haskell's remedial programs and raise the general level of education
For their part, KU students and faculty should think of ways to increase and strengthen their interaction with the Haskell community.
The KU School of Social Welfare has participated in a program that has enabled Haskell students to transfer to the University, and some contact has been made between the athletic departments of both schools.
By formalizing and expanding these contacts, KU and Haskell could increase cooperation and help improve relations between the two college communities.
Lawrence looks better after summer in Texas
This column is tantamount to an apology, for I have straved. I have cheated. I have gazed into the hazy, smoky eyes of a busy, brazen temptress come to steal me, and I have whispered my secrets into her ears.
Love means saying you're sorry as many times as need be.
So, from my knees, with a heavy heart, I beg; Lawrence, take me back. The tempiess wasn't empty-headed, far from it, but she wasn't you, either. Three hard months have taught me that home is not just where one's head slams into one's pillow.
The temptress, name of Austin,
bumped into my life from the hill
country of South Texas. She offered me
a lucrative summer job, a cheap
apartment, a famous university a
few blocks from my door, a growing
skyline and fine amusements, and all
the Mexican food I could eat.
I divorced Lawrence, the old battle-ax, for a vixen wearing nothing but a 10-gallon hat, a tazel and a smile. HOW dee, partner.
I didn't look closely enough at her stretch marks.
BRUCE F.
HONOMICHL
Staff Columnist
She had a water shortage, a bad case of street construction, a bad case of traffic and a bad case of politicians. I contracted a bad case of roommate.
I had to teach my roommate (a REAL smart boy, folks) how to fry an egg. I also had to teach him how to
The roaches even asked me to tiptoe. (It was only fair, I guess. They were there first.)
were there in. In the end, what made me long for he old battle-ax was not the traffic.
the endless street construction, the smog, the crime rate, my roommate, my freezing apartment, nor the cookie-cutter sameness that permeates all college towns.
Austin had a new highway here, a new factory there, new subdivisions everywhere and more and more traffic and fear in the name of progress City or female the fresh face one knows in youth changes, and, if one is distant long enough from that face, memory
I had no living history there. It would have taken years for me to build a living history, and I had only a summer to do so.
I soon realized that my college years belonged to the battle-ax. The distance heightened my appreciation for her.
for her.
In Austin I never fell painfully in love with the pretty mail clerk in the dorm or the sorority pledge in freshman English or the girl next door at the famous university, as I have done numerous times at the University of Kansas. At the famous university in Austin, I never slipped on the ice in winter. I never slept
under oak and walnut trees on spring afternoons. I never started a cup fight at a football game and I never destroyed five metal wastebaskets because THE girl refused to date me.
When my roommate at KU talks about Blutenbork, Gardner's Chicken Sauce and The Black Hole. I understand those phrases as part of our history (a name in the book) that we once had and a force in our room that makes our socks disappear, if you must know).
My roommate in the apartment near the famous university only granted, and only now and then. We didn't have the time to risk building a history, and knew it.
I'm sick of Mexican food, anyway. It's good to be home.
Forgive me, Lawrence, my sweet lady. I owe you a kiss on the cheek and a Joe's run.
In the spring, I ran away and all but renounced Lawrence as I was leaving. But a home is made of history, good and bad, and my history belongs to the battle-ax. We have no secrets.
NATURALLY, SOME ASPECTS OF THE FERRARO
COVERAGE SEEM EXCESSIVE
OR UNFAIR AND MAY DEEP
PUBLIC RESENTMENT OF THE
PRESS, THEY CAN'T
APPRECIATE OUR
DIILIGENCE IN
PROTECTING
DEMOCRACY FROM
ANY TAINT OF
CORRUPTION NO
MATTER WHERE
IT TURN UP.
U.S. elections ignore Israeli settlement issue
WASHINGTON — Like a nagging backache that recurs at inconvenient moments, the issue of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza has returned to a national politic of Israel and the United States.
The settlements — and their symbolism of the Israeli Likud Party's policy of "creating the fact" of permanent possession of the occupied territory — make up one of the most striking findings from the Labor Party and make any possibility of a working coalition in Israel remote.
However, as Merle Thorpe, a Washington lawyer interested in Middle East affairs, wrote in his recent book, "Prescription for Conflict," the U.S. policy of ignoring the settlements has become a test of $^{13}$
In the U.S. presidential campaign, the settlement issue resembles Sherlock Holmes' dog that didn't bark in the night: remarkable because of its silence.
credibility among the Arabs, and even among some Jews who disagreed with the Israeli government's tactic of taking over the West Bank through a spreading wave of settlements.
JIM ANDERSON
United Press International
Thorpe wrote, "They (the West Bank Palestinians) are convinced that the United States is indirectly responsible for the occupation and for the denial of their liberties. Unfortunately, similar anti-Americanism, stimulated by perceived American biases, has also spread to many other countries in the Middle East."
Thorpe's book said that a growing number of Israelis (29 percent in 1981, 48.5 percent in 1983) opposed establishment of further settlements
Former Prime Minister Men
achem Begin, a member of the Likud Party, put in motion Israel's West Bank policy.
bank policy
The former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benenvist, head of a study published by the American Enterprise Institute, thinks that the settlement policy had now gone so far that the Israeli takeover was irreversible.
Retired Israel Maj Gen Matityah Peled pointed out that U.S. economic assistance to Israel indirectly helped pay for the settlements
Good question.
In an article in the New York Times, Pled asked, "I for one would like to ask the American taxpayer: Why are you giving us the rope with which to hang ourselves?"
Good question.
Benveniest suggested one: "The Americans are sick and tired of the conflict. They are behaving just like people do in private life after they have tried to solve a problem without success. They persuade themselves that it is actually not important."
Another possible reason for the silence on an important but complex issue is that neither President Reagan nor Walter Mondale has records on the subject of which they can be terribly proud.
Reagan indirectly spurred on the building of the settlements in 1981 by watering down Carter administration policy statements.
His language was noticeably milder than the Carter administration's.
Carter and Mondale had a chance in 1978 to stop the settlements, as part of the Camp David Summit Carter — according to his own book and accounts by others at the summit — hammered away at Begin in a long session on the evening before the leaders announced their framework
Vice President Mondale was a prominent member of the U.S. team, thus, the settlement issue will likely continue to be an unwelcome guest at the banquet table of the U.S. elections.