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Wednesday, September 1, 1976
University Daily Kansan
Comment
Opinions on this page reflect the view of only the writer.
Fire unsettling
For someone who has lived in a fraternity house similar in appearance to the Baker University Kappa Sigma fraternity house, the fire that killed five Baker students early Sunday is very disturbing.
Fire jokes, fire extinguishers fight and playing with the fire alarm were common stunts for my fraternity brothers and me. It's the same way in securities, and false fire alarms in University residence halls are at least common.
I SUPPOSE we joked about fires mostly because it was fun to gas someone with a fire extinguisher (the soda-acid type makes a big mess), but it may also have been a way to ignore the possibilities of a fire.
Fires aren't something people sit around and talk about unless something tragic like the Baker fire happens. Then it's frightening.
The Baker fire probably will set the fire inspectors in every college town in the area scurrying around to inspect all the Greek houses for deficiencies in their fire alarm systems. Many deficiencies will probably be found.
THE LAWRENCE fire inspector says that at least one Greek house doesn't have a fire escape, and I can think of three that don't.
Two of those houses are fairly modern, but one is of the older variety, like the Baker Kappa Sigma house.
I'm not sure, however, that they need fire escapes.
Almost every building differs from every other in design, which means that
safety standards, especially for fire escapes, vary. If a wooden hallway has three exits, then a fire escape may not be safe unless there is a brick hallway with only one way out.
BUT EVEN if the Baker Kappa Sigma house had had a fire escape, one wonders whether the five men who were killed would have been able to escape.
For there was no fire alarm system at the Kappa Sigma house, and to me that seems to be something that any building, no matter what its shape, should have to warn its residents of a fire.
The Baker fire was a tragedy, and perhaps it will serve to prevent similar deaths. But there is a chance that local officials may overreact.
A sudden rush upon student housing by fire inspectors might uncover a few with inadequate protection, but new fire extinguisher systems are expensive, and smoke-detection systems aren't cheap.
I WOULDN'T want to see housing that fails to meet minimum fire standards shut down immediately just because the building has some technicality in fire regulations.
Perhaps the Baker fire can be used to spur a voluntary fire prevention program. Such a program might save a rooming house owner or Greek house from demands from fire officials that prevent students from mediating. It would also ease the fears of students' parents. It might even prevent a fire. **Rv Carl Young**
Contributing Writer
The University of Kansas and the City of Lawrence should be commended for trying to solve, or at least getting insight into, a real problem: how to efficiently people from point A to point B.
THE STUDY should begin this month and is scheduled to be completed in February. What happens then is up to those who like it or not, must take a long, hard look at the city—what is it, what is it this city—both its residents and its students—moving.
The problem is transportation, KU and city representatives will meet tomorrow in City Hall to select someone to do something about the problem. $20,000 and expect to hire a consulting firm to study Lawrence's transportation.
Steve McMurray, Student Senate Transportation Committee Watson, city manager—who领头 the jointly sponsored quest for information—aren't certain better transportation system.
Both agree KU on Wheels, the city's only commercial bus line, should be the prime target for the consultants' scrutiny. But neither will speculate on how it should be changed.
A to B still a problem
STILL, THE two parties primarily concerned with local transportation have agreed the study is necessary. They have $16,000 from the U.S. Department of Transportation and are kicking in an additional $2,000 each to pay the bill.
That in itself is noteworthy, for how can improvements be made if their need isn't justified by some impartial arbiter?
There is a scene in the movie "The Man Who Fell to Earth" in which the alien, played by David Bowie, is lounging in a trance in front of a wall of television sets all tuned to different channels; he electric panoramics with the same vacant gaze that humanoid viewers use on their sets at home.
How many times I have thought and even acted in the same way! But no more. Now I am free.
The camera pans the sets and shows us the deadeningly familiar fare on each tube: a nature show about lions in Kenya; shoot 'em up westerns and detective shows; a mountain of lions from an old movie; vapid sit-ons; and newsreels of the latest carnage from around the globe.
TV addict's salvation
THE ALIEN then responds in a way I really identified with. In a desperate fight with his conscience, he clutches his ray-bombarded head with both hands and screams at the crowd. "We're out of mind! Get out of mind! Leave my mind alone!"
Our color set broke, we lack the money to have it fixed and now it sits harmlessly in my mother-in-law's basement.
YES, I'm free. But, like the cigarette smoker who quits for two years only to succumb again, like the alcoholic who takes that one drink, I'm not sure I will be. You'll notice it was cicada time and not willpower that gave my wife and me a tubeless home.
I had tried many times to watch only the "good stuff" documentaries and PBS, but I kept getting bogged down in the endless swamp. The same swamp of reruns and pap that I sneered at all during high school first two years of college.
insulted "Leave it to Beaver" watchers and abnorod people who sat transfixed to their sets when friends came to visit.
Then I got married and got attacked from the rear: my mother-in-law gave us a 24-inch color TV.
I USED to mercilessly needle friends who planned their weeks around the TV Guide. I rudely
Thinking I could handle it, I allowed it in the house as long as it wasn't in the living room
John Putter
Contributing Writer
Jobn Fuller
will suggest minor improvements to do a better job with what we have.
NEITHER McCurry nor Watson envisions gold-plated subways or motorized a railway as a research study. Neither expects more than a recommendation of how KU and the city can work together to reach pocket of cities without adequate transportation.
It was positioned in front of our bed.
But city and campus leaders, especially Watson and McMurray, should be praised for their dedication and opening the door to change
where it could distract conversation.
WITHIN SIX months the three of us were spending an awful lot of time in bed. I started watching only "Star Trek", and the news and "selected" old movies such as The African Queen "Homer, the Hunger Games" was watching the shows either before or after the ones I allowed myself to watch.
then, before I knew what had happened to me and after it was too late to repair, I realized the damage was real. I grabbed my way up to the hard stuff.
I WAS mainlining vast chunks of my time and my mind into the world through television. I would begin each evening with the "Beverly Hills Billies" and top off the early hours by heading to Art Linkletter at 3.
The fact that I was more often bored and somnolent than not while tube gazing didn't help me escape. As John Mayall says in his book *Eat Your Way*, "It's hard to turn you off, even though you never turn me on."
ALSO found that marjuan,
despite its delightful qualities,
and I began to suspect that the
people behind the spread of pot
in this country are headquartered
Avenue advertising offices.
The addictive quality of it all was driven home one night when we were getting poor reception during "60 Minutes." We had a long length of antenna wire for an antenna and often had to couple the skill of a contortionist with that of an amateur. The lack of reception. If all else failed you could hold the wire in your hand and use your body as an antenna.
The only double is that all you're good for the rest of the night is watching TV.
So there I lay, a 20th century child of the media, holding the antenna in my hand for an hour, getting an intravenous-like fix
YES, I really knew I was over the deep end when I made attempts to quit and found myself a Guide that I had thrown away four days ago. With trembling fingers I would wipe the mustard off the cover and the reassuring glow of the tube.
It's great to get whackoed on some Columbian weed before a good Humphrey Bogart movie.
of God knows what kind of electronic signals. My body was the medium and if what Marshal McLuan said is true, that is correct.
I don't think TV is any easier to give up than any of those people. I can't drawal symptoms aren't as physically painful or upsetting. Just knowing it's bad to watch TV is often not enough to out.
THE MESSAGE I got, though I'm sure this isn't what McLuan had in mind, was that I was a fool to be a slave to television. But smokers, and thus drug addicts, almost all say their habits are bad and they wish they could quit.
I'm just thankful for two things: 1) That the damn things (and especially ours) break apart too easily we too poor to get ours fixed.
If not, I'd have to put off
writing this column to watch
‘$25,000 Pyramid.’
I hope the study will enable those in charge to logically explain how these situations of where we're going, and how we're going to get there.
AS FAR AS KU is concerned, students need adequate transportation, not only across campus, but also to shopping malls throughout the community. McMurry said many people,
commodate a seemingly automobile-dependant community?
transportation is rather awesome and foreboding. Does mass transportation belong only to the New Yorks, Chicagoas or Kansas? relatively small Kansas community, blessed, or cursed,
Mary Ann Daugherty Contributing Writer
Mass transportation in Lawrence might founder, as it apparently has in metropolitan areas where it efficiently remedy the current problems of insufficient funds, incomplete routing and crowded buses, the all-too-important headaches for the Senate.
with more than 20,000 students, trv to handle its demands?
IT MAY BE premature to forecast the impact of a mass transportation system. But with a study scheduled to begin soon—a study that will largely concern the city's only bus line—its possibilities are worth considering.
A more likely possibility is that mass transportation won't evolve at all. Possibly the study
Buses already operate here for the school district, the aged and Haskell Indian Junior School. We service that would like to stay in business. With the advent of mass transportation, what would happen to our services? Parking lots built to ac-
AS FAR AS the city is concerned, the idea of mass
mostly students, stepped aboard buses nearly 600,000 times last semester. Still, he says, many students, especially those in the north and east parts of Lawrence, weren't reached. But many teachers said they had received requests for some type of mass transportation system in Lawrence. "IS AFAR the city is con-
Blanda's career fades with age
It seemed an inappropriate way to say goodby to a man who had done so much for the game.
MUCH OF this seemingly hopeless position is of McCarthy's own choosing. His uncompromising, idealistic and high principled approach to politics is a welcome relief from
By GERRY O'CONNOR
LAST WEDNESDAY afternatherm the Oakland Raiders became the third professional football team to tell Gore
had done so much for the game.
A man who on Sunday afternoons was able to make any fan over 40 feel 20 years younger.
A man whose extraordinary talents for throwing and kicking a football were overshadowed from determination to be a winner.
Eugene McMarthy, a major presidential candidate in 1988, the man responsible for coordinating and inspiring open-source efforts in Vietnam War, today finds himself without a party, without strong political and financial support and without the prospect of gaining more than $10 billion in the November election.
McCarthy's hopes dim
In the recent frantic scrambles for media coverage, the 1978 presidential campaign of one of the most influential politicians of the 1960s has been all but forgotten.
Blanda they no longer needed him. The Chicago Bears told him that in 1959, and said the same thing in 1966.
"This makes the third time a team has declared me too old to play this game—only this time and now," the 48-year-old Blanda saddled.
By PAUL D. ADDISON
Blanda started his career in 1949, when Harry Truman was President. His career continued under the administrations of Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
McCarthy, former Democratic senator from Minnesota, is running as an Independent candidate for the Committee for a Constitutional Presidency, an organization he formed. It is not, he insists, a reform movement that uses the demotion of many presidential powers and privileges.
the often excessive major party maneuverings that stress the necessity of winning over other considerations.
McCarthy is, in many ways, a martyr to his cause. He is a figure who probably belongs more to an era of youthful idealism, in which he would appear to be an understanding
AN INDEPENDENT president, he believes, would be more likely to respond to the request of a federal court, the Constitution intended.
In 1968 the antiwar movement was a cause that brought him widespread support, especially from the country's young people. He works toward, such as the deflation of the presidency, redistribution of work to solve unemployment and the downplaying of military considerations, lack the glamor and nationwide support needed to campaign forward effectively.
TO HIS credit, however,
McCarthy has nother aban-
doned nor significantly altered
him simply to gain public
acceptance.
It is sad that a man of Blanda's stature is waived out of football without so much as a goodbye or a thanks.
liberal, than to today's era of practical politics.
THE ACCOLADES are bound to come. No doubt he will be inducted into the Football Hall of Fame. But still his quiet departure from the game he contributed so much to is sad.
IN A MOVE DESIGNED TO KEEP THE PEACE BEATER NORTH AND SOUTH HORIZON, PRESIDENT PORT SENET SENT EXECUTIVE OF STATE KINGDOM ON A PEACE KEEKING MISSION ABROAD.
WHEN KIDS INVERSE PLANE LANDS
INCOME THE HUSBY INSTRUCTED
TO MENT WITH ARAB LEADERS AND
TRY TO MAKE HIMSELF GENERALLY USEful.
WHEN QUOTED ASBOUT How
THIS WOULD HELP KEEP DEPRESS
IN KOREA FOOD REPLIED, HENRY
HAS ALWAYS BEEN ORNED MAIN
in the MID-EAST -- YOU SEND
DROUGHT TO WHERE THEY CAN
DO THE MOST HEALTHY GOAL.
WKDC/
Not even George Blanda was able to stay young forever. Although for a long while it looked as though if anyone was the fountain of youth, George Blanda would be the one to do it.
Corry and Westphal
McCarthy started his 1976 campaign aiming to garner the support of the undecided majority perplexed by the multitude of Democratic candidates and disturbed at the thought of four more years of President Ford.
$ \sqrt{3} $
HE LEAVES football as the all-time leading point scorer. His 25 years as a player are also a record. He is the only player to have played in each of four decades.
Now that the major party candidate choices have been made—and McCarthy still hasn't done anything sizable body of support—he can to hope to pick only a few votes from those who see no essential differences in the cat-and-mouse fight between Jimmy Jerry.
HE EVEN had a bit of a bop belly, a fact that helped endear him to the Geritol set. He became the epitome of the grizzly old veteran, the one who'd been through it all before.
would trot on in the field in his high-top shoes with that fierce look of competitiveness in his red shirt. The American football public.
McCARTHY'S personal campaign, however, is far from over. Nevertheless, McCarthy can still play a role in this year's election, as a constant and pleasant reminder that integrity and high principle are subordinated to the often trivial cut-throat and competitive attitudes of the major parties.
But there is much more to the man than his glowing statistics. Blanda captured the heart of football fan in
WEEK AFTER week he threw the winning touchdown pass or kicked the winning field goal in the waning seconds. Blanda was named Most Valuable Player that year. He was the most incredible age for a player in a young man's game.
Blanda captured the heart of every middle-age football fan in the country in 1970.
Job stereotype bad
There was just something about the way "the old man"
During the past several years I worked as a custodian to support my undergraduate academic career. As a result of this perspective, I have observed that a significant segment of the University population has a difficult time relating to their workers because of the servants, seems, people judge a person's intellectual and moral worth by his or her employment.
Letters
To the Editor:
This sort of convenient
Of course I am not advocating that all who aspire to higher education are patently callous and ignorant, nor do their inherent dignity in physical labor.
assumption tends to degrade both the perceiver and the perceived. The world has certainly seen its share of telelucent beings, telelectuals," as well as virtuous and worldly wise "menials."
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas daily August 14, 2013. Subscriptions to KU Press June and July except Saturday, Sunday and Holiday Subscription by mail are $9 a semester or $18 a year outside the country. Student subscriptions are payable out side the country.
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Letters to the editor are welcomed but should be typewritten, double-spaced words. All letters of words are edited and may be condensed according to space limitations and the editor's judgement. All letters of names; signed; KU students must provide their academic standing and hometown; must provide their position; others must provide their address.