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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Monday, Dec. 9, 1985
Spies in the classroom
They sit in the back of the classroom and scribble notes. Their concern is not next week's exam, however, but the political views of the professor.
They are members of Accuracy in Academia, a conservative watchdog group self-appointed to expose "misinformation" in university classes.
The group then tries to persuade guilty professors to balance their teaching with literature provided by AIA. If this fails, a professor can be written up in the group's newsletter, which is sent to like-minded alumni, parents and legislators.
Their tactics are simple. They record what they consider to be biased or inaccurate statements by their professors and report them to the organization's Washington headquarters.
For some, the group is a throwback to the McCarthy era. In a similar effort to ferret out communists and communist sympathizers, the McCarthy witch-hunts hounded
many professors and intellectuals out of universities.
AIA denies that this is its intent. Its goal, members say, is only to combat a liberal bias prevalent on U.S. campuses.
In doing so, the group's methods run counter to the principles of a university. Universities strive to find truth in the exchange of often conflicting ideas.
The very principles AIA opposes allow the group to continue its classroom spying. Its members cannot be banished from the classroom and should not be.
They are as free as their professors to add their views to the crucible of discussion and to compete equally in the quest for truth.
But AIA is less interested in truth than conformity. It uses a political litmus test that measures loyalty, not accuracy and balance.
But they can't do this if they hide in the back of the class, afraid to be challenged, afraid to be wrong.
Betting on no-shows
Last week they weighed the odds and decided to paddle general admission tickets to three men's basketball games for the bargain price of $4.
So Athletic Department officials are a betting lot.
Disappear is what Athletic Department officials are betting students will do over winter break. The three games for which tickets were sold are over break.
Tell that to the Danny Manning-crazy sophomore from Overland Park.
"What?" you ask. "Didn't basketball tickets disappear months ago?"
Officials figure students will busy themselves with home and holidays during vacation and won't bother trekking back to Lawrence to see the Jayhawks.
For years, the Athletic Department has cried for student support for the football and basketball teams. The University finally has a team
But by double-selling student seats in Allen Field House, the Athletic Department shows how it rewards loyalty.
to brag about, and students do their share.
At worst, they've strutted into a public relations trap baited with money.
At best, the Department is playing fast and loose with students by betting that they won't show up to claim their seats Dec. 21, 23 and Jan. 11.
Suppose enough students show up to see Kansas play George Washington University, the University of Arkansas and Southern Methodist University. Suppose also that enough extra tickets to the games are snapped up.
Cheers won't be the only shouts flying through Allen Field House.
And a gambling Athletic Department will have wagered away the trust of perhaps its most loyal fans.
Words on Bremner
It's tough to find words to describe John B. Bremner, Oscar S. Stauffer distinguished professor of journalism.
Today, Bremner teaches his last editing class. At the end of this month, he officially will swap the classroom for the luxuries of retirement: rest, relaxation and travel.
Newspapers across the country shelve his book, Words on Words: A Dictionary for Writers and Others Who Care About Words, alongside other dictionaryes, stylebooks and reference manuals.
Words are Bremner's profession. Since 1969, he has drilled KU journalism students on the rights and wrongs of language. His gruff but effective teaching method has molded novice news writers into copy craftsmens.
Journalism students will continue to take editing classes. They'll continue to learn the basics of grammar,
spelling, syntax and Associated Press style.
But they'll learn it without Bremner's style — without that blustery bellow that has instilled fear and respect in countless budding journalists.
He's, taught students more than the difference between that and which, who and whom, nauseous and nauseated. More than the correct way to spell Volkswagen and millennium.
He's taught students to care about language - to appreciate the beauty of words such as bittersweet, chiaroscuro, crepuscular and serendipity.
But today it's difficult to find the words to say goodbye. The best words are probably his own, the ones he traditionally has used to bid farewell to his students.
Meanwhile, comma, peace, period.
Rob Karwath
Editor
John Hanna Michael Totty
Managing editor Editorial editor
Lauretta McMillen
Campus editor
Susanne Shaw
General manager, news adviser
Duncan Calhoun Business manager
Brett McCabe Sue Johnson
*Retail sales* Campus sales
Megan Burke
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR should be typed, double-spaced and less than 300 words. Include the author's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, include class and hometown, or faculty or staff position. WORD SHOTS should be typed, double-spaced and less than 700 words. The Editor
Megan Burke
National/Co-op sales
John Oberzan
Sales and marketing adviser
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Deaths bring mortality close to home
The end of the semester is near. As it closes, we glance back on the big events that made the semester unique.
In the past, we have had Student Senate fiascos, Gay and Lesbian Services of Kansas debacles and Athletic Department scandals to mark the semester.
But this semester is different. The Kansan headlines and campus grapevine didn't harp on any single event, but instead lingered reluctantly on many deaths.
We have read about a KU swimmer killed in a car accident, a former KU professor of occupational therapy killed in a plane crash and the suicide of a KU student.
One KU student was killed training and another died when she fell from her sorority house ledge while cleaning windows. Most recently, a KU professor of interior design was found strangled in his closet.
We didn't debate casual controversies over lunch and between classes
Michelle Johnson
Staff columnist
as we usually do. Instead we faced our own mortality again and again as we read about students and professors dying in circumstances that could have easily happened to us or someone we knew.
Someone once said that every man's death diminishes us. It is certainly true that as we hear about a student's or professor's death, we feel a special loss.
Not only do we feel sadness and remorse for the people who have died, but a bit of fear sets in as we realize how close someone's death hits.
The concept of death isn't a stranger to any of us. We know that it isn't a promise we can back out of or a contract we can have a lawyer
break. Death becomes reality for most when someone close to us dies, such as a parent, relative or close friend.
The death of my grandfather two summers ago was my reality. In all the important ways he was my father. My coykock feeling of invincibility died with him.
But, for me and for most of us, the death of a student seems to strike an even deeper vein. The thin barrier of youth and promise that we think stands between us and death is seen for the illusion that it is.
I had a geography class last fall with Jeanna Marie Carkoski, the student who died from a fall while cleaning windows. We weren't friends, but we sat next to each other and enjoyed talking together before and after class.
She was a freshman and I was a junior. She learned from me a little about getting a tighter grip on college life. With her, I could re-live some of the freshness and excitement of my first year at KU.
We hadn't seen each other since the class ended. And the first time I had really thought about her again was when I heard she had died.
I can remember reading her obituary in the Kansas and numbly thinking that those sorts of things weren't supposed to happen to someone like Jeanna.
A woman who is young, smart, and full of enthusiasm for the future, like her, isn't supposed to fall off a ledge and die.
Jeanna wasn't a close friend, but her death shook me. She was someone I had met, someone who I knew was capable of accomplishing great things in her life because of her optimistic and level-headed approach.
I can't help but think that we all get a little shaken up when we read about another student's death. We may not always collapse in tears or dwell on the death for long, but for at least a brief moment we reflect on the thin hold we have on our own lives.
Praxis embraces full range of left wing
One need not travel to Russia or Cuba to find communism and anti-Americanism. The American universities house enough of their own.
The group, established in 1981, consists of 15 to 25 active members and more than 100 supporters from the University students and faculty and the surrounding community.
The University of Kansas has Praxis, a left-wing student organization on campus. Praxis is a Greek word meaning the unity of thought and action.
Now, not every member of Praxis is a Communist. However, communists seem to feel right at home in the group.
Praxis President Dan Parkinson, graduate student in history, described the organization as an open forum for left-wing opinions.
Such voices, he said, might not get expressed without Praxis. Members follow communist, socialist,
democratic, and anarchist philosophies.
At best, the group members can be viewed as reformers. At worst, they can be viewed as troublemakers.
According to Parkinson, they're all linked by the belief that the world needs change. The issues they consider include racism, famine, nuclear war and capitalist exploitation.
"There are people in Praxis who advocate revolution," Parkinson said. "But no, I'm not a Marxist or Leninist."
"I advocate change. I don't think revolution is necessary. There are many kinds of changes possible."
Members of Praxis frequently appear in the main lobby of the Kansas Union, standing behind a long table. Every subversive idea Lenin donated to the world can be found on this table, called the "literary table."
Included in the cacophony they sell
Evan Walter Staff columnist
are copies of the "Declaration of the Revolutionary International Movement" and Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta's book "Anarchy."
They also sell the "Revolutionary Worker," the newsletter of the Revolutionary Communist Party U.S.A. (RCP), the locally-published "Gentle Anarchist," and the "Praxis' quarterly publications."
The RCP, of which a few Praxis members belong, publishes the "Declaration of the Revolutionary International Movement."
"The Marxist-Lenninists will never hide the truth from the masses," the book says. "The rivalry between the two blocs of imperialist powers led
by the US and the USSR respectively is bound to lead to war unless revolution prevents it."
The United States has little to fear about a communist revolution. These groups are small and lack credibility and the grasp of realism.
But they have big mouths. Variations on their theme have been successful in the past. What a century ago were mere communist ideologies, today endanger the safety of the free world.
As for Praxis, many of the words they have enlightened the university with differ little from the words that inspired the Soviet Union.
"Problems are rooted in the unequal social division of labor, the formation of classes. We seek to tear down the many barriers that divide our modern world," to quote the Praxis manual.
Anyone reading Lenin's "State and Revolution" will find the same thing.
Mailbox
Sit down and cheer
It's not often I find myself making an appeal to our supporters behind the bench, but it seems we have a seating (or standing) problem that needs to be addressed.
Needless to say, we have one of the most impressive environments for college basketball in the country and that is largely due to the tremendous vocal support provided by the students. We are very proud of your efforts.
Many of our best fans, of course, locate behind the KU bench where it has become a custom to stand throughout the game. This continuous standing is now a problem for us and I am hoping those students who demonstrate such loyal support will have an understanding of why we need their cooperation in the stands.
The elevation of the new floor-level bleachers has raised its occupants to the point where, when they stand, they block the view of those in the first four or five rows in the upper section. After our first game, we received numerous complaints from those individuals who were unable to see the game.
I don't believe anyone behind the bench wants to intentionally block the view of a fellow Jayhawk fan. As a representative of the KU Athletic Department, I must have compassion for anyone who attends our games and encounters problems in
viewing the court. We need to work together toward a solution.
I'm not asking anyone to reduce his level of vocal support or stay glued to his seat. In borrowing a phrase I use often with my players, don't be "selfish" to the point that you lose concern for those behind you. Stand up and cheer the big plays and then sit back down (but don't stop cheering). Stand up and cheer at time-outs or during the pregame but be conscious of the viewing avenue of those behind you.
Thanks for your help and I will visit with you personally Monday night.
Larry Brown head basketball coach
Scientific cartoon
As one of the students who reads the "Far Side" comic panel first, I was, of course, delighted Wednesday to see that the University Daily Kansan had finally succumbed to reason, and begun running the panel on the front page.
Though the panel was a re-run, it was one of Larson's more esoteric and bore a second look.
But RCA is doing that these days as well with an advertisement showing Nipper from behind, with middle-age spread, rocking out to his master's
Juxtaposing a praying mantis for the familiar terrier was a nice cappo on the old RCA advertisement, "His Master's Voice."
latest video release. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?
Whether the animals themselves can produce such sounds is not known, nor is the use the animals have for their hearing system.
But perhaps Larson may also be alluding to the recent discovery that praying mantises can, in fact, hear and do have ears. Well actually, they appear to have only one ear, located between their hind legs, and it is very sensitive to ultrasound.
Cole Gilbert
It also is not known whether manies have mating calls, as one student conjectures. However, the females of the species are suspected to use a perfume to attract males, who then strut in front of the females and dance with them before mating.
Kirkwood graduate student
Suffering not unique
It is quite a contrast to Israel, where Palestinian people get all the rights of the Jewish citizens, have
No Beth, the Jewish suffering still does exist, in all Arab countries where Jews are.
I'm sorry to hear that Ms. Mahmoud has been lied to and misled in her research on the Palestinians in Israel. It's really sad to know that there are people who believe that the Jews have not suffered and that the Palestinian problem is somehow special.
My people have suffered more in this century than the Palestinian Arabs ever have or ever will. I am really insulted, as an American, that you believe Americans are stupid enough to fall for your typical line of foolish rhetoric.
representation in parliament and are able to attend universities.
You fail to mention that many of the Jews that died in World War II died at the hands of Arabs in Palestine who complied with the Nazis against the Jews as well as against the United States.
Also, the total number of Jews that fled Arab countries to seek refuge in Israel is not 45,000. It is closer to 1 million.
You also implied that it was the Israelis who committed the massacre at Sabra and Shatil. You know as well as I that it was done by Lebarae Christians. Why are you so afraid of picking on the Christian majority of this country?
Michael Geller St. Louis senior
Psychology of humor
Thanks for the Thursday, Dec. 5, spoof on KU psychology professor Maynard Shelly, whom you described as "a modern day Freud or Jung, probably a genius." It's nice to see the Kansan making such a creative foray into satire.
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Mary Erickson Lawrence
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