OPINION
University Daily Kansan, February 1, 1985
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansas (USPK 650-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Staffer-Flint Hall, Lawen, Kansas 6405, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and final periods. Second-class postage paid at Lawen, Kansas 6604. Subscriptions by mail are $13 for six months or $27 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $33 a year outside the county. Student postage rates apply to any mailing address changes to the University Daily Kansas, 118 Staffer-Flint Hall, Lawen, Kansas 6405.
MATT DEGALAN Editor
DIANE LUBER SUSAN WORTMAN Managing Editor Editorial Editor
ROB KARWATH Campus Editor
LYNNE STARK Business Manager
SUSANNE SHAW General Manager and News Adviser
DUNCAN CALHOUN MARY BERNICA
Retail Sales National Sales
Manager Manager
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Fair example
Teachers everywhere could benefit from the lesson that New Jersey is attempting to teach.
The New Jersey Legislature is expected to approve legislation this spring setting a minimum starting salary for public school teachers of at least $18,500.
Even after adjusting that salary to the higher cost of living on the East Coast, New Jersey teachers would fare much better than most beginning teachers in Kansas.
In some Kansas school districts, teachers going to the head of the class for the first time make as little as $13,000.
Some states pay their beginning teachers even less than the Kansas starting figure. The New Jersey legislation would create the highest statewide minimum pay for teachers in the country.
It is the type of claim that any state would like to make that their teachers are paid better than anywhere else in the country.
Laying claim to having the most corn or the greatest number of 85-degree days or the tallest buildings will have little effect on the future of the country.
But having good teachers will.
And although salaries alone cannot guarantee having the best teachers, monetary remuneration is a sign of good faith on the part of school districts.
Society dictates that financial rewards are some measure of a person's professional worth.
This being the case, few professions other than teaching have greater worth and poorer compensation.
Teachers have one of the greatest responsibilities for the future of society. They help shape ideas and disperse the knowledge that students need to become contributing members of society.
The New Jersey Legislature has recognized the value of hiring and retaining good teachers by paying salaries commensurate with the responsibility of the position.
Its example should inspire Kansas and other states to do the same.
Papal teaching
Pope John Paul II has spent the past week in South America, resuming his traveling call to faithfulness and justice as the Roman Catholic Church officially sees it.
From Venezuela came the familiar but inspiring scene of about 1 million people gathered for Mass with the pope another testimony to his personal attractiveness.
Likewise, the tour has produced no surprises in the pope's message. He has continued to call people back to the traditional teaching of the church with firmly conservative stands on numerous subjects.
In his Caracas homily, he spoke against artificial contraception, divorce, abortion and euthanasia.
The pope also has continued to address the economic inequality within nations he visits. And he has challenged the church to become a mediator between rich and poor, powerful and weak.
His presence has led feuding Ecuadoran political, labor and church leaders to call a truce. In and Peru, he probably will appeal for the government and members of the Maoist Shining Path movement to end a two-sided reign of terror.
But the tour also underscores that John Paul wants the church to serve the world without entering its official structures. He has told priests and nuns not to hold political office.
His statements of the church's "preferential option for the poor" have not turned into a championing of liberation theology. In Latin America, that approach to theology often mixes traditional Catholic social teaching with Marxist economic analysis.
But the pope, in fact, has called for abandonment of Marxist analysis as a tool in social ministries.
Clearly, this pope has in mind not so much the times as the centuries. He intends for the church to pursue its mission to the world, but from its own vantage point more or less outside the world's economic and political structures.
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten and double-spaced and should not exceed 300 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and hometown, or faculty or staff name. The Kansan also includes individuals and grounds to submit guest columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 113 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
LETTERS POLICY
Liquor laws cost state in image, taxes
Each state in the union strives to have its own special identity.
We all want to be unique. States are no different
Since 1947, when open saloons were "forever banned" by the Legislature, Kansas has been indulging with conformity with ridiculous laws laws.
This year, the Kansas Legislature is moving toward changing the dismal tradition.
While many students at the University of Kansas dread the seemingly inevitable raising of the drinking age, there is another aspect of Kansas liquor laws that should be addressed. For example, else, for its financial implications.
This prohibition, requiring membership in private clubs to drink alcoholic beverages, has long been the subject of ridicule.
Should Kansas end the prohibition of liquor by the drink?
lose more than $600,000 in potential revenue each year as a direct result of the above factors.
It's a costly joke.
Countless restaurant owners have testified before Senate committees that they would sell more food and liquor if liquor by the drink was
Roger F. Thompson, senior vice president and general counsel for &A; Restaurants, said that the six clubs that &A; operates in Kansas
&SA Restaurants, such as Bennigan's and Steak & Ale Restaurant, are not fast-action clubs. They're just family restaurants that offer a private club for those who wish to have a drink with dinner.
Staff Columnist
There are 88l clubs operating for profit in Kansas. During the last
DAN
CROCKETT
fiscal year, Kansas took in almost $9 million from the 10 percent liquor excise tax.
Thompson also said that his company had no plans to develop any more restaurants in Kansas now but might soon as many as nine in the
Many other industry officials have testified that businesses and travelers don't come here because of our backward lawluses.
next few years if liquor by the drink was permitted.
The Rev. Richard Taylor Jr., spokesman for Kansans For Life at its best! is one of the most vocal opponents of liquor by the drink. He argues that the club system provides better control of the liquor industry
Taylor's idea of control is being able to turn people away at the doors of clubs. But present liquor laws don't offer that much control, really.
Anyone with about $15 and a legal ID can get a club card. That's hardly selective.
And with all of the extra money that would be generated by taxes or the increased profits produced by liquor by the drink, better alcohol awareness and treatment programs should make even the reverend happy.
There is a good chance that Kansans will get to vote on the issue this year. But by strange legislative logic, any state may not be statewide, but by county.
After the vote, the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Industry probably will have to distribute maps dotted like checkerboards to design.
nate which counties passed liquor by the drink.
There must be better ways for states to be unique.
I come from Nebraska
You're laughing spitefully already, I know. You're thinking back to last fall when 20,000 drooling savages in fire-engine red, double-knit pants and matching cowboy hats descended on our campus. They were obnoxiously loud, and all said the same thing, "Go Big Red." And their team beat our team by about 50 points.
Nebraska is a strange place. Football is religion and big business. Folks out in the western quarter of the state are always trying to secede and become part of Wyoming. Unlike the other 49 states, Nebraska has not divided its legislature into a house and a senate.
That's not such a terrible way to be unique, though.
But when the Nebraska enters Kansas, either following the leam or doing business, he finds things a little different.
Maybe Kansas should try to be different by having a national champion football team.
Subway victim says Goetz still wrong
Any 21-year-old Kansan can go to Nebraska, walk into any drinking establishment and order a drink.
A 10-minute ride on a Boston subway, and I was minus my wallet.
I had ridden the subway enough to have a good sense of when someone was on the car working the crowd — picking pockets or preparing to snatch purses and packages. Usually it was the door, not the door opened, spilling the subway riders out into the crowds at the station.
I tightened my grip on the suitcase that I had with me and breathed a premature sigh of relief.
Seconds later, as the subway pulled up to the Harvard Square stop, I realized that a guy had
MARGARET
SAFRANEK
Staff Columnist
"A WOLF IN WOLVES' CLOTHING"
I kept my eyes on him and quickly abandoned my suitease to go in pursuit of him.
brushed past me and, ignoring my suitcase, had defly plucked the wallet from my front coat pocket.
I laugh at the situation now, finding it hard to believe that I had been so bold as to chase the gay and holler at him and foolish enough to leave the suitcase unattended.
But while the anger, frustration and fear of that encounter have dissipated somewhat with time, on that cold winter night in Boston, had there been any way for me to get the guy. I probably would have.
The anger was uncontrollable at first. There was someone who had, in addition to my money, vast amounts of information about me. He had my banking card, my Nebraska driver's license, my student identification card and several other items that told him more than some of my friends knew about me.
The frustration was easier to manage.I realized that the odds
from the start had been against my stopping the guy, and I soon resigned myself to the theft as part of living in a big city.
Fear had not taken hold of me in those first few minutes as I maneuvered through the crowd to pursue the thief. But later it occurred to me that if the guy was enough of a creep to steal my wallet, what was there to stop him and prevent me from frightening me? The fear came after the police left my apartment, and it stayed with me for weeks.
It was five years ago that my wallet was pickpocketed, but when I think of the incident, I understand why people in New York are cheering Bernhard Goetz, the so-called highway vigilante.
I rode the subway at least twice a day, every day, for several years while I was in Boston, and I saw milder versions of what New York
subway riders occasionally must face while trying to get from one part of the city to another.
I saw gold chains ripped off women's necks, men urinating in the station as people waited for the groups of youths harassing someone.
Although I would sit silently, along with other subway riders, as these various events occurred, on the inside I think many of us shared the anger and the helplessness of the victim, knowing just a number of circumstances that made it them and not us.
Although I share some of the anger and the frustration and the helplessness, I still think that Bernard Goetz was wrong.
Oh. I can understand his feelings airight. Had I a gun with me in Boston that night, there's a good chance I would have pulled it on the guy who stole my wallet.
But that thought is more frightening than the chance of encountering a mugger on a subway.
My carrying a gun wouldn't have meant that I knew how to use it or that the guy who stole my wallet deserved to be shot.
But if everyone who decided that they were mad as hell about the crime rates and didn't want to take it anymore started stoting guns or knives to protect themselves, that's what we'd have.
There would be little time to think of what punishment was appropriate for the crime committed. A real action was even really a crime.
Some of Bernhard Goetz's supporters claim that justice finally reigned.
But it wasn't justice. It was but a very short-term solution to a larger problem.
Surely we are capable of finding other, more civilized answers.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letter out of line
To the editor:
I would like to comment on the letter by Pam Richardson, which appeared in the Jan. 29 University Daily Kansan.
Whatever view one may have of abortion, to debate the issue is one thing. To engage in personal attack is quite another. I disagree with some of Robert Mauk's views on abortion, but I can't imagine myself attacking him and his family as Richardson chose to do in her letter.
I haven't the space to answer adequately her remarks about Mauk, except to say that her vision of him as a person on his letter is, quite simply, wrong.
It is her opinions of Jan Mauk, however, which cause me the most concern, because of the fact that Jan is no longer here to defend herself. Richardson's comments concerning her are so completely out of touch with city that they go beyond more falsehood and enter the realm of the bizarre.
Were her remarks not so cruel and vicious in nature, they almost would be laughable for their wild inaccuracy.
It would be bad enough if such phrases were uttered about Jan Mauk in the heat of an argument. But that somebody could sit down and coolly compose such remarks for publication defies comprehension.
Finally, let me say that I am painfully aware that my own personality is far from exemplary, so I can't afford to Richardson as a paragon of virtue.
If I may, however, I would like to suggest that in her haste to condemn the character of people she has never met, she may wish to pause to reflect upon a subsequent way in which her own letter speaks about her own character.
Robert Payton Kingman senior
To the editor:
When a controversy becomes as volatile as the abortion issue has, emotions run high. Rash words often accompany such high emotion.
I don't believe Pam Richardson was considering fully the poor taste she was demosniritating, the lowest level of hypersensationalism she was stooping to, when she called Jan. Dialed, "deserter" and "debarred."
Then again, perhaps this was Richardson's full intention. I truly wish Jain Mauk were able to explain
Randy Kitchens
to Richardson her decision not to abort Patrick. That we are left to argue — one side heroes, one side victims — and to our egos, but is unfair to Mauk.
As for the children's plight, as a close friend of the Mauk family, I would like to invite Richardson to pay them a visit. Not to argue not to compromise, to be able to overcome outcome one woman's decision to choose life.
Playing team ball
The best-conditioned athlete in the world would have a hard time playing that style of ball for 40 minutes. Coach Brown's teams always have had depth, and I think this is one of their strengths in five of its players on the floor.
To the editor:
This is a reply to Julia Brown's letter, which appeared in the Kansan Jan. 30.
I should give her that the Jayhawks should be — and are, in my mind. Big Eight sign contenders. However just as she says they lack skill, so she seems to lack knowledge of major college basketball in general.
The many substitutions of players may bewilder her, but anyone who has watched Coach Brown's teams over the years knows how he coaches. His teams have always hustled and run a lot. In order to play that kind of game, players need to be fresh and rested.
She mentions the good, solid play of the team earlier. They did play well. However, if she expects the Jayhawks to score against Kentucky and Oklahoma in the same manner they scored and played against Detroit and Indiana State, she needs an occasional look at the caliber of our opponents.
Finally, our team is young Granted that Calvin Thompson, Mart Turgeon, Ron Kellogg, Greg Dreiling and Cedric Hunt are great member that we also have nine freshmen who still are learning and developing.
Give them a chance before we start scheduling Wheeler Tech Dental
I think I speak for many, many students when I say that our team is a good one and will be a great one before it's all over.
I probably also speak for many students when I say: Julia, look at Coach Brown's record. You stick to your job, and let him do his.
Jim Williamson
Topeka junior