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Thursday, April 21, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Big Eight has bad priorities in raising ticket prices
It all comes down to the almighty dollar.
The price of tickets for the Big Eight Conference tournament is becoming directly proportional to the growing success of the Big Eight Conference.
The Conference has raised tournament ticket prices to $100 for courtside seats and $80 for other seats. The prices for courtside seats are higher than for any other major conference.
raising the ticket prices was a mistake. Conference officials should be trying to make the tournament more accessible to students from the midwestern schools. It seems ironic that the Big Eight tournament costs more to attend than the Final Four tournament.
Although the additional revenue generated from the increase in prices is channelled back to the schools, the increased success of the conference teams in the NCAA tournament already is resulting in additional revenue for the schools.
Also, the University of Kansas raised the prices of its all sports tickets this year - a double whammy for students and alumni alike who avidly follow KU teams.
The Big Eight can bleed sports fans dry if it wants. But its priorities are screwed up if it continues to equate success with dollars generated.
Jody Dickson for the editorial board
Vasectomy was a good deal
Once going . . . going twice . . . sold! Hope you enjoy your new vaselectomy.
Central Family Medicine, a medical group with offices in the Kansas City area, donated a vasectomy to KCPT-TV's annual fund-raising auction. The donated vasectomy, as reported in the Kansas City Times, went for the low, low price of $185.
Imagine bidding for an operation designed to sterilize men. Women with a lot of children could buy the vasectomy as a gift for their husbands.
"What are you bidding on, Sweetie?"
What would be next? A raffle for a tubal ligation:
What are you buying on sweete?
"It's a . . . uh. It's a gift for you, dear. Something you can use (or not use for a couple of days) around the house."
What would be next? A raffle for a tubal ligation?
Representatives of the medical group did, however, place a few restrictions on who could be the recipient of the vasectomy. The man had to be 21 and had to have at least one child. The one-child requirement must have been to prove that the recipient actually would benefit from a vasectomy; after all, how much good would it do to sterilize someone who already was sterile?
But whatever people may think, it's clear that birth control, even the surgical kind, has reached a new level of openness. And in a world facing overpopulation, that can't be bad.
Alan Player for the editorial board
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board
OU needs social conscience
This society could use a dose of democracy. This campus could use a dose of organized and, yes, radical, social conscience.
The kind of apathy that promotes the pessimistic status quo may just be a thing of the past at OU if the new chapter of Students for a Democratic Society gets off the ground.
The group seeks to provide a unifying force for OU's several "social advocacy" organizations; that is a force that is much-needed around here. Just take a look at the poor attendance at some of the recent rallies if you don't believe me.
Where is the spirit that a few weeks ago ousted a Maryland universtisy's president? Where is the spirit that a few years ago ousted the corrupt U.S. president? One need only look around at the segregation, the cheating, the ever-rising tuition to see that the spirit may be gone, but the causes aren't.
If SDS can renew the spirit — the spirit that keeps us from just curling up and giving in — then there's something to breathe a sigh of relief about. Perhaps the group is just what is needed to pull OU off its collective butt and make some changes.
The Oklahoma Daily University of Oklahoma
News staff
Alison Young. Editor
Todd Cohen. Managing editor
Rob Knapp. News editor
Alan Player. Editorial editor
Joseph Rebello. Campus editor
Jennifer Rowland. Planning editor
Anne Luscombe. Sports editor
Stephen Wade. Photo editor
Richard Stewart. Graphics editor
Tom Eblen. General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Kelly Scherer ... Business manager
Clark Massad ... Retail sales manager
Brad Lenhart ... Campus sales manager
Robert Hughes ... Marketing manager
Kurt Messersamml ... Production manager
Greg Knipp ... National manager
Kris Schorman ... Traffic manager
Kimberly Coleman ... Classified manager
Jeanne Hines ... Sales and marketing adviser
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Return of Nixon provides insight
Former president's re-emergence into public should be taken cautiously
From out of the past, like a bad B-movie that still haunts one's nightmares, stirring up old fears and new boredom, he was back!
Not as big as life but twice as nery, there was Richard Nixon on the tube, a little older and, alas, just as wise. The most celebrated recipient of a pardon in American history was explaining why the current president should pardon his two aides, Olive North and John Poindexter:
"Did these two men do what they did, believing, whether mistakenly or not, that they had the approval of the President or were acting in order to serve his interests and would get that approval? If the President, after considering that, believes that that was the case, then he, the President, would have a good case for pardoning, then the so-called crime would lack an intent."
No, it would only have a motive: to serve the people. The act would still be a crime if it was pre-belief.
Crimes remain crimes even if they're committed by a president or in his interest. That principle is called equality before the law. But a man who still can't recognize that Watergate was his biggest mistake can scarcely be expected to recognize a crime, especially one committed in his name. Nixon seems willing to call Watergate anything — a foul-up, a mistake — but what it was, a crime Or perhaps he doesn't know that someone done on behalf of the president, even if it's a crime, is permissible. Whoever said we live and learn must never have met Richard Nixon.
Now Nixon says he probably should have pardoned his chief aides, John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman. Why not all the lower-dows involved in Watergate, too? If the chief conspirators deserve pardons, why discriminate against the small fry? And why stop at those involved in Watergate? Why not pardon Spiro Agnew, too? He took only money; he didn't disgrieve the
Paul Greenberg
Sundicated Co
presidency. Nixon's scale of values is never so excruciatingly clear as when he defends pardons for Colonel North and Admiral Poindexter because they made no "personal gain" from the arms sales to Iran — as if crimes could be crimes only when they involved money.
Does anybody remember when Nixon and Agnew were supposed to be running a law-and-order administration? Not since the Harding administration has the country been led by a more permissive bunch. Well, that comparison is unfair — to the Harding administration. Warren G. Harding never needed a pardon.
Memory fades. Now the country's first par-pended president appears on "Meet the Press," where perfectly straight-faced questioners solicit his counsel on affairs of state. Soon Nick is prattling on in his best 1-2-3 manner about what Ronald Reagan ought to do about Ed Meese, the country's attorney general and persistent embarrassment. The President ought to consider these three points, said Nixon in that familiar semblance of well organized thought: "One, is he an honest man? I think he is an honest man." How would Nick know what an honest man is? Certainly would be able to recognize a devious man. That's what he called Henry Kissinger in this interview. He got that one on the button. It's just honest that may be beyond his ken.
The man still can give an uncanny imitation of reaching a logical conclusion. If you just close your eyes and listen to the rhythm and inflection of the voice, not thinking about what the words
actually say, he might be mistaken for someone making sense. They say he won that first presidential debate with John F. Kennedy in 1960 if you were listening to the radio. But those who could see him caught on. The return of Nixon to television did afford an insight into his problem with the meaning and integrity of words: His idea of a poet turns out to be Jesse Jackson.
The self-rehabilitation of Nixon goes painfully on. It is a cumbersome process, like a mechanical man climbing Mount Rushmore with the aid of creaking pulleys and ropes. Nixon advances slowly, depending on the public's forgetfulness and his own dogged determination. He re-enters the news one step at a time — an interview, a book, a little media-stroking. He's supposed to be good at foreign policy, and he carefully cultivates that conventional unwisdom. It's an assumption as unexamined as it is widespread that virtue is a handicap in foreign diplomacy, and that the worst foreign diplomatic policy. So Nixon is thought a Machaveli when, looking over the wreckage he left behind when he fled the White House in 1974, one is reminded more of Maxwell Smart.
Nixon remains fascinating to some of us. Why? Part of it is the sordid spectacle of watching someone who has had a great fall trying to put himself together again. (King Carol and Lucky Luciano used to draw great crowds in exile) Part of the attraction is sheer curiosity: How far will the man go? How dead is any sense of shame in American public life when, in search of political wisdom, we consult the first-rate bungler behind a second-rate cover-up of a third-rate burglary?
It is remarkable but in character that Nixon should now pose as some kind of elder statesman instead of elder fraud. What's astounding is not that he should deliver his pronouncements in all seriousness but that they should be taken seriously.
K·A·N·S·A·N
MAILBOX
Gay support inhibited
On Wednesday, there were probably fewer pairs of jeans on campus than any other spring day. Wednesday was "Wear Jeans Day" to display support of gays and lesbians.
The special day's intent was not only for gays to wear jeans; after all, if a gay hasn't expressed his homosexuality before now, why would he suddenly risk abandoning all of his previous secretiveness? The purpose was to show that even 'straight' people can at least accept others' differences. As a matter of fact, most of us use realism to realize that we face it folks, a good percentage of the world (and that includes KU) is hymosexual.
I heard one friend justify her wearing of jeans by saying that by the time she remembered what day it was, it was too late to change
clothes. That's fine if she actually doesn't support or accept gays. But on at least one occasion, I heard this same person say that someone she knew was gay, "but that doesn't make her a bad person."
So where's the hang-up?
In making my point, I am not attempting to instigate controversy. I just believe that on the one day in which everyone (gay or not) is given the chance to support homosexuals, it is really sad we made to feel too inhibited to even exhibit support.
jennifer Vanderhoof Olathe freshman
Curb Vitale's publicity
The KU basketball team has brought many accolades to the University of Kansas and Lawrence. Many people have ridden the coattails of the team's success and have made a pretty good penny. Making a buck off people who are willing to pay is understandable, but giving free publicity to a certain commentator is utterly ridiculous.
Dick Vitale should not be given the satisfaction of cleaning the Allen Field House floor
And last, we will never know the effect his comments have had on our recruiting year.
during Late Night with our beloved Larry Brown. For one, he has been degrading our coach and University each and every time Larry's name was mentioned for a job other than here at KU. Second, immediately after interviewing Danny Manning, when he was named the Naismith Player of the Year, Vitate told the entire ESPN audience that Danny didn't deserve the award; Hersey Hawkins did. And last, we will never know the effect his
What are we to gain by inviting this self-praised basketball prophet? Is the field house going to be filled? It was last year. Are students going to be more spirited? Impossible! Is Larry Brown staying here just to see Dick Vitale scrub our floor? No way! Larry's love for this University runs far deeper than a scrub brush.
What does Dick Vitale have to gain? Publicity, notoriety and a free trip to the NCAA championship basketball team's first practice. To the people who plan this annual event, please invite Danny, Chris and Archie back; they mopped up the NCAA tournament and came out clean. Vitale is all washed up!
Timothy F. Schuler Morris, Ill., senior
BLOOM COUNTY
AS USUAL, WITHIN TWO WEEKS,
A CLOUD OF CHAOS HAD
DESCENDED UPON THE MIGHTY
MEADOW PARTY POLITICAL
MACHINE
by Berke Breathed