4A
Thursday, November 21, 1996
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Technological fees need student and state efforts
Technology is expensive and constantly evolving, a fact that everyone in education realizes. A long-range plan including both student fees and state financing is needed to finance the never-ending project of updating technological equipment at the University.
While a portion of the University's equipment cost may be covered by students, the balance of the technological tab will have to be paid by the Legislature. Lawmakers and University officials who deal with the Legislature must understand that updating equipment is an ongoing process, not a single-shot deal solvable with a lump sum.
The University should not accept a short-sighted legislative solution that could leave the University with insufficient funds in the future.
Students may have to resign themselves to the idea of paying a technological equipment fee. For several years, engineering students at the University have been shelling out an additional $15 per credit hour to provide equipment for their technologically intensive education. Most engineering students see the benefits provided by the fee and regard it as a necessary evil in the age of computers.
Perhaps technology fees at the University should be implemented on a schoolwide basis, such as the School of Engineering fee, thereby assigning higher fees to students in programs that require more high-tech equipment.
As University officials and the Board of Regents search for solutions to the University's technological shortcomings, the question is not who will end up paying, but how much they will be paying.
The system for keeping KU's computers and equipment up-to-date needs a comprehensive overhaul, the result of which should be a joint financial commitment between students and the Legislature.
BRENT SUITER FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Night-owl students call for late-evening library hours
Many students are unable to study during the day because of class and work schedules. Consequently, they have to study late at night.
Many students sequester themselves at University libraries, away from the temptations of television and socializing that divert their attention at home.
However, these students are frustrated that the two main libraries on campus, Watson and Anschutz, close at midnight Sunday through Thursday.
Marilu Goodyear, associate dean of libraries, has an answer, but it may not be one that students want to hear. Goodyear said one section of a library could not be opened only for studying, especially at Watson Library, because of the inability to close off just one area.
Therefore, the entire building would have to stay open. Goodyear said this presented security and budget problems. A lack of security late at night can be remedied but only with increased staff, which the libraries cannot afford.
The minimum wage increase that took effect in October greatly constrained the libraries' budget because its staff is predominantly composed of minimum wage-earning students. The wage increase next summer will further burden its budget.
Goodyear said the library administration would be open to ideas about how to stay open later, after the problem of accommodating minimum wage increases had been solved. She emphasized that the issue was a money matter, and unfortunately, there was not enough to go around.
NICK ZALLER FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSANSTAFF
AMANDA TRAUGHBER
Editor
CRAIG LANG
Managing editor
MATT HOOD
Associate managing editor for design
KIMBERLY CRABTREE
CHARITY JEFFRIES
News editors
DARCI L. McLAIN
SARA ROSE
Public relations directors
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KAREN GERSCH
Business manager
HEALY SMART
Retail sales manager
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
JAY STEINER
Sales and marketing adviser
JUSTIN KNUPP
Technology coordinator
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Shawn Trimble / KANSAN
Texaco incident reveals need for affirmative action
WASHINGTON — "Share the fantasy," a memorable perfume ad used to invite.
I, too, would like to invite you, dear reader. to share a fantasy.
It is Texaco's commitment to equal opportunity.
"Our commitment to diversity is an inclusive process, grounded in our core value of respect for the individual and in our long-standing policies of equal opportunity for all employees," said the company's annual report for 1995.
"It's this diversity thing." grumbled Robert W. Ulrich, then-treasurer of Texaco Inc. "You know how black jelly beans agree."
Good words. But, now that you have heard the dream, share the reality as recorded secretly by a participant in an all-white, all-male August 1994 meeting of top Texaco executives who were discussing a discrimination lawsuit filed by black middle-managers.
"That's funny," said Richard Lundwall, then-human resources assistant. "All the black jelly beans seem to be glued to the bottom of the bag."
Ridiculing the African-American celebration of Kwanza, Ulrich said he planned to wear a Viking hat for National Odin Month to celebrate his Norwegian heritage.
"I'm still having trouble with Hamukkah," he said, laughing. "Now we have Kwanza."
The plaintiffs have charged that Texaco practiced a dual evaluation system that persistently upgraded select white men, downgraded otherwise-qualified blacks and provided inadequate s a f e g u a r d s against racial favorism.
The tape also recorded the men discussing their alleged practice of keeping a sanitized version of committee-meeting minutes and a second, more frank restricted version containing information that could be harmful to their side in the lawsuit.
"We're going to purge the (exlusive deleted) out of these books," he said.
Ulrich suggested on the tape that there was "no point to keeping the restricted version anymore.
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
Another executive, J. David Keough, Texaco's senior assistant treasurer, added, "You look, and make sure it's consistent to what we've given them already for minutes."
The tapes were recorded by Lundwall with a recorder in his pocket for his personal use. He turned whistleblower after he recently was terminated in Texaco's downsizing. After excerpts of the tapes appeared in The New York Times, a federal grand jury in Texaco's corporate hometown of White Plains, N.Y., launched a criminal investigation into possible destruction of evidence by Texaco executives in the civil-rights case.
The tape reveals men who are openly hostile to the very notion of allowing African Americans to join their little club.
A popular television comedy this season is called Men Behaving Badly. Perhaps we should title these Texaco tapes WHITE Men Behaving Badly.
Right on. To middle-class black folk like myself, the Texaco tapes are directed to the issue of job discrimination as the Rodney King tapes were to police brutality. Why, we wonder, does it take a tape recording to convince so many white people that we're not irrationally paranoid?
Right. No wonder all the black jelly beans get left stuck on the bottom.
Someday, America can attain the dream of a color-blind society expressed by Martin Luther King Jr. and other noble visionaries. But first, we must deal with a cruel, bitter reality live and on tape.
Peter I. Bijur, Texaco's chairman and chief executive, decried the tapes and declared himself ashamed and outraged that such a thing had happened to his family.
Just as many CEOs, Bijur calls his employees a family. That's a fine analogy, as long as you remember how many families are dysfunctional.
In any case, Texaco's corporate culture appears to have rewarded some favored sons more than others, regardless of qualifications.
That's why, if America is going to live up to the noble words expressed in Texaco's corporate diversity policy, we Americans need affirmative action, not to give any group an unfair advantage but merely to level the playing field — which still needs leveling.
Unfortunately, as happened with the King tapes, I suspect the cloak of denial soon will settle back over the heads of affirmative action opponents. There will be those who will call the Texaco tapes an isolated incident, just as there were those who said Rodney King had it coming when he was pummeled repeatedly by four police officers.
That's the fantasy
Clarence Page is a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Column ill-researched filled with inaccuracies
Andy Rohrback's Nov. 11 column, "Shakespearean romance reduced to physical desire," is a fine example of what does not belong on the opinion page. While it certainly states Rohrback's opinion that modern love is shallow and wholly physical, it is based on a lack of research and factual accuracies.
Rohrback starts by admitting not having seen the new film version of Romeo and Juliet, and it is pretty
end of a night together (act 3, scene 5), mixing sex and romance. The dialogue is rife with sexual connotations, and the play has a violent setting. He backs up his views using a film he hasn't seen and a book he can't remember and comments on two fields he doesn't know, history and film. This sort of writing belongs in the same high school English class where *Romeo* and *Juliet* is first taught, not in what should be a respectable newspaper.
Kevin A. Boyle Petaluma, Calif., sophomore
clear that he hasn't read the play, either. He writes, "Luhrmann's Romeo mixes sex, violence and outright rebellion with Shakespearean romance to make it palatable" and that "the good, old-fashioned love story without guns and sex has gone the way of the dood." It is true that the original play lacked handguns; Shakespeare had to make do with swords. A more careful reader might recall Romeo killing two men in sword battles in the written work. And while Shakespeare left sparse stage directions, we do see Romeo and Juliet at the
Racial quotas detrimental to equality dream
Our country took an important step toward realizing Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of racial equality when Californians voted to end affirmative action programs in their state. King, who dreamed of a country in which people are judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin, would be proud.
On Nov. 6, Californians passed the controversial Proposition 209; which read, "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferen-
STAFF
COLUMNIST
Proposition 209 essentially outlawed race-based quotas. Many supporters of affirmative action were outraged by its passage. They argued that such quotas were necessary to guaran-
trial treatment to,
any individual or
group on the
basis of race, sex,
color, ethnicity or
national origin."
Supporters of affirmative action also argued that in a perfect world, such programs wouldn't be necessary but that the continued presence of racism in our society justifies affirmative action as a viable approach to achieving minority equality.
tee minorities proportional representation in the workplace and other institutions.
Opponents of affirmative action, on the other hand, argued that quotas perpetuate the racial injustice that affirmative action programs attempt to combat. Affirmative action seeks to achieve racial equality by discriminating on the basis of race, yet discrimination on the basis of race is the very definition of racism. So, by definition, affirmative action is racism.
romas Sowell, a black syndicated columnist, put it this way: "Equal opportunity laws and policies require that individuals be judged on their qualifications as individuals without regard to race, sex, age, etc. Affirmative action requires that they be judged with regard to such group membership."
Affirmative action not only is immoral on its face, but it also harms those it seeks to help. Quotas often lead minorities into positions for which they are not qualified, which is a recipe for failure. Quotas also give employers reason to wonder whether a minority's college credentials, for example, were received on the basis of merit or skin color.
If defenders of affirmative action want to combat racism, they need to drop their double standards. Their tolerance of racism against non-minorities mutes their campaign of intolerance of racism against minorities.
Our society will never be perfect, but it will be more perfect if we abolish a practice that condemns racism in one breath but espouses it in the next.
Defenders of affirmative action are correct on one important point: We don't live in a perfect world. But the fact that we don't live in a condition of perfect racial harmony doesn't justify affirmative action any more than the presence of crime in a society justifies a police state.
Defenders of affirmative action, of course, argue that it's fine to use race as a basis for hiring because it creates equality. But by doing so, they surrender the moral high ground that King and his followers fought so hard to attain.
Other states should follow California's lead and ban affirmative action programs. We should not replace institutionalized racism with institutionalized racism; instead, we should condemn racism as an evil in all of its forms.
John Hart is a Shawnee graduate student in Journalism.
OUT FROM THE CRACKS
By Jeremy Patnoi