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Monday, March 3, 1975
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Real world awaits
It is a peculiar and interesting experience to be a last semester senior. Knowing that one will soon leave the sheltered, incubator-like life of a teenager, the real wife is a starting realization that comes only once in a lifetime.
How quickly the time has passed. It seems as though it was only yesterday when I was drudging through English I, attempting to find buildings on campus and learning the words to the Rock Chalk chant. When my sophomore year arrived I could begin to officially consider Lawrence my new hometown and had the temerity to question the words of an erudite, pipe-smoking professor. If nothing else, the sophomore year assured me that I would not have to re-experience the pangs of severing relationships with parents and siblings.
By my junior year all the strings were in my command. My major was picked, bosom buddies made and required courses were being swiftly eliminated. I found security in knowing I would be able to return to school, ideally more years studying, partying, sleeping and eating.
Before I knew it my senior year
arrived with all its trappings. Courses have been going too slowly and weekend parties ending too soon. I watch with mild amusement the mistakes committed by undergraduates, the same errors I made a couple of years earlier. I spend a good part of the time not believing I will have to leave the University of Kansas and encounter whatever the mysterious future has in store.
It's not possible to predict the future but it's possible to predict what won't be the same. The new challenges and responses in this case are rather than innocuous theoretical problems to be solved in a classroom discussion.
But it'll be great to get on with whatever lies ahead. Surely it would be fun to always be able to attend concerts, athletic events and myriad other happenings at a major university. That can't last forever, just as life itself can't last forever. don't believe in the 'last' don’t believe in the 'last' For those of you graduating in May, enjoy these last great months as much as you can; then be ready to get on the next carousel of time.
Stephen Buser
By TOM BILLAM
Rent-a-vet policy puzzling
Contributing Writer
The Pentagon has contracted a private firm to train Saudi Arabian national guardsmen to pull triggers.
War has finally become a commodity. The knowledge of how to fight can be bought and sold in the open marketplace.
VINNELL CORP., a Los Angeles based company, will help customers of the US, sri服务会 to instruct the Saudis in warfare. Pentagon and Vinnell spokesman have begun creating a mercenary force.
The Pentagon has said that the training of the Saudi national guard is crucial, including on security, protection of Saudi oil fields and wells. Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger said it would improve foreign relations with the United States and their security was enhanced.
THE MENTION OF security naturally raises the question: are the instructors going to protect their wells? And if the wells need protecting while the instructors are there, then the instructors participate in the fighting?
William Beecher, a Pentagon spokesman, has said of the instructors, "they're not involved in any fighting or potential fighting in any of these countries."
THE VINNELL PEOPLE think they can do a better job this time in Afghanistan. The King Faisal's Bedouin tribesmen are intensely loyal to him; loyalty won't have to be taught as it was in Vietnam. The instructors will control in Arabic, and they will give orders instead of supplying advice. The desert terrain suit American tactics much better than did the US during rivers of Southeast Asia.
BUT THIS PRIVATE instruction in warfare is only part of a large $300 million agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia to modernize and re-equip the Saudi national guard with new equipment. The U.S. will supply the know-how; the U.S. government will supply the hardware.
Schesinger said that he didn't expect any difficulty in explaining the propriety of this
arrangement to Congress. He said that there had been similar arrangements before in which the military used to train foreign military.
Bell Helicopter International
aircraft user U.S. Army aviators to
helicopters. Northrop Corp.
taught the Saudis to fly the F5
fighter plane. Raytheon Corp.
provided the Hawk antaircraft missile.
YET IN THIS instance, the U.S. government was the go-between in the training deal. The fact somehow lends the deal some aura of officiality, of policy.
There is little doubt that the arrangement is legal. Such deals are authorized in the Foreign Military Sales Act, a part of the U.S. assistance program.
BUT THIS RENT-A-VET deal has brought into the open once more the disturbing business of training in helping to arm the world.
each other with arms supplied by the United States. Then the government stopped arms used in attacks as if the embargo has ended.
India and Pakistan fought
CONGRESS VOTED to stop sending the Turks arms unless the Turks stopped fighting. Presumably then arms shipments would resume so that they could continue at some future date.
Greeks and Turks on Cyprus used NATO weapons supplied by the United States, among others, to kill each other.
Israel has procured most of its arms from the United States. Israel has long been a friend and ally of the United States.
YET NOW THE UNITED States has been increasingly arming some of Israel's bitter Arab antagonists.
And that is what the government and Vinnell are doing in training a combat force for Saudi Arabia.
Why do the Saudis need such a competent security force? Who are its potential enemies? The Soviets aren't lacking in oil, but they're not so able to keep the Middle East oil to the industrialized West.
SEEN. HENRY JACKSON, D.W., hit upon a possible answer when he said, "It's a bit more difficult to get American people—this private contract appears to be a program to provide a local defense force. We're the only ones raised an inference of a threat."
Is there method in this madness? Or does the United States hand out troops to nations like lollipops to children, then sit back and observe who survives?
Maybe Congress should examine U.S. foreign policy, if indeed we have any.
Loose money is culprit
BY LELAND J. PRITCHARD
Professor of Economics
Economics used to be described as common sense made difficult. That is no longer true. The new economics is a body of economic theory devoid of common sense.
We are told by economists of the Keynesian macro-economic persuasion that we have to choose between fighting in unemployment. We can't do both at the same time, they say.
HOWEVER, THE RECORD of the past two years suggests that unemployment problem other than on an emergency public service basis, we must secure our present rate of inflation.
ume, service their vastly expanded debt.
The proximate cause of our current recession is a massive weakness in consumer demand. The two weakest sectors of the economy are housing and consumer durables, especially automobiles.
The weakness in consumer demand is much more than a psychological phenomenon. Consumers simply don't have the confidence to perform their current output at the current inflated prices and, at the same
THE REAL DISPOSABLE income of the average production worker has declined more than 5 per cent from a year ago, and his real income is still at least 10 per cent decade age. During the past decade, home mortgages and other consumer debts have increased more than 90 per cent. Because of the sharp rise in interest rates, most of which is due to the inflation premium on mortgage servicing these debts has risen by a much greater percentage.
INFLATION IS the
physic principle we
we attribute to the inflation?
Keynesian economists think that our "double digit" inflation is largely caused by temporary pressures on food and energy.
In reality, the increasing rates of inflation that began in 1965 are the largely to the effect of an increased military involvement in Southeast Asia; (2) a continued and pervasive growth of monopolistic price practices in our economy; and (3) an excessive increase in our money supply and the rate our money is spent.
Of these three factors, the excessive increase in the volume and velocity of our money supply is by far the greatest of our two inflation and our two-digit interest rates.
MISMANAGEMENT OF OUR money by the Federal Reserve Board has made the excessive expansion of our money supply a decade-dead end in 1964, the Federal Reserve Board allowed our money supply to expand at an annual rate of about 2 per cent through 1954, our money supply grew almost 7 per cent annually.
To put it another way aggregate monetary demand increased more than 300 per cent from 1964 through 1975. Consumer goods and services increase only about 44 per cent.
THE RESULTS OF THESE monetary practices have been nothing short of disastrous. They account in large measure for the present two-digit institution, the lofty level of interest and the high rate of new housing starts, the short-fall in consumer purchases of durables and the sharp decline in stock and bond prices.
Fortunately, the twin
NONSTOP INFLATIONARY MERRY-GO-ROUND
problems of inflation and unemployment can be fought. Short run measures to reduce the rate of inflation involve increasing the money supply to an annual rate of less than 2 per cent.
In the longer run, inflationary pressures can be greatly alleviated by introducing more currency into our price structure.
Short and long run methods of coping with excessive unemployment should be largely structural, such as a temporary expansion of public service agencies. A program of job training combined with other measures that will match job skills with jobs.
...THE FIRST WAVE OF UNITED STATES MARINE, REPRESENTING PHASE ONE OF T HE
MORNING MISSIONS OF THE STATE INVASION FORCES LANDED THIS MORNING A NATIONAL
HEAVY RESISTANCE FROM THE RIVER IS PROVIDED BY NATIONAL GUARD AS WELL AS THE HIGHLY PROFICIENT SAUDI AIR
COMMANDERS. THE SLEERK, SOPHISTICAL UNITED
STATES FIGHTER, ALLEGRAFT AT 9:00 AM.
Readers respond
To the Editor:
Use of athletic profits needs rethinking
There is a great deal of discussion taking place regarding the financial status of intercollegiate athletics, the administration, the Corporation and the dire consequences that will result from Title IX. Because I believe that the discussions are based on some misunderstanding of the financial position of athletic programs, I would like to offer a few remarks to clarify the issues.
At KU during the last fiscal year, profits on football and basketball were approximately
IN MY VIEW, THE fundamental problem in the discussions of financial problems arises because the major and the minor sports, major sports, especially football, should be considered as the business of the corporation, and thus should be the basis on to judge profitability. On these grounds the big-time athletic programs do make a profit.
$260,000 and could have been higher because cost overruns on football and basketball, that is expenditures in excess of the budgeted amounts, were roughly $120,000 last year. Thus profits could have been around $380,000.
THE COST OVERRUNS are an inherent problem for these corporations. Because by definition they are supposed to be efficient, there is little incentive to minimize costs to maximize profits. Indeed, there may be an incentive to increase expenses if the unbudgeted revenues, such as those derived from bowl receipts, it seems this problem needs to be corrected before the company can make some of the arguments regarding financial plight.
WHATEVER THE SIZE of the profits derived from the major sports, the athletic director then disposes of these profits. Generally, the money is spent on the minor sports and occasionally on physical plant and equipment. As is the case at
many universities, the money spent in this way is sometimes from the major sports. This is analogous to General Motors paying out dividends in an annual larger than its net earnings.
Minor sports, however, aren't the only things that could be financed with the profits. The athletic director could choose to give bonuses to the football coaches, finance the intramural program or women's interested schools, and dividends to the students. The fact that the money is spent on men's intercollegiate athletics is in part because the corporation is expected to support at least the number of minor colleges for membership in the Big Eight and also because no one has ever given a thought to how the profits should be spent. At some time in the past the money went to men's intercollegiate athletics so do so today primarily because this precedent has never been questioned.
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THIS SEEMS TO be an appropriate time to reconsider the uses of these profits. Programs other than men's intercollegiate sports, especially women's intercollegiate sports, now have some funds available for these funds Also, it seems reasonable to expect that before additional state subsidies are sought for the men's program the desirability of various aspects of that program be carefully evaluated. Special programs in minor sports are desirable, the level at which these sports are funded could be scrutinized.
IN MY OPINION, the reconsideration of the use of these funds should be even more general, involving not only consideration of men's versus women's collegiate versus intramural sports and athletic versus nonathletic programs. These decisions should be made by someone with a commitment to a special interest made by the chancellor, the University Senate, the Faculty Senate or the Student Senate.
TO FACILITATE A meaningful reevaluation of these issues I think it is imperative that the athletic corporation share some of its profits with the University. At suggestion from a bowl receipts be turned over to the chancellor, and he decide how these funds should be spent. If this were done, not only would the funding of sports be placed in its proper perspective but also the athletic corporation would have some incentive to consider the cooperator. Finally, the athletic corporation would be able to visibly demonstrate that it was making a continuing contribution to the University. Thomas Weiss
Member of the Athletic Board
To the Editor:
Blood drive
Much as one hesitates to criticize as humanitarian an organization as the Red Cross,
it is apparent that whoever is responsible for the semiannual blood drive at KU hasn't profited from experience.
EACH SEMESTER THE student body is appealed to for blood donations and each time a donor is accepted, the process tends to donate. But if tales of friends plus my own experience are at all indicative of the inconvenience involved, I would rather someone for avoiding the process.
On handouts distributed before the drive, it was stated that donations would take "approximately one hour." But when I arrived at the Kansas Union Ballroom, a sign was posted warning of a possible wait of an hour and forty-five minutes in the office. We traveled lines of people waiting was enough to tell me that this second estimate was optimistic.
I THOUGHT I COULD avoid the wait, however, because I had taken the precaution of making an appointment for that purpose. When I approached a woman who was helping with the drive and tidied her room, she said her appointment didn't make any difference and that I was to go to the end of the line.
PERHAPS WALK-INS should be accommodated if people with appointments did not show, but the staff should who take the effort (admittedly small) to make an appointment should be spared the inconvenience of waiting. In short, the Cross is doing something that dinservice by discouraging participation in its blood drives.
oems this year, isn't something done to speed up the process? Obviously, there is a limit to the number of people that can be filtered through, but it seems logical that the number be estimated and an equal number of appointments made.
Molly Wood Wichita Junior