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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
/
Friday, Aug. 30, 1985
Asinine. Disgusting.
Those are words used by city commissioners Ernest Angino and David Longhurst Tuesday to describe the behavior of students at all-campus beer parties.
Mind your manners
Tempers flared this spring when the City Commission debated whether five fraternities and a sorority on Stewart Avenue could sponsor the Stewart Street Bash, a beer party to raise money for charity.
The City Commission frittered away much of its weekly meeting trying to find a way to regulate the large beer parties through the city's beer ordinance.
Now, that reputation falls suspect.
Problems between students and Lawrence residents over such parties are sad commentary on the state of citycampus relations. For years, harmony between students and residents thrived and put other college towns to shame.
For a long time, the large parties have throbbed as a sore spot in the relationship between students and permanent Lawrence residents.
If students and residents want to restore it, they should pluck their dispute from the name-calling City Commission chambers and sit down to reason politely.
Each side has rights. But each must compromise if wounds are to heal.
Residents must realize that the complexion of "their Lawrence" is transformed each fall when 24,000 students stream in for nine-month stays.
But rather than fuel the fire, students and neighbors who disagree on the party issue should do as their mothers always told them: Remember their please and thank you.
Students, meanwhile, must realize that they have to live by the same rules as other citizens. They aren't special cases.
Before the party, organizers met with neighbors and agreed to pull the plug on the music by a reasonable hour. They also tried to make sure party-goers didn't tromp across neighbors' yards.
Neighbors shouldn't harass police all night with cranky, nitpicking complaints. Students, as responsible citizens, must make sure that their parties don't degenerate into brawls.
The negotiations between organizers of the Stewart Street Bash and homeowners last spring were a start to resolving their conflict.
But since the party, the relationship between the Greek houses and their neighbors apparently has disintegrated. Tuesday's name-calling by city commissioners marked a new low.
If they did, the City Commission could drop the issue and get back to platting and zoning.
The United States and the Soviet Union share the stage as villains this week in Geneva.
Arms race cronies
They join the world's other nuclear powers — Great Britain, France and China — as targets of criticism from the 129 signers of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. A conference to review the agreement began Tuesday.
halt the arms race, make progress toward nuclear disarmament and work to stop all test explosions.
The other treaty signers have upheld their end of the bargain. They're rightfully upset that the United States and the Soviets have not.
The treaty was designed to halt the spread of nuclear weapons but left the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain holding a nuclear monopoly. In exchange, the three countries promised to
The Old South, it seems, still lives in Austin, Texas.
At the University of Texas, 16 of 19 sororites have refused to sign an anti-discrimination clause with the university's campus activities office. The clause must be signed as a part of registration with the university. Registration is necessary for the group to use campus buildings for activities.
As President Reagan and Soviet Premier Gorbachev thrust and parry with offers of arms reductions and test moratoriums, the rest of the world wearies at their lack of real progress. The U.S. and Soviet lines sound hollow and similar.
that the closed rush enabled the white sororites to discriminate against blacks and Hispanics.
The dispute stems from charges of discrimination from the university's Black Student Alliance. The sororities have a closed rush. The black student group charged
Sororities, Texas-style
The sororities signed a similar anti-discrimination clause with the Texas Student Publications Board, which allows them to buy pages in Cactus, the campus yearbook.
The campus activities office has the power to investigate charges of discrimination and deny university standing if discrimination is found.
But a difference between the two clauses exists.
The publications board does not.
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 sale
Megan Burke
National/Co-op sales
John Oberzan
Sales and marketing adviser
General manager, news adviser
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I its present principal owners picked up Strong Point for a song a few months ago. At the time, the stock
America bullish on prostitution
The name of the stock, one broker is telling the other, is Strong Point, once a Utah corporation now doing business in Orange County, Calif. And, indeed, there is quite a strong point to all this: the principal holding of Strong Point is about to be one of America's best-known brothels, the Sparks, Nev., Mustang Ranch.
The Fast Track Bar and Grille where the stock-trading set goes to drown the woes of a bearish day, celebrate the joys of a bullish day, make a coke connection or meet a member of the opposite sex.
On this particular day there is excitement. It seems a pimp named Dapper Dan made the mistake of offering the services of a young woman at the bar to a young man who turned out to be a member of the vice squad. Dapper Dan was busted on the spot for, among other things, the felony of living off the earnings of a prostitute.
Across the bar, at about the same time as the bust of Dapper Dan, two savvy stock traders were discussing a new issue. You might even permit me to call it a hot new issue.
was trading over the counter for 50 cents a share. It was a real estate speculation venture in search of a hot property. When the company announced it had opened escrow to acquire the Mustang Ranch, the stock's price jumped more than sixfold, to $3.25 a share, almost overnight.
Peanuts, one broker was telling another. That stock has almost unlimited potential. If you think the
Robert C.
Maynard
Oakland Tribune
skyrocket performance of Resorts International stock was spectacular, you haven't seen anything yet. After all, Resorts is just into gambling. This deal is the big leagues of sin. After you've traded stock in women's bodies, where else is there to go? It's the ultimate.
The story is made all the more intriguing when the first broker tells the second of the colorful history of the previous owner of the Mustang Ranch, Joe Conforte. Colorful guy.
Joe, colorful guy. They used to call him "the king of vice" in Nevada.
He frequently made his public appearances with a woman on either arm. Usually neither was his wife. A bodyguard was usually close by. There was always a big cigar jutting from his mouth. He has been convicted of extortion, bribery, tax evasion, you name it. Even in Nevada, where the law is loose on lots of particulars, Joe Conforte is a legendary study in outlawry. One of his reasons for sailing Mustang was so he and his wife, Sally, could settle a $10 million tax evasion beef with the IRS.
Conforte's erstwhile fortune was built on the backs of hundreds of young women over more than two decades of selling sex in Nevada, where prostitution is legal in most counties. One of those women, former cocktail waitress Buffy Wilson, told a newspaper reporter once what it was like to work for the Conforte establishment:
"They took 10 percent off the top of everything you earned for room and board, then 50 percent of what was left. Out of your less-than-half, you had to tip the maids daily and the doctor who saw you every week. You
ended up with about 30 percent of what you took in." She said she entertained 6,000 clients in three years.
In all human history, there has never been a lack of supply of such services, even under worse conditions than those at Mustang Ranch. More important, no ready evidence exists of a diminution of demand for the services of prostitutes. That being the case, the profit picture can only be described as rosy when the world's oldest profession finally goes public. Even so, the authorities acknowledge the stock offering is unconventional.
"I am not sure this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they set up our free enterprise system," said Charles Larson of the Securities and Exchange Commission, "but I can confirm this would be a first."
The message to Dapper Dan and pimps like him all over America is clear: Get rid of that pretty purple Cadillac, dump that absurd wide-brim hat and pawn that gaudy costume jewelry. If you want to live off the earnings of prostitutes, go see your stockbroker. But hurry. This hot offering is going to go fast.
Terrible weapon ended terrible war
Monday marks the 40th anniversary of the official Japanese surrender that ended the most terrible war the world has ever seen. And 46 years ago Sunday, Nazi Germany invaded Poland and began World War II.
However, a controversy still rages today. That is, was the United States justified in dropping the atomic bomb?
The answer is an unequivocal yes. Imperialist Japan was the enemy. They were the aggressors. They attacked Pearl Harbor on that quiet Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, intending to destroy the American Pacific Fleet. They almost succeeded.
During August the news media gave wide coverage to the marches and ceremonies to remember the destruction of Hiroshima and those who died.
The press questioned whether Truman was justified in his decision to drop the atomic bomb. Suddenly, the United States was the bad guy.
The press ignored Japanese atrocities such as the Bataan death march, the torture and executions of American pilots, and massacres of Chinese civilians.
The Truman administration conducted many long discussions about the use of this powerful new weapon of war. But you wouldn't have known that from the way the press delivered the story.
In 1945, the United States was faced with a choice. To get Japan to surrender, it either had to invade the Japanese home islands or use the atomic bomb.
The invasion of the Japanese home islands would have cost the allies at least 1 million casualties. To put that in perspective, at the end of World War II, the United States had a total of slightly more than 1 million casualties. The invasion of Japan would have doubled that number. To Truman, those figures were absolutely unacceptable.
To bring this fact a little closer to home, many students' fathers and
grandfathers, who were over in the Pacific Theater, never would have returned home, much less have a family.
The Allied leaders had agreed that nothing less than unconditional surrender would be accepted. This was
Victor
Goodpasture
Staff columnist
for two reasons. First, each didn't want the other to make a separate agreement with Germany or Japan. Second, the Allies wanted to make sure that neither power ever again would be the source of aggression against peaceful nations.
To force any surrender from Japan would have been tough. The Japanese were prepared to fight to the last. The battles for Okinawa and two Jima had shown us that.
The Allies could choose a third course — to do nothing. They could
continue aerial bombardment and impose a blockade of Japan. In other words, the Allies could starve them into surrender.
But a policy like that might have taken years, killed millions of civilians and ravaged the country with disease and famine. Not only that, but the Soviet Union was about the one so invading of its own. If the German invasion of the Soviet Union Japan might have become a divided country, just as Germany is today.
The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed that a nuclear war would destroy the world. Thus, such a war must never be fought.
I suspect that next year the media will get all excited about the 41st anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing and cover the marches and ceremonies to remember those killed by the atomic bomb.
I just hope that somewhere, someone will pause in silent reflection upon the sacrifice made by Americans who paid the ultimate price for our freedom in World War II.
We should never forget them
Mailbox
Satirical handbook
I have just read Victor Goodpasture's "Advocates of drug use disoriented students" in the Aug. 27 Kansai regarding Boog Higherberger's book, "KU Disorientation Handbook," which apparently advocates drug abuse by students.
don't we? Well, he is, isn't he? Isn't he?
Isn't he?
Ian Chai
I have not read the book, so I have to draw all my material from Vie's article, but if seems that Boog's just being satirical. I mean, surely when last year's president says, "drugs are bad for the college experience, but unfortunate of the best ones are illegal," he must be joking. No same person who knows the score on dope can honestly say that. And we all know Boog is that.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
sophomore
Divestment unneeded
The divestment battle being fought over South Africa finally should come to an end. The Kansas University Endowment Association recently stated that it could 'tdivest even if we wanted to.' The KU Committee on South Africa, however, continues to demonstrate for divestment from that country. This shows a lack of understanding on the committee's part in two areas. Namely, they don't
remember that we are a republic which has been known as government by law. Also, they've failed to study the whole situation in South Africa.
Agreed, the current system in that African nation isn't nearly as fair to all races as ours. But, it took almost two centuries to bring about equality for our citizens. Likewise, the citizens of South Africa have demonstrated they are willing to improve their policies toward blacks.
We must realize the majority of blacks are not native citizens of the country. While looking for employment and a stable government, they fled from other African nations on their own. This situation would be similar to a flood of illegal aliens
from Mexico entering the United States and demanding a change in government policies.
The jobs these blacks want and need are there because of foreign investment. Take out the foreign capital and unemployment among blacks rises, riots increase and more blacks needlessly suffer.
Finally, we should listen to the blacks. The majority has requested that all U.S. companies remain in the country. Consequently, the blacks stay employed and our positive impact on society is a solution to apartheid is simple; the United States should exercise diplomacy, not divestment.
Bonner Springs sophomore
Mark L. Gillem
Bouner Springs sophomore