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Friday, February 20, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Quality over quantity
In a struggle between quality and quantity,quality won out.
The KU School of Business recently decided the quality of the school must prevail, even at the cost of students.
Budget cuts, lack of resources and an overworked faculty have forced the school to reduce the number of students it will admit in the 1987 fall semester. The school has about 1,100 undergraduate students this semester.
The school, unable to handle all the students who want admission, will adopt a competitive policy and begin turning some students away.
The school will judge applicants on their grade point average in business and nonbusiness courses and their American College Test score, and the school will tighten admission requirements.
With this system, only the
best and most serious students will be allowed to major in business at the University of Kansas.
And that's the way it should be.
The business school has a responsibility to meet the needs of the students presently enrolled. One of these responsibilities should be to ensure that students have the opportunity to take as many classes as possible from business professors and not teaching assistants.
A competitive admission policy will increase the quality of the business school's students and take a load off the faculty, which will benefit the University, the school and the students admitted.
Although the policy will hurt some students, far more will benefit from a more selective policy.
Showing public concern
Dillons did not become a thriving business by giving products away, but their latest efforts to help detect colorectal cancer by providing free detecting kits for the disease should be applauded.
Dillons, along with KAKETV in Wichita and Wichita's St. Francis Medical Center, began what they call "A Test For Life," a program to detect colorectal cancer. Through the program, Dillons' pharmacies provide free Hemocult testing kits to the public. The only charge to those using the kits is for the stamp to send their sample to St. Francis. They are notified of the results within two weeks.
Only about 50 percent of those who test positive will actually develop a tumor or growth in the colon or rectum. Those persons are referred to
their own physician for further tests.
Detecting the disease early is critical to colorectal cancer treatment. After the condition has been diagnosed, a victim has a 90 percent chance of surviving for five years if properly treated.
This program, which is being run for the third consecutive year throughout Kansas, is expected to be a success. At least 20,000 people are likely to participate, and those who test positive for the disease will be referred to adequate treatment centers.
The program will make a necessary dent in the quantity of colorectal cancer cases detected early enough for effective treatment. Let's thank Dillons, KAKE-TV and St. Francis Medical Center for providing for us a cost-free way to check up on our health.
'We, the people. . .'
"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity..."
If you are confused as to the answer to that question, you are not alone. A recent survey conducted by the Hearst Corp. showed that one in four U.S. citizens confused the purpose
The preceding passage is the opening to: a) the Declaration of Independence b) the Constitution of the United States c) Billy Idol's latest song. If you chose "b", congratulations. At least you know the difference in the wording of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The next question* however, may be trickier. What is the purpose of the Constitution?
of the two historical documents. The survey also showed that only 41 percent of U.S. citizens could identify the first 10 amendments to the Constitution as the Bill of Rights.
The powers of the federal and state governments in the United States are spelled out in the Constitution as well as certain guaranteed civil liberties.
It is important that people be aware of something as basic as the foundations of our country. If people do not understand this, they cannot fully appreciate its benefits. And if people do not appreciate it, eventually, it could lead to elimination of our way of life.
Although that may sound extreme, it is not unforseable. Ignorance in the past has led to many disastrous things. Let's not let the basic tenets this country was based on die because of a lack of interest.
News staff
News staff
Frank Hansel . Editor
Jennifer Benjamin . Managing editor
Jul Warren . News editor
Brian Kaberline . Editorial editor
Sandra Engelland . Campus editor
Mark Keilbert . Sports editor
Diane Duttrell . Photo editor
Bill Skeet . Graphics editor
Tom Eblen . General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Lisa Weems . Business manager
Bonnie Hardy . Ad director
Denise Stephens . Retail sales manager
Kelly Scherer . Campus sales manager
Duncan Calhoun . Marketing manager
Lori Copple . Classified manager
Leonard Liimanski . Production manager
David Nixon . National sales manager
Jeanne Hines . Sales and marketing adviser
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Opinions
National health plan catastrophic
Conservative President Ronald Reagan has done a big favor for the liberal (and then some) Senator Teddy Kennedy, D-Mass. In a complete suspension of principles, Reagan has given the official nod to the health
Paul Campbell
Medicare coverage will result not in public-private sector cooperation, but instead in the slow subjugation of the private sector to the public sector.
Columnist
care proposal offered by Health and Human Resources Secretary Otis Bowen.
Under this measure, the government would take over the catastrophic body being provided by private insurance companies.
Though it follows the president's instructions to study how the private sector and the government can work together. Bowen's expansion of
Approved under pressure from a Congress that was making catastrophic health care a main issue, the new proposal offered by Bowen does not even cover any additional expenses that presently are covered by Medicare or the private insurers.
As Council of Economic Advisors Chairman Beryl Sprinkel wrote in a memorandum last year, "this would replace a competitive private practice with a government monopoly."
News stories describe only the affected few who indeed require some form of financial aid either because of insufficient coverage or poor planning. One woman in New York was forced to sell her mother's home to cover emergency medical costs. It is
people like her who require help, but the size of the program planned by Bowen is out of proportion to the problem.
The number of people who require more than maximum Medicare coverage is estimated at 12,000 by Stuart Butler, director of domestic policy studies for the Heritage Foundation. He said, "They are talking about a massive program that will cover upwards of 30 million."
Instead of easing the burdens of medical costs, the plan will act as an incentive encouraging hospitals to keep people longer because long-term care in nursing homes is not covered by Medicare.
The result will be an increase in costs followed by government instruction into the medical market to keep costs down by providing guidelines on who the hospitals can keep and for how long. The result will be neither lower medical costs nor better medical service.
While it looks good to go on television and proclaim benefits to the elderly, approximately 70 percent of the elderly in the United States now have coverage against catastrophic illness through private insurance companies or privately funded health maintenance organizations, according to the weekly Human Events magazine. The Bowen proposal is an example of overkill management planning that will displace coverage already provided by private insurers.
The intervention of the government into an area already effectively covered by the private sector has been a complete reverse of President Reagan's stated policies of lifting the government burden off the citizen. His turnover approval of the Bowen health plan is not only fiscally dangerous to the nation, it is a disheartening sacrifice of principles.
Bush slowly steps away from Reagan
WASHINGTON — Vice President George Bush is ever so slightly trying to put some distance between himself and the White House as he moves into the position of a presidential candidate. It won't be easy.
UPI
Helen Thomas
Bush has been the loyal, dedicated team player. He has not made any mistakes as far as President Reagan is concerned.
So the White House is showing a lot of understanding of Bush as his "political" posture emerges, along with an attempt to display some independence from the administration, particularly in terms of the Iran arms-contra aid scandal.
Some of the other possible candidates, such as Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, have said that Bush could be hurt by the Iran affair. He was the first to test the waters, going so far as to acknowledge "mistakes were made."
The New Quarterback
But Bush has gone a step further now, no longer denying that a trade of weapons to Iran for the U.S. hostages in Lebanon may have been a prime motivation for the secret dealings that have unglued the administration.
Bush's problem is not new, and Hubert Humphrey was the classic case of a man with a similar problem. As vice president to the all-powerful, all-demanding President Lyndon Johnson, Humphrey was kept on a tight leash even after he began to seek the Democratic nomination for president in 1968.
The Vietnam War was the premier issue leading Johnson not to seek relection, but he was not about to let Humphrey on the hook. When Humphrey made a major campaign speech in Salt Lake City indicating a policy switch on the war, Johnson flew to New Orleans the next day and shot down Humphrey's premise, saying "no one can predict" when the war would end.
It is going to be very difficult for Bush to separate himself from the
major decisions of the administration as they unfold, good and bad. He was a member of the National Security Council, and in fact he presided at most of the crisis meetings with the advisers.
Reagan threw everything but the kitchen sink at him in terms of his range of jurisdiction. Any time a problem came up it was handed over to Bush, who would head yet another task force on the subject — involvement in the Central American problem, regulation, fraud and waste,
and international terrorism.
In addition to that, during the Reagan re-election and congressional campaigns, Bush has been constantly on the road. He is the president's No.1 surrogate.
For all that, Reagan must consider him a "good soldier." Whether that will be his political passport to the GOP presidential nomination is a question.
Mailbox
Logic in letter faulty
The editorial was correct. I drove the turnip when the speed limit there was 80, not 75 (as on the rest of the interstate). The average traffic flow was about 85-90. I drove and was regularly passed.
I am writing in response to the letter "Fail to make point," by Sarah Jennings and Mark Gillem which appeared in the Feb. 16 Kansan. They claim a Feb. 9 editorial demonstrated faulty logic when it concluded people will drive 70 if the speed limit is raised to 65.
Ronald R. Lofgren
If the speed limit is raised, people will still assume they'll get a 5 mph or so leeway before they are ticketed. Those who conclude drivers will comply with a higher speed limit (since that's how fast they drive now) are showing the faulty logic.
Ronald R. Lofgren
lawrence graduate teaching assistant
Thoughts on penalty
How can the people of Kansas recently polled be so hypocritical? While a majority of us support the death penalty, we admit that we do not necessarily believe it to be a deterrent to abhorrent crimes. That is to say, "We should kill these criminals, but we aren't sure why."
There are many voices speaking
out on the issue, but the arguments that are being put forth by those who oppose legalized government killing (not in war) are usually that of dissatisfaction with the perfectness of the concept: racial unfairness, inequality and the potential for wrongfully convicted men being put to death.
I have never witnessed an execution as I would hope most people have not. But if I were to have lived in the 1800s and was in Paris when a prisoner was put to death, I might have reacted in the manner Leo Tolstoy did when he saw the execution of a criminal in 1857 by the guillotine. It made a deep impression on him; he had taken his own 'Confessions'. that the spectacle of the head and body thumping into the box caused him to understand with his whole being that no theory of the established order of things could justify such a deed, that it was wholly evil.
Dealing with murderers is a serious subject. A killer or repeated rapist is in himself a wretched creature, but I was taught that I do not have to do anything that I do not want. I am not calculated and convenient murder of human life, and do not call reinstatement of the death penalty, progress.
Joseph D. Alburty Leawood junior
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed