UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of other sources.
APRIL 17, 1979
Drop the host program
While it was not the sort of news that would rock Strong Hall, the announcement last week of the dermis of the Sunflower girls was a small but encouraging sign that the University of Kansas Athletic Corporation is slowly beginning to recognize the realities of the 1970s, not to mention Title IX.
Bruce Mays, assistant men's athletic director, bore the good news that the Sunflower Girls, a group of female KU students designed to escort athletic recruits about campus and induce them to sign with KU, no longer would exist as before.
UNFORTUNATELY, that announcement was tempered by the news that a similar group would still function at KU, but would involve men as well as women.
"We need a variety of students to show our prospective athletes around the campus," Mays said. "There are
some places girls can't take guys, like into the locker room after a game or to a fraternity."
While that undoubtedly is true, it remains questionable whether hosts or hostesses are needed to lure high school students to KU. The idea of super-hyped hucksters out hawking for college courses on what new repellent at what some prefer to consider an academic institution.
And the host program costs money. Given the questionable value of the program in the first place, it is almost unbelievable that the KUAC would find a place for it in its budget. Despite the fact that much of KUAC's money comes from private sources, it seems likely that there could be more beneficial uses for it.
In fact, the most beneficial thing KU could do would be to end the hosting program entirely.
The verdict read as follows: The Cavalier Daily is guilty as charged for failing to bow to the University of Virginia and refusing to recognize the University Media Board's
The sentencing came immediately after the verdict: Permission to use university records was granted.
Students defend Constitutional right
Such was the fate of the Cavallier Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Pittsburgh, where we were forced to pack clusters of supplies, leave their Newcomb Hall residence and head across Charlottesville to a new location where they hoped to continue publishing.
THE EXPULSION had come after weeks of controversy concerning the Cavalier daily editors' refusal to recognize a Media Board established by the university to oversee student publications and radio media but not the Cavalier Daily had agreed.
The Media Board, established in 1976 by the university's Board of Visitors, comprises 13 students and has the authority to require all materials published require the paper to publish corrections, retractions and letters to the editor. The Board of Visual Arts also students saw that authority as censorship.
The Cavalier Daily only had to be printed away from home for one day. The editors invited students to attend a workshop allow the paper back on campus. But the questions raised by the university actions
Sold the American Civil Liberties Union, several Washington lawyers and Virginia graduates from around the country. Also, some students went to a stratification against the action and there was talk of boycotting classes at the time of the agreement. Before the agreement, the
editors had said they might have gone to court to seek an order restoring the copyright.
HOWEVER, WILLIAM L. Zummer,
chairman of the Board of Visitors, was
content to let the paper stay off campus
indefinitely.
"If they can publish a private newspaper, that's their prerogative," he said. "There wasn't any intention at all to control it. It was intended as proper supervision."
The proper supervision that Zimmer and the Board of Visitors called for, he said, required the Cavalier Daily to "correct ethics" and by a code of journalistic ethics.
The student-run newspaper has been "somewhat irritant in refusing to recognize the authority of the university," Zimmer added.
While Zimmer accurately described the editors as "irritant" in their refusal to respect the university's authority, he was understanding why they so were irritated.
WHAT THE student editors were refusing
to respect was the right of any group—not just the University of Virginia—to dictate what would be taught.
Stephen Retherford', deputy director of the Virginia chapter of the ACLU, said, "There is a First Amendment issue, but it's not clear cut. If the Media Board was set up to harass or intimidate the editorial staff, there may be a First Amendment issue."
Other legal services also came to the aid of the Cavalier Daily, Attorney Mike Simpson of the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press in Washington called the Cavalier Daily "one of the best student newspapers in the country.
"The question of how fully a university can control a student newspaper has not been litigated," Simpson said. "This could be attest case."
INDEED, THE powers that the Media board were given may not have been inducted into the group. Staff very likely would have been intimidated who they chosen to recognize the powers.
And that is just what the student editors did in their agreement with the university, to use the office space and equipment, the technology to recognize the authority of the Media Board—but only until August 30, 1979, at which point the Daily Will be free of university control.
The students said they thought they won. They will have editorial independence next
fall after agreeing to begin payments on the equipment.
But there are still questions left unanswered.
FEW NEWSPAPERS would agree to have such an authority over them if they could avoid it. However, student newspapers, faced with an economic dependency on a university, often face pressures to allow such a board to govern which letters they publish, and how they make corrections and who is to remain on their editorial board.
The Cavalier Daily, in a brave move that could have canceled publication for the first time in the paper's 89-year history, chose to stand up, at least initially, to the authority of Mr. Gates with the board for several months, the Cavalier Daily may have indeed won its battle.
But in rejecting the Media Board's authority, the editors of the Cavalier Day were perhaps揭穿 the Board of Visitors' role in disseminating the nalistic code of ethics—one that stated they would do their best to provide the public information that is free of any outside
And the actions of the Cavalier Daily editors also showed that they, more than anyone else involved, believed in the validity of the rights of freedom of the press as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
South African investments deplorable
To the editor:
The KU Endowment Association presently owns more than $7 million worth of shares in companies that operate face-to-face with the community. The total value is probably considerably higher than $7 million; we have had access thus far to only a partial listing of the Endowment Association's corporate holdings. The KU Endowment Association has many millions of dollars in banks that have made massive loans to the white-dominated South African regime. KU Endowment Association money has indvertently helped racialism has racist economy and a brutal police state.
UNIVERSITY DAILY letters KANSAN
In response to pressures from American campuses, many of the U.S. corporations in South Africa have recently begun to desegregate their factories' restroom facilities and other spaces symbols of racism that have proven embarrassing to them back in the United States. But the basic structure of racist exploitation in these factories remains unaltered. These companies continue to employ African-Americans close to slavery, with their poorly paid workers chained to them by the pass laws and other repressive government edicts. These corporations, in turn, help prop up the South African economy by providing the industrial infrastructure that South Africa needs but cannot erect on its own.
South Africa presents an especially shocking case of exploitation of man by man. Its government's political philosophy is comparable in many respects to Nazism. It has been accused of the majority of the population are inferior beings who are to be ruled over and exploited for the benefit of the master race. it is little wonder that many of the most prominent leaders of South Africa spent billions II in prison as active Nazi supporters.
In South Africa today, millions of Africans have been forced to live in barbed-wire compounds, manhole covers and railway crossings. Any and all resistance, even if entirely peaceable, has been met by imprisonment, exile, and frequently (according to the United Nations) reports by officially sanctioned torture.
Several dozen universities have already decided they can no longer profit from such a viciously exploitative system. They have decided they can no longer in good faith hold stocks in corporations with factories in South Africa or hold deposits in the banks that lend money to the South African states, Massachusetts, Michigan State University, the Ohio Oregon, the University of Illinois, Columbia lengthening list of universities and colleges that have divested. We strongly urge the KU Endowment Association to join them.
Though repression exists in many other countries, the policies of South Africa provide for the systematic destruction of human rights on a particularly massive scale and in an abnormally racist form unique in the world today. The United States formally declared South Africa's aparthat a "Crime Against Humanity."
Yet American corporations participate in this crime. Their activities in South Africa have invariably contributed to and profited from apartheid. All companies there are provided with a black labor force that can be jailed for organizing fraternity groups or restricting their rights as workers. Even more insidiously, the vast black majority of the people must at all times carry passes and if they try resigning from their jobs their passes become invalid, and they consequently risk arrest and enforced banishment to a barren reserve in the deserts. There, without any possibilities they may and their families face slow starvation.
Claude S. Hunter
Chairman, KU Committee
on South Africa
Everybody loses if KU divests holding
To the editor:
In reference to all of the anti-South African investment people, we feel we must put in a word or two for the Endowment Association.
First off, it must be made very clear that we are totally against apartheid, and all types of racial discrimination. The present government in South Africa is unjust and promotes apartheid. We can see that this is true and cannot be denied. But this is not the only way to prevent it. The point is: what to do with KU's $ million investment in South Africa?
The anti-investment people want KU to pull its $7 million out of American business operating in South Africa. For the majority of investors, the situation is insane. There are many people who could care less about any "social responsibility" to the people in South Africa at all, and KU's investment would quickly be on the market by those who desire profit.
The investments in South Africa are basically high-risk and high-return investments, and many people and businesses are kept alive by such investments. So why should KU throw away this high-return investment? So that all the whining ant-investors can sleep better? KU dvigesture is better than acquaintance, accomplish nothing but that. And we will lose a high-return on investment that is hard to find in other corporations.
We will lose a return on investment that produces scholarships, provides loans, builds special-purpose buildings and adds collections to our libraries and museums. So what is the point of divesting? All KU will be lose money, so that the campus “does not matter” (in fact, it maximally responsible) will be happy. And this is not enough reason to divest, to save the least.
And in response to the March 29 letter of Veronica Cruz, we must say that if the "boy" (her words) doesn't like his $84 a day she would not hand it over not handcuffed and chained to home and can leave if he wants. There are many jobless people who live on less than that, and would be more happy to have his job, but they don't need her." She doesn't need him, he needs her.
Ask him where he'll work if she fires him. And ask all the corporate-employees blacks where and what they do when and if the corporations pull out. Nothing! The corporations pull out, and all our little-investors will be happy. Their final goal would be accomplished.
No changes will occur in South Africa when KU pulls its paltry $7 million out. If KU's investment was held in one corporation that promoted apartheid—to whose end KU's money was vital—the story would be different. But this is not the case.
But now, blacks will starve, riot, murder, etc., because there will be no jobs or money to hire them as employees. If this is the result of unequal treatment of everyone loses; from the corporations to KU to the now-employed black. Is economic collapse what the anti-environment people believe?
But of course not! The anti-investors will claim, "This is not what we wanted! We want an end to apartheid, with no other consequences." Unfortunately, that is not the way he be. And the anti-investors will try to keep the only natural end to their brother cause.
they base their arguments on and carry them to their fullest consequences. Since they seem to be unable to see beyond the moment, we felt he had to do it for them.
Perhaps they should check the premises
Doug Gentile
Olathe junior
Tom Wayne
Prairie Village
Governor continues breaking promises
To the editor:
If any of the citizens of Kansas are keeping score, they can put another check mark under the John Carlin he column. For the second time in the governor's short term he has broken another promise to the residents of Kansas. Although he stated he was against it, he still stands in the way of the bill if it were passed by both the House and the Senate. Well, the bill was passed by them both, and he did stand in the way.
His first lie came when he said he was going to control or even stop the rising temperature in those words, but he made the people think he could do this. Soon after Carlin took office his head was made to be unmovable and should be no way to control the utility sales tax.
The point is not whether the death penalty is right or wrong, the point is that Carlin is saying one thing to the public and doing the other. Carlin is the ideal governor for Kansas. His mind is like the weather, it changes day by day.
Why should the residents waste their time going to the polls electing representatives and senators when the governor does not have a voice in the state government. Gov. Carlin desires to return to his dairy farm instead of returning to the governor's office. Perhaps if the governor keeps going at the rate he is now, the Republicans, come together for a single vote. Then the governor's office with a write-in vote.
In the 1976 elections, the Democrats called for their party to unite on both the national and state levels. It seems that they have done that, for both levels seem to be seeing how many promises they can make and then see if they can keep from meeting any of them. They are trying to see how many leaders they can get into only term. But perhaps that is the whole Democratic platform, promise a lot and deliver little, if anything at all.
If Gov. Carlin continues to change his mind, the citizens will be able to exercise their blessful right to change their minds, in a successful process change governers in the next election.
Chad Williams Kingman freshman
Prof's name used without his consent
To the editor:
Some announcements have been done on campus at the University of the Sponsors in Island's lecture. My name was used without my knowledge or consent. I am in no way a sponsor of that
Richard T. DeGeorge professor of philosophy
Radiation suggestive of atomic blasts
By FRED C. ESPLIN N.Y. Times Feature
HERSHEY, Pa.—I have a sense of deja vow about what is happening southwest of me at Three Mile Island. When I was very young and lived 2,200 miles away in southern Utah, something similar happened. The Nevada desert 100 miles south of Cedar Falls, Utah, had a site of atmospheric nuclear tests during the 1959s. Children and parents watched the flashes in the sky and felt the ground tremble. It was a show, close enough to enjoy but far enough to let us feel safe. What we didn't know was that winds carried radioactive particles that settled on our gardens, in our water supplies and on the grass our cattle grazed
We were told that there was no danger. And we believed it. Any birth defects, sickness or death in the years that followed, would have been missed. When the tests went underground, we missed the shows but didn't think much about it. Having to face the leukemia death of a schoolmate was a childhood trauma, so I had to bring my parents or I connected with the tests.
11. **WASN'T** until I read recently about a government report on the unusually high number of migrants.
my homeetown that things began to add up. A Public Health Service study in 1965, never released until this January because it was too soon. The number of an unusually high number of leukemia deaths was occurring among Utah residents exposed to radioactive fallout from atomic reactors.
I think the fallout we experienced endangered all of us, and may have killed some of us. Now we understand the risks of such exposure to radiation, and the kind of incident that happened in southern Utah 30 years ago is unthinkable. But again I find myself, now with children—sons, 5 and 3 years old and 11 months old —on the edge of a disaster. We are assured that there that is no need to panic or to evacuate. We are asked to trust. Can we? Maybe it is a minor incident. Maybe not.
IF LIVING this close to a nuclear power plant is a hazard, I begin to think, maybe I ought to job a elsewhere. But where? When we left Washington, D.C., central Pennsylvania seemed an attractive alternative to the hassle of the city.
These past weeks have taken the edge off the attraction. Where do you go to escape the threat of an environment polluted with nuclear refuse? Farther east, farther west,
The Midwest? Or, do you learn to put up with it as the price for living in an industrial society becoming increasingly dependent on nuclear energy?
What happened at Three Mile Island is a grim reminder that we haven't left behind us the risk of repeating the tragedy in southern Utah. It is still with us. What is to be done? The vast expanses apparently we still do not know as much as we think we do about safety harnessing nuclear power. I also ponder the irony of being at the sites of both of the biggest nuclear accidents to occur in America. Then it's time to look further, as we escaped the residue of the mishap. But these are not issues I expect to resolve in my own mind for a long time.
Fred C. Esplin directs program development for $ \mathbf{f q} $ WITF-TV and WITF-FM, Hershey, Pa.
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