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Opinion
University Daily Kansan, October 30, 1980
Archie keeps busy
Archie R. Dykes has turned from chancellor to campaigner.
Fresh from a seven-year stint as KU's chancellor, Dykes hasn't taken long to become politically active. Of course, he has every right to do so.
Yet his recent actions are enough to make it appear as though he is paying off some old political favors. First, he has sponsored a reception for U.S. Rep. Larry Winn, Republican. Then he sent out letters to various "KU Friends" on behalf of State Sen. Arnold Berman, Democrat.
The letter outlines Berman's accomplishments in the Kansas Legislature
and says Berman would continue to work with the University in an effective manner.
The letter never calls for Berman's reelection, but suffice it to say that Dykes is putting his considerable KU influence to good use, or at least to some kind of use.
Berman, in particular, has worked diligently for increased staff salaries and numerous building and campus improvements. Many of these were Dykes' pet projects. The letters convey Dykes' appreciation for Berman's actions quite well.
A deadline on letters
It's less than a week before the election, and if readers want to write letters to the editor concerning the Kansan's endorsements or the election in general, they must submit them to 112 Flint Hall by 3 p.m. today.
possible and will provide a fair sampling of letters. Students, faculty members and classified employees will get priority.
As usual, readers must follow the Kansan's letter policy.
Because of space limitations, readers are encouraged to write brief letters. The Kansan will publish as many letters as
The election is an important time for people to express their opinions, not only at the polls, but also in this public forum. We welcome your views.
Kansan's Dole endorsement lacks thought, responsibility
By JULIE CRAFT and DON STROLE Guest Columnists
The Kansan, by endorsing independent presidential candidate John Anderson, U.S. Rep. candidate Dan Watkins and U.S. Sen. candidate Bob Dole, shows that it is not much in tune with the relevant issues of either the presidential or senatorial campaigns. Clearly, John Simpson, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senator, is much more aligned with Anderson and Watkins than is Dole.
Dole has called for a simplistic 30 percent across-the-board tax cut, whereas Anderson, Watkins and Simpson support a much more moderate tax cut. On energy issues, Anderson, Watkins and Simpson for strong conservation measures and the development of alternative energy sources.
None of them support the continued increase of profits by the big oil companies at the expense of the consumer as Dole surely did when he voted against the windfall profits tax and when he received huge sums of money from these special interest groups.
Also, the Kansas contended in its endorsement of Watkins that U.S. Rep. Larry Winn had not been an effective congressman for Kansas. Certainly Dole was not being an effective senator when he was running for president while the Rock Island railroad was going under.
It is just incredulous for anyone who has compared Dole's and Simpson's stands on issues to believe that Dole could be endorsed by the same entity that also endorsed Anderson and Watkins. Evidently the Kansan has not bothered to see where Simpson stands on the issues.
The Kansan cannot maintain that Simpson has not spoken on the issues. On at least three instances Simpson has spoken on the major issues at the University of Kansas. On one of these instances, we know that the Kansan heard what Simpson had to say on energy.
During this talk Simpson made clear that he is against nuclear power and for conservation and the regulation of toxic wastes. These issues not only illustrate his difference from Dole, but also
To call Simpson opportunistic is to indicate that the Kansan has not paid too close attention to his campaign. How could one call a candidate opportunist when this candidate has fought a tough, uphill battle for the Senate for more than a year?
say something significant about Simpson's controversial stands on the critical issue of abortion.
Simpson, who is quite wealthy, could have thrown huge sums of money into the campaign if he was simply opportunistic. Dole has been an unsuccessful politician and money into the election, which is not the case.
It is Dole who has outspent Simpson many times over. Simpson doesn't want to buy the election, but he wants to give Kansas a senator who truly cares about the concerns of Kansas—one who is much more interested in the issues than his own personal advancement.
The worst aspect of the Dole endorsement by the Kansan is its admission that Dole was an embarrassment as a presidential candidate, but not as an embarrassment to embark on embarrassment as a senatorial candidate.
The Kansan neglected to cite any instance where Simpson has been an embarrassment, other than the fact that Simpson contributed to Dole's 1974 Senate campaign. This is just another indication that the Kansan has not bothered to attend. Simpson has said or done during his long campaign.
We conclude by informing the Kansan that Simpson will be at KU for several appearances today, with a speech at the School of Law at 1 p.m. followed by visits on the main campus.
We can only hope that the Kansan will make the effort to cover these appearances. Perhaps then it will see that Simpson is not at all an embarrassment, but rather a candidate with bold and fresh ideas for solving the problems presented in the book. The Kansan is not a candidate whose ideas are tied to the interest groups that have produced many of these problems.
Julie Craft and Don Strole co-chair the Douglas County Simpson for Senate campaign.
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 after the first line of the letter, they should include the writer's class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan reserves the right to edit letters for publication.
The University Daily KANSAN
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Campaigning leaves KU dim HOPEs
Cigars and a ceiling fan and the "machine" would be in full swing, Chicago-style. A few illegal undergrad votes, like the graveyard vote, could also could be truly politics, Hizzozamada style.
It's become a virtual campaign, this 1980 HOPE Award selection has. There are buttons, posters and newspaper ads. There was a nominating convention of sorts down in Learned Hall. This fall, students are stumping more than ever before.
And what a shame. Used to be, seniors voted for an educator in whom they genuinely believed. Used to be, the award was recognition for an outstanding professor, an outstanding expounder of thoughts and theories. Used to be, there were no campaigns, no flyers, no newspaper endergems.
But no more. Politics is the perversion of a beautiful honorable good. The slick shell has earned
Of course, the campaigners believe in their candidates and in their candidates' teaching abilities. No doubt, the recipient of this year's award will be as worthy of this honor for an outstanding progressive educator as have been past recipients.
Yet we are witnessing the beginning of what could become an outrageously deformed contest, the winner in years to come being, ultimately, the professor with the wealthiest students. Media-based campaigns certainly are not cheap.
So what's wrong with buying a HOPE Award, anyway? No one ever set financial limits. No one ever established campaigns to win awards. No one ever awarded the award, simply charged future seniors to
select an outstanding progressive educator in a popular election.
Naturally, they assumed that the most popular instructor would be elected in such an election. Obviously, the instructors teaching large classes, composed primarily of seniors, would have the best shot at the award. Unfortunately, the award's conceivers didn't foresee the recently surfacing money-campaign factor.
What then of the fine educators with poor students or few students or ethical students?
AMY HOLLOWELL
They never receive the HOPE Award, that's what. Their names never even make the first ballot unless their students play the campaign game.
Indeed, every student can play if they choose. It's called coalition building, power in the classroom.
This year, the Engineering Student Council decided to play and win. Before the initial balloting earlier this month, the council organized a drive to nominate Don W. Green, professor of chemical and petroleum engineering. They selected Green from the engineering faculty as the school's candidate, urging engineers from all sequences to rally behind this one professor instead of risking division of their potentially unified support.
It didn't take long for the journalism seniors to join the campaign, plastering Flint in red.
Chowins, assistant professor of journalism,
soon,飞莉 For William Balfour, professor of physiology and cell biology, appeared across campus.
Those slapping the sickness into the HOPE Award search apparently have no qualms about doing so. For them, it is simply a matter of winning an election and getting their man into the winner's circle by whatever means necessary.
Moreover, the professors themselves are not generally opposed to the questionable tactics employed by their enthusiastic supporters. In a recent Kanan story, only one of the five finalists expressed dismay with the exceptionally active tone of this year's campaign. After all, these efforts could mean a HOPE Award for them.
What does this award mean, though? Currently, it retains its prestige. In a sense, it still means, if it ever did, that the senior class; after four years, eight semesters and numerous professors, has voted to recognize this one educator as outstanding and progressive.
But it's in danger. The present campaigns signal the demise of the original HOPE, of whatever sincerity there once was in this campaign, and the worthy teacher. The spirit, it seems, is waning.
We have all known good professors, competent ones, but not many have been inspiring and motivating, not many have been truly excited, truly interested, truly outstanding educators. This award, it seems, should honor those few.
But sadly, from the looks of things, it seems we will soon honor outstanding campaigners rather than those outstanding educators. What a shame.
Letters to the Editor
To the editor
Vigilantism nonsensical solution to crime
I was appalled by Bill Menezes' column on Oct. 20 entitled, "Vigilantism better than no crime control." Citizens arming themselves "to the teeth" and "blasting away at shadows, the cat in the garbage cans, the neighbors or anything else that looks suspicious" is, Menezes admits, the backbone of a system that he labels "attractive" and "loICAL."
Comparing modern vigilante violence to settlers banding together to defend themselves against Indians, Menezes calls this lynch mob mentality an American tradition and even implies that we have no choice but to accept it. The benefits of mob rule, he claims, far outweigh the possible dangers. If innocent people are killed as a result, that is "fortunate."
If law enforcement agencies are unable to cope with rising crime rates in some areas, I agree that something needs to be done, but for citizens to take the law into their own hands, forming vigilante committees and killing who looks suspicious completely invalidates the concepts of justice, law and order that Menezes is presumably concerned with protecting. Who can pinpoint the difference from a vigilante killer and a criminal? John Clifford
Stipp rips
Lawrence freshman
To the editor:
I would like to respond to David Stipp's column about John Cage in the Oct. 16 Kansan. Stipp's conclusion, thinly clad in clumsy satire, that John Cage should be ignored is a perfect reflection of a little mind being preyed upon by that well-known hologolob, a penitence反射 to new ideas.
Sittip said, in effect, that because he couldn't understand it, Cage's art was trivial and not worthy of attention. The babbling crowd of intellectual pygmies that always attends important art has often responded to Cage in this way. I would submit that Sittip's difficulty with the history of 20th century ideas rather than the result of Cage's opacity.
One of the richest lodes of thought in the 20th century has been the analysis of self-referential
statements. For instance, a revolution in the foundations of mathematics in the early 1900s that completely changed our ideas about mathematical certainty was sparked by analysis of statements that referred to themselves. Recently, some of the most exciting ideas about the mind revolve around its self-referential properties. One of the variations of this 20th century theme has been self-referential art that draws on the body and demonstrates a theory of art. Some of the greatest artists of the past 50 years have created primarily self-referential art, examples being Wallace Stevens, Vladimir Nabokov, and Henri Matisse. Cage is one such artist.
the Cage piece that Stipp ridicules, "Four Minutes and 32 Seconds," is a witty little meditation on the nature of art. Its message is that art is often an attempt to express the inner thoughts of the artist, but impression too complex or evanescent to be communicated. The paradox at the heart of great art is that it is sometimes successful in communicating essentially inexpressible things. What better way to express this paradox of art than music, which is no sound at all, as Cage has done?
Stipp totally misses Cage's point, which reminds me that one of my biggest grapes about journalism is that journalists are always setting themselves up as experts in a field, then telling others what they can do. That field are what they themselves can understand. For instance, Gravity's Rainbow, the novel by Thomas Pycnchon, was denied a Pulitzer Prize in 1974 because one of the Pulitzer judges, a Wall Street Journal editor, wasn't to finish reading it. As such examples attest, journalism superficial enough captures the kind of benigntrouble that Mr. Stipp would give us.
David Stipp
My congratulations on your publication of Bill Menezes' column about vigilantism. Not many papers would allow their readers to see what they were thinking about, and they posed to a semester of conservative campaign
Lawrence graduate student Vigilantism silly To the editor
rhetoric, especially when it happens to be one of their own columnists. The world may be repelled by naked, slobbering, madness, but it can never stop the Kansan refused to let its reader know it exists.
Menezes' idea of community spirit being reborn in vigilisman is an interesting one. It could be a return to the "good old days"—with few variations. Instead of quitting bees, the little women could reload shells for dad and save their Aunt Jemma labels for target practice. Dad could drink Cuban rum and Russian vodka, then shoot the emojies.
Menezes mentioned that an armed suburbia might be hard on neighborhood cats but failed to recognize the possibility of two suburban guerrillas opening fire on the same cat some dark night and mistaking each other for the enemy—whoever that is.
Knowing the human need for vengeance, it would take only few accidental wounds to dislodge them.
The names of the great American battles, Bunker Hill, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and Pearl Harbor have given way to names like the battle at New York, which was an offensive and the landing at Lakewood Estates.
There could be commemorative plaques with the names of the famous fighters of the suburban armies, etched in bronze, listing the corporate affiliations of the fallen.
"George Greedhead, Executive Vice President, Greedhead and Sons Toxic Chemicals. Killed in the Battle of Avalon Loop Drive."
The list could be endless. After all, what is the Colorado deer season but a lot of armed suburbanianites and a huge area. Even with all that space and all those mountains to absorb most of the wild shooting, a lot of rich people still manage to shoot each other. Imagine a smaller space, more guns and the possibility of an endless season.
Come to think of it there may be some method to Menezes' madness. It might help to redistribute wealth, even if real fighting didn't break out. After all, how are poor people supposed to steal guns if the rich people don't buy them for them to steal.
*Kirk Tindall*
Lawrence senior