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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Tuesday, Nov. 5, 1985
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
A fitting memorial
After two years of designing, discussion and redesigning, a memorial to KU students killed or missing in Vietnam is finally a reality.
namely a reality.
A brief dedication ceremony at the site at the southeast corner of Memorial Drive and West Campus Road is planned for Veterans Day, Nov. 11. It's hoped that construction will begin soon after that.
The project arose from differing ideas of students, faculty and the administration. The first two designs and sites proposed by a student committee were rejected by faculty and administration representatives before a consensus finally could be reached.
But perhaps this is fitting for a memorial to veterans of a war that wracked this country and this campus.
Perhaps it's right that work finally should begin this year, the 10th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and 15 years after anti-war anger literally set this campus aflae. The year the nation finally welcomed home Vietnam veterans with a ticker-tape parade.
The memorial will be a
tangible reminder that in the end it doesn't matter whether a war is won or lost, popular or unpopular, "moral" or "immoral" — the price is the same. The sacrifice made by the 60 KU students whose names will be carved in the limestone wall was the same as the sacrifice made by those who died in World Wars I and II, to whom Memorial Stadium and the Campanile are dedicated.
The memorial also will recall questions that drew past students out of the classrooms and into the streets: What should this nation be willing to fight for? What should this nation ask its young people to die for?
Such a reminder is needed as years pass. One Vietnam veteran who lectures to high school students has found that many can't find Vietnam on a map and don't know whether the United States fought with the North or South Vietnamese.
The memorial — conceived of by KU students to honor KU students — will ensure that we on this campus don't forget.
Ensuring academics win
After two years of embarsment caused by 16 academic ineligibilities in the football program, the University of Kansas Athletic Corp. has mapped a plan to insure that athletes perform in class as well as they do in the playing arena.
A KUAC committee has before it a "working document" spelling out changes the Athletic Department should make to insure that academic problems of the past two years on the football team don't haunt KU athletic.
The report contains familiar vague promises. But it also talks specifics.
One proposal establishes a KUAC committee that would review academic credentials of recruits. The committee would screen recruits and let coaches know which ones were borderline academic cases.
With hope, marginal students would be passed over when it came time for handing out scholarships.
A second proposal would
prohibit athletes from adding or dropping courses without the approval of their advisers and Richard Lee, assistant athletic director in charge of support services. Any athlete who snubbed the process could lose his scholarship.
A third proposal is orientation sessions for recruits before they start their years on the Hill. These would drill into recruits the expectations for their academic performances.
For two years, the Athletic Department has said it wants to end eligibility problems. They blacken the University's name, athletically and academically.
Specific proposals for solving the problems lie on the table. KUAC board members should move quickly to pare the working document down to the specifics, then enact it.
Only with such specific suggestions will the University avoid a third year of embarrassment caused by academic problems of athletes.
Farm Credit forecast
The country's fourth largest lender screamed for help last week.
The Farm Credit System reported that it lost $522.5 million in the third quarter and said it likely would lose at least $3 billion more through 1987.
Financial problems of farmers, the system's borrowers, lie at the heart of the system's woes.
Saving the Farm Credit System from collapse depends in the short run on alleviating problems of those farmers.
That won't be best done with a federal bailout for the system, which would extend further the burdens of the deficit-taxed government.
Only cutting the deficit — which would weaken the dollar and open foreign markets to
U. S. farm goods - will brighten the financial forecast for farmers.
In the long run, the Farm Credit System must abandon poor methods for determining loan eligibility. In the past, farmers have put up land as collateral. As a result, when times turn tough, the Farm Credit System is left with acres of low-value farmland when it desperately needs cash.
The system should determine loan eligibility based on farmers' abilities to make money. That would allow the Farm Credit System to more accurately gauge loan risk.
And the system wouldn't be in the position of screaming for financial help when that's what it's supposed to be dishing out.
Rob Karwath
Editor
Duncan Calhoun Business manager
John Hanaa 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
Megan Burke
National/Co-op sales
John Oberzan
Sales and marketing adviser
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"Have you ever gambled your money with cards?" Mike, a conductor on a freight train asked. "Gambling with your life is the biggest gamble there is."
The deadly gamble of training
Mike knows. In his 43 years of railroading, he has seen many deaths result when people play games with trains.
He's seen it all - people who try to commit suicide by deliberately standing in front of the train, people who want to see how close they can get and jump out of the way at the last minute.
"How can they know how close we are just by a pinpoint of light?" Mike asked.
Brian Lucas died while training.
Students who say they have gone
training say they did it merely for the
purpose, after the first time, the
thriller is gone.
"If they'd been with me and seen all the blood and guts I've seen, they wouldn't be talking like that," Mike said.
Training is supposed to be fun, thrilling, and safe.
Donald Lucas, Brian Lucas' father,
said he wanted Union Pacific trains to slow at the training bridges. This would supposedly insure that nobody
Kimberly Hurley
Staff columnist
Donald Lucas had better be ready for legal action. According to Mike, trains don't slow at crossings, marked or unmarked, unless a city ordinance has been passed. If they don't slow at crossings, they're not going to slow for pranksters.
Train tracks are private property and are owned by the railroad. Only a railroad employee has the right to be on railroad property. Mike said he might "be a little funny about it," but he didn't think he had any right to be on railroad-owned property unless he was working.
else died while training.
Training is trespassing, and trespassing is illegal. If Union Pacific is expected to secure a trespasser's safety, then everyone might as well hold a spotlight for a burglar in their backyard.
Parents try to sue the railroad,
blaming the company for not making
the tracks safe and blaming the
railroaders for not stopping in time.
"We can't stop that train outside of three-quarters of a mile," he said. The times they have been able to stop in time, have been few and were only because of luck.
The victim's family doesn't realize that they aren't the only ones who have to cope with the trauma of the accident.
According to Mike, many railroaders grieve and feel guilty for many years after witnessing accidents. "It haunts them till the day they die," he said.
One crew member continually was haunted by an accident. Every time he rode the train over the place where the accident occurred, "he
Mike chooses to handle his grief in a different way. "I just try to forget about it. It's better that way.
"These kids don't know this stuff. It's no thrill, no fun and games for us."
Students who argue in favor of training say it is a trend, almost a tradition. They say training is only dangerous when alcohol is involved.
But it makes no sense whatsoever to risk a life playing a game, no matter how popular the game or how
many people before have played it.
It makes no sense to drink while playing dangerous games to heighten the thrill. If the thrill is from the danger, and they think there is no danger unless they are drunk, then there truly is no sober thrill.
Students, or anyone, who want to feel the thrill of near danger have plenty of opportunities. Auto racing, skydiving and downhill skiing all provide thrill-seekers with an element of risk.
Even if the railroad could be persuaded to slow the train at the two bridges, it will not stop the training. If students want to train, they will ultimately find other places, other bridges.
Finally, it isn't Union Pacific's responsibility to protect those who want to play with the danger of a speeding freight train. It's easier for parents to teach their kids a little responsibility. Mike said, and not expect the railroads to patrol bridges and arrest a few out of many.
Mike refuses to ride on the engine anymore. Instead, he rides on the caboose.
He said he's just sick of watching thrill-seeking end in death.
Labor faces bewildering middle age
Middle age can be perplexing Those of us who have reached that ambiguous status know what it is to look in two directions. We look back on what we accomplished, but that is never fully satisfying. We are also constrained to look ahead, still challenged by the unfinished agenda of life.
Institutions can be similarly challenged, and how they meet that challenge can tell the story of what their later years are going to be. The best available example of an institution in mid-century crisis is organized labor.
When the old Congress for Industrial Organization was formed on Nov. 9, 1835, the air was electric with a new spirit of confrontation for justice in the big plants of the industrial heartland. Soon the issue was joined over the right of workers to strike and the fundamental role of labor in the process of production.
In the half-century since, the AFLCIO and independent labor organizations have experienced some triumphs the old labor states only dreamed of at the time of the founding of the CIO. At one time in the 1950s, one factory worker in three was a member of a union.
Those who saw the 1972 labor vote as an aberration explained it away as a reflection on the Democratic candidate, George McGovern. He presented a face to the electorate that year only a mother could love.
By 1961, when President Kennedy was inaugurated, labor was powerful enough to see to it one of its own was appointed to the Supreme Court. He was Arthur Goldberg, former general counsel of the United Steel Workers. He later resigned to accept President Johnson's appointment as ambassador to the United Nations.
Between the beginning of the 1960s and the early 1970s, it became apparent organized labor had reached its zenith. The telltale sign was that younger workers were paying their union dues while paying virtually no allegiance to union leadership or ideals.
By 1972, many union leaders were embarrassed by the fact that their membership broke ranks and supported a Republican for president, Richard Nixon.
Others peered more deeply behind
the veil of labor and saw something more serious than the erosion of union discipline in presidential elections. They saw nothing less than the substantial decline of one of the most powerful movements this country has ever seen.
Robert C.
Maynard
Oakland Tribune
More important than those indicators of serious problems, a major shift was occurring in the American economy. All too often, labor leaders greeted our questions about it with a blank stare.
That change, still a distant cloud on the horizon then, is a storm filled with problems today. It is the immense shift of the American economy from industrial production
It was fascinating to cover national labor in the early 70s, as I did for a time. The leadership was getting older and the membership was getting younger. The leadership espoused traditional liberal values. The membership was becoming more conservative.
The effect of that shift on labor union membership has been devastating. Since the mid-70s, members in the Steelworkers had dropped by half. The Garment Workers union has lost a third of its members, and about the same for the Rubber Workers.
Meanwhile, the Service Workers union membership is up 50 percent and the Communications Workers have increased by about a third. The problem for labor at mid-century is that its growth unions are not growing nearly as rapidly as its industrial unions are deteriorating.
All this occurs in a new climate of deregulation, international competition and advancing technology. Many of the problems labor faces today could not even have been guessed at when the old CIO was founded.
How those problems are addressed today will determine what sort of old age organized labor will have. If labor has a plan for its revitalization, it is still very much an inside secret.
Mailbox
Legitimate fears
While Khemiesa Chaieb's call for all parties in the various Middle Eastern disputes to recognize their common humanity cannot but be warmly applauded, his equating the Israeli right with Nazism perpetuates the sort of myth he seeks to avoid.
The Israeli right is obsessed with the survival of its people - as are most players in the Middle East.
Although some of them are personally racist (as are some members of any religious and ethnic group) their behavior is not based on deities of supremacy or on the goal of obtaining power. They are motivated by the fear that they will lose the security and personal dignity they have so painfully gained.
A good history of the Jews will fill
you in on the precarious, often despaired status of European Jews for most of the last 1,500 years; and an excellent history will fill you in on their similar treatment in the Arab lands.
In fact, the undermocratic models proposed by Kabane and other Israel ultra-rightists derive not from Nazi Germany but from medieval Christian Europe and many current Moslem nations.
Members of minority faiths are not full members of the nation's corporate body, with restrictions ranging from denial of access to otherwise public institutions to inability to own land and substantial property to outright expulsion.
orange Those Sophardic Jews who support the Israeli right so strongly tend to be recent immigrants from these countries or their children, stung by personal memories of what it means to
All such seemingly insoluble conflicts, whether in the Middle East or Northern Ireland or the Punjab, seem insoluble precisely because both sides have legitimate fears and just claims.
not be a full citizen and desperate never to be second-class again. You or I may not like their tactics, but we can't deny their historical experience.
I remember how, as a graduate student at Berkeley in the early '70s, I would listen to the students staffing the Israeli and Palestinian tables in Sproul Plaza. If I closed my eyes I often could not tell which side was speaking; we want our land, we want our security, we want our children to grow up with dignity. You have taken (or want to take) our land, you deny our security, you deny our children their dignity; what you charge us with is false
Casting one side as the devil, or an Hitler (almost the same thing) doesn't help. Until each side is ready to listen to the fears of the other and to acknowledge what is just in the other's claims, there can be no hope for peace.
Judith Roltman associate professor of mathematics
Outstanding program
Thanks to the Free China Club and the academic departments that worked hard to promote the program given Oct. 25 by the Youth Goodwill Mission, "An Adventure in Chinese Songs and Dances." The troupe presented an outstanding program. The beautifully costumed, energetic and talented young dancers made this a thoroughly enjoyable event.
Marilyn Schroeder Lawrence resident