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Tuesday, April 22.1975
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinion of the writers.
opinions of the writers.
Profs get low grade
Have you ever written an essay test or term paper only to have it returned to you with scarcely more time than necessary has happened many times to you.
Undoubtedly, there are many reasons for this lack of two-way communication. Perhaps the professor is over-burdened with students and hasn't the time to respond in detail. Perhaps the professor knows little more about the subject than the student.
There is an unfortunate tendency among too many professors to give grades and little else. One wonders if students make papers and exams are in fact read.
Perhaps the professor simply doesn't want to make the effort to
communicate with his students. I suspect this last reason is too often the truth.
Classes would seem far less impersonal to some of us if more professors put more effort into evaluating papers and tests. If more professors showed more interest in their students' work, perhaps more students would show more interest in their classes.
Certainly, many students don't care whether their professors communicate with them or not. Some of us, however, would appreciate more of our professors' time. Some of us aren't here just to be graded. Some of us are here to learn.
Steven Lewis
By ROBERT A. GAVIN
Kyungan Staff Reporter
The agony of da feet ...
The marathon is a 28-mile run that is more easily said than done, I thought as the doctor examined my feet.
An hour earlier, Robert W. Busby had entered the stadium and finished his winning run to Baldwin and back in less than three minutes when he seen his face when he was returning from the halfway point. His eyes wanted that gold watch and engraved plaque so badly that he would spring for it necessary, until he passed out.
For six weeks, between Kansan staff assignments and schoolwork, I trained for the marathon. Superficially, perhaps, but I felt prepared to enter the Kansas Relays.
I couldn't comprehend what form of masochistic machismo propelled a man to run such a distance.
Attempting to regain the form that helped me win two Kansas City league two-mile run championships in high school, Lauren Rose and Robinson Gym became the places to go after classes.
They didn't help much.
Although my legs seemed stronger than they were three long years and many bottles of Coors age, it seemed my feats failed me in the end of the 19th century. I had beenaked and looked to settle all the nonsense.
The race began downtown on Saturday morning. As I eyed my 100 or so competitors on the roof of an office in Massachusetts, I thought that many were fooling themselves. White-haired gentlemen with flabby arms, heavy-set executives, smiling collegians—certainly these jokers couldn't face for such a long distance.
I must have been a fool.
"DAMN THOSE NO-FRILL FLIGHTS!"
Talk of U.S. downfall premature
It was almost 19 years ago when Nikita Khrushchev made his widely heralded challenge to the United States: "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!"
The induction to plan the funeral of Uncle Sam becomes all the more intense when he is sent to Paris to setbacks in the rest of the world. The Southeast Asian Treaty Organization is morbid, and U.S. influence in the Far East seems at its lowest point since the war with Iraq. The Atlantic Treaty Organization is in disrepair, with France a member in name mostly. Greece and Turkey are preoccupied with the war in Portugal is drifting leftward and Italy tottering toward
THIS SOMBER JUDGMENT is given force by the current debacle in Indochina where we have seen not only the stark limitations on the effectiveness of U.S. forces but the sterility of U.S. diplomacy.
Although millions of Americans took him literally and saw the threat of 100-megaton bombs raining down on a city, actually was boasting that in agriculture, industrial development, scientific achievement and diplomatic advances the Soviet Union would soon overtake the United States and become the richest, most respected nation on earth.
KHRUSCHEV'S SPEECH was laughed off as a bit of ludicrous cockiness in 1958. I fear American gufaws would be so comfortably loud dandy by day. Levi Bredenberg to forget detente and make the same brash prediction.
economic and political chaos. Soviet influence is up and U.S. prestige is down in India and the Arab world, with the latter less drastically to what long has been a U.S. energy problem.
This litany of woes could go on
An astounding number of people these days suggest gloomily that the United States has had it as the great world leader and that the entire Western world is in rapid
that most people on earth crave: a large measure of personal freedom. After enough food for survival, liberty is still what mankind cherishes most. Granted that some forces in the United States are forever trying to limit or destroy
By Carl Rowan
Copyright 1975 Field Enterprises, Inc.
freedoms, and some Americans are foolish enough to try to give them away, we we've done pretty well at maintaining freedom of political institutions, freedom of worship and a free press.
At the time Khrushchev made his boast, Europeans were chuckling over the story of the little Communist dog that
drifted from East Berlin to West Berlin, boasting the lush glories of life in the Communist sector.
The challenge to us Americans isn't merely to keep our liberties, but to convince other people that we want them to enjoy what we have-a fear of the threats of freedom to bark new and then. Somehow we must tear our image away from the grasp of dictators, oligarchs and oppressors. The Communists' military successes in Vietnam are no more devastating to American life than stories that South Vietnamese officials tried to hustle $73 million worth of gold bars into Switzerland.
and on, but at the end my conclusion would be the same; talk of the collapse of the United States is grossly premature.
"OH, I LIKE to bark every now and then," replied the dog from East Berlin.
"Well, if life is so luxurious on the Communist side," the West Berlin dog inquired, "why do you sneak away to my sector?"
Harder times may be in store economically and further embarrassments may await us abroad, but I expect we'll come out of it all a better, more influential nation.
But we still have something
I was the only runner who left his sweatset at the outset of the race. The cold temperature and gusty winds will freeze these old geers' limbs before they reach 26th Street, I thought.
At the five-mile mark, I was still waiting for them. At the 10-mile mark, I was still waiting for them. At the pointy point, I forgot about them.
I began my strategically perfect race. I'll keep a slow, steady pace of seven and one hundred miles in distance. The jokers and turkeys will drop back from exhaustion by the time we get home from town. I'll just keep plugging and they'll come back to me.
They weren't such turkeys after all.
My coach and valet, Barney, pampered his subcompact along the distance, stopping to take my sweatsuit, give me a jacket, sunglasses, new socks, new shoes, ice, more dextrose and, of course, the feared counterirritant called Atomic Ball.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
"Great," I said. "I will pass 20 of these jerks in the next couple
miles. Give me some more water."
A few miles later, he yelled,
"How do you feel?"
"My man," I said, "this is the coldest, meanest race I've ever entered."
I limped to the halfway point in one hour and 45 minutes, expecting the brass band to welcome my arrival.
I looked at him for a long time, studying his face.
"One, forty-five, thirty," the timekeeper said. "You're halfway there. How do you feel?"
"It's back in Lawrence," be said.
Eighteen miles gone. I looked up the road and saw a 50-year-old man a quartet-mile ahead in a refreshment stand beyond him.
as though it was the only watering hole left in Dry Gulch. "Water or Gatorade?" the official asked.
Fifteen minutes later, I limped to the refreshment stand
"That's all right, son, you take all you want."
"Both, please."
"My body just told me something," I said. "I'm sorry, but it's time you drove me home."
"What time is it, Barney?"
I thanked him and prepared for the final eight miles. I was unable to move my legs. I knew I'd never finish.
I walked and ran one mile until I spotted Barney's car on the side of the road.
"You have nothing to be sorry about, man," Barney said. "You've just run 20 miles."
I got in the car, took off my shoes and looked at the blood blister on my foot. We drove to the stadium to find a doctor. I watched and thought about those lose legs and who had whipped me cleanly.
"Some mighty cold dudes with visions in their eyes run this race." I said.
"Yeah, I know," Barney said, "but I wouldn't want to be in their shoes right now."
Director asks support for teaching awards
Director, Office of
By PHIL McKNIGHT
It is to the credit of the teaching mission and record of the University of Kansas that the H. Bernard Fink family and the Standard Oil Foundation have taken note of the University's teaching record in this manner. It is equally important that Chancellor Archie R. Dykes thinks that the faculty as a whole, as members merits the kind of recognition provided by his awards. Efforts to increase the importance and value of
Instructional Resources
In a few weeks, awards for
coaching teaching ability will be
given to the faculty.
These awards include the
H. BERNARD Fink Award and
the four Standard Oil of Indiana
Awards In addition for the
fourth grade Chancellor's Teaching Awards,
teaching activities cannot help but be enhanced by his action.
teachers. I am not recommending that we emulate or mimic others, but that we use information about them as part of a process of "know thy teaching self."
Because of the importance attached to the awards, I think we should make every effort to derive as much value from them as possible. I have a suggestion that may help in this regard.
First, I would like to suggest that we do more to publicize the various teaching styles and characteristics of nominees and winners of the awards. In this way we would all know more about our own award. Behind this suggestion is the belief that because there are no absolute qualities that everyone must have to be able to teach anyone and everyone, teachers should be encouraged to develop their own distinctive styles. This entails, in part, the description as well as the recognition of the teaching styles of successful
The recognition of successful performance as a teacher is similar to the recognition of successful performance as a student. In both cases, it seems that the criteria should be specified so that the assessment would be more useful. In this way, we might be in a better position to say, for example, "The A' on his superior achievement as a chemistry student who has a accomplished the following..." similarly, we might be in a better award reflected on his superior ability as a teacher who does the following in her classroom...
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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John Pike
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Craig Stock
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Dennis Ellsworth
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Dave Roeer
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Deborah Arbonnes
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Warped priorities supply KUAC
To the Editor:
Priorities at recent Student Senate funding hearings illustrate a fundamental law of our warped economic system. That is: wealth breeds wealth. The million-dollar KU Athletic Corporation is funded with almost half of our activity fee ($5.90 of $12) or this, $4.51 of $12. The amount to be a guaranteed income for KUAC, to protect it if game attendance dwindles.
As the less-funded student organizations work together to share the leftovers, KUAC's stipend remains safely within the deep freeze of Student Senate Enforcement No. 17. It takes a two-thirds vote of the Senate to chip open that act.
THE ADMINISTRATION has failed to adequately provide for the recruitment needs, as well as other educational needs, of, among others, students. Therefore, support for those groups was undertaken several years ago by a conscientious Student Senate. Now a move is being made to rechallenge this support for and to assist with Sunday afternoon ball games. It would indeed be a sad commentary on student priorities if this rechallenge was actually approved by the Senate. We believe that certain monied powers exerted due pressure on last year's Senate and that this student body would oppose "circus," as opposed to "administration," as appointed by feet. Perhaps the senators should get in touch with student feelings on the matter.
largest groups should get the most money obviously does, and forever will, leave the minority groups denounced as self-serving) out of the green pastures. The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.
S. Dian Lee Lawrence Special Student
Nuclear power To the Editor:
Professor Houck's letter in the April 7 Karsan claiming that tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans have died as a result of nuclear activities is an excellent example of one-sided sensationalism, as he describes "the facts" of Houck's much dispute among reputable scientists, he also completely ignores the other side of the question: the health hazards and property damage avoided by developing nuclear power. The case in use in Houck's book of the new famous "Gompa-Tamlin-Patmilin death formula" which, by using current AEC emission limits, arrives at 32,000 additional cancer deaths a year by 1980. Drs. Gofman and Tamplin's work has been attacked by grounds by creditable scientists, including Dr. Ralph Lape.
The "formula" ignores the possible existence of a threshold for the formation mediating effects of distance on the emissions. Lapp, using the same "formula" but including all possible emissions at only five extra deaths a year
I
I would like to come to the
London Senior
Bible defense To the Editor:
The point is, considerable dispute still exists among the scientific and public communities over the benefits and dangers of nuclear energy in nuclear power and alternative energy sources are far from in yet, and what is needed now is a rational climate in which to examine the argument. Hysterical developments as Houck's and others, can only prejudice the public by creating undue alarm and possibly deprive us of what may be a clean, safe form of energy that can determine this by a measured, monitored development of nuclear power. Chuck Doyle
As to Houch's speculation over the death of Karen Silkwood, it is just that she was considered evident evidence that Silkwood contaminated herself before the car accident in which she was killed, in an attempt to retrieve her Gee plant where she worked.
in 1880. In contrast, Gofman himself estimated that 200,000 people are dying annually from the effects of fossil-fuel burning, which could be reduced or at least held steady in the face of rising demand, by increased reliance on nuclear power (N.Y. Times Magazine, Feb. 7, 1971). Houchk this phase of Godwin's man.
The golf, some school bask
Tl will dout Quig
H W
rescue of Kenneth Kimman, who wrote a letter (April 8 Kansan) of defense of Steven Lewis and his "Biblical balderdash."
In Ken's letter, he made two comments in reference to the Holy Scriptures. The first comment was that "the Bible does have faults, as do many books," and he wrote by fallible people." I agree with Ken in saying that a book written by men can contain fallacies. But the Holy Scriptures, though written by men's hand, is divinely inspired (Tim 3.16). He is been inspired by a perfect Being makes the presence of faults rather improbable.
SECONDLY, KEN SAID "We must overthrow the dictatorship that the Bible has established over millions of countries and philosophies contained in the Bible don't in any way constitute a dictatorship. A dictatorship is something forced upon people. All who believe in God will believe in their own free will."
In a sense, one could say that those millions of people under the "dictatorship" of the Bible were slaves, as hinted by Kinnan—slaves of the only truth and the law of freedom (Rom. 8.1.2). The Bible teaches us to obey the law and to overthrow the only true and lasting freedom there is.
I also might add another thing the Bible teaches: Steven, Ken, Jesus loves you both very much.
David W. Tallent
Aurora, Colo., Junior