THE SUMMER SESSION, KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of the editors.
JULY 23.1979
Kennedyism in college
Although politics does not seem to be the most popular topic around the University of Kansas campus these days, President Jimmy Carter's recent television appearance and visit to Kansas City have perhaps generated at least a few arguments.
As candidates enter the race for the nation's highest office, more and more attention will be given to a declared non-candidate. This is somewhat of a unique situation in American politics and some sort of explanation should be attempted early.
But looking beyond the current debates about America's energy problems and the complicated proposals deemed necessary to solve them, KU students might begin thinking about 1980 and the presidential elections; a lot of politicians are.
According to national polls, Ted Kennedy could become president if the election were held today. College students would be a good part of the Massachusetts Senator's supporters. Why?
Senator Kennedy's liberalism doubtless attracts many of this country's younger voters. However, regardless of his political opinions, many voters--young and old--support him for one simple reason: he is a Kennedy.
America has a passion for the Kennedy family. When John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, the nation felt robbed of a great leader whose promise remained unfulfilled. Five years later, as Robert F. Kennedy prepared to continue the American romance, another tragic murder once
again left us feeling empty and searching.
Despite a serious political wound caused by the Chappaquidick accident 10 years ago, Ted Kennedy seems to be getting very near to ending the search. America has to know how the fairy tale ends.
However, there is more to electing a president than simply choosing a respected, even worshipped, name. Students particularly should be aware of how they have been influenced and make an effort to understand the man, not the image.
At KU and college campuses across the country, Kennedy, should he ever really decide to run, must be carefully examined by a rational questioning of his political ideals.
History will look at the Kennedy brothers as a tough elite group who captured the hearts of the country's citizens. Above all, each will be remembered for their determination to face difficult decisions and confrontations.
Ted Kennedy's ultimate decision toward the 1980 presidential election will probably be regarded, no matter what he decides, as the correct choice. His reluctance in the earlier races has not damaged his image certainly.
It is almost with the rights of royalty that the Senator sits back and lets the common, less dynamic politicians struggle for the White House. His growth in popularity is assured.
Hopefully, KU students will be a little less malleable. If and when Ted Kennedy decides to make his move for the presidency, perhaps there will at least be some who, if they choose to vote for him, will do so after studying his politics, not his heritage.
The summer semester charges onward and the news sweeps briefly in front of our class being swallowed. The cunions of tomorrow just ahead. What happened to yesterday?
Summer's end nears
By BRUCE A. WELLS Editorial Writer
News on the domestic scene
A University of Kansas parking violation notice discovered after an almost-missed morning class. An examination of the vehicle revealed that it was on the group I Vehicle. $12.90 after 14 days.
Sitting through endless repeats of M*A*S*H* and holding unfinished homework assignments. The Igo continues his visit in as troops occupy Idi Amin Dada's villa.
Hamburgers at a hamburger heaven with greasy fries and warm Coke. D-Day is celebrated at Normandy as elementary students are accused of poisoning their teacher at Sacramento, Calif. Jack Haley dies following a heart attack.
A day at classes and an afternoon of sunshine. A trip to the park and a dripping icecream candle. Carter calls for solar energy to meet 20 percent of our energy demands by the year 2000 as an ABC reporter is shot dead by a Nicaragua national guardman.
Fun and games in a pool with ham sandwiches and beer and wet cigarettes. But Kennedy is still unsure about the presidency as the shah arrives in Mexico City. Boston Pops conduct Arthur Fiedler dies following a heart attack.
A quick trip to a "Happening in the Park" see artists and spectators in existentialism
"I am part of a movement of people that is trying to say that the object is not what is happening," one craftsman says. "There's too much emphasis on the art object itself. It is the things that happen while it is going on."
It is determined by a congressional study that the use of small amounts of antibiotics can kill certain hormones in animal feed may be hazardous. Israel bombs five Palestinian positions in southern Lebanon six hours after a terrorist attack two in Teiv Al-`a'vir central bus station.
MKAFILA
THU SEP 18, 2015 AT CHANGUNG TRAVEL
A trip for an early evening program about Gurai Mahara]i Jai and the Knowledge he reveals. A short video tape is shown. A record wheat crop is predicted for Kansas farmers as governors are given the power to manage the in-service stations and the FAA continues. Inside a grounded DC10s, James I. Miller of Kansas City, Mo., dies in a dynamite blast.
A quiet date taken to "Escape from Alcatraz" and seen through the forgiving ingredients of too many highballs. Maybe a lucky night. Gold prices go up as dollar loses value and an Associated Press-NBC News are hopeful. Earlier, the Red Cross announces it has run out of food for 150,000 refugees in Managua, Nicaragua.
Badtime once again comes and tired eyes slipped to the dark world. Anastasio Somoa's replacement steps down and 32 in a defunct Kansas City, Mo. mortuary.
Summertime almost over and the fall semester waits with bayonets fixed. On
Struggle against racism continues
While the proportion of black families earning more than $15,000 a year has increased, the proportion of white families with such income is almost twice as great as the proportion of black families. Even so, gains for some black families only make
THE CASE FOR black progress has been made primarily by buttressing anecdotal achievements with two pieces of economic data: first, the significant increase in black unemployment since 2014, second, the evidence that young black and white couples, outside the South, are at virtual parity in initial income. Against this case are the high rates of black unemployment and the relative decline and stagnation and absolute decline, in black family income.
WASHINGTON—In an important sense, the case for substantial progress by blacks in recent years is a creation of neo-conservatives who, radically to the right by the 1960s, are pursuing principles pay. Broadcast and print journalists, receptive to these views, have packaged them for the general public. I inevitably the emphasis of blacks on progress be made has been discounted as a rhetorical propaganda, if not self-interested propaganda.
The impression of substantial positive change is an amalgam of the real development of desegregation in the South and the new image of the ubiquity of blacks in institutional roles, including, one suspects, TV commercials. The just published United States Census report, "The Social and Economic Study of the Black Population of the U.S." shows that black people to cheer about. The volatility of data in such areas as income and poverty demonstrates the precariousness of assumed progress.
By LISLE C. CARTER JR N.Y. Thnes Feature
clearer the extent of income loss for a large number of other black families. Relative family incomes were dubious from the start. In effect, the income of multiple earners in black families was being compared with that of single earners in white families.
THE IMPORTANT THING about the parity point is that it is over 10 years old and that it applies to only about 6 percent of black families.
A statistical analysis done by the Urban Institute some years ago showed that if trends continued in many areas, blacks would never close the zan with whites.
Neither time nor circumstance is an ally. The economy provides small margin for redistribution and in those sectors where jobs have been growing, competition is becoming increasingly intense among blacks, Hispanics, white women and hand-capped and older workers. In sum, the most diverse group of individuals divides over scarcity. Plainly, the situation demands the highest priority from our initiative, our intelligence and our will.
NEO-CONSERVATIVES, however, offer a more comfortable alternative. That is, the concept of the underclass: The notion that there is a group of Americans who demoralized, inadequate and lacking in ability to assemble, collaborate and the broader community of opportunity and mobility; and that, therefore, little can or should be done to improve their chances.
Inevitably, this lower category would be found to consist of a substantial proportion of blacks and brownies. Ironically, the career and income achievements of a significant number of blacks make it easier to slam the gates of opportunity on a much larger number than white people, thus the essentially racist character of that exclusion in the notion of an underclass.
Lisle C. Carter Jr. is president of the District of Columbia, Washington D.C.
Puerto Rico is exploited
To the editor:
I would like to address a few words to Charles Stansifer, professor of Latin American studies, concerning his comments in relation to the July 4 demonstration in support of Puerto Rican independence.
If Professor Stansifer depends upon the traditional U.S. press establishment for his information on Puerto Rico, then it may be understandable that he was "surprised" at the U.S. pressure to have customary for a large segment of the U.S. press to impose self-sensorship on the activities of national liberation movements until such activities make it virtually impossible to ignore them any longer. This is because the movements are viewed as a direct threat to U.S. hegemony. The struggle for Puerto Rican independence has been a continuing process since even before the U.S. intervened in 1898. During recent years, the U.S. policy has grown significantly, with a corresponding increase in support from outside that country.
While U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico may be "sort of symbolic" to Professor Stansfer, it is a bitter reality for the Puerto Rican nation. The United States to further this country's own business interests. And the result of eighty years of exploitation is a nation plagued with poverty and insufficient employment. Space does not ensure a detailed account of the rape of Puerto Rico
by U.S. imperialism. However, if the learned professor would look into the deplorable U.S. record in such areas as education, nutrition, ownership of land and agriculture, or the use of forced sterilization of women), he would see just how real U.S. imperialism can be.
Surely Professor Stansifer was not serious when he said that he did not believe the United States wanted to dominate Puerto Rico. Are we told these eighty years as a past president to do anything to liberate Puerto Rico? Between 1936 and 1950, the U.S. Congress defeated five bills calling for Puerto Rican independence. The brutal repression of the Puerto Rican nongladiistas" during the Thirties, Fortes, and Fittes, is not exactly ancient history.
In 1960, J. Edgar Hoover, in a directive to U.S. agents stated: "I want you to be advised that a more positive effort must be made not only to curtail but to actively disrupt the activities of Puerto Rican nationalists." With this, the F.I.B. launched an investigation into harassment program against the Puerto Rican dependence movement. All available evidence of a nation which does not wish to dominate another nation?
Finally, Professor Stansifer makes the incredible assertion, "At the moment I think the U.S. government would be happy to give Puerto Rico her independence if she asked, but they are not asking for it." After decades of attempting, by every conceivable means, to destroy the island of Puerto Rico, Professor Stansifer believe that the U.S. government is eager to accept an independent Puerto Rico—free of U.S. controls?
Of course, the U.S. might consider it advantageous at a certain time to have a less formal neo-imperialist relationship with Puerto Rico. One in which a ruling elite within that nation maintains its sub-majority in the U.S., Professor Stansfer does not mean to imply that the U.S. would be willing to accept the right of the Puerto Rican people to solve their own problems in their own way, with their own political and economic systems. If they indeed be a monumental change in the Latin American policy of the United States.
As far as the people asking for their independence is concerned, in all probability they will have to do so in the only way in which it can be achieved free of the U.S. control—the same way in which the people of Nicaragua are "asking" for their freedom from a government, trained, installed and maintained by the United States.
Cartoon demeans women's rights
James L. Hamon
Coalition for Puerto Rican Independence
On July 16, an editorial cartoon appeared in the Kansan concerning the new Susan B. Anthony dollar. I found this cartoon intolerable and to the feminist movement in particular.
To the editor:
The cartoon also showed the female lashing out at the male for creating the coin as "another snivelling attempt to reestablish your wanniness sense of male superiority." Again this statement is ridiculous. We are not looking for nonexistent argu-
In the cartoon, a female, looking suspiciously like Gloria Steinberg, was portrayed as being outraged by the fact that Susan B. Johnson had given her a coin. This is ridiculous. Presidents have
always appeared on one side only; if doubt of anyone expected a coin with a female face to depart from that particular tradition. In the latter recognition, but for equal recognition.
Stouffer needs snow removal
ments. There are plenty of genuine ones. I certainly think the Kansas editorial staff could have used better judgment in selecting this particular cartoon for reprinting. Sexism has no place in a newspaper—nor anywhere else.
While reading an article entitled "328 Petition KIT for Sidewalks," in the July 12 edition of the Kansas, I was surprised to see a comment made by maintenance department head Don McConnell, stating that the area were regularly cleared during the winter.
To the editor:
I do not live in Stouffer Place, but while helping a friend move in there last January, I was shocked at the lack of snow removal that that area receives. For several days after the snow storms of early January, the area was a complete mess. Very little, if any
I have heard comments to the effect that coins are reserved for presidents and since there have been no female presidents, women should not rate a place on U.S. coins, but that there have been no female presidents or Supreme Court justices. Until recently, opportunities to obtain the necessary education and experience to run for any political office were not available to most women. The House and the Senate today still have a handful of women, although the president is $15 percent female. Are we then to deny the woman further by disallowing her a place beside her country's leaders?
It was quite obvious to me that married student housing is low on the list of priorities. Even when the crews came in to make a house, they had to be made, and the streets were already ice over from traffic. Stouffer Place has apparently never received much attention from maintenance personnel; it' good to know some people are starting to gripe about it.
nose removal was done on the roads, and
nose was done on most of the paths.
John E. Bucher
Lawrence graduate student
One last comment: how interesting to note that, even when one woman finally does a place at home the leaders of her counterpart reduced in size to that of an oversized quarter.
Robyn E. Kahn
Program Assistant
Women's Studies Program
By ROBERT A. DAUSCH N.Y. Times Feature
Nuclear energy needs energetic study
BALTIMOE-Being a concerned citizen, I found it necessary to have a reasonably well informed opinion about nuclear energy.
The only problem is that I haven't got several years free time to go to some technological institute to be as well informed as I should be to make a well-structured plan, but I could venture on the feasibility or safety of nuclear energy would be worthless.
But I'm not alone. I'd wager that at least 95 percent of the people in this country are hopelessly ignorant of the most basic facts about nuclear energy, though, of course, they have never, to my knowledge, kept a person from having very strong opinions.
I don't know enough about nuclear energy to say much about it, but I do know this: As an American citizen, I have the undeniable right to participate in the decisions that will shape my destiny and that of my country.
Ignorant as I am, how can I participate in our national policy on nuclear energy? And, for that matter, how can our elected officials participate in these decisions?
I ALSO STRONGLY suspect that there are precious few nuclear experts who really know all they need to know to make effective decisions: certainly no one seemed to understand what was happening at Three Mile Island.
The problem with so complex a subject as nuclear energy is that if we are to have intelligent and truly well-informed decisions made, the public and even the Congress will have to entrust themselves to a small band of technocrats tucked away in underground laboratories and byoles and in the dark recesses of the energy companies' boards of directors.
It isn't wise for a nation to entrust its care to a small group of men who are largely insulated from the society, and not visible to the public in such a way that they would have to take responsibility for their actions, as elected officials must.
As the world's oil supply dwindles, and America looks for alternate supplies of energy, it would be wise to consider not only the technological implications of an energy resource, but the political implications and economic implications as well.
To the editor:
Skylab brings fallout
You bloody Yanks did help Australia win world War II, but this doesn't give you the courage to play.
Robert A. Dausch is a science fiction writer.
THERE IS EVEN another danger inherent in the complexity of nuclear power. It takes a lot of technology and a lot of money to build an atomic reactor, and it requires a very powerful computer on this source of energy, then a small group of large capital investors would be able to keep small business out of the energy market, and have an ominous threat of nuclear war, so make the current exploitation of the oil companies look like the Little Sisters of the Poor, and the only way the public could be protected from unbelievable price gouging would be an incredible glut of government funding that would pose a serious threat to free enterprise.
John B. Bremner
Professor of Journalism
Anthony Redwood
Associate Professor of Business
THE SUMMER SESSION
KANSAN
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