Page 4 University Daily Kansan, February 10, 1981
Opinion
Behind the curtain
It looks as if the caucus curtain will remain drawn this session in the Kansas Legislature.
That's because last week, Attorney General Robert Stephan decided that the state Senate Republicans could close their party caucuses to you, the public, and your representatives, the news media. Closing the caucuses, Stephan said, would not violate the Kansas Open Meetings Act.
And Senate Republicans apparently will take full advantage of the legality of closed meetings. Legislative meetings are supposed to be open, but when the Legislature passed its open meetings law, it wrote in a convenient loophole allowing it to close some meetings at its own discretion.
Real progress has been made the last few years in making the Legislature an open body. Stephan's ruling, however, is an impediment to the continuation of that progress.
Because so much of what goes on in a legislature is based upon the parties' own interactions, closing off party caucuses means shutting off a substantial portion of the legislative process to public scrutiny.
It means that going to the Statehouse to see the Legislature in action is like going to an automotive assembly factory to see a car put together, but finding that the engine assembly is done behind closed doors. You miss seeing how crucial components are added.
Senate Democrats largely favored the opening of both parties' caucuses, but Senate Republicans overruled them. So if your senator is a Republican, take the time to ask him or her why you shouldn't be able to see what goes on in the Republican caucus.
You've got a vested interest in knowing what your Legislature is doing at all levels. You're paying for it. It there's to serve you. So why shouldn't you know?
State has enough liquor laws without 'wavward children'
The bill would allow minors who drink beer to be classified as wayward children and in some cases as drunks.
Why don't we just jop their little hearts out? It'd teach them a lesson and save the state of
A new bill that would impose criminal penalties for minors caught drinking beer was referred to a State Senate committee last week. The bill is supported by the Kansas Highway Department and the Beverage Control, the Associated Students of Kansas and the Reverend Richard Taylor.
JANE
NEUFELD
Kansas the burden of another unenforceable and asinine law.
Right now, minors are not penalized for drinking alcohol. The Legislature, with a hanging-judge gleam in its eyes, wants to remedy the situation.
It seems that a lot of people want to make Kansas dry again. Public opinion won't let them, so they do their best to make confusing laws to curtail drinking.
Do the legislators really believe that minors are going to stop drinking beer just because they could be called wayward children? If so, they are a sad lack of understanding of the human mind.
You can't legislate morality. Prohibition should have taught us a lesson. People want their booze, and they'll have it on way or another, and they've regulated, bathtub gin or moonshine whiskey.
Laws attempt to regulate individual vice, from drinking to drugs to sexual mores, are ignored with an enthusiasm generally reserved for World Series games. The more something is allowed, the more enticing it is. One of the surest ways to obtain a ban or to classify it as lacking in social value.
Attempts to control the use of alcohol as it affects society are certainly necessary. Inxticated drivers, for example, must be kept off the highways, and another State Senate bill aims at highway safety by prohibiting open containers of beer in vehicles.
In Kansas, we can drink, but we can't buy anything alcoholic after midnight; we can drink at 18, but only 3.2 percent alcohol, which necessitates swelling enormous amounts of booze to get the effect of a couple of shots of real alcohol; we can't buy anything on Sunday, perhaps to avoid blasphemy; we have to join clubs to drink genuine, hard-core alcohol.
The police will have to raid dark, deprived bars and pry out the wayward children who are quaffing forbidden beers. Then the courts will have to handle them.
Perhaps the legislators think that minors are children and will be docile and obedient, intimidated by the force of the law against them and worried by the prospect of a criminal record.
But the problems with the bill imposing criminal penalties on beer-drinking minors seem to outweigh the benefits. Just what do the courts plan to do with all these wayward children once they're in custody? Lecture them? Spank them? Take away their lollions?
Drinking is a vice, granted, and is bad for your liver, brain cells and GPA, but the bill is going to make police waste a lot of time hunting down these individuals themselves and causing no trouble to anyone else.
Guess again. Along with massive foolishness and delusions of personal invulnerability when it comes to being caught, high school and junior high school students are reckless.
The threat of being a wayward child will not discourage minors. They are crazed.
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For God's sake, don't we have enough strange liquor laws? Do we have to start whopping minors over the head and hauling them away because they want a beer?
But virtually everyone, wets and drys, Taylor and ASK, supports the bill. Perhaps tavern owners, terrified that Taylor may succeed in raising the drinking age to 21 and kill much of their business, are trying to placate Taylor with a ban on alcohol. But conciliatory piece of bait to a starved nibble.
It won't work. A shark is not sataled after eating a minky. Taylor will still want to raise the drinking age. Last week he said he wanted it to be a compromise on the way to raising it to 21.
So Taylor will continue his battle against boo, despite indications that people will drink, legally or not. And the mirrors bill will probably pass, adding another anomaly to our already wary behavior. More and more furtive perhaps but just as determined, will make their way to bars and grocery stores.
At least Kannans can congratulate themselves on the high mortality of the state, while another Kannan
Academic allegations most serious
It was a busy day across the country last Friday.
Ela Grasso, former governor of Connecticut, was dead at 61. Marine PFC Robert Garwood was found guilty of collaborating with the enemy in Vietnam. Another murders hid child's body was found in Atlanta. Several oil companies announced higher fuel prices.
Yet most Kansas' eyes were glued to a series of Kansas City Times stories that involved alleged recruiting violations in the athletic departments of the University of Kansas, Kansas State University and Wichita State University.
Concerning KU, the Times said that athletes were here first to play sports, and second (perhaps) to gain an education. The story dwellled on skaky academic practices, including questionable grade changes and enrollment procedures.
Although the story about KU was short on substitution, the Times struck at the heart of the problem facing perhaps all universities to boost big-dollar sports programs.
And although the Times didn't mention it, the alleged academic practices affect more than just the athletes; they affect a number of other students.
The story concerning academics has failed to elicit much of a reaction from KU students or administrators, at least on the surface. The Times—and most of its readers—were more worried about abortions, the cash payoffs and the various other inducements alleged in the stories.
These alleged malpractices are clearly newsworthy, but except in KU's case, the academic angle was completely ignored by the Times.
The Times' stories weren't without problems.
For starters, the Times spent two days of front-age coverage on an isolated incident in a New York suburb.
DAVID LEWIS Editor
cleaned up before the Times even started its investigation.
A gaping hole in the Times' story concerning how an athlete's mother obtained a house was quickly filled when the Wichita Eagle-Beacon reported that the mother was helped by a friend who had won a $1 million mall practice suit.
Nevertheless, the Times deserves commendation for uncovering some stories in the backyards of some "friendly" competitors. And if the Times' stories result in the cleaning up of some morals, then the newspaper印发了 that has served the public interest. Time will tell.
Despite the serious charges, much of the University was relieved to see the article, for rumors of much more "illegal" charges were beginning to spread.
Some of the talk around Allen Field House before the KU-Oklahona basketball game Saturday sounded like this: "They (the players) were anything on us. They didn't prove a thing."
Such mentality illustrates an unhealthy academic atmosphere at the University
That the University would possibly prostitute its academic standards to maintain a steady flow of athletic receipts is indeed the greatest atrocity explored by the Times.
It hasn't.
Obviously materialistic inducements mentioned by the Times are immoral. Yet the manipulation of an athlete's education—and not makingikes—should make all of our stomachs turn.
The main concern with many of us Friday was not our academics; it was whether KU would be placed on NCAA probation and whether our sports programs would continue to prosper. It's too bad that athletes get lost in the shuffle. They do.
Well, the stories have come, and for the most part, they probably have gone. The KU story most likely won't lead to any NCNA investigations and KU officials shouldn't have to worry about any impending probations. Everybody's happy.
To be sure, some athletic boosters must be relieved. Some KU officials must be relieved. Some faculty members must be relieved. And some coaches must be relieved. And some coaches must be relieved.
Yet relief isn't supposed to be spelled W-I-
N. Yet in a lesson we should have learned in the
first lesson.
'Now . . . who's next?
Letters to the Editor
To the editor:
Norman Forer's trip to Iran criticized, praised
I can hardly believe that Norman Forer has leveled criticism against State Rep. Joseph Hoagland to the effect that Hoagland is only trying to further his career, when that is the exact motive that I wonder if Norman Forer had in mind when he went to Iran.
As a resident of Kansas, I was personally embarrassed when I heard of a KU faculty member going to Iran to "save the world." I, too, was surprised more action was not taken against him. We had even taken the Iranian crisis into their own hands, we wouldn't have them home today.
Maybe I can't condone Hoagland's action on the house floor on the day he made his famous "Forer speech," but I can't criticize him. I do want to attack Hoagland, the institution of higher education, but rather was attacking the person of Norman Forer for his actions concerning Iran. If I personally felt that he had attacked KU with malicious contempt, then I would be on the Hoagland critique team. If I knew that Norman KU, it was Norman Forer. If I had been in the Statehouse at the time of the famous "Forer speech," I would have proudly clapped the loudest.
Keith A. Smith
Free speech violated
Keith A. Smith
St. Paul junior
To the editor:
Those of you who are enraged because you have heard that Norman Foster "abandoned" his classes have been misinformed. The reason he is being slandered is that his trip to Iran was controversial, not because he failed to meet any teaching obligations.
What is the big deal here? If every teacher who was guilty of this were fired, there would be no more teachers left. Fier was suspended without being formally charged. Because of this, he refused to request reinstatement, but he was reinstalled anyway.
First, Forer gave notice to his dearest before he
was called to the class. Third,
he had colleagues billed for her.
Fourth,
Why was he reinstated? Because the administration had no case against him. There are no charges to be made. The only hearings held within the University were closed to the
accused. Only because Joseph Hoagland decided that he wanted a little publicity for himself by denouncing Forer at the height of a national fervor over the return of the hostages was Norman Forer allowed to defend himself in front of a committee in the Kansas State University. This should have happened in the University when he was accused in the first place.
I attended the hearings of the Kansas Legislature when Forer addressed Hoagland. Forer made his speech and provided documentation proving that he had not abandoned his classes and that his rights to speech and due process had been trampled on.
The most memorable part of the hearing was when the professor demanded that Hoagland substantiate his slanderous claims about Forer's trip to Iran and the alleged abandonment of classes. Hoagland looked at the table in front of him and batted his eyes for about 10 seconds. All eyes were fixed on Hoagland. Then the chairman of the hearing, he asked if there were any other questions from the other members of the committee.
Anyone with a shred of integrity who knows the facts, whether or not they agree with Forerer's politics, cannot deny that his rights to free speech and due process have been waived. The University administration has been using tactics reminiscent of the McCarthy era.
Why did he say nothing? I charge that he said nothing because there was nothing he could say. He had been confronted with facts and they threw him off.
Juliet Matamua Overland Park sophomore
Forer is an inspiration to students and faculty alike. He is an individual who gets
Efforts appreciated
To the editor:
I want to thank Norman Forer for spending his energy, time and money in attempting to break down the walls of noncommunication between us. I believe it to be a human being in our inhumane society.
involved in issues that although they may be unpopular, enhance the freedom and dignity of
His work has included protecting the rights of policemen, factory workers, garbagemen, foreign students and KU janitors. He was intensely involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and was one of the very few faculty members who rallied in support of the Native Americans living in Kansas.
I believe in people like Norman Forer and find it very disheardening when I read hateful letters against him based on ignorance and prejudice. It's time for people to praise acts of conscience, to protest chest attacks against those who stand up for their principles.
Rick Frydman Lawrence junior
Avoidance of war point of Iran journey
To the editor:
It seems to be a matter of some importance to attempt to think coherently about Norman Foster's notorious trip to Iran at the height of the hostage crisis.
Criticisms of Forer to the effect that his trip was "ineffective" seem to imply that such critics can have in mind only the matter of the release of the hostages. It can hardly be disputed that Forer's trip did not bring about the release of the hostages. But the release of the hostages was by no means the only, nor even the most important, issue at stake. Of far less importance was the question of an imminent war. And it is not nearly so clear that Forer's trip was "ineffective" with regard to forestalling a military final solution to the hostage problem.
Indeed, it is precisely the fact that very few Americans were able to see any issue at stake besides the release of the hostages that made Forer's trip morally necessary. It is not an outrageous simplification of the situation at that time to say that the American rulers were mesmerized by the fact that those Iranians had taken Americans hostage and the Iranian rulers in turn by the fact that those Americans were sheltering the shah. It was obvious that
there existed a very great threat of war, and neither party to the dispute was being very open to negotiation or even to rational discussion.
It looked very much as if there would be a war unless something were done to convince the Iranian officials that their policies were suicidal. Two terribly important threats needed to be acknowledged by them. First, they needed to understand that there was absolutely no support for their position in the United States. The Iranians seemed at the time to have highly erroneous views about this matter. They又 neglected to notice that if they saved and deposed those of the board even those who actually were spies, Carter could not refrain from war even if he wanted to.
Forer found himself in virtually a unique position to accomplish this task. He was a professionally skilled mediator and negotiator. He had established himself long before the Iranian revolution as an opponent of the shah's regime and a friend of the Iranian people. He was one of the most active members of persons, including President Bani-Sadr, who currently held positions of political power. He was in short one of the very few Americans whom the Iranians would trust and believe.
The morally significant features which I think are conclusive in this matter are of course not matters which could be known with certainty at the time or even with present hind-sight. It is plausible to hold that Forer's trip was a necessary condition for bringing the Iranians around on the two propositions mentioned above. Further, it is also more than correct and giving correct views on these matters was a necessities of a terrible bloody war. And if both are in fact true, it inexorably follows that he had a moral obligation to make the trip.
It is pointless to indulge in ad hominem attacks on Forer's critics. But the arguments I have heard against his trip are extraordinarily poor, based for the most part on attacks on his character or on the astonishing silly view, in the light of the literally earth-shaking issues at stake, that nothing what can justify a professor's absence from class.
Arthur Skidmore Assistant professor of philosophy