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Thursday, February 9, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Students wage daily war to capture parking spaces
The low hum of an idling car serves as warning to the defenseless prey that time is running out. Like a vulture hovering over a dehydrated calf, it waits.
Strolling through a parking lot can be dangerous business these days. You never know what people will do for a good parking space.
Each school day, a vicious, everyman-for-himself war rages on the KU campus. Cars commonly can be seen racing around a row of parked cars, jockeying for position. Some people, even nice people, have been known to steal a spot that rightfully would be someone else's.
Like most warfare, the parking war usually rewards selfishness. Most attempts at courtesy will be sucked into a collective void, never to be returned — and worse, it will leave you with a longer walk.
The lack of parking at the University of Kansas could not be more obvious.
An interesting psychological dynamic plays heavily into this scene. You see, my car is my domain. I control the heat setting. I decide what music will be heard. Inside my car, I deal with other cars, not other people.
As such, I can race around a parking lot to dupe other cars out of the open spot without guilf, knowing that some other fink probably would have done the same.
purchase
Next fall, construction of a $5.4 million, 776-stall parking
north of, Allen Field House should be complete.
garage north of Allen Pond. But a parking board member said this week that the board would recommend that less than half of the stalls be allocated for faculty, staff and student use. The rest will be去 to visitors.
University, staff and students History says, though, that there always will be a scarcity of legal parking spots. Next year we will be vying for parking spaces under the protective roof of a parking garage.
James Farquhar for the editorial board
Amnesty will visit USSR to test Gorbachev's word
If Mikhail Gorbachev had walked into an upholstery store in 1985 and asked for an extremely large drapery in a cotton print, the store owner would have been skeptical about filling the order. Despite Gorbachev's seemingly good intentions to replace the iron curtain that had shrouded his nation for years, the curtain-maker no doubt would have worried about whether the General Secretary really would make a change.
However, four years later, it appears that Gorbachev, now also the Soviet president, is keeping his promise of glasnost, or openness. His latest step: inviting an Amnesty International delegation to visit the Soviet Union.
A London newspaper announced Saturday that Amnesty International, a human rights organization, had been invited to the Soviet Union and that places, dates and meetings for the trip were being discussed.
The Soviet invitation is an important victory for Amnesty International. The group has been trying to get into the Soviet Union to investigate human rights abuses since 1960, when the organization was founded.
organization was founded.
Amnesty International's main objective in the Soviet Union is to establish a count of political prisoners who are being held unjustly. Amnesty International officials said in October that about 150 Soviets had been "imprisoned solely for the non-violent exercise of their fundamental human rights." However, in December, Gorbachev declared that his government no longer would hold political prisoners.
outh pointers. The time has come for him to prove that.
The title has. Gorbunov can do so by allowing a free reign to the human rights officials as they travel through the nation. He should put no limits on whom Amnesty International officials can talk to, where they go or what they investigate.
where they go. Will the group be traveling behind a synthetic, eye-deceiving polyester curtain or a sincere, down-to-earth and unrestrictive cotton curtain?
It's time to see how far Gorbachev's glasnost goes.
Cindy Harger for the editorial board
The editors in this column are the opinion of the editorial board. The editorial board consists of Julie Adam, Karen Boring, Jeff Euston, James Farquhar, Cindy Harger, Jennifer Hinkle, Grace Hobson, Jill Jess, Mark McCormick and Mark Tillford.
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--political and scientific contributions of black people to American society. Let me suggest that it also should be a time for us to examine the progress we have made in achieving true social justice in our society. Each of us should examine our own values, reaffirm our commitment to the rights of all people and celebrate the cultural differences that enrich our world.
Social change starts with all of us
February is Black History Month. It is a time our society has set aside to give long-overdue recognition to the many educational, cultural, social,
David Ambler
difference that they must make. During Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, we were made to change laws and prohibit practices that deprived individuals of their constitutionally protected rights. In retrospect, and in comparison to the task that lies before us, changing discriminatory laws was a piece of cake. Our task now is to change the attitudes and beliefs among us that dehumanize and devalue others simply because they are of a different racial, ethnic or cultural group. Those of us who are members of the dominant culture must carry the largest portion of this culture responsibility. We must ensure that the sheer force of our numbers does not diminish the contributions of others to society or restrict their ability to pursue their own goals, unfettered by the burden of racial hatred or cultural stereotypes.
cultural stereotypes.
Unfortunately, incidents have occurred already this semester that remind us that bigotry and discrimination are still active forces on our university. I inevitably, people turn to the University for solutions. While the University must provide moral leadership in this battle, the chancellor does not have a magic wand to wave that will change the hearts and minds of people in the University community. Eliminating racism and bigotry is a responsibility that each of us must
Guest Shot
assume; first for ourselves and then with our friends and neighbors.
friends and neighbors.
Many good people recoil in anger from an act of bigotry. In frustration, however, we often respond that there is nothing we can do, for after all, we are but one person. I believe that there are things we can do as individuals to eliminate this sickness from our world. Let me suggest 10 things that you, as a student, can do to make our campus community a better place for all. If all of us could do just one or two of these things, we would be a model community in short order.
Here they are:
1. Examine your own values, beliefs and prejudices. To recognize that we have our own stereotypes and prejudices is the first step in learning to appreciate other people and their values.
values
see the movie "Mississippi Burning." Its intense brutality and emotion will help you realize that bigotry and racism are a cancer that can devour a community.
3. Check your own language for words and expressions that are demeaning and offensive to people of different racial or ethnic cultures from your own. If you enjoy the so-called "ethnic joke," ask yourself why. Our deepest prejudices often are revealed in our humor.
4. Tell others around you who use language offensive to ethnic or cultural minorities that such language is unacceptable to you. Ask that
they refrain from using such language in your presence. Our silence may imply our acceptance of such language.
5. Include individuals who are different from you in your own social and recreational activities.
6. Develop a personal friendship with at least one person who is culturally or racially different from you. Let that person help you examine your own prejudices; give that person the opportunity to share his or her culture with you.
7. Attend the many cultural programs sponsored by the various ethnic and nationality groups that form on the campus each year. You will never have an opportunity to see as much of the world in one place as you will while you're a student on a university campus.
8. Volunteer for a community philanthropic service project that assists individuals who have been victimized by racial or ethnic discrimination. The best way to fight discrimination is to experience it first yourself.
10. Demonstrate through your behavior that it is possible, and indeed, enjoyable, for people who are different to live together in harmony.
9. Insist that any student organization to which you belong are diversified in its membership, whether that be an academic club, a recreational team, a housing unit or a social group.
are different!
Appel, the Nobel Prize-winning author,
Jacqueline, "The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference." The likes of the Klan, the Skinheads and the Neo-Nazis can only succeed if people of good will do nothing. You are responsible! You can make a difference!
- David Amber is the vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of Kansas.
Child care needed
Since I was one of those 20 women who occupied the East Asian Studies building in 1972, I read with great interest Mary Neu-baur's article concerning the lack of adequate day-care facilities at the University of Kansas. I am dismayed to find out that the child care situation at KU hasn't improved in the past 17 years. When we seized the building, the only campus day-care facility was the Bureau of Child Research, which had a three-year existing list. Our demand for an additional facility was met through the development of the Hilltop Campus Early Education Center, which was to take full-time child care as well as all-day kindergarten program. From the beginning, applications outnumbered openings by more than eight-to-one. I now am back on the Lawrence campus as a graduate student in business and can see that a great deal of progress has been made at KU in the past 13 years. But it is sad to see that KU has
continued to show such little regard for meeting the needs of its students and employees by failing to provide adequate, affordable child care.
Diane E. Anthes
Olathe graduate student
No solution
Forcing college students to perform "voluntary" national service in exchange for federal financial aid (a proposal before Congress) will reduce the federal budget deficit, racially integrate the University of Kansas, inexpensively upgrade the U.S. military force so it can meet its "commitments," lower our high military budgets, socially level our stratified society and allow lower-class racial minorities to rise to the top of our ranks according to Senate rules (Feb. 6 Kansan). Surely be jets. Will national service also solve the drug problem, end the Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome epidemic and halt the flow of illegal aliens over our borders?
megalian overalls and wigs. National service also would alter the social contract, according to Lipsey. I'm sure it would, but let's see how. According to Lipsey, the plan would encourage the "privileged" members of our society to repay society with voluntary service in military and civilian public service jobs. That's ridiculous. The proposal is neither voluntary not egalitarian. It would affect only those who need financial aid
for college, and all other forms of federal college aid would be eliminated. Such as plan could only make the social contract more unequal than it is now. Eliminating federal student aid would not integrate society; it would further remove the poor and minorities from higher education.
front might be the best way if we really want to encourage the privileged and those who benefit from our system to repay society, shouldn't we require service from the leaders of corporate business (who have gained much) and not from less-than-rich students? Or maybe corporations that receive tax breaks should be required to build low-cost housing for homeless families.
housing for homeless rulers.
Most of the arguments in national service obviously are fluffy references to its overriding purpose. The reason national service has gained popularity in Congress is because Congress needs a cheap way to increase youth enlistment in an era of declining youth population. Our enormous military presence around the world is coming in conflict with limited financial resources and lowered enlistment. But national service based on elimination of federal student aid programs can't head off that growing problem indefinitely. Eventually we will have to support for alternatives to our world military presence. Chuck Fin
Lawrence graduate student
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed