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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Friday, Sept. 6, 1985
Student employees of the University of Kansas aren't paid enough.
A report given last week by the Associated Students of Kansas said that student's salaries increased only 16 percent in the past three years. KU's tuition climbed more than 50 percent, and financial aid dwindled steadily in the same period.
John Allen, director of legislative affairs for ASK, said many students' salaries had failed to increase since President Reagan froze the national minimum wage in 1980.
The Kansas Legislature allocates more money for student salaries each year, but
Increase student pay
This economic discrepancy squeezes many students, and the dilemma is even worse than it first appears.
salaries never increase. The money simply flows into a general pot and creates more minimum wage jobs.
At this point, it hardly seems necessary to urge the Senate, when it returns from vacation Monday, to approve economic sanctions against South Africa. Passage seems assured, and the only issue still in doubt is whether President Reagan can find the votes to sustain his expected veto.
Allen said most on-campus jobs remained at $3.35 an hour with a mandatory ceiling of 20 hours a week.
Twenty hours a week at minimum wage yields $1,072 for an entire semester. That doesn't even cover out-of-state tuition for a semester or in-state tuition for a year.
ASK will petition the Kansas Legislature for the third consecutive year to increase student wage and hour limits when lawmakers convene in January.
ASK is doing well to start lobbying early. Students should unite behind the effort. Maybe the third time will be a charm.
Send a clear message
It might appear odd that Reagan would have anything to fear from the Republican Senate. But the confusing signals coming from the Reagan administration, combined with South African resistance to change, have prompted even moderate Republicans to want to distance themselves from the president's policies.
But a wrong vote on these sanctions is unlikely. The House approved the mildest available.
Loyalty to the president may be one thing, but Republican desire to take control of the House of Representatives in 1968 is quite another.
The GOP is relying heavily on winning southern congressional seats away from the Democrats. This strategy depends on the support of black voters and could be jeopardized by a wrong vote on sanctions.
It voted to halt the sale of Krugererrands in this country, ban loans to the South African government, and prohibit the sale of computer technology to any agency that enforces apartheid. It promises more stringent sanctions in one year if no progress is made toward reforming apartheid.
Events, as usual, outstrip congressional action. Some U.S. banks, for instance, have already refused to renew South African loans, prompting Pretoria to halt foreign debt payments for four months.
So even if approved, these sanctions still are little more than a gesture. U.S. gesture clearly signals U.S. commitment to ending South African apartheid and unserrambs the confusing messages coming from the Reagan administration.
Compulsory safety belts
Since then, only five states have adopted mandatory seat belt laws.
Highways are designed with safety in mind. Car manufacturers must adhere to safety standards. Drivers have to obey traffic laws created to promote safety.
No one would argue that protecting persons from injury or death in automobile accidents is not a worthwhile goal.
Last year, Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole decreed that automakers would have to provide air bags or automatic seat belts in all new passenger cars by 1989 unless states with two-thirds of the nation's population voted to make seat belt use compulsory.
But one of the most basic safety measures — the use of safety belts — is still ignored by most Americans.
A piecemeal approach to the problem is clearly inadequate.
Secretary Dole should push for national legislation.
President Reagan abhors federal intervention in transportation matters. But he was swayed by Dole to use highway fund cut-offs to force states to raise the legal drinking age to 21. Dole argued that a higher drinking age would save between 700 and 1,200 lives each year.
A mandatory seat belt law was passed in New York last July, and state officials recently announced that traffic fatalities declined 18 percent in the first six months of this year.
About 45,000 Americans are killed annually in this carnage. An 18 percent decrease would save almost 9,000 lives.
Kansas shouldn't wait for federal action. The Legislature should pass a mandatory seat belt law when they convene in January.
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
Retail sales    Campus sales
Megan Burke
National/Co-op sales
John Oberzan
Sales and marketing adviser
**LETTERS TO THE EDITOR should be typed, double-spaced and less than 200 words. Include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, include class and hometown, or faculty or staff position.**
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Students play role in news judgment
The University Daily Kansan, as the campus newspaper, isn't a platter of goodies served to the community each day for it to consume, digest and excrete until the next day's platter comes along.
The Kansan is a source of information that contributes to the knowledge of the students and sets in motion ideas, conversations and actions.
A recent example of a story that people commented on among friends — but didn't spend much time asking Kansan staff about — was last week's front page story on football players who may be ineligible to play because of grades.
handled. But I knew I wouldn't have any answers until I asked the people who made the decisions about the story.
Many comments were voiced by students. Among the most common were: 1) The newspaper was trying to embarrass the athletic department, 2) the photos were published only because the players were black and 3) the Kansan was trying to start the semester with a sensational splash.
When I saw the newspaper, I questioned the way the story was
News judgment involves selecting detail and balancing various elements.
Libel suits are decided over word choice, headlines and photographs that are misjudged or don't receive sufficient scrutiny.
I am, not as a journalist but as a reader, that I had fulfilled my obligation to bring the newspaper closer to the audience it serves by questioning them and presenting a different view.
My questioning the editors about the football story accomplished two important things.
The editors found that they could stand behind their decisions while also learning something that might make future decisions easier.
The tone for the day, the week and sometimes much longer is set by what the Kansan chooses to cover and indirectly by what it ignores.
and the responsibility to hold a mirror to the decisions of the editors, reporters and columnists to see whether those staff members can explain and stand by their decisions.
Students, therefore, have the right
Most of the time the Kansan staff can stand behind its decisions. But the times when it can't are the times when it most needs to think about those decisions.
The public's right to know is one of the unofficial creeds journalists work under and vigorously defend when trying to put a story together.
The need to get the whole story — the who, what, where, why, when and how — to the public usually is the first and last line of defense used when threatened with obstacles.
The public's right to know, how ever, extends to knowing the questions behind how the whole story comes to their attention in the first place.
Journalistic accountability on a newspaper is the difference between a newspaper published for other journalists and one published for the community.
Michelle Johnson
For the readers of the Kansan, accountability best begins with students realizing their own power to question the news judgment of the Kansan staff.
Beyond pointing out factual error or writing letters to the editor about issues, students have obligations to themselves and the Kansas to inquire about why some topics make the newspaper and others don't.
As watchdogs of society, journalists often forget that we are not exempt from scrutiny ourselves.
It's easier for you to rely on the Kansan if you understand the staff's decisions, and it's easier for the staff to do a better job when it understands its own decisions, too.
Pick up the phone or stop by the newsroom when you have questions about the Kansan or its stories.
Yugos will be crushed like bugs
In the days when I was earning $50 a week and counting pennies, I decided that buying a tiny economy car that gave 30 miles to the gallon would be a smart move.
This was in the 1950s, when nobody worried about gas mileage. Fuel was cheap and the supply seemed inexhaustible. So almost everybody had a V-8 engine and tail fins.
Mike Rovko
But I got myself an early, used Beetle. It was such a basic piece of machinery that it didn't even have a fuel gauge. You knew you were running low on gas when the tank was empty and the engine sputtered. Then you kicked a lever on the floor that opened a tiny spare tank that would get you to a gas station.
Many of my friends told me I was nuts. They said I might be squashed like a bug by big cars. But I enjoyed pulling into a gas station and asking for two dollars of regular, knowing I would drive for a week on it.
I noticed something strange happening. Going uphill, I had the gas palmetal almost to the floor. But I was creeping along so slowly that even big trucks were passing me.
I don't blame them. They thought I was driving in reverse on an interstate highway.
Then I made a trip to eastern Ohio. Somewhere near Akron, the hills began appearing. The hills got higher and higher. And that day, there was a strong wind blowing out of the east.
When I got back, I drove straight to a car lot and traded in the Beetle for a used four-door Buick Roadmaster. It sucked up gas like a thirsty elephant, and it had a ride that would have made a sailor seasick.
Also, by putting a cigar in my mouth, I gave the appearance of
'So I'm waiting in dread for the arrival on the highways of something called Yugo. The car will accelerate — using that word laughingly — from zero to 50 miles an hour in 19 seconds. I have seen thieves run away from cops faster than that.'
Finally, on a long, high grade, with the engine roaring, the car almost stopped.
Cars were swerving around me and people were leaning out the window and yelling, "Are you crazy? . . Pull over, you lousey."
somebody making $75 a week, and car hikers at Greek restaurants started treating me with respect.
And I made a vow that I would never again be so un-American as to drive a car that didn't have a powerful engine.
But it had an engine that was almost as big as the entire Beetle and could climb any hill. And I didn't have to worry that I might drive into a pothole and never come out.
The car will accelerate — using that word laughingly — from zero to 50 miles an hour in 19 seconds.
But it isn't the size that makes me nervous. It's the engine, which sounds about as powerful as my old Beetle's. Which means it is slightly more aggressive than a wind-up rubber hand.
Tasting the forbidden fruit
I have kept to that vow. During the great fuel scares, I refused to be stamped into buying something small and practical. Even when early Yuppies sneered from their tiny Rabbits at my lumbering, gas-eating Bronco, I stomped the pedal and fed those eight cylinders.
That means that if you are moving along an expressway at about 60 miles an hour, which most people do, and some little Yugo is creeping onto the highway a quarter of a mile ahead, before he gets to 55 or 60 you will probably be upon him.
I have seen thieves run away from cons faster than that.
They will be a menace and should be banned by law from being driven anywhere but in the backyard or at amusement parks.
A little arithmetic tells us that a car traveling 60 miles an hour can cover about one third of a mile in 19 seconds.
At the risk of kicking a dead horse (no pun intended), I would like to respond to a recent Kansan staff column that questioned my integrity and seriously misrepresented some things I've said about the use of drugs.
Guest Shot
This is a tiny car from Yugoslavia that, at $3,990, is going to be the lowest-priced new car in the United States.
Dealers are already writing stacks of orders from frugal people eager to drive something that's not much bigger than a kitchen appliance.
So I'm waiting with dread for the arrival on the highways of something called Yuno.
The article, by staff columnist Victor Gopasture, asks us to believe that to "an intelligent, informed and mature adult" there is no difference between drug use and drug abuse, at least in the case of drugs that happen to be illegal.
Victor thus presumes to pass judgment on the intelligence and maturity of some of the most well-known thinkers in the Western world. Aldous Huxley, for instance, was enthusiastic about the virtues of mescaline, and Sigmund Freud had a great fondness for cocaine.
Dennis "Boog"
Highberger
But they won't be. So I'm serving warning on all future Yugo drivers now. Stay out of the way of me and my current gas guzzler.
know any more about pharmacology than they do about economics.
Of course, these drugs had not yet been outlawed, and apparently we are to conclude that it is only since that time that these substances have become a threat to society. Alcohol, too, must suddenly have become dangerous in America in 1919, thus leading to Prohibition, but became safe enough again by 1933 that Prohibition could be lifted.
All sarcasm aside, the views expressed in Goodpasture's article about the dangers of illegal drugs betray a blind faith in our government that in light of recent history seems highly unjustified and very dangerous. These are the same people who have brought us the Vietnam War, Watergate and a trillion dollar deficit. It seems unreasonable to assume that they
If you don't, I'll just pull off at the next exit, go to the nearest car wash, and have them brush you off my grill.
The leaflet nowhere says or implies that people should be stoned all the time. What it says is that occasional use of psychedelic drugs under the right circumstances can be helpful in expanding one's awareness. These are two very different assertions,
This is simply not true.
and it seems like deliberate distortion to get from the latter to the former.
The term "drug" is abused at least as frequently as the substances it refers to. Wild, vague assertions such as "Drugs destroy society" have little meaning when one remembers the word "drug" refers to a great variety of substances both legal and illegal that are taken under a wide variety of circumstances and produce an amazing array of different effects in their users.
Apparently failing to understand this, Victor hideously misrepresented some ideas I presented in a leaflet titled "Salamii and Corciousness." According to his column the leaflet "says that the world would be a much better place to live if people were stoned on drugs all the time," its argument "centers on legalizing all drugs" and the leaflet states that "we are the first culture in history to attempt to control mind-altering substances.
Similarly, the leaflet makes absolutely no mention of the question of drug legalization, but it does express the opinion that drugs are outlawed for reasons other than their physiological effects.
Nor did the leaflet say that ours was the first culture to attempt to control drug use. All societies in history have exercised control over the drugs taken by their members, some through rituals surrounding their use, some by force of law. What the leaflet really said was that ours was the first culture to attempt to stump out access to higher states of awareness. I will restrain myself from commenting on Victor's assertion that perhaps this is what makes ours "the most advanced culture in the world," except to suggest that an advanced culture doesn't exploit other people or foul its own nest with toxic wastes.
Neam Chomsky once wrote that "freedom is the precondition for acquiring the maturity for freedom, not a gift to be granted when such maturity is achieved." It is precisely this freedom that anti-drug crusaders fear and wish to eliminate.
As students, it is our responsibility to question the basic assumptions of our society, to think for ourselves, to taste the forbidden fruit — in short, to be free.
Happy trails.
Mailbox
Neighborly relations
With the aftermath of Stewart Street Bash, all of us, (the organizers and the local residents), agreed that the party was a success. I do appreciate their willingness to cooperate with us on the endeavor. However, on Tuesday I heard some distraught news from one of my fraternity brothers concerning the City Commission meeting.
I understand that parties on our block, Stewart Avenue, have been brought into discussion at the City Commission and that they are a major controversy. I do sympathize with the neighbors' right to peace and quiet. However, I thought that we had come to terms with the existing problems and that it was understood change would take some time. I do feel sorry that the city need be involved in this whole matter. It appears that the neighbors have found the wrong outlet to present their problems to. Problems are usually solved by locating the source and then confronting it. Your solution by bringing the problems to the city commission is an inadequate one.
It's not their problem, it's your and ours. We should be the people working on it, not the City Commission.
Richard J. Hayes, Jr Wilmette, Illinois junio