UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of the editors.
APRIL 30,1979
Bus increase justified
It seems some members of the Student Senate are a little slow in catching on to things. Things such as an energy crisis and the strong need for improved public transportation.
If the members really did understand those things, it would take little mental application to realize that improvements and expansion of the KU on Wheels bus program is not only a necessary and important step, but a step well worth a $2.50 increase in the student privilege fee.
That increase would meet inflation needs and increased costs and would allow a new bus route to east Lawrence and increased night hours.
A PETITION in the Student Senate calling for those increases, and a $2 increase in the amount charged for a semester bus pass, was passed last week, but not without opposition. And
if that opposition takes root in the Kansas Board of Regents, which must give final approval to the increases, it could be a telling blow to the bus program.
When those benefits are weighed against the $2.50 increase, it should be clear to both the Senate and the Board of Regents that maintaining the KU on Wheels program is of vital importance.
Anything less would be self-
defeating and irresponsible.
Much of the opposition to the fee increase is based on purely selfish reasoning. "I object to paying a large amount of money for something I'm not going to use," argued one student senator.
NEVERTHELESS, it is obvious that the bus program does benefit a large number of students, and the energy-saving potential of mass transportation is well documented.
Burden of U.S. defense should be shared by all
To the editor:
There have been several editorials and letters this semester opposing the draft. Of particular interest is Richard Camr's letter (April 4) stating that the quality of the manuscript was so excellent since 1872. Either Camr was in a most exceptional case, or he wasn't very observant.
Cram seems to think that all a soldier must do is dig foxholes and fill sandbags. That may have been true before World War II. However, the development of strategies based on tanks and helicopters has increased in recent years, such as TOW missiles and laser range finders.
I served in the Army from 1792 to 1976 (as an enlisted man in a signal unit) and saw the quality of both "grunts" and technicians during that time.
Support units also depend on advanced equipment. I need not mention the caliber of machinery used by the Air Force. This equipment must be maintained and operated by technicians who understand electronics and mathematics, not uneducated graduates of Army training courses. It might also add that the training course 'higher' skillful 'college-educated technicians' too good to do manual labor.
I am also disturbed by Cram's ideas as to whom should serve in the Army. Life in the armed forces is mostly distasteful. Unfortunately, the world is such that it is necessary for our security that somebody serve. This unpleasant chore should be shared equally by all segments of our society. We must be disingesting that those who enjoy the best benefits of the American system must shoulder the greatest burden.
One might misread the last paragraph of Cram's letter to imply that all volunteers are kill-crazy war lovers. In fact, that sort of narrative is clearly thrown out of the Army as mentally unstable.
the vast majority of volunteers (and ROTC students, as well) are there out of financial necessity. They don't savor the cause and killing any more than civilans.
There are other considerations favoring reinstatement of the draft. Although the active duty components may be meeting their recruitment quotas, most reserve units are at strength. Most civilians don't realize that most countries can't afford to maintain a full-strength standing army during peacetime. Reserve units are mobilized in the event of war, and the speed with which mobilized often determines the outcome.
If a conventional war broke out, it would take six months to register and draft the first inductees, and another two years to recruit and train. The Warsaw Pact nations have twice as many men and four times as many tanks in their army. These are not large armies in the western USSR that have large armies in the western USSR that
could be at the front within hours and reserves that could be mobilized within days. If a conventional war broke out in Europa, NATO would lose before any additional American troops could be put into action to bring out 'bearers' our reserves back to full strength.
Conscription would help defend our freedom not only from without, but also from within. Undecided volunteers (or, "someone willing to follow or curry out a job") would be much about our democratic form of government. Their loyalities will lie with the Army, not the nation. Draftswes would be more motivated to disobey orders to overthrow the civilian government. Anyone who does so would be any country's military is being most naive.
As one might expect, college students oppose the draft. But it is shameful to see them oppose it. They want to as a facade to hide the real reason for that opposition. Most college kids just don't want to go into the service and seem content to let the sons of less fortunate circumstances
In the past two hundred years, hundreds of thousands of our countrymen have died in defense of our liberty and millions more have worked for poverty wages, thus allowing America to develop into an industrialized nation. Our generation ages more than ever, but more than any other, yet we are the least willing to make any sacrifices ourselves.
America needs citizen soldiers rather than professional soldiers. Tid Techsher
'Rocky Horror' show refreshing with toast
In regard to Bill Winsor's letter warning of the "decendence" of "Rocky Horror," I can't see how the showing of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" could "saturate" the university with "polluting mind rot." Aside from the campus-wide distribution of Today's student and occasional blitzes of the saturation of university is free from any such "saturation."
To the editor:
I, too, have attended "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," and I found both it and the audience to be refreshingly frivolous and irreverent. I suggest that Mr. Wisner and his brother attend the movie at least once more. This time, however, they should be sure to watch, for example, party hats, taisst, squirt guns, and a sense of humor. They'll have much more fun.
Todd Zwahl
Augusta junior
But even after Ford lost the race, he was not able to shake the globe of Nixon, which has been held for 50 years.
Nixon pardon still plaques Ford
When Gerald Ford lost the presidential race to Jimmy Carter in 1978, speculation was that Ford's pardon of Richard M. Nixon in 1974 had hurt him as much as anything.
Ford, however, took steps to rid himself of the ghost last week when he appeared on NBC-TV's "Weekend" show and explained his action. He said he was surprised by the negative reaction to his presentation of Nixon and that he not explaining better why he granted the pardon.
Yet, even if Ford had emphasized that argument in 1976, there still is a question about whether it would have made much difference to the many Americans who supported Mr. Bush's rule and misruffles perpetrated by the Nixon White House. There are, in fact, many
Instead of spending all of his time "working on the domestic and international problems of the president representing 25 percent of the electorate," as was "devoting 25 percent of my time on the legal matters, the tapes, the documents that were in controversy as far as President Nixon was concerned."
Mary Ernst
Americans who still would like to know the truth, truth that only Nixon could have done.
FORD ASTUETELY noted that Nixon's resignation "would have been far, far better accepted if he had been controle, admitted to the American people."
but Nikon never apologized to the American people who he had let down, and because of that many voters never forgave Ford for the pardon.
FORD HAS said that he does not intend to run for the presidency in 1980, a decision obviously related to his defeat in 1976 and to his role as head of the organization that may have helped cause that defeat.
Some even suggested that a pardon deal was made with Nixon before he stepped down.
"Unfortunately, some people still don't believe it, but as long as my conscience is clear I have to accept what others may feel." he said.
“But if circumstances did develop,” he added, “where there was a consensus, she in the spring of 1890, and I felt that I could be country, I would not duck the responsibility.”
Despite a clear conscience about the matter, Fond is seen by some as the villain
in the affair, and to them that affair was one of the truly great crises of the U.S. presidency and had badly deflated the morale of the nation.
However, few Republican leaders are likely to see Ford as being particularly constructive to the party or the country, consensus or no consensus in spring 1880. Ford was an enthusiastic candidate after he failed to beat Carter as an incumbent. That image is hard to shed.
oep hurt that the citizens of this nation had suffered from the Watergate affair. No longer, it seemed, were they willing to trust elected officials, and especially the one official who needed their trust the most—the president.
Ford's decision to pardon Nixon was probably a difficult one to make—the political consequences being what they were.
Ford thought he could restore that trust by devoting all of his time to the "domestic and international problems of the president," and avoiding the Watergate affair and the involvement of Nixon seemed the best way to do that.
However, the most pressing domestic problem in 1974 was the involvement of Nixon and other officials in the Watergate affair. Instead of providing the leadership to guide the American people through the crisis, Ford chose to skirt the issue.
Hindsight is a great thing, but it does not change much of anything. Ford, in looking back at his action, realizes now that he has learned what the anger of the anger toward Nixon and his pardon
A IN SICERE to restore the
confidence of the American people in the
US government.
And the American people, in looking back at Ford's action, realize now that Ford could have helped the nation answer the questions raised by Watergate. And they realize now that that chance will probably never come again.
Futile wars obscure other problems
Last night I didn't sleep very well.
It wasn't because I was sick. And I don't think it had anything to do with the exam I was scheduled to take in the morning but failed to study for. Yesterday I had a full day of classes and felt exhausted. I should have slept like a baby.
But I didn't and I think I know why. After work I ran into a close friend and we began to talk. The conversation began as most. The weather? School? Graduation? Shortly we were joined by two more acquaintances in conversation continued much in the same vein.
I'm not certain how or when, but gradually the conversation shifted to the topic of
Like most little boys, I grew up playing the games of war, in which toy guns fired imaginary bullets and where death lasted only for a moment.
Our backgrounds are different, politically and socially. Yet somehow we had all in some shape or form been touched by that person who spent minutes we shared some of those memories.
I KNEW my father was a soldier by profession, but the full ramifications of his occupation didn't register with me. Even when he left for Vietnam and we said our goodbyes, I don't think it ever dawned on me. I was a chance that I might not see him again.
She said she was in the fourth grade at the time, but could still remember the "weird and strange" feeling that pervaded the atmosphere about the place. Even her playmates could sense there was something odd happening there, although influenced their own lives, she said.
ONE INDIVIDUAL spoke of living in a small Kansas town in a community composed completely of the families of military personnel.
My father was an Army officer, and at the all-black grade school that I attended 1
He went away and he came back, with stories of battles, close calls and fallen comrades. But none of this really mattered to him. That was his back and that was all that mattered.
Another person talked of the senselessness of the war and how he probably would have evaded the draft were he of age at the time.
My own experiences with Vietnam are faint, but with time have grown sharper.
A few years later a new set of orders came. My father was to return to Vietnam.
By now I was in junior high and was beginning to be come attuned to what was happening in Southeast Asia. I remember feeling outraged by the new orders. It just didn't seem right for him to have to go over it, but he must be a mistake. I resented and hooded.
IT WASN'T and the waiting, hoping and
maviing vitil just began anew.
Every day my younger brother and I would check the mailbox to see if there was a letter from our father. If there was then it was sent to me. But when we weren't we just tried not to worry about it.
One day a letter came and the pained expression on my mother's face revealed that the news wasn't good. Our father had been wounded.
Wounded? This was a strange, new and forbidding word. I remembered hearing it used by newsmen on TV but I didn't understand what it meant.
"Is he dead?" my brother asked with a bint of fear in his voice.
"No," mom replied reassuringly, wearing a tight and nervous smile. "He's in the hospital and says not to worry. He'll be coming home soon."
SO IT WAS that I became formally introduced to the subject of war. Because of my youth I didn't quite understand Vietnam, or for that matter, war.
I didn't know who my father and millions of other fathers, husbands, brothers, lovers, nephews, uncles, cousins and others were getting shot and killed. I just couldn't tigre
And now almost 10 years later, after having read numerous books on the subject, the same questions that teased my childish mind remain unanswered. I am still in the
I don't know, it just seems so senseless, so pointless and beyond all reason. The technological achievements that have improved our world and the emphasis we place on life and living would suggest no sound basis for our participation in war.
BUT IT JUST isn't the case. Reports of battles and rumors of wars, nations rising up
against other nations continue to get headlines in the news.
Is this the result of rational human beings or of brutes?
The U.S. and Soviet Union for the past 30 years have lived in a state of fear of one another because each has the potential to remove the other from the face of the earth.
In recent weeks there has been talk of a new SALT agreement with Russia and what it would do to stabilize the growth of nuclear weapons. The intent of the accord is to re-arm the nuclear and firepower of weapons for each nation, and thus reduce the threat of nuclear war.
But I am not convinced that a new agreement will make any significant difference. My own advice is to accord your accord leaves much to be desired, But, quite frankly, I can't say I have much faith in it.
IT JUST seems such a waste. A waste of
time, money and effort. Both countries could simplify things by just agreeing to cease production of nuclear arms and to shift to less nuclear warfare unrealistic, but it would afford the world community the time necessary to work on some of the other more pressing world problems.
Problems such as the energy crisis, widespread hunger, spiraling unemployment and inflation deserve the immediate attention of all rational human beings. But when will this day come? When will we have the time?
When will our world be able to talk about the energy crisis, unemployment and inflation in the past and not the present tense? When will we be able to say that no child has to go to bed hungry? When will we stop being beasts and start being men?
I think I'll try to get some rest now.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
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