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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Tuesday, Oct. 1, 1985
We told vou so.
Bemoaning the budget
This phrase probably has passed through the minds of Gov. John Carlin and his staff members during the past few months, as they and others bemoan the prospects of less-than-hopeful state revenue projections for fiscal year 1987.
The B proposal, the realistic one, calls for an increase of 1 percent in the University's budget. The C proposal, what KU officials really want, calls for an increase of about 7 percent over this fiscal year's base budget, more than $181.6 million.
And KU administrators probably will do some wailing themselves.
The state budget in fiscal 1987 probably will be tight. Both Carlin and other legislative leaders recognized this summer that tax revenues would not be what was expected.
So, it seems, have University officials. This month, University officials submitted A, B and C budget proposals to the state.
KU officials have said the B proposal or the A proposal,
which calls for a half-percent increase in the budget and is the "bare-minimum" proposal, simply would not be good for the University. Neither proposal contains money for new academic programs.
Carlin proposed the sales tax increase in January as a way to help pay for education, for the future of Kansas. That proposal died a lonely death in the hallway outside his office; it never was introduced in the Legislature.
Yet, the legislators will say, nothing can be done; the money is not in the state coffers.
But these will be the same lawmakers who refused to even consider raising the state's sales tax by a half cent.
And the state lottery and legalization of parimutuel betting never had a chance last session. Both of these proposals could have raised money.
Instead, KU officials will have to endure the mumblings from state legislators who did not have the foresight to help prevent the situation they will apologize for.
Incoherent moral vision
William J. Bennett, secretary of education, recently used the phrase "coherent moral vision" to describe both a goal for public schools and a current shortcoming of them. To paraphrase Voltaire, we wonder whether this idea is coherent, moral or a vision.
Bennett spoke to leaders of Phyllis Schlaffy's Eagle Forum, and perhaps that partly explains the tone of his remarks. He turned to the old oratorical appeal that something is being lost and those present must save it.
systems and their assumptions, not indoctrinate.
"We can get the values Americans share back into our classrooms," he said. Presumably Bennett can fit his avid support of tuition tax credits for private schools into his vision.
Besides, exactly did all Americans share a "coherent moral vision?" Ask Harriet Tubman, Brigham Young, or Franklin D. Roosevelt about that.
To promote patriotism, he would have children learn: "that there is a moral difference between the United States and the Soviet Union." Schools should explain the
Bennett's interest in improving public schools is good, and education in values is not wrong. But he has landed on the wrong side of the question: Democracy's great moral strength is respect for diversity
No, as usual, this would-be crusade stumbles over its own ethnocentricity. Children need to know what right and wrong are about, but that doesn't mean one coherent moral vision exists to establish what is right for all.
In short, Bennett has followed many others in tracing a moral vision that is coherent only to those who think similarly anyway. As a national agenda, it is an incoherent moral vision.
One-man relief effort
In this era of over-hyped celebrity charity, a lone Mexico City freshman stood in front of Wescoe Hall last week and asked his fellow students for quarters.
Antonio Luna, the freshman, didn't have a permit to collect money on campus. He skipped his classes on Thursday to solicit contributions for his "Mexico relief quarter line" and said he planned to turn over the money he raised to organizations handling recovery efforts in earthquake-devasted Mexico City.
Some students were skeptical. No one knows this
guy, they said, and no one knows whether the money he collects will ever be sent to Mexico.
But many students were moved by Luna's personal plea for donations, some laying dollar bills on the ground next to the several feet of quarters.
To Luna, the amount of money raised didn't matter. He said he had "family, friends and everything" in Mexico City, and was only doing what he thought a Mexican citizen should.
Rob Karwath
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Summit should not focus on SDI
Reagan says he is firm about retaining SDI. But critics from all corners have attacked research and testing of the system and have called it an aggressive move that would increase the threat of nuclear war.
With less than two months remaining before the summit meetings in Geneva, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze has propounded a 50 percent cut in the nuclear arsenals of both superpowers. President Reagan said afterwards that he was satisfied with the proposition and with the meeting with the Soviet minister.
A
The plan, if perfected, is designed to make offensive missiles obsolete.
This appears to be a good, fresh overture for the November summit between Reagan and Soviet Premier Gorbachev. But many recent discussions, such as Gorbachev's September interview with Time reporters and conferences in the United Nations, have centered on one topic — Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative plan.
Evan Walter Staff columnist
Staff columnist
For the summit to be successful, both sides should temporarily dismiss the SDI argument and ease tensions first. She wardmade's successful visit to the United States was a good start.
The fear it provoked in recent discussions and congressional reports, however, already seems greater than the fear of the missiles themselves.
The Soviets repeatedly have warned the U.S. to drop SDI research. Reagan has responded that the program is merely a defensive program that kills missiles, not people.
The critics have underrated the fact that the United States hasn't deployed any space defense system or even perfected it. The missiles are deployed, however, and the danger from them hasn't decreased since the most recent wave of panic crested a couple of years ago.
Although the United States and the Soviets are not friends, they share one point of agreement — neither nation wants a nuclear war. Worldwide annihilation strikes no one's fancy.
The threat of nuclear war is still as strong as the night "The Day After" sent the world to bed with nightmares about the possible future. The SDI hasn't yet increased nor decreased the threat of the missiles.
If arms reduction is to be effective, it must focus on the weapons that threaten mass annihilation, not a defensive system yet to be deployed.
If such an aim were achieved, SDI research would become obsolete. But the United States shouldn't decide to
The first goal for the summit would be the cutback of all offensive weapons, and this is an important for this greatly exceeds the halt of anti-missile research.
abandon research before the nuclear arsenals are reduced. SDI could be dropped when progress towards zero appears promising.
Roland Dumas, the French foreign minister, said at the United Nations Thursday. "We see possession of anti-missile and anti-satellite operation devices by one of the superpowers justifies the other's effort."
Trimming the nuclear arsenals of both superpowers would obviate the threat.
Reagan said in a news conference, "I stop short of deployment, because I'm willing to talk to our allies and to the Soviets."
So long as deployment is postponed, so long as talks are pursued to reduce arms, the United States can continue to maintain its security capacity aimed at Gorakhche at the U.S.
Arms talks can determine whether billions of U.S. tax dollars will be invested to perfect the system or whether decisions will render the system unnecessary. The world is counting on the latter.
Yuppabilly slips into Northern speech
While we were watching the last Bears game, Little George leaned away from the bar and said, "Hey, where is Joe Namath from?"
The bartender said: "He's from Pennsylvania. Town called Beaver Falls."
"That's what I thought. Then why does Namath talk that way?"
"He talks like a Southerner. Or a black guy. Listen."
So we listened to Namath's commentary. And he was right. It was "law pass" for long pass. It was "laif" for left, "plez" for plays, " plehr" for player, "bah" for by, "tron" for trying, "lah-min" for linenen and "su-h-prahzed" for surprised.
"That's very strange," said Little George. "I've been in that part of Pennsylvania and they don't talk that much about it, like we do, like Midwesterners."
"Well," the bartender said, "he played college ball in Alabama. Maybe he picked it up there."
"That was 20 years ago. And he spent a lot more time than that in New York but he doesn't talk like a New Yorker."
"Then why does he talk like a Southerner?"
I interrupted to explain this phenomenon.
What they were hearing is a dialect that has crept into American speech. I call it Yuppabilly, because it is often spoken by white Northern Yuppies who, for whatever reason, want to sound like Southerners or blacks.
I first noticed the Yuppyblah dialect when I heard a former Yuppie co-worker of mine speaking it. If you didn't know him, you would have thought he was from Arkansas or some such rustic place.
In fact, he was for a wealthy New England suburb and had attended Ivy League schools.
Actually, Yuppability has some of its roots in the folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s, when white suburban youths began plunking guitars and banjoes and singing songs about "Ah bin swinging a six-poncher hammer fum mah hips on down." Bob Dylan, the son of a
But he developed his Yuppability dialect because he was single and discovered that he could impress more females in single bars if he spoke with a draw. It provided him a more rakih, macho, good old boy personality than did his Yale background.
Mike Royko Chicago Tribune
Jewish hardware store owner in Minnesota, became a star when he learned to sing and talk like a 1930s dust bowl Okie.
And that spilled over into rock music. One reason nobody can understand rock lyrics, besides the deafening decibels, is that everyone is singing in some sort of Southern or black drawl. You even hear English rockers howling, "C'mawn all you pee-puhhll, let's git togather."
The urban cowboy fad helped the spread of Yuppability, with MBAs wearing $180 boots going into big city stores or saying: "Mah pulh laise or yayes."
The CB craze contributed, too,
everybody who talked into a CB tried
To confirm my theory on Namath,
I called a few people in his hometown
and asked how they talked and how
he used to talk.
(I interrupt to point out that his name isn't Joe Willie. It is Joseph William. Few parents of Hungarian
ancestry give their kids names like Joe Willie, or Bubba, or Billy Bob)
An editor at the Beaver Falls newspaper said: "No, we don't talk that way. We sound like other Midwesterners." And a writer who knew Namath when he was a kid said: "He used to talk like all of the other kids."
For an experts view, I asked Ellen Schauber, an associate professor of linguistics at Northwestern University, whether some people develop accents to be trendy.
"Absolutely," she said, "some accents are trendier than others. Every accent brings a characterization of oneself or one's society. Through an accent, they associate themselves with groups."
Maybe that explains Namath's accent. He spent many years playing college and professional football. And part of his job as a quarterback involved being chased and fallen upon by gigantic lineners, most of whom seem to be either black or white Southernners.
Maybe Namath thought that if talked like them, they wouldn't fall on him as hard.
Ravaged Mexico looks to World Cup
More than two weeks have gone by since the devastating earthquakes hit Mexico. The total number of dead and missing has surpassed the 5,000 mark. Rescuers are still finding more bodies under the destroyed buildings.
But this suffering country received a small boost last week when it heard that it would still be the host of the Soccer World Cup championship.
This small bit of good news follows recent disasters and several years of severe economic problems.
Lant year, a natural gas explosion
mournth of Mexico city killed
hunters
Its $90 billion foreign debt makes Mexico the second largest debtor nation after Brazil. The International Monetary Fund said Mexico was not eligible to borrow more money because it failed to meet IMF targets for decreasing its budget deficit and lowering inflation.
Carlos Chuquin
But because of the earthquakes,
Staff Columnist
the IMF put Mexico into a distress loan category. Mexico will need to borrow several billion dollars by 1986 to avoid defaulting on its loans.
The recent earthquakes added to this string of disasters. Because the first quake was upgraded from 7.8 to 8.2 on the Richter scale, it became one of the five deadliest in this century
Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid declared a state of emergency and ordered the army to control looting in Mexico City. To avoid later catatrophes, he also ordered the destruction of buildings that were damaged by the earthquakes.
So the news that Mexico will still be
Mexico City is not the only site for World Cup games. There are eight of them in 2014.
The International Federation of Soccer Associates, soccer's world governing body, announced that the national team will be delayed or moved to another site.
the host to the 1986 World Cup gives some cheer. Many people thought the quakes would make Mexico unable to organize the championship.
Putting on the World Cup is still a challenge. Because of the earthquakes, Mexico City may not have enough hotel rooms. But the stadiums where the games would be
Mexico was given the World Cup after Colombia declined it because of financial problems. Many consider the origination of the Cup as a tribute to the Olympics in 1984.
The Mexico's decision to still hold the famous games should make every Mexican proud. As one Mexi- man we just lost a battle but not the war."
played suffered only minor damage in the earhounkkes.
The World Cup will attract masses of soccer fans from different parts of the hemisphere, who will come to watch the 24 best teams of the world. It could also alleviate some of Mexico's economic problems. A World Cup, or any event of its scope, increases tourism and attracts foreign currency.
Mexico already has experience in organizing international events. Mexico played host to the 1968 Olympic Games and successfully organized the 1970 World Cup.
For the Mexican people, the World Cup could be a great relief after the nightmare of its recent disasters.
Yet despite the optimism of the committee members, an enormous effort will be needed to make the 1986 World Cup a successful one and to make Mexicans forget the tragedy of the earthquakes.