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Monday, November 24, 1986 / University Daily Kansan
Opinions
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
A paltry election turnout
About 70 percent more students voted in this year's student-body elections than in last year's.
On the surface, that would appear to be encouraging news. But, in reality, there's not all that much to celebrate in that figure.
Even with the huge increase in turnout, only 13.9 percent of the eligible students on campus cast ballots in this year's election. The large increase came because a paltry 8.4 percent of the students voted last year.
This year 3,578 students showed up at the polling places to elect the officers who will oversee the allocation of more than a million dollars.
To be precise, 1,120,000 of YOUR dollars.
Voter apathy is something politicians are faced with in any election, but student elections at the University of Kansas almost have become a comedy of errors.
The results of this year's
If there ever was an election in which every vote counted, this was it, and every one of those votes apparently will be recounted. But it's downright sad that it will take so little time to do so.
election were close. The Cheers coalition candidates won the student-body presidential and vice-presidential seats by an unofficial count of 151 votes.
Our Student Senate receives a lot of criticism, often in this very space. But perhaps, as one administrative official recently put it, KU students get a much better student government than they deserve.
Obviously only 3,578 of us deserve any form of government at all.
The upward swing that voter turnout this year is an important step, but when the polls open again in April, even more students must take the time and effort to participate in the election process.
Once again, finals time
They sneak up on you, like a dentist appointment. You're cruising along, getting back into the swing of school after Thanksgiving break, when, baring it's finals time.
A fact often pushed to the back of students' minds is that after the delightful respite of Thanksgiving break, there are a measly six days of classes left. Not much time to pull up those lagging grades.
And, odious though it may be. Thanksgiving break is the ideal time start opening those books for more than a cursory glance. You're home, away from the distracting influences of bars, friends and noisy roommates. There's nothing to do but eat leftover turkey and study. Take advantage of this time; it's all too short.
Finals are December 10-19:
just around the corner. Begin
to consider new places to study
and when they will be open.
Find out the schedule of library hours during finals and which restaurants have free coffee refills.
If you start now, you will prevent the need for those all night, caffeine-laden study sessions. Although a good dose of coffee will help keep those eyes open late into the night, the lack of sleep will only adversely effect you the next day. And studies have indicated that too much caffeine can cause memory loss. So what you think you learn in a coffee-induced stupor is really only sitting on the surface of those brain cells. When you try to recall the information during a test, it will be long gone.
The best way to prepare for finals is to get plenty of sleep before an exam, spread your studying out over a few days instead of the night before, and stay away from mind-altering chemical substances.
End the bloodshed
Little by little, the United States is increasing its involvement in the Nicaraguan civil war.
Nicaraguan contrasts began military training at an undisclosed location in the United States, administration sources said last week. Their training will be financed by the $100 million in aid Congress recently authorized for them.
But the contrast will need a lot more than a few million dollars before their cause will be anything but hopeless. What's worrisome for any male of draft age is that if the contrast' cause really is as vital as President Reagan contends, the U.S. government may eventually waste something a lot more important than money in an attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government.
U. S. support of the contrasts is based on a misunderstanding of the war in Nicaragua. Some portray it as an East-West struggle, communism vs. democracy. The Sandistas may be left-wing compared to
the oppressive U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship that ruled until 1979, but the idea that they are the vanguard of a communist domino-effect conspiracy in Central America is pure fantasy.
Because the Reagan administration's Nicaraguan foreign policy apparently precludes anything but military solutions, the only rational way to end the bloodshed has been ignored. It is the Contadora proposal, drafted jointly by eight nations representing 75 percent of the population of Central America, which promotes a negotiated settlement to the Nicaraguan civil war.
U. S. participation in the Contadora plan, which includes halting all foreign aid to military forces in Central America, would place our nation on the side that's usually forgotten: the people of Nicaragua. Their desire for peace outweighs Reagan's desire to reinstate a right-wing puppet government in Managua.
News staff
News staff
Lauretta McMilleen ... Editor
Kadey McMaster ... Managing editor
Tad Clarke ... News editor
David Silverman ... Editorial editor
John Hanna ... Campus editor
Frank Hansel ... Sports editor
Jack Kelly ... Photo editor
Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
David Nixon ... Business manager
Gregory Kouil ... Retail sales manager
Denise Stephens ... Campus sales manager
Sally Depew ... Classified manager
Lisa Weems ... Production manager
Duncan Counsell ... National traffic manager
Everyly Kastens ... Traffic manager
Jeanne Nines ... Sales and marketing adviser
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Hemingway is latest in wimp wear
A few days ago, a friend called. He'd just heard that a company was set to market a line of Hemingway fashion clothes.
He wanted to know what kind of guy would buy, let alone wear, clothes like that.
Gil Chavez
Columnist
I said probably the same ones who a few years back dressed like Harrison Ford in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and who now did their best to look like Tom Cruise in "Top Gun."
My friend asked whether Hemingway would stand for such a thing if he was alive.
I thought he would. All that time he spent in Paris living off pigeons in the park gave him a mercenary attitude when it came to money. I reminded my friend that Hemingway hated what Hollywood did to his stories but that never stopped him from selling the rights to them.
That's what he had thought. The big customers would be wimps desperately trying to hide their wimpery behind Hemingway's famous name.
After we got off the phone, I started thinking about it. Talk about your strange ideas, this was one. Hemingway certainly wasn't a clothes freak. He dreaded the tuxedo more than a charging elephant.
My friend seemed reassured.
Although he spent a lot of time in idaho, he never owned a decent winter coat. What clothes he did wear were old, baggy and plain.
I imagined how it would look: loyal yuppie Hem-droids roaring New York in the dead of winter in thread-baffles flannels and light hunting vest,
dining on onion sandwiches.
"The audit, was it good?" said Nick as he leaned against the wall and cut a thick slice of onion. He cut it well with a letter opener that was a souvenir from the merger war.
"Like all audits, it was good. Not as good as others, but maybe I was not as good," said Bill. He watched Nick cut clean and well.
"Captain, more sauce." The waiter and Nick had served in the Yale brigade during the Ivy League campaigns of '68 and '69.
"Remember, captain, when we went over the top against Penn? After the game the mescaline came hard and fast, and we broke the windows in the women's dormitory but the women were at the Monkees concert, so we drove Leech's Rolls into the river?"
"Monsieur Nick, you must not think of anything," said the waiter and he went to bring more sauce.
When did the captain start speaking with a French accent? Was it after the tear gas or during the ROTC fire? I haven't been good since the concussion from the merger war, he thought. A secretary leaves a file cabinet open and the next thing you know they're digging you out from under the reports. I won't think of anything, he thought.
Nick tried not to think of anything.
"Hey Nick, let's go over to that new store. Shoes of Kilimanjaro, I hear they have a new shipment of worn-out hunting boots," said Bill.
"Sounds good, very good. Do you have your gold card? We will buy much."
I'm sure they will; wimps usually have plenty of bucks and are indigenous to shopping malls. But I can't complain, at least they haven't yet dreamed up anything for women. Although, if given the chance, I'm sure they could think of something. Perhaps a fashion patterned after the way Getrude Stein dressed.
There's no need for a language war
Californians now have made English their state language. Why not? Congress has just made the rose the national flower, much to the discomfiture of those who would have preferred the marigold, or the cotton boll.
Paul Greenberg
Columnist
Various states have official birds, flowers, mottoes, and even languages. It isn't Spanish an official language in New Mexico and French in Louisiana? Arkansas even has an official state fossil. (No, it isn't Oral E. Faubus.) Why shouldn't California have a state language?
Ever since the days of the Yellow Peril, Californians have led the nation in spotting menaces, and this year it's the language of Cervantes and Borges. Xenophobia seems to have given way to linguaphobia.
Because, unfortunately, this wasn't an exercise in the purely ceremonial, or a statement of the obvious — namely, that English is this country's unofficial national language. The folks out to designate English as the official language aren't engaged in a ritual so much as a crusade, and every crusade needs an infidel to oppose.
To quote Stanley Diamond, leader of the campaign to make English the official state language: "We have Hispanic politicians who have an unstated or hidden agenda to turn California into a bilingual, bicultural state." What a shock to those of us who thought of California's unofficial language (Valley) as firmly entrenched and its
culture (Laid Back) as expanding eastward at a relaxed rate.
Others across the country are joining the crusade. Americans love a menace — so much that, if one doesn't exist, they'll invent one. Similar campaigns are being planned for Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York (yes, they speak English in New York.) Washington and Wisconsin.
Richard Lamm, the governor of Colorado who is carving out a new career as the prophet of doom, already has testified before Congress on the dangers of speaking in tongues.
Similar concern can be spotted in the words of John Marshall, of both Adamses and both Roosevelts. It was particularly strong at the turn of the century when the "new" immigration from eastern and southern Europe, the grandparents and great-grandparents of so many English speakers today, were flooding into the Promised Land.
They were hard to miss: In 1890 the foreign-born population of Chicago almost equalled the city's entire population of 1880. Immigrants made up a third of Boston's population and a fourth of Philadelphia's. And four of every five New Yorkers in the Gay Nineties were either immigrants or the children of immigrants. Talk about a polyglot population: To describe it as merely bilingual and bicultural would have been a vast understatement.
How in the world do you think the children and grandchildren of all these immigrants came to speak English, and probably only English, without its having been declared the only genuine, official, recognized and certified state language? Could it be they realized that knowing English was the way to get ahead in America? Could it be something
about English itself    its remarkable absorptive
canacity – that lets it soak up other languages?
To believe that at this late date English needs to be voted the country's official language in order to save the poor thing may demonstrate not the usual xenophobia but a remarkable lack of confidence in the one medium that above all has merited Americans' confidence in this age; the English language.
Not only is such a step redundant; it could prove counterproductive. What better way to make people defensive and assertive than by telling them their language is un-American? A state language might go over about as well as a state church.
There is nothing wrong with an American's knowing another language; it would make the foreign service's job a lot easier when it came to recruiting. Yes, kids who don't speak English need to be taught it, but those who speak only English need to learn another language. (Among other advantages, studying a foreign language is a good way to understand and appreciate one's own.)
All of this is going to sound unspeakably calm to the excitingists who believe English is disappearing and the sky is falling — but there is no reason for panic, or even for an official language. At a time when statist solutions are being seen through around the world, why resort to one when the subject is as personal, as intimate, as language?
one of the great advantages of this country is its diversity. Declaring English or any other tongue the official language only gets in the way of achieving that first goal of the Republic, *E Prelibus Unum*, that most American of phrases even if it isn't an English one.
This country would seem to have enough real divisions without inflaming an issue that is best left to time and grace and the enticements of life in the larger community — all of which have proved quite sufficient before in American history.
Mailbox The first memorial
While the editorial "A living tribute" in the Nov. 11 Kansan was good, I question how long the Kansan editorial board has been at the University. I seem to remember attending many a football game in Memorial Stadium. Now, if I'm not mistaken, that was the first monument on campus. Next time you visit the Campanile and the Vietnam Memorial, don't forget to look down the hill at Memorial Stadium and remember all of those who fought and died in World War I, the war to end all wars.
Dennis Linse,
Omaha, Neb. graduate student
A sexist reference
There is a great deal of irony in that the Nov. 11 Kansan article, which reports two women's efforts to analyze some aspects of the gender discrimination problem, should use the sexist term "chairman" to describe one of the women.
James T. Todd.
Lawrence graduate student