KANSAN COMMENT
Students & the slums
By HALINA PAWL
Off-Campus Housing
Committee Co-Chairman
I would like to respond to Mr. Dan Beek's appraisal of the off-campus housing situation. That off-campus housing to the north and east of campus is a slum. I would immediately agree as my article in the fall Jayhawker illustrates.
After two years of investigation into the housing problem, its complexity is emerging. City Hall says it realizes the conditions but that if all of that housing were investigated and much condemned, a great number of students would be left homeless due to the Lawrence housing shortage. The Building Inspector does act on specific individual complaints, however. The university is reluctant to take action because of the inevitable "en loco parentis" issue with the students who live off-campus, partially to escape university living regulations.
In essence, the students living off-campus are the only ones who can directly influence their conditions. As it stands, tenants who inform their landlords of defects in their dwellings have reportedly been rewarded with rent raises. This has understandably made students reluctant to complain and the conditions worsen.
The problem is complex and discouraging but not hopeless. If the students become better
informed on the laws and their rights, they will be better equipped to deal with the situation. Such information is available through the Student Senate Office as well as legal information regarding individual complaints. Law students working through LSCRRC and with the Student Senate Housing Committee are writing a proposal to the State Senate to up-date the present code so tenants will have an option besides simply moving out of a situation they don't like.
Housing conditions are a community affair and no real change can be made without the landlords' contribution. The Housing Committee has been in contact with the Landlord's Association which is interested in correcting bad business practices and standards. They support a written lease which would clarify responsibilities and are trying to find answers to the problem of relocation.
Any "constructive action" suggested is always welcomed. Housing information including a summary of the Lawrence Municipal Minimal Housing Code, Discrimination Ordinance, rental checklist, eviction and noticing procedures, and complaint forms are available in the Student Senate Office, UN 4-3710.
Halina Pawl
'See, I told you I'd take care of it.'
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The letter which appeared in last Wednesday's UDK signed by The University of Kansas Printing Service should have borne the names of its authors. I have received a telephone call from a Printing Service employee who said that he and others at the Printing Service had not seen the letter and it did not, in fact, represent the opinion of all employees. Apologies to those employees who did not support the letter and also to those readers who were wrongly led to believe that the letter represented the entire Printing Service staff.-MS)
hearing voices—
Biafra, blacks, visual arts
To the editor:
Please permit me to pass some comment on Judith Kahane's article which appeared in the UDK of 2nd March, 1970. It appears to me that Kahane and other sympathizers with the authorities of defunct Biafra are still undergoing the tedium of closing their minds to truth and relevance. The issue about Nigeria is not whether U.S. did commit or is committing genocide in or outside U.S. Nixon did accuse Nigeria of genocide but he will probably never concede that U.S. did or is committing genocide anywhere. Now that the attempt to Biafranize Africa suffers an agonizing blow in Nigeria, one wonders whether the Americans who supported Biafra should not direct their principles toward U.S. After all, they can as easily justify the fragmentation of their own country into as many independent republics as there are ethnic affiliations. I am conceding the argument of some people that the analogy of the Nigerian Civil war and the American Civil war is irrelevant or far-fetched.
Britain supplied ammunitions to Nigeria because in the interest of British investment, there was no alternative. Biafra already conceded the petroleum royalty to France despite the fact that Britain carried out the bulk of prospecting and refining. It is clear that France was in Biafra for the same reason Britain was in Nigeria and not because France was that "humanitarian." Russia was also in Nigeria but Russia had no immediate interest in Nigeria as such.
In the Biafran rebellion, Kahane had quite a conglomeration of allies: France, Rhodesia, South Africa, Portugal—they were all there. Many of the Americans that supported Biafra are now yelling at Pompidou for selling jets to Libya as if they are just starting to learn that there is no morals as such in economic imperialism. Krance killed thousands of Algerians because they asked for independence, France is repressing separatist movements within her borders, France is also repressing secessionist movements in Chad; the same France armed Biafra for what
the French government called self - determination. Rhodesia, South Africa, and Portugal (all of them members of the committee to keep Biafra alive) are currently depriving millions of black people the right to even vote.
Was it Ojukwu that committed fratricide or was it Nigeria that committed genocide? Ojukwu boasted that he was going to die fighting for Biafra. He disallowed food and medicine to get to the people because he was pre-occupied with the assertion of a moribund sovereignty. When the time for rhetorics elapsed and the end of the rebellion was in site, Ojukwu ran into hiding with a plane-load of property and a Mercedes car. What a way to die fighting! Then came reports of atrocities by the Nigerian Forces —reports related by people on the Biafran side and written by people who already made up their minds what to report. Parts of the reports may be true, but that simply proves nothing more than that baser propensities are ubiquitous to all human societies, especially in a war.
I sincerely appeal to Kahane and others who think like her not to re-open the wounds of the Nigerian tragedy; that is the way to give the people of former Biafra a chance to test the promise of the Nigerians to welcome the Ibos back into the society. The Federal victory may have damaged the egos of some people. Failure is as natural as winning; it is unsportsmanlike to cry over spilled milk.
Omotoye Olorode
Ogbomosho, Nigeria
graduate student
★ ★ ★
There was a time when the Negro had every right to demand more than he had. At that time, I felt that he deserved it. Then something happened. The situation was no longer shifting but began landsliding. The blacks were beginning to overreact. Over the past ten years this tendency has gained momentum. Today, it has reached a point where a small
To the editor:
minority at this university, which is typical of the national situation, is dictating policy to a weak-spined administration. The administration here has backed down every step of the way, including allowing the vulgarity being printed in the Harambee. The truly outrageous part of this is that, according to a recent issue of the UDK, all the students up here have helped finance this paper with their fees, and yet black students receive it for nothing while non-blacks have to pay an additional fifteen cents. Why do we blind ourselves to discrimination in reverse? The white population have trapped themselves into feeling so guilty about the blacks former slavery, for which at least this student feels no responsibility, that they are not only allowing blacks to discriminate them, but they are discriminating against themselves. This attitude seems most obvious in the Chancellor's office.
If a few people on this campus, especially those whose rights are being trampled on, would try to honestly answer the following questions without using the racist attitudes the BSU continually spews forth, maybe they would realize that they have overshot civil rights.
A. Why does the BSU and other radical black organizations continually expound on moral obligations when, by printing of obscenity (and I do not care whether it is technically obscene or not) they show that they have no moral conscience?
B. Would you like to have your small child who is just learning to read find a loose Harambeen and sharpen his reading skills on it? The Vortex can be included in this category.
C. Can you seriously and responsibly justify why non-black girls must compete in a field of hundreds for a pom pon position while black girls need only compete among ten or twenty? I might add that the original competition drew only four, not ten or twenty.
D. If I or a group of my peers had confiscated half the UDK's on any day, amounting to approximately twelve hundred dollars worth, would we still be allowed to attend this university?
E. Is there any justifiable reason
E. Is there any justifiable reason why non-blacks must adhere strictly to the rules and blacks need not?
F. Is there any way this university can possibly guarantee that ten per cent of the fall freshman class will be black?
G. Is it not a radically racist attitude when positions on any staff are filled according to their color and not their merits?
H. Why is being part of a responsible, sensible, hard-work-ing majority (the establishment) considered so shameful?
Alan L. Moser Shawnee Mission senior
* *
To the editor:
I read today, with some amusement and disbelief, the article concerning the lack of space in visual arts. I was especially interested in the statement attributing the eventual loss of half of any one freshman visual arts class to lack of space.
Really! I assert that visual arts doesn't DESERVE to have more space until something is done to upgrade the faculty and the curricula.
Having previously been a student in visual arts myself, I know from a limited experience that students leave visual arts for many reasons. But the reason I
have heard most often is that students are disgruntled either with the faculty or the curricula. Granting that my experience is limited, I don't know of a single student that left because of lack of space.
There are faculty members in that department that must have been there at least 20 years, which in itself is not bad, but they are teaching their courses the same way they did 20 years ago. The material covered in these courses has become totally irrelevant and completely divergent from what is being done in the field today. One faculty member delivers lectures from a notebook in which the pages are so yellowed, torn, and rotten, that he must turn the pages with great care in order to avoid having the whole thing crumble in his hand.
There are some faculty members who must be teaching because they couldn't make it in their field. If this is not the case, it is the impression they leave. They are not enthused about teaching and are unwilling to give the student any help or advice concerning his work or his career.
Visual arts has been resting on its laurels too long. Even if given more space, I maintain that the department will die of decay from within.
More space indeed! KU would do better to use the money elsewhere.
Jack R. Pittman
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