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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Friday, Nov. 15, 1985
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
A careful way to divest
Tuesday's ruling by Attorney General Robert Stephan offers the Kansas University Endowment Association a way out of its "to divest or not to divest" dilemma.
The ruling still won't permit the Endowment Association to rush out, loudly condemn apartheid and put its money into less tainted investments.
Stephan ruled that Kansas law, specifically the prudent man rule, would not stand in the way if the Endowment Association chose to divest from companies doing business in South Africa.
But it can no longer hide behind the prudent man rule. The rule, according to the Endowment Association, only permitted investment decisions that were based on a stock's performance and not on moral judgments.
The business care rule, which is the one Stephan says applies to the Endowment Association, suggests that the stormy political and economic climate in South Africa could be reason enough to divest from companies doing business there.
KPERS decided to sell most of its holdings in companies that do business in South Africa. It retained stock only in those U.S. companies that abide by the Sullivan Principles, a voluntary set of guidelines providing for equal treatment on the job for blacks and whites.
A similar action by the Endowment Association would signal its opposition to apartheid, call attention to its support for those U.S. businesses committed to improving the lives of South African blacks and still adhere to sound investment practices.
Best of all, after Stephan's ruling, it would not be illegal.
As the freighter Marshal Konev steams for the Soviet Union laden with American corn, it leaves in its wake the confusing tale of Miroslav Medvid.
The 25-year-old Ukrainian sailor grabbed worldwide attention last week by leaping 40 feet from the deck of his ship into the Mississippi River, apparently in an attempt to defect.
One alternative course was set by the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System earlier this fall.
The Medvid mystery
This should encourage the rising chorus of protest from student and faculty groups. And now that it is free of the more restrictive rule, perhaps the Endowment Association could gracefully reach some compromise with those clamoring for divestment.
He was caught by another Soviet sailor and returned to the ship in handcuffs.
Through a twisted series of events, U.S. border patrol officers sent Medivd back to the ship. But before he set foot on the Konev's gangplank, he jumped into the river again.
State Department officials later interviewed Medvid. He told them, as his captain and two Soviet diplomats looked on, that he had merely fallen overboard.
It's too late to determine
Medvid's intentions. But U.S. officials should investigate why the border officers sent Medvid back, even, according to a translator, after she told them he clearly wanted asylum.
Questions swirl over whether Medvid was sacrificed so as not to sour next week's Geneva summit. Other plausible scenarios fault the language barrier or incompetence for bungling the case.
Once they returned Medvid,
the border officers surrendered all U.S. options in the case.
Detaining the ship was not
the answer. Sen. Jesse Helms' subpoena ordering Medvid to appear on Capitol Hill was unenforceable.
In any case, Americans need to know what happened to Miroslav Medvid. State Department officials need to get to work finding this out.
Apathy in the assembly
The College Assembly, on the surface, seems to model itself after the Athenian assembly of ancient Greece.
As the governing body of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the assembly represents more than 600 faculty members and 11,000 students.
Students make up 25 percent of the assembly, or 116 seats, and will be elected during Tuesday and Wednesday's Student Senate elections.
But only 76 students are running for those 116 seats. And of those 76, it's doubtful that more than a handful will show up at the assembly's monthly meetings.
Apathy is nothing new on campus, and the bylaws of the assembly reflect this. Only a 10 percent quorum is required to conduct business.
This is unfortunate, because
the assembly's business affects thousands of students undergraduates preparing to enter professional schools, and undergraduates and graduate students seeking degrees in the College.
During the past year, the assembly has approved changes in undergraduate requirements in Western Civilization, math, foreign language, and English.
Perhaps the College should wage an all-out publicity campaign to attract student representatives. It could raise the quorum to encourage more to attend. Or it could simply eliminate student seats if students continue to skip meetings.
Even in ancient Athens, representation meant nothing without active participation.
Rob Karwath
Editor
Duncan Calhoun Business manager
John Hanna Michael Totty
Managing editor Editorial editor
Lauretta McMillen
Campus editor
Susanne Shaw
General manager, news adviser
Brett McCabe Sue Johnson Retail sales Campus sales
Megan Burke
National/Co-op sales
Oliver Obzern
Sales and marketing adviser
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR should be typed, double-spaced and less than 300 words. Include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, include class and bometown, or faculty or staff position.
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Sales and marketing adviser
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The chancellor says that KU's antiapartheid protesters "do not understand the basic purpose of an institution of higher learning."
The University's role
I disagree.
The activist students understand all too well the purpose of the university in American society. The university in its current form serves primarily to reproduce the system of exploitation on non-European people and of the Earth itself that this country's prosperity is based on.
The university's role as an open forum is entirely subservient to its job of providing properly trained personnel to the corporate and government bureaucracies that oversee that exploitation.
Apartheid is not an accident. Apartheid is just a particularly repugnant expression of an economic system that has no respect for the Earth or the people on it, and treats them as mere objects to be used in the pursuit of ever-increasing material accumulation. This industrial system has taken control in the capitalist and "communist" countries alike.
Thus, the fight for justice in South Africa cannot be separated from the fight for justice for the native people of this continent.
It cannot be separated from the struggle for justice of the people of Nicaragua, Afghanistan or Poland. It cannot be separated from the struggle to put an end to the threat of nuclear annihilation and environmental collapse.
This is why the negotiations between students and the administration on the subject of divestment have focused on the relationship between the Kansas University Endowment Association and the University of Kansas. The students have realized that the people at the Endowment Association who pull the strings at the University are the same people who run the multinational corporations that profit from ravaging the Earth.
We live in a time that is crucial for the survival of our planet. We no longer have the luxury of hiding in our ivory towers, of idly debating the correct positions on the "issues."
Every day of business as usual here brings us another day closer to the brink of destruction. The Universi-
ties in North Africa is just the tip of the iceberg.
Those who would have us spend all of our energy arguing the fine points of the relative merits of total divestment, partial divestment, government sanctions and so on are doing the same as asking us to debate the placing of the deck chairs on the Titanic.
We don't care where the chairs are
the important thing is to change these
chairs.
Our struggle will not be over until the University is reconstituted as a democratic institution, and until the University begins to work for the oppressed people of the world instead of the oppressors.
Dennis "Boog" Highberger Pleasant Grove graduate student
As I passed 1116 Indiana St., I casually glanced at the house where I once had lived for a year. I have fond memories of that year, and of the great elm tree that spread its arms over most of the front yard and backyard. The tree was a friend whispering in my ear through many an nighther.
I can let my laundry go for an extra week or so, and it won't bother me. But Sunday night as I drove down Indiana Street with a duffel bag of dirty laundry riding shotgun, I saw something that made me sicken with horror.
I don't consider myself unusually squeamish. Dead animals along the roadside may give me a momentary pang, but they don't cast a shadow over my day.
End of an old elm
And so I looked, almost involun-
Writer not qualified to criticize Gottfried
After reading Tuesday's letter to the editor about Coach Mike Gottfried and our University of Kansas football team, a strange feeling came over me. I could not figure what was angry, sad or embarrassed.
I felt anger because I know Mike as well as anyone at KU. In my tenure here, nobody has been more supportive to our basketball program than Coach Gottfried. He shares the same concerns for his student-athletes as any responsible coach.
He supported his players' legal efforts because he honestly believed they were misinformed and given inaccurate academic advice. As a direct result of this "misunderstanding," the careers of three football players were terminated.
No one except Coach Gottfried, his staff and the team seemed to care about these young men. Why should they pay the penalty?
Nobody cared enough to
publicize when about 80 "regular" students were disenrolled from business courses because they were not properly advised of the prerequisites. All this did was to reinforce the contention that the academic advising situation on the Hill is shoddy at best. The football players weren't the only victims, but yet they received all the bad publicity.
I am also angry at the "win at any cost". comment. Was it just a few short years ago that KU's football program was mired in the abyss of NCAA probation for recruiting violations and other irregularities? I can say for a fact that history won't repeat itself with Coach Gottfried. Now if he is not running a program with integrity, I don't know who is.
the entire Athletic Department and the University as a whole.
Things always haven't been the best for me here, and Mike was always there with a pet on the back. It really saddens me that someone who knows next to nothing about KU football would slam the program and try to pass himself off as a critic.
I felt sad because I know how much this hurts Mike; however, it doesn't only affect him. These allegations have negative overtones for the present team, all of Coach Gottfried's former players,
I felt embarrassed for the University Daily Kansan. Don't get me wrong, I am not a proponent of restricting free press. But I was disappointed that one of the nation's top university newspapers would print slanderous opinions questioning the coaching ability of Milton Griffin after knowing the source of the letter.
I have three daughters, who will obviously never play college football, but if I had a son, I would be proud to him play for Coach Mike Gottfried.
Larry Brown Head basketball coach
tarily, expecting to see a dark yard and a lit house partly obscured by the tree's branches.
But in the yard a spotlight glared on the hewn stump of the old elm. The cut, about 5 feet above the ground, was made at a steep angle that faced the street. Burned in huge letters on the cross section was the insignia of the fraternity that had recently taken over the house.
I felt utter disgust, as might a war veteran upon seeing that a medic had amputated his buddy's legs, then branded the soldier's forehead to mark his handwork.
Now, I am not so naive as not to realize that trees die of Dutch elm disease. I talked to a member of the fraternity who said the tree was dead and had to come down. I accept that.
Ben Jones Lawrence resident
He said that the fraternity members hated to see the tree go, but that because they had been advised that they could not leave it standing, they "did the next best thing." I don't buy that.
The elm should have been destroyed completely, perhaps a new tree planted in its place. For the fraternity to make a grotesque, self-aggrandizing monument of it adds insult to injury.
How long had the tree been in that yard? Most of a century. How long have members of Alpha Epsilon Pi lived there? A few months. It seems presumptuous that they should take a tenant whose lease had finally expired and mutilate it for their own glory.
Necessary protests
Evan Walter is wrong. Antiapartheid protests are not a waste of time.
They serve a much-needed function as a forum for discussion of issues including racism here and abroad, sexism, prudent government, spiritual aspects of political responsibility and divestment.
Walter's editorial is riddled with weak logic and inconsistencies. No one is suggesting that divestment will cure South Africa's problems. The question is not "Will divestment end aparheid?" but "Does investment support anaphrase?"
Walter says divestment will not work because "voices of sharp disapproval" from "the free world" have not swayed the South African government." He then recommends "messages (be) delivered directly to the Botha government."
In other words, he recommends the same course of action he condemns
Walter does not understand violence in South Africa. He strongly suggests that Marxism is at the root of black violence. This is a ridiculous assessment. Violence is not just murder and mayhem, it is watching your family go hungry, being publicly degraded each day, having no future.
Mistreatment of blacks by whites, not Marxist doctrine, is the cause of violence in South Africa. How could the blacks be influenced by Mars? The whites have denied them the right to read and understand his writings.
What Walter objects to is the shift from violence against blacks to violence against whites. If a slave
master is beating his slave and the slave strikes out in self-defense, are we to pity to slave master? In my heart, I cannot justify violence, nor can I feel么 sympathy for the slave masters of South Africa.
John Bode
Manhattan junior
A tougher Jayhawk
I am damn sick and tired of seeing Kansas football teams continue to pump up the already over-inflated ego of one Barry Switzer. It's embarrassing enough that Swiss dines almost annually on roast Jayhawk, but brother, he don't even leave no bones!
But for the guy who had the foresight to schedule the likes of Hawaii, Indiana State and Eastern Illinois, KU could well be 2-8 instead of 5-5. Whoever he was, give the man a bonus.
Our gladiators' performances of late have been entirely in keeping with the competitive persona of that happy (better, hapless), pixilated creature that adorns their helmets — you know, the one with the Little Lord Fauntleroy buckles on his boots.
I think it's high time to bring back the Fighting Jayhawk of old with his contemptuous sneer and "don't mess with me" attitude. And players to match — meanies like Riggins, Cromwell, Sayers, Hadil, Jessie, Zook, the Shanklins, McClinton, Irvin and the like.
Until then, it appears, Oklahoma and Nebraska will continue to trade off picking up all the oranges on New Year's Day.
William Koester
William Koester Kansan sports editor,1940
Kansan ties don't hinder them - or us
This time each semester, a flood of "baby editors" invades the copy desk at the University Daily Kansan.
The copy desk is where stories are edited and headlines for those stories are written. It is a semicircle of computer terminals in a room in Stauffer-Flint Hall. Hence its nickname, the rim.
Baby editors are students in a journalism class, Editing, who have been chosen by their professors to work on the Kansan because they have displayed an early knowledge of grammar and style. They replace copy edits, so both Advanced Editing and work on the rim for credit.
This semester, two baby editors presented a problem to the Kansas
Amy Brown and Kris Turkenbach are baby educators. Brown also is the student body vice presidential candidate for the Common Sense Coalition in the Student Senate elections Wednesday and Thursday. Kurten-
John Hanna Managing editor
bach is running for an off-campus Senate seat and is Common Sense's camaign coordinator.
People both inside and outside the news business say the appearance of a conflict of interest can pose just as many problems for a newspaper as a full-blown conflict.
The Kansan makes a habit of covering Senate debates and probably will endure candidates in the election. Obviously, Brown's and Kurttenbach's positions on the paper raise questions about their roles in that coverage — questions about the Kansan's credibility.
Rob Karwath, Kansah editor, and I had a tough decision to make when we learned that Brown and Kurten-
bach were baby editors and had filed to run in the elections.
That wouldn't be fair.
But the Kansan is different. It is a newspaper, but it is also a laboratory for students. As students, we feel uncomfortable determining the academic fates of other students.
Yet is it fair for candidates to work on a newspaper that tries to objectively cover the election and may endorse candidates?
On one hand, their participation on the newspaper and their candidacies represent an appearance of conflict of interest. On some newspapers, Brown and Kurtenbach would be asked to make a choice
Asking Brown and Kurtenbach to leave the rim would hinder their educations. It would ask them to stop doing something they pay money to do — learn.
Brown and Kurtenbach, who both work two three-hour shifts a week, won't edit stories dealing with Student Senate. They won't work on the scheduled nights of voting.
As copy editors, they work on stories that already have been read by two other editors. They check for spelling, grammar and style errors.
Copy editors don't have much license to rewrite stories; they usually must check with other editors before making changes. Also, their work is checked by a copy chief, who supervises the rim.
And copy editors have no say in where stories appear in the paper or which candidates are endorsed on the Opinion pane.
Why bring up all of this now?
An election is on, and the Kansan's readers should know that two candidates have a connection with the newspaper. As editors, we have taken steps to see that neither the Kansan's credibility nor the students' educations are hindered by that connection.
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