OPINION
University Daily Kansan, January 23, 1985
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daykan Kaisan (USPK 650-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Staufer Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kansas 6040, 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 Lawrence, Kana 6044. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or in counties and $18 for six months or a year outside the county. Student subscription to the University Daykan Kaisan TMASTER: Send address changes to the University Daykan Kaisan, 118 Staufer Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kansas 6040.
MATT DEGALAN
Editor
DIANE LUBER SUSAN WORTMAN
Managing Editor Editorial Editor
ROB KARWATH Campus Editor
LYNNE STARK Business Manager
DUNCAN CALHOUN MARY BERNICA
Retail Sales National Sales
Manager Manager
SUSANNE SHAW General Manager and News Adviser
DAVID NIXON Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
Stepping out
The Reagan administration has decided the United States will not take part in International Court of Justice proceedings in the case brought by Nicaragua.
Nicaragua's suit charges the United States with illegally supporting the mining of harbors and paramilitary attacks by rebels in Nicaragua. It urges the world court to order the United States to stop the attacks and make reparations.
The State Department justifies the refusal to participate in the case on the grounds that the suit is "a misuse of the court for political and propaganda purposes."
The administration also says the world court's 15-1 November ruling, in which the world court asserted its jurisdiction over the case, is "clearly erroneous."
But the fact is that the United States, like a spoiled child who loses a game and picks up his marbles to go home, is refusing to abide by the norms of international justice.
When the United States joined the tribunal in 1946, the treaty it ratified states:
"Each member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decisions of the International Court of Justice in any case to which it is a party."
In the matter of jurisdiction, the treaty states:
"In the event of a dispute as to whether the Court has jurisdiction, the matter shall be settled by the decision of the Court."
The truth is that the United States, through the Central Intelligence Agency, did most of what Nicaragua claims. That alone has done tremendous damage to this country's credibility abroad, especially in Latin America.
Refusing to live up to legally binding treaties now will only serve to further undermine the moral authority and credibility of the United States.
Some argue that the Soviet Union and other countries routinely ignore the world court and other international bodies when it is to their advantage.
But that is beside the point. The standards the United States sets for itself in the international arena should be independent of what the rest of the world does.
If we are to lead the world down the path to a more lasting peace and a more just world, we must lead by example. If we choose to ignore international law, then we lose the right to criticize others who do the same.
Worse yet, we undermine the very law on which civilization depends.
News about news
Journalists are taught to report the news, not make it. Despite this instruction, the American media still are making headlines.
And the news they are making, like much of the news they deliver, is bad.
The media are on trial. Developments in Gen. William Westmoreland's $120 million libel suit against CBS and in former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon's $50 million libel suit against Time magazine are reported daily.
People who are critical of the media, who supported the government's refusal to admit journalists into Grenada, may think the media are, at last, getting what's been coming to them. But they fail to understand that libel suits and government restrictions threaten more than the media's freedom.
Although the First Amendment seems straightforward, no one can be certain what our country's founders intended when they wrote "Congress shall make no law . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." But after centuries of censorship and other limits on the press, they were probably willing to err in the direction of freedom.
Such freedom is not without a price. A society in which ideas are freely exchanged and in which those who are entrusted with power can be criticized and challenged requires a strong, fearless and aggressive press.
That press may, at times, also be reckless, offensive, biased and inaccurate. It may bring us bad news about our leaders and our institutions.
But that is the price a society must pay to be fully informed. The price should not be foisted upon the media in the form of exorbitant libel judgments.
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 individuals. The Kansas also offers guest questionnaires. Individuals and groups can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
LETTERS POLICY
TV violence pollutes society
I realize that to say this out loud is to sound like a naive do-goody, but I wish that television broadcasters can be sent out over the airline because but is sent, out over the airplane.
I'm like everyone else — for years I have read about violence on television, and most of the stories have gone right past me. Among the problems in our society, TV violence didn't seem to be all that earthshaking + and there was too much contradictory evidence about whether TV violence caused imitative behavior.
Only recently has it struck me that it doesn't really matter whether people are imitating the violence they see on television. The point is, television violence is a terrible pollutant in television, the most dangerous communication in history, and it brings act after act of awful violence into our homes.
Many writings tell, and crime statistics verify, how violent a society this is. But a simple fact remains: Most Americans will be lucky enough to live or hear their entire lives in prison or by hearing a gunshot fired in an apartment.
That's in their real lives. On television is another matter.
The National Coalition on Tele-
vision Violence states that an average
TV-watching boy or girl of 15 has
about 24,000 (televised shootings).
There are other, similar figures. In 1982 it was reported that an average of eight violent acts per hour occurred on network prime-time television. A year later, it was reported that 300 percent more violence occurred on the pay-movie-cable channels than on the networks
That's how it works. Perhaps no shootings witnessed in the real world. Twenty-four thousand shootings witnessed on television.
from the trend; a 1983 study showed that 4-year-olds watched an average of 8,000 violent acts a year — not in cartoons, but violent acts — in cartoons.
Even morning cartoon shows aimed at children were not exempt
Again, none of this is to say that watching someone shoot someone else on a television show will make a
person go out and do the same thing -- although there are respected academicians who make precisely that argument.
But put that aside for a moment. The sickening fact is that the people who program network television have decided that a perfectly acceptable way to entertain Americans is to show them televised pictures of people wounding and killing other people. Every night of the year, these are the images that are sent into America's homes — not as disheartening news, but as upbeat family entertainment.
And maybe it's time to realize that if we really are a violent society, a lot of the blame for that sad fact goes to television. There is a lot more violence than it is given more money than in the real life of almost anyone but a homicide cop.
It's too easy to say that television is only mirroring real life; clearly the life that is portrayed on television is based on the meanest and sickest parts of society. The placid, gentle parts of society don't get mirrored as much.
The people who program network television would argue that we, the viewers, are the people to blame for
this state of affairs; by accepting the violent fare and rewarding it with high ratings, we are giving our implicit endorsement.
But we've seldom been given the chance to have it any other way. Virtually since the birth of television, excessively violent shows have been a mainstay of network programming schedules.
The answer to this is far from simple. It is wrong to argue for censorship. It is also wrong to assume naïve ones of these principles; works will limit of their ways, and take the shootings and the other violence off the air.
But if we buy the argument that television is an enormously influential force in how we live — and that is precisely the argument that the networks make when selling time to commercial sponsors — then we have to wonder what all these years of gunshots coming into our living rooms have done to us, and will do in the future.
When President Reagan was shot in 1981, the videotapes of the assault were rebroadcast so many times that eventually it became hard to separate the actuality of what had happened from the TV image it had become
The President's being shot had been packaged in a form similar to all of the other shootings that had been fed to us — the only difference was that this one was "news," and the others were "entertainment."
The networks, when they try to argue the case that few people imitate the violence they see on television, miss the lesson of all this. Television has won it - it has become a picture of picture of how we see ourselves.
And as long as it insists on deciding that gunfire qualifies as entertainment, it guarantees that we will never be in the most depressing possible light.
Aspin wanting more specifics on arms budget
Rep. Les Aspin, the new man at the helm of the House Armed Services Committee, is letting the administration know it must detail its arms control positions if it wants to win friends and money on Capitol Hill.
And in doing so, Aspin is hinting that his past support for the MX missile the administration wants may be waning.
He raised a number of interesting questions for the administration.
Aspin, D-Wis., took over as chairman of the influential committee a bit over two weeks ago. He turned down all requests by reporters for interviews, and instead drafted a speech on one issue — that is, the war — and then delivered it to reporters and defense analysts to give a glimpse of his thinking.
Aspin said the injection of the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative into arms talks has shifted the emphasis of nuclear strategy from deterrence to defense, even though the SDI program is purely research to see what might help down ballistic missiles.
The former Pentagon economist now in his eighth term in Congress warned the administration it must keep Congress posted on arms talks and the U.S. position if it wants budgetary help.
"Congress is not likely to vote the administration's way on all these
ELIOT BRENNER
United Press International
issues just because arms talks are going on. There is an enormous deficit going on too. It is not enough to say that defending the country against ballistic missile attack is good and therefore we ought to fund it all, or to say some of these weapons are needed for bargaining leverage and therefore we ought to approve them automatically," he said.
Aspin said what he and others in Congress want to know is where is the SDI program headed, and since that may take some time to find out, just what is the administration going to do with the more immediate arms issues such as the approaching missile force put the United States over sub-launched missile limits unless others are decommissioned.
And, he said, members want to know the U.S. positions on strategic and intermediate range missile talks as well as why it would not be a good idea to trade off defense (read "Star Wars") for a reduction in Soviet offensive capability.
Aspin's hint that he might not be entirely thrilled anymore with the MX missile cames in a question asking, "What should we do with the MX now that it is no longer central to the negotiations?" His past support is based upon its role in negotiations, not its abilities as a weapon.
"Isn't the threat to build defensive systems around our missiles if the Soviets don't reduce this offensive threat (huge land-based missile stocks) to our land-based force a more rational threat (and therefore a better bargaining chip) than the threat to build MX and thereby put at risk their missiles. At least in the former case, the punishment fits the crime. The response would be to defend against the threat whereas with MX the response is to replicate it," he said.
"If the administration wants Congress to fund its requests, it is going to have to spell out its position with considerably more clarity. With huge resources and the administration to say arms control negotiations are going on."
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Article disputed
To the editor:
in the Jan. 17 story on the recommendation of the University Council Committee on Academic Procedures and Policies regarding the proposed discontinuance of radiation biophysics, your reporter, Kathy Flanders, writes that "F. Allan Hanson, chairman of the committee, admitted the committee's recommendation violated University discontinuance guidelines because it was based on financial, not academic, considerations." That statement is utterly untrue. I made no such admission to Ms Flanders or to anyone else. In fact, the question of whether the committee's report violates University guidelines did not come up at all during the interview I had with her.
The committee's report does not violate University guidelines. The issue is that, in order to be a viable program, radiation biophysics would be required to include hiring new faculty. In recommending that radiation biophysics
be discontinued in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the committee noted that the dean and other persons representing programs in the College most closely associated with radiation biophysics testified that they would prefer to see the College develop in directions other than the revitalization of radiation biophysics. That is an academic matter. It obviously has financial implications, as almost any academic matter does, but Ms. Flanders is mistaken in reporting that our report "was based on financial, not academic, considerations."
Ms. Flanders also writes: "Hanson said the committee wasn't supposed to suggest transferring the program but did so anyway." The guidelines direct us to make a recommendation for or against discontinuity, but they certainly do not forbid us to say anything else. We decided that we would do this in case that justified a second part of our recommendation; that efforts be made to transfer or establish radiation biophysics or a program
To the editor
F. Allan Hanson
F. Allan Hanson
Chairman of the University Council Committee on Academic Procedures and Policies
similar to it in some segment of the University other than the college. Contrary to the implication of Ms. Flanders' statement, this violates neither the letter nor the spirit of the guidelines.
Finally, Ms. Flanders devotes part of her story to comments from me concerning the possible effect of discontinuing radiation biophysics on the University's nuclear reactor. What she does not report, although I told her explicitly, is 1) that considerations regarding the reactor played no part in the committee's deliberations; and 2) that I am not in full possession of the facts regarding implications for the nuclear reactor and that she could doubtless get fuller information by consulting someone closer to that situation, such as Professor Benjamin Frieden.
In response to Cecilia Mills' article "Dieters shed pounds and dollars," dated Jan. 18, I feel a responsibility to inform students that there are safer and cheaper weight reduction methods available.
Counsel on diets
Watkins Memorial Hospital employs a full-time registered dietitian who provides nutritional counseling to students in all areas of eating. All students enrolled full time are entitled to these counseling services without charge. The students' health fee (a portion of their semester's tuition fees) provides the dietitian's services.
For those individuals who benefit from group support, Weight Watchers provides a program stressing sound nutrition and shared concerns. However, when when money is an issue, as is often the case, professional help exists on campus. Weight reduction takes a lot of hard work and motivation. But it does not have to cost a lot of money.
Ann Kohl
R. D. Watkins Memorial Hospital
-
V