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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Monday, Aug. 26, 1985
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Sanctions just a start
As classroom doors open on college campuses nationwide in coming weeks, the protests against South Africa's policy of apartheid doubtless will pick up where they adjourned this spring.
Despite a state of emergency, riots by black South Africans have left more than 600 dead. Moderate whites call for negotiations to increase black political representation. Chase Manhattan Bank, a giant of the financial industry, reportedly has halted loans to private investors in South Africa.
Pressure on South Africa from some quarters has started already.
The violence in South Africa continued and intensified over the summer, and the U.S. Senate, when it returns from summer vacation, should approve quickly the economic sanctions passed earlier by the House.
Yet the Reagan administration won't step across the line of quiet diplomacy.
This policy of "constructive engagement" has made some headway. South African President Pieter Botha has ended restrictions on mixed marriages and segregation at some public events. In January, Botha made the first moves away from his country's black homeland policy.
The policy, the cornerstone of aparthid, gives black citizenship in separate homelands. It lets the government deny rights to blacks on grounds that they are citizens of separate nations. Most blacks have never seen these "homelands."
Botha for the first time recognized blacks as full South Africans, not merely visitors who require visas and passports to travel and work away from their homelands.
But in a recent speech he dashed hopes that he would do more.
In the face of violence and threats of economic sanctions, Botha seems to rely on the Reagan administration's
promise of continued support The confidence may be unwise.
Calls for a more vigorous anti-apartheid policy by the United States grow louder each day, coming even from the likes of conservative Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Georgia. In light of growing opposition, President Reagan may not sustain a veto if the Senate approves sanctions.
Whites have shown a stubbornness in the face of international pressure, and the South African economy is in many respects self-sufficient. But the United States is South Africa's No.1 trading partner. Sanctions may not end apartheid immediately, but they will convey U.S. resolve to end the status quo.
The United States has other choices besides politely expressing concern about apartheid. One comes straight from Reagan's foreign policy handbook.
Worse from the U.S. view would be the overthrow of Botha's government by a group as hostile to the United States as that in Iran.
The United States should open negotiations with the opposition black leadership in South Africa. This could take the form of economic and legal assistance and pressure to free blacks jailed under martial law.
But sanctions alone aren't enough. Whether blacks are strong enough to seize power, they can pull the pins on South Africa's political and economic stability. South Africa could enter the cycle of repression and terrorism found now in Northern Ireland.
The Reagan administration is willing to slap economic sanctions on Nicaragua, but not on South Africa. But there's more.
It still wouldn't measure up to the pressure against Nicaragua. But it would put white and black South Africans on notice that our interest in their country is based on full extension of rights to all.
Beanies could be next.
Tradition and true spirit
Beanies, worn by freshmen, were once a tradition at the University of Kansas. That tradition ended after World War II.
But the University's fall orientation committee revived another tradition from that era Tuesday night with an event called, appropriately, Traditions Night. About 1,500 students, many of them freshmen, attended.
Lovely Ulmer, co-chairman of Fall Week, said students and alumni had asked that the tradition be reinstated because it informed students about KU.
They heard speeches from Chancellor Gene A. Budig, William Easley, student body president; Larry Brown, men's head basketball coach; and Arno Knapper, presiding officer of the University Council and the Faculty Senate.
And the event probably had a more important social function: It gave students a chance to meet others and form perhaps lasting friendships.
But as the semester begins, students and administrators need to remember that school spirit involves more than just reviving or observing time-wheathered traditions.
School spirit also involves caring enough to speak up and become involved in student groups and in political movements. It sometimes involves challenging authority and tradition.
After all, dissent is not a sign of disloyalty. Sometimes the people who care the most are the ones who refuse to wear the beanies.
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Revival of tradition recalls link with past
Traditions of my student years on Mt. Oread, dating back more than half a century, long ago disappeared. The first tradition that I as a naive, unsophisticated freshman encountered was the wearing of the required freshman cap — a navy blue beanie with a small bill. The question of whether freshmen would continue to wear the cap through the spring semester was decided after the end of the football season in a series of contests between freshman and sophomore men — foot races and a
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Traditions come and go, but the ingredient without which they cannot succeed is dedicated student interest. Unless students are interested, a tradition never survives.
tug of war across Potter Lake. Usually the freshmen won these contests, although in all honesty many freshmen had become so enamored of their caps that they
Students who attended the Traditions ceremony Aug. 20 in Memorial Stadium witnessed a new University experience, the revival of an honored tradition that ceased to operate 20 years ago. For 40 years the annual New Student Induction had been held until its termination in the mid-1960s, losing out to advocacy of favored projects or opposition to the established order.
The best-remembered tradition was the annual Nighthirt Parade. This was held on the night before the first home football game. All University male students were invited to participate, and uninterested students were routed out of hideaws to join the trek to the agreed starting point on campus. Upon reaching Massachusetts Street, the long line of students snake-danced down the street to the park at Eleventh Street dressed in their pajamas or nightgowns. Students gathered around a
Although the new Traditions meeting was a modification of the old Induction ceremony, it stressed much the same basic points — the commitment of an earlier generation to establish an institution of higher education in Lawrence, the heritage of pioneer settlers in the Kansas Territory in favor of quality programs, and the dedication of the pursuit of excellence. The 1985 event, we hope, will again become an annual affair.
Another tradition concerned dating at football games. It was the practice for paddle-swinging K-men to take men students with dates from the stadium and either toss them in blankets or force them to run a long paddle line. Termination of the practice came without shedding of tears by anyone.
hated to terminate the wearing requirement. The cap tradition finally ended after World War II after the Men's Student Council abolished paddling as a means of enforcement.
big bonfire in the park. A program of athletic talks followed, and the affair ended with the familiar Rock Chalk yell. Then the paraders were free to attend the second or rerun of the movie theaters, and some merchants even distributed candy treats. The Nightshirt Parade breathed its last in 1947. Thus died an annual event that had its start early in the administration of Chancellor Frank Strong, who KU from 1902 to 1920.
Today's students may wonder how students of the good old days found time to study. But it all was a matter of good fun, and the time involved
The Doc Yak Show was a short, between-classes athletic rally in the fall semester, conducted from the bed of a hay rack. The annual Honors Convocation was really not a tradition in the sense of student interest measured by student attendance, but its motive was never challenged — to honor the scholastic achievers. Then there was the announcement of the names of new members of the men's senior honor society, Sachem, at an evening rally in front of old Green Hall.
Guest Shot Raymond Nichols
After the end of classes in the spring semester came the annual faculty-senior baseball game, an event that never won recognition for the number in attendance. Often the crowd had to be relied upon to provide a player or two for the senior team. This event understandably died from the calendar.
There were other traditions which I list rather than describe;
was well worth the disruption of the study routine.
No, at 2:30 or 6 in the morning, the campus isn't quite real. But the longer I'm here, the less sure I am that 2:30 in the morning is so different from 2:30 in the afternoon. Even in the middle of the day, Fraser and Watson Library look like Park Place and Boardwalk.
One tradition, which started about 1970 and which continued with great student enthusiasm, was Higher Education Week, a period in the spring when university advances were recognized and honor was paid to laymen who contributed in out-standing ways to the support of higher education. Student participation was widespread. The affair originated in the minds of a student group, whose leader was "Rusty" Leffel. The fact that the recognition was not held in 1985 suggests that it is, alas, on its way out of the calendar.
And Moses, ignoring an anachronistic shopping cart that intrudes on his sacred moment, kneels to rekline the same fire that in fact rekindled him.
About the only tradition of any significance today is the HOPE Award. This is a designation by seniors of the professor of the year, the person whom they select as the outstanding teacher on the campus. This tradition, established in 1959, is entirely a student affair. Long may it continue.
Every university campus has its own traditions, celebrations either for fun or for recognition of special contributions by students or laymen. Traditions are an essential part of the maturing process, and participation by students over the years has demonstrated their contribution to the learning process. May such practices long continue on Mt. Oread.
Raymond Nichols is chancellor emeritus of the University.
In the middle of the day, sometimes I see people who have more
Campus at all hours offers choice of realities
At 2:30 or 6 in the morning, the campus isn't quite real. When the sprinklers are on — they were before the monsoon season — their gray streams dance like novices at a tryout: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Two, two, better, now, five, and ready, kick
The same surrealistic mist makes Fraser Hall look even more like a hotel from Monopoly than it does in full sun.
And it's hardly better at 6 a.m. in the half-light of dawn. The dark shadows of bushes in front of Snow Hall instead look like the moat that castle of learning always deserved. Rabbits scurry away from joggers-errant into the moat, but no splash follows.
Or no' they're not dancers at all. They're spots frantically panning in search of some character on Jayhawk Boulevard, that shimmering stage, that Broadway-on-the-Hill.
"Here I am." I want to shout.
"Over this way. Start spreading the news; I'm leaving today. I'll make a brand-new start of it . . ."
And I really am *walking right smack down the middle of Jayhawk Boulevard at 2:30 a.m., to the applause of a water splashing on concrete, wondering when I've felt so pleasantly silly.
Once I heard a writer say that he never changed anything he wrote at 3 a.m. That sounds glorious, but I think it's gloriously stupid. Anything I write at that hour, I don't trust. Things are true at 3 a.m. that are untrue at any other hour.
Nobody can make anyone else believe in Monopoly trinkets and moats and appreciative audiences of sprinklers. Just as surely, nobody can make anyone else believe that Madonna and Sting are fashion leaders or that football is the centerpiece of university life.
hair on their necks than on their heads. I see runners with wire coming out of their ears. A few days ago, I thought I saw Madonna.
Nobody can keep anyone else from believing any of these things either. You pay your money and you take your choice.
And on autumn Saturdays, thousands of cars and people swarm the campus, and the air crackles with a reality created for its own sake, an aura of something important happening.
A campus is no less real than the "real world," but it is a special
Daytime or nighttime, a lot of realities coexist at a large university. You pay your money and you take your choice.
environment. At a large university, people take up serious directions in life that will last many years. A lot of realities compete for those people.
Dan Howell
Staff columnist
What probably is most real about being on campus is that each person has to choose which realities to believe and enter. There are too many to engage all of them. More important, many of them conflict with each other. Much of the stress and some of the creativity of a campus come from their interaction and competition.
I once heard a student make a statement that illustrates perfectly the conflict of realities and their value systems. Fed up with moralizing religious zealots, the student said, "Well, I know something better than religion and it's spelled s.-e-x."
The various realities of a campus do not sit around waiting for adherents. They advertise, they proselytize, they rush.
A campus offers a bewildering freedom to choose, but not the freedom not to choose. It's worthwhile to remember that choices made now often become lifetime patterns. Some people get into learning. Some get into religion, some get into drinking. And so on.
Too often people get into a pattern in the first weeks of college out of a need to belong somewhere, then never grow beyond it. Some realities are better than others. True education is about recognizing and naming realities and about choosing wisely among them.
Maybe at 2:30 some night, or why not some afternoon, those who have chosen well can walk right smack down the middle of Jayhawk Bouleward singing. "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere."
South Africa solutions
Mailbox
I would like to respond to many students at KU who signed the petition calling on South Africa to abandon apartheid. A copy of this petition and the list of signatures was sent to me by the KU Committee on South Africa, accompanied by a request for my support for congressional legislation imposing economic sanctions on South Africa.
As chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa in the Senate, and an observer of South African affair, I am very concerned about the South Africa problem. I have been especially worried about the unrest that has occurred in South Africa during the last eight months. The killing and imprisonment of
I believe that we should take some very tangible actions to impress upon the South Africa government the importance of ending their policy of apartheid. Such actions have been included in South Africa legislation which has recently been approved by the Foreign Relations Committee. These involve a ban on nuclear dealings with South Africa, a balt to bank lending to the South African government and a ban on computer sales to apartheid-enforcing agencies.
blacks are not only highly objectionable morally, they also raise serious questions about where South Africa is heading.
On the other hand, I am not in favor, at this time, of cutting back or eliminating American economic dealings with the South African
private sector. Such sanctions, I believe, could be detrimental to the interests of the black majority. There are many in South Africa whose views I respect, such as Alan Paton, who believe sanctions would only lead to further reprisals and would not be effective in convincing the South African government to make changes. While I do not believe economic sanctions are the answer, neither do I accept the status quo.
The U.S. government should make it clear that it views apartheid as a morally repugnant system that must be changed. It should press for a serious process of reform, both because it is right, and because only fundamental change can protect the future of all South Africans.
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Nancy Landon Kassebaum United States Senate