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Thursday, September 26, 1974
University Daily Kansan
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
East, West dream of simple Kansan life
By ROY CLEVENGER
Reporter
I've never been quite sure what to expect when I tell someone I'm from Kansas.
I've learned from experience that Kansas is probably the most misuse of Kansans. Kansans aren't really maligned; rather, we are
laughed at, and I've never been able to figure out exactly why. It isn't that we have some problem that makes us worthy of scorn: We're not over-crowded, we don't have much pollution and we are dogged by prairie dogs any more.
Neither is it any particular distinguishable characteristic, like the legendary bragging of Texans.
Rather it seems to be something general we have or maybe something general we lack. You just can't express it by saying that we lack the mountains of our neighbor to the west, or a great river, such as the Mississippi River, towards the east. Maybe it's in the old image we have of a state that never quite made the grade, a land that was never molded by nature or man.
What puzzles me most is that we are laughed at for different reasons by Westerners and Easterners.
Westerners seem to have a greater appreciation of flat land and open space. Most of the people in Kansas think of Kansas as civilized but largely undeveloped and featureless. One close friend of ours had lived in spring, and she told me it was an eye-opening experience.
"I never knew you had trees
out there," she said, "or farms with up-to-date machinery, and even a few small towns. I never saw it be half that interest."
On the other hand, the Easterners I have known admit only grudgingly that Kansas is in a terrible place. East was as a high school
ber that the Indians in Kansas were friendly; she thought that only my proximity to Kansas City kept me safe.
It's not surprising that high school students could have mistaken ideas, but I really began to worry when I read a story by a friend Pennsylvania journalist about a
"Maybe it's in the old image we have of a state that never quite made the grade, a land that was never molded by nature or man."
senior, and I was rather surprised to meet another senior from the Boston area who said he wanted me to be for me to live under constant siege from Indias. I must say I wasn't prepared for a city the size of Chicago, misconceptions weren't as bad as hers. I never did convince
radio interview I had made here as part of my work for a historical foundation.
"Radio waves carried the youthful voice across the Kansas plains," the story started. "But there in the heartland of the United States, we have not discussing the sprouted conifer winter wheat on that mid-May day . . .."
The story was very friendly, and no harm was intended, but even I grimaced when the writer began talking about owls on the prairie that day." How could he do this to us?
If our state is misunderstood by Americans, then the situation is doubly mystifying for foreigners. My roommate last year was from Japan, and I asked him to point out where he could find all the cowboys, Indians and buffaloes. He had formed an image of Lawrence long before he left Japan: All League clothes, and everybody else was a cowboy or an Indian.
What worried me most was that my roommate wasn't uneducated. In fact, he had a Master's degree in business from college and he had come here to learn the advertising business.
In a way, I felt disappointed when I had to tell him that the only Indians here had come to
go to college, that the only cowboys were students dressing clothes they considered attire buffalo buffaloes were kept in zoos.
My own problem has always been compounded by the fact that I'm from Leavenworth. My town—or my heart of my town—is called Fortunately, multitude of prisons we have or of nearby Ft. Leavenworth. I really don't mind being asked whether I'm an army brat (I'm a soldier). I think a few of the prison comments get a little heavy-headed.
Whenever we'd go to Colorado on vacation, we used to say we were from Leavenworth. It seemed that everyone in the state had the same question: "Are you from in or out?"
Now, at my mother's insistence, we circumvent the city by riding the bus we're from "near Kansas City." It's not that people haven't
The imaginative ones asked whether we were out on good behavior.
heard of the town we're from;
it's that they've already heard
too much.
I've never decided just what I should do to try to correct the wrong image people have of Kansas. Maybe the state should issue a booklet listing all the cities, assuring people that there really are highways here, and including a picture of a row of houses with TV antennas. All those houses require a booklet required to carry ample supplies of the booklet with them at all times, and acquaintances would be invited to visit the state and see for themselves.
I've never told that idea to anybody, and the only time I almost did something was when I saw that newspaper story from Pennsylvania. I made up my mind to send the writer an inchthick stack of postcards, a book of memoirs, and the capitol in Topeka and the Campanile and the Eisenhower Center in Abilene and maybe one of combining operations on a large farm.
But then I realized that I'd be shattering dreams the writer had had all his life and, even more important, I realized I should have been the image of the real Kansas. Maybe we are mostly open plains and tiny towns, small farms and one-lane roads. But maybe that's not all bad. In a country strained by too many people and too many cars and too much asphalt covering good, black dirt. Maybe they shouldn't try to straighten out their roads. Maybe they shouldn't try to change ourselves in the process.
Despite my fury, I kept my feelings in comfort, and instead of Wichita and Topeka and Lawrence and Abilene I sent that writer in Pennsylvania a short note of appreciation scribed on the back of a piece of twine from a collection of twine that's on display in a glass case on the main street of Cawker City, anyway, that's the way he wanted Kansas to be. Maybe I do, too.
WASHINGTON SLEPT, AND SLEPT, AND SLEPT HERE
With the recent FBI report about the upsurge of crime in America, many people have expressed despair about our ability to achieve safe streets, or law and order.
Justice favors wealthy, not poor
After the pardoning of former President Richard M. Nixon, many Americans have expressed doubt as to whether our criminal justice system really has any kishin to justice.
Both groups ought to read a new report by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEA4) called "Survey of Inmates in Local Jails."
No other document I have
KU athletic director Clyde Walker has bemoaned these changes, as have probably many other collegiate athletic directors. Walker contends that only two sports—football and basketball—support the collegiate sports system, and both have contributed to the two contributions generated from these two major sports might soon be providing scholarships for women's field hockey and softball.
discriminated against.
In mid-1972 LEA4 had the census bureau survey this country's 3,921 jails, which are
Reform infects system
By Carl Rowan
Walker's point is well taken. Thousands of dollars come in each year from alumni and other students who are interested in men's athletics—primarily the successful football and basketball programs.
For whatever it may be worth, my guess is that this well-intentioned legislation one day will be seen as the last vestige of the prophecy may be wrong. The two-party system has been pretty well fixed in our republic for the past 120 years, since my father taught me to sprush its gussets and fell into shreds. The two-party system
Walker said in a recent Kanan article that the island was an attractive prestige and progress gained during the past 100 years.
Where are we headed with our two-party system? The question has been raising its puzzled head for quite some time, but the issue recurs with fresh plexity in the pending bill for the financing and regulation of federal election campaigns.
Women must sweat, too
"The they want us to start at the top for women," he said. "Ninety per cent of those who contribute to our program couldn't care less about women's athletics."
Football and basketball revenue supports not only women's sports but also the minor men's
The University of Kansas athletic department is in exactly this situation. If certain provisions of the proposed Title IX legislation are approved, recently established women's athletic programs will increase in financial aid, but the men's athletic department will have to bear most of the burden.
seen so convincingly links criminal behavior to poverty and lack of education. With no
Building success is of paramount importance in our society. Once this success, whether in a career, business or program, has been achieved, most people are resentful of those who attain equal success without the same blood, sweat and tears.
number of people who are
wretchedly poor, pitliably
uneducated and shamefully
Since neither minor sports nor women's sports are proven drawing cards, a similar number of scholarships for each category isn't unreasonable. However, to cut the number of major sport scholarships in the process could mean the ruin of collegiate athletics, as Walker said, by destroying the base on which all collegiate athletics stand.
Equal pay doesn't necessarily mean equal ability. Billie Jean King and Chris Ewert probably couldn't beat any male player at the U.S. Open, but they are the top crowd-drawing players in tennis. They've proved it at the box office.
This is what KU and other collegiate sports-women must do before they should receive an equal or even equitable number of athletic scholarships. But until they do, let's hope our legislators and Title IX will leave our football and basketball teams alone, because they alone are supporting collegiate athletics on this campus.
sports such as tennis, baseball and track. All
women's sports, yet they aren't profitable than
men's sports.
Perhaps someday the women's athletic department will fill Memorial Stadium for a women's field hockey team.
Women simply have to prove themselves in sports, first, as strange as that may sound. It can be done. The best example is this year's U.S. Open tennis tournament where, for the first time at a major sporting event, men and women received equal pay.
—Mark Mitchell Makeup Editor
Even so, the system is in trouble. A dozen causes have contributed to the slow decline. The stress on the healthy destroyed most of the healthy
needed to presidential candidates and possibly to congressional candidates as well. The idea is to make our politics purer.
has survived Bull Moors, Progressives, States' Righters and George Wallace. It is a remarkably durable institution.
The purpose is fine, but I doubt that this bill will account for the purpose. It will be the private company campaigns outside expenditure
By James Kilpatrick
bacteria of political patronage.
Programs of public welfare have replaced the scuttle of coal for the precinct worker. Parties with a record of reward for faithful service, and they can impose little punishment for defection. Television provides a candidate with access to the audience of a shad bake, clam bake or party rally in the park.
Other factors have played a part. A generation has grown up in disenchantment with political institutions generally. Young people that "the system" has failed to end poverty, stop racism, prevent war and clean up the dirty environment. The two movements of the same system. Almost half of the young people registering to vote in recent months have refused to affiliate with either major party. Like organized religion, politics is traveling at the edges.
The pending bill on campaign reform, unless I am wholly mistaken, will accelerate the parties' efforts to purpose of the bill. The idea is to prevent the malodorous scandals that stunk up the political landscape two years ago and to be less on the amounts that could be spent by candidates for the presidency and for Congress. The bill would create a new federal board to oversee the accountability contributed through a check-off plan, would be chan-
the party system. It will cripple one function of the political party, which is to raise funds for a party campaign. If the bill passes, money available to candidates for the House and Senate, the effect will be to encourage third, fourth and fifth party candidates, thus benefiting plurality winners in office.
This additional probability: Once the national government gets involved in our elections, through the new administrative campaign subsidies, the question to toward the direct national election of presidents will take on fresh momentum. We would then be headed toward a fundamental restructuring of our party, the minority parties, assured of a place on a uniform, nationwide ballot, would multiply like rabbits. In theory, the voter would have a greater choice; in practice, to judge from the experience, we would wind up only with greater confusion.
"The intake point for the entire criminal justice system." These are some of the things the survey discovered about 141,600 people who were in jail at that time:
Mostly poorly educated
people go to jail. Seven black
immatures out of 10, and six white
immatures out of 10, had not
finished high school.
With deference to the reformers, who sincerely want to make our sick politics well, I cannot believe this radical surgery is well-advised. Before the two-party system is further weakened, it might be prudent to reflect that we have nothing to its place. There is not much to marvel at and marveling at the brilliant operation of the patient dies.
© 1974 Washington State Stroodens, Inc.
—Mostly poor people go to jail.
Nearly half of the blacks,
mostly young people, earned less than $2,000 in the year before arrest. Ninety per cent of the blacks and 84 per cent of the unarmed earners earned less than $7,500.
People without jobs are highly likely to wind up in jail. Two out of every five inmates were injured, and they were jailed and three out of 10 had been jobless for more than a year. And of those who had been employed, 60 per cent worked on a part-time basis.
this LEAA report shows what most of us knew: that blacks are jailed far out of proportion to their percentage in the population. Blacks make up 11 per cent of the population, but 42 per cent of jail inmates. The number of blacks in almost three times as likely to be poor, and twice as likely to be jobless, as a white American.
This report points up some other disturbing racial differences. Of all the black inmates awaiting trial, 47 per cent had been charged with murder, kidnaping, rape, aggrigated assaults, and mutilation with 22 per cent of white inmates accused of such major crimes. Whites on the other hand, were more likely to have
been charged with forgery, fraud, drug possession or drunkenness and vagrancy. Among those already sentenced, whites were more likely to be misdeaner-type offenses, and blacks of felony-type crimes," the report said.
It is time we talked more openly about these differences. My mail is full of insinuations that blacks commit violent behavior, including "animals." Is it this, or is it a reflection of the fact that the level of black education is so much lower and the level of economic desperation so much higher than that of whites?
Blacks rob and burglarize at several times their percentage of the population. Is this the product of some inherent racial quality or merely a reflection of race? What alternative opportunity to embezzle, swindle or engage in sophisticated frauds?
We may debate such questions forever. But the LEAA report seems to say one thing loud and clear: As long as we run this society in such a way that we leave 5 million people out of work, 25 million living in poverty and millions in poverty who need employment jails will be full. So will our juvenile detention centers, reform schools and state and federal prisons.
This LEAA report recommends nothing. It just gives us the facts. The question is how the society has matured enough to challenge posed by these facts. Copyright 1974, Field Enterprise, Inc.
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