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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, Feb. 26 1967
Accentuate the Positive
Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe is, in part, charged with the responsibility of educating the youth of Kansas. The task has never been easy and with the increasing crush of students, the job becomes more difficult.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Even if the money were easy to find, major problems would still exist. There is no pat formula to follow in trying to determine what courses should be taught and in what manner. These are just two of the unanswerable questions education leaders constantly seek to answer.
BUT MONEY IS an object. The Chancellor is acutely aware that it is, the Legislature sometimes regards it as an end, and the taxpayers wonder where it goes.
Sympathy can be found for the Chancellor, the legislators, and even the taxpayers. The sympathy is deserved and it is needed.
But it is not a solution. After everyone has had his cry, the problems and the challenges and the responsibilities still remain.
Imagine the frustration of each of the three: The Chancellor has an informed idea of what needs to be done and how to do it; the legislators have a somewhat less informed idea of what needs to be done and worry, rightly, about how to finance the necessities; and finally, the taxpayers want good education but feel they are already overburdened with taxes.
THURSDAY, CHANCELLOR Wescoe voiced his frustration in a speech to a meeting of Kansas educators. He is weary of hearing. "How cheaply can it be done?"
The question he and all other educators are waiting to hear is, "How can it best be done?"
Before this question will be phrased, the decision must be made whether Kansans want good education in light of the expense involved.
If the Eurich Report and the Keller Report on education in Kansas are correct, Kansans want education less than they want to talk about it. It costs nothing—in dollars—to talk.
WHAT HAS resulted is a negative approach which assumes that the taxpayers of Kansas cannot afford or are unwilling to pay the price of excellence in education.
The legislators prefer to talk in terms of what can be done with what we already have. This concern for efficiency is desirable. But if Kansans hope to solve the problems and meet the challenges of education, this basically negative approach of doing-best-with-what-we-have is not going to cut the mustard.
Proposals to raise the needed increase in tax revenue are met with complaints that it can't be done. Recent tax-increase proposals which have met the no-can-do argument were plans to raise the ad valorem tax and create a severance tax.
Perhaps the people who have persisted in saying. "We can't do what you propose," are right. But where does that leave us?
IF WE CAN'T do what has been proposed, what can we do? The legislators are going to have to come up with some answers—however imperfect they might be.
These legislators would be quick to fire a man who worked for them if, when faced with a difficult problem, he threw up his hands, lay down and wailed "I can't do it."
None of this printed talk changes the fact that the problems before the legislators are complex.
But if the answers are going to be found, the legislators will have to change their tune from the "I Can't Do It" blues, to something like "We Did It Before, and We Can Do It Again."
—Terry Murphy
ECM—Its Structure and Aims
By Jerry Musil
When France, vetoes Great Britain's bid to enter the European Common Market over the objections of the other five nations, it effectively halted Britain's attempt to join one of the most successful organizations in the history of Europe.
The Common Market was organized in 1957 when the six members of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) met in Rome and expanded their eight-year-old economic agreement on coal and steel to include all parts of their economies.
SINCE THAT time, the activities of the Common Market have captured world attention. Its successes have caused both the free world and the Communist bloe to consider how best to cope with the economic challenges it poses.
As a unit, the Common Market has achieved a rate of growth never before sustained in the history of Europe. For the past five years the gross national product has been growing at a rate about double that of the United States.
Before the Common Market existed there were 30000 separate tariffs and quotas restricting trade among the six nations. Western European firms served relatively small, tariff-protected markets. The absence of a mass market precluded mass production and led to an expensive misuse of resources.
THE COMMON Market proposes to create a mass market by tearing down the 30,000 barriers and substituting a free trade area. The members agreed to cut tariffs until, by the end of 1969, there would be no internal tariffs. To date, tariffs have been cut 50 per cent, well ahead of the timetable outline in the Treaty of Rome.
Like the United States, each Common Market country had a system of price supports for its chief farm products and limited agricultural imports to protect the farmer.
The agricultural policy, called "variable levies," means that each country can impose a levy on agricultural imports from another Common Market nation sufficient to bring the cost up to the price of the same food produced domestically. The levy is to be decreased each year until it disappears.
THE COMMON Market is also to establish a common external tariff. This tariff is to be the arithmetical average of the tariffs previously imposed by the six countries. The Common Market has already gone one-third of the way toward setting up this external tariff.
This tariff poses a serious challenge to non-member countries. The European market
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could be lost to the United States and other non-member countries because of the lower priced Common Market goods.
A European Social Fund pays part of the cost of retraining and transferring workers to new jobs. A European Investment Bank grants loans to the Common Market's underdeveloped regions, particularly southern Italy.
THE TREATY calls for the free movement of capital and labor across national boundaries. The treaty establishes a number of special organizations to deal with specific problems.
EDITORIAL. DEPARTMENT
Dennis Baistler. Editorial Editor
Supervising the activities of the Common Market are a number of supernational bodies. The executive branch is a nine-man commission which has the day-to-day administrative authority. Its members are entirely free from control by their governments.
But trade is not the only concern of the Common Market. It states that national policies on anti-trust rules, fiscal regulations and tax structures should be brought into harmony.
Acting on the proposals of the commission is a Council of Ministers, which is made up of one representative from each member nation. The decisions of the council are arrived at by simple or qualified majority.
IN A qualified majority the more populous members have more votes than the less populous members. This means that even though a member country may oppose a Common Market proposal, it alone cannot block the action. The admission of a new member, however, requires unanimous approval by the six present members.
"TEST MARKOT OR NOT — IVE HALF A MIND TO MAKE
THAT DOG OF HIS WAIT OUTSIDE!"
BOOK REVIEWS
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, by Ernest Hemingway (Scribner School Edition, $1.50).
This copy of "The Old Man and the Sea" is a particularly good one for the university student—small, compact, hardbacked, with a striking cover and excellent printing. A study guide and biographical sketch of Hemingway are included, along with critical evaluations of this book.
Few books in so short a time have captured the imagination and affections of American readers as has Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." Its brevity accounts for some of its popularity, its simplicity for still more. Many readers as well must have been caught up by the tiny yet epic tale Hemingway is telling.
It was "The Old Man and the Sea" that immediately preceded Hemingway's being awarded the Nobel Prize. Even if it were only a short story (which it may well be), this brief story of an old man, a boy, a big fish, and shark in the Gulf Stream deserves a prize by itself. For more than 10 years it has been part of the literary consciousness of America, and it seems sure to be remembered many years hence.—CMP
Sound and Fury
Death Penalty OK; Hanging's Archaic
The Daily Kansan (Feb. 20, 1963) presented some very enlightening excerpts from "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky along with a personal testimonial (Sound and Fury) by Mr. Patrick M. Prosser on death by capital punishment.
I wonder now if the Kansan will enlighten us further with a detailed account of a brutal murder? For a start we could be given the account of the slaying of an innocent store clerk in an insignificant heldup. We could progressively build up an eyewitness account by a young child with a vivid description of the rape and shotgun slaying of his mother.
I AM CERTAIN that Mr. Prosser could find many GF's who saw buddies killed on the front lines of Korea or perhaps even killed some of the enemy themselves. These GF's could also tell him that they did not like the job they had to do and perhaps even were sickened by it but that if such a job was necessary to preserve their way of life and their loved ones it must be done. So it is with capital punishment—a necessary tool which must be available to society when other deterrents are ineffective.
I have also wondered whether "when the head is cut off it knows for a second after that it has been cut off," or whether hanging results in instantaneous death. Alas, though, I have never been inspired to worry about the matter very long as I doubt whether the convicted murderer gave much thought to the matter when he killed his victim. However, for the benefit of those such as Mr. Prosser who do worry about such matters let me say that I do feel that Kansas is a bit archaic in their form of death penalty as well as other matters.
That capital punishment should exist there is no doubt, but in what form and in what type of criminal cases it should be employed is still debatable.
John S. Mandel Washington, D.C. graduate student