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Wednesday, February 14, 1990 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Take action
Lobby Day presents students with opportunity to express the need for Margin of Excellence
Students should take advantage of the opportunity to make a difference in higher education Monday during Lobby Day in Topeka.
The event, planned by the Associated Students of Kansas, is designed to show support for third-year financing of the Margin of Excellence. Students will surround the Capitol to attract legislators' attention and to show that the Margin is crucial to higher education.
Student involvement is an essential element in the demonstration. At least 400 students are needed to surround the Capitol, and far more than that should participate. More than 65,000 students attend Regents institutions, so 400 students should be easy to recruit.
State Sen. Wint Winter Jr., R-Lawrence, said that student involvement had had a dramatic impact on legislation during the seven years since he was elected and that Lobby Day could be a perfect occasion to be part of that impact.
It is rare for students to have the opportunity to meet face-to-face with legislators and to tell these legislators exactly what is important to them. Not only should underclassmen go to Topeka, but also graduating seniors. It is
important to show that students care about education as they prepare to end their education.
These officials are not the people who live with closed classes and a dwindling faculty because salaries are not comparable to other universities. Students must take advantage of Lobby Day to discuss such problems and to show that they are concerned about the future of higher education.
The first workshop is 7 tonight at Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union. The second is 2 p.m. Sunday in the auditorium. Buses will leave for Topeka at 9 a.m. Monday from the parking lot behind the Union.
The event is free for students. Transportation has been provided by KU on Wheels, and participants can ask their instructors to be excused from class if they have documentation concerning their whereabouts Monday.
Events such as Lobby Day are vital in reminding legislators exactly how important the Margin is in continuing to upgrade higher education. If enough students participate, it ultimately could improve the quality of education at the University of Kansas.
Camille Krehbiel for the editorial board
Rising from ashes
Tobacco tax would rebuild education budget
ight up for the Margin.
Labor. An exaggeration, perhaps, but the state Senate passed a bill last week that would increase the tax on a pack of cigarettes by 5 cents and on other tobacco products by 5 percent. The additional money raised by the tax would be earmarked for higher education.
tax would be earned for higher State Sen. Dick Bond, R-Overland Park, the sponsor of the bill, said the tax would raise $12 million. Bond's original bill earmarked the money for financing of the third year of the Margin of Excellence, but the bill was amended after Bond learned that Board of Regents schools were facing a $20 million shortfall.
The Margin of Excellence is the Regents three-year plan to bring the total financing of its seven institutions to 95 percent of their peer schools and to bring faculty salaries to 100 percent of their peers.
The bill, which is in committee in the House, is a concrete and pragmatic solution to the crisis facing higher education in the state of Kansas. The Regents schools need the Margin to remain competitive, maintain educational quality and recruit and retain top-notch faculty, staff and students. Simply stated, the
schools need money. The state knows where to turn for a guaranteed source of revenue.
Raising the tax on tobacco is a relatively painless way to generate revenue. People who smoke generally do not quit because of an increase in the price of a pack of cigarettes. The tax consequently falls only on those who choose to smoke. Lawmakers also can count on a steady source of money indefinitely.
Critics argue that such a tax is unfair and takes advantage of a specific group. The tax may target a specific group, but no one is forced to smoke. If the price is prohibitive, smokers can quit if they want. As long as people smoke, however, the state should exploit the opportunity to gain some benefit from it. A tax works.
The University of Kansas and other Regents schools desperately need the Margin. Gov. Mike Hayden has said he supports education, but his actions suggest otherwise. Bond's plan takes action and provides a source of revenue to finance the Margin without adding to the burden of property or sales taxes. It is the Margin's best hope.
Blacks still turn to TV page
I got several recent issues of Jet
Bob Greene
Syndicated columnist
Race relations in this country are so monumentally screwed up that at times I am almost tempted to propose a rule for white journalists: Don't even try to write stories that purport to analyze Black events or to make suggestions about Black life. As whites, we just don't have a clue.
But today I'm going to violate my own rule and comment on a Black-related issue that in the grand scheme of things is quite small but that I don't think is insignificant.
honor Louis Gates Jr. is a Black academic and award-winning author. Recently, Gates published a long essay in which he discussed the Blacks in contemporary U.S. popular culture, particularly television.
I wondered: Could that be true? It is an article of faith that Blacks have attained great visibility in the fields of entertainment and sports; commentators have said that this "progress" is deceptive and even cruel, holding out false hopes to Black youngsters who will find the going rougher in less visible fields of endeavor. At this late date, is it possible that Blacks really turn to a magazine feature that simply tells them when Black men will appear on TV?
"Blacks retain their fascination with Black characters on TV. Many of us buy Jet magazine primarily to read its weekly television feature, which shows every Black character or movie that can be seen on the screen that week."
Gates' essay was thoughtful. It pointed out the vast differences between the lives lived by members of Bill Cosby's TV family and the lives led by most real Black families. But one sentence popped out at me:
Jet bills itself as "the largest Black weekly news magazine in America." It claims a paid circulation of 927,686 and a total weekly readership of 7.5 million. Indeed, on the final page of each issue of Jet, there was a feature headlined "Television," listing Blacks scheduled to appear on TV in the week ahead.
My column-writing colleague at the Chicago Tribune, Clarence Page, said that reading the last page of Jet was a longstanding tradition in many Black households, including the one in which he grew up, in Middletown, Ohio.
"It it was definitely something that everyone looked at when I was a kid," said Page, 42. "There simply were not very many Blacks on television, and the last page of Jet was the place to look when we wanted to know if any Blacks were going to appear.
"Ask any Black person who was growing up then — it was so rare to see another Black person on television that when it would happen, someone in the house would call out, 'There's somebody colored on TV!' If Nat King Cole was a guest on Ed Sullivan's show, we would all rush to the TV set. Even 'The Mickey Mouse Club' – on Talent Roundup Day, it was very meaningful to us if a Black child with talent was included."
Still . . . so much has changed, at least in the often superficial world of
popular culture. Does the Jet Black page still have a readership — and if so, does the page really list every Black who appears on TV each week, as stated in the Henry Louis Gates Jr. essay? It would seem impossible.
"It is impossible," said Robert E. Johnson, associate publisher and executive editor of Jet. "We could never fit all of the Blacks who appear on TV on one page. But the page is still one of our most popular features, and we attempt to print the weekly highlights of Blacks who are on TV."
Johnson, 67, has worked for Jet since 1953. "There was a time, when we first began the TV page, that we couldn't come close to filling it," he said. "There weren't enough Blacks on TV in a given week to fill the page. So we would list all the Blacks and then fill in the remaining space with the Blacks who would be appearing on radio."
For years, he said, readers would clip out that page and keep it near the family TV set. "Advertisers have always lined up to purchase the inside back cover of the magazine," he said. The newspaper automatically opened Jet to the TV page, so the adjacent ad was guaranteed to be seen."
Even now, with many more Blacks on TV, than could ever fit on a single listings page. Jet has not discussed the possibility of doing away with the feature. "Perhaps the status of Blacks in this country is better than it once was," Johnson said. "But in many ways, that's not saying much. With everything that has changed, our readers still turn right to that page. That in itself should tell you something. The page will be staying."
▶ Bob Greene is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
LETTERS to the EDITOR Money for peace
Right after the U.S. invasion of Panama, the editor of La Prensa in Panama City expressed his view to a reporter that the need for any Panamanian military restructuring was unnecessary. The point he made, which seems to be lost by many in the United States, is that the pre-invasion Panamanian Defense Forces became corrupt because they had no real military threat posed against them, thus they became distracted by the possibility of interfering in civil affairs.
need to put it to the forefront in the debate about future defense spending. Will the U.S. military, now facing no threat comparable to the U.S. military might, become inclined to dictate civilian policy? Is the war on drugs an enterprise to wider military participation in national law enforcement?
This is a profound concept. We
The time is now to boldly cut defense spending. The United States spent twice what was necessary to deter Soviet aggression, which clearly is half of what it once was. A defense budget of $75 billion or less would now be in order. This would compare to the 1 percent of the GNP that "demilitarized" Japan spends.
The "peace dividend" we all should receive shouldn't just be one of money but rather a more difficult dividend in the absence of militarism.
Paul Longabach Lawrence senior
News staff
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Railroads pump life into rural towns
Commissioners voted to convert about a mile of abandoned railway into a recreational trail, a stretch of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe track from the overpass on east 23rd Street to 29th Street.
joggers, strollers and bikers got a gift from the city commission vesterday.
Lawrence is getting its first taste on the national rails-to-trails movement, which recycles abandoned rail lines. A similar project in Topeka will create a 20-mile strip park running south to Overbrook.
Evolving transportation needs, the growth of trucking and the economic benefits of scale force railroads to neglect expensive maintenance on tracks traveled by few trains. Eventually, these "light density" lines degenerate beyond use, and railroads abandon them.
Hard-working people are converting weed-choked, rusting eyesores into public assets. Bravo.
Railroads peaked in Kansas at more than 9,350 miles of track in 1917, only 57 years after the first rails
But we mustn't forget the less glamorous part of the rails-to-trails equation: rail line abandonment.
Derek Schmidt
Staff columnist
More than 300 miles now are scheduled for abandonment. About 3,000 more are light density, which means they're likely targets.
stretched into Doniphan County.
Today only about 6,800 miles of active track remain. Most observers consider the 1970s to have been the decade of railway decline. But since 1980, railroads has deserved more than 570 miles of Kansas track.
Unused track doesn't threaten Lawrence or other major cities that have main-line service. But the view from Mount Oread could degenerate into a panorama of strangled small towns. Most endangered lines are branches serving rural communities, many of which have only one track.
The state could lose half its remaining railway in the next few decades.
Abandonment means that grain
Taxpayers chip in for repairs.
and other commodities must be shipped by trucks. It takes about 3.5 semitrucks to move the grain formerly hauled in one railcar. Each truck batters expensive roads and highways.
Keeping rural tracks viable makes a lot of sense. Support for rural rail service stems not from a desire to help railroads, which probably can make more money by abandoning marginally profitable lines, but from a desire to save dying small towns.
That's expensive.
Rehabilitating tracks in Kansas would cost about $66 million, according to a 1985 study. Congress last year extended the 13-year-old Local Rail Service Assistance program through fiscal 1991. The renewal will pump $40 million into rail projects nationwide.
Gov. Mike Hayden commissioned a 1989 study on the state role in curtailing rail abandonment. Since its release in June, the governor has created a bureau of rail programs.
Now it's time for another big step. The governor's report outlined several ways the state could support rural rail service. Action brews while ideas percolate through the Topeka bureaucracy. One option is to emulate the Iowa Rail Assistance Program. Shippers, the state and railroads would share the costs of rehabilitating track in a manner similar to the way groups share the costs of maintaining highways.
Only a fraction of that will go to Kansas.
Rails-to-trails is good. Rails to towns are better.
People interested in a healthy rural Kansas ought to insist that gubernatorial candidates address rail preservation in this year's elections.
Fixing run-down railroad track isn't a trendful political issue. Abandonment is not a transient problem. Without action, it will persist long after the perennial death penalty debate has calmed and this year's abortion questions have been resolved.
Most communities are not as fortunate as Lawrence. Some lack people dedicated to making abandoned tracks into parks. For others that's impractical; how many people want to jog from Colby to Oakley?
Derek Schmidt is an Independence senior majoring in journalism.
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