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Thursday, August 28, 1986 / University Daily Kansan
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
The 'brain drain' continues.
Bye-bye, brains
Last week, a study presented to the Legislative Educational Planning Committee brought more bad news about the continuing flight of Kansas's sharpest young people out of the state.
Of 101 1985 National Merit semifinalists surveyed, 59 said they planned to go to an out-of-state college or university to continue their education.
Even more frightening was the fact that only nine of the respondents said they planned to remain in or return to Kansas after college.
Opinions
These students were honored as semifinalists when they took the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test during their junior year of high school, and this fall, the majority of them packed up and crossed the state's borders to pursue higher education elsewhere.
What a waste.
More than three-quarters of them said they had made their college choices by looking at
the schools' academic programs. Kansas colleges and universities must have come up short in the comparisons.
Instead, many of them are flocking to Stanford and Northwestern and other prestigious schools.
With all of this evidence combined with the fact that 60 percent of the semifinalists from between 1970 and 1980 are living, working or studying outside the state — higher education in Kansas still is faced with budget cuts or unsatisfactory salary increases every year. The best faculty members of the best schools in Kansas don't make as much as their counterparts at peer schools, and they leave at an alarming rate.
Who can blame them?
The river of talent and intelligence that flows out of Kansas must be dried up. Our representatives in Topeka would do well to listen when Chancellor Gene A. Budig and others say that the financial crises at our colleges and universities affect the state as a whole.
Athletic ups and downs
For Kansas University sports fans it's a good news bad news — more good news year.
First some good news. The University of Kansas Athletic Corporation has decided to sell more all-sports tickets than ever before — 7,300 in all. Additional 300 were sold to half of the newly created seats in Allen Field House. It's a credit to the creative architects who squeezed those seats in.
Why the increase?
But along with the additional seats came an increase in ticket prices — from $45 to $55 for the all-sports package.
Why the increase.
Last year, the Final Four.
Jayhawks earned $250,000 for
their performance in the NCAA tournament, and attendance in Lawrence brought in almost $1 million more. Granted, ticket prices have remained constant for three years, but don't the students get to share in last year's bounty?
Back to the good news. KU athletics has enjoyed more success, both on the field and in the classroom, than at any time in recent memory. The days when scores of academically ineligible football players were common seem to have passed.
The best news of all is that a winning tradition has been reestablished at KU. It befits us.
In good hands
Douglas County commissioners finally have seen the light. The newly created county administrator position has been long overdue.
The position was created earlier this month by the county commissioners and they hired Chris McKenzie, former county counsel or administrator-personnel director to fill the position.
As county administrator.
He will provide much-needed expertise in the day-to-day workings of the county government.
More important, though, is the fact that the position is largely free of political influence. Because it is a nonpartisan, non-elected position, political games should be absent. That will leave the administrator free to concentrate on overseeing county departments, budgets and the many support services on which the county departments rely.
McKenzie will be too busy supervising the county to worry about the pressures of re-election or the need to put political friends on the payroll.
Commissioners aren't fulltime employees. A day-to-day supervisor will have more time to stretch tax dollars to the limit and keep a close eye on county affairs.
political. Nancy Heibert, commission chairman, said that counties required more work than they did 20 years ago. And she's right. The Reagan administration's "new federalism" has stripped localities of much-needed government financing. That has left local and county governments in the lurch, scrambling for state money and juggling their books to make every penny count.
Because McKenzie already has performed many of the duties required of him, he is the ideal choice for the important position.
News staff
News staff
Lauretta McMillen ... Editor
Kady McMaster ... Managing editor
Tad Clarke ... News editor
David Silverman ... Editorial editor
John Hanna ... Campus editor
Frank Handel ... Sports editor
Jacki Kelly ... Photo editor
Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
David Nixon ... Business manager
Gregory Kaul ... Retail sales manager
Denise Stephens ... Campus sales manager
Sally Depew ... Classified manager
Lau Weems ... Production manager
Duncan Calhoun ... National sales manager
Beverly Kastens ... Traffic manager
John Obrenzan ... Sales and marketing adviser
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Let's toss the movie jabberers
I wish I could predict that it's the beginning of a national trend, but it probably isn't. Nevertheless, we can still savor this one isolated incident.
It happened on a recent Saturday night in a movie theater in Chattanooga, Teen.
Five teen-agers were sitting together and loudly jabbering. That's what many young people do when they go to movies. They jabber.
I've never understood why people want to pay money to get into a movie house to jabber. There are so many other places to jabber. On street corners, in school yards, on back porches, in hamburger joints
Anyway, they were jabbering. And other members of the audience sitting nearby were making the usual responses, turning, and glaring, saying "shhhh," sighing loudly, squirming in their seats.
But these gestures are seldom effective. Jabberers don't care if they disturb others. If anything, they enjoy it. It gives them a sense of power.
And that's one of the biggest reasons that hundreds of thousands of their victims have stopped going to the movies.
So, all a person can do is suffer through the jabber, move to a different part of the theater, or leave entirely.
That's unfair, but it's a result of a glaring defect in our legal system.
If the system were fair, a person would be fully within his rights to give a jabberer a warning. Then, if
Mike Royko
Chicago Tribune
the warning was ignored, he could seize the jabberer by the throat and squeeze until the nuisance was unconscious or deceased.
A few, well-publicized strangulations of jabberers, and instances of rudeness in movie theaters would be sharply reduced.
But the law protects jabberers. Strangle one and you'll probably wind up in prison instead of being treated to a tickertape parade, which would be your due.
Anyway, the five teen-agers were sitting there jabbering. And every few minutes, they would fling some popcorn in the direction of the screen.
tolerated. Ushers would have tolerated the dawn up the airs, shone their flashlights, in their faces, and told them to knock it off. If they didn't, they would have been shown the door.
This night in Chattanooga, though something rare and wonderful happened.
And if they resisted? When I was an usher at a theater on the West Side of Chicago, we were issued big, heavy-duty flashlights. The sweet sound of a flashlight against a skull was like a melon being thumped for ripeness.
But today's theater owners are too cheap or too timid to hire usheres. If you go to the lobby to complain, all you'll find is some wimp of a ticket taker who will go hide in a stall in the men's room.
A man came from the lobby and told them to stop jabbering and throwing popcorn.
As evidence that jerkism isn't necessarily the result of social conditioning but might be genetic, the girl's family has been raising a terrible howl.
And they were. They were bundled off to the police station and charged with disorderly conduct and, in the case of the girl, with resisting arrest.
Then the man appeared again. And this time he told them that they were being ejected.
Naturally, they giggled. And, in a few minutes, they were jabbering again.
them that he was a cop, off duty and working for the theater, and the little obscenities were under arrest.
Even better, when he had her and her friends in the lobby, he informed
They refused to go, so he grabbed the nearest one — a female creature—and hauled her bodily from the auditorium.
Brimming with indignation, they've gone to city hall in Chattanooga and demanded that the policeman be suspended and that the theater be closed down.
Unfortunately, they didn't try to escape. So he couldn't shoot them. But you can't have everything.
Both demands have been denied, as they should be. If anything, the policeman should be promoted and a street named in his honor.
Sometimes soon, the crew of jabberers will appear in juvenile court and a trial will be held, if they can shut up long enough for anyone to be heard.
I know what the proper punishment should be. But it probably won't be imposed. Some wimpy appeals court would probably rule that it's cruel and unusual punishment to order the removal of five tongues.
... A (B)
Guns or grain? You can't have both
The lack of criticism that U.S. citizens display when confronted with an obvious Reagan contradiction is perplexing. It is sad commentary on the condition of the nation's critical faculties.
The Reagan administration is so often wrought with contradiction that it is depressing. What's even more depressing, though, is the lack of outrage by the American public at the glaring inconsistencies.
The Reagan administration's latest folly was the decision to sell grain to the Soviet Union at below-market prices. Is this the same Soviet Union that supposedly threatens our democratic ways?
Perhaps the vast majority of people in this country have lost the ability to even recognize contradiction. The lack of criticism by the American public has allowed Reagan to inflict upon us some of the most incoherent and amusing policies in our history.
ly a grave threat to the United States, or does Reagan merely use the "Red Scare" as a political expedient?
which is 1? Are the Soviets actual
sure I applaud the decision to sell grain to the Soviets. The United States should carry on normal and mutually
Christian Colbert Columnist
beneficial relations with the Soviets.
We have nothing to fear.
However, we've been conditioned to hate them. Our overalzeal fear of the Soviet 'Union began after World War II. It was engineered by persons in the State Department who needed a justification for spreading U.S. in fluence around the globe.
Influence once anti-communist sentiments were started, they took a life of their own. As a result, communist tears continue unabated today and pervade all of our institutions.
The administration's decision to sell grain to the Russians seems to suggest that they have become less threatening. Why else would they decide to sell the Soviets grain? Isn't food more vital to national security than nuclear warheads?
Surprisingly, the Reagan administration has been able to have it both ways. On the one hand, they have portrayed the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," which should engender fear in us. This has allowed them to push for, and get, larger and larger military budgets.
Yet, they are not opposed to selling grain to the Russians.
This is politics. It doesn't have to make sense.
make it more important. In politics, it appears that it's more important to serve the dominant economic class than to have consistent policies.
Indeed, that is precisely what Reagan has done by intensifying hostile relations with the Soviets. Tension between the superpowers
ruels the arms race and benefits the military industrial complex.
According to Harvard economics professor John K. Galbraith, weapons expenditures reward well-paid executives, technicians and wealthy stockholders.
Now is a favorable time for change.
The Soviets now are extending their unilateral moratorium on the testing of nuclear arms. In addition, they are making verifiability easier by allowing U.S. scientists to set up monitoring devices near test sites. Apparently, they must recognize the futility of the arms race.
If we could somehow weaken the power of the military industrial complex, we could join the Soviets in a test ban and abruptly end the insane arms competition.
An end to the arms race would save countless billions, without jeopardizing our national security.
Tough Nicaragua policy hardly new
Last week, President Reagan told reporters from the Mexican newspaper, Excelsior, that if Nicaragua's Sandinista regime didn't reform its policies and actions towards civilized democracy, the only alternative would be a "takeover" by the U.S.-backed contra rebels.
The decisiveness of Reagan's words, however, doesn't reflect a change in his attitude or policies toward Nicaragua.
The New York Times called it the "blunt statement" the president has made on this issue thus far.
To some, the word "bluntest" in the headline might infer that the president has been trying to conceal his true goals in Nicaragua.
but the administration has not deviated from its original policies concerning Nicaragua. Nor have they tried to hide their goals or the two main reasons for these goals: 1.
to bring a forlorn hope of eventual democracy for Nicaragua and 2. to retaliate the spreading of communism.
Supporting the contrasts is a tentative form of action and not an
Evan Walters
Columnist
answer to the problems of the Nicaraguan people.
Even if the rebels can pressure the Sandinistas to change or remove the
And while the goal of the U.S. support may be to pressure the Sandinistas into democracy, a contravictory can only ensure an interregnum between generations of dictatorship and democracy.
Although most dictatorships don't tolerate democracy, the opposite need not be true. People in a democracy can always vote for dictatorship.
dictatorship, it won't guarantee desirable results by U.S. standards. And if democracy did arise in the form of a voting ballot, that alone might not solve the problems of human rights abuses or dictatorship.
As history has shown, Communism
the Citizen government. The Reagan administration's fear is based on a suspicion that Nicaragua's Marxist philosophy will bring Communist revolutions in surrounding countries.
The Sandinistas' totalitarian dictatorship isn't distinguishable from many other third world countries Nonetheless, the Nicaraguan government bothers the United States, unlike other dictatorships, such as the Chilean government
doesn't subside with content, but expands its roots under the soil. Wherever the seeds of revolution might lie in the non-Communist world, Moscow will find them and thereupon fertilize.
Communism now infests almost every corner of the globe. Initially stemming from Moscow, with every Soviet conquest comes a new center communist expansion. For decades, the United States has tried to contain this totalitarian force and to prevent its growth.
Communism has sustained its growth rate, however, this time hitting the American shores. President Reagan is not satisfied with mere containment with Communism in such close proximity, he desires a more forceful approach, one which might call for the overthrow of the Nicaraguan Government.
Has that not been clear all along?