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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
At this year's Homecoming Day festivities, the early Jayhawk will catch the parade. And he'll have to go downtown to do it.
Friday, Nov. 8, 1985
A downtown parade
At 9:30 tomorrow morning, the homecoming parade will march down Massachusetts Street — a switch from a nearly 20-year-old tradition of having the parade go through campus on the Friday afternoon before the game.
John Fevrely, junior class president, decided to switch the time, date and place of this year's parade so more local residents could attend.
This year's parade — complete with 14 floats, the KU Marching Band, five high school bands, clowns, politicians and campus dignitaries — will run from Seventh and Massachusetts streets to South Park, 12th and Massachusetts streets.
The move downtown will allow students and professors who have Friday afternoon
classes to watch the parade. Spectators won't have to hassle with finding parking on campus, either.
Lawrence residents who can't take off from work on Friday afternoon will be able to cheer on the floats and the band alongside the University community.
KU may be the home of the Jayhawks, but Lawrence is the home of KU. Homecoming should be a celebration that both the city and the campus can share.
And although the time, date and place of the parade may be different, the homecoming spirit will remain the same.
Let's just hope it doesn't rain on this parade.
All in all, the move to a Saturday morning parade should encourage a bigger turnout. It also recognizes the important link between the University and the community as a whole.
Dipping into the till
The Social Security trust fund began paying for Congress' ineptitude a week ago.
The price was $38 million The price was fitting
The Treasury dipped into the trust fund to keep the government running. That's because Congress didn't head off the problem last month by raising the debt ceiling, the limit on the amount of money the government can borrow.
It's easy to understand Congress' reluctance to raise the ceiling in the face of the record federal budget deficit. But dipping into the Social Security trust fund is outrageous.
The answer to the problem lies in quickly hammering out a plan to chisel the deficit down. Any such plan would supply Congress with at least a rough outline for action on the debt ceiling.
Congress put off the sticky problem, but it must do something within a week. The Treasury threatens to close up shop if it can't get its hands on more money by then.
Congress, then, wouldn't have to delay a decision on the
debt ceiling. The answer to the problem would be in front of all 535 members' noses.
The principals in the deficit debate raging in Washington say they're already following this plan: first the deficit dilemma, then the debt-ceiling question.
But Congress should have sweated out the deficit question long ago. It was the biggest issue in last year's election; it should have received top priority when Congress convened in January.
Had Congress used its time judiciously, it wouldn't face cramming important issues onto the calendar right before the holiday recess. It's the equivalent of an unprepared college student cramming the night before a final exam.
Students who put off school work see the consequences in bad grades.
With one important distinction.
When Congress crams, innocent bystanders such as the Social Security trust fund suffer.
Commending a curator
Robert Hoffmann, a curator of mammals at the Museum of Natural History on campus, has provided one more indication of KU's academic reputation.
Last week Hoffmann was named director of the National Museum of Natural History/National Museum of Man, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. When he goes there in May, he will supervise exhibits, public education and the research of 120 curators.
Hoffmann, Summerfield distinguished professor of systematics and ecology, plans to also make time for his own research on the evolution of mammals in North America.
Those who have visited the Smithsonian know the wonders of its natural history museum. Those who haven't may get a number such as 81
million items in the collection and 6 million visitors annually.
Although the scope is smaller, the KU museum provides the same chance to ponder nature. It also continues to be one of the University's best attractions to the public, as shown by the recent swarms of school children during Dinosaur Days.
We congratulate Robert Hoffrann on his appointment. From his first paying job selling peanuts at a zoo, he has turned a lifelong interest in animals into a chance to help the progress of science.
For the rest of KU, Hoffmann's appointment offers a reminder that the museum in the middle of the campus is a fine one, attracting attention and visitors from far away. It deserves attention here as well.
Rob Karwath
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Privileged athletes
While walking to my night class in Wescoe Hall Monday night, I wondered what was going on, that so many noisy, disruptive students were emerging from Hoch Auditorium and walking down Javahk Boulevard.
My question was answered in Tuesday's Kansan: They were privileged varsity athletes enrolling early for next semester's classes.
Because I am a graduate student, I was pleased to note that according to the spring 1966 Timetable, graduate students are in the first-to-enroll category with seniors. Nowhere did I see that athletes had preference over that category.
But according to Gary Thompson, director of student records and educational services, this "was not the first time varsity athletes had been allowed to enroll early, regardless of their class rank."
At some point, KU student athletes will have to become one of the crowd, like the majority of us. They need to know why they are students first, athletics second.
Otherwise, I pity their not being able to grow up without someone from the Athletic Department leading them along by the hand every
step of the way. What better time to start this growing up than at enrollment.
Lori MacCurdy
Lawrence graduate student
Training hearsav
I was shocked to read about the KU sophomore who died last week in the training accident. It is sad to see the young man end his life on the basis of poor judgment.
I feel, however, that the articles printed in the Kansan are more hear-say than fact. The Nov. 4 column by Ewan Walter finally brought me to the conclusion that few people who are writing about training know about it or have drank it. Actually, there is no "game" to training at all.
I have been at KU since 1978 and have trained three or four times a year. The popularity of training has been so great in the past that it received a write-up in a KU yearbook.
Training can be done by one person or a group of people. What actually happens is a person sits behind a triangular metal support on a train bridge approximately three feet from the track.
Behind the support the person is shielded and hidden from the oncoming train. As the train approaches the anxiety builds until the train passes with a rush of sight and sound. The person stays seated until the train passes.
Granted, training is illegal because of trespassing laws, but I have never heard of or witnessed anyone attempting such a foolish feat as jumping across the track in front of an oncoming train. Everybody is looking for thrills in their lives, but most have enough common sense not to push it to the brink of disaster.
With the coverage this accident has received, the public must think that KU students are off their rockers, running in front of trains. Obviously a few must be, but not the rest of us.
Lincoln, Neb., graduate student
Coverage complaint
As a KU graduate and permanent Jayhawker, I want to commend you on the consistently excellent news coverage you provide in the Kansan, the important and sometimes only coverer of events for thousands. In many years of reading the Kansan, I
have but one complaint.
When I was out of state for a conference, my children were pictured playing in a park (summer Kansan, June 26). Although rightly titled the "Denning sisters," one of them, Mary Alice, was not named. And although their mother's name and out-of-county address were given, my name with our local address wasn't.
Gerald Denning 1421 W. Second Terr.
An open forum?
The University had a long tradition of fighting racism. But those days are gone. The University supports apartheid. The trustees rot in the squalor of inhumanity. The chancellor is a coward. He speaks with disdain for racism, but his actions invest in it. The University is not well.
The University as open forum is the catch phrase. When all of South Africa is dead and the blood is on the chancellor's wealthy white hands, will that be enough open forum? I think probably so, because the University will die, too.
William H. Taylor Lawrence graduate student
Aspiring to be leader of the PAC
Before I could finish the fifth article I'd seen this week about the 1988 presidential election, I went outside to shake off an onepressed feeling.
One of the neighborhood boys was sitting on the steps. He also looked depressed. I asked him whether something was wrong.
"Yeah," he said, "I just can't get my PAC off the ground."
"How much are they making you Boy Scouts carry these days?" I asked innocently.
"No. My political action committee he responded with a hint of scorn.
"How about a contribution?" he asked. "If I don't get started now, I'll never raise enough money to beat the Kennedy and du Pont grandkids."
"Oh." I said. The oppressed feeling wasn't going away.
Guest Shot
Shawn Aday
"Hold it," I demanded. "What election are you going to run in?"
"Presidential, 2024," he chirped, chin up. "The election may be a ways off, but the Michigan and Iowa primaries should be right around the corner pretty soon.
"And if I don't get in the game early, I don't stand a chance. Most of us politically ambitious kids have it rough, you know. I mean, the Kennedy kids and the du Pont kids and the Roosevelt kids and the O'Neill kids can do whatever they feel like
when they're growing up. And then when they get close to 30, people start begging them to run for things.
"But what can I do? I could try acting, but 'Bedtime for Bonzo' was probably a one-of-a-kind movie. Maybe I could become a general. A lot of old-time presidents were generals, but I haven't heard about any popular ones lately. I guess you'd need to win a pretty big war to get popular enough to be president. Just my luck, I'd put in all that work to become a general and then I'd never get a big war to win."
"Listen kid," I said, "money and fame aren't everything. Look at Abraham Lincoln. He didn't have either."
"That old log-cabin line isn't going to work in the 21st century," he said, scornful again.
"It wasn't a line," I objected. "It was the truth. Besides, I meant that you should read and study and learn as much as you can and be as honest as you can instead of worrying about PACs and money."
"That shows what you know," the kid said. "Why should I know everything when I can keep plenty of aides around to fill me in?" It's not what you know, it's who you can afford to hire to run your campaign. He's the one who makes you look good.
"Lincoln would never make it in those new campaign commercials where everything and everybody looks pretty and they don't have to say anything.
"He wouldn't even know what a PAC was, I'd bet."
Anti-apartheid protests a waste of time
The South Africa protest fad once again has influenced a campus rally and parade. This time, it ended with five arrests.
And once again the protesters have wasted their time and effort.
They take pride in their bravery for stepping out to protest against the establishment, an establishment that condones free speech.
Evan Walter Staff columnist
They have repeatedly thrown the issue in everyone's face. If the issue is of such importance to them, why don't they go to South Africa to fight for their cause, instead of inconveniencing a college campus?
is a cruel one, but it must, and will,
end.
After all, no evidence suggests that divestment will cure the array of problems in South Africa.
Subversive groups have swarmed South Africa with riots and murders, and for years the free world has pressured the government to change. Voices of sharp disapproval have come from all corners. If none of that has worked, why would divestment cause the government to change?
Divestment, although proposed as a tool of pressure on the Botha regime, would strongly encourage civil disobedience of the aroused people. Within the oppressed mob is an intense anger and aggression. The South African masses are dangerous.
Further outbreaks of civil disobedience could render South Africa's
group that subverts the minds of the young rioters in South Africa.
The biggest danger of divestment is that it would encourage and
The South African government has practiced a system of aparthid for many years. President P.W. Botha has demonstrated to the world that he is an unjust oppressor. The system
'If the issue is of such importance to them, why don't they go to South Africa to fight for their cause, instead of inconveniencing a college campus?'
five million whites, already in grave danger, helpless in the face of angry mobs and in the ruins of a crumbled economy.
Yet, the divestment advocates have amplifiedly narrowed the scope.
"It is our intention to make South Africa ungovernable." Oliver Tambo, president of the African National Congress, recently told reporters. The Congress is a dangerous Marxist
The problem with the divestment
strengthen advocates of Tamba's approach. Would that be freedom? In other countries where rising political activists had promised "no more governing class," what happened?
That would be imminently dangerous to South African civilians, especially to white civilians, whose safety the United States should be every bit as concerned about as it is the blacks'.
advocates isn't their motives. It is with the ends of their plans and their means of getting there.
Their only end is to stop apartheid. Their only means is to stop supporting the evil regime by divesting from companies that do business in South Africa.
Divestment is not a plan of action. A better way to get rid of apartheid would be for political leaders to apply pressure to the South African government. Messages delivered directly to the Boehner government imply achieving constitutional change. Although diplomacy doesn't work very fast, it maintains stability.
The divestment advocates make another error of judgment. They make the generalization that all South African blocks are unified in their beliefs and struggles.
The problems within South Africa aren't due to apartheid alone. The varying differences within the country also must be considered.
The violence isn't simply black versus white, but black versus black versus white versus more black. The country is divided into numerous factions and tribal units, many intensely engaged in their own rivalries.