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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Thursday, Oct. 10, 1985
A hastv deficit plan
Students who pull all-nighters know that the results are often less than satisfactory. Last-minute efforts usually are flawed.
Forged under the threat of bouncing government checks, the deficit reduction plan approved yesterday by the Senate shows the flaws of haste construction.
The plan, sponsored by Senate Republicans, calls for a balanced federal budget by 1991. If the deficit failed to stay within the annual limits placed by Congress, the President could then put a lock on spending.
But like a last-minute term paper, the Senate's plan could have used a less-hurried approach.
One part of the proposal, which gives the president the authority to make final cuts, will be a lightning rod for the opposition, particularly in the House. Many in Congress oppose turning over their control of spending to the executive branch.
cuts will have to be shared by defense.
The Senate was able to lift the debt ceiling for another week. But whether a week will be enough time to hash out a compromise with the House remains to be seen.
If not, the Senate will face another deadline, another possible all-nighter and another hastily conceived attempt to deal with the nagging problem of the deficit.
Finally, the plan fails to mention the politically unpalatable need to raise taxes. Eventually, any effort to reduce the deficit is going to require more money flowing into the federal treasury.
Finally, a place where the University's undergraduate scholars can strut their stuff.
A place to shine
Thanks to the College Honors Program, research papers and projects by selected undergraduates will be published yearly in the "Kansas Undergraduate Review."
The KU Honors Student Association edits and publishes the review, with financial assistance from the office of student affairs, the Kansas University Endowment Association and the Owl Society.
The first issue of the review, which is free and available at Nunemaker Center, features projects prepared by students in psychology, economics and communication studies.
In the past, the reward for thosewearisomeweeks of library or laboratory research usually amounted to little more than an academic pat on
the back, a nice "A" on the transcript and some comments of praise from the professor.
The 'Kansas Undergraduate Review" gives student research some much-needed publicity by getting papers and projects off professors' desks and into the hands of other students. This should serve to encourage discussion among disciplines and to stimulate other students who would like to see the results of their research in print.
At 54 pages, the first issue offers only a small sample of the creative thinking taking place on campus. But it's a start.
This year,,500 copies of the review were published on a budget of $600. Let's hope that this small showcase for student research is able to expand into a year-round forum, perhaps publishing two or three times a year.
Suing handgun makers
They know better.
That was the recent judgment of the Maryland Court of Appeals, the highest state court, in a recent lawsuit against a maker of small, cheap handguns known as Saturday Night Specials.
Although it applies only in Maryland, it may have an effect on several cases pending in other states.
The court said in a unanimous decision that purveyors of the guns should know that the Saturday Night Specials — virtually useless for legitimate law enforcement, protection and sporting purposes — are used mainly by criminals.
Therefore, the court said, the purveyors of these criminals' tools can be held liable for injuries of those who have been shot by others using the guns. The ruling is the first of its type in the nation.
Gun foes hailed it as a major
victory in their long fight to stop the sale of handguns in the United States. A National Rifle Association spokesman said it would take guns away from people who needed a cheap form of self-defense.
Such lawsuits seem to be a trend. Unable to get desired — and necessary — legislation, gun-control advocates have turned to the courts. Perhaps they think that a shot at the pocketbook of gun manufacturers would be more effective anyway.
Although the Maryland Court of Appeals' decision is commendable in that it may help slow the flood of deaths attributed to handguns, it also is troublesome. As a society, the United States is far too litigious.
Such rulings should not be necessary. States should write, pass and enforce strong gun-control laws.
Rob Karwath
Editor
Dunean 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
John Oberzan
Sales and marketing adviser
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E.B. White tapped childhood dreams
Although the writer has died, E.B. White's words of life and life's rules are immortal.
Most successful writers concentrate on one or two literary forms, but not White. He used several forms successfully.
Most grownups expect a child's pretending and crude creativity to diminish when the youth finds a reality-filled world. But White encouraged inventive play and increased its capability to dream and imagine.
In his short stories and essays, his columns in The New Yorker and his books for children, White's humor takes a different turn as he turns turning pages and wanting more.
Grammar texts usually take up much shelf space and are hard to understand, but White's edited version of William Strunk's "Elements of Style" briefly and clearly relates the how-to's and how-not-to's of writing.
White's essays meet an adult need to hear a critical opinion, and opinion that doesn't take every fact to heart.
Kimberly Hurley
Staff columnist
White's skill was his ability to clearly communicate ideas to the young, the old, and everyone in between.
Although White wrote poetry, he didn't think of himself as a poet; instead, "a non-poet who occasionally breaks into song."
It's no surprise that people know White for his young adult classics, his works that focus on talking animals.
As a fourthgrader, I tired of dinosaur and butterfly books; I wanted more out of life, so I read "Stuart Little."
"Little" was my first adult book; the small printed paperback edition
Children, by the time they begin to read White, have already wondered what it would be like if animals could talk to other animals.
gave me a boastful fifth-grade feeling.
Stuart, like me, had his triumphs,
his low times, and his dreams. He
made mistakes. He cared. He wasn't
much like the mouse my brother
caught between the stove and
refrigerator; Stuart wore clothes.
White invited a silent relationship between children and animals, as his animal and children characters could talk to each other. For a few years, I thought the squirrel in my backyard heard how shiny I thought his coat was.
Strangely enough, White's adult characters accepted the humanized creatures. When Stuart offers to sail a man's toy boat, the man's only question is, "Are you sober?"
Stuart never answered my questions. Why did he, a mouse, have human parents? The words said Stuart looked like a mouse, the pictures said Stuart looked like a mouse, but my 9-year-old's logic said this guy had to be a mouse.
Stuart's mission was finding his
bird-friend, Margalgo. I learned early not to like unresolved stories. Maybe this book was the reason. I wondered why White left me wondering if Stuart ever found Margalgo. I wondered why White wanted kids to wonder.
A year before "Stuart Little," White wrote, "It must be a lot of fun to write for children — reasonably easy work, perhaps even important work."
Through White, young adults learn about sadness, death and renewal. In "Charlotte's Web," Charlotte's death brings a tear, but her spider babies bring hope and reassurance that life continues.
Of his books, White once said, "I have had a very nice time along the way."
White's words read fresh. His imagination leaped as far as any 6-year-old's and provided a non-parental insight about living.
One would suppose he might similarly comment about his own
To each according his (writing) needs
Have you ever had an urgent need for a writing instrument — say, to jot down a phone number or a recipe from "Hour Magazine" — and you weren't carrying a pen or a pencil?
Quick, what did you do? Most likely you lifted the nearest写入舀具
The White Bike seems to be a socialist flash in the pan. The system, providing free transportation on campus, is simple. If you see a white bike, use it. When you're finished, leave it where you get off.
But it's not catching on. There is, however, a similar take-and-return system that's been around for years. It's White Pens system. Let me explain.
This impulse is exactly what the White Pens system feeds on. It's a system of socialism that everyone uses, like it or not. It's simple. If you see a pen, use it. When you are finished, drop it.
The system is supported unconsciously. People presume that any pen within reach is for their use. And when they're finished writing, they set it down just as unconscious- not even considering a future pen.
This urgent need for a pen began in the newsrooms of the early American
press. The official White Zens system started in the newsroom of the New York Tribune around 1880. Karl Marx was touring the building of the paper for which he was a correspondent when he noticed how many books were broken stories because they couldn't find a pencil.
Despite the often greedy ways in which people borrowed pens, the system grew rapidly. In one Chicago newsroom, an editor asked a reporter how to respond to someone who gave him one that for some reason didn't fit the editor's needs.
Marx solved the problem by putting pencil holders at each door. Reporters contributed and removed pencils as needed. From each reporter according to his ability, to each according to his need of a writing instrument.
The idea spread like peanut butter. Newsrooms across the country began scattering pencils on tables, chairs and floors. Without thinking, reporters would grab the nearest pencil. Some had been known to grab pens right out of other reporters' hands to take phone messages.
Rick Zaporowski
Staff columnist
of pen and should find him the "wight pen." The reporter gave him the nearest pen — the White Pen. The name stuck.
Unwritten rules of the White Pens developed. The primary law of the White Pens to this day is "The pen you set down is no longer yours."
Corollaries also developed. These include "No matter what you're writing, the guy on the phone always needs your pen for something more important," "Never buy your own pen; there's always one sitting around" and "Don't get too attached to any one pen because it will be gone tomorrow."
But not everyone liked the system. Some go as far as to say it caused the Great Depression. Wealthy bankers, for example, saw that the trading of pens reduced new pen sales, thinned out the cash flow and thinned out their profits.
The banks organized a rebellion by
making their pens impossible to borrow. Even today the rebellion continues. Walk into any bank and you'll see that all their pens are chained to the tables. Nobody gets away with a bank pen.
I, too, am a rebel. It's not that I don't want people to write. I just don't want people to write with my pen, — the one with my ink, my fingerprints, my ideas and my germs.
The White Pens system has gone out of control. I have organized a group of revolutionaries to put an end to the White Pens. We call ourselves the Keepers. If we see a pen waiting by a phone or resting on a desk, we grab it and keep it, in hopes that this will force people to buy their own pens and hold onto them dearly.
Yesterday, I watched this strategy at work when a reporter needed to write down a phone number. She jerked her head around looking for any pen, but I had taken them all.
I licked my lips in satisfaction as she pulled out a lipstick and wrote down the phone number. She was just another victim in the ball-point free-for-all.
"Dammit, where's a pen when you need one," she said.
Mailbox
Missing story's point
I would like to reply to Roger Moore's letter to the editor, which appeared in Friday's Kaman. Mr. Moore took offense to Bob Tinsley's reference to a single 17-year-old student, stating that there are "several" 17-year-olds at the University and that using the word "one" is therefore improper in this instance.
I think you missed the whole point of the story. It was not simply to praise one student for her efforts, but to use one student as an example of the efforts of many. If you had read past the fatal word "one" in the first paragraph, you would have seen that Tinley was not implying there was only one such student, but that she was one of a group whose special efforts and situation should be recognized.
others. Well, perhaps you are right.
But picking at generalizations in Kansan stories is no way to accomplish what you seek.
It sounds to me as though you are a little intimidated by your situation. Maybe you feel that being so young you have to stand up for your rights and dignity more fervently than
Bruce Stimpson Coffeyville senior
Same old stereotypes
There it was, yet another "amusing" editorial on sorority life. The same old weak attempts to parody that worn out Susie Sorority cliche.
As a KU alumna, I recently had the chance to read my old paper, the Kansan. Well, what do you know — some things never do change
Not being very funny may be excusable; not being at least halfway original isn't "... obtain their MRS degrees?" Ha, ha, Boy, that's a new one."
Leslie Smith 1983 graduate
perpetuate a one-dimensional myth.
So when it comes to taste, Ms. Kellogg, this is one reader who says 'it's all in your mouth — and my, those grapes are pretty sour, aren't they?'
The Greek system is not above its share of editorial comment, but c'mon, can't you at least make it a little creative? I guess it's just a much easier to trot out those old stereotyped gags that only further
S. African minerals
Another scenario is that South Africa could form a cart with the
The Republic of South Africa is a treasure trove of gold, diamonds, and a host of strategic minerals. What would happen to those minerals if we "losst" South Africa?
Under any set of circumstances, South Africa will continue to market the wealth from its mines because mining accounts for a large percentage of South Africa's economic activity and an even larger percentage of its foreign trade. Of course South Africa could embargo the United States, but such an embargo could easily be circumvented by means of third parties in other countries.
Soviet Union, Bu$such a cartel would ultimately fail, as all cartels seem to, when either country needed hard currency. An example of such a cartel failure in action is OPEC.
Even the worst case scenario, a cutoff by both South Africa and the Soviet Union of all of these strategic minerals to all Western nations, would not be devastating, only inconvenient. All of these minerals are replaceable or substitutable.
If they weren't, logic would dictate that mineral concerns around the world would be scrambling to find alternative sources as a hedge against this worst case scenario, something they demonstrably aren't doing.
Thus the net result of our "losing" South Africa in terms of strategic minerals is nil, and the strategic mineral argument should be removed from the national debate on South Africa.
Chris Banker Prairie Village third-year law student