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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Monday, Jan. 21, 1986
Still no progress
Two months after the football season, the case of Lynn Williams and Dane Griffin versus the University of Kansas hasn't been settled.
For all intents and purposes the players won.
KU declared the two football players ineligible to play last season because they may not have been making "satisfactory progress" toward a degree. The two then filed suit disputing the University's definition of "satisfactory progress," and gained an injunction allowing them to play.
Whether Williams and Griffin were eligible to play for KU no longer matters. What does is that the University was unable to accomplish what it should be able to.
But does it matter now? The suit filed by the players was intended to force the University to allow Griffin and Williams to play.
The case is still on file in Johnson County court, in limbo, waiting for either of the parties involved to make a move.
They did.
Athletes who play for a university should be subject to losing that right if that university sees fit. Instead, KU lost its power in a tangled web of judicial procedure.
Through its attempts to move the case along quickly, KU ultimately defeated its purpose. University counsel filed a motion for dismissal of the case and for a change of venue, which would have sped up the process by getting the case off of jammed Johnson County Court logs.
Both only resulted in additional hearings and the continual moving back of the trial date.
But a settlement of the case is still eagerly awaited by both parties. The result of this case will tell whether a player has the right to question a university's definition of "satisfactory progress."
It's possible that KU encountered problems because the "satisfactory progress" rule was newly instated by the National Collegiate Athletics Association, and because the NCAA left it up to each school to define the term.
If anything is to come of the case, it should be a clear definition of "satisfactory progress" that KU and other universities can enforce.
Lottery may be needed
The argument that stopped the passage of the Kansas lottery amendment last spring in the Legislature was that legalized gambling draws money from the pockets of the masses, with few chances of any one person becoming rich.
That argument can only be hindered now by the proposal that lottery profits could replace those losses by financing programs that could benefit the masses.
Gov. John Carlin has suggested using profits from a state lottery and pari-mutuel betting to generate money for "economic development."
Kansas should not depend on gambling to soothe the woes of
an economy dependent on staggering petroleum, agriculture and aircraft industries. But it should use those revenues to help build and finance programs, such as education, that need more money.
Carlin said that revenues from a lottery could be as much as $35 million a year, and pari-mutuel betting could raise about $10 million for the state each year.
Missouri's lottery, with projected profits of $86 million, starts today, and 67 percent of those profits would be used to finance new programs for education.
A Kansas lottery could stop Kansas money from trickling across the border into Missouri's lottery game.
The odds that Kansas will hit the jackpot and save its sluggish economy by establishing a state-run lottery are a million to one.
But the odds that Kansas could enhance state programs from lottery profits are unbeatable.
Hope for democracy
Finally.
After decades of military rule, Guatemala has finally inaugurated a civilian president. Vinicio Cerezo, from the centrist Christian Democratic Party, was sworn into office Jan. 14.
Democracy in Guatemala is long overdue. The country has been under military rule since a U.S.-backed coup ousted President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. Although elections have been held since 1966, the military always has blocked the opposition and installed a new general.
Guatemala should be applauded for at last joining the "redemocratization" of Latin America that has been led by Colombia, Argentina, Peru and Brazil. The return of democratic rule to a country that has been rife with reports
of brutality and corruption is a welcome step forward.
Just inaugurating a civilian president will not solve the problems in Guatemala. Cerezo faces an inflation rate that officially is 50 percent — some estimates are twice that. School teachers are threatening a strike. Industry is struggling along at 30-40 percent capacity.
But hope at least is promised.
The country seems relieved to see an end to military rule and eager to solve economic problems.
Both the left and the right have high expectations for improvement, suggesting that Cerezo may be given the time he needs to bring about change.
Real reforms may be difficult to enact, but Guatemala seems to be on its way.
News staff
Michael Totty ... Editor
Lauretta McMillen ... Managing editor
Chrin Barber ... Editorial editor
Cindy McCurry ... Campus editor
David Giles ... Sports editor
Brice Waddill ... Photo editor
Susanne Shaw ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Bret McCabe ... Business manager
David Nixon ... Retail sales manager
Jim Williamson ... Campus manager
Lori Eckart ... Classified manager
Caroline Innes ... Production manager
Pallen Lee ... National manager
John Oberzan ... Sales and marketing adiser
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Decadence follows false advertising
Our society is headed into the gutter. Don't look at the profusion of child molestation to substantiate this claim. Don't gaze at FBI crime and murder statistics. Don't point your finger at Miami's murder cops.
These are subjective things. After all, Roman men had Roman boys 2,000 years ago. Stats are open to manipulation. And Chicago has long been a bell-ringer for mean cops.
The clearest evidence I can offer you of decadence is the McD.L.T. and All-Star Wrestling. The significance of these two social phenomena will exist long after future historians forget who was vice president in 1985.
These two things will be scrutinized and studied — picked apart in minute detail to determine why they succeeded in a high-tech world. Maybe future Freuds will establish a behavioral course of thought based on the acceptance of these two packaging marvels.
At any rate, they will wonder how an advanced society so easily accepted those obvious fakes.
They will have to delve below the surface to find how a hamburger, of
Tim Erickson Staff columnist
all things, was marketed as an entirely new product. And they will no doubt offer absurd explanations for All-Star Wrestling, where grown men fought fake, fixed contests in front of sell-out crowds.
1, for one, am insulted by the McD.L.T. I am fooled sometimes, but not by this one. I know a hamburger when I see one, and the McD.L.T. is just a hamburger. No amount of advertising will convince me to eat a McDonald's hamburger, which I rate somewhere below parsley.
From McFries to McNuggets to McShakes, McDonald's has attempted to fool us with hype. They have seduced and hooked our children within a lovable clown and fed us all greasy food. They have disguised the grease bomb with snappy advertising and sold them by the billions and billions.
Maybe future psychologists can glean insight from the marketing ploys of the fast food chains. They can peg the 1970s as the selfish generation. "Have it your way" will be their big tip-off.
When it comes to the 1980s, they may look at "the hot stays hot, and the cool stays cool." They may infer that social upheaval was in the making, but no one could see the other side because of the wall of separation.
I am at a loss to know what they might think about All-Star Wrestling. I cannot understand how KU, the "Harvard of the Midwest," could sell out All-Star Wrestling tickets to watch Doggie Bob Brown. Future historians will surely be unable to figure it out either.
While we openly admit to this falsity, we endorse it with our wallets and cheers. All-Star Wrestling degrades their (and our) sense of rationality. It plays fast and loose with the time-honored scope of the word "star." And yet we yell wildly as loud-mouthed wrestlers beat announcers over the head with rubber microphones. It is fake, and we love it.
I mean, we all know this sport is fake and fixed. No doubt body slam and hammerhead locks hurt, but the ring is made out of sponge and elastic. Yet this "sport" is enjoying a resurgence that is unexplainable. It seems to me the sponge and elastic has entered into the minds of All-Star Wrestling fans also.
Future historians may have a hard time figuring out why such obviously fake muses enjoyed success in our society. They will scan reams of paper and watch hours of video tape to discern why these things were believed. They may even spot ring-side fans eating McD.L.T.'s on old video tape.
But when the evidence is all in, they will be left with only one rational conclusion. They will decide, and logically so, that it was all just a big societal joke.
NEE CAME TO EARTH FROM THE PLANET NUDLE.
It's the only thing that makes any sense.
"**HE SAID TO A TREE.**
"**THE ITS MEANS, 'HAVE A NICE NEW YEAR!'**"
HAPPILY, HE MADE CONTACT WITH HUMANS.
20445 W4617
DID YOU HEAR THAT WEIRD LANGUAGE?
King helped Dixie become Sun Belt
When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed 18 years ago, his eulogists universally declared that his legacy would be his philosophy. One after another, they praised his leadership in the cause of change through non-violence.
Now, at the onset of the first celebration of his birthday as a national holiday. I wonder if King's legacy might not extend beyond philosophy into the economic fabric of the South and the nation.
Today, we commonly speak with admiration and respect of the economically dynamic Sun Belt. Thirty years ago, before King and the movement that overthrew Jim Crow, the South was a different story. It wasn't called the Sun Belt then. If it engendered an endearing terminology, it was "Dixie," and that was not always complimentary.
To some, the region was an economic backwater, a rural slum on a magnificent scale. Wages were cheap, land was cheap and the population was predominantly in poverty or close to it.
Robert C.
Maynard
Oakland Tribune
Rigid segregation and the fanatic adherence to a caste system limited the region's appeal to large-scale outside investment. The politics of race skewed judgments and suppressed sound and systematic public policy.
In those times, it was common for some of the best minds of the South, white and black, to flee in search of a saner social climate. The artists and writers of the region frequently depicted a land haunted by the contradictions of color.
That was the environment into which King and his legions marched. They shattered the status quo and laid the social groundwork for "the new South" of the 1960s, which in turn became the Sun Belt of the '70s and '80s.
Looked at that way, nothing of the moral philosophy of King is
denigrated by saying his was also an economic contribution. The Montgomery, Birmingham and Selma campaigns were instrumental in bringing about dramatic change.
They helped secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned employment discrimination and other forms of racist economic harm. That law helped blacks gain access to better jobs, and thus become more effective consumers.
A year later, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which helped blacks become more effective citizens. Black electoral power ended most of the cheap, grandstanding politics of race that had stood in the region's way for almost a century.
Before King and the civil rights movement, Southern median income ran about a third below the rest of the country. The gap was slightly narrower for whites than for blacks, but the truth was the South suffered as a region. Rigid racism was an expensive luxury.
By the 1980 census, the income of Southerners, black and white, had
grown significantly closer to the country as a whole. The trends are such that over the next decade it will be unlikely the South will differ from the rest of the country in its basic economic profile.
To be sure, other forces were at work in the region besides King and his followers. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society did a great deal to build an infrastructure in the South roads, sewers, power sources, uf-
— roads, sewers, power sources, urban mass transit and so forth.
Foreign investment began playing a positive role in the '70s, and oil and natural gas played a big role all along.
Despite those forces, the key to the South's rebirth was the end of Jim Crow and his reign of terror. On this, the first King, holiday, we should recognize King's role. In leading the war against Jim Crow, he helped set the stage for the transition of Dixie to the Sun Belt.
That is a powerful economic reality for the Sun belt, and for the country.
Mailbox
The decline of KANU
I have been listening to KANU since 1972, and through most of that time I have admired it for its creative-programming, excellent announceors and good sound.
I believe, however, that during the last few years, the station has been declining. From day to day the decline has been small and hard to detect, but over time the loss of quality has become glaring.
Music by Candle Light was perhaps KANU's best local program, and the announcers, though youthful, brought taste and charm during a hectic part of the day. Why is it gone?
Let me give some examples;
Reception is atrocious. When the tower got clipped, I was patient. I put up with weaker power for many months, knowing that KANU would be broadcasting with high power. But reception has never recovered since
■Jazz in the Afternoon was another excellent local show. The program director made a complete hash of that schedule change. Diane Olmsted's talents are misused, and the programming is now a mere clone of KCUR.
the tower toppled. I have trouble getting a strong, clear signal in my car, on my portable radio and even sometimes on my stereo receiver. Whenever the signal fades, I can switch my radio to a Kansas City FM station and get clear signals. Why is reception noe?
On second thought, it seemed to me that if Mr. Hill were running abort, he would have less time to influence the station, and that probably would be good. I really don't know what I'd rather have him do. But I do know
It is my strong belief that the decline of good radio in Lawrence began when Howard Hill was hired. The professional quality of the station simply has not been there since his arrival. By professional I do not mean slick, but rather a commitment to serve the unique market that is Lawrence, and to do so with verve and wit.
When I kept reading or bearing about various "public service" commitments by Howard Hill, I became angry. After all, his involvement in politics, Haskell College, etc., may accrue influence to Mr. Hill, but it can only detract from his commitment to his job.
Don Dorsey
Don Dorsey
adjutant assistant professor
human development
I am sorry to write such a critical letter, and I have put this off for months. But I care about good radio in Lawrence, and I want KANU to resume its place as one of the best stations for hundreds of miles. That it will never do as long as a "Classical Top 40" mentality pervades programming
this: loyalty built up over a decade and a half kept me listening to KANU long after the bloom faded.
Characters not Greek
Matthew Wilson Terre Haude, Int.
graduate student
In her article on the opera "Dido and Aeneas," (Kansan, Jan. 16) Leslie Hirschbach describes the characters as "ancient Greek kings and queens." Dido, who was from Tyre, was Phoenician, not Greek. I doubt that Aeneas, being Trojan, would appreciate being called a Greek, especially since Trojans did not get along too well with Greeks.
In honor of King
Heaven and Earth Speak Out for Liberty
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. The Universe is expanding.
The Universe is expanding.
Everything heading out of prison
Everything needing out of phantom
evouling darkness
wurherw
where.
Like a monstrous python with deer
No place to hide from reality.
Heaven and Earth speak out for
Heaven and Earth speak out for
Liberty.
All is rising and increasing
Where nothing increases or rises.
Save along where it is free.
Behold! Humanity celebrates
maturity.
Apartheid, wars and terrorism
Must go down as primitive.
Racism is juvenile activity.
Dignity is birthride to ev
human being.
Civilization means civil living.
O members of the human family
Arise to the course of Liberty.
With love, equity and global mentality
Unlock the gate to Universal
Dignity is birthpride to every human being
Anthony A. Aiya
Anthony A. Alka
Anthony A. Aiya Lawrence resident