Friday. February 25,1977
University Daily Kansan
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'Cats token champs
So the Kansas State Wildcats won the Big Eight Basketball Championship. Big deal. So what?
This is the year of the Big Eight Post-Season Tournament, and the Big Eight Championship is no longer worth that much. The Wildcats get a nice trophy, of course, and a nice seeding in the post-season tournament, but they aren't playing in the NCAA tournament. That honor belongs to the winner of the Big Eight Post-Season Tournament.
FOR THIS year's KU fans, the tournament is a lucky break. Without it, this year's season will be an uneventful one. With it, the Jayhawks still have a chance to go into the NCAA tournament.
But the fact that the new tournament has worked to KU's advantage doesn't change anything.
The post-season tournament was created for one main reason—money. It extends the season and gives the various money-stayed teams a chance to qualify. The chance to grab those needed ticket receipts.
Of course the fact that KU and K-State (and, more recently, Missouri) have a tendency to win the Big Eight Championship year after year had to have some effect on the vote of the other big school. It has moved the current tournament was approved by a 6-2 vote. There isn't really any need to specify which two schools were opposed.
SOME BIG Eight officials have said that the tournament didn't really rob the conference champion of its play-off berth, but merely increases the Big Eight's chances at placing two teams in the NCAA. A conference champion which lost the tournament, they say, would have a very good chance at an at-large berth in the tournament.
This is wishful thinking to the least. The Big Eight is a great football conference, but the same cannot be said for basketball. The Big Eight would receive an at-large berth only after the SEC, ACC and Big Ten had been placed. And may not even then.
Other defenders of the tournament say it is good because it increases fan interest in late season games that would otherwise be meaningless, as teams battle for the home court advantage and a higher seed. This is probably true, but it also decreases interest in early season games and renders the old "must-win" situation extinct.
IT ALSO turns the Big Eight Pre-Season Tournament into a joke. KU may well play K-State four times this season. This is good enough, it takes the shine of a traditional rivalry.
For years now, the Atlantic Coast Conference has had a post-season tournament. It has probably brought in lots of money and created lots of fan interest. It has also caused many ACC champions to spend the play-off season at home while less-talented (but hot at the right time) ACC teams lost in the NCAA restalions.
The Big Eight Post-Season Tournament is mistake. Having both it and the Pre-Season Tournament are a bad idea.
Maybe the Jayhawks will get it all together and sweep the tournament. If they do, their fans will cheer and the wheat will wave and the 'Hawks will go to the NCAA.
But we really shouldn't be there.
Affirmative action goes on trial
The Supreme Court this week quietly agreed to hear a school discrimination case that promises to be less tacitish as it addresses issues and even more important to colleges and universities.
Like the busing cases the court has heard, the latest case concerns a struggle between blacks and whites. It involves an attempt to increase minority representation in previously white-dominated institutions, as did the busing cases.
THERE'S AN interesting twist to the new case, however: the person who said he has been asked against is white, not black.
He is Allan Bakke, a 36-year-old white civil engineer who is suing the regents of the school for not complying with Davis Medical School. He says that he would have been admitted to the school in 1973 or 1974 and had not followed a special admissions policy for 16 minority students.
Bakke claims, in short, that it is a classic case of reverse discrimination. In taking his case this far he is bringing to the fore something that has been grumbled frequently in
Affirmative action policies are designed to eliminate all discrimination, for whatever reason, in institutions that
Jerry Seib
Editorial Writer
anyone in a way that is not discriminatory.
recent years; that our attempts to stop discrimination against "minorities" have gone so far that they have produced new cases of discrimination against those in the "majority."
ON TRIAL before the Supreme Court are the affirmative action policies that have become the Ten Compromise educational institutions, including the University of Kansas. Affirmative action policies are thick documents that can be read in university or business can hire, fire, admit, diamise or deal with
receive federal money. They have, however, come to be associated with the movements of blacks and women.
The Supreme Court should bear the latter argument with a healthy skepticism. Discrimination isn't always discrimination, especially if one is trying to cut through years of social and educational inequities.
When the Supreme Court hears Bakke's case, a clear definition of the powers of affirmative action should emerge. Civil rights leaders see the case as a call for more commitment to helping minorities achieve social and economic equality. Others oppose affirmative action policies, saying that discrimination is discrimination no matter who
ON THE face of it, admission to a medical school is a clear cut matter. The people with the highest grades and highest admission test scores get in. The answer is that you don't ask a question of black and white; a lot of gray area to be considered.
Admissions tests are drawn up by members of the white majority, who instill their white identity in thinking into every question on the test. The same is true, to a lesser degree, of nearly every class and every test a student completes a grade point average.
The black from Harlem or the Chicago from rural Texas is at an inherent disadvantage when facing either situation. His test
scores and grades have to be taken with a grain of salt.
LIKEWISE, the Suprem-
Court will have to decide
whether the needs of society
will outweigh pure objectivity.
When two candidates are
approximately equal
in qualifications, does the ad-
vantage go to the minority
candidate because minorities
underrepresented in the
profession? Should schools
go so far as to give less qualified
candidates a chance at the
expense of their white counterparts?
They are emotional questions all. In voting to hear the case, the Supreme Court was grimly no clue to the way it is leaning.
Given the personality of today's Court, it seems that anyone who reverses a challenge inamination has chance of winning his case. But the Court should remember one thing before making its own decision to start making up for centuries of discrimination some time.
Letters
Officials hurt basketball team
To the editor:
National championship,
nowwinning season, excellent
job. Big Eight champions, All-
Americans, strong team,
laughed off the court, good
years, Gong Owens, 56 per cent,
post-season winners of victories.
These phrases were used in the two
letters to the editor in the Feb.
2 Kansan. One attempted to
explain the decline of KU basketball, and the other praised the record of Coach Jordan. Proverbial window. We don't need cheap explanations and scapegoats because we all know the real reason KU basketball is big. That's days of old-Big Eight officials.
Before you jump to conclusions and decide I don't know
© 1977 NYT Special Features.
Alger Hiss, who worked in the State Department for 10 years and was convicted of two counts of perjury on Jan. 21, 1950, will be the guest of the University of Kansas next Tuesday.
Nixon and Hiss cases compared
Hss probably will enjoy his visit to the University, and students probably will benefit from his appearance here. Who might speak more knowledgeably about the McCarthy Era than he.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas daily August 10th, 2014. Subscriptions are $5 per month and June and July are except Saturday. Sunday and Halloween. Subscriptions by mail are $8 a semester or $18 a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are a year outside the county.
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STILL, SOMETHING bothers me about supporting a person like Hius by paying 50 cents to buy him a ticket to the gym from gsUA. I plan to hear
HSS HAS never admitted to any of the charges that were made against him, and he will speak to the judge he speaks here. Now, however,
The activities in question took place around 1937, but didn't come to light until then-Rep. Hiss was being a traitor and cranium spymp in 1948. Because the statute of limitations on any treason or espionage charges had run out seven years earlier, Hiss was told about his involvement in the case to a New York grand jury.
Although oversimplification might be unfair, it should be noted that Hiss was accused of passing secret documents to Whittaker Chambers, a former magazine editor, for transmission to a Communist spy ring.
him speak, so I guess the 50-cent admission fee is worth my seeing him.
Brent Anderson Editorial Writer
It is doubtful that anyone will be too upset by the Hiss visit. What happened to him nearly 40 years ago is of interest to many of us, especially those who think the United States Communist witch hunt conducted by Nixon and Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
Nixon's demise, because it
We may never know for sure whether Hiss really was a Communist and spit—a traitor to the United States. Time has healed some of the wounds caused by the Red Scare of the 1960s, but it has been shown that innocent people were hurt because of it.
he can speak knowing that the man most responsible for his conviction is despised throughout the country.
I DON'T mean to imply that the crimes Nixon and Hiss committed, if any, are similar. Any relationship between their demises is, at most, ironic. But what if Nixon were to be the guest of the University of Kansas March 17?
was recent and closely followed,
is familiar to most of us. What
we know about Hiss is based on
more limited information, so
possibly we are less quick to
praise him or curse him.
It wouldn't take long for the uproar to start, and it probably would end only after the former president left the campus or it was announced he had decided not to come at all.
I wonder if, in 20 years, the students of KU would react to a visit by Nixon the way we react to the visit by Hiss. A far-fetched comparison, granted. But there is a similarity between the public led by the public in their days of fame. History indicates, I think, that Hiss was hated in much the same way Nixon is today.
what I'm talking about, consider the following facts. KU is averaging 16 turnovers and 23 fouls per game. No matter what team they play, no matter what position they play, and the turnovers continue. Neither Owens nor the players should feel responsible, though, because they have no control over what happens on the court. The rets have decided that KU should make their basketball games, and they are making sure their decision sticks.
No example could point this out better than the KU-K-State game here Feb. 12. KU was in excellent position to come away with a victory when the officials decided to let K-State win. John Overby, an official at the game, awarded the ball to K-State after it fell. K-State then be a jump ball. Had there been a jump, KU might have won, but the officials couldn't let that happen.
I think having Hiss as a SUA
Forums speaker is a good idea,
and I'm looking forward to
seeing him. Do you think they
could get 50 cents a head to hear
Nixon speak?
Has anyone thought why the officials at the KU-MU game here Jan. 8 ejected Donnie Von Moore instead of Hoble Nobles? It was because Herb was having a terrible day shooting (6-21 in seven). Donnie could have helped hold MU's center, Kim Anderson, in check. The officials' strategy would have worked, too, had not John Douglas made everything he threw up on the stretch. I guess even the officials are enticed to a bad game every
So, all you foul-mouthed, quick-tempered fans who think you know all the answers had to admit that it is much simpler than you think. And the next time you see a Big Eight official on the street, stop and ask him how KU's team was going. I'm sure he knows.
John Herbert Lawrence Junior
Gym court misused To the editor:
Five of us went down to Robinson Gym last week during open hours with the intent to play a game of basketball. Upon arrival, we noticed that there were 20 persons on one court, and we needed to play on the other court were only 10 students, with no one waiting to play. We courteously asked these 10 students if we could split the court with them and play half court as the other students were doing. Our team was full of confidence and profanity, and we were told by one of the 10 students that they were "athletes getting into shape" and that "at athletes make K.U. go." Furthermore, we were told by one member of the group that basketball is a man's game and not for inimitable players; students failed to yield the court, we went to the management.
Before he even walked on the court, the manager told us that he'd had trouble with this group last week, and that he was too tired to play. "So you didn't have him," he didn't have the backing of the campus police. Upon entering the court, he stopped, told us that these students had every reason not to attend after we pointed out the discrepancy in numbers and that we had been told that these players had been there all morning; so he told us to go to the already-backed court.
We feel this is not fair because
Robinson facilities are supposedly for all students. For 10 persons to bully 35 isn't right, and if the management won't do anything about the problem, they will point that will see that these facilities are run correctly. Finally, if these "athletes" are being put through school with part of other K.U. students' sportsmanship, they will K.U. and should exemplify the spirit of fair play and good sportsmanship. These "athletes" did not.
(Names withheld by request.)
A question of pride To the editor:
Courtney Thompson obviously does not have the sense of pride in Kansas University basketball that the Gong Owens supporters have. She lauded Owens numerous times in her article (Kansan, Feb. 23) for producing seven Winning seasons in Iowa and having "winning" seasons is not what has given KU the reputation for outstanding basketball, nor has it made KU the second winning team in college basketball.
Miss Thompson points out that KU has been playing rughester competition, as some sort of rationalization for our team's playoff berth. In nonconference action, the Jayhawks should be playing, and remaining competitive with, the best team in the country nationally recognized teams since 1971 has shown that we are not competing with them any longer! And our cumulative conference record of 74-61 (55 per cent) against Big Eight球队 makes it more likely to make any longstanding Jayhawker follow crime!
She also writes that 25 Gong Owens shirtwearers "hardly represent a significant groundwell of opposition." I feel that the decrease in attendance indicates that more than 25 people are unhappy with their game, and no one can go to any KU game and expect to see a sellout crowd of 18,000 fans; in fact, only one of KU's 13 home games was sold out this year.
Lastly Miss Thompson mentions that our "recruiting reputation also is a concern." In the past few years, KU's recruiting program has trained high school All-Americans to play in Allen Field House for the crimson and the blue. However, several times this talent never blossomed as expected. Perhaps it was that the players able to excel on a college level, but the recurrence of such a phenomenon so many times in so few years might cause one to wonder whether the staff actually restricted this talent. Recent examples include students who tend to mind are Aubrey Nash, Marshall Rogers, Leonard Gray, Nino Samuel, and most recently Andre Wakefield. In fact, Rogers went to Pan American University last year, and Gray went to Long Beach State and is now playing pro ball.
KU "k basketball is GOING downhill! I have a feeling that the silent majority on our side, not just not "a grumbling few."
Editorial corrected To the editor:
Jeff Nelson Salina Senior
I
The Kansan editorial (Feb. 21) on the Middle East was remarkably well-balanced. However, several crucial facts were omitted and an outright error made.
Israel refuses to recognize and thus negotiates directly the issue of an organization recognizes the existence of Israel. The editorial failed to mention that the Palestinian Council's 10-point program and national policy are due to the destruction of Israel.
The editorial also failed to mention that both sides of the dispute, and Cyrus Vance, are waiting until after national elections in Israel in May to start any serious bargaining.
Also, Egypt, like Israel, desires peace, or at least a nonwar state at this time. Israel should be roughly 10 times that of Israel, but about the same GNP, spends about the same amount (upwards of 40 per cent) as on military expenditures. The food rations in Cairo last for a series of financial difficulties which have plagued Egypt for years. Additional domestic economic problems could undermine the current government as much as an unpopular policy decision taken by Sadat.
Finally, the editorial incorrectly stated that Israel refuses to give up the West Bank and portions of the Golan Heights for security reasons, and the old city of Jerusalem. But the planned Palestinian minimum bank, not in outer Mongolia,
Diane Wolkow
Prairie Village senior
Tanman wait rude
To the editor:
Jay Bermis in his or her (I can't tell from the photo) comments regarding John Jay, who has relied both insensitivity and ignorance. The fact that the editors would print such a childish piece confirms the Kansan's reputation as a narrow-minded organ of anti-Semitism, importantly support. Bernis should wonder who would wait one second to catch a look at any Kansan staff member's shadow or no shadow. To lay in Mr. Snider is as clearly rude as anything I've seen this spring.
W. Propst Box 591 Lawrence
Letters Policy
Letters to the editor are welcomed but should be typewritten, double-spaced and no longer than 400 words. All letters are edited and may be condensed according to space limitations and the editor's judgment. Letters must not be signed; KU students must provide their academic standing and hometown; faculty must provide their position; others must provide their address.