Guns needed
A letter to the editor, printed on this page, addresses itself to the "problem" of campus police wearing guns and the efforts of some to have campus traffic and security officers relinquish their weapons.
The KU community lies in close proximity to a large community which set a record this year-108 homicides. Is this reaffirmation of man's basic decency? On the contrary, it shows man's basic need for protection from elements in society that show no decency at all.
The number of homicides in Kansas City, may, to some, show that policemen with guns really provide no deterrant to crime. However, if policemen were weaponless the chance is good the murder rate would have even been much larger.
The letter asserts a critical edge is supplied to men who have no business with guns at all. A question that arises from this statement is: Who, of all people, does have—business carrying a gun?
Moreover, the Kansas City problem is relevant to the KU campus. We live in a society that in the last decade has become more violent, as exemplified in Kansas City. One needs only cite riots in various cities, growing crime rates and the assassinations of three public figures in recent years.
There is little crime and violence at the University of Kansas. Aside from an occasional pot party or parking lot fight, there is little need for an armed police force to invade the campus. There are however, a number of incidents reported each month were a coed has been molested or raped on or near the campus. There is usually no policeman around on these occasions but if he were, how effective would he be without a gun?
In order to preserve the "peace" an officer of the law needs something to give him superiority over those attempting to break that peace. Until the day when men's minds are changed and the "critical edge" is not needed, a policeman needs the one piece of equipment a lawbreaker will respect.
Unfortunately that piece of equipment is a gun. (ATJ)
Teacher shortage causes largest education problem
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — The government said Sunday the nation's No. 1 problem in education was lack of teachers. Reason for the shortage, it said, was ever-expanding educational programs and "teacher dropouts."
The Department of Health, Education and Welfare, in a report on a survey made during the Johnson administration, said the most critical education problem was the recruitment, preparation, retraining and retention of teachers.
The report, compiled by the U.S. Office of Education under its former commissioner, Harold Howe III, conceded that more and more persons are entering the teaching profession, but their numbers are being absorbed by the steadily expanding field of education or siphoned off by better paying jobs.
The report pointed to increased services such as guidance and counseling, creations of two-year community colleges, expanded vocational training and special programs for the handicapped and poor all requiring more teachers.
requiring more teachers. It suggested use of teacher aides to execute routine duties with the teachers themselves operating at various professional levels, such as interns, staff teachers and master teachers.
Such a concept, the report said, "presents a challenge to the present system of teacher education. It suggests . . . that a college education might not be the only route to a teaching career; that a variety of systems, timetables and entry points might be provided for teacher preparation; and that many of our population might contribute to . . . the education of young people."
A student newspaper serving the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mall subscription rates: $6 a semester year. Second class postage paid monthly for publications, garments, advertising offered to all students without regard to color creed or national origin. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.
Anti-guns
To the editor:
Where once the UDK, despite occasional shortcomings, attempted to challenge the students to other avenues of thought, we now languish with an editorial page which has consistently offered us what we already have as a solution to the problem which we no longer want. It is difficult for me to understand why the University authorizes its "policemen" to wear guns.
The psychology of violence which pervades much of modern paranimo is best dealt with, we are told, by supplying the "critical edge" to men who, on the balance of things, have no business with guns at all. To be overly romantic about men and their occasional dispersal of parking tickets is to invert the priorities.
"Happiness is a warm gun" according to the Beatles, and so it was last week when one campus officer fiddled, stroked, and otherwise fondled his holster. I stood there and watched for awhile; I'd never before seen a man play with his "critical edge" in public.
If we are to make an assumption about men, why in God's name can we not reaffirm his basic decency, at least while the sun is up?
Bill Hansen
Readers write
Former Peace Corpsman examines Biafran conflict
By PETE MINER Linguistics Graduate Student
Thursday and Friday of last week the Nigerian Student Union attempted, for the first time on this campus, to publically inform the KU academic community of the little-publicized "other side" of the Nigerian crisis. In my estimation the "America for Peace in Nigeria" symposium was only partially successful in achieving its presumably educational aims. It was certainly successful in that certain fundamental political, economic and, indeed, "humanitarian" implications of the Nigerian-"Biafran" conflict were finally articulated by people, both of the KU faculty and the Nigerian nation, whose opinions do merit much consideration. The symposium was, nevertheless, disappointing in that so few of the concerned citizenry of this university were present (if buttons and car stickers do indicate concern). It is because of this lack of response on the American's part that I feel compelled to speak out.
My feelings about the Nigerian crisis are necessarily prejudiced by the fact that I lived and worked as a teacher in Nigeria for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer prior to and during the war. These credentials certainly don't qualify me as an expert on the current civil war in Nigeria and the events
leading up to it. I do, however, feel that as a result of my stay in Nigeria I gained a certain sensitivity to the varied and complex problems of that country and certainly developed an affection for the Nigerian people which will never leave me.
When I arrived in Nigeria in 1966 after the July coup, I was struck by a sense of urgency and optimism among the people, who for all their aspirations were nevertheless painfully aware of their problems. To recall the phraseology of one of the African speakers at the symposium, Africa is no longer the "Dark Continent but more appropriately the Running Continent," and certainly at the time of my arrival Nigeria was one of the recognized leaders of the emerging African nations. When I left a war-torn Nigeria in 1968, the people still seemed hopeful and were even more impatient to get on with the terribly formidable task of nation-building; their problems were, of course, tragically much greater.
I share the Nigerian's feelings of despair brought about by his war just as I share his optimism. But the war is his problem to solve, mine only to understand. It is because I have been trying to understand it for more than a year now with many of my questions still unanswered that I am alarmed at how easily so many Americans have already made up their minds, bought
their stickers and buttons, made their contributions, signed their petitions, joined their committees, and perhaps eased a few consciences. I've questioned a number of these people who propose to help "Biafra" and have been appalled to find that some of them aren't quite sure where so-called Biafra is. Moreover, most of those who can at least locate "Biafra" inevitably have to profess their ignorance of the nature of the Nigerian conflict. They stand solely on their humanistic concern for the "starving children of Biafra." When so much else is involved, I find this stance, at best, only tenuous.
It is difficult to find fault with one who is genuinely troubled by the knowledge that people are starving in the rebel-held territories of Nigeria. But when he shares his concern with others in the nature of a button on his lapel which entreats, "Keep Biafra Alive," then he has most explicitly, if only in ignorance, recognized the existence of Biafra (something that our State Department has not done to date) and should be intellectually prepared to defend that existence and explain why he has implicitly advocated the division of Nigeria.
If he sends aid to the starving people of "Biafra" in the form of food or money, he should know how this aid is being distributed, to whom it is going, and whether or not, through possible
misappropriation, his aid might in fact be perpetuating the war, which, of course, only results in more bloodshed. If the "Biafran" supporter is indeed in favor of keeping "Biafra" politically viable, then surely he must understand the implications of a "Biafran" victory not only for Nigeria but most of Africa.
but most of Africa. There are certainly other aspects of the Nigerian crisis which must also be carefully considered. We must be concerned that if more people don't start asking intelligent questions about the legitimacy of any kind of American involvement in Nigeria's civil war, then a Life magazine picture of a malnourished Nigerian child and a number of well-intentioned, if not factually thorough, letters to constituent-minded congressmen might result in a dangerous shift of our present posture of neutrality, a shift which could seriously affect our relations with other African nations as well as disrupt the nation-building process in Nigeria.
There is a proverb which suggests that "in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king." If Americans are going to concern themselves with the internal problems of another country, let them do it with their eyes and minds wide open and not be guided solely by media which can be and certainly has been, at times, ill-informed, sensationalistic and, at worst, false.