UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kanan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of
MARCH 29,1979
Search violates rights
A recent dispute between residents of Joseph R. Pearson Hall and the directors of the hall concerning room searches conducted during spring break has revealed a disturbing fact.
Earlier this week they threatened disciplinary action against students occupying those rooms.
During the break, several directors of the hall entered rooms searching for violations in safety codes. They were able to find one of them and street signs in some of the rooms.
The hall directors violated the University's Students Rights and Responsibilities Code, which is part of the residence hall contract, by entering rooms without previous announcement.
THE CODE clearly states that 24-hour notice must be given before a search and that students have the same rights to privacy that are guaranteed all citizens.
ret these protections were ignored. Although there is obviously room for interpretation in the contract, the residence hall officials have in this
case bent the contract to meet their own whims.
In defense of the searches, Richard Frolick, director of JRP, said, "It's been done in residence halls in the last six years. It's done here in JRP every time we close the hall."
BUT THE fact that it has been done in the past does not make it right. Room searches are usually preceded by notification to the residents that a search is coming. That was not done this time.
Regardless of whether the searches are legal, they still remain a questionable ethical practice.
As one resident told the hall director, "No matter how you try to get around it, you still have no right to violate our rights."
Despite that violation, the hall director has threatened punishment against those who have received warnings before. But to carry out that threat on the basis of a questionable search would be unfair and unethical.
The right to privacy should supersede any effort to punish the offending students.
Mr. Carter: America won't listen to warning
Dear Mr. President:
Congratulations on your recent triumph in the Middle East. Once again you put your political life on the line in the hope of winning a state that you have succeeded. It takes courage and fortitude to be willing to put yourself in such a do-or-die situation, particularly when the outcome is uncertain, sometimes stubborn and unreasonable. For this, sir, you deserve to win a Nobel Peace prize. Incidentally, the latest poll had you up a few points in popularity and this should not detract from your experience.
But sir, there is something else I'd like to take up with you for a moment. There was another poll released last week and, well, it wasn't too good.
This particular poll measured the feelings of Americans on energy usage and conservation. The findings, quite frankly, bordered on depressing.
ACCORDING TO that poll, more than two-thirds of the American public think reports of oil and gasoline shortages are a hoax to get consumers to pay more for fuel.
Almost one-fifth of the 1,600 people surveyed said they had not even tried to cut energy use. And more than one-fourth of those questioned said that if gasoline prices went up to $1 a gallon, they would not drive their cars less.
Sir, these are the same people you went to a few months ago after the Iranian revolution and asked that they turn down their thermostats, drive less and take steps to conserve our precious energy resources. If it doesn't look as if it were listening.
I'm told that the United States uses amps approved by the Department of a day by the Treasury. Department that by resetting hot thermostats just then, you can save the supply of $5,000 barrels of oil.
REDUCING THE SPEED limit from 55 to 50 mph could save 250,000 barrels of waste. Wider use of car pools—increasing the number of passengers from 1.3 to 2.3 passengers—could cut consumption by the equivalent of 780,000 barrels a day.
Compared to the 21 million barrels we currently use daily, the Treasury department's conservation measures may not save us as much as saves to most people, is a good star.
The problem, air, isiring to convince our nation of the importance of energy conservation. Much of the nation has a very long and trying winter last year and we are beginning to give up willingly to give up those three extra degrees.
And you know, sir, how Americans feel about the current 55 mph speed limit. Any proposal calling for further reduction in highway speed would cause a massive public uproar.
AS FOR increasing the number of passengers in our cars, well, you also can forget about this happening at any significant level. Most people regard their cars as an extension of their private vehicle would prefer not to have to share them.
I'm really at a loss for suggestions as to how you can convey the seriousness of our situation, and I remember the stunt the oil companies pulled in 1973 and that is the source of part of the fuel.
Energy Secretary James Schlesinger says that since the appeals aren't working, mandatory measures such as rationing may have to be implemented.
Personally, I've never cared very much for Schlesinger or his policies, but this time he may be right. The thought of rationing is distasteful to me, but if that is what is the situation, then so be it. Something has to be done.
A concerned citizen
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Cooperation key to 'reinventing' auto
The majority of Americans still believe that the gasoline shortage is just a conspiracy conjured up by the oil companies as an excuse to charge ever-increasing prices.
Perhaps many of them will still cling to that misconception even as they wait in line for their gas-ration coupons, which are sold at the mall and are an American scene sometime in the near future.
Also, American automobile industry also has the desperate cling to the hope that the oil shop will be passing nightmare and that their love affair with gas-quizzing monsters will never have
AFTER INITIALY scouting at Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams' charge to them to achieve even greater gas mileage by doing "nothing less than reinventing the automobile" and "new automakers have changed the challenge and expressed optimism that it can be done.
But several of those automobile industry officials have awakened to the harsh reality of the energy shortage and to the fact that the current state of the nation direction their industry takes in the future.
"The fuel issue is a national problem, and has to be get at," says Henry Ford II, who heads the company.
than Henry Ford I did when he first tried to
set a Model A rolling some 80 years ago.
Ford and other automobile companies have said, however, that it will take more time for the automakers to develop their industry. It will, they say, take the combined effort of the industry and the Ford company.
Last week, such an effort was begun as two Congressional committees conducted hearings on the theme of redesigning the car. Several key automobile industry executives praised the suggestion as one of the best things to come along in some time.
SEVERAL MEMBERS of Congress have supported Adams' suggestion that the federal government put hundreds of millions of dollars into new, basic research toward "reinventing" the automobile through joint government-industry projects. But the automakers do not like the term "reinvent," and prefer, in its place, an economy.
economy along with relaxation of federal laws and regulations.
S. I. Terry, a Chrysler Corp. vice president, praised Adams' proposal that the government share the burden of expensive advanced research in the area.
Wilson W. Sick Jr., a vice president to American Motorists, said that the idea of "calling attention now to the transportation needs beyond the 1980-45 period" was that he wanted to relax the constraints that preclude industrywide "cooperation" in basic research efforts. His comments referred to a government consent decree in which the industry is barred from working jointly in the same areas. That law will expire later this year.
ALLOWING INDUSTRYWIDE cooperation on research, Sick told the Congressional committee, "would be the most productive experiment in a way to develop new technotools quickly."
Such a move would, in fact, likely work better in developing an automobile that could meet the government's—especially Adams"—demands.
cooperation is the key to finding a solution to the energy problem.
But what is needed most of all, and which has been most lacking in past attempts to get it right, are the problems.
That cooperation would have to mean less concern by the auto industry about the profit loss they may incur from a massive research effort and an easing of government regulations concerning cooperation on such a project.
Something very close to Adams' reinvention of the auto idea is what is needed. He says that he would like to see a fleet of cars that average 50 miles a year by 1895.
But to bring about such a drastic change would require not only a change in thinking on the part of the government and the auto industry, but also in the public's attitude toward it. The status symbol of the will have to be the Cadillac EI Dorado and not the Cadilla El Dorado.
PHILIP CALDWELL. Ford vice chairman and president, said, "It's not enough to solve the technological piece of the puzzle. We've also got to satisfy the customer."
If the industry can solve the technological end of the puzzle, the customers will very likely do so.
JAMES SCHLESINGER. SECRETARY OF ENERGY
With the exception, that is, of those Americans who feel that gasoline is taken from an endless reservoir. But then, it will be those car owners that will be left sitting for hours in filling station lines to fill their guzzlers at one dollar a gallon.
Investments bolster S. African regime
To the editor:
In a recent letter, Richard Burkard wrote in favor of the Endowment Association's having the right to invest wherever it pleases, including in corporations with operations in South Africa. Rather than considering what rights are or are not permitted under the Association, I'll instead discuss the effect that U.S. investment has in South Africa.
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN letters
While admitting that U.S investment has helped the South African government to buy bigger tanks and more guns, some might still claim that corporations can improve
... serve to entrench the position of the minority regime."
The South African subsidiaries of U.S. corporations have not had a positive influence on the nature of its presence been neutral. Actually, U.S. investment has bolstered the minority government and has helped to secure for the U.S. position from which it can subigate the black market.
Stated in the words of a U.S. Senate subcommittee report, "The net effect of American investment has been to strengthen the economic and military self-sufficiency of South Africa's apartheid regime." The South Africans themselves give a similar negative assessment of investment. According to Steve Biko, "Hawaii" was the first to
This minority government, which is to be politely asked to reform itself, is the same government that, by law, buried blacks for many years. Black people poverty wages they now receive. When high school students protested against the government, this same minority government, supposedly having a potential for future greatness, killed more than 300 of these students.
the conditions for blacks. Proponents of this view seem to claim that corporations can help blacks by making plea suggestions to the government's intransigent Afrikaan bureaucracy that the black majority be less completely subduated.
In the past, U.S. corporations have had little effect beyond strengthening the minority government. As for the future, the likelihood that corporations will have a more progressive influence is as small as that of non-majority executives to South African subsidiaries, vigorously antagonize the South African government and sacrifice their profits.
Medicine Lodge junior
Mark Cline
STATE U.
BY T. M. ASLA
This is the system of employment inside the homes of U.S. executives in South Africa. It is an extension of the bigcity and smallcity systems in the country, employee relations in the factories these executives run during the day. The U.S. presence in South Africa is a disgrace to our nation and the Endowment Association is working to bolster the role of American businessmen there.
Veronica Cruz
In the pamphlet, the president of the American Women's Club boasts that she pays her "boy" (her words) only $86 a week to attend a club meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, $193 in the rock-bottom minimum at which a family can survive. Warning against excessive generosity, the pamphlet says, "If you give three dollars a hot day, he'll want three the next day."
Bigotry in S. Africa evident in pamphlet
Veronica Cruz New York, N.Y. junior
To the editor:
A recent item in the national press seemed to undermine the KU Endowment Association's contention that U.S. corporations in South Africa contribute to the material well-being of the black population there.
The news story concerned a pamphlet written by the American Women's Club of Johannesburg and distributed by the U.S. consulate in South Africa. The pamphlet's purpose is to "prevent Americans from running away of the system of apar-
Senate fails to meet grad student needs
To the editor:
In a country renowned for its freedom, approximately 20 percent of the KU student body is disfranchised in the Student Senate. I refer, of course, to the graduate students. This comes about because both graduate students and undergraduates participate in the Student Senate proportional to their numbers in the student body.
this would be fine if they made up a single, relatively cohesive group, with students who have distinctly different interests, needs and problems than do undergraduates. Graduate students are more complex and need of the undergraduates, because they
all were undergraduates themselves, at one time
The converse is not true, however, because undergraduates have never been graduate students. In addition, most people tend to act in their own self-interest, and this makes it quite easy for them. This is quite simple. On issues in which graduate students and undergraduates are not split into two major groups, one containing most of the graduate students and another consisting of a few well. But issues which separate graduates from undergraduates result in the 24 graduate student senators being outvoted and the total disenfranchisement of a district group of students who should never be lemmed with the rest in the first place!
For example, as a result of the recent Senate meeting, there is no graduate repressent for the State Department government. Disenfranchised! In effect, undergraduates, not graduates, have final control over every bit of the $11.10 activity fee which each full-time graduate receives.
In fact, by amending the Student Senate Revenue Code, the undergraduate student senators could completely eliminate funerals and burial Council, which is under Senate jurisdiction.
Certain undergraduate senators have tried recently to have the funding of the Graduate Student Council drastically reduced.
What I propose is an autonomous Graduate Student Senate, which would be parallel to the undergraduate one. Most students in the graduate students will value of value to graduate students as well as undergraduates, and the new Graduate Student Senate would fund them proportionally (i.e. pay 20 percent of the cost as a percentage) without direct graduate student consent).
The remainder of the graduate student activity fee money would be spent by the Graduate Student Senate and used in the best interests of the graduate students, as it is currently spent by the Student Senate and the best interests of the undergraduates.
David C. Merkel
Blacksburg. Va. graduate student