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Monday, February 21, 1977
University Daily Kansas
Comment
Opinions on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Kansas or the School of Journalism.
U.S. holds cards
Maybe this will be the year.
Conditions are considered favorable for a major peace conference in Geneva involving the nations of the Middle East. There is a chance that finally, after all these years, something promising will happen regarding that crises-filled area.
But, as Secretary of State Cyrus Vance has said, "If progress is not made this year, then there is a danger that other factors may arise that may destroy the favorable conditions which currently exist."
WHAT HAS raised the hopes of optimists is that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has been weakened—both politically and militarily by the Lebanese civil war. It has been estimated that 40,000 of the PLO's 200,000 men died in that war, which ended with Syrian peace-keeping forces occupying Lebanon.
The PLO no longer has the power to block a Geneva conference, which it opposes because Isreal might as a result be recognized formally as a state by other Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Jordan.
There also are factors that don't favor a Geneva conference.
Many fear that Israel demands and the presence of Syrian troops in Lebanon will evoke the temperers of the more rebellious factions of the PLO and bring about a new outburst of terrorism. These extremists, who believe they have been unjustly robbed of their homeland by Zionists, want Israel destroyed. This desire for destruction has caused such incidents as the slaying of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics and numerous plane hijackings.
ONE MAJOR drawback in setting up a peace conference is the question of how the Palestinians should be represented. Israel says it is ready to agree to Palestinian representation, but it wants a more moderate group of Palestinians with which to negotiate—no PLO.
Another problem is the Israeli elections May 17. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's Labor party has come under attack in the last couple of months, and many fear the political power of Israel's conservatives could result in an even less favorable Israeli attitude toward the Palestinians, Rabin.
fearing anything that might hurt him politically, is wary of making any major decisions on a possible conference now.
But Israel can afford peace.
ROBIN'S RECENT statement that "1977 will not be a year of diplomatic magic" reflects that attitude.
Military spending takes half of the country's budget. Inflation is a continuous problem. The Israelis are strong militarily, thanks primarily to U.S. aid. Another war probably wouldn't cure an already ailing economy.
Arab nations also are interested in peace so their economies can continue to expand. But there are obstacles to peace in some of these countries as well.
FOOD RIOTS IN Cairo last month have left Egyptian President Anwar Sadat wondering about his country's political future, which could change abruptly if Sadat makes an unpopular decision.
All the countries of the Middle East seem to be looking to the United States for a solution.
"The United States holds 99 per cent of the cards," Sadat has said. "If it is really interested, it can have peace within a month." I am not mad yet by coincidence in
"Egypt and Israel don't have confidence in each other, but in the United States."
President Carter knows this. He has sent Vance to the Middle East to determine attitudes toward a Geneva settlement. He also is extending invitations to the heads of state of each country to visit him soon in Washington, D.C.
A MAJOR CONCERN is what would happen if the countries were to sit at a Geneva table. Arab nations, pointing to United Nations resolution, want Israel to return the land it occupied in the 1967 and 1973 wars. Israel is interested in returning some of the land, including a "mini-state" to the Palestinians, but refuses to give up its occupation of such territories as Syria's Golan Heights and Jordan's West Bank.
Possibility of peace in the Middle East rests largely with the United States, which already has begun doing its homework. But peace will be at hand only if others make concessions.
Such concessions must include Israel and the PLO, both putting history aside and showing a willingness to compromise at the table, wherever that table is located.
As you may or may not have noticed, the Kansan didn't endorse any of the student body. This week's Student Senate election.
The Kansan did not endure any candidate for student body president in last year's Student Senate elections either. Or any candidate for election in the year before that. In fact, the Kansan never has.
THE KANSAN is, in part, funded through the student activity fee allocated by the Senate. This portion of the fee, which totals about $2 per student a semester, is "in lieu of subscription." The Kansas could survive without it, but it probably would have to start charging for the paper and digital versions of students as a result of such a charge. The Kansas, therefore, is to a certain extent intertwined in Senate politics.
It's not that we're all politically apathetic. Kansan staffers probably know more new candidates than any student Senate elections than anyone else on campus-with the exception, of course, of the various candidates. It's simply Kansan has a vested interest.
Endorsement. self interest clash
Endorsing one candidate would not only alienate the other candidates—who might well win—but would, more than ever, give a great number of charges of convining and plotting and self-interest. Any attempt to endorse the candidate the paper honestly thought was the best way to get the job would go for naught.
A glance at the other college newspapers that the Kansan gets in the mail makes a non-interesting look, even more attractive.
Last year, for example, the University Daily loan at the University of Iowa endorsed one of three student body presidential candidates. They did this in a rather large, boxed,
front-page editorial accompanied by two front-page articles pointing out negative aspects of the two other candidates. The front page items appeared on the one and only election day.
NOW THE editorial may well have been for the best candidate; and the two other ar-
newspaper bluntly and unsubtly trying to call all the shots.
Another example is what happened in this year's K-State
The Kansas could have done what the Iowan did, but that kind of ego-trip causes far too many irate phone calls. That kind of political involvement we can do without.
everyone write-in in Curtis Redding, top writer of Kansas State basketball player. Once again, the team had been justified. But the Kansas will never have to be in such an awkward position. (Incidentally, 100th voodoo and forced a run-off election.)
Editor's Note
Jim Bates
Some people might say that the people at the Kansan are just a bunch of sniveling little cowards. If we had any guts, they would be the candidate we thought was right come hell or high water.
ticles may well have been well-founded and accurate. But the general impression the reader gets from these throws its weight around; a
And, frankly, these people may be onto a grain of truth. We do worry about alienating candidates.
main reason we don't endorse candidates is not cowardice but conflict of interest. And we like to think and hope the next few months will prove—that were president when he (God forbid!) blows it. Once in office, he is fair game.
BUT WE like to think that the
We also like to think that a student body president wouldn't be so petty as to carry out some personal vendetta against the just because of some critical editorial or unfavorable story.
Caution is advisable and tact is wise; but snivelling covardice is something to be frowned upon. The Kansan does not intend to snivel just because of politics.
Letters
Assassinations probe warranted
To the editor:
Growing concern in professional journalistic ranks about the information sovereignty affecting news reporting affords an appropriate backdrop for the observation that very little has appeared in the press and is reported in a recent Press Feb. 2 on the extension of
KU needs speed reading class
In the offices of the KU bureaucracy, thousands of memos, handouts, and reports circulate daily, keeping administrative cogs in perpetual motion.
In campus classrooms, professors and their assistants daily assign students to read and write articles, articles and newspapers.
Jimmy Carter's suggestion to cope with the mountains of administrative paperwork is to trim the government's size, increase theNUM and avoid complex and ambiguous language in reports.
FOR THE MANY KU students who are bombarded by verbage, there is only one solution—speed reading.
An average student will have taken approximately 25 seconds to read the above four
education is still stymied by skeptics and disbelievers.
paragraphs and will have digested about 50 per cent of the information. Average speed readers will have reduced that time to from five to nine seconds and will have increased their comprehension to between 70 and 80 per cent.
Speed reading as a time saver and an aid to comprehension is
THE SECRET OF rapid realing lies in the ability to master three things: to learn words, to use sentences that the eye can see at each glance; to think words as one reads them to eliminate "sun" and "rain"; and to recognize that the eye can see at each glance; to think words as one reads them to eliminate "sun" and "rain".
a skill very much in demand by both KU students and faculty. It seems strange that so little emphasis in KU's curriculum is placed on reading power. What could, and should, be an integral part of
Paul Addison
Editorial Writer
centrate on the words being read.
methods are both different and most effective, the only real difference seems to be the cost of each program.
THE EVELYN Wood Reaming Dynamics Institute is the avowed leader in the field, as well as the most expensive, and because the course was first taught in Lawrence in 1967. Since then more than 3,000 people in Lawrence have completed it. The course includes two one-half hours a session and pay $275 for the course.
In Lawrence, at least four speed reading courses are being offered this semester—two by KU and two by private firms.
Evelyn Wood's major competitor is a New Mexico based corporation, the United States Reading Lab, which arrived in Lawrence for the first time last week and for just over $200 offers a 16-week program comprising four three-hour
While each contends that its
At KU, although strides have been made the past two years to increase the number of reading courses, only the School of Education offers a class, which is quickly filled. The alternative is to sign up for an effective reading, which costs about $50, and is offered by the Dean of Men's and Dean of Women's offices.
For success in speed reading,
in as most other learning
methods, discipline, devotion
dial in the program are
needed.
FOR THOSE completing the course, both groups guarantee to triple reading efficiency or money is returned.
© 1977 NYT Special Features
class sessions and 12 weeks of home study.
Although it is possible to learn the method from any number of books currently on the market, the book you find that feels best reads speeding in best learned.
it is in course speed reading is best learned HEADER AS a freshman sophomore required course or as a part of a wider "learning techniques" class, speed reading would be an asset to every elementary education. In the benefits of a speed program would be reflected, throughout KU, in terms of increased understanding of course material,consumption of more reading material and a conference in academic excellence.
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. In addition, KU students must provide their academic standing and homework; faculty must provide their position; others must provide their address.
the Select Committee on Assassinations (of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King). Established by massive congressional endorsement last term, the Select Committee on Assassinations (of John F. Kennedy) countered a doubling of its original opposition of 65 votes. There is little reason to believe this shift reflects any substantial change in public opinion, which by all indications is due to the growing reliantness investigation of both assassinations.
A key figure in the establishment of the Select Committee and current Committee chairman, Rep. Henry Gonzales, D-Texas, stated Jan. 25: "Now that the Committee has been a reality and their involvement is well that there are strong and organized forces dedicated to stopping these investigations in their tracks. . . During the span of its short life in the 94th Congress, the Select Committee found previously undisclosed evidence, critical witnesses who used revelations and revelations which lead to serious questions that must be resolved."
District of Columbia Rep. Walter Famtroy stated that threshold inquiries "have provided literally a thousand questions unanswered by the three assassinations." Among these, why seven FBI agents questioned Oswald for 12 hours and yet no transcript was provided to the Warren Commission and why the commission had been in the employ of the FBI. Congressman Mario Blaggi, who former a soldier leader of New York City detectives, called for a thorough investigation, speaking from the perspective of an officer. We would carry both these cases as open cases. So if we are dealing in terms of honest investigations carried on for the purposes of finding answers to questions that would have to be handled without no choice but to continue the investigation. The people have a right to know the truth."
Rep. Stewart McKinney, R-Conn., asserted that Select Committee counsel Richard Sprague was the victim of a massive hatchet job "the likes of which I have never seen." Rep. Scott Gunther asked the question of what motivated this hatchet job. Rep. Samuel Devine, R-Ohio, and Rep. Yvonne Burke, D-Calf., expressed sharply directed suspicions at the leaking (just before debate) of a Justice Department report which allegedly concluded that there was no need for further investigative intrusion into the King case.
An earlier report by the Justice Department had arrived at just the opposite conclusion. The leaked report was not available to supporters of the committee on Feb. 2 but was cited by opponents of ex-candidate Ben Carson's investigation. The House voted Feb. 2 to extend the Select Committee on Assassinations temporarily until March 31. Among those opposing an extension of the life of the former Rep. Larry Winn, Keith Sebelius and Joe Skubitz of the Kansas delegation.
Are they under the illusion that their voting in this matter is representative of the sentiments of a majority of their constituents? Or have they been caught up in some form of corruption of which is not intelligible out here where the sunflowers droop?
Bill Summers
P.O. Box 203
Pittsburg
B&G crew thanked
To the editor:
I would like to say a special thanks to those unsung heroes of the University of Kansas: the men and women of the buildings and grounds department. Too often these people are taken for granted and it is time we give them some well-deserved praise.
During the past winter the members of the buildings and grounds department were out and about in the freezing weather clearing sidewalks, salting stairways, and continuously shoveling the mud slush from the roofs of buildings so that knowing to know our learned instructors are opening the knowledge of the centuries to us, it is also very comforting to know that someone is
1.
protecting our butts during the icy weather.
The members of the buildings and grounds department deserve further praise for their constant cleaning, planting, trimming, and mowing throughout this visually appealing building. Maintaining a 'manicured' appearance at KU is not only noticed by visitors, but appreciated by the students.
Thanks to the people who know their job and do it exceptionally well.
Wel again the c when
Chris Funnell
Chris Funnel
Prairie Village sonhomore
Kau Nebr Satur with Buffa vanta
ASK advocated To the editor:
Propinquity and snobbery might be the reasons behind the University of Kansas not admitting Students of Kansas (ASK).
It is said that most of those seated on the Kansas Board of Regents are old KU alumn. Lawrence is only a scant 20 miles from the state legislature. KU has some undeniable clout in Topeka. But KU isn't the only school in the state to have a system that all had to be together under an ASK umbrella to help thwart KU's dominance in Kansas' higher educational planning.
The Student Senate, that munificent student governing body at KU, chose to ignore its sater institutions in the state by staying out of ASK on the premise that it would need more in fees. Humm, the Kanana said that there was perhaps a surplus of $100,000 in the Senate treasury, and the cost of ASK wouldn't have even dented that at 25 cents a student head. KU joining ASK would help the degree program educational elitism that is now so blatantly apparent.
KU should support ASK. With the state's largest school also in support of this group, it too would have more clout in Topeka for all the state Regents schools. Jeffrey Latz
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
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Editor Jim Rates
Business Manage Janice Clements