Page 4 University Daily Kansan, October 6, 1980 Opinion Senate must fussbudget As KU's Student Senate rediscovered last week, you can't please everyone. Every year at this time, the Senate takes requests from various campus and student organizations at its supplemental budget hearings. The Senate finds itself swamped by groups that want money set aside for their activities. This fall's ritual was no different. In all, the Student Senate Finance and Auditing Committee saw 57 organizations request a total of $86, 896.35. Yet the Senate had only $16.097.35 available to allocate. Although the committee strives to be consistent and to award funds on the basis of a group's service to the University, much of the Senate's budget decisions hinge on value judgments. It's certainly not easy to be fair when a lot of organizations have legitimate needs and there's not enough money around. The committee recommended that funds be allocated to 29 organizations and many groups' requests were reduced to zero. Starting tomorrow, the Senate will consider the committee's budget recommendations. It would have been much simpler for the Senate to have cut the $18,000 budget in 57 slices and to give each group about $282. It's not that easy. To the Senate's credit, the committee spent much time determining which groups it thought offered the most services and needed the extra funding. Yet the committee's recommendations should be scrutinized by the Senate before final approval. Without a doubt, the Senate's most important job is to allocate funds for student services in an efficient and fair manner. The job needs to be done right. Cultural, attitudinal barriers are fueled by sexist language Language is the lore of its people. It is a script of their aspirations, hopes and values richly written by grammar, vocabulary and semantics. It is also the maker of culture—renewing and retelling tradition. Yet today, language's strong ties with tradition have led it to hopelessly trail the times. Once the lodestar of a male-dominated society, language has persisted in past patterns of bestowing its largest and prestige on the male sex. Nevertheless, the facade of tradition and linguistic purity invoked to defend this inflexibility is increasingly challenged by women SUSAN SCHOENMAKER convinced that an equal life requires an equal language. They recognize that language is the touchstone of our society, which can by the nature of its words shape, direct and limit change. Although the male bias in our language is often hidden by unthinking habits of tradition, occupations tagged for men have only recently become fair game for females. Holly contested such words as "postman," "congressman," "newsman," and "policeman," as the migration of women into the job market makes a mockery of their meanings. Rather than preserving inaccuracy under the banner of tradition, it would seem more logical to reconcile the language to reality. Society should fall in step with the example of the U.S. police officer who occupies positions into such neutral terms as mail carrier, police officer and journalist. Those opposed to such changes argue that they labor the language with inegleant constructions. Akwwardness, however, is in the eye of the beholder, and that is the nature of the teacher of training the tongue and the temperament. The height of the language's love affair with the masculine referents is the word "man," touted as a generic term that blankets male and female alike in its linguistic bounty. But if the word "man" frequently masquerades as "person," the disguise isn't complete. If the word "man" had truly gained universal stature, the following excerpt wouldn't strike us as humorous: a research paper discusses "the development of the uterus in rats, guinea pigs and man." We shouldn't sacrifice sensibility and precision for the sake of preserving a male monopoly over the humanity. The words "human" or "people" are easily substituted and clear up the cobwebs generated by the multi-use word "man" because they are not context-bound. Another gern of literary logic is the pronoun, "he," in theory a reversible referent that applies equally to male and female. Although "he" supposedly heralds the entrance of both a male and female noun, it nevertheless has little function as an adverb. It is the state law that shrilly observes, "no person may require another person to perform, participate or undergo an abortion against his will." A more judicious use of the pronoun, with each serving its own sex, would best suit society. In the event that a sentence has no particular sex in mind, such as "a person shouldn't eat after he swims", can be easily transformed into a plural, "people shouldn't eat after they swim." This is not to suggest we engage in a witch hunt to eliminate all masculine elements in the language, rather we should seek to work changes that will add clarity to the language and dignity to womanhood. Only then we begin to liberate the language from pervasive connotations that undercut the female sex. The ultimate insult "you woman," the denigrating term "women's work" and "womanish" as a synonym for weak, all unleavious stereotypes in our language that will take centuries to shake. Language that is just timeless but timely can fairly reflect the feminine factor. Unlike the French Academy, which is frantically shooping English out of France in the interests of linguistic purity, we should seek to balance our language's past with the demands of the present. language a skill with the demands of the present. If men and women ever expect to be equal partners in the American story, then they must be willing to rewrite the words to tell it. Cruel chicken farmers lay an egg The pitiful chicken sat motionless in the small cage where she had been confined since she was 16 weeks old. She picked at the feed in the trough and occasionally dropping an egg down a metal crate. In her eyes was a suffering that only eventual slaughter would quiet. And her pain was shared by other chickens caught in the battery, or group of wire-mesh cages, in the windowless, time- and temperature-controlled barn. Gone are the blissful days when Farmer Browns let their chickens have the run of the barnyard. Chickens used to peck, scratch and destroy them, free to roam and frolic in the dust. But no more. The American people, just emerging from the "Me Decade," have so far managed to close their eyes to the terrible torments their chicken brethren are undergoing on farms across the country. But this state of affairs has ruffled some Britons. No, the people of the scoper'd里, where 90 percent of chickens live in batteries, are not blind to the birds' plight, and a free-range egg movement has sprung up there. Soldiers in the British free-range egg army spend $240,000 on a newspaper ad barrage last spring. In Switzerland, free-rangers awn a national referendum banning small chicken cages, and the European Common Market is investigating the issue. A British group called Chickens' Lib has even conducted commando-style raids on battery barns to gather evidence of cruelty. These chickens' chums, as it were, charge that chickens suffer "stimulus poverty," and "battery fatigue" from having no room to move. The chicks roost in nests and roosts. In short, the poor things do without all the things that could make chicken's lives meaningful. The hardhearted and inhumane react to the free-rangers' concern with a shrug. "Aren't chickens exceedingly stupid birds?" they ask coldly. "Can't they get exercise stretching one wing at a time?" "Do they really have enough awareness to be aware of their own condition?" Oh, how entrenched are most people's beliefs SCOTT FAUST about poultry! They say "sunny side up" or "once over easy" with thoughtless disregard for the anguish of those creatures who pass each day thinking there must be a better way of life. Yes! Yes, there is, and someday the world's chickens will join wings and rise against man's birds. Already, on one local farm, the seed of discontent has blossomed and a brood of chickens have won the freedom that was always rightfully its. The chickens are liberated and have the run of the yard outside of the barn that was once their prison. Eggs are still laid, gathered and taken to market, but they are eggs given up willingly. The farm is an Orwellian vision. Emblazoned on the barn are the words, "Chickens of the world unite." You have nothing to lose but your cares! "It is a slogan that quickens the heart. These chickens have begun to develop their intellects and discover alternative lifestyles. One especially wise chicken was able to translate the chicken language into English, and he discussed the changes that freedom had brought to the farm. "We are a proud group now," said the leader, who kept her grown-out feathers out of her eyes with a red bandanna. "Bird-brained" is an age-old misconception, and we are proving that daily. Once we had only an oral heritage, but now we can write to, although some call it chicken-scratch. A glance around the yard revealed chickens fulfilled. They had distinguished themselves from their less-cultivated comrades at other farms and spent their time drawing pictures in the dust, preening themselves or talking in animated tones about the revolution. She said the chicken had wandered away from the farm one day, and, strolling into town, had come upon a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. She has never recovered. One chicken, however, sat glumly by a fence with her head drooped. When asked about this one, the leader said the depressed chicken had spoken to the modern shocks. Liberation is not without its price. But the other chickens appeared ready to accept the challenges of their new-found freedom, including the duty to spread the heat by laboring farms and eventually to the entire world. A cluster of chickens worked diligently on some posters they planned to carry on the raid. The knifing words of one of the posts brought home the injustices perpetrated by man. It read, simply: "Free yourself!" A chicken's mind is a terrible thing to waste. In fact, they were planning a midnight escape the next week to bring truth to a nearby battery base. W Depai Kansi "FI award oopor system chant goals barric SUI work preve ranks Moor Kans Mac confere a sys levels supple "Tl what Moor post z of Mi power to fig "W notice "Tha We d diffic The University Daily KANSAN (UPS$ 650-640) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Monday and Thursday due June and July except Saturday, Sunday and holidays. Subscribes pay $1 for six months or $27 a year Subscriptions by mail are $1 for six months or $27 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $2 a semester. Postmaster: Send changes of address to the University by Kathy Kinsler Hint Hall, The University of Kansas Lakeview. 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