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Wednesday, April 24, 1974
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN commer Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Reform or Revenge?
Last week the Kansan ran a story about the lack of medical attention and facilities available to inmates in Lawrence jails. At present, convicts don't receive a medical check-up when they enter jail. This increases the risk of spreading contagious diseases to the inmates, guards and the community at large. Furthermore, when an inmate becomes seriously ill, he is unable to receive treatment at the jail; instead, he must be taken elsewhere to be treated.
Lawrence and Douglas County officials are aware of the problem. There are plans for including some medical facilities in the new Douglas County Correction Center. In the meantime, officials would like to begin a medical screening program to detect those convicts who are unfortunately, the ability of local authorities to improve present health care facilities in jails is limited by lack of funds.
The situation here in Douglas County is merely one more example of the disgraceful condition of this nation's prisons and jails. The prospects for dramatic change aren't very good either. Prisoners' insults become an obvious issue as resistance to reform is strong in some areas.
Tom Wicker's column in the Kansas City Star April 20 described the problems of enacting a prison reform measure in New York state. The proposed reform would enable inmates to attend college courses at an unused prison in New York. The beginning cost of this program was $100,000; the proposal has been rejected by the state legislature because providing prisoners with a college education would be coddling them.
The whole controversy revolves around one question. What does society wish to accomplish by sending a convict to prison?
Chief Justice Warren Burger has suggested that the United States examine the prison systems of some European countries. Sweden, for example, provides humane treatment for convicts, emphasizing psychiatric care, rehabilitation and post-confinement counseling. Burger cannot be described as a "bleeding-heart liberal"; nevertheless, he recognized the need for improving the way this nation handles its convicted criminals.
If society desires merely revenge, then prison reform is undesirable. Instead, every possible step should be taken to make prison life as miserable as possible. If this is what society truly desires, then this desire is self-destructive.
One can presume that underlying the desire for revenge is some desire to deter the criminal and potential criminals from similar behavior in the future. Prisons, even the most miserable prisons, however, aren't effective because they are too criminal. The rising crime rate and the high rate of recidivism would seem to indicate that the possibility of imprisonment does not deter some persons from criminal acts.
Decent medical facilities are an absolute necessity for providing humane treatment of prisoners in Douglas County jails. County officials shouldn't stop there, however. Along with the new county correctional facility should come a new shade of realistic and innovative rehabilitation programs for the inmates.
If, on the other hand, society desires that criminals be reformed or rehabilitated, then the prison system is a patent failure. Instead punishment is more likely to reinforce his criminal lifestyle.
John Bender
Fluoride Pollutes
I found that fluorides were unknown 100 years ago. Henri Moissard, French chemist, was the first to measure the moment fluorine in Frankfurt in 1886.
Last summer I took 10 dogs and 10 cats that had been killed at the humane society and removed their jaw and leg bones to test them for fluoride concentration. This experiment was for an air pollution class under the guidance of Clancy Gordon, a University of Montana botany professor who has the most extensive collection anywhere of slides showing the effects of air pollution.
I did the messy experiment mostly because someone else had started it the year before and all the procedures were outlined. All I to do was follow directions, do some stuff, and then blood and flesh didn't bother me.
Since then fluoride sources have been found to include volcanoes; atmospherically contaminated feeds; mineral supplements high in fluoride; emissions from industries such as phosphate fertilizer, aluminum reduction plants, iron and steel mills, enamel frits, tile and brick manufacturing and coal burning operations; soil and water.
The Department of Agriculture says, "Airborne fluorides have caused more worldwide damage to domestic animals than any other air pollutant." Fluorides have, along with arsenic and lead, received more attention than other air pollutants mostly because they have caused more economic loss than other pollutants.
I have seen cows unable to drink because their teeth's calcium no longer protected their nerves. Because of the pain these cows could only drink sporadically and held the water away from their thighs so they did their tongues. Cows whose joints were affected could barely walk.
There are playgrounds near aluminum plants where children adhere to a fence.
But even though fluorides have received more attention than other air pollutants "... practically no information was available on the susceptibility of dogs, cats and honey bees in relation to other diseases that has been shown for fluorosis in cattle, horses, swine, rabbits and poultry," according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The results of my experiment didn't fill this lack of information. There was a tendency for fluoride content to increase with an animal's age. This was suspected because fluoride is an accumulative poison in the skeletal parts of animals. Also, the jaw bones usually contained more fluoride than the leg bones.
I concluded only that criteria for proper management of fluorides and other pollution problems need to be developed before more damage is done. The task ahead is twofold: Pursue whatever may be polluting and sue whoever causes the pollution.
If the task is done, I don't think growling dogs and scratching cats will haunt my dreams anymore.
Margie Cook
End of Free Enterprise Predicted
Authoritarianism Needed in Stagnant Economy
By ARNOLD TOYNBEE Special to The London Observatory
Since the industrial revolution two centuries ago, our newfangled economic set-up has required constant "growth" to keep going.
In the first phase of that novel economic life, the entrepreneurs of mechanized industry secured growth at the expense of their employees, the "natives" of unmechanized countries and nonhuman workers; the mechanized industry were low; the unmechanized Asia, such as spinning and weaving, were put out of action by western manufacturers. Asian, African and Latin American countries were compelled to admit such western goods at low customs rates. And the limited reserves of the planet's inreplaceable fuels such as coal, metals and mineral oil, were consumed on an unprecedented scale.
Few of the politicians in those countries have yet dared to tell the truth to their constituents. But the truth is declaring itself in ways that cannot be ignored. The recent steep increase in the price of oil by the global market has been shown that the "natives" have learned from western cartels and trade unions the art of exploiting monopoly situations.
THE PROGRESSIVE change in the workers' favor in the balance of bargaining power between capital and labor in the mechanized countries has made those two industries more likely to ever than more easily grown than ever. The growth of the GNP has been the only means of meeting demand for continual increases in wages without loss of profits. However, "natives" and nature have now worked together to increase the mechanized countries' GNP to a halt.
In this century, industrial workers have raised their wages through unionization. The developing countries have heightened their tariff walls and have set up, behind these, mechanized industries of their own. In the past, companies that threatens him with pollution and depletion.
In the developed regions—Europe, North
In the last two centuries the major part of their populations has been decanted out of rural agriculture into urban industry, and the population has swollen to a size at which it cannot be maintained solely by its own domestic resources. It has become dependent on the importation of cheap raw materials, fuels and foodstuffs, and on the development of new industries in terms of trade are turning against the developed countries in favor of the developing countries, how will the peoples of the developed countries react?
America, the Soviet Union, Japan—growth is going to cease and be reversed. Continuous economic growth is going to be replaced by continuous economic recession. How will the mechanized countries respond?
When the peoples of the developed countries are forced to recognize the inexorable of the new facts, their first impulse will be to kick against the pricks. And because they will be powerless to resist them, they will assault one another. Within each country there will be a biter struggle for the control of diminished resources.
They are going to find themselves in a permanent state of siege, in which the enemy is able to destroy an austere as they were during the two world wars. The wartime austerity was temporary; the future austerity will be even more progressive because he progressively more severe. What then?
That struggle would merely worsen a bad situation; it will somehow have to be stopped. If left unchecked, it would lead to anarchy and to a drastic reduction of the size of the population by civil war, famine and pestilence, the historic reducers of populations that have outgrown their means of subsistence.
Consequently, in all developed countries, a new severely regimented way of life will have to be imposed by a ruthless authoritarian government.
An authoritarian government's first task will be to impose a scale of differential subsistence payments (not wages or rents) on its workers, regardless of all classes. In Britain, we all already agree
that differentials are necessary and, in principle, equitable; but we have failed to agree on their actual scale. In the future a scale as large as a scale must be decided by authority and, unless required, by
What is the proper basis for fixing this scale? Children and incapacitated, unemployed or retired adults will have to be maintained by taking the subsistence payments allotted to the productive and nonproductive of the subsistence allowances should be proportionate to the social value of the work. But how is social value to be estimated?
**SCIENTIST** doing research on the recycling of irreplaceable natural resources not to be paid less than a driver's wage. The value of the scientist's work may not exceed 10 years hence. Again, the returns on a probation officer's work should be considered as valuable for society's spiritual well-being as is the scientist's for its material survival.
In a siege economy, all private property—except perhaps houses of non-patrialital descent—can be raped.
may perhaps houses of non-palatial dimensions—may have to be nationalized. Those suggestions are revolutionary, but they are as imperative as wartime control in the US; the abolition of free enterprise. The economy will be put in irons. Some economic activities—for instance, stockbroking and real estate-developing—will disappear. In circumstances, may be more agreeable, or perhaps a更than remunerative, to be an educator or a minister of religion or an artist or a poet than to be the manager of a nationalized business enterprise or a worker in an industry not manufacturing mechanized vehicles.
A society that is declining materially may be ascending spiritually. Perhaps we may be going to return perforce to the way of life of the first Christian monks in upper Egypt and of their Sixth Century Irish successors. They must be able to remain uncomfortable and difficult to manage. But it may be a blessing in disguise if we can rise to this grave occasion.
Rebel State Doesn't Need Australia
By DAVID LAMB The Los Angeles Times
HUTT RIVER PRINCIPALITY, (formerly Australia)—The royal family entered the dining room in working clothes, the princess and barons and lords nodded to a table which seemed not quite equal to the presence of nobility.
From several tarnished pots on the stove came five-and-dime-store plates containing a spoonful of peas, a small helping of mashed potatoes, a single strip of bacon and cheese. Leonard poked at the serving with his fork and reached for the bread and butter.
"Some wine, Prince Leonard?" asked Lord John Whatley, the principality's postmaster general, and the prince said that he would drink after making sure that his ministers for foreign affairs and the treasury had full glasses.
PRINCE LEONARD was particularly proud of the sparkling white wine. After just being recognized by the seree Republic of Montmartre, he felt the occasion called for the finest vintage, even if it had only cost $1.89 a bottle.
"You know," he mushed, "if we'd sat down and planned it, it never could have turned out like this. We just wanted to get the data raised. We didn't figure on seeding."
In fact when Prince Leonard—formerly Leonard George Caskey in the plebian era—was a prince, he had
“A flag over there’s got the thistle for independence,” said Prince Leonard, a wispish little man with black bushy eyebrows and drooping eyelids. “The scies for praise is blue for . . . he, what’s the blue for Earl? It’s yeah, and the blue for faith and justice.”
1970, he never dreamed that by 1974 his principality would be printing its own postal stamps and currency, operating a one-man flag of sort in Adelaide and flying its own flag.
The birth of the Hutt River Principality, isolated in the western Australia farmlands 350 miles north of Perth, began in 1989 when the government quoted to 1,600 bushels. Caisley protested that 1,600 bushels wouldn't even produce enough income to pay the interest on his two tractors. He threatened to secee, fled a house for $2 million and began reading book laws.
IN ONE, HE found a law, he says, that states that anyone who hinders a de facto prince in the discharge of his princely duties may be charged for treason. Because it seemed unlikely that the state politicians would want to be charged with treason, he declared his independence in a registered form, and he asserted that the prince and swears he hasn't paid a penny in taxes since. He does, however, still export some of his sheep to Australia.
Three years ago Australia's social services department notified him that it was planning to release a prisoner.
his 30-resident principality, retroactive to the date of secession. He interpreted that as official recognition, and no one has really arrued the point since.
To be sure, though, any new nation has its share of birth pains, particularly one of only two homesteads, a chapel and a post office, 15 miles from the nearest paved road.平原地区拥有一个马装憨包 on the principle which is common to which were printed in New Zealand.
Prince Leonard is quick to point out that
Hutt River Province is nearly 50 times larger than Monaco. He envisions the principality one day as a booming resort, complete with a casino, and already he has received some financial spinoff from the collectors who write for first day covers.
Foreign policy is based strictly on neutrality, a fairly wise position because Prince Leonard, Princess Shirley and their son Prince Louis match for the 30,000 mannual Army armament.
Male Domination Enhances Romance, Study Indicates
By ROBERT SHIELDS The London Observer
Is it true—as has so often been stated—
that women like to be dominated by a man?
Are they physically and romantically at-
tached, who are men who self-sassured and
masterful?
When completing questionnaires, American women undergraduates frequently complain that they retest the manner in which young men resort to "the comfort of contact" as a method of attempted seduction. Is this complaint a genuine one?
Woodlawn Program Criticized
To the Editor.
Readers Respond
I wish to commend the Daily Kansan and radio station KANU for their unbiased coverage of the behavior analysis program. This is especially mark Mitchell and John Frazke.
I wonder how many of our school board members who express their approval of this program ever entered Woodlawn, unannounced, to observe.
Many of us were amazed to discover that Mr. Knox and the school board not only put the program in Woodland School, but also approved of it. Bob Taylor, in an address to the Board of Trustees that made Mr. Bushell, and Mr. Siegrist were solely responsible for this program.
Griff and the Unicorn
by Sokoloff
Mrs. Swearingen deserves a good citizen award because of her courage to openly fight this "monster." Ten people realized the abuse and humiliation she endured at the hands of some of our public servants. Mrs. Swearingen acted unselfishly and for the welfare of Wooddawn children. Several women went to court with the program, but stated they were afraid to permit their names to be used, in fear of their children's safety.
Mrs. Betty Crum 735 Lake St.
A few years ago, several Woodawwin parents attempted to obtain some honest answers from school officials but had to give up in dismal defeat. Some of these families moved from Lawrence to enroll their children in other schools.
Thanks to the Kansan and KANU, my faith in the free press has been restored, in your generation's hard work and courage to express it.
Intensive English
To the Editor:
I have been reading with interest the polemic regarding the Intensive English Center. As a long time teacher of foreign languages, I am accustomed to frustrations of the students and those of the teachers, for, unfortunately, there are no short cuts to language learning. The frustrations are inherent in the very nature of language as an educational skill to be acquired painstakingly.
But, alas, all is not lost. If the foreign students think they are not learning English
Laura Teixela Tarquinio visiting professor of Spanish and Portuguese
as speedily as they had hoped, they should take heart for having learned so quickly the democratic way of life. Back in their own countries, there is no redress. Had they been there, there would have been no chance for walking out, demonstrating or being heard in their demands, without facing serious retaliation.
Whistlestop Defended
The response of several men on campus and on the Kansan editorial page has been one of "humor." There aren't many things that women can do to make them less humiliated. Whistlestop is an attempt. Yet some ridicule it and to try to make women too embarrassed to participate, thus undermining the whole program. Why? Do they prefer that women be subject to the threat of assault? Are they afraid of losing a weapon? Is male sexism just a weapon? Why?
I don't understand. Why are men so opposed to the whistles? I have become very curious about men's attitudes towards rape, gay sex and the punishment—to teach me a lesson. I never found out what it was I had done to deserve that fate, what I was supposed to learn from it or what he thought he should not decide and administer this "justice."
To the Editor:
Rebcca S. Wendland Alamogordo, N.M., senior
I
Dr. John C. Touhey of Florida Atlantic University, writing in the British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, reports on an experiment he devised to assess the relationship between male dominance and heterosexual attraction.
His subjects were 80 undergraduates (40 male and 40 female) who were asked to work on a maze test that consisted of punching a series of holes in a card.
Male and female subjects worked together in pairs, sitting side by side. In one set of tests the male partner held his right hand over the girl's left hand, in which she held a stylus, guiding it to the punch-holes he selected ("physical dominance").
In a second series there was no actual physical contact, but the male subject gave verbal instructions to his partner while she also insisted he had selected ("verbal dominance").
Half the pairs were told they had done exceptionally well, while the other half were led to believe they had done exceptionally bad.
After the experiment each girl was asked to complete a questionnaire assessing the personality of her partner. According to the questionnaire, the most highly of—and were more willing to accept a date from—themen who had obtained a good score in the maze test, especially if the male partner had been among those who "physically dominated" them during the experiment.
The girls were significantly less favorable in their judgment of the men who had done badly in the test, especially if there had been physical dominance.
On the basis of this experiment it would seem that physical domination by the male increases a girl's interest and romantic response if he is thought to be successful but decreases it if he is thought to be a comparative failure.
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