4
Opinion
University Daily Kansan
Thursday, Sept. 26, 1985
Graduate teaching assistants who wish to attend the University of Kansas face a difficult choice.
Worthy of their hire
The excellence of KU's academic program looks attractive. But stipends paid to graduate teaching assistants are embarrassingly low.
During the past fiscal year, KU's salaries for teaching assistants lagged a full 25 percent behind its peer schools. Perquisites such as fee waivers, health insurance and eligibility for unemployment benefits for laid-off teaching assistants also fell short.
The Board of Regents recently requested $200,000 to improve GTA stipends in the budget submitted to the Kansas Legislature for fiscal year 1987. But the request is only a stop-gap measure, falling far short of the $500,000 necessary
to bring KU up to the standards of competing universities.
KU can still field excellent teaching assistants, but it must compete for graduate students with schools that can offer much higher salaries and full fee waivers. The University often loses in this competition.
Words spoken in 1947 to athletes by Dean Nesmith, longtime KU sports trainer.
Meager salaries also can deflate the morale of those GTAs who choose KU. And the harm can trickle down to undergraduates, who deserve to have the best teaching assistants available.
The University can't expect to promise academic excellence at the same time it offers medioresc financial assistance to its GTAs. The Legislature can take a critical step in January toward making KU an easy choice for teaching assistants.
"Get plenty of sleep, drink the proper beverages and no attention to cigarette advertisements."
'Deaner's' dedication
That advice from "Deaner," as Nesmith came to be known, typified the hard work, simplicity and dedication that marked his life, 46 years of which he devoted to the University.
During his career, athletes saw Nesmith as more than the wizard who worked out their aches and pains.
Nesmith died early yesterday at 71. Although he retired last year, the University community began to realize only yesterday that a special friend was gone.
"The athletes could bring things to Deaner that they couldn't bring to the coach." Jerry Waugh, who played KU basketball in the 1940s and later was a KU assistant coach, said of Nesmith last year.
In an age of computer-aided athletic training, Deanner was a holdover from the era of leather football helmets. To his
players, he conveyed an equally old-fashioned sentiment. He cared
Tape, towels and linament were the tools of Nesmith's trade. So was the love he expressed to his charges through advice and encouragement.
"He never played anyone who wasn't physically read." Floyd Temple, an assistant athletic director, said of Nesmith last year. "But if they were ready, he would dispel their fear and get them ready to go.
Gale Sayers, Wilt Chamberlain, Jim Ryun, JoJo White and John Hadi—all had their ankles taped or their injuries scrutinized by Nesmith.
"He'd have that young man dying to get back into the game, or even practice."
When asked in 1981 how he felt looking back on the list of immortals he administered to Nesmith said, "It makes me feel old. I don't hold any of them in awe. I still think of them the way they were when they played here."
Likewise, the University community will remember Dean Nesmith the way he was during his years on The Hill.
A dedicated man who cared,
Under no circumstances
Sound like a fair assumption?
A man who takes a woman out on an expensive date has the right to demand sex — especially if she's drunk and leads him on.
Judging from two studies presented last week at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, it's an assumption shared by an alarming number of men and women who believe forced sex on a date is permissible.
One of the studies, by a Cornell University researcher, found that of 19 percent of Cornell women who reported having intercourse against their will, only 2 percent said that they had been raped.
Another survey, taken at Washington State University, found that 5 percent of the women and 19 percent of the men said date rape was OK under some conditions.
As one of the most deplorable crimes to be committed against a woman, rape justified under any circumstances defies understanding.
The students surveyed said date rape was acceptable if the man spent a lot of money on a woman, if she led him on, if she had sex with other men, if she was intoxicated or if she excited him, the survey said.
These so-called acceptable circumstances make women the victims every time a male becomes sexually excited.
The studies raise questions about the relations between men and women. How could a woman, no matter what the circumstances, allow rape to go unchallenged? How could a man expect sex in payment for an expensive date?
Rape festers in our society. But when both the victim and the rapist try to justify the assault, the infection becomes malignant.
Rob Karwath
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Who needs books when there's TV?
A while back I saw this stupid TV show. It was dumber than those things on PBS.
Dustin Hoffman was the main guy in it. It was one of them TV-play things. I think it was called "The Dead Salesman," or something.
Anyways, it was terrible. Firstly, all it had was an old family that didn't have money or good clothes or a TV. They do a bunch of talking about getting jobs and getting people to not just like you, but like you a lot.
Finally, the main guy, Willy Logan, dies at the end, which was OK, but they didn't even show it. I thought they'd at least show the car crash.
The show was written by some old guy, which explains why there wasn't enough violence. His name is Arthur Murray, you know, the dance-less teacher. He also wrote this thing about TV. They should make him write soap operas or something.
Guest Shot Rick Zaporowski
Then when someone has to read a book for some reason, they can just check out the tape and watch it on TV, like that "Dead Amway Man" show.
This solves gobs of problems.
Firstly, whenever I go in the library,
which is only when I have to get a
book for a class, I always ask the
people at the preference desk to get it
for me. For some reason, they
always get mad and look at me like
I'm stupid or something, which I'm
not.
With the TVs there, I wouldn't have to ask for their help, cause I've found thousands of movies at the rental store.
Well, I didn't think much of the show, 'cause I missed most of it anyways. But then a friend told me that the show used to be a play. First, I thought, "No wonder it was so boring." Then I thought, "I hope they don't make it a series."
Second, if someone gets stuck in,
say, a Shakespeare class, they could
skip all that "To be or not to be" stuff
and just watch the show. I happen to
know that most of his stories are
Then I started thinking about society and education and the universe and stuff and I came up with this idea. So here's my preposition.
On the fourth floor of the libary, there's just a bunch of old literature books. Well, what we do is get rid of those and put in about 100 TVs and VCRs.
already on tape, 'cause in high school we had to watch, "Macduff."
I should tell you that I fell asleep after that ghost came in, but when they tape the shows, they could do stuff so nobody falls asleep.
For instance, they could make those plays more interesting by putting music in the background. Like, for "Romeo and Juliet" they could play "What's Love Got to do with It," by Tina Turner, or "When Doves Crv." by Prince.
All in all, I think TVs could make my education at KU a lot more better. And I'm the one paying for it, so I should get to decide how I want to be learned.
I know the KU people won't like my idea, so I'm thinking about having a protest and making signs and stuff, but I don't have a dischurny.
Does anyone know how to spell" ill-litter-it?"
Peace journey begins with first step
Opposing the arms race, assumed at this conference and others to be basic to peace efforts today, is an overwhelming task. The facts are tedious and hard to grasp.
The difficulty of finding peace with justice may show most quickly in the inability of young people to hang tough with peace issues. At Saturday's peace conference, the crowd of people mainly about two dozen people under 30
People may just need some years before they can take on a draining, often unrewarding struggle like this one. They need to get other issues addressed on their own lives. Many are consumed in the heavy challenge of college education.
Now, I don't doubt people's interest. Look at what happened with "The Day After." Students turned out by the thousands to work as extras and to attend the vigil. It was not just that for many it was also a statement.
"The Day After," however, was uniquely spectacular, tangible and participatory. It was useful, but it
wasn't the tough groundwork needed to bring peace with justice.
To work for peace, people need individual and collective strength, a capacity to generate peace where they are and a sense of history and values. These things take time to develop.
Working for peace takes watchfulness, for the powers of this world will enhance themselves at others' expense when they can. It takes discernment to unveil the deceits of those powers. It takes constancy and devotion. I know I'm starting to sound like "Kramer vs. Kramer," but it's the same things that are needed. It takes solid, unfinishing love for others and the world.
But I listened to a World War II veteran — a man with pride and strength in his face — talk through tears about what the arms race has done to the world. He had a passion
I guess I couldn't say whether all the older folks Saturday have those qualities. Some may be warped and bitter.
Dan Howell Staff columnist
I don't buy the whole liberal package of some people in peace movements. But they're not the only people there and they don't own the issue. So don't excuse yourself because of bad company. Besides, trying to preserve the world is the most literally conservative cause of all.
I don't want the vision of peace and justice left to socialist nuttresses any more than I want national defense left to the Pentagon. At times the only thing more distasteful is the idea of war.
for peace that began with knowledge of war's uniliness.
Every means has pitfalls and it takes a long time. As Joan Baez once wrote, the only failure bigger than peace has been the use of violence.
Being for something is harder than being against something. That truth applies in a particular way when people avoid peace activities because they're against the kinds of people found there.
The question of peace and justice already involves us all. The only question is whether to be involved responsibly in sustained public etiquette.
Lawrence Weiler, a conference speaker and a veteran arms negotiator, said, "If this is the paramount issue, then our representatives must be able to prove that we needed is political will, and that will come through public demand."
I'm sympathetic to the hesitation of young people to get involved. I was reluctant at 21 and I am still cautious. But college people should be thinking about what matters in this world.
Even if they take baby steps, I'd like to see more of them stepping into commitments toward peace and justice.
Panic over AIDS is the greater plague
More than forty years ago, in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt assured us, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." And so it goes today. Rolling Stone recently called these "The Plague Years," and we are facing a plague but a plague of a dull nature. The BS still harms me, and without discrimination, but there is also a plague mentality in the land, which may prove to be just as destructive.
Calling it "The Gay Plague," the world had breathed a sigh of relief in the beginning. After all, as Jerry Falwell said, this was obviously a plague visited upon "sinners" by God, a sort of divine retribution. And we were content to back and watch what happened. The government invested an insignificant amount of money and the majority of us were not afraid. Most of us were not homosexual, after all.
But now we are afraid. Every day,
it seems, we hear of another child
with AIDS. "20/20" advertises "a
young woman who is married, loves
her husband, goes to church on
Sunday and, somehow, has AIDS." A
man has died of AIDS. Even Rock
Hudson has AIDS. No one sees safe
Guest Shot Douglas Stallings
anymore; the great leviathan is swallowing up tens of thousands, and the numbers are doubling every year. There have been about 13,000 cases of AIDS diagnosed to this date in the United States, 11 in Kansas.
And now we are afraid. The fear is being driven by the media, by parents who don't want their children attending school with AIDS victims, by church groups, but mostly by ignorance. And I suppose that's what bothers me most.
Those with AIDS are being shunted bit by bit - denied medical insurance, denied access to the public schools, fired from their jobs, abandoned by loved ones - forced into a certain solitude. John Doane wrote, "As sickness is the greatest misery, so the greatest misery of sickness is solitude, when the infectiousness of the disease deters them who should assist from coming." And he adds later, "Solitude is a torment which is not threatened by hell itself."
I am saddened but not surprised. We fear death above all things. It is a fear even our religious beliefs cannot overcome. And we have made it our business to slow death's coming and have succeeded to a remarkable degree. No wonder, then, we are frightened by that which lays asunner all those accomplishments. Not even cancer means certain death anymore. We have been bullied into a sense of security, verging on invulnerability. No wonder, then, we have been frightened by AIDS, from which no one has recovered.
Yet when I think about the parents who kept almost every child out of the Queens public school in New York City, I can almost laugh. In NYC, where there is the highest concentration of AIDS victims in the
But we have let fear take hold of us. We have used it to persecute AIDS victims, to discriminate against not only those homosexuals who have the disease but also those who have not. And more important, we have taken on a plague mentality, denying AIDS of fear for our own lives, becoming both selfish and hard-hearted.
country, everyone is afraid of one little girl whose disease may be in remission. If they stopped to think for a moment, however, they might realize that they have a ten-fold greater chance of coming into contact with an AIDS victim in the supermarket, the subway or even Macy's.
But I can't laugh, not about fear and loathing and paranoia.
If anyone (or anything) will have the last laugh, it will surely be the AIDS virus itself. It will kill countless thousands more that it might not have killed because of our fear and bigotry. Because we thought the disease was a "gay plague," we were unwilling to invest heavily in AIDS research years ago. Ironically, because of our insistence that AIDS would not hurt "normal" people, it may have more of an opportunity to do so. We might have found the virus sooner, we might have developed a vaccine by now, had we begun working when AIDS first reared its ugly head. But we were unable to feel compassion then for homosexuals as we are unable to feel compassion for children and adults dying alone right now.
One might ask when we will ever learn.