The University Daily
KANSAN
Wednesday, December 3, 1980 Vol. 91, No.69 USPS 650-640
University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
Tension rises near Poland, Soviet border
By United Press International
The Soviet Union closed Poland's western border to Western military observers yesterday and sealed parts of the Polish frontier. Soviet officials said they were "very" six" alert according to British military analysts.
In Warsaw, the Communist Party purged four hard-line members from the ruling Politburo, a move that would seem to strengthen the position of the party's reform-minded leaders. All four had been associates of former party leader Edward Gierek.
the decision came at the end of a two-day session. The central committee met against the backdrop of reported Soviet troop movements on the border with the populous new independent labor unions.
In Washington, the White House warned that any Soviet military intervention in Poland would have "serious and adverse" consequences for East-West and U.S.-Soviet relations.
White House Press Secretary Jody Powell said President Carter had spoken with the leaders of France, West Germany and Britain this week about the Polish situation.
The State Department summoned Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, and an administration source said U.S. intelligence had been accused of conspiracy thought to indicate a possible invasion of Poland.
In Moscow, the Soviet Foreign Ministry issued an unusually specific statement denying a Soviet nuclear agreement.
Despite the Soviet denial, military sources in West Berlin and London said the Soviets had shut off those parts of Poland the East German border remained open to Western military observers.
THEY WERE also signs that Warsaw Pact troops were engaged in maneuvers on Poland's borders, Western military sources said. Similar incidents occurred in the Soviet invasion of Belarus in 1968.
The reported Soviet moves would effectively block Poland on two sides. Poland is sandwiched between East Germany to the west, the Soviet Union to the east and Czechoslovakia to the south. All three are members of the Warsaw Pact.
However, the sources cautioned against interneting the moves as invasion preparations
"We're not—emphatically not—viewing this as evidence of an imminent invasion, but a cover for exercise activities," one Western source said.
ABC News reported that a group of 60 Polish generals and 200 staff officers had drawn up a petition and submitted it secretly to the Compunist Party Central Committee.
DAVE KRAUS/Kansan Staff
The petition reportedly states that if East German forces crush a U.S. flanker, it will be defeated and the war ends.
CIVILIAN TRAFFIC across the East German border apparently was not affected by the military move. The northwestern and international rail traffic was flowing normally through West Germany.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gerry. Jerry Curry said there had been no change in the status of U.S. forces in Europe. No large-scale maneuvers are scheduled during the next week.
Some Western analysts saw the reported troop movements as part of a series of Soviet warnings to Poland because of recent Polish labor unrest.
Debbie Porter, left, stands next to Jan Denfeld in their apartment. The two are trying to obtain a marriage license in Douglas County.
Women to battle state law against same-sex marriage
By BRETT WOODS
Staff Reporter
Marriage licenses are issued by the state and recognize a binding legal relationship between a man and a woman. To most people, a marriage is a public declaration that a man must live with each other.
Jan Denfeld and Debbie Porter of Lawrence meet all the legal requirements for marriage with one exception—they are both women and marriage between two people of the same sex is illegal in Kansas and the rest of the United States.
The two didn't know that when they formally applied for a marriage license Sept. 26, but three days later Douglas County refused issue a license in compliance with state law.
"When we got down there (the Douglas County Courthouse), we told them we had come to pick up our marriage license," Denfeld said. "At first everybody started looking at each other and then finally a woman came up to us and said in a very loud voice, so everyone in the office could hear her. I'm sorry but it's come down that two women can't get married. I mean we can't issue you a marriage license in Kansas."
Sitting together on the sofa, holding hands in a one-bedroom apartment they share with seven cats and a parrot, the two women said this week that when they were children they didn't know about the specific law that prohibited homosexual marriage in Kansas.
Denfeld and Porter said they would like to be married in Lawrence because their friends were here. Both women live and work in the city. Denfeld is director of Gay Services of Kansas.
*ney (the county) said they took it to someone higher and found out the opinion of the court, which said you can't do it," Denfeld said.
THE TWO are now planning to write the American Civil Liberties Union and request that its leaders accept the bill.
Homosexual marriage in Kansas was prohibited during the 1980 legislative session when lawmakers rewrote the marriage laws to specifically state, "The marriage contract is to be considered in law as a civil contract between two people of the opposite sex. . ."
A 1977 opinion by former Kansas Attorney General Curt T. Schneider also barred homosexual marriage by citing previous Kansas statutes and relating them to four cases where various state courts said men were not implicitly referred to a man and a woman.
S Schneider said the laws were "sufficiently gender-specific (and) that a marriage may not be solemnized between persons of the same sex."
Autumn Dentelt and Porter legally can live together as lovers, they face many legal barriers if they do, according to Roz Richter, executive director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund for homosexual issues in New York City.
"You can't file a joint tax return unless you are legally married," Richter said. "The other two big areas come up with insurance and medical benefits. Most employers permit you to place your spouse on your medical records so that you do that unless you are legally married."
Richter also said inheritance laws in most states provided only for a person's spouse if he didn't have a will. Co-parenting of children is also restricted to married couples.
See WOMEN page 6
Commencement changes include guest speaker
Acting Chancellor Del Shankel has approved Commencement changes that include inviting a nationally prominent speaker to the University and introducing individual school recognition programs.
Shankel said this week that he approved most of the changes recommended by the Special Commencement Committee appointed by former Chancellor Archie R. Dykes.
The only change Shankel did not approve was to move Commencement from Monday to Sunday. Commencement will be Monday, May 18.
The date change would have made it difficult for Kansas Road 10 Regents members to attend the event.
The committee's recommendations were based on a survey taken last at May's Commencement. The survey asked students to identify ways to make the ceremony more
David Amberl, committee chairman and vice chancellor for student affairs, said the commission has been working to improve student
students and suggested each school have a special event to recognize students.
Ed Julian, University Relations in-
special programs, said, "The recognition
programs will put more focus on students who
will attend four years at the University and
graduated."
Shankel said the University was trying to line up a prominent speaker for this year, but would not schedule a speaker if one of national importance was not available.
putting it was not valuable.
"We don't want to launch that part of the program without someone really good," Shankel said.
To provide time for a speaker, the Distinguished Service Award recipients and outstanding teachers' recognition ceremony will be held at All-University Supper on Sunday, May 17.
The committee also recommended streamlining the program and activities and cutting back the process down Mount Oread Special Stadium to last no more than 45 minutes.
Lawrence savings institutions to add checking with interest
By ROSE SIMMONS
Staff Reporter
Lawrence's commercial banks and savings and loans institutions are putting the finishing touches on new interest-bearing checking accounts, as well as new federal deregulation of banks earlier this year.
For the first time, savings and loans institutions will be allowed to offer checking accounts. All banks and savings and loans institutions will be able to offer "negotiable order withdrawals" for bear-bearing accounts January 1. These accounts can earn a maximum of 5.25 percent.
Officials at local savings and loan institutions are enthusiastic about the deregulation move and plan to offer competitive interest-bearing checking account plans.
Officials at Anchor Savings Association, 900 Ohio St., said that NOW accounts will be offered free to customers who maintain a minimum balance of about $500.
Capitol Federal Savings, 1046 Vermont St., will offer free NOW accounts for a minimum daily
Officials at Lawrence Savings Association, 910ermont St., said that their NOW account plan would be available.
"The inability of savings institutions to offer checking accounts has made it necessary for customers to conduct their financial business at different institutions," he said.
Kent Earl, treasurer of Lawrence Saving Association, said he expected more customers who had savings accounts at the association to switch their checking accounts to the institution in order to increase demand for the association's other financial services and also increase profits, he said.
different instructions, we need
All Lawrence banks will offer NOW accounts,
although bank officials have differing opinions of the new banking regulation.
Bonnie Wells, director of marketing for First National Bank of Lawrence, 90 Massachusetts
St., said that the bank had always wanted to offer an interest-bearing checking account service.
"We're pleased with the regulation, she said. Wells said the regulation would allow the bank to better serve its customers. Wells she did not think that the regulation allowing savings and loans to offer checking accounts posed a threat to banks.
"Banks have years of experience with checking accounts," she said.
"the interest-bearing account has nothing to with loaning," he said. "It is just another service."
This experience with checking accounts would them, in turn, save over savings and loan charges, she said.
Banks use customer savings and checking funds to make loans. Because banks will now pay interest on some checking accounts, these funds will be more expensive to lend out to consumers. Some borrowers may have no need to have to pay interest on both savings and checking funds that they use for loans.
However, a loan officer at University State Bank, 955 Iowa St., who asked not to be identified by name, said that paying interest on checking accounts would not affect consumer loan rates.
PETE MAXON, loan officer for Lawrence Bank and Trust Co., 647 Massachusetts St., said that the deregulation of banks and the deregulation of bed-and-breakfast could increase the interest on consumer loans.
Maxon said banks would have to make loans at higher rates to keep the same margin of profit that they had when they used checking account funds without paying interest on them.
NOW ACCOUNTS also will cost more at banks than at savings and loans. Banks require higher minimum balances for a free interest-bearing account. Douglas County Bank, Ninth and Kentucky, will require a minimum balance of $1,000. Other Lawrence banks have not determined what minimum balances they will require, they said.
As she worked, her hands were still supply and quick, but their brown skin was covered by dark-brown age spots. Marguerite is 67 and has seven dozen pillowcases a day, five days a week for 30 weeks.
The KU Credit Union has run a pilot program for interest-bearing checks called "Ex-
In 1950, Marguerite said, she earned 25 cents an hour but her salary has increased steadily since then. Now she earns $2.44 an hour.
Workshop for blind source of employment and frustration
By VANESSA HERRON Staff Reporter
Every seam was nest, a half-inch wide. But when you look at the touch of her hands, because she is blind.
See BLIND page 5
TOPEKA-Under glaring fluorescent lights,
Marguerite Mahjah slid one blue-gray
pillowcase after another beneath her sewing
needle.
Marguerite has worked for Kansas Industries the Blind in Topeka since the factory opened in 1930.
ABOUT 3,800 sheltered workshops in the United States provide steady employment for blind workers. In return, the U.S. Department of Labor gives the shops permission to pay their visually impaired employees 75 percent of minimum wage or less.
Most workers can supplement their incomes with Social Security Disability Insurance payments, be said, and fast workers can inquire about the status when they are paid for each unit they produce.
Although her salary and those of the factory's 27 other visually impaired workers are below minimum wage, the wages are legal, and account for a substantial part of the wages of the Toopeka workshop, the wages are fair.
Theoretically, the sheltered workshops train their employees to join the sighted work force and earn competitive wages.
"If we had to pay everybody $3.10 an hour, we'd so broke." Albright said.
Today will be partly cloudy and considerably warmer, with a high near 42. Winds will be from the south at 15 to 20 mph. Tonight will be mostly clear with a low around 32 and southerly winds at 10 to 15 mph.
Tomorrow will be mostly sunny and unseasonably warm, with a high of 58 degrees. The outlook for Friday and Saturday shows highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s, with rain developing Saturday eight and turning to snow by Sunday.
Temperatures will drop sharply Sunday.
Marguerite Mahijah guides a pillowcase through her sewing machine at the Kansas Industries for the Blind workshop in Topeka. More pillowcases stacked in a neat pile await her attention in the background. Mahijah has worked at the workshop as a seamstress for 30 years.
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