Opinion
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, February 19, 1981
Tradition beats dollars
The KU Athletic Corporation made several things certain at its meeting last night.
For starters, KU will not play its home games against Iowa State in Des Moines KU will not play its home games against Colorado in Denver. KU will not play its home games against Nebraska in Omaha.
And finally, KU will not play its home games against Missouri in Kansas City, Mo.
The board yesterday did more than just eliminate the possibility of a KU-MU game at Arrowhead Stadium. It passed a policy stating that KU home games—all KU home games—would be played in Memorial Stadium.
That's where KU games belong.
The board's decision has to be a victory
for KU students and alumni, most of whom had been against such a move from the very beginning. The board's decision should be well received.
The KU-MU football grudge is the oldest rivalry west of the Mississippi. To punt tradition for the sake of making some extra bucks would have made KUAC's message loud and clear: College football is a business, period.
Yet college football is more than a business. And the University has learned that if KU puts its foot down, this big-business mentality can be minimized.
Had students and alumni not teamed up against the Arrowhead move, the proposal would have probably passed. This time, tradition seems to have overcome the dollar. It's a nice change of pace.
Kansas alcoholic controls counterproductive, absurd
By F.L. WASSERMAN
Guest Columnist
The history of alcoholic beverage control legislation in Kansas has ranged from the amusing to the absurd. For a number of years, it was illegal for airlines to serve cocktails on their flights while over the state, and in 1972 then Attorney General Vern Miller and agents of the Kansas Alcohol Beverage Control conducted a raid reminiscent of prohibition days on an Amktra train near Newton. Liquor and beer were confiscated and three Amtrak employees were charged with violating the Sunflower state's ban on the "open saloon."
The "open saloon" is still prohibited, although I fail to see the difference between the evil "open saloon" and some of the legal although highly protected properties of the clubs in Topeka, Wichita, and other Kansas cities.
When the Kansas Supreme Court rejected an attempt by the legislature to allow restaurants to sell liquor-by-the-drink, the court opened "open saloon" as any place that sells liquor for consumption on the premises to the public. This resulted in the legislature continuing the legal fiction of the Kansas private club, which is little more than a state-sanctioned speakeasy.
Anyone who wants to pay $10 and wait ten days can buy a drink in one or a number of "private clubs." Most Kansans don't realize it, but the annual membership fee is almost pure profit for the club. About the only worthwhile reform since the rejection of the restaurant liquor law was the enactment of a 10 percent exercise tax on liquor sold in clubs.
It seems inconceivable that the legislature would not remove the waiting period and reduce the membership for clubs if the lawmakers believe they should always let the people of Kansas vote on the issue.
The last time a constitutional amendment allowing the legislature total control of liquor was presented to the voters in 1970. It was defeated by a very narrow margin (48.8 percent to 50.2 percent) at a time when most private clubs were operating under a loophole in the law that limited liquor sales to low cost and with no waiting period. The ten dollar-ten day requirement is expensive and inconvenient for Kansas residents, but is prohibitive for tourists.
Most tourists can buy a drink in Kansas only if their motel has a club connected with it. This is self-defeating, as our state is losing thousands of dollars of potential excise tax receipts from liquor-by-the-drink sold to tourists, to say nothing of the effects of these overtly restrictive regulations on the tourism industry of Kansas. By buying wine at the motel, it should be easier to buy a bottle of Old Rogut at the corner liquor store than it is to buy a glass of wine with dinner?
Cermal malt beverages have been legal in kansas since 1973, a full decade before the repeal.
legislature declared that beer containing less than 3.2 percent of alcohol was not intoxicating. This is, of course, as much of a legal fiction as the private club. Actually, so-called 6 percent or "strong" beer is closer to 4 percent alcohol, and except for a slightly watered-down taste, it's hard to tell which you will plastered on-3.2 beer is intoxicating.
The legal age for purchase and consumption of 3.2 beer has been 18 since it was legalized, and when prohibition was repealed in 1949, the legal age to purchase liquor was set at 21, which was then the age of majority. Many states, Kansas included, lowered the age of majority to 18 during the 1970s, and many also lowered the drinking age.
It seems that the problem is not as much the inability of 18- to 21-year-olds to handle liquor, but the younger teenagers who obtain alcoholic beverages from their older friends. Most if not all 21-year-olds are out of high school, while many high school seniors reach 18 before they graduate, and there are even some 19- and 20-year-old high school students.
The solution to the problem is not to restrict responsible 18- to 21-year-olds to Kool-Aid and cola. The state does, however, have a responsibility for preventing alcoholic beverages from entering households of minors, meaning those persons not mature enough to handle the responsibility of drinking.
Perhaps the legal drinking age for beer should remain at 18 in Kansas. The sale of beer, however, should be restricted to on-premises sales for those under 21. If you're 18 to 24, you'd have to drink alcohol. You can now vortebe beer tawerna or Pizza Hut, and you could always get an older friend to buy your six-pack.
Many of the states that have raised their drinking age have done so through popular referendum. We need a popular vote to straighten out the mess our state's liquor laws are in, so why not vote on both issues? Liquor control policy should be the domain of the legislature and the people, not the Kansas Supreme Court. Removal of the antiquated and unintolerable liquor law, in the state constitution will permit this measure. Kansas should also be allowed to vote on the question of whether the legal age for purchase and consumption of beer should be raised.
The proposed law that would suspend the driver's licenses of a person under 18 convicted of driving while intoxicated is a good idea. This law should include drivers of any age. A first respondent can be given the option of attending alcohol safety lessons rather than having his license suspended.
The alcoholic beverage control statutes of Kansas need to be completely rewritten to provide sensible and straightforward solutions to alcohol-related problems, rather than the current policy of piecemeal reforms to an awkward and unrealistic liquor and beer control system frought with self-defeating technicalities and legal fictions.
Rising crime brings fear into lives
I rarely walk home alone at night any more. I don't get a chance to enjoy the clear skies and the fresh air and the solitude that is so relaxing after alone day.
My friends don't jog around the block at night without telling someone where they're going.
I grudgingly pay for the parking ticket stuck under the windshield of my car because I'd rather lose my money to KU Parking Services than to a mugger. I'd rather not trek across campus and give someone a chance to rob me or perhaps do something worse.
I pay for the ticket and sacrifice my spending money because I am afraid—not so much that I don't go out and not so much that the fear of being attacked fills my waking mind. It is great enough to make me change plans or to deter me from doing something I enjoy.
Because I'm wary, I drive rather than walk. I harbicide the doors and windows of my room with locks. And I park only in well-lit lots and travel on major roads.
It doesn't seem right that I should have to change my ways to protect myself. And especially in Lawrence, a college town in the heartland of America, I shouldn't have to
constantly think in terms of self-defense. Although there were only two homicides in Lawrence in 1800—and they seem in continuation in contemporary communities committed in New York or Atlanta—the fear
CYNTHIA
CURRIE
that is a defense against injury is—essentially a poignant here in *I am awoken* in *New York*.
And the fear is brought home by the small incidences that are commonplace in the conversations at the dinner table or at parties; the tale of the friend who was attacked in front of her apartment, the stere equipment ripped from the dashboard of a parked car, the stolen from a set table by a gang of children who have become apprehensive, beef up our own defenses and become more careful of our actions.
They are defenses that change our movements, that make our lives, in the words of Chief Justice Warren Burger, "hostage to crime." During an address to the American Bar Association last Sunday Burger said the justice system could no longer protect those who abide by the law because of the problems within the system.
"Are we not hostages within the borders of
house or because of alarms and locks?"
Burger asked.
We are. We knew what Burger was speaking to him, he said it, before he put him on the path. He asked for help.
It's not the same capacity the hostages in Iran faced, but it is a restriction of freedom. The restraint is not physical, but we are in cells of limited activity. We cannot go where we want to be, so we might have done for fear of becoming just one of the staging criminal statistics.
I probably won't get a chance to enjoy the cool spring nights without wondering whether the footsteps behind me are menacing. I'll wear my new tickets yet continue to park in a safe place.
It looks as though from now on I'll have a little less choice and a little less free.
Reagan, Roosevelt interesting comparison
By JEFF MOUNT
Guest Columnist
All that was missing was the fireplace and Fala.
Ronald Reagan's first speech to the public as president last Thursday night not only reaffirmed our conviction that he is a very effective rhetorician, but it also kindled hope that this president is a man of action, and to look at his oration is to marvel at a clever woven speech that could earmark the absence of a cogent presidency.
Basisally, the speech served a two-fold purpose: First, to galvanize the nation, and second, to provide the framework for his economic policies that will be sent to Congress later this month.
Realizing that for his proposals to be accepted the public must understand our present economic plight. Reagan used inflation statistics from 1960 to 1980 to shed light on the parallel
Essentially, this theory holds that through the inextricable coalescing of government deficit spending and progressive taxation, big business generates productivity, which is the key to a healthy economy.
This relationship has become almost parasitic, and it is time for a new economic ideology to surface comparable to the Phoenix. Out of the ashes of the past's failings to grope with the situation, Reagan explained in simple terms the shift from new economic paracas: supply-side economics.
between the proliferation of government spending and skyrocketing inflation.
Instead, the president tells us, government should shape its policy with a propensity toward promoting the private sector of enterprise in hopes of propelling the output of goods and services. This theory is certainly diametrically opposed to Keynesian economics, but, as in FDR's time, we are ready for action—any action.
In extending his analysis of our woes, the president tells us that the condition we face today is not only one of government misunderstanding but also one of the public's psychological paralysis.
We are told that we are victims of language as another barrier to solving the economic enigma, and in the words of Stephen Blackpool, “Tis a muddle.” Reagan points out that we have misinterpreted the symptoms of infaithion He redefines what has hurt the consumer.
By reminding us that we (the voters) always want to shift the tax burden onto big business as a cure for inflation, we fail to see that the shift is latently embedded in the price of goods passed on to the consumer as a compensatory measure. The president then redefines the remedy as supply-side economics. Through this careful process of redefining the problem, Reagan instills the belief that this new line of thought will cure the illness previously mis-diagnosed.
Interestingly enough, Reagan did not use war metaphors to rally support (which is probably just as well since Carter's "moral equivalent of war" was later termed MEOW) but instead invoked a spirit of bipartisanship between business and the consumer.
Being affiliated with a representing party carrying the albatross of representing self-interest group tables on this association by saying that "the only special interest group is the people."
When explaining such a complicated subject matter (as did Roosevelt with banking), a speaker must reduce the subject to its simplest form. The reason marshaled a great number of rhetorical devices, such as speech and in its delivery, but perhaps his most effective was his conversational delivery. He
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talked to, with and for the people, not at them,
reminiscent of FDR's style.
GR want Wayn
Ironically and paradoxically, both Roosevelt and Reagan entered the presidency in the face of dire economic ills, yet chose an antithetical approach: FDR cured the ills with deficit spending; Reagan will forgive ahead with a frugious economic policy and a proclivity to iconoclasm.
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At the repl and
Like Roosevelt, Reagan will experiment, all the while probably repeating FDR's maxim, "Reform if you would preserve." Americans can only hope that Edward A. Meesee III and his economic entourage will possess the economic savvity of a Harold Hokes or a Harry Hopkins.
To be sure, Reagan's speech will not suddenly render the nation's economic sickness benign. The speech did have its Achilles' heel. By spending so much time in explaining the patient's present state and history, Dr. Reagan has not prepared us for the side-effects sure to develop when supply-side economics is administered.
Whether the patient will swallow the medicine is another matter. And as we all know, medicine tastes bad going down. But as we also know, it works better than water — even if in this case it is a political placebo.
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