UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorslals
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kanasan editor staff. Stified columns represent the views of the editors.
November 7,1979
NRC realizes threat
It had to happen sooner or later; the Nuclear Regulatory Council told a House of Representatives subcommittee that it would not procure nuclear plants near populated areas.
NRC Chairman Joseph M. Hendrie told the committee that his commission extended a freeze on new nuclear plants at least until spring.
The continuance of the freeze, which was started after the Three Mile Island fiasco last March, will affect four plants scheduled to open by January and 88 others in various stages of construction.
The NRC said the moratorium wounds give policy makers time to consider recommendations made by a presidential commission on the Three Mile Bridge, which is sound and is based on some very real fears of the dangers of nuclear energy.
Hendrie also indicated that a moratorium on all plants—including the 70 now in operation—was not just a remote possibility.
In fact, eight of the 12 presidential commission members said they supported a moratorium, on all nuclear thought, though they couldn't agree on details.
MONDAY'S DECISION means a loss of dollars to the nuclear industry. To millions of Americans, however, Monday's decision means they will have nuclear weapons safely in their lives, that nuclear accident will be less of a threat.
That is an assurance that has been needed for some time. If Americans are to be subjected to the horrendous threat of the nuclear industry, and if Kansans are to have their own nuclear bombshell at Wolf Creek, then that threat should be completely investigated.
The presidential commission and the NRC have recognized the threat. Perhaps soon they will finally recognize the futility of continued operation of nuclear plants and declare a moratorium on the entire industry.
Only than will the threat be eliminated.
KU should investigate custodians' complaints
They quietly come out at night. Armed with brooms, buckets, cleansers and vacuum sweepers, they wage war against soiled envelopes—trash, dirt and germs.
Before the sun rises, they usually are victorious, the buildings across the campus are transformed almost miraculously from pits to pristine structures.
These "soldiers," KU custodians, rarely receive praise and gratitude for a job well done.
And rarely are they heard complaining. Until recently, that is.
Within the last two weeks, they have created a sit on campus with a whirlwind of accusations and lawsuit threats involving their supervisor and the University.
The controversy centers on complaints by the Custodian Action Committee, a group representing the custodians, against their services in the University's insurance services, a Colorado-based company hired by the University in 1977 to improve the efficiency of the custodian services on campus.
The University was officially thrown into the ring last Thursday, when the committee said it would involve KU in any legal action against AMS, on the alleged violation of
BUT NOT many people, especially KU administrators, seem willing to listen to the complaints, hoping perhaps that the trouble will be solved, and good times will return to Mt. Orcad.
But although administrators prefer that
John COLUMNIST fischer
AMS and the custodians solve the problem alone, the University cannot ignore this situation.
The University seems reluctant to accept the fact that KU is a major party in the conflict because its employees are involved.
The administrators have tried to make amends by talking with AMS about changes. But that simply is not enough.
With workers' allegations of physical infringement against the tiring of workers for no apparent reason, the situation deserves a great deal more attention from the authorities.
Although the administration has said that it cannot talk with the CAC because of the contract with AMS, the legal questions don't prohibit investigation.
Only one party seems to be correct in its accusations, and the University has an obligation to determine which one it is. The U.S. $25 contract is up for renewal next year.
THE UNIVERSITY also has an obligation to its employees. An investigation would demonstrate an interest to the custodians.
The administration cannot ignore this situation any longer. It owes it to the custodians and to the rest of the University to investigate these allegations.
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Textbooks take joy out of reading
I'm not sure when it happened.
I think it was sometime in the middle of the seventh chapter of my journalism law book, or perhaps it was after I had finished reading it. But then I realized that I came to realize that I hated reading.
I was stunned. But then I stopped to think about it. I realized that I had done nothing but read for the past 16 years. Nine months later, I spent reading one assignment after another. One book after another after another after another. Each semester brings another mile-long reading list, of great achievements in literature.
COLUMNIST
John logan
I'VE JUST reached the point where I have had enough. I need to escape, to go
someplace where nobody will come up to me and say, "Read 250 pages by next Wednesday."
It's not that I can't do the reading, I can.
But I find myself hating every viblely cursing my prepositional phrase and inverted pyramid.
Hate reading is really unusual for me. At an early age I had a voracious appetite for books. I read everything I could get my brain working on, and I read. Even through high school I read
for fun, often reading novels between classes or before swimming practice.
But not any more. Whatever attraction books held for me has died here at KU, a victim of suffocation by mountains of textbooks and Xeroxed copies.
SOMEBODY REALLY should do a study on the amount of reading an average student is required to do. Here at KU the students are eight textbooks a semester. Multiply that by eight undergraduate semesters and you have the total amount of time brought up the way through about 60 books which
That probably wouldn't be so bad, except that the authors of most textbooks apparently compete with each other for a certain subject. It is better writing. That writing, more than anything
else, has turned me off reading. It has become a chore rather than a pleasure.
UNFORTUNELY, the nearest break from the printed page is more than a month away, a month after that includes five English books, four law chapters, a dozen novels, and several other assorted textbooks and readings. Even then, the respite is all too brief.
And then comes the realization that it is impossible to avoid the printed word. Books are everything at KU, they are everywhere there. We cannot learn unless we read them.
Perhaps that is true. But even so, there must be some way to put the pleasure back into reading. Because the way things are now, reading is absolutely no fun.
Stories behind facts spice texts
N V Times Special Features
By KEN MACRORIE
I'm waiting for a plane in the Las Vegas airport, listening to the tiny clunk-clank of silver dollars falling into pans below slot machines. The rain of money sounds torential. Passersby stop to look. They know money is being 'made', as we say, just as is school they know that textbooks were opened and read for a test, so students can learn truth, more money is lost being than won from slot machines, more facts forgotten than remembered from textbooks.
For 30 years as a professor I've "given" assignments in textbooks and before that for 20 years "done" them as a student. Not until this year, as I was writing my fourth book, I realize what sort of creatures textbooks really are.
The revelation came when I was writing a book to help people record what a number of teachers around the country and I call an "i-Search." A person conducts a search by asking questions about life and lives the story of his adventure. When I reached the point in the book where I had finished telling how I Searchers learn from talking to experts, and I felt must have been doing it.
I KNEW THAT all the lists of reference books and instructions on how to make note cards and bibliographies that textbooks have presented do not result in well-documented, useful undergraduate research names.
The textbooks told students what the principal reference guides are and how to use them; but students forget or don't understand, and then misuse them. In their books there are many examples of what tools are for dull people. Yet true investigators are ex-
satisfied, sustained in their work not by instructions but by curiosity. I thought that if I could show students why and how reference works were created, they would learn the concepts. But they would realize what needs each one answers.
PERHAPS, I thought, I should tell the story of how ten Franklin got us into libraries. or How William Frederick Poole made the first subject-indexed guide to literary journals. This could look through every issue of the journals to find something new.
And perhaps I should tell how the 13-volume Oxford Edition dictionary was made-tue me the historical development of the dictionary, but might tell some of the stories of the dictionary's 70-year pregnancy and may be something of the editors' efforts. But the story is less than that. Then these students could see that in their way they are the authorities I present—authors we own certain
Halfway through writing those stories, I sensed what I was producing—no a textbook but a context-book. Suddenly I knew that most textbooks are fatally lacking. They misrepresent. They tell less than half-truths.
They peddle the ideas, methods, principles and knowledge of authorities but abstracted and detached from them.
BY THEIR FORM, they imply that the discoveries
wing full-blow in the heads of experts.
No hint of frustration, joy, missteps into quackness, divorce, bickering, boredom from the task of sorting and labeling shards of fact year after year until—Eureka! or once, again, nothing at all.
This framework of abstracted idea and generalization is information in the field, people without the expient that breeds meaning, people who cannot perceive a context that accretes and fills in the chinks between rocks, sitting in the shadows. This is what we call "context."
Textbooks fail even to hint that the discoverers—those knowledgeable ones—are human and that this failure has a real bearing on the research.
THE OTHER DAY, a math teacher said to me: "When I pointed out to my students that an answer in the back of the textbook was wrong, they said, 'It can't be. That's where you find the right answers.'"
Because textbooks betray none of the humanity of their authors or of the authorities whose work they merchandise, they unwittingly imply that their readers can never themselves become authorities.
I'm finishing my context book now. It's longer than my last two textbooks, and truer.
ICANHEAR fearful publishers say, after reading it: "You may be right but you're being impractical. Telling stories about how knowledge was arrived at will double or triple the length of textbooks."
But we don't need to tell a story about how every fact or circumstance is just enough to convince readers of the authority of authors.
And suppose the context-book is twice as long and
the context-arent's. Aren't we willing to pay for
kindness of a book?
Ken Macrae, who is a former professor of English at Western Michigan University, has written several books
Nursing school funding concerns KU
To the Editor:
I have always felt that the University Daily Kansan does an admirable job in covering a wide variety of campus events. However, I also feel that it is only the Lawrence campus which is covered in the Kansan. As a Junior Nursing student at the Lawrence Medical Center, I feel we deserve the attention afforded KU students on the main campus.
At this time the School of Nursing is facing a very serious issue regarding funding for the upcoming year. An additional 40 students are eligible to attend Junior class. Eighteen additional faculty members were requested to cover the increased student load, yet only two faculty members were requested to receive a faculty ratio is imperative due to the intensity of the course of study. Direct patient care (i.e. dressing surgical wounds, passing examinations) can not be learned in a large lecture setting.
PRESENTLY THE entire area is facing a shortage of nurses which has almost reached crisis proportions. There are 160 openings for R.N.'s and L.P.N.'s at the University of Kansas Medical Center alone. How can we hope to alleviate this shortage if we do not have enough in a larger class and, therefore, the number of nurses entering the job market?
It has come to our attention that funds are available for the Nursing School. This money, however, is being beamed in different directions at this time. Decisions
on budget allocations for the 1980-1981 school year will be made sometime in December. It is for that reason that I am writing this letter to the President of the Lawrence campus, the Medical Center, or the Regents Center would write a letter to his state legislator requesting that funds be raised for the School of Nursing, the situation could be resolved. This resolution would, in turn, benefit every resident of the area, including students, by providing better health care.
I would like to thank the Kansan and the Lawrence student body in advance for their support of this cause.
Barb Krumme
Junior Class Representative
University of Kansas School of Nursing
Catholic Church opposes abortion
To the Editor:
I would like to publicly clarify a statement made in the UDK on Tuesday, Oct. 30, in "Right-to-abortion demonstrators lobby Kansas senators by mail." The Rev. Jack Brenner, a United Methodist minister and Director of the Ecumenical Christian organization that there were Catholic organizations that support the right of abortion.
There are no official Catholic
organizations, and by official I mean those appointed and supported by the official Catholic Church. that support abortion programs are not in conflict on this issue. There may be Catholics who belong to certain organizations who do support this issue or organizations who call themselves Catholic, or organizations who speak on behalf of the Catholic Church.
Father Vincent E. Krische KU Catholic Campus Minister
Catholic moral teaching is very clear on the rights of the fetus as well as on the rights all involved. To deny fatal life is to attack life at its most innocent and defenseless
To the Editor:
prevent the black majority of its people from being educated. This autumn the Student Senate and the Graduate Student Senate stand on whether to urge the Endowment Association to pay more.
Senate should tell KU to divest in S. Africa
The KU Endowment Association provides generous support for our own education. It ironically, its investment in companies such as IBM and Coca-Cola金钱 in a country that has erected laws to
In white-dominated South Africa, all schooling for the black population is tightly controlled. The blacks are to learn only what the government wants them to. No black is supposed to receive an education that would let him or her compete successfully in school and be a spot on a black child's education for every 400 spent on the education of a white child.
Every effort also is made to keep the adult black population ill-informed. According to a United Nations report, it is a criminal offense in South Africa for a black citizen to attempt to kidnap or rape a person to a few of his friends. To be caught doing so brings up six to十月 imprisonment. An African pastor who teaches his congregation how to read the Bible risks a jail sentence, as does an African student with a lecture at the University of Caesetown.
Our own education should not be financed, even in part, through the profits made off of a system that so limits the educational freedom of its workers. To continue with investments in such a system, we need to put pressure on the Endowment Association has stood for.
The Student Senate should say to the Endowment Association, "Divest."
Nadia Kaviany
Nadia Kaviany Southfield, Mich., junior