4A
September 14.1994
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Rewording cripples Student Senate resolution
DAVE HULL
DAVE HULL A last minute amendment to the recent community service resolution renders it virtually meaningless.
Last Wednesday, Student Senate passed a resolution that will affect all student organizations receiving funding from Student Senate's unallocated account. In plain English this means any group that goes through Student Senate's budgetary process on a yearly basis.
The resolution is nonbinding. It does not mandate anything. However, the intentions may be to implement this resolution in the form of a bill at some point in the future.
It is titled, "A Resolution To Create The Community Service Initiative." The resolution creates a specific provision for community service. It requests Senate funded organizations to perform one hour of community service for every $100 of funding
received from Student Senate. In other words, if your organization receives $400 from Senate you will be required to perform four hours of community service.
Like nearly every piece of Senate legislation, this resolution was required to go through at least one of Senate's standing committees. These committees are comprised of students and student senators. It is the job of the committee members to discuss and, when necessary, improve legislation before it is sent on to the full Senate.
In the case of the Community Service Initiative, the debate in the University Affairs Committee was heated. Some committee members felt the resolution was equivalent to making
groups work for funding. But at $100 an hour who would complain? After all, the funding for student groups comes out of the pockets of every tuition paying individual It is only fair that groups do something to earn their funding.
Now consider that if a group had three members and was asking for $100 in funding, its community service could be shared by all three members. Each of them would have to work for 20 minutes in exchange for $100 for the group.
Why then did some members of the University Affairs committee so adamantly oppose this legislation? I spoke to a handful of senators to find out what the arguments against the resolution were.
At the knee jerk level the initiative has appeal. But a closer look reveals that this provision places an unnecessary burden on members of the student community who already dedicate a great deal of time performing a community service in virtue of their organizational involvement. The argument is that groups such as Women's Student Union, Hispanic American Leadership Organization et al are, by their very nature, performing a service to the community by offering programs that further cultural awareness.
Some senators claim this provision is a time tax on those most involved in these organizations. The leadership, the dependable members, the ones who put in the most time to begin
with, are going to be the same ones ultimately carrying the weight of community service.
However, during last week's Senate meeting the resolution passed without even an inkling of debate. Why were there no objections to the measure? Perhaps because the resolution was crippled by the University Affairs move to strike lines 59 and 60 that required groups to perform the community service before being eligible to receive funding the following year. Without these lines, the resolution may as well be dead, for even in the form of a binding bill it would accomplish nothing.
Dave Hull is a Wichita senior in history and philosophy.
VIEWPOINT
Continued EPA negligence leaves pesticides unchecked
In the early 1960s, Rachel Carson initiated the modern environmental movement with her book, "Silent Spring." Its attack
Silent Spring on the health risks of DDT and similar pesticides led to a mass of environmental legislation including the
them. The U.S. General Accounting Office predicts the reviews will not be completed until at least 2004.
In terms of cancer risks,
PESTICIDE LAW
The present law lacks a provision for citizen lawsuits against the EPA, allowing the government to escape accountability.
Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act of 1972. However, with pesticide residues in food ranking third among environmental health threats more than a generation later, it remains the weakest and most poorly enforced U.S. environmental law.
This act required that all commercial pesticides be approved for general or restricted use by the EPA. In addition, it mandated the EPA to reevaluate more than 600 active ingredients approved for use before 1972 to determine whether any of them caused cancer, birth defects or other health problems. Although the analysis was to be completed by 1975, the EPA missed the deadline. In 1987, Congress extended it to 1997. By 1989, the EPA had carried out the preliminary assessment of 139 of these chemicals and had completed review of only two of
the EPA ranks pesticides the third most serious environmental health hazard. With frightening
effects of long-term exposure to pesticides being discovered every year, why has the EPA allowed further exposure to hundreds of chemicals with unknown effects on humans?
The federal act of 1972 is the only major environmental law that does not provide for citizen lawsuits against the EPA the essential tool to ensure government compliance.
With the new deadline for reevaluation of all pre1972 chemicals less than three years away, the EPA must act quickly. The National Academy of Sciences claims up to 98 percent of the potential cancer risk from pesticide residues can be eliminated by applying today's stricter standards to those chemicals. If the EPA allows continued exposure to these chemicals, the law should be amended to hold the government liable for its negligence.
ERIC MADDEN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
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CAMERON DEATH
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NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Invasion of Haiti would be unwise
The Clinton administration increased the drumbeat toward a military invasion of Haiti when State and Defense Department officials declared that U.S. troops are going to Haiti.
But before President Clinton commits U.S. forces to an invasion and the loss of lives the operation inevitably will cost, he should get the approval of Congress. And he should spell out for the American people just why such a drastic step is necessary.
Perhaps it is telling that Clinton has sought U.N. approval for "all means necessary" in dealing with Haiti but has not sought the consent of Congress. Perhaps Clinton fears congressional opposition; perhaps he fears being unable to justify a military solution to the satisfaction of Congress.
White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers used a familiar formulation: "It is time to restore democracy to Haiti."
The United States has no vital interest in Haiti, and the international community is not threatened by its instability. So, why invade?
The Rapid City Journal Rapid City, South Dakota
Beware of self-righteous Environs
While enjoying my ride home on the loud, polluted, cyclist menace that we call the bus, I found myself filled with indignation at Chris Stong's column, suggesting that busses and other vehicles not be allowed to drive on campus. Why was I upset?
Well, for starters I found that his solution disregarded several groups of students who might truly need a bus system. What, I ask, does Mr. Stong intend to do for the numerous students on campus who are handicapped? Did it occur to Mr. Stong that some people in wheelchairs cannot "get up the hill independently?" Are he, Amy Trainer and all the wonderful people at Environs going to provide an alternate means of transportation. Or is Mr. Stong advocating that these folks negotiate their wheelchairs through the grass for the sake of the "system."
Exactly, what system is he referring to? Probably, some tree hugging, granola youth group that feels its cause is above the economic concerns of the drivers and other individuals employed by the bus company. No, cleaning the emissions on the buses aren't enough for the true believers. Does Mr. Stong have any idea what these people are supposed to do for a living? Or does he expect
NICOLAS SHUMP
the sense of goodwill that a cleaner campus will bring to be sufficient for food and clothing? Doesn't he realize that many students drive buses to pay for their education? Of course, nothing is more important than a little clean air, right?
Another area that Mr. Stong neglected to consider was the fate of the significant number of commuter students. Where exactly are they supposed to park, downtown? Or is Mr. Stong going to provide a shuttle service for all of the commuters? Or maybe we should all bike 30 miles down old K-10 for the sake of Mother Earth? Give me a break!
Finally, Mr. Stong offers no solution to the problem of night classes. What are students who are taking night classes supposed to do under his system? Does he really expect
people to trudge half-a-mile or more to classes in the dark? I guess the chances of being raped are less important than grass on campus, right Chris?
Of course, what really raised my ire was his blatant disregard for inactivity. And this from a philosophy major? I ask Mr. Stong how he thinks that most philosophers operated? Even a cursory glance at the the history of philosophy will show this was not the case. Does he think that Socrates spent his days "gleaming the cube" around the Athenian agora? Of course not. In fact, he probably spent his days on a stool at the neighborhood pub conducting a symposium(it's Greek for drinking party).
Alright. tired of the French? How about the Germans? Did Nietzsche discover his Zarathustra while testing driving a Porsche 944? I think not. Or how about old Marty Heideger, he may have lived on a mountain, but he sure as hell wasn't climbing it while working on Being and Time.
OK, if you're tired of the Greeks let's look at the French. What was Descartes' famous saying: Cogito ergo sum. That's right, I think therefore I am not I think therefore I ran. Or how about Sartre? He didn't come up with Being and Nothingness by doing steps on the Eiffel Tower, he wrote by sitting in one of those street cafes in Paris, chain-smoking Gauloises and going blind.
Assuming that Mr. Stong has a cursory familiarity with these thinkers and their works, what then would cause him to be so hostile to "people sitting on their backsides." It's quite simple really, his analysis is symptomatic of the shoddy thinking in the environmental movement. Or maybe Chris Stong just got caught behind one too many exhaust systems. Whatever the reason, future attempts to analyze the pollution and traffic problems should substitute sound analysis for their everpresent self-righteousness.
Does Mr. Stong think that Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead figure out their Principia while tearing around the paths of Oxford or Cambridge on a pair of Mongooses. Of course all of these ruminations ignore other traditions such as Zen, which places a premium on nondoing and non-being.
Nicolas Shump is a Lawrence senior majoring in comparative literature.
HUBIE
By Greg Hardin