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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Friday, Oct. 4, 1985
If KU is attractive to research sponsors, the argument goes, then professors actually have greater academic freedom in a practical sense: They receive the means to pursue professional interests in the forefront of their disciplines. Student assistants benefit likewise.
Keeping campus secrets
A proposal before Faculty Council to change the University policy on classifying research - keeping some research secret - is an unconvincing compromise of academic freedom. For that reason, the council deserves praise for lively debate Thursday and delay of action until at least Nov. 7.
The proposal intends to attract research opportunities to KU by allowing more secrecy, which companies often want to insure exclusive first use of new knowledge or designs.
However, the heart of academic freedom, as the proposal states, is free discussion and full dissemination. It includes freedom to pursue new ideas. Secrecy as a condition for that freedom is anomalous and must have strong provocation.
A strong provocation has not been established yet. How much is at stake for whom? What are the policies of competing universities?
Research has three parts:
Primary sources, process and product.
The processes and products of research already can receive a one-year classification to protect sponsors' interests. The proposal would change that to allow up to three years when compelling reasons exist.
The proposal's second change would allow total classification of process and product results that a committee deems insubstantial — usually applications rather than new knowledge, which arguably is the University's main interest.
Supply and demand, sure. Movie theaters also raise ticket prices when they bring a new blockbuster to town.
Any encroachment on academic freedom, however, deserves substantial debate and demands strong provocation. An urgent need for and a powerful benefit from a more lenient classification policy could make it defensible.
The Athletic Department's ticket policy is no family entertainment bargain.
If not, academic freedom should prevail.
For the most popular home football games—such as last year's contest against Nebraska and this year's game with Kansas State—the department has taken to offering only reserved seat tickets and charging a higher price for them.
Expensive family fun
General admission tickets for the other home games this season cost $7; reserved seats sell for $13. But reserved seats for the K-State game on Oct. 19 will cost $15.
But another part of the Athletic Department's policy requires everyone going to the game, regardless of age, to have a ticket — and to pay full price for it.
A family of four would have to pay $60 to attend the K-State game, whether the children were 18 months or 18 years old. That's hardly an attractive offer for alumni with children who plan to bring along the family to see the 'Hawks.
Athletic Department officials say that children who sit on their parents' laps often disturb other spectators by kicking nearby fans. And when they squirm off their parents' laps, they take up precious seating space.
But by offering only higherpriced, reserved-sleeve tickets at popular games, the Athletic Department seems to be attempting to milk the most from its football fans.
Memorial Stadium can seat 51,500. Surely it has room for hundreds of squirring young spectators. And the Athletic Department surely has room in its ticket policy for discounts for children.
A deadlier penalty
It's a game played in the name of defense and national security, and the stakes are high.
Recent instances of U.S. citizens charged with spying for the Soviet Union has refocused attention on the daily competition between the superpowers for a political and technical edge.
But are they high enough to justify executing those who are caught? And is it a more effective deterrent to kill those convicted of espionage or imprison them for the remainder of their lives?
Last week Amnesty International went to bat for convicted spies. It condemned legislation in Congress that calls for the death penalty for espionage.
Death for espionage, of course, is nothing new in the United States. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the 1950s after their arrests for selling the secret of the atomic bomb to the Soviets. But the death penalty — a god-like act that should properly be left to the gods — is not a suitable deterrent.
Execution, in fact, is a way out that should be denied those who sell our country's soul.
A better deterrent for those who consider bartering America's secrets would be to give them life sentences without possibility of parole. It is far worse to make a spy remember his mistake in the confines of a cage than to put him out of his misery.
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
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National/Co-op sales
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Right-wing label doesn't stick
Critics miss point of hero fantasies
Another Chuck Norris film has made its debut in Lawrence. "Invasion U.S.A." will, I'm sure, become another critics' delight. They ripped apart "Rambo: First Blood Part II" last summer, and they will again give delightful and undoubtedly colorful reviews of a movie that expands more bullets than Rambo could ever have imagined.
No doubt some critics will label the film "right wing" without elaborating on what they mean by the term.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines "right wing" as "a division holding relatively conservative views within a larger political movement."
What angers conservatives is the relatively free use of the term. When was the last time a critic called a movie "left wing?"
The "right wing" label usually applies to those films that show Soviet-American confrontations and portray Americans in the better light. Does this mean that the James Bond movies, which often pit the Americans against the Soviets are "right wing?"
Is "Rambo" really a right wing movie? Many people went to see "Rambo," so does that make them right wingers?
"Rambo" is a fantasy. It is an escapist movie which shows what Americans wish would happen. The movie did have political overtones, but did those who saw the film really walk away with its message? Most people went to see Sharon shoot the bad guys, and they got what they paid for. What more needs to be said?
"Invasion U.S.A." has one of the most ridiculous plots ever imagined. Is it political? No. Is it right or left wing? It is neither. It's just a shoot-the-bad-guys type of movie with a lot of death and destruction.
Because the movie condones the use of military force to stop terrorists, critics undoubtedly will label the film "right wing." At the box office though, the movie is a hit.
A recent cartoon has a producer say to his director, "This is stupid and a waste of money. It'll make millions at the box office."
The producers, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, couldn't care less what the movie's message is, if any. They just know that American audiences love this type of movie.
When the movie "Dirty Harry" came out in 1971, Variety magazine called it a "right wing police fantasy." Other critics said the movie promoted police fascism. Meanwhile, Time magazine said it was one of the time's ten best movies.
Victor Goodpasture Staff columnist
The movie was very popular at the box office. Does that mean that those who liked the film condone police fascism? Of course not.
Most agree that the movie wasn't about police fascism, but instead appealed to people who were sick of crime and wanted someone who would stand up for justice. The Bernard Goetz incident seemed to fully back that up.
Americans like macho superheroes who fight for truth, justice and the American way. Critics continue to verbally destroy movies about those heroes because of the impossible plots. No doubt the movies are fantasies, but isn't part of the fun?
Hollywood is going to continue to pump out films like "Uncommon Valor," "Missing in Action," "Red Dawn" and "Sudden Impact." Soon the movie "Danz III" and "Commando" "Rambo III" is also in the works.
All of these movies have the same
basic formula — an all-American guy who is avenging some evil force against incredible odds.
The criticism of fantasy plots doesn't seem to apply to movies such as "The Exorcist" and "The Amityville Horror." In "Amityville," the producers suggested that a house possessed by evil and a tunnel to hell actually took place.
In "Three Days of the Condor," audiences were expected to believe that there was a super-secret CIA organization that really controlled the United States. Now who has the fantasy plots?
Americans are going to continue to go see Eastwood, Stallone and Norris defend America and make it safe for democracy. Whether right wing, left wing, or no wing, these movies are becoming increasingly popular, even if they have fantasy plots.
in the future, film critics should restrain their use of the term right wing, because most of the time the term just doesn't apply.
Besides, when it comes to these fantasy plots, I'll take Stallone with a machine gun instead of Linda Blair spitting up pea soup any day.
Mailbox
Coherent moral vision
The recent unsigned editorial beemoan the goals of education secretary William Bennett (Kansan, Oct.1) is a masterpiece of confused liberal thought. The author goes into fits of appletype at the mere suggestion that a society must have a coherent moral vision.
Several of the hallowed cliches of academia are present; diversity, indoctrination, ethnocentricity. Even allowing for the fact that journalism attracts the lunatic fringe of the terminally disaffected, the author's real moral ambivalence is unfortunately shared by a great many college students, if only to a lesser degree.
The editorial is littered with idiotic statements that reveal much about the shallowness of modern education. Children, we are told, must not be taught right from wrong, but only "what right and wrong are about." Educators are supposed to explain "systems and their assumptions."
This is the cafeteria approach to education: The student should taste each of the competing ideas that move along the conveyor belt to the garbage can. The result of this aimless instruction is a student who is absurdly uneducated — considering the expense — but who knows what education is "about" — that being money, of course.
The author even objects to pointing out the moral differences between the Soviet Union and the United States. This inability to make even the most elementary moral distinctions (in this case between the most inhumane government in history and one of the most benign) is the hallmark of a modern liberal arts education. The author's own logic demands that the Bill of Rights and Mein Kampf be taught as two competing "systems."
If our only task is to familiarize the student with the existence of differing viewpoints (like Siberia and San Francisco) why not dispense with universities altogether? We could raise the kiddies on a steady diet of Phil Donahue, who argues from both sides of nothing with equal intellect-
Tim Williams
tual torpor. (And he does it on free TV.)
Of course, this is not far from the approach of the University of Kansas, a typical public institution. If anyone be deceived into thinking that we actually "educate" at KU, let him read the Kansan and he will be promptly disabused.
graduate teaching assistant French and Italian
Verbal gymnastics
Victor Goodpasture continues to baffle me with the verbal gymnastics that he passes off as logic. His Sept. 27 column ("Registration resisters deserve no aid") is an excellent example.
First he equates refusal to register for the draft with cowardice and refusal to defend the United States. But in the next paragraph he attempts to disassociate draft registration from the draft itself.
If we accept this, the real coward is the person who is morally opposed to violent acts of aggression and still registers for the draft.
There is no heroism in registering for the draft if there are no consequences to be faced. The true hero is the person that risks all — (family ties, personal freedom, rights of citizenship) to remain true to his or her moral conviction.
Would you care for another example of verbal gymnastics? Good-pasture accuses the American Civil Liberties Union of clouding this issue, yet toward the end of his editorial he inserts three paragraphs that have nothing to do with draft registration.
How does the failure to repay student loans relate in any way to federal loans to students that refuse draft registration? I would much rather hear what Victor has to say about the illegal discrimination that is perpetuated by draft registration. Since only men are required to register for the draft, only men can be refused student loans for refusing to register for the draft.
It cheapens the sacrifice that was made by those who went to Vietnam, or protested in the streets, or refused induction and were forced to leave their homes to be true to their moral convictions. Regardless of which choice was made, each of us had to pay the associated consequences. Derogating others because of their moral convictions is not only cheap, it is the first step toward intolerance of diverse opinion.
Finally, as a Vietnam era veteran (U.S. Marine Corps, — 1970-1974) I am indignant that someone who has never experienced the terror of facing his own mortality dares to call others cowards and yellowwellies.
Gary W. McCullough Lawrence graduate student
The greek system is a favorite target of Kansan writers, and once again they've shown their wonderful bias against it with Gina Kellogg's short-sighted column "Sorority hazing comes out of closet."
Unfair slap at greeks
On first glance, one isn't sure whether to take the column seriously, but when one reaches the last few lines one realizes it is just another slam at greeks, thinly disguised as humor.
I think this also undermines Kellogg's contentions that all sorority women are here to find husbands and buy new clothes. What of the sorority women who major in engineering, business and pre-law? They are obviously here for an education!
Ridiculous columns such as this do not deserve to be printed. When they
I'll freely admit phone duty and study hours are part of living in a sorority. But everyone, not just pledges, does phone duty, and study hours are designed to increase scholarship. It is interesting to note that the all-sorority GPA is higher than the all-campus woman GPA.
are, it only shows the ignorance of the writer and the bias of the name.
Sorority women are no shallower and no more materialistic than the rest of society. If they have this image, it is only because of a few individuals.
Sororities provide a home and family for hundreds of girls at KU—factors very important in a healthy college experience.
Jan Holliday
It would not be fair to characterize the Kansan staff as hippie left-wing radicals only because a few of its members are — and neither is it fair to characterize sorority women as Kellogg does in her column without realizing sororities are composed of all types of women, and it's a good thing we're not as narrowed-minded as that Kansan writer.
Jan Holiday
Great Bend sonhomore
Protests obstruct view
In response to the vow by the RC Committee on South Africa to protest on campus during the second week of October, I ask them to please reconsider. These protests will clutter the campus during one of the most beautiful times of the year on one of the most beautiful campuses in the nation.
Aparthide is indeed a tragedy; one that even the good ole United States has had to endure. But the end of aparthide is nearing, and it will be resolved with or without the support of a few university students halfway around the world.
Besides, would supporting divestment in South Africa really be successful in helping the situation? This would hurt the economy. Oppressed people don't overcome their burdens in times when even the affluent are scrambling for their livelihood
The vast majority of students at KU realize that apartheid is a wrong that must be corrected. We don't need to be informed, so please不要 obstruct our view of the beauty of fall with your protests.
V
Drew Gardiner Garden City senior