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Friday, December 4, 1992
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
IN OUR OPINION
Financial limitations justify keeping the band at home
For the first time in 11 years the Jayhawk football team will be heading for postseason play. The Jayhawks accepted an invitation to play Brigham Young University in the Aloha Bowl on Christmas Day.
This achievement has been anxiously anticipated by Jayhawk players, coaches and fans ever since Kansas' defeat in the 1981 Hall of Fame Bowl.
However, another group that has been integral in the rebuilding of the Jayhawks' football program had been expecting a trip to Hawaii for the holidays -the Marching Jayhawks.
Band members have expressed disappointment and anger over not being included in the Aloha Bowl festivities. These complaints are not unexpected. However, when stacked against financial and practical aspects of the trip, the decision to leave the band behind is sound.
The Athletic Department chartered an L10-11 plane from Trans World Airlines. The plane, which seats 272 people, will carry the football team, coaches and support services. The remaining seats will be used by the spirit squad and the band. This arrangement will result in more than 30 band members attending the Aloha Bowl.
This is 30 more band members than will be representing BYU. Moreover, because of Aloha Bowl rules the band wouldn't be allowed to perform at halftime, thus diminishing its visibility.
Financially, the University will receive only $750,000 for the Jayhawks' appearance in Hawaii; $330,000 will be spent just chartering the plane and $150,000 in purchasing Aloha Bowl tickets. The rest will be spent on hotel rooms and other expenses.
There is no doubt that for many years the band deserved to play for a better football team than they have. They have been recognized consistently as one of the best college marching bands in the nation and have been awarded the coveted Sudler Trophy for Intercollegiate Marching Bands. And no one can take for granted the commitment of band members and their importance in success of KU football.
However, the band can take heart. According to Bob Frederick, athletic director, any bowl game in the future, other than the Aloha, would guarantee entire band and spirit squad participation.
But when given the limited financial resources and limited role a full band would play, the correct decision has been made.
STEPHEN MARTINO FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Despite the inevitable protests Somalia needs U.S. assistance
Washington's dramatic offer of U.S. troops to help the United Nations deliver food in Somalia is sure to encounter a host of objections.
It will violate Somalia's sovereignty. It will only intensify the fighting. It will turn the U.N. into an instrument of U.S. imperialism. And it will leave no lasting peace.
All of these run up against two incontrovertible facts. Mass starvation is under way in Somalia, and previous international efforts have failed to stop it.
Will such a large, uninvited military force represent interference in Somalia's internal affairs? Certainly. But in a country with no effective government, and hundreds of thousands of starving citizens, this seems a trifling complaint.
The Globe and Mail Toronto
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Bush should be thankful the job is no longer his
Losing a job can be tough for any one. And in some ways, it's even worse for George Bush.
When most people get the boot, they clean out their desk or locker, say "so long" to their friends and "up yours" to the boss, and go home or to the nearest bar.
But because we have this long transition period, Bush has to stick around the White House for a couple of months and be gawked at by the press.
COLUMNIST
They note that he looks glum, weary and listless. Well, why not? Being fired by 62 million people has to be a downer.
Even worse, he's expected to go through the motions of being president until Bill and Hillary are sworn in. But unless a war breaks out, that means he has almost nothing to do except the silly ceremonial stuff.
And recently he performed one of those choirs. It was the traditional Thanksgiving appearance. What happens is that some turkey farm presents the White House with a turkey the size of a small horse.
The president goes into the Rose Garden and makes an inspirational talk for some school children, the White House staff and the press.
MIKE ROYKO
Then he announces that the big gift turkey will not be used for Thanksgiving dinner. Instead it will be donated to a petting zoo. The tradition of pardoning the gift turkey is believed to have started with Jimmy Carter and has continued since. Before then, presidents just said: "Yum Yum, off with his head."
This act of mercy delights the children and is a relief to the White House kitchen staff, which would have to do the dirty work. And it's a matter of indifference to the press, which thinks nothing of beheading politicians, so why should it worry about a dumb bird?
You would think that something as innocuous as this ceremony — a tired, dispirited, lame-duck president sparing the life of a turkey — would attract hardly any attention, much less cause controversy.
But we are in the age of political correctness, when almost anything a person does — even nothing — is enough to cause some special interest group to get bumpy.
No sooner did Bush issue his presidential pardon when he came under attack from not one but two sets of blabber mouths.
And it happened with the turkey.
"The reality is that 45 million birds will be killed to celebrate Thanksgiving. We can celebrate this family tradition with compassion and that means not eating a bird. It's time for Americans to adopt a compassion diet."
First came someone named Robin Walker, who is a spokescreature for an outfit called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Ms. Walker had hardly finished when another blast came from someone named Mark LaRochelle, the spokescreature for an outfit called Putting People First, which is engaged in philosophical warfare with the animal rights activists.
He criticized Bush for pardoning that one turkey, saying: "There is a very old tradition of eating turkeys. Sending them to petting zoos seems to disarrange the poultry farmers. ... It is a little hypocritical that the president then goes out and eats a turkey which somebody else had to slaughter. The message it's sending is very negative."
Ms. Walker said that sparing the life of one turkey wasn't enough.
So on the one hand, we have Ms. Walker the turkey lover saying that the president should have issued a pardon to the 45 million turkeys that we ate.
"You can't hide the 45 million dead turkeys behind a presidential pardon of one bird," she said.
That strikes me as being impractical.
You spare the lives of 45 million turkeys, and what is going to become of them? They have no value alive, so they will be set free. Then this country will be overrun by turkeys. We will have turkeys everywhere. Is Ms. Walker prepared to take care of 45 million homeless turkeys?
The next step would be for some turkey-loving activists to demand that Congress finance programs to build homeless turkeys shelters or to provide training for turkeys to become peacocks.
On the other hand, we have this meat-eating fellow Mark LaRochelle gripping about one turkey being spared and accusing Bush of hypocrisy for eating a turkey that someone else dispatched.
Well, what would this Mark LaRochelle have Bush do? Maybe whip out an ax right there in the Rose Garden and lop off the turkey's head? History probably won't be kind to him anyway, but should he be remembered as the Turkov Splitter?
And what about the children in the Rose Garden and those watching on TV? It would send them into shock, which would open Bush up to millions of dollars in lawsuits by their parents.
This is an example of the bony age we live in. Give one turkey break and you're caught in a cross fire between the tofu-eaters and the flesh-chompers.
But maybe it gave Bush material for a Thanksgiving table prayer. Something like: "Lord, thank you for this bountiful blessing. And, after giving it further thought, thank you for getting me out of this goofy job. Who needs it?"
Mike Royko is a syndicated columnist with the Chicago Tribune.
STAFF COLUMNIST
MARK COATNEY
Career decisions come with growing up
"Every kind of life has its demands, its tests. Can I do this? Can I live with the consequences of what I'm doing? If you can't answer yes, you're in a life that's too much for you... Get into the place that's your nature, whether it's running a corporation or picking daisies in a field, become what you are, and . . . you've done more than most men." — E. L. Doctorow, "Loon Lake"
People have been asking me for years what I want to be when I grow up. The only difference between now and when I wive is that now they say, "What are you going to do when you graduate?"
The assumption is that upon receipt of apiece of paper from KU, I will suddenly become a growup, an assumption I very much doubt.
What do I want to be when I grow up? The answer is the same today as you did years ago.
I want a crew of scurvy sea dogs. I want to sail the Spanish Main. I want to sit with 16 men on a dead man's chest. As Giltberg and Sullivan remind us, "It is a glorious thing to be a pirate kine."
I must face up to the fact, however, that not everyone gets to be a pirate king.
Failing that, what am I going to do?
What's my plan? What's my goal?
Will what I do for the rest of my life?
"Every kind of life has its demands."
I don't think I'm the only one graduating from the University without a firm answer to these questions.
Every day of the week, students:
Those of us who are graduating have met the demands of college life. We know how to write 2,000-word papers three hours before class, how to make the teaching assistant think you know what you're talking about, how to shoot a tall boy, etc.
Now we have to find out if we can handle other kinds of lives. Can we be doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs?
Being a lawyer, for instance, might be really cool. I've always wanted to be able to pick up a phone and yell, "Stop baffling my client," to a noisy reporter. There are down sides to being a lawyer, though, like being scorned by Dan Quayle. I don't know if I can handle that.
"Here we are all playing the citizen game," the poet Harley Elliott writes, "and it's the easiest thing in the world to do."
All of us, accountants, soldiers, tailors, playing the citizen game, looking for our level. And how many of us find it? Will I? What, in the end, is fulfillment?
In the end, the only way I can answer is with this story.
At that moment, I was no longer a child, but someone who could do a man's work and had a man's worth. As far as she was concerned, I was a grown-up. That's my level, that's the place I'm comfortable with, and all the confirmation of my life that I need is that he still lets me sit at the men's table.
The proudest moment of my young life came at the age of 13 when my great grandmother seated me for the first time at the men's table when all the relatives came to dinner.
Mark Coatney is a Uniwood graduate student maturing in political science.
Loco Locals
By Tom Michaud