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Opinion
University Daily Kansan, November 5. 1982
Back to the old contract
After nearly two months of negotiations between administrators and graduate students, the office of academic affairs has agreed to stop using a controversial new graduate teaching assistant contract.
The decision is a victory not only for graduate students but for students throughout the University. At question was not only the contract itself, but the extent to which KU students and employees should be consulted in budgetary decisions that affect their futures at the University.
The new TA contract, approved this summer without consultation with graduate students, allowed the contracts to be canceled up to 30 days before the start of a semester if funds were not available. Students began
One graduate student on the contract negotiating committee said he doubted that returning to old TA contracts, minus the dismissal clause, made the administration any less free to cancel TA contracts in case of financial troubles. He is probably right, given the discretion administrators would have in dealing even with tenured faculty in cases of financial exigency.
protesting the change as soon as they learned of it in August.
Nevertheless, the change is important — important because it makes it less convenient for administrators to fire graduate students caught in the round of budget cuts, and important because the morale of students and faculty will depend heavily on their perception of administrators' responses to their concerns in case of further cuts.
After 38 years in alumni job, Clodfelter still going strong
Sure, the plushly decorated alumi office has the ever-present IBM Selectric clawing away in its office, and there's an abundance of paperwork done — just as in any other University office.
Tucked far back into the walls of the Kansas Union, the University of Kansas Alumni Association office conveys an aura of tradition.
TOM HUTTON
The difference between the Alumni Association room and other offices is that the finite things, the typewriters and the forms, all seem to be sent to this aura of tradition, and to friendliness.
Of course, the Alumni Association office had better be friendly — it provides the connecting
link between former students and the Uni versity.
Those alumni who will be returning to KU this weekend know, as many current students do not, how important the Alumni Association is to the life of the University.
There is one association employee who is particularly important. The people in the association office affectionately call her their "senior member."
Many returning alumni, regardless of the year of graduation, will remember having met Mildred Clodderite at some time. And even for alumni who have never met her, chances are good that they have received correspondence with her name attached.
Having been active in the association for 38 years, Mildred Clofetlfer is a perfect example of why KU has one of the most active groups of alumni in the United States. She is also at least partly responsible for the millions of dollars KU has received in endowments through her work with the Alumni magazine, the Flying Jayhawks and the Kansas Honors Program.
Her connection with the University goes back nearly 60 years, to when her family moved to Lawrence so that an older brother could attend KU.
While an undergraduate business major in the mid-1930s, Clodfelter worked at the student hospital to help finance her schooling and "hold her end of the bargain up." It took six years and five summers at KU for Clodfelter to complete his studies. She also taught people to tire of University life. Not Clodfelter, soon after graduation she was back at the hospital.
She began working for the Alumi Association in 1944. Most of Clodfelder's years with the
Alumni Association have been as the assistant secretary, interrupted by stints as the secretary-treasurer of the association
In the meantime, the number of dues-paying alumni has grown to more than 30,000, causing many changes in the duties of association employees.
As the association's size swelled, so did the stiff. This was supposed to leave Clodferl more time for the things she does best — corresponding with alumni, keeping alumni files up to date and representing KU throughout the state.
When Clodfeller was hired, she worked on the association's books, purchases, correspondence and fund-raising.
But time is always short when it comes to keeping biographical information on every student who ever attended KU and corresponding with them about the association's many events. These files contain photos, newspaper articles and personal information about the person on such things as employment, marriages and honors.
The files used to be kept inside the association's offices in huge cabinets. Computers are now used to store much of the information, Clofdeltier said.
"Just about everything is computerized now," she said. "I used to always have to ask someone to help me take something up on the things until I had it all worked out." She just kept going back until I knew how to do it."
As with the computers, Clofdlete has had to change with the times. She said her years at the University helped make understanding and adapting to the transitions much easier.
"I was riding back from Kansas City the other day and was talking with one of the young men in the car," she said. "He told me how lucky I was to have gotten to know all those famous people way back then. I guess it comes with age — just getting to know."
One of Clifford's biggest projects will be to help the Alumni Association move into the new K.S. "Boots" Adams Alumni Center across from the U.S. Navy's third office, newer and larger than past ones
Clodletter will be busy the next few days with scheduled reunions of KU alumni from the '49s covering the entire weekend. Six hundred advance reservations have already been released for the weekend, and nearly 1,100 tickets have been on campus for the homecoming day.
"I'll be 65 when the move is completed," she said. "I know I'll work for at least a year or two after that. There's plenty of things left for me to do."
Maybe that's part of the reason Mildred Cloedler will receive a distinguished service award next week from Gov. John Carlin. She's said she'll need more room and it will be hard to find more room on her wall.
Coming home
South Africa: Mideast of the 1990s?
By ROBERT S. McNAMARA New York Times Syndicate
NEW YORK—Unless South Africa's racial policies are fundamentally redesigned, they will eventually lead to a catastrophic racial conflict that will have serious ramifications throughout the Western world, most especially in the United States.
Frustration is clearly festering among young blacks within South Africa. Many have already left the country to join liberation movements. Many more will do so in the future. And if a rising tide of violence engulfs both whites and blacks in South Africa — and particularly if the white chosen to help wage a war of liberation drives back the white regime — then the United States will be confronted with a very dangerous set of dilemmas.
Many Americans — both blacks and whites — will have intense feelings about the issues. Strong conflicting pressures to support one side or the other will emerge. The resulting debate could quickly mobilize African political and social groups, and would divide the United States from its European allies. And it surely would lead to bitter and divisive debate within the United States itself.
To put it bluntly, if South Africa fails to deal justly and effectively with its own internal racial problem, that failure will not only result in immense damage to its own society, but it will impose heavy economic, military and political penalties on other societies as well.
It seems clear that the South African government recognizes that there is both internal and external criticism of its policy. It is seeking to give the impression that it is responding to such criticism with a number of limited reforms. Despite such actions, there has been little change in the basic structure of apartheid.
The weakness of the government's program is twofold. The pace at which it addresses the pressing social and economic needs of blacks is slow, and it fails to confront the issue of political participation.
Blacks are excluded from all significant forms of political participation in South Africa. They have no authorized voice; they are not even allowed to join political parties containing white members. Legislative power is vested in the 177-member parliament. The House of Assembly is chosen by whites (who total 4.8 million in a population of 29 million) and is restricted to whites. Executive power is held by the prime minister, the leader of the majority party in parliament. Parliament is supreme, and no court may invalidate its acts.
Nowhere does the South African government
begin to advance toward what former British Prime Minister Edward Heath has called the only solution: "granting of full political rights to all citizens," he said — a universal franchise at the national level."
Already one sees signs of a growing, though reluctant, acceptance among both South African blacks and outside observers that fundamental values will come only through revolutionary violence:
- Young blacks are increasingly chafing at inaction. An estimated 8,000 have left so far for military training abroad.
- — Many older blacks, sharing the impatience of the young, are resigning themselves to the inevitability of sabotage and guerrilla warfare as necessary for change.
- Growing acceptance of violence as a tool of change has stimulated interest in radical ideologies, particularly Marxism.
Because the South African government continues to refuse to make any fundamental change in its racial policies, a violent explosion appears inevitable. And it is possible that the depression," when it occurs, will be preceded or accompanied by Soviet penetration into the region.
Can one visualize a feasible alternative? I think one can.
Clearly, a major element of such an alternative scenario is the program of economic reform supported by liberal South African business leaders. But although a program of economic reform is highly desirable in itself and certainly requires government intervention in African and international business leaders, I do not think it is likely to bring the necessary political reforms fast enough.
I believe that the political issue must be confronted squarely. The South African government's view — that separate but unequal development is not inherently discriminatory, that all people are equal, that all people, regardless of race or color, is totally unacceptable — must, I believe, change.
Now, of course, no outsider can dictate the form of an acceptable political alternative in South Africa. But it seems obvious that whatever the final formula may turn to be, if it is to have any chance whatever of succeeding, it must do so before any event that will do two absolutely essential things:
- It must assure the blacks full participation in genuine political power.
- And it must protect the whites against a winner-take-all form of majority rule.
Some will object that rule by a black majority will lower the rate of economic and social advance in South Africa for blacks and whites because the education system has no capita, literacy levels and life expectancy are all
higher, on average, for blacks in South Africa than in the nations of black Africa. They attribute the difference to the limited experience of blacks with self-rule, and they predict the same impact of such rule on South Africa. They are undoubtedly correct.
The colonial powers no more equipped the blacks in their colonies for self-government than South Africa has trained hers. When Zambia became independent, there were 100 college graduates and 1,000 high school graduates in the entire country. And here in South Africa, white university graduates outnumber black graduates 75 to 1—in proportion to population, 390 to 1.
But the fact remains: For the blacks, social and economic advance is not an adequate substitute for political power.
What should U.S. policy be in the present situation? It should be based on the recognition that black nationalism in South Africa is a struggle whose eventual success can at most be only delayed — and at immense cost — but clearly not permanently delayed. Indefinite delay will only guarantee that at some point black resentment will erupt into widespread violence, supported by bases and arms outside the country.
The United States must make it clear to South African whites that in the face of such violence the United States will not support them against the blacks.
I recognize that South Africa's official reaction to such a U.S. position might well be to terminate its exports of the four key minerals it now supplies to the West: chromium, manganese, vanadium and platinum. These materials are essential to Western industry and defense.
In anticipation of such retaliatory action by South Africa, the United States and the other Western nations should begin now to increase their stockpiles, to develop alternative sources and to prepare contingency plans to share such limited supplies as would be available.
The final battle lines have not yet been drawn in South Africa. Fundamental political change, without prolonged large-scale violence, is still possible.
But time is running short, and the options are running out.
And if what is left of the 1900s does not witness real movement toward sharing of political power, then South Africa may, and I believe will, have a place. And if that happens, it would world in the 1900s as the Middle East is today.
In the matter at hand, to fail to act wisely now is only to govern having to act deprensively now.
Robert S. McNamara was president of the World Bank from 1988 until he resigned in June 1981. This was adopted from a speech given Oct. 21 at the University of Wilswatersrand, Johannesburg.
Central issue ignored in budget questions
To the Editor:
In all the discussions on the educational budget cuts I've listened to, the central issue is consistently evaded or ignored: Should education be state-controlled and tax-supported, as it is today?
The answer to the question becomes evident if one makes the question more concrete and specific, as follows. Should the government be permitted to forcibly expropriate the wealth of teachers or students in an institution may or may not sanction (the standards of education controlling all schools being pre-
All alleged "right" that necessitates the violation of another man's rights is not and cannot be a right. The Bill of Rights was not directed against private citizens, but against the government, as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power. When unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights, a government is man's
serbed by the state) and to pay for the education of children who are not their own?
To anyone who understands and is consistently committed to the principle of individual rights upon which this country was founded, the answer is clearly no.
deadliest enemy. There is nothing new or unique about this country's economic crisis.
The solution is to bring the field of education into the free marketplace. When the economic principles that have resulted in the superlative efficiency of American industry are permitted to operate in the field of education, the result will be a highly developed and concentrated educational development and growth.
Some educators fear that if this were to happen, their working conditions would deteriorate. You can't compare the conditions at private universities today with what conditions would be like if everyone took their hands out of everyone else's pockets and got rid of the governmental parasites that now feed off of and corrupt our educational system.
The University Daily KANSAN
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Pot Shots
As a result of the fact that education has been tax-supported for so long, most people find it hard to project an alternative. If, for many years, the government had undertaken to provide all the citizens with clothes (on the grounds that clothes are an urgent necessity and contribute toward the public "good"), and if someone were to propose that this field should be taken up to private enterprise, he would doubtless be to say "What! Do you want everyone except the rich to ruin and madden?" Yet it is a simple fact that our industry provides more affordable, high-quality clothing to more people than at any other time in the history of the world.
Kris Kahnert
Lawrence senior
The final chapter of Sam Hardage's political career:
"No! I'm not coming out to somebody gives me an office. I'm going to hold my breath until
"Sam, please, will you open the door? Reporters want to talk with you, your supporters want to see you, and your wife wouldn't mind hearing from you either."
"Look, Sam, it was only an election. You've test them before. But that doesn't mean you have to."
"But how can they keep this from me? Look at
Tom Gress
all the money I spent! I figured it was just like buying downwichta Wichita. And look at me: I am All-America football player. I was in the Air Bowl. But NO! NO! NO! They won't let me have it!"
"Sam, if you keep throwing these temper tantrums we're going to send you back to Mississippi without your dinner. Now let's be a good boy and come out and say 'hi.'"
This woman spent four nights in jail, and the official charge, (get this!) "offensive touching," is considered battery or a police officer and was arrested a penalty of five years in the state prison.
"Oh, all right, if you say so. But only for a few minutes. Then I'm going back to play with my
Even though the Equal Rights Amendment is, for now, dead in the water, men are beginning to claim their share of equal justice under the law. Case in point. A 21-year-old Florida woman was recently arrested for putting the squeeze on a male police officer. She pinched his posterior.
Reflect, if you would, on the number of males in our society who would be tossed in the
"That's a good boy Sam. Everybody will be pleased to see you. And remember: You can't win them all. Sometimes you can't even win your own county."
Tracee Hamilton
slammer if women were to make a citizen's arrest each time their derriers were grabbed, pinched, patted or slapped at work, on the streets and in bars. My opposition to prison overcrowding makes me hesitant to even consider the possibilities.
In this case, the officer admitted in his report that the woman looked familiar, so you may ask why the officer couldn't have, er, turned the other cheek. His report said, in part, "pinching an officer . . . doesn't do much for your positive self-respect."
I'm sure it doesn't. It probably wouldn't tinkle a man not in uniform. And, believe it or not, it doesn't do much for a woman's self-respect, either.