UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of the authors.
November 15, 1979
Book policy a failure
The Kansas Union Bookstore's textbook department may be open for business again, after being closed for two months to clear out $900,000 worth of lofter books, but the problems that forced it to close seem likely to remain.
Betty Brock, manager of the Bookstore, says that University departments and instructors are a primary source of the overcrowding problems in the textbook department. Because instructors have ordered too many textbooks, Brock says, all of the unsold books had to be shipped back to the publishers to clear the way for new books coming in for next semester.
True, many of the overstocking problems could be eliminated—or at least alleviated—if instructors were more careful and realistic in their book orders. In addition, ordering on time could prevent some of the last-minute rushes and surprises that the Bookstore so often must contend with.
Although the latest order deadline was Oct. 31, only seven departments had their orders filed with the Bookstore by that date.
Beyond these problems, though, the Bookstore has flaws within its own organization that only aggravate the storage problem.
For one, although the Bookstore found it necessary to expand the upstairs to house the overflow of ceramic
beer mugs and stuffed Jayhawks, it still tries to cram all of the University's book orders into the basement. It just doesn't work.
Second, the Bookstore's contract with the University also poses some problems. That contract states that the Union Bookstore must order all books from the University library. So even if an instructor orders books through the independent Jayhawk Bookstore, the Union Bookstore through a referral agreement with
—through a reciprocal agreement with the Jayhawk Bookstore—sees those order blanks.
AND UPON seeing those blanks, the Union Bookstore must order those books, thus putting twice as many books as the instructor intended on the shelves of the two bookstores. It's no wonder that there are too many books in the basement level of the Union Bookstore.
At least one University department is upset enough with the hassles created by lack of space and an inefficient ordering system that it has taken over ordering and selling books for its own department.
If the problems of the Union Bookstore are to ever be resolved, they must be recognized as being more involved than just over-ordering.
The 1980 presidential race is on, which means that a horse of political speech writers are sitting at their typewriters and can use flattering American public.
Or, to put it more accurately, they are thinking of ways their candidates can lie to the American public.
Ted Kennedy, when he finally announced his candidacy last Wednesday, began the sweet talk by criticising a rather mild president's stance of being timid in presiding one's past a few months ago.
"BEFORE The last election," Kennedy said, "we were told that Americans were in control of the nation. We passionate. Now the people are blamed for every national ill and scandal as greedy, selfish, arrogant."
"Did we change so much in three years? Or is it because our present leadership does not understand that we are willing, even anxious, to be on the march again?"
But, Senator Kennedy, you may soon learn that just because it is said, doesn't mean it is true. Verbally bestowing virtues will not make it will not make them possess those virtues.
And although the implications of the president's words were greatly exaggerated by the author, they are a subject of which you spoke—energy—President Carter was far more accurate
Candidates wooing public with deceit
PERHAPS KENNETH doesn't think that the use of 30 percent of the world's energy by less than 5 percent of its population is greedy.
Perhaps he doesn't consider wasteful the use of two to three times more energy by Americans than by the citizens of such nations as Japan, Sweden and West Germany.
President Carter was not being vengeful for low ratings in the polls when he called the American people those things last summer.
He was putting a label on what he saw, when he looked at the American people still buying them, still driving them by buying them, still driving them a few blocks to the store and still leaving the motors running.
THE PRESIDENT was looking at the people who still insist on heating their homes to 70 degrees—a temperature those
Still, this is only one example of what could happen if we would stop being so wasteful.
President Carter has tried to tell us this—not nearly as forcefully as he should, but he has, at least, tried.
that are beyond our ken as well as our control.
He was watching people leave the lights on when they left a room, watching people leave the hot water running while they shaved.
This year, we have sent $65 billion to foreign countries for our oil imports—and that $65 billion accounts for only 43 percent of our total oil use.
COLUMNIST byczynakl
It was not what the American people wanted to hear.
Chappaquiddick a cloud on Kennedy candidacy
same people consider far too warm in the summer.
Here's another figure: About 42 percent of the oil we use is converted to gasoline.
WHAT WE want to hear is that we can overcome, that good old American ingenuity will prevail, that all we need is a leader to "get us on the march again."
Those few figures, when computed properly, will reveal this astonishing fact. If the average of all our cars was raised to a mileage of 60, we could cut our oil imports almost in half.
The time for hammering away with the hat of the American people is now. The Republican flatter us. President Carter will chime in. Soon the Republicans will be singing the same praise
THIS IS NOT a good time to be even a guest at the OPEC tables, much less a beggar. We are too dependent on situations
"We need not be permanent beggars at the banquet tables of the OPEC rulers," he told his fans last week.
And yet another: The average car on the road in this country gets about 14 miles per gallon.
And until the campaigns are over—if they ever are—we will have to turn to the wise words of the cartoon strip character Pogo who says, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Kennedy phoned no one until the next
There's probably a journalistic taboo against it and there are many who say it has no bearing on the presidential election and should not be mentioned.
Kennedy said that after he freed himself he dived for Kopechne but could not reach her because of the swift current.
SO KENNEDY LEFT. He said he returned to the scene of the party, went back to the car with some friends and finally made his way to his hotel.
The 1969 Chappaquillekick incident is one for the people to contemplate and discuss. It was a shocking moment, as Kennedy's opponents, President Carter has already commented on Chappaquillekick in the past, but not John Connally, never known for his tact, said simply that he had "never drowned
But I think those people are wrong. They're not aware of the law, and it is an issue that must be confronted because it says so much about the man, Ted Kennedy, who is loudly lauding as the man at the center of the court.
NEITHER HAS KENNY. But he certainly did not do all he could to save Mary J Kopechei, who was trapped in his car when he plunged and lay sedimented in six feet of water.
morning. Before he reported the accident he called an attorney. Presumably he asked how to escape prosecution and how he, as a public failure, should handle the incident.
The car was discovered by fishermen. By early afternoon, the day after the accident, Kennedy finally reported it.
It says a lot about the man who would be President.
KENNEDY INSISTS he lost his ability to operate clearly when he hit his head in the wreck. Yet he managed to walk more than a mile back to the cottage, and he swam a 500-foot stream to get back to his hotel when he touched the ferry had quit running at midnight.
When Kennedy left the party, he did not head for his or Koppehne's hotel. Instead drove toward the beach. While crossing the ocean, he controlled of the car and it plunged into the water.
As an issue it should not dominate debate. Kennedy should be ruled out as a candidate for several reasons—not solely for this one. But the issue should not be ignored.
The wreck occurred after a night of drinking and dining in a cottage on Chapquidquid Island near Martha's Vineyard, where the captain, all younger than the men, were present.
david COLUMNIST preston
THE INCIDENT is heavy on Kennedy's mind as he enters the 1980 presidential election. And it should be.
Kennedy claims that the incident is not at all indicative of his ability to handle a crisis today. I don't know where he draws the line between his responsible stage and he but insists that he has better judgment today than he did night 10 years ago.
His destination when he left the party and headed down the dirt road toward Dike Bridge is still not clear. There is nothing on the other side of the bridge but beach.
Abortion should be personal decision
To the Editor:
As a member of National Abortion Rights Action League, I think the writer on "Fetus Choice," (Nov. 2) misunderstands our goal. We are not in a group can make the decision on abortion. NARAL supports the right of individuals to make a decision regarding abortion, not any other choice. The right of individuals must be available if a woman is to have a choice. Unless abortion is safe and legal, women will have unsafe abortions which could lead to death, pain and severe injury for the woman.
In addition, I resent the anti-abortion, pro-life person who was exposed to the handicap by exploiting the handicap. As a disabled person, I assert that the prevalence of handicapped people and women is on the rise.
The writer also questions if any society should make decisions about who is born and suggests that that would encourage decisions of "mass death" of segments of the population. The German society which put millions of ethnic groups and handicapped people to death also outlawed abortion, calling it immoral. The analogy that some people make between abortion and mass death or murder is that the law and is not based on historical realities.
In conclusion, the only societal decision to be made on this issue is whether abortion should be legal or illegal. Any other decisions must be personal and individual. Allowing people to make decisions you disagree with is the wrong thing to do, and anyone's right to disagree with me, but they
What it suggests to students is that becoming educated is mainly a business of acquiring marketable skills rather than a process of learning to think; what it fails to consider is that the ability to think is the most basic, and even marketable, skill of all.
Thinking skills a lost commodity
Instead, I have watched them become more intellectually passive, more paralyzed by anxiety about their futures, more concerned with achieving at the expense of understanding and less able to think critically and independently.
IF I 15AW sign that students were being better nourished from this steady diet of supportively basic skills they are being fed, I am confident.
I remember thinking when I started teaching that teen-age, whatever else they didn't know, at least they knew that it was imptuous.
NOW, STUDENTS inclined to worry about finding a safe niche in the world. rather than to ask questions about it.
BROOKLINE, Mass. —Unlike the parents of my students, I find myself more annoyed than comfortable with the direction that education has taken in the last few years. I have no argument with the notion that it is important to usually teach what matters. What bothers me is that the Age of Competence is inspired by a vision of learning as shortsighted as the vision that inspired the age of relevance. In fact, the question “What is relevant?” once the unstated determinant of course content, hasn’t affected how students respond to propositional phrase, and now reads, “What is relevant to success?”
Their perspicacy isn't a result of laziness. Far from it. The most recent census of students I have taught have been more serious than
They assume that the teacher has all the answers and that their job is merely to obtain them, store them up, and bubble them up.
The new question is no more pedagogically sound than the old one, but it has had, from my experience, a more deadening effect.
N. Y. Times Special Features
Instead, we have come up with an approach that sounds rational, and is certainly consistent with current social and economic importance. We can see how the belief in the importance of their beliefs that learning is the painful but necessary act of swallowing undigestible chunks of knowledge, and that being able to learn is essential.
ever about the need for an education—so serious, in fact, that I wish for their sakes that they could relax a bit, and feel a little more exuberant about being young. It is, though, their anxiety about school does not grow with maturity than better, prepared for the world that so intimidates them.
I CAN'T resist the observation that Dickens' "Hard Times" provides a powerful lesson in what happens to a culture that has not been taught yet. The school effect, Mr. Gradridge's Model School, to exemplify both the cause and effect of an excessively pragmatic, spiritually impoverished,
We educators and parents are. In our zeal to put behind us the mistakes of the early 1970s by concentrating on practicality, we have managed to forget two critical principles: People learn best when their natural inquisitiveness, rather than their fear, is nurtured; and the true value and reward of an education is a richer and more meaningful relationship with the world—not a college degree, a job or a salary.
*STUDENTS*, of course, aren't really to blame for their attitudes or conclusions.
By JOHN M. RITCHIE
have no right to limit my choices and my right to control my reproductive life.
Derby graduate student
The full title of the novel, appropriately enough, is "Hard Times These Times." Graddrudd's views are as senseless now as the times.
John M. Ritchie teaches English at Brookline High School in Brookline, Mass.
The students are likened to "little vessels... ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they be full to it"
Minister inconsistent on rights of unborn To the Editor:
I would like to respond to a speech given recently by Rev. Jack Brumer on behalf of the Kansas Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. Rev. Bramer began his speech by saying, "The Protestant Christianity has strongly affirmed a reverence for all life." However, in the following sentence, after describing the reasons why abortion is so dangerous as superior to all others, he abruptly changed direction by concluding, "and in recognizing that there are tragic conflicts of life with life that may justify abortion" and then stated, "Developing the open theme by affirming the equality of all life, the second half of the sentence then condones the use of abortion process, which is inherently unequal. It is important to one life by ending the other."
The second paragraph opened with, "The most basic question involved in the abortion debate is whether abortion as such—no major Protestant faith group has taken a position advocating abortion." *Are* Protestant faith groups "correct" to the decision legalizing abortion on-demand obviously "has taken a position advocating abortion" when the carrier of the infant dies.
IN THE next sentence, Rev. Brener said "The most basic issue is one of religious freedom: whether those who face an unplanned emergency are free to follow their own path or not, without being dictated by the state." The Constitution, in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, promises to every person "the equal protection of the laws," thereby asserting the supremacy of statutory law and inspiring practice which conflicts with it.
In the third paragraph, Rev. Bremer described those opposed to the Supreme Court decision as trying to impose their "societal view" upon everyone else. I hope the following quote will help to illustrate how the court's decision was delimited by religious or ethnic affiliation.
From the Geneva Declaration of the World Medical Association: "I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of confection."
Rev. Brémert's next paragraph stated, "The various Protestant faith groups differ about when unborn胎儿 life becomes truly human, personal life. In decades the debate has shifted from abortion mediation in Washington, D.C. These authorities in various fields from around the world reached almost unanimously the following conclusion: "The majority of our group are unaccompanied unborn babies of sperm and egg, or at least the blastocyst stage, and the birth of the infant, at which
point we could say this was not a human life, one changes occurring between imminent months. In the fifth month of life, a one-week-old child or a mature adult are merely stages development and maturation.
AT CONCEPTION, a being is created whose chromosome number leaves no doubt as to his or her humanity. The growth of the organism depends on the properties of life that he or she displays.
be deprived of life, liberty or prope,
but avoid the process of law. The Human
Life is an unequal matter, the moment
of conception is the only legal
response to this situation consistent with our
goals.
Upon consideration of the constitutional aspect, in conjunction with the accumulated experience, it is appropriate to conclude that the legalization of the abortion process breaches the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
2702 W. 24th St. Terrace
Pink sweater story greatly overplayed
To the Editor
Why did you put a banner across the top of the Nov. 9 issue of the University Daily Kansan indicating this was to be a lampon issue of campus values?
Below the fold, a story on the breaking Iranian issue already causing reverberations on college campuses less than 100 miles from us.
A story on the delayed delivery of
A sweater to sororites and fraternities holds
interest only for those caught in the sweater
problem and those of us who can find a
sweater to wear, as a treatment of the woes of a few Greeks impatient for imitation catholic sweaters.
Above the fold, pink sweaters
THE CONTENT and placement of this article mirrors in the editors the same forethought the young lady in the story of the girl with the sweater seabornal William Williams.
"One time she contacted Williamson, he claimed that her order was late because he was having trouble getting pink sweaters.
"It was not until she had hung up and checked the order that she realized they had not ordered pink sweaters."
Is the Kansas having as much trouble getting stories as Williamson is having getting pink sweaters?
Too late perhaps, the Kansan is realizing that the majority of the students did not order pink sweaters for their page-one headline.
THIS IS AN important story. But is printing a local story first priority regardless?
A paper emphasizing primarily local conflicts, however petty, imparts to students that they live an ivory tower existence.
The below-the-fold story on Iran proves no such existence is possible.
Laura Davidson
Overland Park senior
Stu Litchfield
Overland Park sonhome
To the Editor:
Ungrateful Iranians should leave U.S.
when I came to this University last year, I felt secure in knowing that KU provided equal opportunities for people of every race and ethnicity. My foreign students and foreign foreigners have never bothered me since I have traveled through many foreign lands, and I realize the importance of cultural values through personal contact. I have never considered myself to be very nationalistic; the "love-it-or-leave-it" mentality is too simplist to be taken seriously.
My question is this: When do guests become so obnoxious that it becomes necessary to ask them to leave? How much pressure does the name of freedom before enough is allowed?
I cringe when I read of Iranian students who, after using the University's facilities, crowding the classes and poorly teaching undergraduates, can openly support causes American citizens. It's disgusting when I see them interfering with the speeches of others whose viewpoints are just as valid if not more so. It's disturbing to see a national nounment desecrated. I was sickened when I read about the riotations on earth labeled "Satanian America."
GO BACK TO your own nation that you have secured what you said you wanted so badly—save the redundant execution of an already terminally ill man—a nation with a leader that has stepped back in time, and who is in charge of standards are minuscule to noxious.
America is by no means perfect, but that is no reason for us to allow ourselves to be slapped in the face by our guests.
Personally, I would rather see America suffer slightly with 8 percent less oil than to endure another insult to our pride as a nation.
My patience has worn thin. I am more convinced than ever that, since we try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one, we need to do better and those of our true allies and tell the ungrateful leeches to go to hell. I don't this attitude much, but it seems that we either do this or fail to a multitude of Americans who are more important what was best and got put down for time if time after time. If Iran can't be civil to Americans, then America has no reason to be civil to Iranians. Leave us in peace or whatever Khomeini allows. Just leave.
Wayne Reddick
Wayne Reddick
Springfield, Mo., sophomore
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