Opinion
University Daily Kansan, November 25, 1980
Senate: A clean slate
It's time to start over.
Bert Coleman and Bren Abbott, candidates on the Impact ticket, are the newly elected student body president and vice president. They won last week's election by a convincing margin.
Cotman and Abbott are taking over a Student Senate beset with problems and uncertainty. Yet there's reason for optimism.
The new administration will have ample time to prepare for the upcoming budget hearings. In the past, senators have faced the hearings almost immediately after having assumed office. More preparation
should make the budget hearings more organized and more fair.
The Senate also has been cut in half and presumably reaching quorum shouldn't be such a burdensome task.
The Senate's role at the University of Kansas has been murky in the past several years, yet its setbacks need to be put behind us once and for all.
The Student Senate needs desperately to get off to a good start. More than anything else, the Senate has suffered from a lack of confidence. It needs to establish itself as a firm, responsive body—for the students.
For everyone involved in the Senate, it is a time to unite. The record is clean—and needs to stay that way.
Coalitions' clean campaigns get tarnished near the end
Last week was a good week for melodramas. There was, of course, the much-publicized one concerning J. Ewing. But KU had its own candidate on Thursday. It was called student elections.
The story of who shot J.R. came to conclusion Friday night when a huge television audience learned that it was J.R.'s sister-in-law Kristen who tried to in do that in deer-daardly deeds.
The story of student elections, though not heard by as many people, had more accusations
and complications to it. Even though we know who was elected, many accusations have yet to come.
the man figures in the election story were Bert Coleman and Bren Abbott, and Larry Metzger and Kristy Kossover Coleman and Abbott were running for the Senate in the Impact coalition ticket, and Metzger and Kossover were running for the positions on the Spectrum coalition ticket.
BRETT CONLEY
Oumu the last two days of the campaign things went smoothly with little complaining from the candidates about improper tactics or false statements. But during the last two days, most of the main figures managed to drag the campaign into the depths of muddling and name-calling.
It started with the help of five students not directly involved in the presidential campaign.
David Henry, an independent candidate for Senate, Robin McClellan, Mikl Gordon, Jeff Miller, and Robin Heape, who all have been involved in the Senate in the past, wrote a letter supposedly as an expression of a group of independent, non-aligned students.
The letter presented information that obviously was in favor of the Spectrum coalition. It claimed that Coleman and Abbott were going to severely restrict student involvement in several districts, so that the candidates were voicing a regressive attitude toward student involvement.
The Impact coalition obviously was upset with the accusations in the letter, copies of which
were posted and handed out all over campus. Henry charged two members of the Impact coalition, Dave Addins and Dan Cunningham, with taking down the letters in Wescoe and Fraser halls. But Henry did not see them do it, and Addins and Cunningham claimed they were merely replacing their own posters that had been torn down.
After that complaint was filed with Octavio Viveros, chairman of the Senate Elections subcommittee, Coleman and Abbott filed a motion that the letter was misleading end incorrect.
They complained that there was a definite connection between the letter and the Spectrum coalition because Spectrum members had been seen handing out copies of the letter.
A third complaint was filed by Metzger claiming that members of the Impact coalition had torn down the Spectrum posters in Wescoe Hall.
If there is one thing that is clear from all this, it is that Viveros will have a tough time finding out who was responsible for what. This is much more complicated than the shooting of J.R. because there is more than one culprit and there is little evidence to back up the charges.
the possible penalties range from a $10 to $100 fine to removal of a senator from his seat. It seems unlikely that any fines will be levied. There shouldn't be any because the main reason is not to pay any one candidate candidate but to the image of the candidates and the Senate itself.
The last two days of the campaign managed to take the focus away from the election and bring to light the petty politics of the Impact and Spectrum coalitions.
Coleman and Abbott won the election and many Impact coalition members also were elected, but the action of the candidates has left many students snickering.
If the Senate hopes to rid itself of the image of being a body of petty politicians whose main accomplishment is bickering among themselves, it now has even further to go.
Coleman and Abbott should assess the reasons they were dragged into the mudling and try to avoid such behavior in the future. The Senate can be a worthwhile organization but it needs to convince students of its effectiveness and viability. However, if this is to happen it certainly will not be with the same type of behavior exhibited during the last days of the campaign.
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Assistant Campus Editors Don Munday, Mark Spencer, Cindy Windham
Sponsor Karen Myers
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Manger Editors Tom Tedeschi, Lecila Winkman
Wire Editors Gail Eggers, Iwan wambo, Tanya Tammy
Chief Photographer Chris Todd
Photo Desk Assistant Ben Bigler, Ken Connis, Scott Hoacker
Staff Photographers Jave Krust, Drew Torres, Robert Poelet
Amy Hollewell, Bill Manesquez, Brett Coley
Scott Faust, Fred Markham, Susan Schennaker, Glake Mockups
Editorial Cartoonist Michael Wunsch, Bret Bolton, Lawrence Newman
Staff Writing Den Torcis, Shawn McKay
Staff Writers Karen Coller
Retail Information National Sales Manager Nancy Causse
Campus Sales Manager Carson Coon
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Advertising Makeup Manager Jane Wendreich
Staff Cost Brian Taylor
Staff Photographer Brian Watkins
Towerbeats Manager Barb Watson
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Letters to the Editor
Column on Reagan's death barbaric
To the editor:
Congratulations. In printing Brett Conley's Nov. 14 editorial wishing death upon Ronald Reagan, the Kansan plummeted to new depths of journalistic barbarism. Conley wrote that he "was shocked by the unimuthary far outstrip all the evils the Left accuses Reagan of harboring."
Conley commits the impropriety of wishing death to a law-abiding citizen, who happens to have been elected president by a popular majority. What good is a democracy? If the president of the nation has the next election to try to prove their ideology's worthiness over the incumbent's?
The story of the curse on presidents elected in years ending with a "O" is fascinating and thought provoking. It is a reasonable topic of an editorial, but for the writer to beg that the president strike a curse would lightning to strike a person whose only fault toward you is a difference in perspective.
Speaking of thoughts, the editorial discussed no issues, just twisted statements. Reagan is not the sickly old decrepit man that Conley implies. In fact, he is in excellent health, as proved in the extensive campaign. He is wrong with being anti-Communist?
There may be good arguments against anticommunism, but this article did not examine them. Also, why should being an actor be a liability to Reagan? The discipline and poise necessary to be an accomplished actor is an asset to the presidency.
found coney hail the assassin or our (his) country's president? Conley should write intelligent critiques of people, their words, and their deeds, or else get out of journalism.
Finally, Conley's biggest idocy, "If Reagan dies, his supporters will have William Henry Harrison to blame," is utter nonsense. Whether the curse is true or not, Reagan's death, should it occur, will be caused by his taking sick, or more likely, an assassination.
Albert Paul Burgstahler Lawrence junior
To the editor
Cartoon wrong
I am a physicist and I advocate nuclear fission as an energy source. If this makes me your enemy I feel sorry that the issue has deteriorated that far. But this letter is for those who at least have the grace to support my advice on the greatest nuclear fission the safest and the cleanest energy source available now on a large enough scale to support the taming cities.
The recent Joe Bartos cartoon and its implied criticism of nuclear energy has finally stirred me from my usual lethargy. Since the differences in opinion between Bartos and I go back a long way I cannot let a challenge like this pass by.
By safest I mean that fission power generation on the scale of a 1000 megawatt power plant (about average) produces less adverse health effects than any other means. It is estimated that upwards of 30,000 people die per year in the United States due to nuclear energy source (not including mining and transportation accidents). How many from fission? None yet, not even from the nasty incident at Three Mile Island. Certainly radiation is a hazard, but you got more from Mount St. Helens or by living in Denver than you ever got from a fission plant. Hydroelectricity is due to construction and maintenance accidents) as is any other energy source you care to name. I say choose the safest.
By cleanest I mean that fission power generates an extremely small amount of waste and pollutes the environment less than any other power source. The particulate matter and other waste produced by fossil fuel burning is truly immense, 180,000,000,000
lbs. of very hazardous materials per year.
How much from nuclear fission? Three million times less. There is nothing special about radioactive waste; it is no more deadly, no more potent, no more long-lived and no harder to store than any other waste we produce. If waste storage is your concern, put radioactivity in perspective. Chemical waste is dumped by the millions of tons and is just as deadly.
By available now, I mean that fission is the only source of energy that can satisfy the power needs of the industrialized world undiminished for the next 100 years. (If you think oil prices are bad now, wait until it really starts to become scarce.) Controller thermonuclear fusion (the power source for the stars, our sun in mind) will probably be one of the sources of energy in the 21st century but it is not adequately developed now. No other alternatives have the solid research and development backing that fission does.
And, finally, by large enough scale, I mean a power source able to meet the demands of a multi-million populated city. If power is shut off to them, have no doubts that countless deaths, riots and anarchy as a rule will be the result. Solar power, a perfectly adequate (and safe) source of home heating for semi-isolated, well-heated in a good climate is adequate when dealing with a typical apartment complex, tenament, or office building in New York. This same shortcoming is true for geothermal, tidal and wind power.
Erik J. Ramberg Topeka senior
All I can say further is that I will change my feelings about nuclear energy when I hear a good adequate criticism of it that does not apply to all other forms of energy or accepted social institutions like the automobile (how many thousands of deaths per year?-let's ban them). In any case, Joe, an adequate criticism is hardly the description for your latest attack. Thanks for the kick in the ribs, though.
Title IX copout
To the editor:
The football fallacy once again—this time in the “athletes (male, presumably) cheer Reagan-decy Title IX” feature by Brett Conley. It would be difficult to object to some of the football failings at a winning season or not will solve the problems of athletic funding at KU for all time.
One can hope that even the women athletes would benefit from the increased revenues of a few good years, as Conley suggested, but we are not likely to win forever. And then what happens—are the women, as last funded, the first to be cut?
Unless a sound budget is developed that will provide equitable funding for both men and women in lean years, as well as fat ones, we have made no real progress.
Elizabeth C. Banks
Associate professor of classics
Elizabeth C. Banks
Associates, Inc.
Bruce the greatest
It's about time the Kansan came to its senses and honored its pages with Bruce Springsteen! Amy Holloway's article Nov. 13 described her experience in the Kansan that I could not agree with more.
As a die-hard Bruce fan myself, I am one of those who refuses to see any other concert that of the brilliant artist from Asbury Park, N.J. He is the most explosive and intense performer in the rock world today. His songwriting has been so powerful Dylan and his ability as a guitarist to Jimi Hendrix. But does he show it off? No. He doesn't need to. His fans already know it.
see Springsteen as the true Boss of Rock'n Roll. All I can say to them is "Do you know what real rock is?"" Fully true rockers don't change with frzenized fries (like New Wave), and don't let their heads expand along with their incomes.
Unfortunately, there are those who fail to
Can you imagine Bruce wearing a flashy sequined outfit? Never! Springensteen doesn't thrive on his fans. He lives for them. He writes and sings his songs in the public domain, but his chip-like understanding is formed. His fans know him and appreciate him for what he really is: The Boss.
As the editor of The Rolling Stone once said, "I am a fan of 'Roll,' and his name is Bryce Springsteen."
Michael Greenberg Omaha Freshman
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This is in response to Scott Landgraf's letter to the editor. An Ode to Reagan.
Ma shuff
A repsonse to 'Ode'
Please stop that noise and tell your little friends (for I know you are common) to do the same, at least until there is something to bark at. When are you kids going to pick yourselves up? Are they going to just sit rather than pointing your fingers and jabbering at problems that do not exist?
Are you doing it in search of recognition for your glorious wit? Better try again. But I won't harp on your attempt to use the English language.
Then, Landgraf, if the new policies come to merit our dissent, we shall protest; I'll share a prison cell with you if it comes to that. But if those programs prove to be innovative and effective, we will applaud them. In my case, we will respond with the jerk of a knee and we avoid reacting with the jerk of a knee and the absence of a thought to some hobgoblin of uninformed minds.
the nation just chose a new president. Some would have preferred a different outcome of that election; that is always the case. But we cannot afford to wallow in disappointment and stick out our tongues at each other now that the winner has been decided. The nation has its problems. We must move on to solve them, but we will never begin to do so in the absence of at least some modicum of cooperative spirit.
Sure, Landgraf, you and I may end up strongly disagreeing with Reagan's future policies, but what d'ya say, how about if we both watch with sharp eye as those programs materialize and then judge them for what they become? I think we'll be the better for it if we do, instead of prancing around and coughing out garbled phrases from the same old, worn-out repertoire of anti-Reagan cliches at everbody we meet.
Robert C. Hockett Stilwell sophomore
Columns inspirational To the editor :
Fred Markham's column provides a weekly inspiration for Kansan readers. In his words, we the essence of what makes life worth living. Too many people don't want to match to life's problems. Markham doesn't. He knows that life is too precious to waste on worthless lamenting.
He often uses the words handicapped and disabled to describe himself and others, but Markham is not handicapped. The courage spirit he has displayed at KU has proven that.
Markham's writing provides a unique insight into a world that many fear and avoid. Could it be that they are just ignorant of the facts? Or maybe they just don't care enough to get involved. Markham's column eliminates the first excuse.
Joe Rebein
Dodge City junior
.