Opinion
Page 4
University Daily Kansan, October 21, 1982
Pension program unfair
If a U.S. Court of Appeals decision holds, the Board of Regents university retirement plan will likely change. Given the specifics of the case, one can only wonder why it took a court decision to make aware of the ridiculous premise behind the plan.
The court, in New York's Second Circuit, found that the plan discriminated against women because it used sex-based mortality tables to figure retirement benefits for faculty who contribute to the plan.
The plan, offered by the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund, specifies larger benefits for male faculty because they are not expected to live as long as female faculty. The insurance company has received a stay on the decision pending a U.S. Supreme Court appeal. The Supreme Court is expected to decide this week whether to hear the appeal.
All Regents schools are covered under the Teachers Insurance plan, and it seems likely that if the company loses its appeal, it will be forced to change its policy throughout the
country, not only in the Second Circuit.
country, not only in the Second Circuit. Of those KU officials questioned recently about possible ramifications of the circuit court decision, only David Schulenburger, associate professor of business and former chairman of the KU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, gave a credible explanation of the plan.
Schulenburger suggested that Teachers Insurance delineate benefits according to indicators that more accurately affect health and life expectancy, such as smoking habits, rather than a "crude predictor like sex."
Only 20 percent of faculty women outlive their male colleagues, Schulenburger said. The rest, or 80 percent, are denied appropriate benefits under the plan, which assumes they will live longer than men and spreads their pension benefits out.
He could hardly be more on target in his criticism. It is difficult to understand why the Regents have not questioned the pension plan before this.
Silo Tech jokes arouse annual gridiron rivalrv
I hate K-State jokes.
Especially when they come from someone who has never even set foot on the Kansas State University campus.
I refer to those big bad, bad-mouth jokes that Hill dwellers take delight in spouting whenever it comes time for another intrastate match bet against the purple and white and the crimson and blue.
Guess what time it is?
Silo Tech, isn't that what they call that school down the road?
KState — where the men are men and the
LISA GUTIERREZ
sheep are .. well, you know the K-state of this one.
If one were to take the K-State K rivalty seriously, one would be hard pressed to find such witticisms amusing. But they are made in jest.
encrustes amusing. But they are made in jest.
And out of ignorance.
Fellow wheat-wavers who merely pass the Manhattan exit on I-70 on their way to a Colorado ski trip would be mildly surprised at what K-State is really like. First-hand experience is crucial, jawmst this week, weekend, or without tickets for Saturday's pigeon tilt, could be enlightening.
If you make the trip, dress accordingly. A tip from a former Wildcat, though — not all K-Staters hail from western Kansas. And not all western Kanans wear pointed-toe cowboy boots. Also, not all K-Staters wear cowboy boots, contrary to a popular rumor visibly started in Lawrence one Saturday years ago when the Wildcat football team kicked us in the pants.
Some K-Staters, heavens forbid, even wear topiers, Nikes, oxfords and Bass loafers. Fashion is not dictated by old MacDonald in Manhattan. Urban cowboys in Aggieville bars, hats, etc., easily detected and property scorned. Wildfowl fashions in Sassons just as much as Jawhily fahmendes么。
Also, a stigma surrounds the origins of K-Staters. Whereas "they" they think all KU students are from Johnson County (and we all know that's not true), "we" imagine that the whole of the K-State student population was born and bred in Sharon Springs. Not true. Students attend K-State from all the world — Puerto Rico, Japan, Iran and even Lawrence.
Unlike their milk, K-State students are not homogenized.
Nor are all K-State students studying to be veterinarians, cattle ranchers and millers, although K-State is just about the only place in Kansas where you could get a degree in milling science.
Of course, they also graduate with degrees in nine economics, interior decorating and fashion design.
When it comes right down to it, K-Staters are generally a trod-upon people. And unduly so. Stereotyped as knee-slapin' toe-tapin', they are often the subject of their dungarees. Manhattanites traditionally
are looked down upon by their more cultured brothers and sisters on the Hill.
I'd like to know, who gives us that right?
Just because ours is a culturally and academically superior university, we should not indulge in such virulent feelings toward those less fortunate than we. When we throw wieners at basketball players in Aearn Fieldhouse, we stack to their level. When they manufacture a shoveling with a plucked Jayhawk in the paws of a grinning wildcat, they are showing more colors.
I'll tell you why — because K-Staters malign us behind our backs as viciously as we waft them. They think it's funny to call KU "Snob Hill." They think of us "snobs" down the river whenever they flush the toilet. They find humor in asking "K-Who?"
Why play their game?
Sports rivalries aside, the animosity between Jay and Wille is a senseless one. Who cares that K-State has the best marching band in the Big Eight? Only people in the KU marching band. Cars care whether a certain newspaper chain prefers to over KU grades? I might. But it is only relative.
K-Staters think as much of Jayhawks as we think of them — not much. The rivalry annually begins to peak about now, when visions of the Governor's Cup舞 in our heads. There's nothing quite like a victory over K-State to sugar a bittersweet loss season.
I think an exchange program similar to foreign exchange programs would be useful in dispelling certain misconceptions we have of each other. I have already participated in a exchange with a freshman K-State student — and I can do so in a certain purported hint to the blood in my veins.
But I do we K-State many thanks. I also owe them for scrapbooks of memories. Memories of "functions," of weekly Thursday night residence hall parties, of breath-catching views from the ceiling, of point and line of Swannies runs. No one makes a difference than Joe — except Swannies in Manhattan.
Yet, I know where my loyalty lies. It was I who risked my life yelloping and screaming for the Jawks at KU-K-State football and basketball game, while I sat amid a sea of purple and white.
That tint has nothing to do with the fact that the editor of their school newspaper and their student body president happen to be friends of mine.
I sat in the television room of a K-Storm dome and applauded, loudly, when KU made a musket against the Wildcats. I got some funny looks. Back then back, I was a Born Javhawk.
I owe K-State for picnics at Turtle Creek, rich and creamy ice cream freshly milked with vanilla.
I could write book about Agiglievie. But the way to learn about Agiglievie is for you to best way.
KANSAN
Yes, life in the Big Eight is not so much difficult at that school. it's time to give K-State
For the foolish at heart who visit Manhattan this weekend, try your hand at kissing the Beta rock or rolling down Sigma Nu Hill. Few can do it without getting caught.
The University Daily
A break right through their defense
KANSAN
Editor
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Censors don't want us to think
Run, Tip, run. See Tip run. See Sally and Johnny chase Tip. See Sally and Johnny go home to Mommy and Daddy, Sally and Johnny are normal, well-adjusted children living in a twoparent household — according to textbook censors.
Sounds almost like what you bored your folks with every night in first grade, doesn't it? Did you find it odd that every family in the world had a dog, two cars, a Mommy who stayed home and greeted the kids with cookies after school and a Daddy that worked all day and then came home and played ball in the yard — that is, every family but yours?
I (and you who went through high school in the late '70s) was fortunate, it seems, to have been educated at a time when book banning and textbook censorship were at a lull.
Judith F. Krug, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, said at the ALA's convention this summer that a 1978-1980 survey showed that the nation's books occurred in one-fifth of the nation's schools, but only half the time. Krug said her office handled 300 complaints in the late 1970s, but now receives three times that amount. However, she cited the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of the Trees Board of Education vs. Ploe as a reason for optimism. The Court ruled that decisions on ban books can be challenged in court.
That rulting, however, contained no less than seven opinions, indicating that confusion on this topic is far from over.
We were tainted children, you and I, according to book censors and banners like the Island Trees School Board. We read some trash, we did, and may the Good Lord protect us. Why, I myself must confess to reading such works of pernagrona as "A Tale of a Lost Daughter," "Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," "Charlotte's Web," and that old Kanaas classic, "The Wizard of Oz."
What these books have in common, beques being fairly entertaining kiddie lit, is that they all been banned from different school libraries around the country.
"Mary Poppins" by P. L. Travers, for example, is objectionable because it has been deemed inappropriate for young readers. Doesn't that make the issue crstal clear?
It gets worse: Mark Twain's adventures of growing up on the Mississippi are objectionable. Reasons: ethnic, inappropriate for young readers, objectionable language, ethical, literary standards (these classifications are according to a list issued by the American Booksellers
TRACEE HAMILTON
Association during Anti-Banning Week in September).
The list gets more twisted: "Charlotte's Web," by E.B. White. Reason: inappropriate for young readers. "The Wizard of Oz," by L. Frank Baum. Reason: inappropriate for young readers, literary satire. Harper Lee. Reason: none given. "King Lear." The "Merchant of Venice," "Richard II," by William Shakespeare. Reasons: ethnic, inappropriate for young readers, objectionable language, political, religious. "MacBeth." After all, "out, damned spot..."
I trust you are just as outraged as I am that we were forced to read this trash in elementary and secondary school and now our little brothers and sisters are being spared the horror. Thank goodness for wonderful people like Mel and Norma Gabler, who have taken upon themselves the burden of running our lives and determining our educational background. What a relief!
Mel and Norma are just a couple of down-to-earth Texans who'd like to control what we read (and therefore, unfortunately, what we think about) in the bunch of women into a powerful lobbying group.
As I mentioned before, Mel and Norma believe that depicting a single parent family will lead to, yes, you guessed it, the Demon Divorce. Unfortunately, the number of divorces in America soon will match the number of marriages stride for stride. And didn't you watch the wonder, when you watched the "Brady Bunch" movie to Beaver? whether everyone's parents but yours were as understanding and witty as June and Ward and The Carol?
Dealing with divorce rationally and matter-of-fact in textbooks might be one way of easing a child's pain when his parents separate. He would get a feeling that he wasn't alone, first of all, and his friends and classmates might be a little more sympathetic to his problems.
Ojections to textbooks because of their handling of the theory of evolution are as old as the hills, so to speak, and still strong. But Eugene Frank, an executive with Doublebadle, has a solution to this problem. "You're not going to be able to understand it in the new book," Experiences in Biology, Wiley. The reason is "to avoid the publicity that would be in a controversy over a textbook. We'd like to sell thousands of copies." Somehow, it stands to reason profit would be part of the problem.
The best, and most unbelievable, perhaps, the Gandhi would want children to think They should not be allowed to write textbooks should not question authority and should not be allowed much class discussion. They should be asked only questions to which there is a "correct" answer.
Mel and Norma make sense. I can perfectly understand their want to raise a generation of blindly accepting, mindless twits — after all, I'm harry on their valuable work when they are gone?
Letters to the Editor
Kansan reports propaganda, ignores news
To the Editor:
I'm beginning to wonder whether the Kananda staff can tell the difference between nowa news and old news.
On the day that the unemployment rate rose above 10 percent you chose to report this fact on page 3, while emphasizing instead, as did Ronald McDonald Reagan, the government ban on Solidarity in Poland. Then on the day after the Reagan administration had gotten $500,000 of money, television to advertise its economic policies, television with a headline for the story that could have been approved in the Oval Office itself ("No magic short cuts for the economy, Reagan says").
Reports on the Democrats' response and their thwarted efforts to get equal air-time were buried in the final paragraphs of the story on page 5.
A cartoon critical of the administration's policies from the Detroit Free Press was similarly tucked away on the lower left-hand corner of the editorial page. After all, Bob Dole had been in town to campaign for Morris Kay the day before, so didn't this story deserve second place on the front page rather than coverage of Sen. Donald Riegle's (D-Mich) excellent response to the Nixian address delivered by the President?
Now don't get me wrong. Like most Americans, I'm against "magic short cuts for the valley," but it seems to me that it's Reagan himself, a democrats who are resorting to magical solutions.
Remember it was George Bush who compared Reaganomics to "voodoo," and it was Walter Mondale who said the only way one could cut taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget was to do it with mirrors. Like most cases, I don't like inflation either, but if forced to talk between inflation and having nothing to bet on his president's pretty words, I'll take inflation any day.
Besides, when Reagan boasts about how wealthy investors from all over the world are paying their money into dollars and the American dollar, he ignores the fact that before the upcoming elections, it's just not
consoling to the unemployed steel worker in Pennsylvania who's wondering how he's going to survive when the state's unemployment comp fund is running out of money altogether.
Yes, I'm really sorry that Ronald Reagan himself was once out of work in the 1920s. But it is even saddder that he doesn't seem to realize yet that the reasons for that they the boom-and-bust economic policies of the Republican administrations of the 1920s and that his personal mania for reviving such policies in the 1980s is hopefully going to put him out of work once again in 1984.
Moreover, like most Americans, I'm also outraged at the ban against Solidarity in Poland. Indeed, I even offered your predecessors a translation of an article smuggled out of a Polish prison camp last March that was published in a West German newsweekly, but they weren't even interested enough to reply to me or read the piece.
But I'm even outraged at seeing Reagan Productions Incorporated use the fate of the Polish people as a political wild card to distract attention from its own anti-worker policies in America and that news of political events in Poland on page coverage while the systematic destruction made unions in Turkey, a NATO ally, is never considered to be a worthy moment of our attention.
All criticism aside, however, there is a wonderful irony in the style of news reporting we've been getting from the Kansan recently. Perhaps after you guys get out of J-school and
We all know that the Jaruzelski regime hasn't executed anyone during the 10 months of martial law since last Dec. 13, because if they had, the news would have been reported on the front pages of every newspaper in America. But would you mind finding out and telling us how many executions have occurred in Turkey during this same period?
Did you know, for example, that the former president of Turkey was given a five-year prison sentence recently because he expressed mild criticism of the military regime in his country in interviews and articles that appeared in western European newspapers and news magazines?
can't find work you'll be able to sign on with the
rzeskezki regime in Poland.
After all, you already seem to be well-trained in the sort of journalism that's appropriate in societies where journalists aren't paid to think, but simply to pass on whatever information the powers-that-bear want the people to have and nothing else.
Jon Mark Mikkelson Lawrence graduate student
Mideast policy unjust
To the Editor:
There is a grave awareness growing in this country which I hops to promote through this letter. The awareness of an unjust genocide destinates and backed by the U.S. is tormenting
Many who hear the word "Palestine" quickly think "PLO" and immediately after, (thanks to our media), "terrorism." The thousands dead in Lebanon show the horror of lies and ignorance to all. Many shout, "HURRAH ISRAEL!" Have they ever wondered why there are millions of Palestinians and no Palestine? I wandered; I did not. Could find on the subject and I beseach them to be sure, the books' authors are not Zionists Check the dictionary meaning under Zionist.
In the meantime, the U.S. will continue to supply Israel more weapons to fight the Palestinians, Israel, a country whose population is roughly equal to Oklahoma's, has a standing army one-third of the our combined 50 units. It is apparently justified by an absurd fear of a community take-over in the area. What does the spirit of the people of Afghanistan tell us?
Eventually, the U.S. will have to change its policy because the Palestinians fight on the side of justice. Even if we are able to produce and deliver the tons of explosives needed to kill the four million Palestinians, can we ever destroy the desire for justice?
David Matthew Williams Tulsa, Okla. sophomore