4
University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Tuesday, March 4, 1986
The Jayhawk Defense Initiative, which proposes a giant underground fallout shelter for the University, is either a poor joke or a publicity stunt. Either way, it doesn't promote cause of nuclear arms control.
When former President Jimmy Carter said his daughter was worried about nuclear war, everybody snickered. The horrors of nuclear war were too much for people to deal with, so they pushed their fears to the darkest recesses of their minds.
Stunts miss the mark
The Great Peace March that is heading from California to Washington is another publicity stunt that is about five years too late.
But in the five years since, there's been a swing in public opinion toward a realization that nuclear war cannot be won or survived.
Scientists such as Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich have said that all life would be endangered in the nuclear winter after even a limited nuclear exchange.
A series of movies, including "The Day After" and "Testament," brought home the horrors of living through such an exchange.
The Stouffer Neighborhood Association may not know art, but it knows what it likes. And what it doesn't like.
The time for symbolic actions such as proposing unreasonable nuclear fallout shelters or giant peace marches has passed. People have been convinced. The peace movement now needs to focus on the decision makers and their policies.
It doesn't like having the trash dumpsters, which dot the family housing complex, painted to look like New York subways — at least not without its permission.
The most likely scenario leading to an exchange of nuclear weapons is the escalation of a local conflict into a global clash of the superpowers. This suggests that our focus should extend beyond nuclear weapons to conventional wars. We should be deeply concerned about Reagan's aggressive stance in Central America and be wary of interpreting world events in terms of Cold War politics.
The existence of huge arsenals of nuclear weapons is a genuine cause for concern. But only by pressuring those in power will we achieve results.
So SNA voted at a recent meeting against the undemocratic attempt to foist modern art on the neighborhood's parking lots and decided to have the dumpsters returned to their original institutional brown.
Taking a trashy stand
Although students, in principle, should be consulted on the decisions that affect their environment as well as those that touch their educations, brightly painted dumpsters hardly is the issue on which to make a stand.
It's difficult to understand the association's complaint, however. The objection wasn't to the artist's method, style or talent, the association chairman said, but only that the residents weren't consulted.
In fact, the chairman said, had the office of student housing asked, the residents probably would have agreed to the artwork.
But the city does not take a poll or conduct a referendum when it decides to change the color of their dumpsters. No one would have objected if all the dumpsters had been painted residence-hall turquoise or sea-foam green.
The gaudy colors should be left alone, if only as a reminder that some expression should remain beyond the reach of majority rule.
Pornography protected
The court's ruling was a necessary move to protect freedom of all kinds of speech.
Two recent Supreme Court rulings have reaffirmed that freedom of expression includes pornography.
Last week the Supreme Court knocked down an Indianapolis statute that defined pornography as discrimination against women. The court ruled that the law violated the right to free speech and was merely "thought control."
The Indianapolis law described pornography as discrimination against women that placed them in subordinate roles enjoying pain or humiliation.
The ruling that obscenity is not constitutionally protected still holds, however. The court decided in 1973 that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment. It said that to be obscene, "a publication . . . must contain offentively
sive depictions or descriptions of specified sexual conduct, and on the whole have no serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."
The other ruling on pornography last week stated that communities could restrict the location of adult movie theaters to sites away from homes, schools, churches and parks.
Justice William Rehquist said the ruling was aimed at preserving "the quality of life." Justice William Brennan said it was censorship.
Because this ruling simply restricts pornography to boundaries in the community, it doesn't violate freedom of speech.
In these two rulings, the court has taken careful steps to protect a most valued constitutional protection freedom of speech - while allowing communities to preserve their neighborhoods.
News staff
Michael Totty ... Editor
Lauretta McMillen ... Managing editor
Chris Barber ... Editorial editor
Cindy McCurry ... Campaign editor
David Giles ... Sports editor
Brice Waddill ... Photo editor
Susanne Shaw ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Brett McCabe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Business manager
David Nixon . . . . . . . . . . . . Retail sales manager
Jim Williamson . . . . . . . . . . . . Campus manager
Lori Eckart . . . . . . . . . . . . Classified manager
Caroline Imes . . . . . . . . . Production manager
Poulton Lea . . . . . . . . . . . . National manager
John Oberzan . . . . . . Sales and marketing adviser
Letters should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words and should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, include class and hometown, or faculty or staff position.
will be photographed. The Kansas megaplex's right to recollect or edit letters and guest shots. They can
writf the onlinesshit: indicate cases and homelinks; or faculty to an alt position.
Guest letters are typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The letter is to be honorable.
The Kansan reserves the right to reject or edit letters and guest shots. They can be mailed or brought to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Staffer-Flint Hall.
The University Daily Kanaan (USPS 690-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Flint Hall, Lawton, Kan. 60045, daily during the regular school year, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and finals periods, and on Wednesday during the summer session. Second-class postage paid at the University Post Office, New York, NY, and student subscriptions in Douglass County and $18 for six months and $35 a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $3 and are paid through the student activity fee.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the University Daily Kansan, 118
Stauffer-Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 66045.
Cafeteria boycott had positive effects
Change
It comes in many forms — fresh green lettuce at the salad bar, a long line of supposedly "naive" residents eagerly awaiting to taste the teriyaki steak, a spoon to actually use to eat your dessert with, a smile from a kitchen employee or the drone of conversations ranging from Ferdinand Marcos to social philderings accompanied by music wafting from the dish room.
Change has occurred at Hashinger Residence Center for the Creative Arts despite a lot of rhetoric from self-appointed critics and second guessers. We, the people of Hashinger — the majority — that is, wish to clear the air in hopes that much reader confusion might be dispelled.
We, at Hashinger, had a legitimate problem involving our food and the atmosphere in which we were given to consume it. The issue has been resolved, aided by the empathetic ears of Ken Stoner and Lenoir Eckdahl. However, the price exacted was one that involved the utter nitpicking of the
Herb Vergara Guest columnist
techniques used to elicit a response from the administration.
The irony of all this "expert" second guessing was that some of the damning evidence provided was itself misinformation and conjecture. Through all of this, a certain amount of suppressed tension prevailed. However, the majority gained its final result. Did the second guessers attain theirs?
The irony of all this "expert" second-guessing was that some of the damning evidence provided was itself misinformation and conjecture.
Their criticism reminds me of dogs barking. Little dogs tend to bark a whole lot, but when it comes down to a nity-gritty confronta-
They had been given sufficient notice of all meetings with housing officials, yet they failed to show at the first crucial meeting before the food demonstration occurred. Was it a lack of time, or a general feel
The ringleaders actually did some research on their own in order to get the entire scheme of things. Did the second guessers even know the real issue?
ing of apathy that was responsible for their failure to represent themselves at that first meeting?
almost a whole octet of winning.
In other words, here's your proverbial dog with a big bark but no bite.
Fortunately, as in any other living arrangements, Hashinger is full of responsible, nonviolent and
reasonable students who just like to take care of themselves. They had an issue to be addressed and certain representatives took on the responsibility of insuring some basic consumer rights.
tion, they usually scamper off amidst a whole bunch of whining.
Granted, the initial push might have been a little rough around the edges, but no one was claiming professionalism. A reopening of communication channels between Stoner, Ekdahl and the students really was the hero in the resolution of the problems.
I now think that the administration can be pro-student, whereas, before I was unsure.
Thus, therefore, heretofore, a big "thank you for listening" to Stoner and Ekdahl, and an apology for stepping on anyone's toes. In the end, just about all were happy or rather, relieved.
One thing: If you have a gripe, act. Actions get results; results are remembered.
Herb Vergara is a Prairie Village junior majoring in psychology and business.
The demise of the Marcos mandate is nothing if not the result of a massive miscalculation on that score. It appears the president and his loyalists had no idea how deep was the passion of their people to be free of corrupt dictatorship.
Dictators losing power to new ideals
An associate of Ferdinand Marcos was on television the other night trying to make sense of the sudden unraveling of his leader's government. He could not bring himself to acknowledge candidly the obvious, so he struggled for eunhemism.
"A new, popular temper," he finally said, appeared to be driving Marcos out of power. He did not say so, but that new temper is really an old idea. It is the ancient desire of people all over the globe to govern themselves.
Incompetent or not, it was the voice of the many in the Philippines that Marcos sought to stifle by stealing the election. As he had done through machinations over the years, Marcos thus demonstrated his contempt for the idea of democracy.
"Democracy," George Bernard Shaw once said, "substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."
Democracy a hot item in Third World
Robert C.
Maynard
Oakland Tribune
This is the wrong time to ignore the stirring of democracy around the Third World. For reasons no one can fully explain, the hottest political idea in a number of lesser-developed countries is the idea of self-government.
Where once Marxist revolution captured the imaginations of the young and earnest, now in Latin America and the Philippines, democracy is an idea with growing appeal.
Frail democracies have replaced entrenched dictatorships in Argentina, Peru and Panama. And the winds of change are stirring in other Latin American countries. This could be the start of a major storm for dictators.
Even Mexico, with its long tradition as a one-party state, finds its young idealists looking for ways of bringing the franchise to the poor of the cities and the countryside.
It is much too early to say the revolution of rising expectations can be satisfied at the ballot box in poor and debt-ridden countries. Indeed some might even regard such a notion as absurd, if not a cruel hoax on the poor.
There are still plenty of Marxist revolutionaries in the streets of Manila and the forests of the Philippine islands. Their adherents, though large in number and growing, have no support as broad in its base as that which has emerged in the last few months for Corazon Aquino and the
Yet it is remarkable that socialism is losing its appeal among the young For reasons no one can fully explain, the hottest political idea in a number of lesser-developed countries is the idea of self-government. activists of the Third World, and democracy is gaining converts.
Shaw once said of Christianity that it was a good idea, if only someone would try it. Maybe we have arrived at a time when more societies take that advice with respect to democracy. Perhaps that "new, popular temper" is rising at last throughout the Third World.
How far this idea will spread in the Third World is impossible to say, but the fact that it is occurring at all is surprising and encouraging. It is also encouraging that the Reagan administration reversed itself and supported the popular choice in the Philippines over an old and trusted ally.
Mailbox
A system of free elections alone will not solve the problems facing the Philippines or any other struggling society. Nonetheless, it is superior to all the known alternatives. This might be the onset of an era in which the idea of self-government at least is given a try in some unlikely places.
Singer's farewell
In Argentina, the elected government is struggling with monumental economic problems, but it is clear the people would not willingly trade their present system for a return of the junta.
electoral process.
If you're expecting yet another tirade for or against standing at basketball games, you'll either be sorely disappointed or pleasantly surprised that this letter has nothing to do with that particular well-beaten horse.
No, what I want to say relates to the fact that not only was last Saturday's game against Iowa State KU's last home game of the regular season, but it was also my last time singing the National Anthem and Alma Mater at a Jawahra game.
Yep, I'm doing that graduation in May, so my days of honking
into a microphone with 15,000 other Jayhawk devotees singing along are over.
And let me tell you - I am going to miss it.
I've done a lot of singing since I came to KU in the fall of 1984; I've met a lot of wonderful people, and I've even had some pretty good classes. But nothing that I take away with me from this place in the form of memories will ever compare to the kick I got every time I walked out on to that court.
And then to follow that with getting to be in the stands for the best basketball in the country — I really have had the best of all possible worlds.
A special note of thanks to Kon McCurdy and the band, the mascots and the cheerleaders. You look mahvelous, dahlings, and you are so good at your jobs.
So this is just to thank you — for two incredible seasons of school and team spirit that I don't expect to see equaled anywhere. You've been the most supportive — and certainly the biggest — audience any would-be singer could ever hope to have. Next stop: beer commercials.
Phyllis Pancella St. Louis senior
Fan appreciation
I would like to congratulate the University of Kansas students and fans for being so kind to Kansas State Coach Jack Hartman on his retirement. It was very heart warming to see him presented with several gifts and a special banner.
It's great to be an alum from school with such class.
Bill Hoffman
1855 pharmacy graduate
Westmoreland