Opinion
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, February 20, 1981
Limit should stay 55
Perhaps it's because the land is flat or perhaps it's because barren wheat fields in winter aren't very scenic, but whatever the reason, Kansans definitely aren't abiding by the 55 mph speed limit.
Some state legislators have resigned themselves to the idea that Kansans will never drive at 55, so a bill has been introduced in the Kansas Legislature that would raise the state's speed limit to 60—provided that the federal government raises the national speed limit, too, something President Reagan promised during his campaign.
In contrast to some other states, Kansas' revolt against the double nickels seems mild. Nebraska and Oklahoma both have taken action to raise their speed limits,
But the bill in Kansas is based upon the
assumption that Kansans would accept 60 mph and adherent to it; after all, that's about the speed many drivers are doing on the highways. But the likely reason so many drive around 60 is because they want to keep near enough to the limit in case a highway patrol car appears, yet add an extra mph or two to driving time.
Consequently, the proposed law to make the limit 60 would not solve the problem, because drivers would then inch the speedometer up to 65 or so for exactly the same reason. Passing such a law would do about as much to keep drivers at the speed limit as do the commercials put out by the Department of Transportation, which proclaim, "55—we can live with it." That's not convincing, and neither is the law.
Racial and cultural barriers prove very hard to eradicate
Last spring, four white Miami policemen stood trial for the murder of Arthur McDuffle, a 33-year-old black insurance agent. The trial was held in Tampa, Fla., as the defense requested. On the stand, the officers admitted attacking his wife and children during his motorcycle, beating him to death until his blood and brain tissue splattered their uniforms. One officer then drove his police car over McDuff
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SOMERVILLE
never's motorcycle, to teign an accident. McDuffie never reigned consciousness, and four days later, died. By then, the police officers had faked their "official" report.
The trial lasted four months. But it took an all-will jury less than three hours to judge the defendants not guilty. Three hours later, Liberty City Fla., was in flames.
On January 7, 1981 black youths in Miami went on trial charged with first-degree murder—for shooting and stomping to death three whites who attacked them triggered by the acquittal of the four policemen.
Miami's race problems serve as a grim reminder that blatantly racist attitudes still exist despite all legislative attempts to squash them. The typical well-to-do tourist in Miami can check into a beach hotel, sit on Pina Coladas and ignore the city's crime rate—fourhighest in the nation—so long as he doesn't venture too far unattown.
A staggering 28 percent of the black adult male population of Miami is unemployed—four times the white percentage. When former President Carter visited Miami last June—a month after the riots—Mayor Maurice Ferre sheepshily told him the city had yet to implement any major new ghetto assistance programs, not actually had it done very much since the riots of 1986. It is little wonder blacks riot in Miami—it is their only way of getting back into the city. Now, Charles Veverka Jr., the first policeman to reach McDuffie after the chase that led to his murder, has signed a contract for a book and possibly a movie about his life. He stands to make $1 million from the deal.
The truth is, of course, while overt manifestations of racism are keenly felt in Miami, very few of us are completely free from unconscious racist attitudes.
Prejudices are understandable. We are all conditioned by our parents' attitudes, society's attitudes and lots of experiences and impressions. Fair enough. Reality has to be faced. No one demands that everyone exist between "us" and "them". The trouble begins when people confuse differences with
superiority or inferiority—and treat other people as medical stereotypes, instead of as individual persons.
Miami is a city of extremes, caused by the large numbers of Latins, mostly Cubans, who outnumber whites 3-to-2 and blacks 3-to-1. Anti-black feelings runs high among the Cubans; they haveEdge out blacks even in bottom-level jobs and are not satisfied with the restaurant owner may have good reasons for refusing to employ a person who happens to be black. But if the refusal has anything to do with the fact that he is a black, the action is racist. Such actions are forbidden by law, but they still take place, and the law is hard to enforce. Racism is an enormously complex issue, because it involves attitudes. But its real harm comes from the negative actions that flow from those attitudes.
As well as being a personal thing, racism can become built into a society's institutions. That has become apparent in aspect of Australian life, where a tribal aborigine can be tried and conquered, but when he cannot understand the English language and under a legal system totally alien to him.
Unfortunately, there is no reason to think that the race problem is improving, or that time will necessarily solve the problem; America is now more than 20 organizations to protect the “privileges” of whites operating freely in this country. They range from the bizarre Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Party to the “respectable” Christian Institute (or Individual Freedom).
Racism harms people at every level of their being. They suffer constant hurt and feel their alleged "inferiority" deeply. They come to believe it. Their dignity is destroyed, their will is crushed. Nor is the damage confined to those on the receiving end. People who practice racism often fear being judged for their treatment of others. At the very least, they miss the fellowship of shared differences—the enriched experience of discovering a common humanity across all barriers of race and culture.
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Romance of small towns largely a myth
Ketty Fuller, president and general manager of the Associate Press, praised the safety and morality of his small Kansas home town last week, criticized the common "aberrant behavior" of today, and urged the press to upgrade declining morals.
Fuller, who made his remarks after accepting the William Allen White Foundation award for journalistic merit, was using an argument long familiar to me. I grew up in a town with a population of 1,200, and I've heard the virtues of small town morality and the benefits of small town life extolled a thousand times.
I don't buy the argument. It seems to me that what is being praised in small town life is the comfort of conformity. In asking the press to help upgrade morals to the small town standards, I am confronted with the realities to play God and eliminate attitudes that deviate from the standards of the majority.
One image connotes easygoing life and friendly neighbors. People have time for each other, according to this image. The neighbors are very patient, kind, and think and take care of your dog when you're away.
A lot of the problem hinges on the image of the small town squares, small towns have two or three different differences.
As Fuller said, in the small town you can leave on vacation with your doors unlocked.
But there’s another small town image, the
magnificent neighborhood of
lookingafter one another with skygarden.
The small town in this image is steeped in provincialism and intolerance. The neighbors
report and pass judgment on the time you get up, the time you go to bed, the times you drink, the times you swear, the times you miss church, the times you fight with friend, family or foe and the times you are in bed with someone not legally married to you.
There's truth in both images. It depends on your point of view.
Small towns, by the very fact that their size allows everyone to know what everyone else is doing, are ruthless in enforcing a set standard of morals.
If you fit in with a town, if you conform, then life is great.
JANE NEUFELD
The morals may be stern, or they may be lax.
But they are rigid and universal in that town.
Babylon was a city of moral condi-
Many people like living in small towns. If you can conform and a little eagle-eyed eyecrust doesn't bother you, they offer what Füller said they do—a pleasant, friendly place relatively free of dangerous deviants displaying aberrant behavior.
But if you deviate from accepted standards,
you'd better be impervious to public opinion.
Many people think they would like living in a small town. They are victims of an escapist
dream precipitated by our culture. After a lifetime of coping with city traffic, slum landlords, job pressures and hideous concrete and stucco, I dreamed of dwellers dream about getting back to the land.
Yes, get away from the drunks and the pollution and litter. Go back to a simple life, where you can relax, get to know the folks around you and unlock your door unlocked because youtrusteveryone.
It's a pretty dream, and I too succub to variations of it from time to time. Largely variations of being on a deserted beach or in a tropical jungle with a bottle of gin, six or seven cats and no responsibilities for the next century or so.
However, I know the dream's a myth. There is no escape from life, and anyway large hairy spiders would probably drop out of the jungle onto my hammock and eat my cats.
But Fuller doesn't seem to think the idea of having the press upgrade morals and condemn aberrant behavior is a dream. When he converts his rhusipidoscing about the good old days into a moral framework, the press to advocate the morals of the good old days, he is going beyond nostalgia into legacy.
To advocate the press venturing beyond impartial reporting anywhere but the editorial page is to advocate that they adopt some moral standard and impose it on the public, either in the type of things they report or in the method of their reporting.
Small towns express their approval or disapproval of behavior through social pressure. It is not the job of the press to adopt a similar function and censure morals.
Prior restraint trend threatening press
Guest columnist
By JUDITH GALAS DORSEY
Sphbb Nuclear energy is a national secret.
Hydrogen bombs, nuclear missiles and even the malfunctions at Three Mile Island technically cannot be discussed by the media without mention of the impact of Energy—beggardian of the big secret.
Legislated prior restraint, an oppressive challenge to the First Amendment's guarantee of a free press, so far exists only under the federal censorship appears to be spreading.
Buttressed by the Atomic Energy Act, the government can prevent the publication of material that concerns the design, manufacture or utilization of atomic weapons, the production of nuclear materials or their use in the production of energy.
Pot Shots
Something is really wrong when there is 70-degree weather in the middle of February.
How can I enjoy spring break in Arizona when there has already been at least a week of tanning days here? Why should I bother to drive for 25 miles from our home to the banking rays are available in my own backyard?
Don't misunderstand me, it's not as though I don't like the springlike weather that Lawrence has had this week, but in the middle of the winter?
I mean, really, there have been perhaps four days this entire season when the snow-you
I miss the cold, I miss the winter. And if this
teacher keeps up, I'll probably miss the spring to
that.
type recreational activities were able to be partaken in. My brand-new ski jacket, I bought because the saleman guaranteed there would be an emergency of winter leaf." Hems missed in my clothes.
And what about Spring Fever? It's not even March and already the urge to punt accounting homework has tempted to overwhelm me. I'm still in class. C's in classes that I still haven't taken a test in.
If you've driven a car, you probably know the story: the dreaded sire's octave whirring, the frenetic red lights bouncing from your mirror, the muttered curse, the pounding heart. "Geez, it's the cops!" Hide whatever needs hiding, roll the window down and breathe deeply.
Rule 1: Stay in your car. Cops have good reflexes, and their bodies can actually outthink their minds. An open door is perceived as a threat to yourself the hospital expenses and stay put.
Rule 2: Try humor. A man in California, pulled over for speeding, got off scot-free. All he did was flick open his wallet and say, "Kirk to Enterprise. Beam me up, now Scotty."
Rule 3: If humor fails, apologize for your child behavior and lay in protest at his or her feet. Cop motto number one: "The badge commands respect." Heed it.
Rule 4: If you've gotten this far, forget it.
If you're in need of money, go immediately to the bank and ask for a loan. Go immediately to the bank and ask for a loan.
few simple guidelines for contending with the law-on-wheels.
No matter how familiar the situation, the words always seem to fail. So I've enriched a
Along with the number of hours they've done without sleep, one of the favorite academic war wounds students love to compare is the number of injuries they couldn't find at Watson Library.
But library officials say that the new
applications should stop the magazine
stop the magazine search from being a
thing.
Well, sorry to report, these wonderful new machines haven't made magazines any easier to find because the rest of the library is still a mess. They have made looking for a magazine a whole lot more fun, though. Here's how to get the most out of your magazine search:
1) Select a pretty bluemicrofiche card.
2) Stare at it very closely. Try to figure out how they meet and let them that small.
$ Stick it into the machine and push the
$ Dollars until you get a search watching
$ the dollars fly by.
4) Pretend the microfiche reader is a Ouija board. Rest your fingerprints lightly on the pointer, concentrate, and it will begin to move across the board of numbers and letters. Last time I did this, it spelled out "Good luck, sucker." Oh well, I didn't want my magazine anyway.
The National Security Agency, the most secretive of the government's secret agencies, recently has asked that all scholarly articles pertaining to its activities be referred to the NSA for prior review before publication.
In an AP story on the code censorship proposal, the NSA's Public Cryptography Study Group emphasized that the research plan was voluntary. But the AP story noted that committee members discussed the possibility that the NSA might seek legislation limiting publication of cryptography information if the voluntary system failed.
So far, the NSA's censorship proposal has met with little opposition. It is frightening that university representatives such as Chancellor Ira Michael Heyman of the University of California for the governmental researchers and scholars are to approve of the plan if the NSA is "reasonable."
Freedom to publish and to debate sensitive issues is once again being asked to silently bow to national interests. Although prior restraint holds little favor with the Supreme Court, legislated censorship like the AEA's is hard for lawmakers to resist. It also presents a difficult to win a prior restraint stand-off with the government if censorship receives another stamp of congressional approval.
In Near v. Minnesota, 1931, the precedent-serving prior restraint case, Chief Justice Hughes wrote that prior restraint might be acceptable only in three instances: national security war; war; obscenity; and situations where incitement to violence could overthrow the government.
Freedom from prior restraint allows disturbing materials to be published. A false idea does not exist in a democratic society, even if that idea is unpopular.
Many members of the nixon and public concluded that what the Nixon administration was attempting to secure its own freedom from embarrassment. The Supreme Court ruled that the government had not met the heavy burden of proof necessary to show that national interests would be endangered. The government lost its first attempt at prior restraint.
Two years ago this March, the federal government successfully restrained a small, liberal magazine for six months. "The Progressive," editorially opposed to nuclear proliferation, attempted to publish the article "The H-Bomb Diet—How We Got It and Why We're Telling It."
Forty years after the Near decision, the government demanded that the Pentagon Papers be restrained, claiming that their publication would endanger national security.
Howard Morland had used only declassified materials in his research, information available from other sources.
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asserted that his article would disclose the H-bomb secret.
After six months of courtroom discussion and public debate, many decided that the government had no case. The H-bomb and how it was made was not a secret. The Department of Energy dropped its suit. But prior restraint had successfully stopped the presses for six months. Many journalists fear that the government's challenge will be harder for the press to win.
When Congress first passed the AEA, scientists objected to the legislation. They knew that their thoughts and their research would now be ignored. That only fueled a chilling effect on nuclear research.
Looking back on the act's effect, some scientists assert that the capricious classification of research as "secret" has curtied a free exchange of research and ideas. Some scientists who has caused the United States to lag behind its international neighbors in nuclear research.
Some code researchers fear that the NSA's request for a "voluntary" restraint on code publication will have the same effect. Research will be curtailed.
Beyond the question of freedom to discuss and publish research is the freedom to express opinions and share information on any issues vital to our national welfare.
Any monopoly wields power and those monopolies that control information also control decision making. The government would like us to believe that it has always protected our interests. But unless people believe that ignorance, the by-product of secrecy, is good for us, then that by-product must be opposed by our codebreaking, shouldpair both the press and the public.
The AEA slipped the public and the press before nuclear weapons and nuclear energy were major issues. Once again we are being asked to condone another attempt to legislate prior restraint. Code research, like its nuclear counterpart in the '50s, is a little discussed sleeping giant. Its ramifications are not yet felt or understood by the public.
Prestrior restraint's greatest threat is that it will prevent the public from making intelligent evaluations. Citizens won't know enough to even ask intelligent questions. As the disaster at Three Greyhouses escalated, the possibility of the hard questions and analyze the possible dangers can be life-threatening.
Secrecy effectively kills public debate.
Shhh. The government is once again attempti to legislate eviction.
Please, let's not keep that a secret.
Judith Gaius Dorney is a graduate student majoring in journalism.