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University Daily Kansan, September 22, 1980
Opinion
KU grins and beers it
A plan is being drafted to sell beer over University of Kansas football games. If approved, the plan could tap the keg to some much needed revenue for KU's intercollegiate sports.
Actually, beer has been consumed throughout the years at Memorial Stadium despite the University's ban on beer at football games. Fans traditionally sneak their afternoon brews through the stadium gates, and there's been virtually nothing the University can do about it.
The University will only gain from selling beer, especially given the sad state of the athletic budget. The availability of beer also probably would curb the amount of hard liquor constantly finding its way into the stadium.
A study on beer sales at the University of Colorado at Boulder showed that incidents involving drunkenness were fewer after the University started selling beer in the stadium. With that in mind, instituting beer sales would have few, if any, feasibility problems.
The Kansas Union already sells beer, and no Kansas Board of Regents policy prohibits the University from selling beer on campus grounds. KU athletic officials have indicated their interest in the plan, and Acting Chancellor Del Shankel intends to discuss the matter soon.
At Colorado, beer costs $1 a shot. While beer sales couldn't save KU's athletic budget, they certainly wouldn't worsen its aliments. Even the University could drink to that.
Lawrence bicycle enthusiasts fight police, hills and potholes
I prefaced my answer with a series of athletic bikes, each designed for bike, coupled with carefully orchestrated groups.
"If I don't keep moving, my muscles will tighten up and I won't be able to finish the trip," said dramatically. That line was borrowed from a race whom I had overheard earlier that
"I have four bruises on my leg, my nose looks like a burnt tomato and I haven't had a hot shower in four days," I added modestly, pausing to muster up more malaise.
"But I asked you why you were on a 430-mile
SUSAN SCHOENMAKER
bicycle ride across Iowa," she repeated, ignoring the physiological details.
I looked ahead to the sun-baked highway, which looped over unbroken hills into the distance. Scattered across those hills were more than 3,000 bikers with similar sets of brushes and sunburns. At that moment, however, pain rather than停驻使我attention.
"I think I am here because of the hills." I said.
You know, I haven’t had to walk one uvet. “I haven’t
That was three years before I met Mt. Oread.
At least our Lawrence forerunners were fair.
They didn't mince words when it came to mountains.
Despite all geographic rumors to the contrary, the University of Kansas is not flat. Anyone who thinks bicycling is bourgeois hasn't lived in Lawrence or Lawrence in lawrence have two options - up or down.
But never fear, KU and Lawrence City Hall aren't going to let the landscape have the last word. For the biker who makes it down Mt. Oread with brakes and bravado intact, Lawrence City Hall has kindly supplied the sand to slin on right before you reach the stop sign.
Should you choose to run the stop sign, Murphy's Law, operating in conjunction with City Hall, will see to it that a Lawrence policeman is there to needle a ticket.
When it comes to bicycles, Lawrence isn't justice — is it double ionardy.
Take, for example, Jayhawk Boulevard. Even the most diligent dogger is often faced with the unique choice of running into a pedestrian on the street or a pedestrian on the grass.
Bikers, operating on the theory that there are fewer pedestrians per square inch, generally head for the streets. Cars, trucks and buses are not taken into consideration unless they become
life-threatening, in which case the sidewalk suddenly becomes significant.
Inevitably, this is coaching and cussing from pugnacious petrestians safely removed from the dog's life.
Even the most agile biker, who admittedly has the evolutionary edge, can't always rely on reflexes. Grace is hardy when dealing with such tasks. She knows where and that grates that run the sane way as bicycle tires.
Bicycle paths have always held great appeal for the less blessed among bikers. But bicycles, unlikely candidates for a campus beautification project, have had to bite the budgetary bullet. There are no bicycle paths on campus or in Lawrence, unless painted lines on streets are emblazoned to mark the areas of moribundists either fall to notice the painted lines or are color blind.
Bicycles have managed to establish a maverick sort of monopoly over traffic patterns on campus simply because they outnumber the vehicles and out-size the pedestrians. But in town, might determine the laws of mobility. Bikers, outflaunted by Darwin's fittest, are selfconfessed users of bicycle helmets, shin guards and bicycle gloves.
Bicyclists take solace in the knowledge that soon they may be at the top of the transportation hierarchy. At the last calorie count, bicycles averaged 1,500 miles per gallon.
They're even prepared to abandon tamer traffic for the scramble system on Kansas' highways. Kansas countryside offers the bicyclist a healthy blend of open air, free-flying birds (accompanied by free-falling objects), fast-moving dogs and free-for-all traffic.
There is the thrill of not knowing whether a semi, a station wagon and a bicycle can all fit on that one lane bridge ahead, or whether the dog sees really well. Needs really has a culinary interest in your foot.
Eight years later, some 100,000 bicycles pedled out of New York and back, much to the distress of the more earth-bound citizens. They subsequently passed laws against bicycles, forbidding them to frighten horses and denying them access to Central Park. The law was passed in police, who secreted themselves near sidewalks to intercept and arrest unlawful bikers.
Whether it is canines or capitalists, antibicycle attitudes have been on the books for years. In 1890, one New Yorker wrote, "City streets became dueling grounds between horsedrawn vehicles, pedestrians and cycles, all fighting for the right of way."
That even makes bicycling in Lawrence look blase. Of course, Lawrence is betting that good bicycle behavior depends not on front line enforcement but flat tires.
Flat tires and the Lawrence Law of Geographics—what does down must do up.
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 affirmed by the editor, 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.
Joe Santos '80 KANSAN
Our student body president and vice president take a short trip.
Efforts too late to save Student Senate
Proven once again that nothing from nothings leaves nothing, the KU Student Senate took a momentous step last week by halving the number of senates it will contain after the next Senate election.
After you's stopped yawning, to stop to consider the importance of this step, or rather the lack thereof.
The plan, which apportionions Nunemaker as one school instead of several districts, was introduced by Student Body Vice President Matt Davies in an attempt to solve the Senate's problem of luring quorum to Senate meetings. A Senate quorum requires 108 members to be present; of 58 members, 23 were Wednesday to approve the measure that will doom some of their compatriots' seats.
big deal, right? That evidently is the attitude of the student body when it comes to Senate matters. And it is clearly the attitude of the Senate concerning Senate matters. A look at some of the Senate's antics of the past week bears this out.
The petition to shrink the Senate was debated Sept. 9, but no decision could be made because the Senate underwent another of its many "trial" shrinkages that night and could not raise a quorum. The next day, Davis, suitably, and not surprisingly, perturbed at the turn of events, and not surprisingly, angry letter to senators that barred them for the show of anathy.
The letter is really something. First, Davis voiced his understanding for the lack of respect that senators may have for him and Student Affairs. Second, he was a blank spot of respect that drives some senators apathetic.
exaggeration to try to induce senators to attend Senate meetings.
The letter then resorted to groveling, invoking the influence of the Almighty and a good deal of
No dice, however, and looking at the reasons Davis gave for having "some respect for the idea of student governance," as he put it, it is not hard to understand why the letter was ineffective.
Davis' claimed that the dissolution of the Senate and its operations would take with it "the
BILL MENEZES
bus system, the student health policy, the activity fee, Legal Services, the state student lobby and dozens of other programs." Not to mention civilization as we know it. But in truth, these programs are not so intensely complicated that only the Student Senate can operate them.
The Senate can barely operate itself. The notion that these programs could not be operated by any organization other than Student Senate, or that they cannot sustain suitable student representation, is ludicrous.
Equally laugable is Davis' contention in the letter that the Senate's dissolution would mean a "university at which students have no input into academic policies, into freedom of speech debates, into the selection of faculty and administrators and thereby into the most basic decision-making processes that take place on this campus."
Assuming there was massive student participation in these arenas now, and that would be quite an assumption, Davis would have senators believe that students could not independently
perform the same functions without a student sample that what is known in common language emerges.
Student representation in faculty and administration selection, for example, probably would be better if the students were not drawn from a small, relatively homogeneous group like the one comprising Senate. It would not be difficult to enact procedures whereby students could participate in committee meetings when they were available. The system would be much more representative.
If apathy prevailed as it does now, then the students again would have shown that they did not want to have a hand in the process anyhow. Then the teacher has been given more of an opportunity to participate.
But all this supposition is wasted time, just like the efforts of Davis and others to legitimize the Senate. But it is nice to know that at least somebody cares enough to do what he thinks needs to be done in order to save what he feels is a necessary part of this university, it is obvious that the efforts border on the quixotic. Apathy has been the strongest force in the Senate for years. Unfortunately, despite his admirable efforts to change this, Davis remains blind to the fact that only a miracle of DeMille proportions could change it.
At the Sept. 9 meeting that failed to pass the Senate shrinkage petition, Davis said that if Senate did not improve its efficiency, "no one should be allowed to graduate." Student Senate will begin losing its legality.
To say Senate "will begin" losing credibility is like saying that Nixon "began" losing credibility when he resigned from office. To worry about a business loss is like saying "I'm happy Hooker worrying about her virginity."
In both cases, it's just a bit too late.
Letters to the Editor
Kansan breeds mud slingers, smart-alecks
To the editor:
Enclosed is a quote that I would like to share—one I hope you all will read carefully. The comments are quite an accurate description of Kansan behavior:
"There has come into the department of some immature or ambitious journalists an overbearing elitism that sets the public's teeth on edge . . . Rude demeanor on the part of a smart-ack reeler courts cheap peer approval at the cost of public patience. What a dumb way for the press to act." (Eugene Patterson, Quill, April 1980).
Your own particular brand of elitist, smart- alice journalism has passed from the annoying to the insulting and finally to the preposterous stage.
Scarcely a day goes by that you don't sling mud at some branch of the University, be it the Honors Program, the Student Senate, the Chancellor. You labil everyone and everything with equal ease,ushing your dirt to the press without sparing the time to consider such things as a discussion quotation—things that no doubt are considered to be of peripheral importance to your staff.
Yet there is one exclusion that is even more conspicuous and more annoying than these others, and that is your total inability to propose solutions to the problems you bring up. We all know how easy it is to cut a program down, but the trick is to build it up and solve the problem.
Without that answer, that solution, your editorials have no legitimacy; they merely serve to "set the public's teeth on edge," and they warn the labels of "everbearing" and "elitist."
Student body vice president
I will grant you, there are a lot of problems on this campus waiting to be joined by a lot of curzes. But unless you are willing to crawl out of your ivory tower and face these problems with the rest of the "mortal" population, don't bother to go in. You don't have no interest in listening to what you have to say.
Student Senate
To the editor:
Come on! Give us a break. I ever wear from the Kansean is criticism. Rarely is there an article or editorial offering solutions to the problems that exist in Student Senate. Nothing will ever get better if the Kansean keeps giving Senate a bad name. Why don't you try helping Senate by encouraging it instead of killing it? There is little alternative to Senate, unless you would prefer to eliminate all forms of student representation on this campus.
I ran for office to try to implement internal
changes in the Senate, making the organization more efficient and responsive to student issues. We are not finished yet. At least we are trying different proposals to see whether they work. What has the Kansan done? Criticize, mostly. If you, the editors, have solutions to the problems of the Student Senate or to how we can make the student population less apathetic, then why don't you write about them? I am tired of hearing what a lazy job we are doing and that nothing we attempt is working when you offer nothing your-selves.
Greg Schnacke Student body president
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