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Thursday, October 8, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Fighting chance
Rumors are flying concerning the security of football coach Bob Valesente's job. Bets are being placed as to when his sendoff will be.
After stepping in to rescue the losing Jayhawks a season ago, Valesente has now had his first victory in 364 days. But the victory shows progress and gives hope for our flagging football team.
Great teams cannot be built overnight. Believe it or not, a football coach is not a miracle worker. Besides, not even a miracle worker can turn a failing team around instantly. Perseverence, hard work and patience are all key ingredients for a quality football program.
Valesente has a long haul ahead of him. While still getting to know his team, he is pressured to produce winning results. But he cannot do it overnight. Stability and perseverance are paramount.
Valesante faces scrutiny from all sides. Public chastisement, fan apathy, pressure from alumni and within the University do not make his job easier. Nor do they make the team better.
This skepticism reinforces the attitude that winning is the only goal in team sports. But progress and improvement must be the objectives. Only then can Valesente produce a successful football program.
Save a life
Today is the last day this fall you can save a life.
On Tuesday, American Red Cross Bloodmobile trucks pulled into Lawrence to collect a goal of 800 pints of blood. Simply put, if a mere 4 percent of the KU students were to donate blood, the Red Cross would meet its goal.
No problem.
But it is a problem. The Red Cross depends on blood donors to maintain blood and blood components, such as plasma, to provide for accident victims, newborn babies and their mothers, or those undergoing surgery.
The Red Cross is under continuing pressure to provide fresh, untainted blood to hospitals in Kansas and part of Oklahoma. The process of giving blood is virtually painless and poses no risk of AIDS, benignitis or other diseases to donors.
Giving blood ensures that even indigent patients who need blood can receive it at little or no cost.
Giving blood sacrifices only a half-hour of time to save a life. Forget the free cookies and orange drink. And forget that Kansas State University repeatedly meets its blood-drive goal.
Just remember that at the Kansas Union, today is the last day this fall to save a life.
Settle the score
Dispute-settling is a time-consuming proposition, evidenced by the number of cases awaiting trial in our country's court system. Recently, the Kansas Supreme Court was recognized for reducing its case hacklor over the last six years.
Court backlog is a real concern. Criminal offenses or cases involving highly-valued property must wait until a judge, jury and courtroom are available. However, in less severe cases the wait is pointless. It forces ordinary people to live with their disputed situations in limbo.
vernaps our long-standing court system is not the best way to handle every disagreement that arises. Harvard law professor Frank Sander has proposed some alternate methods of resolving disputes, including the use of a neutral party to help disputing parties come to a solution.
Alternate settlement methods have been tested by the American Bar Association over a two-year period in Tulsa, Houston and Washington — with impressive results. Most of the people using the program were satisfied.
the program were satisfied Whether or not the courts are too busy to handle the smaller cases, realistic, appropriate, satisfying dispute-settlement is what people need.
Giving people the option of a less formal, more immediate method of settling their disputes may lessen the burden on the court system while allowing people to proceed with their lives.
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board.
News staff
Jennifer Benjamin ... Editor
Jull Warren ... Managing editor
John Benner ... News editor
Beth Copeland ... Editorial editor
Sally Streff ... Campus editor
Brian Kabelline ... Sports editor
Dan Riettlinman ... 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
David Derfert...National sales manager
Angela Grietel...Classified manager
Ron Weems...Director of marketing
Jeanne Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
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Snitchers slapped for old offense
I've been sitting here trying to count the number of times some political operatives have shipped me nasty information about a rival candidate. I unit counting at 1,000.
That's part of politics and the news business. Politicians or their flinkies dig up something on an opponent. Then they leak it to someone in the news. Sometimes the newsworter, wits in print or on the tube.
This has been going on as long as there have been politicians and printing presses in this country.
So I don't understand why there is suddenly such a big flap because some of Gov. Michael Dukakis' campaign workers blew the whistle on the government's strange habit of filching other people's speeches.
They provided three news organizations with tapes of one of Biden's speeches that was virtually identical to a stirring speech given earlier by Neil Knockn, a British politician. That, and other revelations of speech-theft, caused Biden to end his campaign.
Now some pundits are writing that Dukakis' campaign may be in trouble because it turns out that some of his campain aides were the ones who switched on Biden.
If that's true, the next logical step is to determine who switched on Dukakis' people for switching in Biden and to declare that these snitchers are now in trouble.
Of course, that would require that somebody snitch on those who snitched on Dukakis' people, which could lead to another layer of people who might be in trouble.
It could get that silly, in this the era of the "character" issue.
It would have been wrong if they had leaked something that had been false, if they had spread
The fact is, there's nothing wrong with what Dukakis' people did — not unless we've suddenly changed the informal politics of politics and news.
But they didn't. The tape showed exactly what Biden had said about his ancestors being coal miners and Biden being the first person in his family to go to college, which wasn't true. And the tape showed everything Kinnock had said much earlier, about his ancestors being coal miners and Kinnock being the first person in his family to go to college, which was true. Nothing had been changed.
But all they did was pass along evidence that Biden was kind of careless about where he lifted his stirring oratory.
This wasn't a cause of dirty tricks, as some of Bidens' supporters have been shrieking. If words that weren't Biden's had been dubbed in, or the word didn't sort its meaning, it would have been a dirty trick.
Sure, we can debate whether what Biden did was really all that terrible. After all, when you steal phrases from John F. Kennedy or Robert Kennedy, you're really stealing from their hired speechwriters.
But the reality is that Biden wound up looking foolish, and that's fatal in presidential politics. And apparently Biden, or his speechwriters, were compulsive about it. We went almost unnoticed, but even in Biden's withdrawal speech, he wound up lifting phrases from John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath." The guy just can't stop.
You might ask an obvious question about ethics: If Dukakis' people wanted to blow the whistle on Biden, why didn't they just have Dukakis call a news conference and show the tapes? Why did they have to furtively slip the tapes to news organizations? Wouldn't that have been the honorable way to do it, in the open?
Sure. But I didn't say that what they did was mainly or straight up. I just said it wasn't LYROW.
Actually, what they did was a bit sleazy and contemptible to bad-mouth someone behind his back, whether politicians do it, or neighbors or people who work in the same office.
Unfortunately, sleaze is part of politics. And it has certain acceptable boundaries. And passing along something that is truthful and factual falls within these boundaries.
So you'll probably read something by one of the lofty political pundits in Washington, saying that Dukakis' character is now questionable because of the way his people snatched on Biden.
But you can bet that while the pandit was writing those words, his phone rang and someone said:
"Hey, I can give you something juicy about candidate Whoozits, but you got to keep me out of it. Deal?"
"How contemptible of you. But, please, slip me the spleeze."
Senate reform
I used to support open admissions at KU, but after reading Chad Foster's attempt at illiteracy in Monday's mailbox, I'm starting to reconsider. His personal attack against Frank Partany is both unjustified and a bastardization of Frank's article. Hist letter's ignorance is only overshadowed by its obscurity. Who would do such a thing?
Neither he can understand the apathy toward student government at KU and how a referendum can help. Since Foster is new at KU, let me explain. Most students support the idea of populism in student government because they feel alienated now. I am working with Frank to start an experimental referendum. All these procedures are listed in rules and regulations, which apparently Foster has never even given a glance.
Frank and I have worked the past year on much needed Senate reforms. As chairman of the Student Rights Committee, my job is to enact these much needed new ideas, the most important of which was the subject of Frank's guest shot; a referendum. But Foster never mentions the referendum, probably because he cannot comprehend what one is.
If Foser would have thought a moment, he might have supported Frank's ideas. As a freshman, Foster's only chance to get fair representation is through a referendum, since
elections aren't until spring. He should be the one in hiding.
If personal attacks such as Foster's get in the way of the real reform I'm trying to enact, he will have destroyed KU's last chance at representative government. When I ran for vice president of Student Senate last year, I realized what a giant bureaucracy I was attacking. But I also realized that students support reforms, if only those can rise above petty politics. Everyone knows that Senate is skewed toward certain elite groups. Maybe Foster was aspiring to be the king of these elite?
Brian Kramer, Burke, Va., sophomore.
Poor use of money
I read with interest and amazement your article about the University of Kansas hiring ex-Gov. John Carlin as a consultant at a fee of $500 for one day each month.
If you assume he actually will work eight hours each day that he is here, he will be earning $62.50 per hour. If he were employed full time, as are most classified employees, for a total of 130.50 per year this would figure out to $130.50 per year. This is more than his salary as the governor.
He certainly didn't do too much for the University of Kansas or the classified employees while he was governor. Now it appears that he was going to be put in but he is getting to get paid well for doing it to us.
If KU and the state of Kansas have this kind of excess money available for a consultant fee, then they certainly should have the money available to maintain the quality of health insurance coverage which has been available in
I defy the University of Kansas and the state of Kansas to justify paying any ex-elected official or any new employee this amount of money when the University and the state claim they cannot maintain the entire salary and benefit packages which have existed in the past.
the past and to also assure each and every employee, classified or unclassified, a decent salary, pay raise percentages and benefits.
It sounds like more double standards and bureaucracy bulb to me. It appears that the state giveth 2 percent, and the state taketh lots more away.
Glenn Hodge, Lawrence resident
Hope extended
In beating KU by only 14 points, could it be that Kent State took our beloved Jayhawks too lightly?
On the other hand, perhaps the mighty Golden Flashes were looking ahead (as they say in bigtime sports reporting), to their game next weekend with that perennial national powerhouse Eastern Michigan.
Rock Chalk — and keep the faith, folks. Our day will come. After all, this is a "building decade." Just wait until next year.
Well, you can't win 'em all. And I hope that you'll convey that message to those birds circling over the Valesette residence, which seem to bear a striking resemblance to vultures.
William S. Koester, Upland, Calif., resident and graduate of the class of 1941
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathe
'HEF' AIMING NO. I
A FLAME UNDERSTAND
THROWER FREEWILL
AT HER IS INVOLED.
PARENTS'
HEADS ?