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Tuesday. August 26, 1975
University Dallv Kansan
KU, Russia reap aid
Recent and projected sales of Kansas wheat to Soviet buyers not only should be of concern to housewives and farmers, but also to every person in the state who is concerned with higher education.
University budget requests, particularly the third proposed 10 per cent faculty pay hike, hinge on the availability of tax revenues. Wheat remains the single most important element of the state's financial base.
If wheat production dwindles, or the grain's market price plumms, then Kansas residents can be certain the legislature will trim funding requests.
Chancellor Archie Dykes, speaking with respect to how the proposed 1976 budget will fare before the legislature, said the document is what will happen with the wheat."
The state produces one-fifth of the nation's total wheat crop, a part of which the Soviets now actively are seeking. The Soviets are expected to need 25 million tons of wheat this year, in addition to what they will glean from their own harvest during the next few weeks.
They already have contracted to buy 16.5 million tons of wheat from exporting nations, including 10.2 million tons from the United States. Agricultural experts predict a large portion of the Soviets' remaining need will have to be filled by the United States.
If American farmers are producing more wheat than our country needs, then what is the problem with selling some of our crop to the Soviets?
To begin with, some people think foreign wheat sales ought to be forbidden if they will drive the price of wheat higher. Earl Butz, secretary of agriculture, acknowledged last week that sales announced so far this year
will force food prices up about 1.5 per cent during the next 16 months.
George Meany, the powerful leader of the AFL-CIO and now a self-styled consumer advocate, purports to be doing the right thing for American consumers when he demands that longshoremen not sell their shirts for the USSR. Meany is to the Kansas farmer who Judas was to Jesus.
What Meany and those other "consumer advocates" don't appear to understand is that farmers need the additional sales so that they can make a profit while operating on a small margin. If sales are limited and prices depressed, many farmers will leave the business.
In 1972, the United States sold more than 18 million tons of wheat to the Soviets, but some farmers have been shown to have had advance notice. Consequently, they held their crops off of the market and netted crop prices, because that the same thing could happen again, but there is no rational reason that it should.
The government should take an active role in seeing that future prospective large buys are announced in advance, then allow the price of grain to gravitate upward at a cost. The result would be that the Soviets would pay, not the American farmer.
The Kansas wheat crop of about 400 million bushels represents not only a tremendous investment, but also a potential funding source which has no equivalent within the state's boundaries.
If fact and reason can be separated from rhetoric surrounding this issue, the state, including its institutions of higher learning, will be allowed to draw on its most prominent source of revenue. Dennis Ellsworth
Students left on sidelines
By WARD HARKAVY
College sports is a business.
Anyone who thinks that all the rah-rah and pageantry that accompany major import
intriectile sports don't turn a
dollar in wages and cents is mistaken.
Intercollegiate athletics can help a university's public relation image, as well as its university's other functions. Some would say that
The continuing emphasis on intercollegiate athletics seems to be obscuring one other imbu-
ment. The function is that, or should be, to provide facilities and programs for all students—not only student-athletes—who are in participation in sports.
One of Chancellor Archie Dykes' first official actions upon assuming his position in the Senate, he joined the Walker, as legislative director.
KU has tennis, basketball and handball courts, a swimming pool and many playing fields.
It doesn't have enough of any of these things hosted by salute students at 20,000 students and a few thousand more faculty and staff mem
Walker is a man who gets things done. Although he has a rough road ahead of him, he may very well be able to rejuvenate KU's mediocre football program.
However, he represents a trend that is leading us away from student involvement in sports. The Big Eight Conference is one of the most powerful athletic leagues in the
country—and Walker seems intent on pushing KU toward the top of the conference.
Do we need this emphasis on intercollegiate athletic competition? Not when it might detract from the University's sports activities for all pro sports activities for all students who want them.
in its guidelines. Recruiting has been restricted both in the number and frequency of trips allowed to lure high school athletes to colleges; the number of coaches a college may have has been reduced; and the number of players suited up for football and basketball games also has been cut.
The University of Kansas
Athletic Corporation doesn't
siphon money away from in-
ternational teams because the
problem is one of commitment.
A commitment for expanding
sports opportunities for all who
desire them must come from
representatives at the University.
Even if a continued emphasis on intercollegiate competition doesn't inhibit the growth of KU's intramural programs, another point has to be considered.
That point is, simply put, can we afford intercollegiate athletic competition? Kansas was one of the top colleges with difficult time with that question.
K-State has had to abandon numerous so-called minor sports because it couldn't afford the money those sports in the Big Eight.
There's no doubt that these restrictions will hurt many players in either maintaining or building strong football and basketball teams. KU is one of the few States, but maybe not for long.
In addition, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, in its recent convention in Chicago, made drastic changes
Maybe colleges soon will have to face the fact that they can no longer operate their inter-collegiate athletic programs in the manner to which they have become accustomed.
What would be so bad about that? There was a time when colleges played one-platoon football, and they had to play both offense and defense, and substitutions were limited. Now it takes at least 45 football players, first- and second-position, to even play a game.
It's obvious that inter-colllegiate sports are suffer- good this is happening. A de-emphasis on inter-collegiate
sports, especially football and basketball, wouldn't lessen competition between schools. It might even humanize the competition in that the name of the game would be the game, not the sordidity of intensive training payments to athletes and regal treatment of athletes at the expense of non-athletes.
Perhaps money saved by the athletic department could even be funneled into women's athletic programs. That would be welcome. Women's participation in sports has long been suppressed, although women's intercollegiate sports have become a burden on athletic departments that other programs are, contrary to what many athletic directors say.
Athletic competition is satisfying and even good for you. KU's athletic facilities have improved during the past decade, but they are still inadequate for the size of the campus.
Let's hope that Chancellor Dykes makes the same commitment towards intramural sports and allows those towards intercollegiate athletics.
Sports are for participants as well as for spectators. Or am I wrong?
Let it rain
James J. Kiparkat has been continued from last year's Kansas and will offer a course on conservation viewpoints.
James Kilpatrick
Life's calamities put in place
Finals are starting early for Liz, a friend of mine working at the school. Most students are gearing up all-nighters and freeting about their class schedules, Liz undergoes tests today to see if she's ready.
A victim of melanoma, a type of cancer that can strike anywhere at anytime. Liz must face such tests every three months. For her, missing a class or getting a parked ticket
Spending law demands too much
are minor irritations; long lines waiting for slow clerks are mere trifles.
Debbie Gump Associate Editor
However, she also comes out with a determination not to let her hidden time bomb threaten
Lt always enters the hospital with a smile, basing her hopes on her three rating, which she considers an opportunity of chance the acting鲁 act.
She comes out wracked with pain from the tests that will tell whether she the melanoma, or the low level cancer, has begun to spread.
"People want to shove death under the rug," she says regrettably. "They don't want to consider dying and death part of life. There was this one man in the hospital with an inperable cancer in his throat. People would visit him dressed in their wedding clothes that had bruised flowers . . . he was even receiving get-well cards, even though he had absolutely no chance."
Those well-dressed guests babbling about the weather apparently could not hear the sad voice of her rose glasses. Liz says her parents
her lifestyle, even though it threatens her life constantly. Having been granted a reprise from that big grad school in the sky, she takes life's catastrophes with a grain of salt.
Liz says she finally learned to treat each disaster with due regard when she accepted the fact that life was finite. It was hard for her to accept the possibility of an early death, she says, and almost impossible for her parents and associates.
also tried mightily to accept the melanoma by ignoring it.
Treasing a tragedy as if it were a minor setback is a natural defense mechanism. Unfortunately, it is also natural to see grown men cursing hot afternoons and rain during the lunch hour as if nature had a personal vendetta against him. When brought to the same level of such triviality as uncomfortable weather, substantive problems lose their substance.
"They can't bring themselves to even say the word 'cancer.' They talk about Lie's 'problem' or Lie's 'illness.' Finally had to force my parents to look at the scars."
It's not been easy for Liz to run a life with roadblocks every three months, but she has learned a few lessons. One is that you don't need a job. She sidered major events are really only life's side shows.
"An uncertain future puts a whole new perspective on life. You learn what's really important. Just the day before I went to the hospital, I was cursing the car because it
wouldn't start. 1 also came unglued when the water pump broke or when school became too much. After something like
this, you realize what life's proportions really are."
Those are words to live—or die—by.
Published at the University of Kansas weekdays and Sunday afternoon periods. Second-class postage paid at Lansing, or $18 for a semester or $18 in Douglas County and $10 for a semester in Rockford. Subscriptions are $1.35 a semester, paid through the university.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Editor
Dougie Wilsworth
Associate Editor
Demore Campus Editor
Associate Campus Editor
Associate Editors
Betty Haggard
Ben Douthit
Don Smith
Chief Photographer
George Mullen
Staff Photographers
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Sports Editor
Marcus Sports Editor
Entertainment Editor
Alen Quackenbush
Bill Tollman
Tom Billam
Business Manager
Circle Lane
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Syndicated by the Washington Star Syndicate, Inc., Klipper National rumors including the Signa Delta Chi Award in 1955.
WASHINGTON—"We know no spectacle so ridiculous, "no spectacle so ridiculous," as the British public on one of its periodical fits of morality." In this matter of election voters have taken a little ridiculous ourselves.
Under the law, federal officeholders, candidates and political committees may request advisory opinions from the commission on the legality of various contributions and awards. The commission has issued a notice of caution, qualified applicants have been asking questions by the dozen. Some 250 letters of inquiry have been boiled down
Administration of the law is in the hands of a six-member Federal Election Commission, a federal court and Street in Washington. Some 75 staff members already are employed. The number will rise to 125 in the current fiscal year. The federal budget areas are budgeted at $5 million.
In the waves of morality generated by the Watergate typhoon, Congress embarked on a reform. The law that became effective in January puts limits on campaign spending and limits on campaign contributions to presidential subsidies to presidential candidates and to national party conventions; it creates crimes punishable by up to five years in jail. The act goes on for the pages.
But the more one wades through the swamps of election
to 31 official requests for advisory opinions. Thus far, the commission has released 13 opinions in reply.
Now, the object of all this activity is to achieve purity, or at least the image of purity, in our federal elections. It is a powerful tool that can be knock it. The Watergate scandals contributed disastrously to a general disenchantment with the political process. The notion that congress had no contribution is an insidious notion, eating away at the vitals of our system.
Once such request came from Sien. Lloyd Bentens. He had been invited to make a lunchon speech for a chamber of commerce in New York, and the chamber had offered "to pay from its general treasury travel expenses for the Senator and his staff." Is it permissible? Answer: No. Corporations cannot channel funds, even indirectly, to a presidential candidate.
Other inquiries involve the most tedious details of accounting and bookkeeping. What is the status of a candidate who is unopposed in his party's non-profit incorporated association, such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars, pay travel expenses for a presidential candidate who speaks at a VFW meeting? How does a hotel operator of Cleveland offer to attract a national convention?
reform, the more one is minded to ask: Is all this regulation truly necessary? All of it? Will it accomplish the desired end? Or will the act result in creating traps, snarees and pifflas for the exploitation of the idolate who finds himself lost in the complexities of the law?
Bo Callaway, campaign manager for the President Ford Committee, expects to hire accountants by the platoon to manage his expenditure. Every expenditure, no matter how petty, will have to be meticulously recorded. The most insignificant courtesy—a ride to an airport, a friendly luncheon, a taxi fare—may require a campaign contribution, subject to limits fixed by law.
Thus far, the reform act has survived constitutional challenge. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia recently rejected a suit brought by Sen. James L. Buckle, R-Iowa, and Sen. Eugene McCarthy, but the two plaintiffs will appeal. On the surface, they appear to have a good case, but it will be months before the Supreme Court can act.
Meanwhile, the nitpicking goes on; file drawers fill up; duplicating machines grind on by day and night. The person who contemplates federal office must first contest a backdrop of fearful complexity. Maybe these requirements will revive the image of purity. More likely, we will find our campaigns strangled in the red tape of too much reform.