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University Daily Kansan, September 15, 1980
Opinion
KU officials blow it
Often the University of Kansas and common sense just don't mix.
One thing is for sure: the University's handling of a KU football ticket promotion program has been an exercise in stupidity.
The University certainly has blundered in scheduling the annual Parents' Day football game on Sept. 20, which happens to fall on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.
The Jewish holiday represents a day of obligation for those who practice the Jewish faith. Therefore, many of KU's 1,000 Jewish students and their parents will be unable to attend KU's home opener against Pittsburgh.
Worse yet, KU officials simply have no excuses for their mindlessness.
The conflict was discovered last April—five months before the game—but KU officials refused to budge. In effect, KU's Jewish population was given an apology and was told to read the next morning's paper if it wanted to find out the score of the football game.
The Parents' Day committee recommended earlier that Parents' Day should be changed, but the date was not moved. Former Chancellor Archie R. Dykes made the final decision.
KU has three promotional dates—Parents' Day, Band Day and homecoming. One of the primary reasons the promotions are held is to help sagging ticket sales for KU football. Although season ticket sales have increased slightly this year, there is no doubt that KU sports revenue is hurting.
An increase in football revenue depends on sound promotions at this University. Unfortunately, KU has alienated perhaps a few thousand potential ticketholders. KU needs all the football revenue it can get or more non-revenue sports will have to be eliminated.
It appears that the schedule conflict will affect the Parents' Day promotion at least to some degree. Any degree can be critical when revenue is needed so badly. But this time, if the coffers come up short, KU officials will have no to blame but themselves.
Letters to the Editor
Smock's beliefs defy attacks
To the editor:
After reading the letters to the Editor of Sept. 3 and 5, I realized I must speak up. The letters in question concerned the recent visit to KU of George Smock, the traveling preacher. Though the writers attacked Smock personally, he was a secondary target. Their main point of contention was what Smock was preaching, God's Word from the Bible. The writers tried to brittle and prove God's scriptures false using their own words. He didn't work. The letter writers were operating under a delusion, and I must point out their error.
That any person possibly could believe himself wise enough to be an equal of God and to debate the truth of His Holy Word is unthinkable. Jesus站 for all eternity that "The Word is word" is truth, and anyone who believes otherwise is merely falling into Satan's trap—he is believant "the lie."
"The lie" is found in Genesis 3:5. When Satan tempted Eve, he told her that if she did this (eat of the fruit, which she already was forbidden to do by God), "your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." God already had told her it was evil, but Eve believed it was not. God gave her a fork and ate the fruit, believing it would make her like God. The result was disobedience to God, a fall from grace and banishment from paradise. So much for human wisdom.
When a man claims he has a better way than God, he commits the same grievous error as Eve: he places himself on an equal level with God and rejects His universal truth. I am so regrettful for men like that, for the following reason.
II Thess. 2:11 states it briefly: "And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie." Once that happens, the only way to come back to the truth is through the blood and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was sent into the world to save it from the lie, but unfortunately, too many people refuse to accept and believe it. That what is Smokow was trying to say, but the letter writers were only looking at the surface of his words, and not at the meaning of it, and indeed by Satan, as the scriptures state, and did not. And the scriptures also state, "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient (fit)" (Romans 1:28). so much for human understanding.
When someone calls God's Word "practise" and instead welcomes the chevroff in a six-pack of beer, (letter to the Editor of Sept 3), it only proves how true God's Word really is. Such behavior is equal to idolatry. When Smock condemned those with views and practices opposite God's, he wasn't doing it on his own authority, but God's. What do the letter writers think God will say to them in the final judgment? The delusion is sent so that (II Thess. 2:12) "they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
Those are not views or judgments concocted out of my mind or Smock's, but God's as they were written down centuries ago for our use and study. They came out of compassion, tenderness and the deepest love the world has ever known. Out of that same love, Smock, and countless others, we have received a gift to deliver the message of Jesus Christ to those who might never hear the truth otherwise. For that, they are met with derision and scorn (and nasty letters in newspapers).
Smock's sniff and bristle approach to the Gospel may seem a bit antiquated, but with the advanced state of moral decay in which we live (sexual promiscuity, alcohol and drug abuse, materialism, etc.), perhaps a stronger approach is necessary. Human values are constantly degenerating.
Christians have remained silent long enough—it is time to speak up. I thank God for the voice of Smock, and pray that his work will continue and that those who have been misled will find the truth through Our Lord Jesus Christ." And Jesus said, "I am the light of the world; he that followw me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the life of light." (John 8:12).
Ed Johlman
North Haven, Conn., graduate student
Honors Program
Brett Conley's Sept. 9, column dealing with the KU Honors Program does raise some frequently heard criticisms. It is unfortunate, however, that he not looked beyond his own bad experience.
To the editor:
Like Conley, I have seen both the best and the worst that the program has to offer. For my own part, I think the experience was worthwhile, if I houseuse of the many interesting people I hives met.
That, however, is of little consequence. What is it that I can now reasonably say that I have seen the other side as well, having just finished a year-long stint as a student representative to the College Honors Advisory Committee. In doing so, I think I have gained some understanding of the constraints within which the program operates.
The Honors Program, like many campus activities, long has suffered from a lack of financial resources. Staff help is short. Teachers of honors classes receive no additional compensation, and in many cases, they teach these classes in addition to their regular loads. Their service to the University is often ignored in tenure decisions. What courses are offered are the product ofdeference among faculty belonging from the Honors Office. When the rewards are purely personal, it is hardly surprising that the quality of honors teachers varies so widely.
Because of its reliance on self-selected volunteers, the program has had difficulty developing the kinds of things Conley suggests. Upper-class seminars integrating the several disciplines (an enormous task) have been attempted, but they again are subject to changes in faculty and student enthusiasm. After all, it is difficult enough to recruit honors instructors within a department, let alone instructors for courses under the LA&S rubric.
Besides sounding oddly elitist, any attempt to more rigorously define the Honors Program is rather redundant considering the College's distribution requirements. But, in addition, how could anyone really construct a schedule of classes that all honors students, regardless of interests and aptitudes, should take? The Honors program is not a discipline, in itself but a professor who works closely both with a professor and with students of similar incinations and abilities in exploring a subject in greater depth than is possible in the usual introductory course.
Granted, the Honors Program is not the best of all worlds, but that is not for lack of trying. The efforts of many people over the years belie such a simple notion. Because of the program's limited resources, there is little incentive for faculty members to teach these classes or for departments to offer them. To condemn the program on the basis of its constraints under which it operates and, further, the opportunities it has provided for countless other students. For these courses, honors or not, that do not live up to one's expectations, there is a solution: drop.
Mark Hansen Colby senior
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Congress suffers prestige disease
this summer, Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas dealt his so-called constituents a body check in a power play contriver to thrust his name into the spotlight. Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign.
Last spring, after coming under attack from angry farmers upset with President Carter's grain embargo, Dole forsook his membership in the Senate Agriculture Committee. Dole switched to the Finance Committee, which will put him in an influential position when the committee drafts tax legislation.
To be sure, his position as tax writer will endear him to Reagan. Moreover, if Reagan
wins the presidency, Dole's position might high spot in the Reagan administration.
Dole's abandonment of farmers will be especially important as election day draws nearer. Dole, who is running for re-election against Democrat John Simpson of Salina, cannot say that he has any real influence on Carter concerning the grain embargo because he no longer is a member of the agriculture committee.
Not surprisingly, this disease, which developed after Watergate, has destroyed the purpose and effectiveness of meaningful therapy. Maybe the disease has simply defended it.
Another symptom of the disease is the congressional subcommittee, which breathes
Joe Bantor 80
KANSAN
This disease has resulted in the loss of effective leadership in Congress because each congressman is interested only in being reelected, not in serving the public interest.
It is widely assumed in Washington that a tax cut will be enacted early next year. Only its size remains in doubt. Dole can collect windfall political points with Reagan if he is in the spotlight of the debate over the size of the tax cut.
Dole's action is not unusual among congressmen. It is merely a symptom of a political disease that seems to afflict congressmen. Congressmen often choose to their own interests above the interests of the people who place them in the position of power.
If Reagan wins the election, Dole would become his chief tax surrogate in Congress because of his position as leading Republican on the committee. Dole could even become chairman of the committee if enough Democrats lose in November.
Meanwhile, Kansans are left in the cold.
Somehow our leaders seem larger than life.
life if the interest group involved is powerful enough. Unfortunately, the farmers' group doesn't have enough political clout, as the grain embargo proved.
The subcommittee serves to give television time to congressmen who feel threatened by their opposition in an election or to boost aspiring presidential candidates. This was evident last year when Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, had tear-jerking Love Canal residents appear before one of his committees.
the 1980s, when important and effective civil rights legislation was passed, and of the early 1970s, when consumer and environmental legislation was passed.
Dole was able to dodge the grain embargo issue and help his re-election chances by joining the finance committee. By doing this, he avoided criticism from farmers because he didn't try to influence Carter on the embargo.
This fraud is in contrast to the leadership of
These laws and their effectiveness inspired special interest group leaders in gun control, medicine, anti-gun control, energy and law, among others, to point their salvos at Congress, which reacted with committees and subcommittees.
Now, in 1800, when effective energy legislation is desperately needed, a stalemate is developing between Northeastern and Southern governments and Southern and Western congressmen.
Dane has sinned. But nothing can assure Kansons that is Simpson were to be elected, but he had not.
CIA accusers spray-paint silly pictures
If it's not South Africa, then it is Iran. If it's not the FBI, then it is the CIA. This time, it is the CIA.
As anyone who listens to Saturday Night Live's Roseanne Roseannadanna knows, it's always something.
Last week, students may have observed the handwork of a paranoid person on several campus buildings. Somebody learned how to operate a spray paint can, and with what took incredible skill and forethought, wrote the legend "CIA out of KU" on several campus walls. The meaning and intention behind the graffiti, however, were a little confusing.
Is the CIA engaging in operations, covert or otherwise, on the KU campus? The only dictator
to overthrow around here already has left to work for a Topeka insurance company.
While overthrowing dictators makes for good headlines, is isn't the type of thing the CIA is doing in the Mount Oread area at this time. Well, it might be a mistake. I've worried about? Maybe recruiting, for starters.
A spokesman for the agency's Denver field office said the agency now was looking for electrical engineers, computer scientists and physicists, just as Texas Instruments does. Despite a hiring freeze in certain areas, a CIA representative will be on campus Oct. 23 and to give out information and to conduct interviews through the University placement office.
If it was the intention of the graffiti writer to bring this to public attention, he was washing his paint. Not only are the CIA interviews as open as any other corporate recruiting interviews, but, like Texas Instruments, the agency has every right to come and recruit.
So what if it is the same organization that propped up the Shah and tried to explode Castro's cigar? Believe it or not, the agency is involved in a number of other activities, and for some people, these activities could mean a rewarding career choice.
But, of course, it also is quite probable that the person who wrote the graffiti was not referring to CIA recruiting, but to CIA intelligence operations. Remember, intelligence is its middle name.
When talking about intelligence, certain
when talking about intelligence, certain
and probably right now for that matter, the
and probably right now for that matter, the
CIA actively solicited information from many students and faculty members who had traveled abroad or had done research concerning foreign affairs.
In the past, this area of local CIA activity has brought crises of "spy" down upon those who have participated. The controversy arose most recently in 1976, when members of the University of Pennsylvania were questioned by the CIA upon returning from trips abroad were accused of being CIA tools.
What the accusers did not seem to realize was that if the travelers did not want to give out information, they were not tortured or thrown into prison. They simply were left alone, a concession they did not seem willing to extend to those who had backed the CIA or other intelligence agencies.
Graffiti from a Wesco Hall wall named two KU professors and an "etec." after the standard "CIA out of KU." Roy Laird, a professor of Soviet and East European studies and one of those named, did indeed work for the CIA. From 1956-57, Laird sat at a desk in Washington, D.C., and wrote papers on the status of Soviet agriculture for the agency. Laired said he also was approached by another professor who asked to赴 Saskatchewan and was asked to find the answers to a list of questions they gave him. He refused, but agreed to answer any questions they might have about his trip after he returned.
"I said, 'Don't put me in the position to go looking for things,' " Laird said.
Now the agency contacts him two or three times a year, Laird said, and asks him questions about research he does as a KU professor, which he gladly answers. Interestingly enough, despite being branded as a CIA tool by some, several years ago he was called "one of the eight leading communists in the Lawrence area" by a radical fringe group.
"The Soviets described me as a 'bourgeois falsifier,'" he said. "I guess that makes me a double agent."
For people like Laird and the others named in the graffiti, whose academic specialties often require work abroad, any link with the CIA, no matter how false or innocent, would be enough for an anti-CIA fanatic in a foreign land to gain access to the streets of Europe and Asia, which crawl with Francais and other expatriates who have no great love for the CIA, this is a real possibility.
What it does make him is the victim of smear tactics by an artist who doesn't even have the power to make a statement.
But why just write graffiti about those who work for the CLA? Other government agencies receive just as much, if not more, from KU academicians. Perhaps the graffiti would have been more appropriate if it had read, "Department of Education out of KU."
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