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University Daily Kansan, September 16; 1980
Opinion
Babes grow up quickly
The University of Kansas' football fortunes are on the upswing, and some new faces this fall are one of the biggest reasons why.
The Jayhawks tied the University of Oregon, a solid seven-point favorite, on the road in their opener Saturday. KU scored the tying touchdown with only 15 seconds left in the game, thanks to a drive engineered by freshman quarterback Frank Seurer.
Although much of the credit belongs to the defense, there is hardly a doubt in the Jayhawk camp that freshmen played a big role in the opening game and that they will continue to play big roles in future games.
Along with Seurer, other newcomers became heroes. Freshman Kerwin Bell, a high school teammate of Seurer's, led the KU rushing attack with 69 yards. Freshman kicker Bruce Kallmeyer kicked the extra point that tied the game.
The freshmen recruits were highly publicized last spring and were expected to be great—someday. But few figured that the freshmen would play vital roles so early in the season.
The Jayhawks will get a much stiffer contest this Saturday when they take on Pittsburgh, an undisputed threat to this year's national title.
Unlike the past, this year's crop of freshmen seems to have added some fresh blood to a program that has been incredibly anemic during the past several years. KU needs players like this to become more competitive.
A few more fruitful recruiting years could help Kansas escape the losers' circle. If the team's efforts against Oregon are any indication, Kansas may do it sooner than we think.
At least the quick emergence of KU's freshmen will give KU some much-needed depth. And this season, Kansas will need it.
Student Senate's approach creates campus-wide apathy
In truth, the problem with the Senate goes deeper than indifference.
Although KU's Student Senate has regularly kept the student body posted on its state of student apathy, I am regrettedly not indifferent about being labeled indifferent.
But for KU's Student Senate, Nestle is only chocolate bar. Issues themselves demand management.
My first impression of the Senate, as a transfer student from the University of Minnesota, was a nigging feeling that something was missing on campus. It was a loss of something that in Minnesota had been lost to students and student-led protests. It had mostly meant losing, but there was something in a shared student loss that made it seem a win.
Because the Senate gets no cues from a silent student body, it is at the mercy of its red rebukeable rules, which often run up tempers and run sessions overtime. There are the unspoken rules, such as unswerping impartiality, which prompted one senator in a fit of fairness to insist on the establishment and funding of a male chauvinist group.
After all, no matter how thin its voice in student affairs, student government was dependably eager to act. Its galloping optimism was infectious. I joined an organization that worked with the student government in an effort to boycott Nestle's food products in dormitory cafeterias because of unethical advertising.
Consider the fact that a resolution calling for KU to divest its holdings in South Africa was introduced in the Senate more than 19 months ago. Wrapped in rhetoric and roll-call votes, South Africa has become a state issue. So far, the Senate has taken justice into its own hands; it's too busy playing jury to bother about justice.
How, he asked reasonably, could the Senate pledge support of the Emily Taylor Resource Center for Women when there was not an alternative for superiority-minded males? Fortunately for the feminists, fairness only went so far in that Senate session.
KU's representation in the Associated Students of Kansas, a statewide student lobbying organization, is a prime example. At the KU Student Association, members delegation, along with six other member
Fairness was fastened to nearly every stand the Senate refused to take. Because the Senate is funded by a student body with diverse opinions, the argument ran, it can't repay it with controversial politics. The result was a muddy line drawn between responsibility to students and representation of them.
schools, voted down a resolution opposing the draft. The reasoning was that ASK as a representative of all students, shouldn't involve them because they don't directly involve students.
Yet those same delegates apparently had no conscienteic twiggs about crossing the seas. But even so, they were not really doing anything.
SUSAN SCHOENMAKER
the issue of raising the drinking age a priority lobbying item. Either ASK has arrived at a unique definition of drinking as an academic issue, or its members are pedaling a soft politics that ease them from responding to pressing international and national issues.
When it comes to issues, the Senate's concern with power and impact has overplaced it.
Robin McClellan, former ASK chairman at Hewlett-Packard, told us when she addressed the draft issue last week.
"It it not something we can lobby for or against because it is a national issue," McClellan said. "I just don't want ASK to split on something with no insult."
That may explain all the empty seats at Senate meetings. Ironically, the very apathy that has dogged Senate decisions may not be because of its lack of interest. Senate has nothing important to say. The Senate, moderating and blurring all its stands for the students who don't speak up, is damaging its own attendance and credibility. And that is why the Senate is positioning itself to benefit no one.
It is only the determined actions of a purposeful Senate that can break student apathy. If students are opposed to Senate actions, they have the right to run for office or to inform their representatives of their opinions. If they would like to could stir up the interests and opinions that would lead to a more balanced representation.
The world may be a different color from the black-and-white days when KU'S Senate was characterized not by glossy rhetoric but by a feeling of commitment to goals, however unattainable.
Maybe the Student Senate is being more realistic these days. But then again, maybe the student body is more realistic. Hence the empty seats.
These days, America's campuses grow up fast.
The University Daily KANSAN
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Football team may quiet boo birds
While KU's 7-7 tie with Oregon in the first football game of the season last Saturday didn't send thousands of KU students and fans into heartbreak, they least inspired a little hope among many people.
For the past several years, KU football fans have occasionally stood and yelled for the Blue, as the football advertisements say they should. But more often they have stood up and yelled at the Blue for making mistakes and not scoring points.
With a little more success may more fans and alumni will be able to yell for the team rather than at them, and may fewer fail to perform as alumni will be ruined with dismal KU performances.
But, more important, perhaps more fans will show up at Memorial Stadium for KU football games. Drawing more fans to KU football games is crucial because Bob Marcum, KU athletic director, has staked much of the athletic department's future on it.
Intercollegiate athletics is big business today, and at KU, the only athletic product that provides a profit is football. It is the only sport that draws enough spectators to provide the hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue it supports a major portion of the athletic budget.
The fortunes of both men's and women's non-revenue producing sports are directly tied to the future of the football team. Unless football is successful and draws more fans to games and
increases revenues, the non-revenue producing sports are in trouble.
Football must provide more revenue to the athletic department because it is the only remaining source of revenue that is not being fully utilized.
The athletic department now raises more than $1 million annually in donations to the Williams
BRETT CONLEY
Fund, which provides scholarships for student athletes. The state of Kansas provides some money for KU athletics, but it does not appear likely that it will be increased. In fact, it is more likely that the funding of athletics will decrease in future years, according to many official athletic officials.
The only other revenue-producing sport at KU is basketball, but most home games are usually sold out and the amount of revenue produced is much higher. A program with just a few thousand dollars left over.
So far, the most obvious sign of money problems in the athletic department has been the dropping of men's and women's gymnastics last spring. However, there have been other budget
saving moves, including the elimination of an assistant athletic director's position, reductions in the budget of most non-revenue producing schools and the reduction of a few athletic administrative positions.
Many people in KU athletics now are closely watching the progress of the KU football team because they know that there could be tougher teams with more personnel cuts and budget reductions.
The coaches and athletes who participate in sports such as swimming, volleyball, baseball, softball and even track have good reason to be worried. Marcum has admitted that his department will be hard-pressed to maintain funding for non-revenue producing sports at the current level and that more sports may have to be sacrificed in the future.
Marcum's main solution is a commitment to turning around the KU football program and making it competitive in the Big Eight Conference. With a better team on the field, Marcum hopes to see Memorial Stadium filled closer to capacity in the future.
For that reason, KU's tie with Oregon last Saturday may have been significant if it shows KU fans that the Jayhawks can at least be more competitive this season. However, if KU fades this season and cannot even play its opponents in games, they will eventually turnaround in the football program. And then the future of non-revenue producing sports will be very dim.
Letters to the Editor
To the editor:
Problems may pull plug on SUA concerts
I was rather surprised and pessimistic to see the article on the front page of the Sept. 10 Kansan, "SUA seeks monthly concerts," I say surprised because the lack of even bimonthly concerts at KU has been the most noticeable aspect of the SUA concerts for the past few years, and pessimistic because I know how it once was.
There are probably a few students still at KU (although there are many of us still kicking around Lawrence) who remember concerts in the years I went to school. That was a time when we nearly had monthly concerts, with musicians such as Elton John, James Taylor, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Steve Martin, Todd Rundgreen, Yes, Ike and Tina Turner, Sly and the Family Stone, Jose Feliciano, Count Basie, Norman Blake, Michael Murphy...
and EmmyLou Harris, Little Feat, Bonnie Raitt, Martin Mull, Mose Allison, Weather Report . I could probably go on, but my memory has dulled over the years.
I realize that during period of time the SUA had a different method of contracting bands, which they said caused the SUA Special Events committee to consistently run in the red. That also was SUA's excuse for failing to schedule many concerts over the next few years.
My question now is, what has changed that will make it possible for SUA to present "one concert a month this semester?" I hope they achieve it. But I'm pessimistic.
Space video games
To the editor.
Sara Henderson Oskaloosa
It's hard for many KU students to accept the fact that they finance a university paper that raises serious ethical issues.
But when it comes to editorsir on "space video games" and damning, very naively, computer technology in general, most will agree that editorial space is much more valuable.
Apparently Blake Gumprecht in his Sept. 9 column was too ignorant to realize the advantages of computerized supermarket checkouts, a feature that most view as a solution to the problem of clumsy clunk with push-button phones only illustrates Gumprecht's inability to operate simple devices.
Gumprecht's editorial, if you could call it that, sounds one of the contrasts of modernist thought that treats majority of
viewers like illiterates. The same goes for Gumprech's editorial.
And the headline, "Video space games screen victim," is totally irrelevant to the adjoining words because Gumpreth talks about the screen on the machine. The only apparent victim seems to be the author himself because he first condemns pinball machines as being simple luck, only to return for a "good game." That's an indication that he constantly practices.
Gumprecht should be writing about technological advances of such mentioned items as computer grocery checkouts, push-button phones, self-opening bank services, etc. Their contribution to progress in the modern world is massive and aspects of our world to operate more efficiently.
If this article is a reflection of future Gumprecht columns, I suppose a majority of the readers will only be reading them for the entertainment of seeing what most would assume was a great opportunity opening for a professional career. In truth, he is turning into a writer for Mother Goose books.
Dreux DeMack
Olathe senior
Student Senate
For the past few years the Student Senate has been having a problem with attendance at its meetings. Despite numerous revisions of the absentee policy and threats of being relieved of employment, the Senate has often results in the lack of a quorum for voting. One ironic example was the recent meeting when
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To the editor:
the Senate was unable to take action on the latest proposal to solve the problem of attendance. Perhaps it is just as well! The latest proposal of a new law would require absenteeism any more than previous proposals.
The about pleim fall, Studu
Let us assume for a moment that this idea of reducing the number of senators had been implemented before elections last spring. The result, of course, would have been that half of the current senators would not be senators. Only the top vote getters would still be in office. This is not bad in itself, but let us examine who is not attending the meetings right now. Are they the senators who were the top vote winners? If so, having only these particular people would not solve the absenteeism problem because they do not come now.
By 56 or reque anno
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This, however, may not be the actual case and probably is not. It is much more likely that the senators who consistently do not attend meetings only distributed between high and low vote getters
If so, we may assume that the percentage of those who do not attend meetings is the same for both the top vote getters (the elected under the proposed reduction) and the whole Senate as it stands now. Since a quorum is a percentage of total membership, and the percentage absent would be the same under the reduction, the Senate would still have the same problems.
In short, changing the size of the Senate will not solve the quorum problem, but only hamper the representation of the students of KU. Then again, it would be easier to manipulate fewer people. Perhaps this is the real goal of reducing the number of senators.
Edwin Cooley Wichita junior
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.
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