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Opinion
University Daily Kansan. October 14, 1982
Planning for the future
The Associated Students of Kansas wants to spend next fall's 20 percent tuition increase on a proposed work-study program to aid middle-income students who can't get financial aid.
ASK approved the proposal, which is called the Kansas Student Employment and Training Program, at its fall legislative assembly and sent it to the legislative Education and Planning Committee.
Under the program, the state would pay 20 percent of each student's salary if the state agency or non-profit organization that hired the student paid the rest. AKE proposed a 50-50 match from for-profit companies.
Mark Tallman, ASK executive director, said the advantage of the program — aside from the fact that it would give some students money for school — would be to provide businesses with an incentive to hire students, who therefore would get work experience.
ASK is looking for support for the plan, but Tallman points out what probably will become ASK's worst roadblock: "...the state has no money."
The plan has merit. It could mean the difference between going or not going to school for many students. And it could strengthen the Kansas economy by supplying a pool of trained workers.
The tuition increase could be spent on any of dozens of needy programs that already exist.
But with state lawmakers desperately searching for ways to keep the state from going broke, such a plan unfortunately becomes a luxury to them.
ASK should remind the legislators that planning for the future is just as important now — if not more so — as it was when the state had a budget surplus.
Beef growers angry enough to roast Richard Simmons
It's fashionable to pick on Kansans these days. Specifically, it has become de rigueur for the Wall Street Journal and Richard Simmons to cry out that the companies' fungus-infested meat and DES-infected beef.
The latter incident has Kansas beef growers in a turvy. Imagine the following:
Carla Catteman-Wife, Sife, Dodge City, was preparing husband John's midday meal last Tuesday while listening to "The Richard Simmons Show" on KAKE-TV, Wichita.
Just as she was about to pile a fifth piece of all-beef bologna on a slice of whole-wheat bread, she heard a voice from the television say, "Stop eating meat. And it's the only thing that is really
LISA GUTIERREZ
going to help. If they can't sell meat with hormones in it, they will be the first to take it
After Carla dropped the sandwich on her no-wx floor, she reached for the volume knob and heard show host Simmons and guest Diane attacking the use of hormones in livestock.
Broughton, editor of Thumpers magazine, a health publication, warned consumers not to eat beef because cattle were injected with growth hormones. The cow's weight and high cholesterol counts in people.
Carla could not believe her ears. Americans not eat beef! What a terrible thought.
Forgetting John's half-finished lunch, she called the Kansas Livestock Association, U.S.
How dare they allow Richard Simmons and some California health break besmirch the good name of Kansas beef growers?
Indeed, the KLA and Roberts agreed — for Carla was not alone in her telephone call. At KLA headquarters in Topeka, phone lines were to be tied up for two days by angry livestock producers. The first to call were cattlemens and then the cattle themselves began to call.
Folks were ready to barbecue Simmons. Cattlemen spent much of last Wednesday pondering whether to sue. Simmons and James Witte, executive in charge of production of the Los Angeles-based show, received telegrams from the KLA and Roberts.
Robert's 'telegram protested what he called irresponsible, inaccurate allegations made on the show. He called the program a "great disservice to the American consumer and agricultural producers who have done an outstanding job of producing meat."
The KLA's telegram went a step further, giving Simmons one week to retract his and Broughton's statements or it would consider legal action.
The idea is absurd — Simmons vs. Cow Growers of America.
However, the KLA has a point. Simmons and Broughton should not have espoused thoughts on a topic they obviously knew little about. During the show, Simmons said that in the early 1895, the beef industry added hormones to feed to increase livestock size and that although DES was banned in 1979 because it was linked to cancer, hormones were being implanted in animals today.
Broughton said that the hormones dripped through the cow's system, which allowed it to gain weight. She also said that these hormones did not break down during cooking and implied that the hormones were the cause of an average gain in Americans during the past 20 years.
KLA officials said Brougher's information was wrong. John Meetz, KLA executive vice president, said that there was nothing on the market today similar to DES.
"Both consumers and producers are tired of self-proclaimed consumer advocates attempting to influence people's diets based on opinion rather than scientific fact. I believe the vast majority of consumers realize that beef is one of the most nutritious foods and that it's an extremely wholesome product," Meetz said in his telegram to Simmons.
Of course Meetz tots offense to Simmons' declarations. What Richard was actually telling an estimated 15 million viewers was to take his bread and bread butter — don't buy his beef.
Of course livestock owners were mad.
Bad feelings and misguided allegations aside, this case could prove to be a beefy struggle between Simmons and cattlemen. The KLA telegram laid it on the line — take back what you said, you lily-livered watercress lover, or we'll have your hide by sun-up.
"Most of these people put up with a lot, and things like this usually run off like water off a duck's back. But eventually one statement is bad to say you say 'I don't have to take this.' " Meetz says.
"We're very interested in any information they can send us saying there are no hormones in meat and that hormones don't hurt you. And if you think they're not safe, you also happy to consider it for a future show." be said.
Witte said the show's lawyer was preparing a response to the KLA telegram.
The future may be too late. Already, beef sales nationwide are down 390 percent. Mothers are buying less beef and the students have forsaken hamburger pizza for sausage. Chasen's no longer serves filet mignon.
Brace yourself, Richard Simmons.
Weigh-in woeful for majorette
Maybe you've been reading the saga of the majorete in Finvilley Pa, Pa who was sidelinesed by an ace. Maybe you're reading
Weight, it seems, makes news these days. Remember the 500-pound plus sex offender and how newspapers ran photos of him from all angles every day for weeks? And then reports of how he was losing weight in prison? Would he have made the headlines had he been your run-of-the-mill sex offender? Not to that extent. America, it seems, is fascinated with fat.
In today's society, thin is in and fat is, well, and the lengths some people will go to to make life miserable for the fat folk are almost unbelievable.
But Peggy Ward is different. Peggy has committed no crime, unless you consider it a crime to be a few pounds overweight according to the guidelines in the book; it is by no standard obese or a freak or disgusting.
Nice try, Cersosimo. If you call benching a girl for being overweight saving her from ridicule, you're a little confused. What his action did was not to hurt himself or to avoid himself and the school, and prompt a lawsuit.
Interestingly, the director, Joseph Cerosimo, who made the decision to bench Peggy, claims he has her best interests at heart. He says the weight limits were imposed to prevent the girls from being teased when they performed at baltime.
The fight began when Cerosimo told Peggy, a 5-foot-4-inch 16-year-old, that she would not be allowed to march with the band until she got her weight down to 128. Peggy tried, and did manage
to get down to $127\frac{1}{2}$ from her original weight of 132. Her doctor, however, advised her to quit dieting because diuretics and skipping meals were aggravating a hereditary liver condition.
The incident, meanwhile, generated a lot of publicity, and school officials retailed and told the Wards that Peggy could march as long as her weight was less than 15 pounds, the weight her doctor recommended.
But Herbert Ward, Peggy's father, will have
none of that.
"School is for kids. Everybody should have a chance. Who gives a damn whether you’re a few pounds overweight? It’s only the high school band."
Herbert Ward isn't just talking. He has filed a discrimination suit against school officials with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission.
And daughter Peggy is glad he did.
"I wanted him to do it," Peggy told me Sunday. "I'm below it (the weight limit), but I
still don't think it's right to have any weight restrictions. It itches me because I don't look at
Peggy's mother, Marjorie, said the ruckus hadn't been easy for her daughter.
"She's been getting harassment from the other girls," Marjorie said. "Three or four were being nasty, but the principal said he wouldn't tolerate it." And she added that she was getting all the attention and they resented it."
Her fellow majorettes weren't the only ones hassling her, Peggy said.
"The band director (Cerosimo) won't talk to me, and the principal will barely talk to me," she said. "But none of the teachers have mistreated me."
Ringgold High School's 17 majorettes were chosen by a committee that included Cerosimo, two teachers and a dance instructor, according to Marjorie.
ney and them do a dance, saw how they tailed." Marjorie said of the trips. "They tailed me."
Peggy was also a majorette as a sophomore and, she said, she was never leased or hassled by her.
Peggy, who has had nine years of dance lessons, said she tried out because "I like to twirl and all my friends are majorties or cheerleaders. I just wanted to be a part of it."
But Peggy, who said the majorettes had a weigh-in every Wednesday after school, says Ms. Shapiro is a big fan of them.
"Right now I don't know if I want to be one anymore," she admitted. "It's a pain, I just feel it."
By DICK WEST
Federal workers dance to fight office blues
United Press International
WASHINGTON--There's a lot of sadness in the world, particularly among government workers.
A worker's plant that really tugged at my heartstrings is printed in the current issue of Policy Review, a Heritage Foundation publication.
It was penned by a young woman lawyer who did a two-year stretch in the federal service.
"One of the first phenomena I observed was that our office's staff spent most of its time figuring out how little work could be done in an eight-hour day," she wrote.
"Lunch would never last less than two hours, at which time the entire office would leave together, abandoning the telephone switchboard and its incoming jam of telephone calls."
head to the cafeteria for coffee. These office heads would last as long as 45 minutes. The rest would be served at tables.
"Everyone would struggle in at least 15 minutes late in the morning and immediately
In the afternoon, the staff would gather around a refrigerator and turn on a radio and dance to
Truly, a federal worker's lot is not always a hamnov one.
I don't blame the lawyer and the few of her colleagues who regularly complained about the merrymaking. As she so bitterly put it, "it was a horrible case analyses while the rest of the office danced."
The writer did not specifically identify the department where these hard working condi-
tices prevalent, but I think I may have called her office a few times during the two-hour lunch
Had I been in this worker's shoes, I would have considered joining a government employee's union. Creation of an atmosphere more congenial for labor negotiators, one of the prime goals of labor negotiators.
Organized or not, federal employees who so desire should be supplied with earplugs to wear while disco music is blaring in the office. And at the same time something should be done to keep them quiet, who have not much public attention by pointing out flaws in the federal establishment.
Believe me, if a government office ever has whistles blowing to a disco beat, nobody will get any work done.
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