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Opinion
University Daily Kansan, November 6, 1980
Another kev election
If nothing else, the Student Senate's decision to cut itself in half has fostered more competition for upcoming Senate elections.
After last Friday's filing deadline had passed, 108 students had filed for 58 Senate seats. Last year, 156 students vied for about 120 positions.
Increased competition will benefit the Senate. Presumably if there are fewer positions available, fewer unqualified candidates wil assume office.
In the past, candidates have been convinced to file at the last minute so that all the positions could be filled. Under the new system—or perhaps any system—there is no safeguard against such filings. Yet it is reasonable to assume that the new system
will weed out some of the apathetic candidates.
The true test of the new Senate will come after the Nov. 19-20 elections. Because there will be fewer senators, the Senate cannot afford to fall into its old apathetic ways.
The election will give the new Senate a chance to start over. Moreover, the Senate will be smaller, and thus starting over shouldn't be as difficult as in the past.
In the past, if only half the Senate showed up at meetings, about 60 senators still would be involved in the decision-making process. Now only about 30 would be making the same decisions.
The Senate's fate rests with the soon-to-elected senators. If the Senate is to gain some direction, the time to do so is now.
KU Endowment Association aids South Africa apartheid
By LAIRD OKIE
Guest Columnist
Brett Conley's column of Oct. 28, "KU has no real tie to South Africa," gives an uninformed and inaccurate account of the divestment issue.
Conley claims that the KU Committee on South Africa has "misrepresented" the University's investment policy by asserting that the Endowment Association invests directly in ex-mergers. It describes how no examples of such misrepresentation. There are, in fact, none to be found.
It was also news to me that the committee believes, according to Conley, that the Endowment Association is "an imperialist organization and an enslave of humans."
From its inception three years ago, the committee's position has been clear. We believe the Endowment Association should divest from those corporations that have operations in South Africa because they help perpetuate apartheid. There is no question that this organization counted countless times in our literature and pronouncements, and reported in the press. Does Conley read the Kansan?
Apparently Conley agrees that American investments in South Africa bolster the aparteid regime. But he suggests that the committee go directly after the corporations and leave the poor Endowment Association alone. What he had in mind was not indicated.
Apart from divestment, the other strategy that has been attempted in order to break corporate ties has been to vote shareholder resolutions at annual meetings of stockholders. This tactic obviously is not very realistic for students, and, in any event, it has met with no success. The divestment movement grew, in part, out of the failure of this strategy.
We have never said and do not believe this to be the case. We do believe that the University should have a sense of moral responsibility when it defines its investment policy, and that the Endowment Association acts irresponsibly when in companies with South African holdings.
Reading Conley's piece, one would think that the divestment campaign at KU is an isolated occurrence. Actually, at least 20 colleges and universities have divested in whole or in part, and there are active campaigns on many other campuses. The divestment movement extends nationwide and includes churches, unions and state and local governments. Corporations must count the cost of investing in South Africa when confronted with the potential loss of investors
and decline in stock values. One corporation under pressure, Polaroid, has disinvested.
Nor is the divestment campaign lost on the South Africans themselves. The overwhelming majority of black African leaders, both in and out of South Africa, support divestment. Anti-apartheid efforts in this country lend great moral and psychological support to the anti-apartheid struggle within South Africa. This is one point made by Denis Brutus, an exiled poet and resistance activist who will be debating at the University today.
White South African leaders decry divestment as a threat to the status quo, and the issue receives considerable attention in the white press. Consider the editorial reaction of the Rand Daily Mail when the Nebraska Legislature passed a resolution last April call upon the state to divest its funds from corporations operating in South Africa.
The paper commented that the vote was "ominous" because Nebraska was "midwestern and conservative. Its vote could well set a bandwagon rolling with incalculable con... . . . Meaningful change--that is the only way to halt disinvestment and save our country."
Conley claims that divestment from such multi-national corporations as Exxon and IBM would severely drain the University of revenues. Yet there is strong evidence against this stock diversification, because the evidence of those universities that have divested suggests that there are substantial alternatives.
After the University of Wisconsin divested, for instance, the Secretary of the Board of Regents explained that "there were a lot of stocks to invest in, to replace those we sold." And a recent study published in the Journal of Portfolio Management concluded that "the effect on companies operating in South Africa is, contrary to intuition, not particularly important."
What is wrong, moreover, with transferring KU monies to local businesses and institutions, thereby helping the local economy and community?
As KU students, we should not be satisfied with complacent assurances that the Endowment Association is "merely investing its money in the most prudent manner," and wash our hands of responsibility. Exxon is refining the oil that fuels South Africa's military machine. IBM computers are used to run the white elite's prisons and prison system. So long as the Endowment Association goes on investing in these companies, KU is helping to subsidize anartheid.
Laird Okie is a Lawrence graduate student and a member of the KU Committee on South Africa.
The University Daily KANSAN
(SPSS 60-648) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Thursday during June and July except September, Sunday and Saturday, and Wednesday and Thursday. Postgraduate class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas or as a fee year round. Student subscriptions are $2 a semester, paid through the student activity fee. Postmaster: Send changes of address to the University Daily Kansas, Flint Hall, The University of Kansas, Kansas City, Missouri.
General Manager and News Adviser...Rick Musser
Kanan Adviser...Chuck Chowtnu
Hashinger's world beginning to fade
We've all heard the intimate call of small colleges, where the world is comfortably off-campus. We've heard of kaffe-klatches with professors, close college friendships and friends, a shared community. We've heard how small colleges touch individual lives, quietly.
For those of us whose college lives consist of student identification numbers, computers
Hanne Richardson KANSAN 80
SUSAN SCHOENMAKER
Matching Hashinger's careless acceptance of its lifestyle, I was unruffled by the
Courties, customs and values, such as honesty, are handed down from older Hashies and, like cherished scrapbooks, they are preserved. Yet those same hand-me-down values are often shrugged off by Hashies who take their traditions for granted.
and 100-student classes, the personality of a small college is missed amid the chilling air of University efficiency. That's why Hashinger Hall, residence for the creative arts, is such a welcome breath of spontaneous community.
That might explain why Hashinger's large following stays, year after year. Over the past three years, an average of 45 percent of the hall's residents returned each year. In the highly transient terms of a college town, Hashinger is a curiosity, its stability is perhaps more dramatically told in its low inflation. Hashinger paid $6.45 in vandalism repair expenses, far out-distancing the next lowest residence hall's cost of $726.05.
From pink flamingoes, Hashinger's unofficial suburban-snubbing mascot, to the Margaret Hashinger portrait that presides over hall functions, Hashinger is an independent spirit. Successful girls give up their opportunities to spend their living and come up with community. It is, in a society increasingly short on tradition, tradition at its most non-traditional.
Hashinger is, for the residents who believe in it, not merely pianos, student art exhibits and hall plays, but a process of living and learning that adds personality to a dry University. Its traditions, reaching into the lives of students who went before, introduce stability for those students sharing today's Hashinger.
What is it but a Hashinger Hall Saturday when you wake up early to the heavy beat of a next-door Beethoven? Where else but Hashinger will you find an orchestra percussionist, a boxstall stall, guitars in the stairwells and a typewriter band performance in the lobby?
amazement of visitors last year who pointed out an unprotected stereo and unlocked bicycles in Hashinger's sixth floor lobby.
"Oh, that's nothing." I said waving away a comment on a "found" sign in the elevator.
This year I was to learn differently. The web of tradition, overlooked because it is Hashinger itself, is at last pulling apart. Some of the parting with tradition is symbolic: Maggie Hashinger, newly retouched, now peers uncomfortably out of her large gilt frame from a stationary cabinet and fortunately real: a damaged piano, a stolen IBM typewriter (later recovered), stolen books and purses, clothing taken from the laundry room.
There was a new sign in the elevator this year, this time from a student bengging for his
Tradition is, for the old-timers and for the first-time, missed
Yet it is finances, not a lack of integrity, that is threatening Hashinger. As J.J. Wilson, director of housing, pointed out, Hashinger hasn't paid its way. Although Hashinger is the pride of the housing department, its special art facilities are expensive.
Accordingly, Hashinger's allotment of single rooms, which are less profitable than double rooms was decreased from 15 percent three years ago to 3.6 percent this year. That led to more noise, longer dinner lines, more impatience, more rules and less compliance.
Apparently, quality of life isn't in Hashiner's budget anymore.
As one resident lamented recently, 'I'm not in danger in Hashinger anymore, I'm living in a dorm.'
Because Hashinger now offers fewer choices, it is inevitable that fewer will choose to stay. Juniors and seniors, bearers of Hashinger's ideals, are the first to leave and the hardest to lose. More independent and with a greater flexibility, they are unlikely to tolerate disruptive changes in a residence hall.
Yet it is from their accumulated knowledge, leadership and stability that new residents inherit a love for Hashinger's one-of-a-kind nature. When the juniors and seniors meet at the annual Hashinger that can never be returned. Traditions that, without them, are forgotten.
Hashing is learning that you can't count lives by numbers.
Letters to the Editor
Although it was homecoming, there was next to nothing about this minor fact in the paper. In an eight-page edition, the Kansan carried only one article and one picture that were even remotely related to homecoming and its activities. Both of these dealt with the football team's participation that week. That is more than I can say concerning the coverage of the KU-Nebraska game.
Being a faithful friend of the Kansan, I and many of my fellow students have been sorely disappointed with the quality of reporting that I have received. I refer to the issues of Oct. 13 and Oct. 20.
To the editor:
Kansan's coverage overlooks homecoming
I found it an insult to be confronted with a cheering Nebraska student on the front page. KU had plenty to cheer about during the first part of the game. The article on the sports page did not have a single good thing to say about our team. We were at the game contended in fact that KU denied credit it than, which was absolutely none. We call this the Kanas? It sounded more like the Nebraskan.
Maybe I dreamed it all, but I could have sworn more happened this weekend than one football game. I wonder—where the Kansan staff was during the parade, the rally and the Ozark Mountain Daredevil's concert. For as good a paper as the Kansan is reputed to be, why were all these occurrences ignored? Out of the eight that occurred last year, two did not than advertising, I'm aware of the fact that a paper cannot exist without advertising, but the news should not be neglected.
Even if the Kansan would have carried coverage of these things in the next edition, it would have been a little late. By then it is old news. The staff should not spread out the news to fill space in the next edition. Come on Kansan—get with it.
Susan Page
Topeka junior
So why not go back to that kind of society? It makes a lot of sense. "To keep criminals from being, 'put back on the streets just months after they commit crimes,' we could institute capital punishment for first offenders and life imprisonment for speeding tickets. Of course, we couldn't get the Cuban refugees that way because they prefer to travel by air. But just think of all the advantages of an armed and ever vigilant society.
There would be no racial problems because there would be no more minorities. There would be no unemployment. We could put people to work in the state government, their lawmakers buried the Constitution. Utopia.
Thanks, Menezes, for bringing this to my attention
were the good old days: lynchings, gunfights, mob rule, and no civil rights or fair trials. If ya wanted to take a nigger out and hang 'im, there wasn't no judge ta tell ya you cauldn't. And it sure cut the crime down, didn't it? It who ever heard of a bank being robbed in those days? Jesse James was just an honest guy who got bad press reviews.
Bob Armstrong Leawood freshman
Mission impossible
Column disturbing
To the editor:
To the Editor:
If BILL Menezes wasn't writing for the Kanas, which would not disturb me in the least, he might find true happiness in being transported to another point in time—say Germany in the 38s.
I sincerely hope that I missed something when I read the article entitled, "Psychology students' mission almost impossible." What could be the result of this absence the moronic assignment 'killing for sport?'
He could goosethem through the streets, busting heads to his heart's content. If anybody didn't like it, he could shoot them. And there weren't any Cuban refugees around either, no foreigners at all, just pure-blooded Aryans (wait a minute. doesn't that mean people from Iran?).
Or, maybe Menezes would like the "rugged individualism," of the wild west. Yeah, those
The T.A. in the class states, "You learn a lot about yourself. It's one of the more relaxing classes." He also states that the students in the class are "anxious," "tense," "really scared," "nervous and more apprehensive" while 'killing for sport.'
I guess this field of psychology is beyond my understanding.
David Quadagno
Professor of physiology and cell biology
To the Editor:
Vigilantism bad
Bill Menezes' generally simplistic, poorly thought out editorials took a dangerously irresponsible turn with his recent editorial suggesting a return to vigilantism. Can he really be serious in saying "vigilantism is't bad as he should" or that it is a "logical" method of crime control?
Vigilantism is defined by Webster as "summary action resorted to by a volunteer committee."
Summary means to do without delay or formality, but often canines disregard for the facts of the situation, the rights of the people involved, or the law itself.
When is that sort of behavior appropriate? And how can any benefits be realized from actions that allow the possibility of lynch mobism, or give trigger-happy types a degree of legitimacy? For Menenez to state that these problems are merely fortunate and that the rise in vigilantism is attractive suggests that he has a very distorted view of American society.
I agree that citizens can help control crime. Defensive actions, such as locking doors, checking on neighbors' houses, and so on can be effective deterrents and should be encouraged.
But these actions should not be confused with vigilantism. Suggestions that such extralegal behavior is the best way to deal with crime should be immediately recognized for what they are—contrary to the foundations of this and every other civil society in the world.
Jim Cartwright St. Louis senior
Letters Policy
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is afar from home, the writer should include the writer's class name home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan reserves the right to edit letters for publication.