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Friday. September 11. 1992
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OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
IN OUR OPINION
Fans should take note of Jayhawks' improvements
It's that time again, when the Marching Jayhawks are fine tuning their instruments, adrenaline is pumping and athletic ability is at its peak. Tomorrow marks KU's first home football game of the 1992 season, as the Jayhawks take on Ball State.
The team is ready to rumble, but are the fans? Memorial Stadium seats more than 50,000, and the Hill can easily accommodate 5,000. But last season there was never a capacity crowd. In fact, Memorial Stadium has not witnessed a sellout since 1984.
In the past, fans have often criticized the team during bad times but boasted when it won. Fair-weather fans are not what any organized team of any caliber needs in order to thrive.
The Jayhawks finished with a 6-5 record in 1991, the team's first winning season since 1981. This season, Kansas has been picked to finish in the Big Eight Conference's upper division. Two Jayhawks, kicker Dan Eichloff and defensive tackle Dana Stubblefield, have earned preseason All-American honors. If the team lives up to its preseason billing, record crowds should be expected this fall.
In addition to Ball State, KU will play host to California Kansas State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado this season. Fan support could make a tremendous difference.
Students and the Lawrence community should show the Jayhawks that the improvements the team has made under Coach Glen Mason and his staff in the past five years have not gone unnoticed.
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Bush's misguided decision saves doomed military base
Even though Homestead Air Force Base in southern Florida escaped from the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission hit list 17 months ago only to be flattened by Hurricane Andrew, it seems to have a charmed political life. President Bush has promised that Homestead will rise again out of the rubble — although the base has lost its primary mission.
The president's promise to rebuild Homestead came along with his pledge that the federal government will provide massive assistance to help Florida and Louisiana recover from the hurricane. No one will argue against helping the hurricane victims. Reconstruction of the air base is a different matter, however.
While reconstruction and reopening of the base would help the Miami area's employment and economy, the cost is not justified in terms of the federal budget deficit and the existence of numerous military bases targeted for closure — each base closure costing millions of dollars — in other parts of the country.
Homestead's primary mission has been to intercept drug smugglers. That's a package political candidates love to defend. But the drug interdiction duties have already been assumed by other bases, according to Customs Commissioner Carol Hallett.
The president's compassion for the hurricane victims is shared by everyone and appreciated. Bush's quick promise to rebuild Homestead Air Force Base, however, should not be kept.
THE ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL
KANSAN STAFF
ERIC NELSON
Editor
GREG FARMER
Managing editor
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
BILL SKEET Technology coordinator
SCOTTHANNA
Business manager
BILLLEIBENGOOD
Retail sales manager
JEANNE HINES
Sales and marketing adviser
Ast. Managing ... Alimee Brainard
News ... Alexander Blohmhoff
Editorial ... Stephen Martino
Campus ... Gayle Osterberg
Sports ... Shelly Solon
Photo ... Justin Krupp
Features ... Cody Holt
Completes ... Michael Hole
Business Staff
Campus sales mgr  Angela Clevenger
Regional sales mgr  Melissa Tellell
National sales mgr  Brian Wilkes
Co-op sales mgr  Amy Stumbo
Production mgrs  Brad Bron
Kim Claxton
Marketing director  Ashley Lungford
Creative director
Classified mgr  Judith Standley
Graphics ...Sean Tevis/Michael Rles
**Letters** should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words. They must include the writer's signature, name, address and telephone number. Writers affiliated with the University of Kansas must include class and hometown, or faculty or staff position.
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Women's fashion invasion capped by ball-cap craze
Fashion is an area 1 usually try to avoid in print because I know nothing about it. I Know, I know. You're saying, Dave that's never stopped you before.
But I try to avoid criticizing women's fashion in particular — no matter what Madonna wears. However, lately I've noticed a lot of baseball cap-wearing women on this campus. It seems in recent years women have realized men's clothes are pretty comfortable. So between fathers, brothers and boyfriends, they began to steal our shirts, then our shorts. Then suits and ties became cool clothes for women. Now our hats.
However, with the exception of Axl Rose, I haven't noticed any men wearing women's clothing. But not being married with women's wardrobes, I said nothing.
But one day this week a colleague of mine burst into my office in an anti-feminist frenzy.
"Where did they all come from, these women with hats? What do they want? What are they trying to say? Who's their leader?"
COMMENTARY
I didn't really care. But because I had nothing better to do, and one of my loyal readers recently complained that I should write a column of substance, I set out in search of these hat-wearing women.
So I asked Ms. Hutch what was up with her and her cap-wearing cohorts.
"I got up late."
I started out with a friend in the journalism school who is a frequent fez wearer. Not only is she a hat-wearing woman, but as a former Mush. Hutchinson, I knew she had her finger on the pulse of campus fashion.
"I'm not a lazy person. I'm a busy person."
So your lazy?
Uh-huh. Do you wear a lot of men's
DAVID MITCHELL
clothing?
"I wear a lot of men's clothes, but I wear a lot of girls' clothes too. Guys' clothes are more comfortable."
(I suspected a double standard.) Is it
(V) correct that a
According to Ms. Hutch, women are wearing hats for the same reason men have always worn them. They're lazy. But I didn't buy it. For one thing, about half of the women caught up in this fedora dab still do their hair and then put a hat on top of it. They braid it, put a hat on, and then stick the ponytail out the back.
"As long as they don't do it around me."
So I asked another advertising student, a chronic-cap wearer named Kim, who uses ribbons with her hats, when women wanted hats for fashion or slobber.
Kim was no road map and as I did not want to rely on a few advertising students to solve one of life's greater mysteries, I wandered to Wescoe to do some real research. In search of hat-wearing women. It took at least two seconds to spot my first victim.
"I get sick of my hair in my face, this
wouldn't have to wear about it."
Amanda, who said she was from Chicago but was actually a suburban-
ite, admitted she was lazv.
"I had a bad-bair day today, so I drew a hat on. I guess I'm sort of a tomboy. I like to wear guys' clothes. They're more casual."
So, what's next?
"Well, I'm not going to start growing a beard so much not to touch his do." Amaranthy said.
So I moved on to Tracey from Kansas City. She had her hat pushed back far on her head, making the visor obsolete. Her pony tail, complete with bow, made it obvious she had at least made the minimal effort Ms. Hutch was try-
However, Tracey said she was not following a trend.
"I've always worn hats. I never thought of them as girls' or boys' clothes. But now for most girls, I think it's a sign of laziness."
What about men who wear hats?
"I think it's definitely a lazy thing for them."
And yet all these women said their boyfriends thought caps were cute. In fact, their beaus had bought ball caps for the flowers and flowers, Sait with it, send her a hat.
Amanda said she had at least five hives of her own, not to mention those she had lifted from her boyfriend and brother. She said hats were a part of her wardrobe a week but she said wearing women were probably just a passing trend.
"It's just a fad. I have a feeling it will go out."
But what will be next for these women who are fed up with uncompetitive jobs?
"Well," said Ms. Hutch, "I'm sure as hell no going to start wearing a jock
Associate editorial editor David Mitchell Is a DeSoto senior majoring in Journalism.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Liberal media has distorted the truth
In the past few weeks I have come to realize that the staff of the Kansan is well on its way to becoming just like the rest of the media. Your attitude is something like this, "I am in the media, therefore I must be a liberal Democrat. I don't know why, but I must. I must
like my views are correct and believed by everyone. I must also bash Dan Quayle and mainstream America for their views. I must also make my readers feel guilty for believing different from me."
I'm not asking for much. I would just like to pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV and get the truth. I don't want to know that you think it was because of a so-called failed
Gush policy. I'll make that distinction for myself. Inundating me with editorials about how bad Bush is and how Clinton is going to save the planet from impending doom is your right. I just want you to remember that Bill and A's Excellent Adventure is going to be over Nov. 3, and you will have four more years to bash Bush.
Brian Kauffman Olathe senior
Will the wonders of scientific discovery never cease! New research has just uncovered an astonishing fact: women work more hours for less money than men.
I'm not making this up! It is amazing, but true. The International Labor Organization did an actual study all over the world. From the United States to Japan, from Africa to Australia, women are pulling down long hours at lower paying jobs and still going home to do the bulk of the housework.
And all this time, I thought it was just me. In the 70s, as young newlywed college students, my mate and I decided to split the household chores 50-50. He was going to school full time and working part-time. I was working full time and studying part-time. It only seemed fair.
Loco Locals
KATE KELLEY Research on working women finds nothing new
It started out fine. One would cook, the other would do the dishes. The last one up made the bed. If that was all that housework entailed, we'd have lived in bliss. But somehow, the other incidental chores, such as laundry, vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing, mopping, and grocery shopping were relegated to my weekends. He had more studying to do, was the excuse. Or was it hunting?
His graduation and commission into the Army came along and I could afford to go to school full time. By now, we also were well into child care juggling as well. The division of labor shifted to his going to work every day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and me going to school all day, studying all night, and handling the child care and housework in between.
HOMERS GOT TO GO
OUT IN PUBLIC
SOMETIME, WHY
NOTA FOOTBALL
GAME?
Women work longer hours for less pay than men. What will they discover next? The earth is round?
We were told this was an egalitarian society, but I doubt that woman would have agreed.
Kate Kelley is a Fort Leavenworth Junior majoring in English.
It is now a few years later and we're both back in school full time. A new division of labor is required. He cooks two nights a week, sees to the cars, sometimes irons his fatigues and has inherited the job of chief homework nag. Those other incidental chores have landed back in my court. Although many of them have been delegated to our three other able-bodied family members, I am still the one spending Friday nights pushing a cart through Price Chopper.
Meanwhile, the man went out,
caught a lizard, whacked it on the
ground a couple of times, and came
back to camp.
But I am not unique. In an anthropology class last year, I saw a film about Australian aborigines. The woman got up at sunrise, threw the babies on her back, and went out gathering wild grasses all morning. She spent the afternoon separating the seed from the chaff by hand, and pounding it into meal. She added the water to make dough from the well she had dug earlier. Then, building a fire in the sand, with no matches, she baked bread for the family meal. All this was accomplished with at least one child hanging from her breast.
By Tom Michaud