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Opinion
University Daily Kansan. October 20.1982
Referendum useful tool
A student senator wants the students to decide whether the University of Kansas should stay in the Associated Students of Kansas.
The senator, Paul Buskirk, has proposed that a referendum on the question be put on the November ballot with the Student Senate elections. The students would determine whether the Student Senate should continue paying membership for KU, which is the biggest member of the statewide student lobby group.
The proposal will be considered by the Student Rights Committee, which could pass it on to the full Senate tonight.
"The issue is not whether the Senate supports ASK." Buskirk said this week, "but whether the students think it is doing an effective job for them."
Forty cents of each KU student's fee is diverted for ASK membership. Last year, KU paid $14,562.
Student Body President David Adams doesn't support a referendum,
because he said Buskirk might be using the proposal "to indiscriminately disguise some real motivation." He also cited problems with getting debates and forums organized in time to inform students on the issue.
The referendum could be a useful tool for the Senate to gauge the feelings of the students. This tool could only lend credibility to the Senate's actions.
The specific referendum proposal on ASK is fuel for the controversy that has surrounded this group recently.
But the Student Senate should not let politics cloud the idea behind the proposal — asking the students what they think.
It will be tough for the Student Senate to put together a program to inform students about the issue should the referendum get approved. But such a program could be assembled if the Senate considered this a priority.
And seeking the opinion of the students — the ones whose money is being spent — always should be the No.1 priority.
There's more to the good life than Brooks Brothers suits
Walter Hempstead adjusted his tie and checked his hair in the mirror. It wasn't his first interview, but it definitely was his most important
rumpest looked at the competition sitting around him in the waiting room. His confidence grew as he scanned each interviewee, none of whom were dressed with nearly his style.
"The schmucks," Walter thought. "I bet they bought their suits at J. C. Penney." Walter's smugness grew as he smoothed out his Brooks brothers' arm and brushed off his Gucis.
Walter flipped through a brochure, "Welcome
TOM GRESS
to Promised Land Annuities Inc."
"Nice retirement benefits," he thought,
"martins every afternoon, tennis courts and a golf course."
"The door to the waiting room opened, and an angel motioned to Walter. Walter grabbed his resume and followed the angel through two doors, then sat down in a small, dark room with
"He'll be right in," the angel said. "He stepped out to get some coffee. Good luck, he's in a surly mood. He's already sent two people down the tubes this morning."
The angel left, Walter looked around the room. Cigars littered the floor. The smallness of the cigars
"You'd think a guy like St. Peter would get a bigger office than this." Walter thought. "Oh well, he's just a personnel manager. After I get on I'll make some points with the Big Guy and get myself a nice office with a cute angel for a secretary."
The door opened, and St. Peter came barreling through. He stuck out his hand for Walter to
Sorry you had to wait Walt," St. Peter said, vigorously pumping Walter's hand as he spoke. "We've heard many good things about you up here."
"Yeah, well, we haven't been pressed for help." St. Peter said, "Lots of wars lately, Look, I won't stall around: The Big Guy's seen your resume and He's impressed. Stanford undergrad, a couple of years with IBM, and a Harvard MBA. Not too shabby. But He wants me to get some more background. 'Tell me about yourself.'
"Thank you. I've been dying for the chance to interview with your firm." Walter suddenly realized what he'd said and noticed the grimace on St. Peter's face.
"Well, mostly I believe in profits. Big profits. Obsecate profits. The kind of profits that make Exxon look like a mom and pop gas station. I live for profits."
He looked at St. Peter for some sign of approval. St. Peter lit a cigar and slurped some coffee.
"You mean you did live for profits."
"Go on. go on."
"Well I think my record speaks best for me. I've got good experience: Two years running the Mexican subsidiary, gouging the peasants, one year selling weapons to the Pentagon, and four corporate takeovers. Pretty good stuff, I think." "What about your lifestyle?"
"What about your personal life?"
"Well, I've been pretty lucky. I had a good broker. He had me in the money markets until just before she interest rates dropped, then he gave me into the stock market and I'm making a little profit."
"I've got a brand new Lamborghini, some nice clothes, and I can afford the best liquor. It's a car."
"Uh, was a nice life, Walt." St. Peter said as he chopped on his cigar. Then he leaned his hand against the wall.
"That's all fine and dandy, but is that all you've done, that is, make money?"
"Hey, what else is there? Yeah, I could've joined the Peace Corps right of college, but they don't even have a retirement plan. And they actually help the peasants. And they
"Look, nothing beats a good profit. Not even sex. I make a few bucks, get myself a nice place to live, and who does it bother? Profits, that's where it's at."
St. Peter leaned back in his chair and gave Walter a good, hard look. Then he sent Walter the call.
"Miss Johnson, send in one of the schmucks in the J. C. Penney suits. Maybe one of them will work out."
"The bum," St. Peter said to himself as he waited for the next person. "Maybe he can find a doctor."
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Pentagon moving back onto campus
Back in the '60s, the Pentagon was the nemesis of many students and faculty members on college campuses. It has not gained much support in the subsequent years, and now it seems that the Department of Defense is buying its way back onto college campuses.
At least that is what the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group, thinks about the huge increase in government colleges and universities for military research.
The Pentagon is in desperate need of a few
CATHERINE BEHAN
The record spending comes after a drop in military contracts to American colleges during anti-Vietnam protests.
weapons and tanks that work and can be used against the Soviet Union, supposedly for defense. It needs research to develop these weapons to support its support — specifically university support.
The American Friends Service Committee surveyed public federal records of contract awards of more than $10,000 from mid-1980 to mid-1981.
One survey showed a 70 percent jump during the past three years in funds for military training.
Meanwhile, the federal government has drastically cut back money for student loans, and consequently, students need alternative sources of aid to get through school. More of them are choosing scholarships offered by the Reserve Officer Training Corps.
There has also been a serious drop in funds, both from the government and the private sector, for other research, such as in the health field.
But David Kraft, dean of the KU School of Engineering, said that although the school had several Department of Defenses contracts for research and training, a short time finding studies that deal with defense.
Now we are getting money to find better and more sophisticated ways of killing each other and less money to find ways to save lives. That could be a scary situation,
One of the research contracts finances a project called "The Mechanical Properties of Human Longbones." This project deals with assessment of engineering properties of bones
and the effects of impact and other factors on them, and not with defense, Kraft said. He did not know why the Department of Defense would finance these projects.
weapons-testing facilities — the White Sands missile range — at New Mexico State.
Herbert Fisher, director of contracts at the Department of Defense, said that all contracts for research must have some defense relationship, although he did not know what the KU research project had to do with defense ether. Because the department had "interest in a lot of things."
Why now, when so little money is being spent to educate people to be qualified for jobs, is the government allocating so much money to research of defense?
"We don't do it for it and games," Fisher said. "There aren't too many areas that we use."
He said that the department issued about 13 million contracts this year, and that this amount was not much higher than in previous years. But he also said that the amount of contracts "creeps up a few hundred thousand each year."
Nearly half of that went to two of the Pentagon's largest contractors, Massachusetts Institute of Technology received awards for work on the controversial Trident missile, and Johns Hopkins used awards for work on the Navy's Aegis weapons system.
Money looks good no matter where it comes from these days, especially money for research. And, well, let's face it, we in the academic community cannot look gift horses in the bag. But that our need for money for research gives the Pentagon an easy in on university campuses.
The Quaker organization said that contracts totaling more than $1.1 billion had been awarded to 250 colleges and universities by the departments of defense and energy for the program.
Other awards went for a study on defense systems at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., a study on the properties of nerve agents and their use. The university's computer support for one of the nation's largest
Although present contracts do not involve weapons systems, the University of Kansas should think twice before accepting military contracts or actively pursuing them. Researchers need more tools to do so. But is the research worth it if it is meant to harm to off .rs?
If the government spent more money on research for cures of diseases such as cancer, it might have more people to draft. If it spent more money on educating people, maybe we would have more people who could assist in the construction of sophisticated weapons and defense systems that we already have.
Some rethinking of defense allocations is needed.
Obviously, the Pentagon thinks that bombs are more intimidating to foreign powers than bullets.
As educated people, it might be worth proving them wrong.
We should start asking questions now. Research is too important a thing to waste.
Letters to the Editor
To the Editor
Who are nurses to know babies from tissue?
I noticed in the Oct. 18 Kansan a story about nurses who didn't assist with abortions after the third month of pregnancy because "the fetuses look too much like babies who could have
Now, this is just a little absurd. Even if they look like babies, the Supreme Court and other informed people have ruled and proved otherwise. What may look like real human life is in fact only fetal tissue, something less than a woman's body. The inconsiderate nurses should go back to work.
Let's look at this rithm rationally: The law says it isn't even contestable that the "tissue" is human life until the 27th week. And the ad for the Wichita abortion Clinic (which has been in the Kansas the past four weeks) says you can get married if your tissue up to the 28th week. Complete legal.
I would have to agree with this position, I think, especially after seeing the little 24-week premature "tissue" on the front page of the Kansan last week. Although it may have looked like a premature baby, because it had a full head of hair and was otherwise fully developed, and being taken such good care of by the (silly) doctor, I still thought "baby" by the (unformed) Kansan, I still think it was tissue. It had two weeks to go before it could be called anything more.
You see, if the mother of that tissue had been planning an abortion in the next two weeks, then the premature birth saved her trouble. Only problem: The tissue is still alive. Legally, she should still be able to terminate the life of her tissue, even though it was involuntarily delivered. An unexpected delivery shouldn't prevent her from exercising her legal right. I think that he would have law, she could still have tissue salt-poisoned or cureplated (up or terminated somehow).
I must admit my stomach is starting to turn at this point, but I think that as rational people, we must look at this with cold logic and not our emotions. Rationally, there is no reason why the mother of 24-week "tissue" should not be allowed a terminate procedure — in the exception to the woman's freedom of choice where the tissue was involuntarily, prematurely delivered.
So, you see, we cannot call these things that look like babies "babies," because then it would no longer be "termination." It would be "murder." And that's against the law. Now, I think I have proven my point: That the abortion law needs to be amended to, uh, specifically sanction the killing of, uh, prematurely delivered, uh, tissue. Don’t you agree?
By the way, who are those nurses, saying the Supreme Court doesn't know what it is taking
Charles Hurley Lawrence law student
No arms race winners
Jerald Keating's Oct. 13 guest column
concerning the fallacies of the nuclear freeze movement contains many fallacies of its own.
First, Keating downgrades the attempts of freeze proponents to scare the public "through terrifying Ground Bomb rallies, chanting the dangers of the 'Big Bomb.'" and so on. True, these attempts are aimed, in part, at the threat posed by the defenses getters, and they may appear abuseless one searches for the underlying message being conveved through them.
Freeze proponents do not have a monopoly on such strategies, though. As evidenced by clips used in the movie "Atomic Cafe," at the height of the Cold War, the United States government produced an array of civil defense propaganda materials, including a film featuring an animated turtle yelling, "Duck and cover!" as he disappears into his shell; in this manner, school children were taught to hide under their desks in the event of a nuclear explosion.
Such a drill appears ridiculous now, but the U.S. government was dead serious about getting its point across. So, too, are the freeze proponents, in using many strategies to heighten public awareness of the dangers of the arms race.
Second, Keating refers to the "window of vulnerability" theory espoused by certain officials of the present administration. According to this theory, the Soviets are developing a first-strike force capable of destroying all our IBMs (land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles), while retaining a portion of their ICBM force. We would then be faced with the choice of retaliating with submarine-launched missiles accurate enough to destroy only.Soviet forces invite total destruction of the United States by the Soviets, using the remaining ICBMs to launch a third-strike against our cities), or with surrendering in the face of this destruction.
Strong arguments can be made against this window of vulnerability theory. The United States is not strategically inferior to the USSR. According to Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., globally the United States has 9,000 warheads and the U.S.S.R has 7,000. Although their missiles have a larger throw weight, ours are more accurate. The Soviets do have a greater number of ICBMs than the U.S., but even based upon the trials, ICBMs, bombers and submarines. Even if our ICBMs were destroyed, our submarine-launched ballistic missiles and bombs could destroy Soviet military installations, hundreds of cities, and industrial centers.
Since nuclear weapons have not been tested, their accuracy (taking into account the effects of magnetic fields, weather and so on) is not guaranteed. Some missiles may fail to launch successfully, but most of these factors combine to shake Soviet confidence in the possibility of a successful first strike.
The Soviets cannot be certain that we would not launch-on-warning in response to a first strike and render their attack fruitless, as their missiles would hit empty sites and both nations
Although Russians do not compose a majority in an ethnically diverse society, Soviet leadership is disproportionately composed of Russians; our missiles would destroy Russian population centers, thus leaving a power vacuum in a country already beet by nationality problems. It is doubtful that a cautious, centrally controlled leadership is willing to destroy itself, not to mention the Soviet populace and economy.
Third, denouncements of Soviet ideology and foreign policy have no place in the quest for a nuclear freeze. Soviet actions around the world have not often pleased the United States (and other countries) to fear them in Vietnam and our support of repressive governments in El Salvador and South Africa), but in "our world, the real world," different beliefs exist and will persist. We can delay arms control until the world becomes a utopia (or more probably, a wasteland), or we can accept the reality of human suffering with dealing separately with them in concrete and realistic manner.
Fourth, Keating states that proponents of the freeze are "naive and intellectually paralyzed." Bernard Feld, editor in chief of the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences; Hans Bethe, Nobel Laureate in physics; Barry E. Carter, former staff member of the U.S. National Research Council; William Colby, director of the CA; MaJ. Gen, William Fairbairn, U.S. Marine Corps, former director for Plans and Policy, Joint Chiefs of Staff; Thomas J. Watson Jr., former chairman of the board of IBM and ambassador to the Soviet Union; the National Council of the United States; and nuclear freeze = are these people naive and intellectually paralyzed? Keating's statement is a sweeping and unfounded generalization.
Finally, the nuclear freeze, possibly preceded by an interim moratorium while its details are worked out, would offer an alternative to the present piecemeal mode of negotiations in which, whilst discussing reductions, we are likely to be forced to consider the use weapons to counter a perceived Soviet threat and to be used as "bargaining chips" in future talks. These bargaining chips could well be regarded by the Soviets as attempts to develop and upgrade a U.S. first-strike capability. From their point of view, negotiations to limit arms in the North will require the use of force step, therefore, they too increase their weapon production. So, the upward spiral continues, and neither country wins, economically or militarily.
On the other hand, a nuclear freeze could halt these useless increases by limiting both the United States and the U.S.S.R. — mutual limitations, to be sure, but also mutual benefits: it is a misconception to assume that what is good for the U.S.S.R. is automatically bad for the United States. We all face massive damage to our societies, and possible annihilation, in the face of the nuclear threat. Suffering is suffering whether one is a Soviet or an American citizen.
Sandra Pellegrini Topeka senior