Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Proposed changes at KJHK give faculty an unfair edge
Student Senate, in a show of insight and clearmindedness, has recommended workable, meaningful changes in the KJHK board.
The Senate, after an informal Finance Committee investigation of the station, recommended that two students and the KJHK faculty adviser be added to the board as non-voting members. Currently, the board is made up of three students and three faculty members.
At the core of the changes, the restructuring would give students a fairer say in electing a station manager. The selection process is such that when the student manager is up for re-appointment, he is not allowed to be part of the vote to determine whether he will continue. With his removal, the faculty gains a 3-2 advantage. Faculty can use such leverage to keep a station manager they alone approve of, or remove a manager they alone dislike. Under the proposed changes, the station manager's vote would be assumed by a previously non-voting student.
The committee's proposal represents an assertion of the station's educational purpose. In the midst of struggles between students and faculty concerning format and hiring practices of the student radio station, the station has become a structure for political strife, not education.
Students must be represented on the board to ensure the educational function of KJHK. A fair mixture of students and faculty would work as a system of checks and balances. Students are needed on the board to learn and to fulfill the station's educational purpose; faculty serve to enhance and guide that process. One without the other cannot work.
The Senate's recommendations should be implemented by the station. Only then will KJHK be closer to serving as an educational institution rather than a political battleground.
Grace Hobson for the editorial board
Working for welfare is key to new, improved program
And the poor get poorer
The pattern of the American welfare system has been one of individuals caught in a web of poverty.
After years of wringing its hands, the federal government finally has submitted a plan, to reform the welfare system.
Amazingly enough, the plan includes job training and work requirements. In a two-parent household, one parent will be required to work at least 16 hours a week to receive benefits. In a one-parent household, the parent will have to work, and day care will be provided by the state. Teen-age parents who have not finished high school will be required to finish their educations.
Day care, of course, is the key of the welfare issue. The lack of affordable day care has contributed to the current welfare poverty cycle. Parents who cannot afford day care cannot pursue educational or work opportunities.
To begin paying for the welfare overhaul, the Department of
Agriculture's human resources is using a $3 million year
training and multiple annual lays off last year.
The initiative is called the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training, or JOBS, program. States will risk losing federal assistance money for poor families if they do not participate in the new JOBS plan.
As usual, there are critics of the changes. They say that people will be performing meaningless tasks, instead of productive work. But what could be more meaningless than not working at all? Others say that it will be expensive. Fixing a huge national embarrassment couldn't possibly be cheap. When a nation lets a problem get out of hand, fixing it needs to be a priority.
We've taken the first step, but some will get impatient with the program. Only 20 percent of the welfare caseload will be required to participate in the new training and work program by 1994.
Changing the welfare system will be a slow and discouraging process. However, improving people's lives is worth the effort.
Karen Boring for the editorial board
News staff
Julie Adam ... Editor
Karen Boring ... Managing editor
Jill Kenen ... News editor
Deb Gruver ... Planning editor
James Farquhar ... Editorial editor
Elaine Sung ... Campus editor
Tom Stinson ... Sports editor
Jannine Swiatkowski ... Photo editor
Dave Eames ... Graphics editor
Noel Clerdes ... Art Features editor
Tom Ellis ... General manager
Business staff
Debra Cole ... Business manager
Pam Noe... Retail sales manager
Kevin Moyer ... Campus sales manager
Scott Mager... Nonfederal sales manager
Michelle Garland ... Promotions manager
Brad Lenhart ... Marketing manager
Linda Hop ... Production manager
Derek Martin ... Asst. production manager
Kim Coleman ... Co-op sales manager
Cari Cressler ... Classified manager
Jennifer Harrington ... Sales
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Our thirst for beer shaped history
Ancient ancestors lured out of their caves for for than just knowledge
WASHINGTON — Its origins are lost somewhere in the stone age, long before history was recorded. Anthro pologists can only guess how it happened, and their guesswork goes something like this.
"Once, in the camp of some nomadic hunter-gatherers, there was a supply of wild grain, painstakingly collected for food. Somehow, possibly in a sudden summer rainstorm, a pool of warm water formed where the grain was stored. The water quickly cooled, and the water into a thick, dark liquid. Some adventurous soul among these primitive people sampled the liquid and found that it tasted good."
"Man had discovered beer."
According to the Beer Institute, which represents the nation's brewers in Washington, D.C., it is important that
I often have wished that a single, recurrent theme would make history easily understandable. But the search for that theme seemed never-ending. Until now. Last week, a handsome, leather-colored booklet fanned on my desk. Its title: "Continuing the Great Tradition of Beer."
It is a publication of the Beer Institute, and its insights on history are enlightening. Bud enlightening. Its modesty is apparent from page two, where it describes the discovery of beer led to civilization as we know it.
The same principle that governs secrets governs enlightenments: They're not complete until they've been fully realized.
"According to one prominent anthropologist.
what lured our ancient ancestors out of their caves may not have been a thirst for knowledge, but a thirst for beer. After civilization got rolling, beer was always an important part of it. Noah carried beer on the ark. Sumarian laborers received rations of it. Egyptians made it from barley. Babylonians made it from wheat and Incas made it from corn.
Derek
Schmidt
Staff columnist
"If the Mayflower had been carrying more beer, it might never have landed at Plymouth Rock. When the Pilgrims sailed for America, they hoped to find a place to settle where the farmland would be rich and the climate congenial. Instead, they found themselves struggling with the stony soil and harsh winters of New England. But they were not alone. One Pilgrim wrote, 'We could now not take time for further search ... our virtuals being much spent, especially our beer.'
"George Washington fought the British for independence and Congress for beer. During the Revolutionary War, Washington made sure his troops received a quart of beer each day. As the governor of Virginia, he dwindled. And an irate Washington had to battle with another opponent — the Continental
Congress — in order to have his troops' rations restored."
Why don't we ever study these facts in history class? Imagine the intrigue when a HIST 128 professor explains how manifest destiny was possible because of a shortage of beer in the United States in Mexico in quest of a Corona. And Lincoln fought the South to recapture Confederate breweries.
Maybe Teddy Roosevelt spoke softly because he had a hanger, and Kennedy took us to the brink of destruction in the Cuban Ceral Malt Recall. Nickixon's last remark: "It Miller time."
John Tower was a patriot by Beer Institute standards. Brewers nationwide are launching a lobbying campaign because they are concerned about possible legislation to require beer warning labels, impose excise taxes and get tough with drunk drivers.
Copies of the Beer Institute's insights on world history circulated in congressional offices last week. The beer institute must think that a glossy documentary about the secular historical perspectives will win votes.
But such foolish tactics draw only laughs, not support. Capitol Hill opinion seems uniform: Whoever thought up this campaign must have been drunk.
Derek Schmidt is an Independence junior majoring in journalism. He is in Washington, D.C., on an internship.
English soccer fans can learn from U.S.
a few years ago, a drunken fan at a Minnesota Viking football game threw a whiskey bottle that conked an official. In an outburst of horror, sports columnists across the nation predicted that this was the beginning of the dark ages in American sports.
But it hasn't happened. Though many Americans might be inclined to bash, knife and shoot each other on streets, in subways and school. They've remarkably well behaved at sporting events.
Oh, there are the usual fights and the pouring of beer from the upper deck. And in the neighbor-hood around Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, many strong suppies that fans will wee-wee on their arms.
In general, though, American sports fans are non-violent, probably because most of them are couch potatoes. The injury rate is far greater among the athletes.
But as the latest soccer mayhem shows, one of the riskiest things you can do in England is go for a long time.
When I heard the first news reports that dozens of fans had been crushed and stomped to death at
Although the crime rate there has been going up, it is still well below ours. Random crazies and organized gangs aren't blasting away with their violence, and the nation hasn't overwhelmed the capacity of prison.
Then we have England, where the situation is the exact opposite.
Mike
Royko
Syndicated columnist
one game — the latest figure is 95 — I found it hard to believe.
I knew from past maulings that English soccer team, especially those from Liverpool, are prone to injury.
But in this case, it wasn't even a fight. The 95 who died their lives squeezed, squashed and crushed them.
That seemed incredible until I read what the soccer promoters, the stadium officials, the fans and the law enforcement people had to say about it.
What it seems to boil down to is one insane fact: This is the way the fans want it.
Those who died were jammed into a cheap, standing-room-only section at the end of the field. It's sort of like a giant cage. They are behind a large fence that is tilted toward them.
Obviously, none of those who died wanted to die. But the soccer establishment, including the fans, prefers the conditions that can lead to people being killed.
The fence is there to prevent them from rushing out on the field and rioting, which soccer players use.
An obvious solution would be to tear down those fences and do away with the cheap room-only section. Everyone would be in a seat. If you don't have a ticket for a seat, you stay home and watch it on the telly, as the English say.
An obvious solution? No. One soccer official said: "The public in England demands the right to stand. It is a very traditional thing."
Another solution would be to keep the low-cost landing room only section to remove the high cost section.
But that would put them back to square one. They used to be without fences. So when the standing-room-only fans became drunk and angry enough about something, they rushed the field and held rots. And that's why the fences were erected.
So, with fans insisting on the traditional right to stand, the choice seems to be between riots on one side and support on the other.
The English are known for their respect for tradition, but even tradition can be carried too far. What do they put on those 95 tombstones: for the English Soccer Fans' Right to Stand?"
And this is something for the Wrigley Field neighbors to think about. So far, there is no record of any of you being wee-weed to death.
■ Mike Royko is a syndicated columnist who writes for the Chicago Tribune.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed