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Wednesday, July 25, 1990 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Sunflower State Games First attempt to organize event found lacking statewide competition requires more efficiency
the first Sunflower State Games are scheduled to begin Friday and, because of a
recent surge in entries, participation is expected to reach or exceed the goal of 2,500 people.
The Games are a great idea. Competition is open to all amateur athletes in Kansas, regardless of age. There are events for everyone, including Special Olympians and others with disabilities. But they've all had to be patient.
Granted, this is the first year for the Games, but some Lawrence residents believe the Games would do well to exhibit a bit more efficiency.
Prospective participants in the Games have been a little discouraged. Some said they couldn't find registration forms and had to
request them by mail. They wrote to a post office box and, as late as three weeks to a month later, finally received the necessary form.
Also, it appears that some entry forms never got to the locations where they were supposed to be. The forms were supposedly available on campus at various locations, but finding them proved to be a tough job.
This kind of disorganization could lead to less participation. It would benefit everyone if this first edition of the Sunflower State Games goes off without a hitch. The Games are worth keeping, and it would be a boon for amateur athletes and Lawrence alike if they continue to grow in the future.
The editorial board
U.S.-Mexico border separates land of plenty from poverty
TLJUANA, Mexico — A rivulet of sweat rolled from the little girl's ink-black hair, cutting a channel through the dust on her brown cheek before disappearing beneath her jaw. The Mexican sun had pushed the temperature into the 90s, and the Pacific humidity made the air thick.
The child could not have been older than 6, but her somber face showed none of the gaiety of youth.
She drifted among the crowd in the openair market, her drab clothes and dirty hair blending with the ubiquitous crumbling masonry and weathered paint. Her squalid lifestyle fit perfectly with the merchants' shacks and street vendors that are Tijuana.
While camera-toting tourists and shopkeepers in tiers dickered about prices of clothing and trinkets on the racks that spilled from stores into the streets, she asked for money. Sometimes she begged with words, sometimes with her eyes.
Derek Schmidt
Guest columnist
Occasionally, an American tossed a coin her way. The natives never did. She was one of them.
And she was not alone.
Across the street, an old woman sat crossed on a grimy blanket that once was red and white but had faded to pink. A worn umbrella kept most of the sun from her tangled white hair, and a tattered shawl shaded her shoulders.
Her leather face and gnarled right foot drew sidelong looks of pity from passersby. But she did not need pity; she needed food.
The woman did not acknowledge the tiny boy in brown nants who plained in the
garbage at the curb near her. She was too busy weaving some sort of garment and tending the three canvas bags that held her belongings.
The haggling and laughing of the market street were foreign to her, though they were her home. She was not there to strike a deal. She had nowhere else to go.
A few blocks closer to the border crossing, a modern plaza had sprouted from the slums. Along its brick concourse stretched a series of stores and restaurants in an open-air mail. In the commons, a fountain gurgled, tossing water into the air and letting it lap carelessly down two tiers of platforms into the pool below. Tourists lined up to snap photos. Street lights and park benches abounded. People filled the area.
The old woman ignored the horde of taxi drivers that swarmed upon every passing tourist in quest of a fare, and they ignored her. She was part of the scenery.
But one corner remained empty. No stores
had opened there, and pedestrians neglected the spot. Only a garbage barrel stood there. A man bent over it.
A cowboy hat hid his face; the barrel hit his arms. He reached deep inside and rushed through the refuse, occasionally fishing out a hole in the trash. The trash for several minutes. He was thorough.
The hilltop panorama in the rolling countryside of southern California and northern Mexico reveals a disparity between the two countries that is striking even to those familiar with it. To the south of the chain-link fence, on the western side, are slums of Tijuana. To the north, a valley empties reaches to the horizon. It is the backyard of San Diego.
The border crossing links the two worlds, On the Mexican side, people dressed as priests asked travelers for money to help the poor. Perhaps they were priests. But as they approached pedestrians and asked for money from the logjam of cars waiting to return to
the States, it seemed likely that the poverty they battled was their own.
The priests were not the last image tourists had before crossing back into the States. Children at work lined the walkway to the customs checkpoint. Some scurried playfully, dodging pedestrians. Others sat quietly.
Most striking was a girl, about 6 years old, who sat on the concrete in a dirty dress, one leg folded beneath her body, the other sticking straight out. She was indisiquishable from the child who begged in the market, except she wore sandals and played music in a serenade for her supper. In front of her, a red-and-white Coke cup collected coins.
And next to her sat a younger girl, perhaps 4 who studied her companion intently. She had been a teacher.
Compact history lesson reveals U.S.' dark side
► Derek Schmidt is an independence senior majoring in journalism who is on a summer internship in Phoenix, Artz.
A good friend of mine stopped by recently with one of his fellow employees for some drinks after they got off work. His friend was from Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean off the coast of Turkey. Though I had met him before, I began to worry about what I could talk about with someone from halfway around the world. As fate would have it, the conversation took on a political tone.
We began by talking about the American Revolution. Ali, my friend's friend, was curious about the United States' past. As my grade school lessons came back to me, my lips raced in my eagerness to recount the history I had learned more than a decade ago. I found great pleasure in reciting my country's history, from Washington to Franklin Booegveld.
Figuring that there was little else but shame and degradation since, I skipped the period from the mid-1940s to the present.
I could not have been more incorrect.
"But who lived in America before the European pilgrims settled here?"
All shook his head, I was sure he was aweed by our glorious past and wishing the same luck on his own country.
"The Indians," I answered
"So it was their land?
"Well . . . " A puzzled look came over his face. "Where are they now?"
Nod
With great shame, I began to describe a few of the events surrounding the white man's betrayal of the Indians and their homeland. In the difference between our lifestyles, we saw no compromise — no common ground. Ours was the Manifest Destiny, and nothing would stop our progress, not even a country full of people with a reverence, peaceful war
Erik Nelson
Guest columnist
of life.
"How come I have never beard this before?" Ali asked. "America is supposed to be the land of opportunity. This . . . this is the story of tragedy."
"After America denied the Indians their freedom, did they continued to deny their freedom because of race or religion?"
Sadly, I nodded.
It was with this question that I truly realized that our country is not the land of the free, nor the home of the brave. It is the land of prejudice and segregation, of weakness and shame.
Al listened, shocked, as my friend told him that, even though slavery was abolished under the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 and that Blacks were granted citizenship by the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, it was not until more than 100 years later, when the Civil Rights Act was passed, that African-Americans were truly recognized as citizens.
My friend tried to explain the concept of separate but equal, but he couldn't finish. How can one describe the concept without knowing of the humility and shame that Blacks had experienced?
Sadly, he turned to me. What had begun as an exciting reapp of America's history had turned into a cold realization of America's past.
"They had separate drinking fountains?" he asked in astonishment.
I don't know. I'm still waiting.
> Erik Nelson is a Dearfield, Ill., senior majoring in journalism.
"When will we learn?" he asked.
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A degree's value is measured in growth
The implied connection between a degree and a particular job is the worst hole dug for and by the higher education community today, a Jesuit educator wrote in a newspaper column several years ago. His statement still rings true.
It comes down to an attitude that is all too often instilled in children at an early age by well-meaning parents and teachers.
Too much emphasis is placed on the earning potential a degree allegedly assures and too little on the real long-range values and effects of an educated man or woman, wrote the Rev. Raymond J. Schrout, S.J.
The real long-term value of education is not measured by a job or salary; rather, it is measured by the experience and skill of a man or woman dealt with life.
"If you are asked what you are going to 'do' with your education, the response should be that you are going to enjoy life in another dimension
"It is difficult not to fall into the trap of defending or selling education on the basis of its utility." Schroth said in a telephone interview.
Jean Williams
Guest columnist
because of what you now know."
Those who cannot see the usefulness of literature, history or philosophy treat those subjects as something to be gotten out of the way and should not be misunderstood many of the greatest benefits of a college education.
Too many students — pressured by parents to major in a high-income field and lured by institutions that promote themselves as sure-fire entries into the job market — march with their eyes fixed on dollar signs.
"The liberal education, when it works, leads the student through the most critical transformation of his or her life; from being a child of the parents into becoming a responsible citizen of the world." Schroth wrote
Commenting on Schroth's column, David A. Ballentine, a history
"In fact, considering our complex and competitive world, it's hard to imagine anyone being overeducated."
"We can't deny that one of the primary goals of education is to equip a person to be competitive in the job market," Ballentine said. "But we have to give them more than just information.
instructor at Johnson County Community College, said that our society is geared to the bottom line, and that the college offers a way to get ahead is to get a degree.
"We must give them the capability to understand, not just historical facts, but how these facts relate to their lives, and how life can be enriched by knowledge of all areas of life."
Students should be exposed not just to the planned career field, but to history, the arts and the writings of the world's great thinkers.
Schröth described two kinds of teachers: the teacher who merely recounts what he knows and has read, and the teacher who introduces ideas that books are friends, then introduces the students to his friends.
Ballentine's theory is, "You are robbed of your slice of the pie of life if you are not exposed to educated thought."
"But it is never too late to be awakened, to become friends with the great writers and thinkers of the ages, to be entertained by your own thoughts without the benefit of the television or stereo headphones.
Understandably, students regard such subjects as literature or Western Civilization as courses to be endured. If teachers can help students discover the remarkable commonality and uniformity of mankind's motives throughout history, and make them aware of the wisdom of the ages and the lessons history can teach, the number of students who start college but do not get their degrees might decline.
"Few experiences are more demoralizing for the student or the teacher than the discovery that the student has never learned to associate education and general intellectual work." Schroff wrote.
Jean Williams is an Overland Park Junior majoring in Journalism.
Other Voices
NAACP Director Benjamin Hooks has called for an end to what he labels a campaign of “harassment” and selective prosecution of promi- nents. Black politicians, including Washington, D.C. Mayor Martin Barry.
would be nice to think that no elected officials, Black or white, would go astray. The odds are that you are the one who wins what race, color or sex they are.
In making his charge, Hooks shows no evidence that Black leaders are being singled out for scrutiny. There probably is an argument that prosecutors like to go after big names and certainly be the mayor of New York, Los Angeles or Washington, constitutes being a celebrity.
However, that in itself shows progress in civil rights. These Black leaders were chosen by a racially mixed population. There was a day when that wouldn't have happened.
There is a responsibility that goes with holding high government positions. Some leaders live up to what is expected and others don't. Indeed, there is a long list of successful Black politicians.
But when Hooks makes a racial issue out of those few who failer, he tends to detract from the many other women have entered politics and succeeded.
From the Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail, July 18.
LETTERS to the EDITOR Let there be life
Kansan editorial score (July
Canine offspring - 1
Human offspring - 0
Although the editorial discussing the "abortion ban" proposed by Louisiana legislators contains several debatable points, the argument that women must necessarily die if this legislation is signed into law seems particularly misleading.
It seems to me that this argument is based on the two assumptions that neither the number of pregnancies (for which abortion is an option), nor the number of abortions actually performed, is equal to the number of fertility of abortion. I find neither of these assumptions believable.
First, there is ample evidence (at least on a nationwide scale) that the number of abortions performed each year has increased since 1974 by a factor much larger than the increase in the population of women of childbearing age. There does seem to be a correlation between the number of pregnancies in which the mother does
not desire to keep the child and the legality of abortion.
The second assumption is that those desiring an abortion will have one performed regardless of the legality of the procedure. Had one applied such an argument to the change in legal age to purchase alcohol in Kansas one would have expected at least a 1-2 order of magnitude increase in the number of citations and fines imposed in the past two years for this specific offense. If the relatively minor penalties in this case deterred the vast majority of 18 to 20-year-old residents of Kansas from breaking the new law, should we not expect the vastly more serious penalties (the risk of permanent injury or death) to deter women from an illegal abortion?
We as a society urge people to exercise control over their diet, their health, their use of tobacco, alcohol and other addictive substances — yet we suggest that there is need to expect reasoning behind behavior. If we are such unreasoning beings, I suggest that we, more than the puppies, need editorial pleas on our behalf.
Ned Keller
Lawrence graduate student
Militaristic signs
We, on behalf of the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice,
write to protest the militaristic qualities of the University's Timetable for Fall 1990.
The front cover, with its implication that one-third of the KU student body bears arms, and the back cover, with its advertisement policy, holds intellectual signals that are inappropriate.
A university, should stand for education in the liberal arts and sciences, basic research and critical inquiry. The Timetable's signs that this University is instead supporting the arms race and military build-up run counter to these appropriate purposes.
We also note the Timable's apparent approval of military programs is inconsistent with the University Council's proposal that graduation credits be withdrawn from ROTC courses until ROTC programs respect KU's anti-discrimination.
We encourage you to take the necessary steps to eliminate all militaristic symbols from future University publications. In the case of the Timetable, we believe that this could be done by either negotiating with the American Passage Media Corporation or, failing that, by arranging for some alternative publication.
Allan Henson
Louise Nanson
Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice
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