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Opinion
Universitv Dallv Kansan. November 18. 1982
KU's done its fair share
The seven Regents institutions are looking down the barrel of employee layoffs and more budgets cuts in the coming fiscal year.
The dismal news was announced this week at Gov. John Carlin's budget hearings, being conducted in Topeka.
The State Division of the Budget has recommended for fiscal year 1984 that more than 250 people in the Regents system be laid off — 82 from KU. This is in addition to a system-wide decrease in that year's budget from the requested $453 million to $424.7 million.
The layoffs and budget cuts are still recommendations. But given the fact that the state is facing a $63 million deficit and a $153 million shortfall in revenue, the proposals should be taken seriously.
For KU's Lawrence campus, the Regents were asking for $104 million, but state officials want to trim that back to $88 million.
James Pickert, chairman of the Regents, testified at the hearing that the schools were willing to do their fair
share to help Kansas out of the problem.
But, he added, there is a limit.
"To force our institutions to reduce the quality of the services they provide to Kansans because of a temporary financial problem will create an environment that will adversely effect Kansas for years to come." he said.
This is not the first time that that concern has been expressed. Nor should it be the last.
KU cut back earlier this semester when the governor announced that cuts were necessary to counter the first revenue shortfall. All the while the University was striving to maintain its high academic standards.
A sampling of the result of that has been already overburdened professors who have been forced to take on more duties, offices without telephones, unheated classrooms that are cold to the point of hampering education and course syllabuses being sold instead of given away.
KU and the other Regents schools already have done their fair share.
Reagan must consider public works program
By HELEN THOMAS United Press International
WASHINGTON—President Reagan likes to point out that he remembers the Great Depression and the personal hardships it inflicted.
He has repeatedly recalled that his father, Jack Reingen, was fired on Christmas eve in that
"I remember what it's like to be 21 and to feel your future has been mortgaged by the generation before you," he said in a recent radio address.
In a new Reagan biography by Washington Post correspondent Lou Cannon, it is noteworthy that the president's father, an ardent Franklin Roosevelt fan, never missed passing out government assistance to the needy.
In those days, it is doubtful that Reagan thought of the New Deal projects as "make work and dead end," but as life savers. Over the years, however, he has developed government sponsored jobs and programs that eased millions of the hump in those dark days.
With 11.5 million persons unemployed, many lawmakers on Capitol Hill are beginning to wonder what is the nation's tolerable level for joblessness, and when does it become less than tolerable. They also are seriously considering whether a program to put people to work building and repairing highways, bridges and dams is in order.
The House Democratic leadership has been in the forefront of such a proposal. The Senate will vote on a bill to change the law.
Whether Reagan can swallow it is not certain. His spokesman describe such programs as a "quick fix" and say that he is seeking an solution to the nation's economic plight.
But a "permanent solution" to unemployment requires a permanent prosperity for this country and no economist on the current scene has offered the key to that door.
So far, administration officials have tried not to get too far on a limb in rejecting moves to have the government create hundreds of new hospitals. "Don't know when they might have to commiserate."
Chief White House spokesman Larry Speakes told reporters that the New Deal projects did not work. He said that a job like that "plays out after six months and dumps the people back out on the labor market, sort of the type that the Democrats from time to time introduced, and very similar to those they have been putting out for 40 years that have not worked."
When he was asked why creation of jobs for building highways and other public projects should be abandoned.
"Let's just wait and see how all these things come out."
But while the White House appears to be trying to hold the line, the Senate GOP leaders are reading the midterm election results in a different way.
I are considering a proposal for a $ 8 billion program that would be offset by cuts in military spending.
The projected increases in defense spending so far are sacrosanct with Reagan, who claims that the United States has to catch up with the Soviets from earlier budget cuts.
He is asking the unemployed to hang in there while he stays the course.
With a long cold winter coming up, even temporary solutions may be better than none in sight.
Helen Thomas is the White House correspondent for UPI.
Core curriculum plan needed
It may be too late for some who, like me, soon may graduate without knowing or remembering how to solve a simple chemistry problem. But there is a plan being studied that I think could curb the instances of students who leave the classroom with basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic.
KU administrators are studying the possibility of a core curriculum for freshmen and sophomores. The committee, chosen this summer to study the feasibility of a core curriculum, will spend three hours Saturday discussing suggested requirements.
Inherent in the committee's discussion of a core curriculum is the need for college students to be skilled in basics. And the earlier this knowledge comes in one's career, the better. Too often I think students overlook certain building blocks that would take the time it were required of them.
I think a core curriculum will afford liberal arts students the technical skills they too often lack. And it could provide the more technically required courses with which to incorporate the liberal arts.
One of the committee's four subcommittees has recommended a 34-hour course of courses. I don't think it will win instant favor with too many students. But the courses are necessary. Included in this curriculum are eight hours of mathematics, nine hours of composition and literature, five hours of a basic physical or science and three hours of public speaking.
The committee has the right idea. Some seniors graduate without knowing how to solve simple percentage problems, find square roots
or define a prepositional phrase. Perhaps if KU required, freshmen and sophomores to take certain basic courses, the University would produce better rounded graduates.
English and mathematics, some of the administrators on the committee think, should be two of these core requirements. How right they are.
From personal experience, I can vouch that the writing skills of many college students are atrocious. Often, I can count myself among these students. I have had to go through the Kansan, many of the news stories and
LISA GUTIERREZ
editorial columns in the unexcoried versions would set many an English professor's teeth on edge. Somewhere along the line, college students have forgotten, (or maybe they never learned) good writing habits. Many cannot express themselves.
"The ability to write clearly and effectively is essential and must be a primary focus for any curricular change," the committee reported in one of its position papers.
And mathematics skills are particularly in short supply. I have suspicions that if algebra, geometry and trigonometry do not pertain to a student's major, they are never taken seriously and learned properly. The same goes for many of the physical and natural sciences such as
geology and biology. Why would it, a journalist ever need to know how a crystal is formed? Or why would I even care? I would hope my poor attitude isn't a preventative one, but I'm afraid it is.
Some may look at the suggested core requirements and crime. Nine hours in composition and literature? You've got to be kidding! Yet, those same people who crine are probably the same few who can't write a decent English composition. No need to worry, though. No one already attended ATU will be affected by a core curriculum policy. More's the pity.
One of the proposed required classes is three hours in the arts or art appreciation. That has to be one of the better suggestions. How many of you could tell the difference between a Monet and a Renoir? Or who can define realism and impressionism? Maybe this kind of knowledge exists in fields, but I think it is necessary if one wants to take advantage of what the University has to offer.
Having these and similar classes serve as a core curriculum for freshmen and sophomores would enable these students to apply these skills as juniors and seniors. It's not that we need to require certain courses, because many already have the necessary skills, so they need to be taken early in a college career, where they can serve as a foundation for further education.
Sometimes, one can become too specialized in his field to the exclusion of other important elements of a well-rounded education. Perhaps not all students suffer from basic skills ignorance. But those that do could benefit from a core curriculum.
Stereotypes not just in comics
Beetle Bailey is on probation.
The Traverse City, Mich., Eagle-Record has put the traditional comic strip on probation because its readers have complained that characters in the strip portray scifi attitudes.
Specifically, the editor, Jim Herman, said readers complained about the way the GIs in the strip leered at the buxom Miss Buxley, Gen. Halltrack's secretary.
The strip's author, Mort Walker, responded with a letter to the newspaper in which he said, "I am strongly against sexism . . . I believe in women having the opportunity to fulfill themselves . . . But I don't believe girl-watching is sexist."
it's an interesting dilemma. How far should comic strips go in portraying reality versus the ideal? And how far should newspapers go in describing what comics their readers want or need?
Newspaper editors have found that the comic section is the most sacred in the newspaper. I had my own small taste of that when I was an intern in Springfield, Mo., two summers ago. The editor decided to solicit readers' opinions before eliminating strips, a cost-saving move. He put a survey in the Sunday comic section. The number of replies was awesome.
As interns and flunks, it became our job to read and compile the results of the survey. The replies were, by and large, predictable. Doonesbury was fanatically loved by a few and fanatically hated by the majority. We read letters from readers saying," Kill it or I'll drop my subscription!" and those saying "Drop it or I kill myself!" It was poisoning the minds of their youth, the parents said. It was a funny funnies survey.
And what were the results? The interns spent two weeks reading the surveys, after which the newspaper thanked the readers for their help. The interns then intended to kill. Let that be a lesson to readers.
Donesbury was not killed, of course. Prince Valiant was slain, which upset many readers. Prince Valiant is a beautifully drawn comic, but the audience could easily read quickly and as dull as dishwater.
"My colleagues report similar problems. Hagar and Andy Capp glorify alcoholism. Garfield encourages cruelty to animals." Lily is a terrestrial typing. Lucy depicts negative female traits in her treatment of Charlie Brown. Superman is a racist. Smuffy Smith is vulgar."
According to Walker, his strip is not the only one under fire. The controversy over Doonesbury is the most famous, perhaps, but there are as many objections as there are strips.
Funny, I always taught Garfield encouraged cruelty to humans. Oh, well. Many of the criticisms are comic, but some are valid. Blondie, when she grabs Dawgwood's wallet and goes off on a shopping spree, does little to exemplify the image of a working woman.
TRACEE HAMILTON
Comics, by and large, haven't kept up with the times.
Strangely, one of the few strips to actually present the "real world" is the much-maligned Donesbury, Joan Caucus' law school adventures prove author Garry Trudeau's open-mindedness. But even Trudeau admits his characters are woefully out of date. Zonker, Mike and Megaphone Mark Skackneyer are taking a hiatus to come out of the 60s and into reality. I was further amazed to read last week that the Nixon staff of 72 had held a reunion. Mr. Dutton was so desperate to depict reunion of the Watergate Bunch? That's almost uncanny reality. But the objections to Donesbury prove people really don't want a stir that's too real.
Is all the debate over comics really that important? Think about your childhood to find that answer. Comics are one of a child's first exposures to the written word. If we anesthetize those images with injectionable stereotypes, images or even words, we're cutting off our noses to spite our faces.
Newspapers, unfortunately, are seen as the perpetrators of these unseemly stereotypes simply by publishing the strips. Yet some newspapers do more to promote sexual stereotypes in their news columns than the strips ever could
An example of this is some newspapers' outdated insistence on using Mrs., Mrs. or Miss when referring to women. The Traverse City Record-Eagle is not a hypocritical paper. The city editor there told me the paper refers to women by their last name on second reference, unless the use of the last name would confuse the story. This is much the same policy the Kansan
Other newspapers, however, need to make changes. Too often a prominent man's wife is identified as just that — "his wife." Old-fashioned newspapers will describe a woman's physical appearance. Do you ever read about "her husband, a trim blond, fortiful"?
Newspapers can make great inroads into the prejudices and stereotypes of today's society. But they must first change their style of news reporting so that they are starting a house-cleaning of the comics page.
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