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University Daily Kansan, November 3, 1982
Opinion
Ratings are fine, but ...
Another national publication has given the University of Kansas high marks.
Changing Times magazine reported in its November edition that the University, as well as Kansas State University and Iowa State University, were among 50 universities that had "above average academic credentials" but had "below average costs."
Last year, the New York Times Guide to Colleges and Universities gave KU a four-star rating for its academic program, one of the best ratings given in the newspaper's survey.
The magazine ranked only those schools whose average scores by freshmen on entrance exams were above the national average. It compared the cost of each school to the 1982-83 national average for four-year private colleges, $7,475.
And those state-supported schools named on the list had to have an annual cost for both in-state and out-of-state students that was lower than that average.
Changing Times' endorsement of KU's academic program should be a source of pride for administrators —
especially today, when budget problems on the state and federal level have made it tough to provide many educational services.
Such endorsements soon may have a hollow ring to them, however.
President Reagan is planning deep cuts in the 1984 budget for federal aid for college students, which means fewer graduate students and students from poor families will be able to go to KU.
The Student Alliance of Voters for Education, a political action group for students, announced this week that Reagan was planning to slash $5 billion from the financial aid budget, leaving $4 billion. But a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education said the 1984 budget had not been drawn up yet.
The group reported that the proposed cut would eliminate guaranteed student loans for graduate students, special grants for minority students seeking graduate degrees and the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program.
with those programs gone, it won't matter to those students who no longer can pay for an education whether KU tops the list or not.
Reagan campaign speeches contain plenty of bafflegab'
By SUZANNE GREENE United Press International
United Press International
WASHINGTON—President Reagan sprinkled his 11th-hour campaign speeches liberally with homemade political epithets that linguists say may not make history, but nonetheless stir the emotions of voters.
In a campaign speech Thursday in Great Falls, Mont., Reagan blasted Washington's "bafflegabers." And a day earlier, in Casper, Wyo., he cautioned against "doom-criers and scare-mongers."
New York Times columnist and former presidential speech writer William Safire included bafflegab in "Safire's Political Dictionary," defining it as "jargon providing more obfuscation than enlightenment, as is often found in government reports and other official statements."
Safire does not list doom-crier and scaremonger, and none of the three terms appears in unabridged versions of Websters, Random House and other dictionaries.
But in a telephone interview, Safire called the terms perfectly respectable "political epithets" and offshoots of a phrase to which he lays at least partial claim — "nattering nabobs of negativism," made famous by former Vice President Spiro Agnew.
"The president can take words that are obscure and make them important," Safire said. But, nevertheless, the final judgment on their general usefulness passes to Safire and other lexicographers who decide whether they will last "or just flash and disappear."
Aram Bakshian, Reagan's chief speech writer, said the terms were "campaign," but he said that they were not part of any particular strategy for the campaign season.
Although Bakshian could not recall where he first heard the epithets, the speech writer said the words had been around since the 1970s and were "not cries from the heart" of the president-
Some of the terms came from a speech Reagan gave for Montana Senate candidate Larry Williams, in which Reagan said: "As you know, the source of our economic problems is even beginning to dawn on the bafflegabbers and fancy dudes in Washington (who think they can depend upon us of our money. You can't drink your own sober or spend yourself rich."
At a rally in Wyoming, Reagan warned,
"Don't let the doom-criers and scare-mongers
frighten our citizens and subvert recovery."
robert Fox, director of the graduate program in linguistics at American University in Washington, D.C., called Reagan's terms "very productive compound nouns" that aimed at adding emotional impact to off-repeated phrases.
"Unless these things are slips of the lips, they are combinations of words that are very useful," said Fox. "“Doom-crier” . . . is a little scarrier than “doom-sayer,” and scare-mongering rouses the emotions more than “rumor-mongering.”
There is no way to predict whether Reagan's political terms will become as popular as such time-honored expressions as "mudslinging"; used during the Civil War, or "mugwump"; used in 1884 to describe political turncocks who supported Democrat Grover Cleveland.
Safire reports that the Blue Earth Post, a Minnesota newspaper, defined mugwump in the early 1930s as "a sort of bird that sits on a fence with his mug on one side and his wump on the other."
"People who are trying to rouse emotions in speeches that have lost their impact come up with these," she added.
An alternative to mugwump is "dudes" coined by Theodore Rosevelt and also used by Reagan.
"He (Reagan) uses some strange language."
Suzanne Green is a political writer for United Press International.
Public's already tried Lewises
The horror of the Tylenol murders has caused another horror — the public conviction that James Lewis and his wife Leann are guilty of the murders.
A nanowritten note was sent to the Chicago Tribune last week. It was signed with the name Robert Richardson, one of Lewis's aides, and it denied that he had anything to do with the case.
The note was part of a thick package of material sent to the Tribute. The package was turned over to the FBI, which said Lewis probably had sent the material.
Lewis and his wife used the names Robert and Nancy Richardson while they lived in Chicago
The note read:
"As you have probably guessed, my wife and I have not committed the Chicago area Tyiolen murders. We do not go around killing people. We never have and we never shall."
Contrary to reports we are not armed, unless one means in the anatomical paraplegic sense. We shall never carry weapons no matter how bizarre the police & FBI reports.
"I hope the law finds whoever poisoned those capsules and I would demand capital punishment."
"Domestically, weapons are for two quite similar types of mentalities: (1) Criminals & (2) Police.
"We are neither."
we are not murdered.
It is unfortunate that Lewis thought the letter necessary. But he was right. The public has already tried and convicted him for the murders.
A web of circumstantial evidence surrounds Lewis. In a court of law, it is unusual that even a large amount of circumstantial evidence would be goughed to easily convict a man.
None of the material in the package sent to the Tribune refers directly to the extortion letter, but in one of the notes in the package, Lewis wrote:
The FBI began searching for the couple after Lewis was connected with an extortion letter sent to Johnson & Johnson, makers of Tylenol, demanding $1 million "to stop the killings."
The rest of the nation, especially Chicago authorities, could agree with him.
That is evident. But there is much real evidence directly linking Lewis to the Tylolen
FBI and Chicago authorities have looked into many, many leads, but they must find someone to tag for the crime unless they are willing to help. A police officer can sometimes less obvious leads may be being ignored.
We need to find it on who committed these murders. It is very likely that Lewis did put the gun into his mouth.
It is every bit as likely that he did not.
We cannot know a person's guilt or innocence in a crime until there is a trial. Sometimes it is hard to decide.
CATHERINE BEHAN
trial, but it is impossible before the trial, unless we are that person.
I remember many times when my mother would punish the wrong child for a crime. I clearly recall one incident when my dog had knocked over a vase and broken it.
over a vase and shoots.
The dog scampered off just as I started trying to pick up the pieces, and my mother walked in. Guess who got sent to bed without dinner.
A simple analogy, true, but in the same manner, we are not giving Lewis a chance. Simply because he might not be the all-American guy next door does not necessarily mean that he laced Tylenol capsules with cyanide.
cynicism.
Condemning people before trial is an obstruction of justice that we allow to occur often, far too often.
An Ohio physician, Susan Sheppard, was accused of killing his wife in 1954. There was a lot of very sensational publicity between the time of
the murder and Sheppard's trial. The trial itself was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court in 1966 on the basis that the extensive media coverage before and during the trial made it impossible for him to get a fair trial. But he was acquitted without the press, and Sheppard was acquitted.
In the trial of Bruno Hauptmann, accused kidnapper-murderer of the son of Charles Lindbergh, the press was again outrageous in its coverage the trial. Hauptmann was convicted, but the case prompted the rule that no cameras would be allowed in the courtroom.
In 1950, Julius Rosenberg and his wife, Ethel, were indicated for treason and accused of being members of a Soviet spy ring that passed information about atomic research in Los Alamos to the Soviet Union. Although many people thought it was the Russian government that the information allegedly given to the Russians was unimportant, the two were electrocuted in 1963 at Sing Sing.
When the public is afraid, the outcry for "justice" at all costs is greater than the outcry for real justice.
When a crime is really despicable, we want the perpetrator caught and punished. It almost doesn't matter who it is, just as long as someone likely to have been involved is punished.
But a crime like this is very anonymous that's why there have been so many copycat crimes. The Tylenol murderer has given crazies a method by which to perpetrate their madness.
It will, therefore, be extremely difficult to find and convict the person who killed eight people in Chicago. If it is Lewis, then I hope he is convicted.
But we cannot convict him before he is tried. We pride ourselves on our criminal justice system. But Lewis himself has shown that this becomes a mockery of our judicial system.
We would all rest easier if Lewis came forward, was tried, if there was a case against him, and found guilty.
Letters to the Editor
But I strongly doubt that this man could ever get a fair trial.
11-11-11 dates from WWI armistice, not WWII
To the Editor:
Ament the story about 11-11-11 there is no mystery to old enough one to have attended the public schools when Aristomie Day, Nov. 11, was observed as a patriotic holiday.
No, it was never a school holiday in Independence, Kau., but the junior high and senior high convocations that week always featured a speaker with a patriotic message. No, Professor Ketzel did not to let me in on the public secret; The Army sent Mr. Ketzel, supposedly signed by representatives of a defeated Germany at 11 a.m., Nov. 11, 1918, hence the 11-11-11.
No doubt there still survive some aged veterans who will admit how delighted they were that day, because their outfits were set to open an offensive to fight through the Argonne and other forests, which would have been fatal in which very high casualties were erected.
Nearly 18 years later, I was in the pipeline of replacements for one of the many thousands of casualties expected in the invasion of Japan. Several million men in uniform were delighted that President Truman had the courage to use the atomic bomb, for the Japanese had never given up without exacting a heavy toll on the attackers in the jungles and desolate islands, and no one expected them to do less in defense of their homeland.
their nominee.
Note that the Hiroshima bomb wasn't enough to convince the government immediately; it took a second one on Nagasaki. Many of us in uniform thought those bombs may have "saved my life." It is probable that in total, more lives would have
been lost and casualties greater (including those on both sides) than those suffered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Tom Yoe
University Relations editor
This bit of history, of course, has little to do with what is considered the problem today of the job market. It concerns the
Helping out the rain?
To the Editor.
They complain about spending one extra dollar to cool buildings that are uncomfortable hot and heat buildings that are comfortable cold. (And I should know about the latter. As a residence hall tenant, I have spent far too many nights trying to get my feet warm.)
10. The Exam :
How could this University be so abusive?
Edward M. Graham Baltimore, Md., senior
Yet they find it necessary and prudent to spray volumetric quantities of water on lawns already wet from heavy rains, as on Thursday, Oct. 28.
When I am fighting frostbite in my own room every other night, and then I see something so insensitive from those responsible, it makes me wonder just how on the level this whole economy is doing.
Shutdown costs high To the Editor
This year the University of Kansas will reduce operations the last week of December to reduce energy usage. Buildings with temperatures sufficient equipment or animals will remain open
and kept at normal temperatures. Offices and buildings that can close have been asked to do so.
In other words, employees have been informed that they will bear the cost of the energy conservation efforts of the University. The University will accomplish its purpose, which is to save money through energy conservation. It also will save an additional week's salary or paid vacation for each employee who will not or cannot come up with compensatory time.
Closing offices and buildings necessitates time off for employees who work at these sites. In the Oct. 29 issue of the Oread, Vice Cancellor Charles Wynn said that his account for their time through a combination of vacation leave, discretionary day, compensatory time or leave without pay."
It would be an entirely different story if the University rallied the cooperation of employees to sacrifice their reasonable right to work for an agency that does not provide utility conservation savings — to the institution.
A question arising from this situation is whether it is fair or even necessary that employee bears the brunt of the institution's conservation effort. The University would have its usual salary funds available, as employees are paid for them. Those employees informed that their building or office is to be shut down will be without work for a given amount of days — not for personal reasons but as imposed upon them by the organization. It would seem only fair, therefore, that the University absorb the cost of salaries that were paid to those who would otherwise have worked.
Then an employee would decide whether he or
she would carve out a week of planned vacation and plump it into the end of December, or whether he or she would try to make due and meet the cost of living for one month of approximately $2000. Perhaps those who will pay should have the say. But, in this case . . . ?
Tamara L. Stam
Tamara L. Sullan
Clerk, Human Development and Family Life
Apologies to KU band
The KU band performed an excellent halftime show at the K-State-KU game. The band members, flag bearers and twirlers should all be proud of their performance.
To the Editor:
Please accept my regrets to those who were abused, mistreated or in any way taunted by those in attendance. I am proud to be a Kaman; however, as all of the schools and universities in the state offer youth opportunities for sports and academic incidents at the K-State game were unavailable.
Manhattan resident
KU, your band is excellent. Keep on representing Kansas in a fine musical tradition.
As a graduate of Wichita State University, I can say that the treatment accorded WSU students was the complete opposition of your treatment.
I have no solutions for future games except that as a former ticket taker at the University of California-Berkley and the University of Iowa, all containers, chairs, seat sacks, sacks, etc.
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