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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Tuesday, Dec. 3, 1985
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Another elections fiasco
Two years ago, Student Senate elections were run so badly that a new one had to be held. Senate leaders said afterward. "Never again."
Last fall, the Senate tinkered with its rules. This year, the Student Senate Elections Committee decided to use voting machines so that things would run smoothly.
But the Elections Committee now is faced with two appeals concerning how the elections were run, and students have seen another elections fiasco.
On Nov. 20, polls were not open when they were supposed to be, and they were clearly under-staffed. Rumors persisted that some students voted twice.
But problems were present before then.
Coalition leaders and candidates for Senate seats waited until Oct. 28 — the filing deadline for senatorial candidates — for a clue about how Senate seats would be apportioned among the schools.
A final decision was not made until just two weeks
oefore the elections. Political bickering between the Elections Committee and the Student Senate Executive Committee over which enrollment figures to use threatened to delay the elections.
The Senate needs an earlier, specific deadline for informing coalitions of how Senate seats will be distributed. A specific policy for which enrollment figures will be used would also help.
The results of any Senate election cannot be considered truly valid unless the elections are run competently. Perhaps further tinkering with Senate rules is needed.
They're charged with guaranteeing that the elections run smoothly. They are either prepared to do their job, or they aren't.
But rule changes cannot anticipate every possible problem. Preparations for the elections are the responsibility of the Elections Committee and its leaders.
This year, they weren't.
A clumsy mistake
When Egyptian commandos stormed a hijacked EgyptAir jetliner Nov. 24 in Malta, they carried more than just the burden of freeing the plane. They carried the burden of mistakes by others.
Somewhere along the line, mistakes occurred at the Athens, Greece, airport, where the hijacked flight began. Athens also was the origin of the TWA flight hijacked in June and taken to Beirut, Lebanon.
But no one had died at that point. And although these hijackers began killing selected passengers early in the episode, the biggest mistake was a clumsy commando raid that raised the death toll from a handful to 60.
Greece, trying to shift the blame, says the weapons used in the latest terrorism were placed on the plane during a previous stop in Egypt. Maybe mistakes were made there too.
Violent hijackings leave no good choices. But the first goal of authorities must be the safe release of as many hostages as
Egypt seemed intent on making a statement against terrorism as violent as the hijacking itself. That intent is understandable: Egypt thinks that Libya, its neighbor, gives support to such hijackers and would like to undermine the Egyptian government.
possible, and usually the passage of time works against hijackers.
Nevertheless, civilized nations need to strive for civilized responses to terrorism. Only when those responses fail should violent raids be used.
Egypt put things in the wrong order by carrying out a commando raid within a day of the hijacking. It needed to let time work on the hijackers.
Yes, they might have killed more passengers. But the outcome of this episode, with its explosive finish, was a much greater loss of life than most such episodes.
One person died in the TWA hijacking. One person died on the Achille Lauro. But 60 died in Malta. The results should teach a lesson.
The wrong approach
A plan by State Sen. Wint Winter Jr. to bring community colleges under the supervision of the Board of Regents at least tries to put some order into the state's system of higher education.
But the proposal dodges the more pressing issues of inadequate financing and too much duplication of programs at too many schools.
But those programs were already dying for lack of interest. And community colleges still attract large numbers of students who seek alternatives to four-year universities.
Winter hopes that the Regents, with control over the community colleges, could reduce some of this duplication. He points to its program cuts as an example of the Regents' willingness to trim the dead wood in the schools' curriculum.
Perhaps the state should consider eventually bringing the entire system of higher education under one banner. But for now, the Legislature needs to consider more modest solutions.
It could merge some of the too-close regional community colleges, particularly those in Labette and Montgomery counties. Then it could trim further unnecessary programs at the state universities.
Most important, the Legislature should increase state revenues so that higher education doesn't have to look to program cuts to end its financial woes.
Rob Karwath
Editor
John Hanna Michael Totty Managing editor Editorial editor
Lauretta McMillen Campus editor
Susanne Shaw General manager, news adviser
Duncan Calhoun
Business manager
Brett McCabe Sue Johnson
Retail sales Campus sales
Megan Burke
National/Co-op sales
John Oberzan
Sales and marketing adviser
**LETTERS TO THE EDITOR should be typed, double-spaced and less than 300 words. Include the editor's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, include class and hometown, or faculty or staff position. GUEST SHOTS should be typed, double-spaced and less than 700 words. The
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Mailbox
Business enrollment
This letter is to set Larry Brown, the Kansan and concerned KU students straight about the "80 regular students who were disrolled from business courses because they were not properly advised of the prerequisites." (Larry Brown, Nov. 11 Kansan).
The main reason many of these students were initially enrolled in business classes was not that they were improperly advised. Instead, they were admitted into the school under the condition that they fulfill the admission requirements by the start of the semester in which the students were initially admitted.
For various reasons, these students failed to meet the admission requirements, were informed of their failure by mail, and failed to change their schedules. Thus they were administratively canceled from the restricted classes.
Many other students were canceled because they did not take the necessary steps to transfer information to verify their completion of required courses.
Some students did claim they were improperly advised into taking these
The school will continue to strictly enforce the enrollment in business courses. In order to maintain a favorable student/instructor ratio and an environment geared toward higher learning, the classes must be open only to those qualified to take them.
In fact, all 86 students were encouraged by phone or letter to petition the cancellation in case an error was made. Once again, all petitions were treated with the utmost of fairness to the student. As a result, only 27 students were officially disenrolled.
Larry Brown, you are a quality coach and community leader and as such, your words and actions carry great clout. I hope, in the future, you will get all the facts straight before you state your position publicly.
classes. In every case, if the student could substantiate his or her claim in some way, they were allowed to remain in class.
The School's first responsibility is to maintain a quality education for its current students.
Steve Bratton
Steve Bratton undergraduate business adviser
The letter by Paul Stephen Lim,
"Proper Etymology," never should have appeared in the Kansan. The best adjective to describe it is "sophomoric." I would classify the letter as below the standards for a first-class university newspaper.
Avoid innuendo
Leave innuendoes to less-thanwholesome forms of media. Contrary to some popular beliefs, there are people on this campus who take offense at off-color writing.
Neil Brown Lawrence graduate student
Parking complaint
Enclosed is a letter I sent to the Parking Service of the University.
On receiving the ticket, I wrote a letter of explanation concerning my parking violation. So it is with a great deal of contempt that I pay this fee.
Please find enclosed a check for the amount of $12.50. This is payment of a traffic fine given to me the night of Oct. 31 for parking next to a yellow curb in a parking area across the street from the Union, where I was attending a concert to which the public had been invited.
There is no question that I was parked next to a yellow curb. But there is a question whether one could see that yellow curb at night with other cars parked along it.
The greater question, however, is how badly do you want to promote poor public relations with the community? (I happen to feel myself very much a part of the University family, since it is my reason for being in this state and my husband has given 15 years of service to it.)
But let's suppose that I am just a member of the community. A visitor
to the campus to enjoy a Halloween concert. Do you really think it's worthwhile to insist on payment of a fine when the person has explained that she did not intentionally park illegally and asked you to please overlook this infraction?
Clare T. Bell McLouth resident
I very much think you hurt the image of a very good midwestern university—not great, mind you, but very adequate. "And as long as small-minded people are interacting with the public at large in its behalf, it hasn't a chance of becoming otherwise.
Alternative to waiting
Mike Snider's report of comments presented in behalf of JPL Firearms and citizens opposed to the adoption of a firearm-purchase waiting period (Kansan Nov. 20) failed to make mention of the several constructive alternatives to such a proposal advanced by Mr. Black.
I think this omission casts those who oppose such a rule in a totally negative light and is not at all representative of our position as responsible citizens. The omission is therefore very careless journalism.
The following constructive measures were presented:
1. The Lawrence Police Department computer could be made available to Lawrence firearms dealers directly, thus allowing a background check in minutes instead of days. Dealers have no desire to sell firearms to people legally barred from possessing them.
2. The money required to enforce and keep records for what we think would be useless legislation could be better spent directly addressing the issue of suicides in general by financing a professionally staffed crisis intervention center in Lawrence.
3. Link any such center with the KU Suicide Hotline.
Although I stachily oppose a waiting period because I think it is both unworkable and needlessly restrictive of trade for the reasons expressed, I support the primary goals of the issue's proponents: stemming crime and suicide. I think that there are far better means to these ends than waiting periods, and many others think likewise.
George R. Pisani director of laboratories biological sciences
Some values from '50s worth saving
Correction
Because of an editor's error, a letter in Tuesday's Kansan incorrectly stated the number of Jews in Syria in 1948. The correct number is 45,000.
Not long ago, I received a scathing rebuke from a reader about a column I wrote last summer. The letter writer inferred from the column that I favored a return to the entire value system of the 1950s.
The author drew that inference because I seemed to quote with approval my father's firm edict that one of my sisters could not associate with a young woman because "she has a history," as my father put it.
The argument of the author was that if I approved of my father's action, that must mean I endorse all the other values of that period. He said I must be prepared to accept the reimposition of segregation, a backlash in the progress of women and a general retardation of the state of personal liberty.
Such exercises are inevitable for most of us. President Kennedy once
It was difficult for me to discern how one anecdote could have engendered such a sweeping rejoinder. All the same, I found myself examining what I found good and bad about the era that shaped me.
said, "We are all chauvinists for our respective generations."
Anyone who suspects I want to go back to the social strictures of the '80s must have missed the main point I sought to make. It is not the loss of institutionalized bigotry that I lament.
What I miss was exemplified by an event I attended in Los Angeles the other night. It was the 21st annual banquet of the West Coast Chapter of Boys High School of Brooklyn, N.Y.
Alumni from as far back as the class of 1917 were there, straight and proud of their lifetime association with a school that helped change all our lives. Graduates at the banquet represented a half-century span of classes, although not every intervening year was on hand.
There were distinguished physicians, lawyers, scientists, athletes and journalists. The school produced such success stories as baseball star Tommy Davis, author Clifton Fadiman, actor Alfred Drake, lawyer Louis Nizer, basketball coach Lenny Wilkens, comedian Alan King,
Robert C. Maynard
Oakland Tribune
philosopher Sidney Hook and composer Aaron Copeland.
The 200 or so of us gathered in Los Angeles tried to answer the question: What was so special about the place? It was not just the faculty. We had many different faculties over that long span. And as we compared notes, it was obvious all faculty members were not universally revered.
It couldn't have been the principals altogether, either. There had been too many of them since 1879, and not all of them great.
So what was it? Discipline. Above all, that is what we shared, a tradition of academic discipline. The faculty drilled us in the art of learning. They even intimidated us a little by painting pictures of what befell boys who did not study at least four hours a night.
It was remarkable as we talked to realize almost none of us knew the first names of any of our teachers. Every teacher was "Mister," "Mrs." or "Miss." That was part of the code of discipline.
Empty form, you might say. What's that old-fashioned stuff got to do with the modern world? I think it has to do with being made aware early that preparation for life is serious business.
All too often in my visits to schools today, I get a sense that the school experience is not related to the demands of later life. I don't mean that to be a universal condemnation. Plenty of teachers try hard.
The buzz term we use so often these days in business is corporate culture. I guess old Boys High had a certain culture and it swept you up, regardless of who you were.
Given the choice all over again of the loose culture so common today in school and the demanding discipline of Boys High, I'd vote for the tough road. But that does not mean I want to go to the back of the bus.
Hart's pitch may cost him D.C. votes
Doesn't Gary Hart know that if he wins the 1988 Democratic nomination, the District of Columbia's three electoral votes are a sure thing for him in the general election?
Is he really willing to risk what is now the last bastion of loyalty to the Democratic Party in a presidential election? Is it possible he just does not care?
or has that savvy senator, who almost won the nomination last year against all odds, committed a political blunder of mammoth proportions?
Deep into the evening not very long ago, Hart came to the Senate chamber and did in the District of Columbia.
He offered an amendment to the District of Columbia appropriations bill that stated that Congress "expresses no preference" on the efforts of any city to win a major league franchise.
His amendment, Hart said, would supersede offensive language in the House report on the bill, which congratulated the District on its "aggressive manner" in going after a franchise and for attempting to "market the Washington area as the ideal location" for baseball's next team.
Steve Gerstel
United Press International
Although Hart has to be indicted as the ringleader, Sens. Richard Lugar, R-InD., and Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., have to be hauled up as coconspirators. They also sponsored the amendment.
At least, Hart was honest about it, saying he would be delighted to have a major league team in Denver and rattling off the economic advantages that would accrue to the largest city in his state.
Lugar naturally was silent. Indianapolis, which is also trying for a
Lautenberg was equally partisan, grandly extolling the Meadowlands complex in northern New Jersey.
But little three-electoral-vote District of Columbia could not fight on its own behalf.
team, is better known for stealing them in the middle of the night - witness the heist of the professional football Colts from Baltimore.
There are 10 cities that want a baseball team, but none of them,
Hart, at least, can make a case for Denver, but Lautenberg would have a tough time assuring that northern New Jersey needs a team.
But northern New Jersey? Those fans already have the Yankees and the Mets, which certainly is plenty — at least it was this year — for any one area.
The District, you see, has no representation in the Senate. And it doesn't have a baseball team either and hasn't had one for 14 years.
Denver, a great sports town, probably deserves a baseball team, although the air there is mighty thin and the ball would fly so far Babie Ruth, Roger Maris and Hank Aaron could become asterisks.
none except Washington, D.C., has ever had one. And Washington has had two, the last of which was packaged by a man named Robert Short and trudled to some forsaken place in Texas.
And for a smart politician, Hart's timing was atrocious.
He was picking on the District of Columbia just about the time the city's representatives were making their pitch to baseball caar Peter Ueberroth.
And the presentation included a letter from President Reagan saying he looked forward "to a tradition which has long been absent from this city—the presidential privilege of throwing out the first ball."
It's good politics for Hart to be on the other side in an argument with Reagan but not when baseball in the District is the issue.
.
Doesn't Gary Hart want to throw out the first ball in April 1899?