4
Tuesday, February 1, 1977
University Daily Kansan
Comment Opinions on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Kansas or the School of Journalism
An American value
Before you go on to read something else in today's paper, or before you proceed to do anything else today, let's stop to consider an all-too-familiar and all-too-uncomfortable problem.
It's a problem that, these days, can assume several names and forms: "exclusive residential district," or "preferred membership" or—one of the most infamous—"preserving ethnic purity." But perhaps you know it best as racial prejudice. Prejudice: irrational hatred of a particular group.
Some might say that any discussion of Prejudice in America Today is cliche; that anything that could be said about prejudice has already been said. And they might say that any discussion of prejudice is a problem; that prejudice exists because people keep saying it exists.
YES, IT is cliche. Racist attitudes have long permeated our thinking, and all that has been said in attempting to obliterate those attitudes has been of little avail.
But no, a serious discussion of a problem does not perpetuate the problem. On the contrary, we're in the fix that we're in because no one has been talking lately.
There was a movement during the '60s to break up the racial and ethnic barriers that had placed non-white Americans into little niches and kept them there. There were efforts on several fronts to establish the fact that ethnic and racial groups had identities of their own. Ethnic heritage, culture and values all stood up to be recognized.
AND IN many ways, progress has been realized. An employer can not—legally discriminate in his job because of an employee's race. A reactor can not—legally refuse to sell "
house to a prospective buyer because he is black. Minority groups have since made advances in several professional fields.
advances in seven. Those milestones during the '60s were supposed to work for the elimination of racial hatred that had scarred America's 200-year history. We thought we were on the verge of a new age of thinking and acting.
A decade later, we have come very far: THE ANSWER depends on how you interpret the question. In ways, we have come far. We've seen more blacks take seats at Congress. There is a opportunity than black and other minority students to enter college. Blacks have "broken the block" in many previously lily white neighborhoods.
Those progressions are monumental and certainly should be counted in our society's favor. Unfortunately, however, they might not be an accurate barometer of how well we tolerate one another in 1977. Allowing a black person to be your neighbor, and how well you and your neighbor get along are two different things.
A DECADADE, have we come very far?
Answer that question yourself. Count the number of remarks you hear (or say) about a "mixed" marriage, or about the predominance of blacks on a football team.
Notice how uncomfortable you get when you're outnumbered by "them." Look at how many people laugh with—not at—Archie Bunker. Question whether the number of minorities in the unemployment line and below the poverty line really concerns you at all.
Disheartening, isn't it? A decade obviously hasn't undone the racist transgressions of two centuries.
But it's no wonder. We've hardly tried.
Pre-enrollment plug
When 10 students were caught enrolling ahead of schedule this semester by using old and invalid permit to enroll cards, University officials apparently delivered only a lecture and told the miscreants to go and sin no more.
RARE OR non-existent is the student who attends the University of Kansas for four years without cheating at enrollment at some time or another. These 10 just happened to get caught.
At first glance, that soft slap on the wrists seems an unusually light punishment for criminals who were caught red-handed. But when one thinks for a moment about the emotion of it, the frequent response to it becomes clear that there was little more that could be done.
Nearly every student has a story or two about how to beat the system, how to sneak into enrollment early if a friend is working at the check-in station, so that you don't get caught for underclassmen, or how to get a false demeanor's stamp on a permit to enroll card, as the 10 violators did.
Until the University finally gets the computerized pre-enrollment system that officials have long been promising, there's no way to stop the violations. Enrollment workers can surely be more alert and reduce violations, but human error insures that there will always be a way to triumph over the rules.
IT WOULD have been a little silly to punish 10 students when so many more are obviously getting away with bending the rules. University officials need not fear that their kind treatment of these students will open the door for more abuse. This is true, but it's a long time—ever since the number of students at KU became too large for the old system of enrolling.
All that can be realistically done is to hope that computerized pre-enrollment for the entire University gets out of the conference room and into actual use soon. It would make involved and would easily easier for everyone involved and would stop making criminate out of students.
Budget rules slow Carter
The OSHA move was only a minor barb in the sides of the business community. Efforts to prohibit corporate bribes to foreign countries met even louder resistance.
Apparently, times have changed. At a conference on the economic outlook for Kansas
Jimmy Carter's people are working furiously these days to meet a February 15 deadline for putting their own stamp on the album for support. How much of a stamp will it be? Not much.
Mr. Carter may find the situation frustrating; conservatives will find it comforting. Viewed in terms of deficit spending, he will be enough, Mr. Ford projected income of $393 billion and outge of $440 billion for a $47 billion deficit. Mr. Carter already has promised to make bad matters worse. His cuts and spending increases will produce a $75 billion deficit.
BUT IF the new President had more time to work on the figures, the country might be facing a budget to boggle the mind. He doesn't have the time. Under the Budget Reform Act, the various legislative authorizing committees must
begin pulling their reports together on February 15. The reports go to the two Budget Committees on March 14.
When the Occupational Safety and Health Administration decreed that public toilets should be placed at specific locations in and in farm fields, cries of governmental meddling rang from the mouths of the faithful. Ridiculous, the businessmen claimed. Let us run our fire, we fit out, and fit not, as we are told to.
The Budget Committees must recommend income and outgo totals to Congress by April 15. The House and Senate then have until May 15 to fix the final target figures.
These deadlines, unlike most timetables on Capitol Hill, are taken seriously. The Budget Committees still are fired by the zeal of reform; they perceive themselves as a voice and their chairmen mean to match the record this year. And wholly apart from their pride in the reform process, the committees see the new procedures and initiatives that Congress can meet the White House on equal terms.
WITHIN THE FIXED timetable, Mr. Carter's people, competent as they are, cannot afford the budget accounts. Some large lump sums can be added—another $4 billion for public works spending that can be subtracted—$2 billion in tax cuts for
James J. Kilpatrick
© 1977 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
Letters Policy
AND GOVERNMENTAL dabbling with the private sector has long been criticized as the American business machine.
business. The deadlines will not permit the thousands of individual revisions that would have to be made to accrual records and insurance plan or the federalization of public welfare.
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 be signed; KU students must provide their academic standing and hometown; faculty must provide their position; others must provide their address.
Mr. Carter faces a second difficulty in shaping the budget for fiscal 78. His predecessors have taken a bold approach to sheer momentum of federal programs already in motion. Roughly 75 per cent of the budget is spent out of the $440 billion total is relatively uncontrollable.
Chief among the tenets of this faith is the assumption that competition lowers prices and improves services and goods.
American businessmen, those diehard chiefs of economic conservatism, have long touted the free enterprise system as essential to the maintenance of the American way of life.
THE BUDGET projects $6.7 billion in payments under Social Security and railroad retirement. The figures are untouchable. The budget includes $23.1 billion in federal retirement. Untouchable. There is an item of $31.2 billion in net interest on debts. Untouchable. Do not leave the house, do even if he were so minded, to cut costs of Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, veterans' benefits, and public assistance payments.
This needs to be understood by those who naively imagine it a simple matter to whack $50 and then add $40 billion there.
CONGRESS MAY help him out of this dilemma by balking at some of these grandiose ventures. When young men and women in the working force fully understand why they are costing them, we are likely to see political rebellion. Five years hence a worker earning $23,700 will be walloped $3,247 in combined employer-employee taxes for Social Security alone. National health insurance requires much more. A sensitive House will be cautious.
Some of these were massive-
vast new sums for education,
welfare and comprehensive
fiscal modest—a new Consumer Advocacy Agency. They all add up. Simultaneously, he is committed absolutely to sub-
suming a balanced budget for fiscal '81.
The President has a third problem also. During the course of his campaign he made extravagant promises—and he made them in two directions at the same time. On the spending side, he promised a proliferation of new programs.
In sum, Mr. Carter hasn't the time, hasn't the power, and hasn't the political support to write major innovations into the budget for the coming fiscal year. Like the skipper of one of those prodigious superintendants, he can change course if he can change course a few degrees here or a few degrees there.
Businessmen should take lumps
But it takes 20 miles of ocean to turn around and half a day to stop. Next year, maybe, he will have a budget 30 per cent of which he may legitimately call his own.
JOHN ARMSTRONG,
president of the KFB, now
pleads for government help.
He has been estimated to be two years
here Friday, officials of the Kansas Farm Bureau and Cessna Aircraft Co. sang a different tune.
administration to step in and help Cessna's sagaing exports. As a result of embargoses imposed by Brazil and Mexico, Cessna's exports, which once amounted to 30 per cent of its business in 1974, is now down to 23 per cent—a 10-year low.
The underlying contradiction
Bill Sniffen
Editorial Writer
domestic oversupply, not counting 1977's harvest, is in business. It was a way out off the wheat crisis is government assistance—specifically, further foreign investment—guranteed foreign markets."
Russell Myer Jr., chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Cessna Aircraft Co., Wichita, called for the Carter
between wanting to be left alone and wanting government help when the going gets tough is evident, and is becoming the corollary to the chief tenet of leadership in business in the mid 20th century.
AS PAIL, MMcCracken,
chairman of the 1968 Counsel of Economic Advisors, noted at a meeting of the Nuclear spoke of economy in 1955, one
was speaking of the American economy. Not so in 1977, he said. As is becoming evident to the most devout of American business leaders, believer in the United States can maintain its stranglehold on the world's economic throat.
Still, some try, seemingly defying the notion that competition is the byword of the free enterprise system.
Hurt by the importation of cheaper clothing, automobiles, televisions and radios from countries such as Japan, Italy, France, Germany and South Korea, among others, their owners of these goods would like to see American-imposed embargoes.
—and embargoes imposed by, who else? The U.S. government.
then the American businessman had better learn to take his licks. He is no longer operating in an economic vacuum.
IF COMPETITION be the
if cornerstone of free enterprise-
provided the concept is paid
more than mere lipservice-
That's tough. And the business community's reaction is understandable. It makes economic sense to want to get the most for the buck. So requests for government help to break up a business that itself belies the conviction placed in the competition theory—will probably continue.
Unless, of course, American businessmen want to change their underlying economic assumptions.
That's not likely. So take your lumps, business. And stop bitching.
This schizoid nature of American businesses' economic beliefs can only reveal businesses' true passion—that loose screw, the cog in the machine, is really only what the American consumer (remember him?) gets.
Letters
To the editor:
Whistle silence no longer golden
Years ago, while sitting in 205 Flint, we'd snicker and take bets on how far the new kid in the class would jump after hearing the whistle for the first time at point-blank range.
To admit that you're associated with the KU School of Journalism—in any capacity—isn't very popular these days. The recent silencing of the University's press officers and inductive comments about the employees and students of Flint Hall.
I quite honestly felt no remorse when I first learned the whistle was gone, and I doubt that anyone who frequents Flint Hall felt differently. When I first started at KU I thought one criterion for being a journalistic reporter shouldn't be too good. Needless to say, with the whistle I was deeply relieved.
Now, after one week of classes, I'm beginning to understand the logic behind the whistle. It has kept me occupied. Professors and students never even needed a watch before. Classes rarely
After the whistle blew, you could walk the halls of Flint and tell immediately who were J-School veterans. They were the only people who weren't cowering in the corners and asking directions to the nearest civil defense shelter.
So, with the absence of the whistle, you can't blame the employees of Flint for skipping through the halls singing, "Ding-dong," but the whistle had its humorous side too. One professor played tag with it for so long that he'd stop in the middle of a lecture, pause a few seconds, and wait for the whistle at a clock. It was a unique time-keeping system. It was KU. But the whistle was also an undeniable headache.
went overtime. And the University as a whole ran on a smooth timetable without having to install a costly clock system. But now classes run long, almost without exception. It's enough to make you hang it all up.
Therefore, it is with mixed emotions that I tell you my ears have had a nice reprieve from that confounded whistle, but it's better to be interrupted and to understand more than to have the School of Journalism be the chief recipient of screaming ventdettes from irate people, saying we're the cause for the end of efficiency at KU. Personally, we like to get to class on time.
Sorry, guys, but the silence ain't so golden anymore.
Mike Strand Lawrence Senior
Kilpatrick disputed
To the editor:
Freedom of the press in high school? Balderdash!
The Kanse rightly printed James J. Kilpatrick's, "Schools Have Right to limit press" in last Friday's edition.
The rights of high school students should be the rights of slaves to the educational process only.
If high school students want to learn anything about personal freedoms they'll just have to wait for their graduation day. They will need to just promote and teach public information and relations work.
This business of allowing it to be free is nonsense. Those kids have to learn respect, the Pledge of Allegiance, to salute the flag and to get a shave and a hair cut.
The first Ten Amendments of the U.S. Constitution shouldn't really apply to anybody under the same law as Klimutz said, have anarchy.
En
in
hon
Why, if Joe McCarthy were here, he'd say that freedom of the press in high school would lead us straight down the road to Communism. Some of those leftist, "pinkie" kids would take me on a tour of the city, you knew your subscription was expiring.
Kilpatrick was right when he said public funds were financing those high school papers, and they should be under the strict scrutiny of educational administrators.
An en Universi been es Frankli D. Murp
Mur the U also s tinge n pract
Imagine, teaching such a thing as freedom of expression in HIGH SCHOOL?
Fraternity clinic 1905 u
Bah. Those kids should be learning how to read. The functional illiteracy in this country is high enough.
Rober for the new develop The che Med Ca
A gift made
Helen director "will be with C mittee
A person just can't imagine why that crazy Tray Jefferson, who was in charge of the decision if it were left for him to decide to have government without press or press without government he'd choose the
the press does is stir up trouble. I can't imagine why they were allowed to embarrass that nice Mr. Nixon.
Jeff Latz
Then, can you imagine our educators teaching such
anarchy in high school? Good Lord, I hope not. What would this country come to?
Jeff Latz
121 14th St., Apt. E.
Fuel saving urged To the editor:
must we always wait for an emergency before we act? Sure, KU needs a plan for an energy emergency, should one arise, but what are we doing now in the interest of our students? A warm walk through many campus buildings will tell you—not much! President Carter has asked repeatedly that EVERY gas consumer do his share by lowering temperatures, least 65 degrees, student, homeowner and homeowner, I see no reason why KU is exempt from acting immediately to reduce temperatures, as requested. By wearing warmer clothing, we will demonstrate a sincere interest in conservation, help reduce the victims of fuel shortages elsewhere in the country who are not as fortunate as we are
Jane Lfett
Toneka. iunior
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