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Thursday, November 5, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Technology talk
Research work encompasses gathering information and synthesizing that information into a conclusion or arranging that information effectively.
The nuts and bolts task of research is locating the sources. As technology has advanced, this task has become simpler for many researchers. Thus, they have more time to concentrate on thoughtful, creative synthesis and arrangement.
imaginative, creative syllabus and unambiguous.
Lawrence High School, in an attempt to keep up with technology, has subscribed to a research data base called DIALOG. This system enables students to locate specific articles by subject from more than 400 magazine titles. The system indexes magazine articles through last month and newspaper articles from the past month and as recent as yesterday. Many articles can be printed out in full or abstract form on the unit's printer.
By contrast, KU is moving slowly into the age of technology in the library. Watson Library has a newspaper index system on trial loan, but it only has articles through April and cannot print the text of the article. Thelibrary also has a computerized search system that the librarians can use, but it is generally available only to graduate students because of expense.
Laud monitors
Living at a KU residence hall may not be a palatial lifestyle, but it offers something hard to come by at many other residences: security.
situations security.
That is not something to be overlooked.
That is not solfening the Residence halls are required to have at least two security monitors between midnight and 8 a.m. They report criminal acts to the police and help with emergencies that students have.
students have. How many other residences provide that service?
Mike White, resident director at McCollum Hall, is not satisfied. For the past three weeks, he has been collecting information and statistics about crime in the halls. This data will be compared with crime rates in the halls before security monitors were required. White will determine whether to propose changes in the residential security system.
propose changes in the residence hall This effort is to be commended. It seems residence hall directors are serious about providing a safe living environment for students
So, if you are considering a residence hall as your new home, don't forget that security often is taken for granted.
Who needs the additional worry of being a victim when school provides plenty of stress?
Comfortable criminals
In the light of the Arthur Katz murder-suicide tragedy in Florida, questions are being raised concerning the credibility of the federal witness protection program. Katz was the disbarred Kansas City lawyer who was moved to Miami and given a new identity in return for testifying about a murder at the prison where he had been incarcerated.
where he had been local detective. Katz's unexpected shooting spree sparks controversy as to whether the witness protection program provides an ethical means to prosecute criminals. Of course the program appeals to the convicted criminal facing life behind bars. Leaving behind the past is not a high price to pay for freedom, especially when the government pays living expenses, finds a well-paying job and provides a monthly stipend averaging $1,200.
The ease with which prosecutors let criminals enter the program is extremely detrimental to our society and justice system. Criminals should be strictly screened before being admitted in order to prevent future Katz-like tragedies from occurring. Thorough psychological tests, in-depth screening and regular updates of the witness' condition are necessary for the program to be successful.
If used only for extreme cases and in dire necessity, with strict regulation, the protective witness program could be effective and worthwhile. But giving a criminal a new life for the conviction of another criminal, at the expense of society, is not justice.
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board
News staff
Jennifer Benjamin ... Editor
Jul Warren ... Managing editor
John Benner ... News editor
Beth Copeland ... Editorial editor
Sally Streff ... Campus editor
Brian Kabelline ... Sports editor
Dani Riettelmann ... Photo editor
Bill Skeet ... Graphics editor
Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Bonnie J. Hardy...Business manager
Robert Hughes...Advertising manager
Kelly Scherer...Retail sales manager
Kurt Messersmith...Campus sales manager
Greg Knipp...Production manager
Drydell Duffelt...National sales manager
Angela Clark...Classified manager
Ron Weems...Director of marketing
Jeanne Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
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Power-seekers point to conflict
On the face of it, Tom Madden's contention that executive vice chancellor Judith Ramaley may have violated state labor law by stating her opinion about a faculty union seems outrageous.
State law prohibits an employer from dominating, interfering with or assisting in the formation of a public employees' bargaining organization. Ramaley's opinion that unionization won't improve the financial condition of the faculty or create new dollars for salaries certainly doesn't dominate or assist in the creation of the union. Only by an elastic stretch of the imagination does it interfere. The attorney for the KU-National Education Association will no doubt verify that.
Well then, what's going on here? Why raise the issue of legality when legally and logically there's
It seems to be a not-so-suble power move by which the KU-NEA organizing coordinator accomplishes two things. First, he demonstrates to a faculty, which will shortly be voting for a union, that KU-NEA is ready to take a hard line against the administration.
Secondly, if the faculty votes KU-NEA as its representative, the organization has a head start in intimidating those administrators who might
represent the Board of Regents in meetings with the new union.
Even more remarkable, while taking this adversarial position, he implies that Ramaley is the one being adversarial while the union is not. He says that her position "could become a serious obstacle to the sort of equal cooperation with the Board that KU-NEA hopes to establish." Baloney! Ramaley's statement is no more adversarial than Madden's saying unionization will improve the financial condition of the faculty. They're both statements of opinion at this point.
Furthermore, the purpose of a faculty union is not "cooperation" with the Regents. Unions are by their nature adversarial, and employees —
While public employee unions may not legally go on strike, their basic concerns are the same as those of private unions. The Kansas Employer-Employee Relations Act clearly states that public employees may form unions to meet and confer with their employer regarding grievances and conditions of employment. The union has the power to make agreements with the employer about those things.
public or private — resort to them only when 'conocooperation' fails to achieve their goals.
Surely the faculty needs to be on a more equal footing with the state as represented by the Regents, and I personally support the right of the faculty to form a union. But let's understand what's happening in this episode. The issue is not whether Ramaley is illegally trying to interfere with the faculty's right to choose a union. That's just a smoke screen.
The real issue is power. Madden's talk about "equal cooperation" and about KU-NEA never taking an adversarial position against the administration is clearly contradicted by the act of raising this phony question of legality.
MAILBOX
Gary Schafer is a Linwood junior majoring in journalism
Outclassed
Let's get one thing straight. A recent Kansan article, Oct. 28, stated that Kentucky did not want to play KU in basketball because it didn't help its recruiting. That's the official Kentucky party line, all right, but it is far from the real reason Eddie Sutton and company won't show their faces.
I was at the last KU-Kentucky game, along with about 15,000 screaming Jayhawk fans. We were all witness to a KU squad that left Kentucky's "Sky" Walker a whimpering hulk of bandaged flesh and his entire team completely outclassed and humiliated.
The eye injury Walker suffered at the end of the first half was Kentucky's only excuse for how dismally they played, but even this excuse is tempered by the fact that KU totally dominated from the tip-off. The score, 83-66, have been much larger had coach Brown not seen fit to show mercy and play his substitutes for the last 10 minutes of the game.
If Eddie Sutton wants to hide his team from KU, so be it. The diametric philosophies of Coach Brown and Coach Sutton are reflected in the fact that KU's basketball program is on the rise, and Kentucky's seems headed in the opposite direction.
J.C. Buckman, Lawrence third-year law student
Kissing up
I'm sure we can do it and you, the voter, are just the person to tie those red-white-'n'-blue laces. Do it nice and tight like a moose or corset.
It's time the United States kissed and made up with Iran. Face it, we need their oil, and we need translations for their torture manuals. The U.S. could learn a lot from Iran and their methods of dealing with "deviants." Although the U.S. has been oozing down the escalator of individual freedom at a pretty decent rate for a capitalistic dictatorship, we'll need diesel-powered sneakers to revert to the modern-day practices of Iran.
A headline on Oct. 13 read "Iranian executed by stoning." This immediately piqued my hope for mankind: I mean, how often do you actually get to read about first-rate, modern-day Salems? Top-notch coverage, eh?
But think about how the United States could benefit in adopting such a policy.
The story reported that an Iranian clergyman was executed by stoning after being found guilty of "gross immorality, drinking alcohol, possessing narcotics, fraud and extortion." Whew, and they say you can't have a good time in Teheran. But think about how the United States could
It's obvious that the first to go would have to be the door-to-door salesmen/ evangelists such as Jim Bakker and o'l Oral. And if we took Reagan's Cabinet and staff members, we'd find ourselves being ruled by the White House hairdresser — maybe we already are.
hardness of ice. McFarlane failed at overdosing on sleeping pills, and Reagan has to be shaved-fed uppers to stay awake and man the Red Button. Poindexter reeled off close to 190 "I don't remember" during the contra-expose, leaving him buried in a heavy heap of fraud. North and his cast of millions, formerly led by Casey or whomever of the Chronically Ignorant Agency, are still thumbing through the land-mine section of Sears' catalogue, looking to lose some Swiss change.
Taking this lot of losers and judging them as one big incompetent, we find ourselves looking for bricks and smiling. And we don't need to stop with the government and pulpit; we can just go down the line and kill ourselves as well.
Maybe the U.S. could open dialogue with the moderates of Iran if we send them secret midnight shipments of sandstone and granite. But then again we never know when we may need the stones to build our own Berlinese Wall over the rights of the individual.
Nancy must have gotten quite a shock when she read the aforementioned headline about being executed by stoning: "Those drug-pushing fanatics, O heavens those barbarians!" She undoubtedly fails to think of the way in which our country murders its own citizens. We also stone them to death, but by using lethal intravenous — heinous injections — everything is tidy and quiet.
What an awesome head rush.
It all boils down to something similar to this: Our governments are closet sado-masochists. The U.S. hangs around the schoolyard after dark, knowing full well the fanatic bully is
walking toward visionary Mecca at all times. Then we find Iran dropping firecrackers at our nuclear tugboats and planting whopie-cushion mines before our microscopic omnipotent eyes.
We just need to form a corporate merger and be friends again. They need McDonald's like the plague, and we could learn the mechanics of happy genocide.
Forest Bloodgood, Stillwater, Okla., junior
Living conditions
As a resident of a residence hall at KU, I have only one response to the article. "KU official lives in Hashinger, attends meetings to see hall life." Feeble. Anyone, and I quote, who stays, "in a guest apartment that was about twice the size of a regular room . . . (that) has a private bath and is usually rented to visiting parents," alumni or retired faculty," and who eats, "some of her meals in the cafeteria," is not living in a residence hall. That person is a guest of the residence hall.
She stayed in a private room. Therefore, she did not have a roommate to contend with every day. Her room featured a private bath. Everyone else shares a bathroom with 24 other people every day. She ate some of her meals in the cafeteria. Most college students who live in residence halls do not have the money to eat elsewhere. Consequently, they must eat cafeteria food three meals a day, seven days a week.
Also, I am curious. Where was her room? Did she have to put up with people running up and down the halls, screaming at the top of their lungs at all hours of the night? Did she have to put up with people playing their sterees at full tilt at 1:00 a.m. ? Did she see a temporary room? Did she examine all aspects of residence hall life?
The answer to these questions is probably no. In light of that, I conclude that Linda Beville may have seen the good about residence halls, but she by no means even tasted any of the bad items of the residence hall system: overcrowding, ineffective security, crowded laundry rooms, unbearable roommates or boring cafeteria food. However, I appreciate her effort. It is a start.
Hopefully, in the future, all of these problems can be solved. But in order to accomplish that task, whoever is in charge must be willing to look at all sides of the issue.
Jaqueline Kelley, Beloit freshman
BLOOM COUNTY
- 1987 Washington Post Co.
by Berke Breathed