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Monday, January 25, 1988 / Ut.liversity Daliv Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Students take an extra step for Margin of Excellence
Hundreds of KU students have signed petitions and written letters in support of the program. But the students who bumped shoulders with legislators at the Capitol made the biggest impression of all.
Tuesday, about 150 KU students did the University a favor. They made a trip to Topeka to participate in a statewide lobbying day for the Board of Regents Margin of Excellence program.
They did more than take up space. "They really tried to do a job to convince the legislators," said Jake Krakow, student body president and member of the board of directors for the Associated Students of Kansas, which sponsored the effort. "We've gotten noticed. We've been able to identify students as a constituency that is active, vocal and identifiable."
Margin of Excellence is an important program. It must go into effect if KU is to avoid falling face down into the mediocrity it now leans toward. Many students have shown their support with petitions and letters, and they are to be commended.
Legislators can no longer ignore students as part of the voting public. And the turnout was especially impressive in light of the apathy with which students usually greet political or educational issues.
But the students who took their concerns to the Capitol deserve special thanks from their peers. They took the time and put forth the effort to work for a goal that must be realized, for the sake of our educations and KU's future.
They went the extra 30 miles.
KU needs evacuation plan
KU officials do not think that a fire evacuation plan tailored to accommodate students with disabilities is necessary.
Such a plan is about as necessary as a fire alarm system itself. To exclude disabled students from the benefits of assured and planned evacuation assistance is unbelievably ignorant and potentially disastrous.
Implementing an evacuation plan similar to that at Emporia State University would provide a great service to all students living in KU residence halls.
Emporia State's plan is widely regarded and used as a model across the country. It is an effective way to assure that the needs of disabled students are accommodated.
Disabled students list on a form the nature of their disability and potential risks involved in evacuating them. Other students are then trained by the disabled student on the proper way to help during an emergency.
Emporia fire and police departments have records of where disabled students live and where their classes are. In case of a fire, officials know exactly where special assistance is necessary.
Similar forms filled out by disabled students living in KU residence halls and filed with Lawrence fire and police departments would be a safeguard against potential disaster
departments would be a safeguard against potential disaster. The extra time consumed by filing paperwork and training personnel is well worth the effort considering the potential effects of ignoring the needs of disabled students.
Jody Dickson for the editorial board
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board.
Housing officials call them "temporary triples." It's the polite way of telling three freshmen that they must live together in a dorm room designed for only two of them.
Other Voices
Nine hundred of the 6,000 students who live on campus spent at least a part of the fall semester in temporary triples. Many of them lived out of one half of a closet, two drawers of a four-drawer dresser and one side of a desk.
Housing officials later "de-tripled" most of the rooms as some dorm residents dropped out of school or moved off campus. But that didn't solve much: Another 1,000 students are still on a waiting list for campus housing.
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Bush sidesteps Iran-contra issue
Vice president uses executive privilege to protect his political ambitions
His office now has announced that the Honorable George Bush has "answered all questions" put to him by independent counsel about the Iran-contra affair. It would be more assured if Bush would answer to all the public's questions about his role in "The Affair That Will Not Die."
Instead, the American public has been treated to a series of evasions and condescensions by this vice president who would be president. The people are supposed to be sovereign in this constitutional system, but Bush insists on brushing off embarrassing questions from anyone without subpoena powers. His excuse is that for him to give a full account of his role in this tangle would violate the confidentiality of the executive branch. That is a high principle, but Bush is putting it to a low purpose: the protection of his own political ambitions.
It is not as if the vice president were being asked to comment on a current policy that might be jeopardized by revealing what counsel he gave the president in the past; what he is being asked is to substantiate all that talk about how close and trusted and sound an adviser he has been to the chief executive. What better test of his claim than to discover just what advice he was giving Ronald Reagan while the most extravagant mistake of this presidency mounted.
Both George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger — secretaries of state and defense as this mistake mushroomed into a crisis — have said what they thought of shipping arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. Of course, they had little to hide; they were against it. Bush has indicated that he was, too, talking guardedly about having expressed "reservations" or hinting that he would have expressed reservations if he had known that exemplars like Shultz and Weinberger opposed this foolish idea. But his name has popped up in at least one memo as having supported this colossal mistake. And why would Bush, or any other adult, need to know how other officials stand on sending arms to Iran in order to recognize such a policy as folly?
Paul Greenberg
Syndicated Columnist
These persistent suspicions could be cleared up if the vice president would be candid about what he told the president when they discussed this subject. Then again, these suspicions might be confirmed. Is that why the vice president is ducking behind executive privilege?
The thought will persist so long as he doesn't come clean — as his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination well know. And his bering them for raising this issue isn't going to prove any more effective than Br'er Rabbit's jabbing at the tar baby did.
When he was vice president, Hubert Humphrey could scarcely discuss his role in the development of the Johnson administration's policy on Vietnam while running for president in 1968. Only toward the end of that campaign did he show some independence — and almost won it. But there was a war going on at the time. Bush has no such reason for keeping confidence about a scandal that now is past; he can only use executive privilege as an excuse, and not a very persuasive one.
Bush has been the perfect vice president if the job of the vice president is to sit quietly and wait, and in the main it is. The country's first occupant of the office called it the most insignificant ever devised by the mind of man. And the classic description of the job is still that of Mr. Dooley, Finley Peter Dunne's Irish barkeeper. "It's shrange about th' vice-pridisy. Th' pridisyine th' highest office in th' gift iv' gift th'. People. Th' vice-pridisyine th' next highest an' th' lowest. It isn't a crime exactly. You can't be sent to jail fr' it, but it's a kind iv a disgrace. It's like writin' anonymous letters. It 'l strange too, because it's
a good job. A man could put in four years comfortably in 'th' place if he was a sound sleeper."
Contrary to Mr. Dooley, the job of vice president is no snap and, contrary to John Adams, it is a highly significant one. There ought to be someone standing by in the government who has not offended anybody and therefore could unite the country in an emergency. Bush has been a superb vice president in that regard, and he was never better than when Reagan was recovering from having been shot. Bush did nothing then and did it particularly well. 2
Saying nothing controversial is a good deal harder than it sounds. It would probably be impossible for the likes of an Alexander Haig, who is by nature unqualified for vice president. He didn't have all that easy a time keeping his equanimity as secretary of state. Bush has long experience at only appearing to lead, and while that makes him a fine No. 2 man, it does raise questions about his candidacy for the presidency.
Bush and Bob Dole may have called a brief truce on this issue, but it is bound to recur so long as the vice president stays in the campaign. And the more he objects to questions about his role in this affair, the more defensive he seems. Have you noticed that it's when he tries to talk tough that George Bush sounds most like Mister Rogers? Don't get me wrong: Mister Rogers does a wholly admirable job, but his job is not that of president of the United States.
In short, Bush's rule about not compromising executive privilege won't do. If Reagan really does think highly of his vice president, and there is no reason to doubt his repeated assurances on that score, then he will relieve his stand in of any obligation not to reveal the substance of their past conversations about arms shipments to Iran. Or would Reagan insist they be kept secret precisely because he doesn't want to hurt Bush? That suspicion is the natural result of Bush's refusing to talk once the issue gets beyond his resume and into his actual performance.
K·A·N·S·A·N
MAILBOX
Group's values unclear
I guess I don't understand what the Alliance of Citizens for Traditional Values is supposed to represent. I frighten me to read that such an organization can stop an important proposal like the one regarding the prohibition of discrimination against homosexuals. What is their definition of traditional values? I wonder if it would include opposition to families with adoption, or divorced women? I fall into both the first and second traditional? Who decides what is and isn't traditional? Ann Ryun? Nancy Liskey? I certainly hope not.
The next order of business for the Alliance of Citizens for Traditional Values ought to be to study the contributions homosexuals have made to our society. I just can't see Lawrence forbidding Gore Vidal residence. I'm not sure a
single member of the Alliance of Citizens for Traditional Values ever watches a Rock Hudson movie rever. There are countless gay men and women who have contributed to our society throughout history. The narrow minds that voted down the proposal would probably say that AIDS is God's terrible swift sword to damn the homosexuals of the earth.
I am a heterosexual woman with a lot of homosexual friends. I love them very much. I would like to protect them from pious groups like the Alliance of Citizens for Traditional Values. I don't want them discriminated against. They are constructive, intelligent, wonderful people who deserve to work and live wherever they choose.
Cathy Renfro Lawrence graduate student
Stop supporting Israel
holiest shrines of Islam. This outright belligerence and disrespect for places of worship entrusted to the state of Israel has placed the Jews among the worst violators of human rights, civil rights and now, spiritual rights.
This letter is an open plea to Jewish-Americans and to all Americans who still believe in human rights. Does power give the Israelis the right to destroy everything the Jews have fought for, their right to co-exist with other human beings? Are these the rights that American democracy stands for and advocates to its allies?
Please call or write your congressman. Your support and tax dollars ($4 billion) go to Israel. With your hard-earned money, there will be more violence and killing of women and children and old men in what was once called "the Holy Land."
With shocking horror and dismay, we watched Israeli soldiers beating defenseless women with clubs inside the sanctuary of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, one of the
Sumaya Al-Raja Yemen senior
Omaima Abdelaziz Bahrain senior
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed