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University Daily Kansan
Thursday, Dec. 6, 1962
Legislating Morals
Kansas, throughout its history, has been noted for its attempts to legislate the morals of its residents.
For many years, the sale of cigarettes was banned in the state. Until 1948, the sale of liquor was prohibited. Kansas still has a board which censors movies shown in the state.
Now, it appears an effort will be made in the coming session of the legislature to liberalize the present Kansas liquor laws. Several groups in recent weeks have come out in favor of allowing liquor to be sold by the drink in restaurants and hotels, in contrast to the present law which limits liquor sales to package liquor stores.
The situation also applies to KU. It is a school rule that alcohol beverages are not to be consumed in student housing—including private apartments. This rule, as any student knows, is frequently disregarded.
BACK IN THE good old days of prohibition, it was common knowledge that Kansans who wanted liquor could bring it back from Missouri or could contact a bootleger—and every town in the state of any size had one or more bootleggers.
Today, the sale of liquor by the drink is prohibited in Kansas. Yet it is common knowledge that liquor is sold by the drink, through a variety of methods, in many country clubs and "key clubs."
It also is illegal to drink in public. But many roadhouse and dance hall owners look the other way when people bring bottles with them.
IT ALSO IS A University rule, and a State Jaw, that liquor is not to be consumed on state property. Yet many residents of Stouffer Place no doubt enjoy occasional drinks at home and the drinking at football games in Memorial Stadium is notorious.
The fact is, of course, that the city police and university officials, whichever the case may be, know that State and University laws are being broken. And the public and the students know that they know.
Why, then, aren't the rules either repealed or enforced?
Obviously, enforcement of a law is impossible if a substantial proportion of the population does not believe it is a reasonable law. The law officers at a KU football game obviously cannot police 40,000 people. The campus police obviously cannot check every off-campus room and apartment. Raids on country clubs and "key clubs" would be suicide for a police chief, who undoubtedly would be removed by the same people who are influential in keeping on the books the laws which make "key clubs" so popular.
THE TACIT agreement by law-enforcement officials and university officials, therefore, seems to be that nobody will be bothered unless the violation is brought to public attention and causes enough complaints.
Local law-enforcement officials pledged to stop illegal drinking in Lawrence only after several Kansas City teen-agers were killed going home after obtaining liquor in Lawrence.
When complaints were received about alleged "excessive" drinking at KU barn parties, the hints went out that the administration would ban such parties if the students didn't cut down on the number held.
Thus, with the laws on the books but everybody following the standards which most of them feel are right, everybody is happy.
THE MORALISTS are happy because they let themselves believe that the laws automatically stop the conduct they don't like. They close their eyes to violations at "key clubs" and are satisfied with an occasional "clean-up" campaign by law-enforcement officials.
In the case of a university, the students are happy because they aren't being bothered; the officials are happy because as long as the violations don't get in the papers the university's "image" is untarnished; and self-appointed protectors of the morals of college students think that these students (including those who are veterans of the armed services) are protected from vice and corruption.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE for governing bodies—state or university—to legislate moral standards. If such a law is passed in order to satisfy a given element of the populace, but is not enforced, it should be repealed.
Rules in the student handbook or laws on the statute books which are not followed by a substantial portion of the population and which are not enforced do not help build respect for the law. They only succeed in turning many people into lawbreakers and the law-enforcers into hypocrites.
—Clayton Keller
No "Image" Required"
Edition
I was distressed to see on page 12 of the Daily Kansan for Nov.29 a large headline which read "Negro Must Improve Image With Ambition." Although I am all too familiar with the talent of the composers of headlines which in most cases leave one completely in the dark as to the substance of the article, I assumed that some racist had made a speech or a statement which the Daily Kansan felt was newsworthy enough to warrant a two-column story.
To my great consternation, upon reading the article I discovered that it reported not the remarks of some bigoted racist spouting the specious and discredited remarks of Booker T. Washington, but a
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
Scott Payne ... Managing Editor
Richard Bonetti, Dennis Farnett, Zeke Wiggsworth, and Bill Mullins, Assistant Managing Editors; Mike Miller,
City Editor; Ber Marshall, Sports Editor; Margaret Cathcart, Society Editor.
... Letters ...
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Clayton Keller and
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speech given by my friend Harry Bailey to the Race Relations Committee of the KU-Y. This was more than I could endure in silence; hence this letter.
FIRST, LET ME say that Mr. Bailey makes some points which I would tend to agree with, but to attempt a point-by-point discussion of the report of his speech would lead to the kind of dissertation which I am not inclined to write and which I suspect you are not inclined to publish.
My primary concern is with the general theme of the report and with what I infer to be Mr. Bailey's attempt to equate the exercise of constitutionally guaranteed rights with the maintenance of the "proper image." My reading of the constitution does not reveal the necessity for projecting a certain "image" in order to enjoy the equal protection of the law, the right to vote, or the guarantees of due process. These rights are guaranteed to every citizen regardless of race, creed, color, previous condition of servitude, and, if you please, the "image" which they project.
AS FAR AS I am able to determine there is no reason why, if a man chooses, he may not be unclean, ignorant, careless, spendthrift—or possess any one of a dozen or more qualities which in general are considered undesirable—and still maintain his rights as a citizen. You may choose to keep your social and physical distance from such a person. This is your right. But you may not choose to tell him that he may not vote because his "image" is unsatisfactory.
To this it may be answered that theoretically my argument is well taken, but that practically speaking an improved "image" is necessary in order for the Negro in
America to become a citizen in fact as well as in theory.
To me this kind of answer strikes at the very heart of the problem of freedom and equality under the law for all citizens. I purposely avoided the use of the terms "segregation," "desegregation," and "integration" in the previous sentence, because along with this idea of a "proper image" they have been used by racists to confuse a basically simple problem. And all too frequently those of us who are opposed to the denial of freedom and equality under the law for all citizens have fallen into this trap set for us by the racists and have become so mired in this semantic swamp that we no longer see the problem for what it is, but as a many-sided problem which requires talk, conference, negotiation, arbitration—anything but action.
THE "CIVIL RIGHTS" lawyers have recognized this all along. They go into court to establish one simple point; that a citizen has been denied his constitutional rights on the basis of his color, an action specifically prohibited by the constitution.
Let's stop talking about segregation, desegregation, integration, mongrelization, "images" and all the other high-powered words which merely confuse the issue, and start looking at this question in its true perspective; a relatively simple matter of guaranteeing to each citizen those inalienable rights which are his by birth and nothing else.
The white man is not required to project the "proper image" in order to "earn" his constitutional rights. A white man's citizenship does not depend on whether or not he is a "credit to his race."
Marvin W. McKnight
KU Language Laboratory
"IT'S THAT CLASS OF ENGINEERS NICE DOOR— I WEEEN WEEKS TRYING TO GET TH' DEAN TO MOVE EM CUTTA THIS BUILDING."
'Legalized Murder Should Be Stopped
Perhaps you wouldn't do it personally. But every citizen in Kansas, by his or her silence, authorized the State of Kansas to murder a sick young man last Friday morning. This barbaric act was performed in the name of justice.
Would you slip the hangman's noose around the neck of a fellow human being? And when the knot is in place behind the left ear would you trip the lever to send that human through a trap door on a death trip that ends with a convulsive jerk which snaps the neck bone into two parts?
IT IS CALLED justice because we—that great impersonal, amorphous group called society—had to get even with a boy who in a moment of madness killed his parents and sister.
It is easy to view this form of murder with academic detachment because not one of us personally tightened the noose nor tripped the lever. But, detached or not, no man of conscience can say that civilization is able to progress by following this philosophy of "an eye for an eye."
What purpose or cause was served by killing Lowell Lee Andrews? Did hanging a convicted murderer restore to life the three victims of his mad act? And the theory that legalized murder acts as an effective deterrent has been discounted. Killing one mad-dog does not lower the possibility of another going off-base and taking his place.
CERTAINLY, society must be protected from people who murder others. But the need for protection does not justify cold, calculated, premeditated murder. A statute may disguise it as justice, but the taking of a life—for any reason—with premeditation does not change the nature of the act.
Some apologists for this legalized form of murder say that Lowell Lee Andrews does not deserve to live because he is of no value to anyone—not even himself. If that is justification for killing a person and removing him from society, we are missing a large group who also deserve killing.
Using the above logic, what right have the incurably insane to live? They are of no value to anyone. These people are a detriment to society. It is cheaper and more expedient to remove them from society by killing them than by maintaining institutions for their care.
BUT INSTEAD of academically debating the matter of killing human beings, let those of us who feel that capital punishment is nothing but murder act to change this senseless tradition.
Instead of permitting this legalized murder to continue as a question that is not a matter of each man's and woman's conscience, let us call for a division of the house so that each man and woman will feel the need to weigh the act in his or her own conscience.
We can be heartened by the knowledge that in the past. Americans have, in time, come to take the positions which have raised the level of human association above the standards set by sick persons such as Lowell Lee Andrews.
There are better guidelines for society than an eye for an eye. There must be. —Terry Murphy
BOOK REVIEWS
L'ASSOMMOIR, by Emile Zola (Signet Classics, 75 cents)—a new translation by Atwood H. Townsend "L'Assommoir" is a pioneering novel in the naturalistic tradition, the story of Gervaise, a lame laundress, who must support herself and her two illegitimate children. The book depicts the complete moral breakdown of Gervaise.