Opinion
Page 4
University Daily Kansan, December 1, 1982
KU doesn't have to win
KU's new athletic director, Monte Johnson, appears sure to bring a few changes to the University's athletic department. Some of his ideas reflect a tempered mixture of stability and innovation that can only improve KU athletics. Others are questionable.
One of his best ideas is hiring a compliance officer to help coaches and administrators keep up with Big Eight and NCAA regulations. Such an administrator is needed to ensure that not only coaches and players, but alumni as well, stay within the rules.
This concern, however, conflicts with what appears to be Johnson's basic philosophy of intercollegiate athletics; that the University must put forth winning teams every season. This also conflicts with the philosophy of Johnson's predecessor, Jim Lessig.
Lessig based his short administration on the premise that fans, particularly students, had to be involved in athletic activities, winning season or not. Larger crowds would generate the
needed support to help build winning teams.
Johnson has said that KU needs winning teams first and foremost, to draw crowds and generate revenue. Lessig placed primary responsibility for successful programs on himself and his administrators. His approach was to develop ways of involving fans.
Johnson's philosophy places that responsibility on coaches, pressuring them to do whatever is necessary to win. They cannot afford to risk a bad season, unless they are willing to look for a new employer. The athletic director himself faces little risk; if a revenue-producing team has a bad season, he simply fires the coach.
Johnson seems eager to build a reputable athletic program, and surely it is too early to make final judgments about his policies. It does seem, however, that some of his comments imply win-at-all-costs values that are not compatible with those of an academic environment.
Christmas is coming too fast. Before you can get your Halloween candies X-rayed for sharp objects or recover from food poisoning because your mom didn't cook the Thanksgiving turkey long enough, America's merchandise are the stuff you need. You'll need booms to buy a Betsy Wetzel doll for the kiddies.
Russell Baker, columnist for the New York Times, suggested last week that Christmas, along with the football season and birthdays, should be held only every three years if we
Full-fledged holiday promos out before the turkey's gone
wished to keep our sanity. I wouldn't go that far, but Christmas, at least, should be confined to the home.
I am not some sicko Scrooge. But because the season always seems to be getting more commercial and seem, let's cut Christmas down to size.
Christmas in television land is only for young, white upper-class families who, amazingly enough, live out in the country where it always snows at Christmas. They open their gifts while Dad takes Polaroid snapshots showing dreadful scenes of people opening outrageously expensive gifts.
Television, of course, is to blame for a lot of the problem. Next Christmas, someone will come up with a beer commercial in which the three wise men, after a long and arduous journey to the manger for gift-giving, stop for Kilmer Time. They gaggle of blood, eye-eyed, athletic shepherds.
And the great television Christmas specials can't be left out, either. There they are, appearances in movies and on TV scripts the same hosts (who don't seem to do anything else the rest of the year) and the
TOM GRESS
We may like to think that Christmas really is like this, but we know it isn't. For a lot of families this Christmas, it'll be enough that they spend time with them; they don'tice to death before New Year's.
same holiday cheer that bores us to death every year.
What we're creating is an entire generation of kids who believe that Christmas began when three shopping mail executives came to Jesus' birth gifting of sports clothes, video games and toys.
Another problem with Christmas stems from stores. Storeowners salivate at Christmas season. Christmas is the time for stores to either stock or sell these stems after a repackage plained year like this one.
Combine all these evils with the fact that as soon as the leaves start to change it's time to put up the Christmas tree and the lights, and we've got a real mess on our hands. And, naturally, when the clock strikes midnight on Dec. 26, the stuff is stuffed in a closet until next year.
So the storeowners can't wait to plunk Santa Claus down in the middle of the store, put on wretched Muzak tapes of Christmas carols and play buying five gifts for each member of our families.
Also on the list of Christmas evils come the shopping centers.
Christmas comes so early and goes so fast that very few step to think about it anymore. So much of a hullabaloo is made each year over the season — the gift-giving, the Christmas television specials — that it doesn't mean much anymore.
We are in so much of a hurry to have a good time, then get it over with, that the whole meaning of the season went down the tubes about the time the advertising executives got their hands on it. It is really just another holiday that clearly seems to stretch out for several months.
This probably won't solve the problem, and it might even make things a bit more intense for 10 days, but perhaps we can at least have a breather between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
How about confining Christmas to a sane, 10-day period? No television commercials, bowl games or specials until Dec. 15. We probably can't get rid of the shopping centers, but maybe we can still confine them until Dec. 15. And no storeowner could put up Christmas decorations until Dec. 15.
Oread parking hassles compounded
The Orend Neighborhood is a quaint little section of Lawrence that is continually trying to
That is nice, but some Oread residents are doing too much.
Fixing problems around the neighborhood is fine, and promoting unity among the residents through cleanup efforts is OK too. But now a resident has convinced the City Commission that
The Oread neighborhood is east of the University of Kansas campus between Ninth and Eleventh St.
There is now an ordinance on the books that allows people to park their cars in the same spot in the city streets for 48 hours, but no longer. After the first 48 hours, Lawrence police will issue a ticket. After the second 48 hours, the ordinance reads; the police will tow the car.
Tim Miller, 936 Ohio St., an Anteed resident, wrote a letter to the City Commission asking it to change the ordinance because it was an "agravation" to neighborhood residents.
Now the commission has asked the planning staff to prepare an ordinance to create a special parking permit system for residents to avoid that ordinance. These permits, of course, would cost residents an amount of money that has not been determined vet.
I never even knew that such an ordinance existed. And although I have often left my car parked on the street for more than 48 hours, I have never gotten a ticket or had my car towed.
Now wait just a minute here. Why must I and other Oread residents have to pay to park our cars in front of our houses now? The only parking problem that has aggravated me is the number of cars we drive on construction in the area and those who use on construction in the area and those who use the area as if they were free University parking.
The police have said they enforced the law only if the offenders were frighten. For instance, if someone has abandoned their car, or if the car was stolen in a crime you know, at some time, the police might ticket and tow the car.
They also will ticket cars if other residents complain about the car being in front of their house.
How in the world could this be an aggravation to residents?
If a person owns a car, chances are that he is going to drive it occasionally. The police have said that the problem cars are those that sit on city streets for weeks.
Junk cars should be towed after they have been left to rust for weeks. Police sometimes find that the cars eventually towed are stolen vehicles.
Sgt. Don Dalquest of the Lawrence Police Department said police recommended that residents park their cars in their driveway or in someone else's, because if a car is hit in the
CATHERINE BEHAN
This is especially important when people go away for a vacation, which is probably the only time that a car that is not merely junk will sit for an extended length of time.
street or damaged in any other way, it is impossible for the police to get in contact with the owner.
The ordinance in question has not been rigorously enforced. Even if someone complains that a car has been parked in the street for days, weeks or even months, Dalquist said, police do not necessarily ticket the car simply because he said that it had been there for a long time.
The police mark the car's tires, then give the owner 48 hours after that to move it. After that time, if the car still has not been moved, the police will ticket it.
just in case the owner does not see the small yellow ticket under his windshield wiper, the
police put a large orange sticker on the window that is clearly visible. If the owner still does not move the car, the police will tow it.
That means the owner would have to leave his car in the same place for at least six days before he can drive it.
Six days! It is such a hassle to move the car once every six days! If people own cars but do not intend to drive them, storing them in a garage would seem to be the best way to take care of it and keep it from being hit on city streets.
If a car has been abandoned, then it should be towed.
And if someone does own a car that he rarely drives, it should be no unbearable problem for him to start up the car every few days, warm it up and park it again. Not only does this keep them from getting ticketed or towed, it is good for the car to be started once in a while.
The only thing this new ordinance would accomplish, it seems, is to let敦 Neighborhood residents leave their junk cars on the streets for days, weeks or months.
Mayor Marci Francisco, who lives in the Oread Neighborhood, said that she was afraid people would use the permits to store recreational vehicles such as boats and campers. She said that the permits should be given only for resident's cars.
Does that mean that we Oread residents can use the streets to store personal cars? There are so many cars on Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio where new permits are not going to solve any problems.
Driveways might. Maybe Oread residents could take up a collection to build a parking garage or driveways. Changing the system so that only Oread residents can park there — at no cost — might alleviate the problems of parking in the neighborhood.
Let's allow Oread residents to live by the same rules as the rest of the city, and avoid the cost of parking permits.
School to churn out master lobbyists
Rv IRA R ALLEN
United Press International
WASHINGTON—Nordy Hoffman, once remembered as a Notre Dame All-America lineman who played for the legendary Knute Rocke, first came to Washington, D.C., as a lobbyist in 1947 and didn't know a thing — not that he was a lobbyist or a business person be held, or how a bill became law.
After 35 years in Washington, first as lobbist for the United Steelworkers union, then as director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and later as sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, Hoffman is now dedicated to transferring the organization's aide back into an honest profession.
What he is promoting is not just a high-prized seminar, but a full-fledged master's degree in "congressional and governmental relations" to be offered by Catholic University in Washington.
If the corporations and law firms that Hoffman has worked with so smoothly for a more than a generation come up with the necessary $425,000 soon, a 30-credit graduate degree program combining studies in government, "styles and techniques" of lobbying, "dynamics of negotiation and coalition-building" and ethics will begin next spring.
He is starting a school for lobbyists.
The board of regents is a "Who's Who" of Washington insiders, from top lobbyist Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., to former Federal Elections Commission Chairman Robert Tierenan, to Sen. Nancy Kassabe, R-Kan. A stable of "lecturers" includes 44 current or former members of Congress and a heavyweight roster of corporate lobbyists, with a few union buttonlers to boot.
bobbie. No, it's a bobbie.
Hoffman says he knew absolutely nothing when he arrived. But back in a time when Congress did not meet during the summers —
back before widespread air-conditioning of muggy Washington — he sat down for three hours every morning with as knowledgeable a mentor as there was.
That image "is one of the things that got me involved." Hoffman says, "I have felt for years that the only way our democratic form of government can survive is to have people who work in that marketplace have a degree of understanding of morals and ethics in govern-
"Doctors, lawyers, teachers all go to college to get a degree. The only requirement for a lobbyist is to file (registration papers) in the House and Senate."
He was Al Sabath, a 45-year veteran of Congress, a Chicago Democrat who headed the House Rules Committee. "Al Sabath taught me most of the things I know," Hoffman has said.
Now in his 70s and a consumitate Washington insider in his own right, Hoffman is trying to professionalize lobbying, an occupation stigmatization that has led to fast women, three-quoted lunches and jewelry.
But Hoffman vows to include a strong dose of ethics as well.
The Center for Congressional and Governmental Relations, as the jobbing school is called, will emphasize techniques of what is well-known as "Washington representation."
"I don't necessarily think it's unethical now, but a lot of things have happened in the last few years that if they (lobbyists) had a better understanding, they wouldn't have committed some of the errors that have been committed," he says.
Although the shady side of lobbying — and sometimes its most effective side — involves funneling campaign contributions to members of political parties, it's "no way" that kind of technique will be taught.
Honorable lobbying, says Hoffman, "is not that difficult. It's just hard work."
Ira R. Allen is a political commentator for United Press International.
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