OPINION University Daily Kansan, January 16, 1985 Page 4 The University Daily KANSAN Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas The University Daily Kansan (USPK 605-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Flint Hall. Lancaster, Kaneg. 60953, 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 Lancaster. Kaneg. 60044. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or $25 for a county. County and $15 for six months or $25 for a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $15 for six months or $25 for a year outside the county. Address changes to the University Daily Kansan. 118 Stauffer Flint Hall. Lancaster, Kaneg. 60953 MATT DEGALAN Editor DIANE LUBER SUSAN WORTMAN Managing Editor Editorial Editorial LYNNE STARK Business Manager ROB KARWATH Campus Editor DUNCAN CALHOUN MARY BERNICA Retail Sales National Sales Manager Manager DAVID NIXON Campus Sales Manager SUSANNE SHAW General Manager and News Adviser JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser Away from Oz Gov. John Carlin and the members of the Kansas Legislature, free this year from the considerations of re-election campaigns, should act boldly and decisively to transport Kansans from the Land of Oz to the land of opportunity. in a recent survey by the KU Center for Public Affairs/Institute for Economic and Business Research is a true indication of state sentiment, Kansans are more than ready for the trip. For years, the governor and the state's lawmakers have paid verbal homage to education while keeping a miser's hold on the purse strings. And fear of conservative or moral backlash has prevented them from giving the state's residents a chance to vote on liquor by the drink. This year, Carlin, as he nears the end of his tenure as governor, risked political popularity and proposed a half-cent increase in the state's sales tax to help finance education and came out in support of liquor by the drink. Most of the 529 Kansans who were asked in the KU poll to speak for the rest of us indicated that they, too, had had enough of timidity. Raise the state's sales tax by a half cent to improve public education, 70 percent of those polled said. Nearly 85 percent said Kansans should have the opportunity to vote on liquor by the drink; 62 percent said liquor by the drink should be allowed. Carlin was on target in his message to the Legislature yesterday when he said that education was the key to the state's progress. "The cost of not investing in education is too great," he said. "We cannot afford to lose the talent, the ideas, the contribution to society and the high standard of living that result from a sound educational system." He recognized that teachers are the key to education when he proposed a 10 percent increase in the salaries of public school teachers but hedged a bit with a 6 percent increase in the salaries of university faculty. Although the budget Carlin recommended to the Legislature for the Board of Regents schools was an improvement over the one suggested by the state budget office, it barely went beyond the status quo. And if it is true that "the governor proposes; the Legislature disposes," then what remains of the Regents' budget at the end of the session will hardly prompt an educational renaissance in the state. Good from a tragedy Bhopal. As with Jonestown, Guyana, a mere mention of the name will forevermore call to mind a human tragedy that caused people throughout the world to shudder. Yet the chemical accident at the Union Carbide plant in India is already old news. Within hours of the incident, the fleeing and dying Indians were on our television screens. The number of dead was updated constantly. The initial death toll of 500 eventually settled at about 2,500. Shaking our heads over the human misery on the television, we tried to recall how long it had been since the liquefied natural gas explosion had killed a large number of people outside Mexico City. If Bhopal is old news, Mexico City is even older, despite how recently the accident there occurred. Fortunately, the industrial calamity in Bhopal will linger longer, if only in board rooms and courtrooms across the United States and India. Safety standards in underdeveloped countries vs. those in this country, appropriate compensation for the victims and responsibility for the accident are some of the questions that should be answered by the time the discussions and trials are completed. Some good might result from one of the worst of industrial accidents of our time. The experts will not be able to put a price on human life, regardless of how easily they agree on an equitable financial settlement for the victims. But the issues addressed should shake up policies, cause long and thought-provoking discussions and result in concrete changes by companies doing business in underdeveloped countries. Without these, the name "Bhopal" will be little more than a place that people years from now will associate with a town in India where some sort of tragedy occurred. The University Daily Kansan invites individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns should be typewritten and double-spaced and should not exceed 625 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. Columns can be mailed or, brought to the Kansan office, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject columns. GUEST COLUMNS A letter from the Kansan editor Somewhere in the back of my mind there always lurks a worst-case scenario. Since becoming editor of Kansan I've developed new some ones. I'm a natural pessimist. The worst is terrifving: The semester is over, I've graduated and my term as Kansan editor has ended. I see an old friend and ask me a thought of this semester's paper. "Oh, I don't know. It was all right, I guess." All journalists dread indifference. If they don't, they're in the wrong business. Readers are indifferent when a newsman a message that the paper isn't doing its job. My first goal, then, as editor is to produce a paper that people will read. This is easy to say but not always easy to make happen. To meet this goal, some changes have been made. The paper isn't challenging or informing the public, and the public. The most obvious is increasing sports coverage to a full page — at least — each day. Instead of appearing on the back page, sports will be inside. A new section — Et cetera — will appear on Thursdays. The section includes stories on the arts and leisure, as well as features on trends and lifestyles. Greater emphasis will be placed on graphics to help explain stories, and all photos will be taken by staff photographers. But the biggest change will be a stronger commitment to covering the campus and Lawrence area — the news that most affects Kansan MATT DEGALAN Editor readers. This will mean reducing the amount of United Press International wire news, but important national and international stories — including briefs — will continue to appear on page two and elsewhere. These changes were made to help us accomplish our primary goal — to inform the University community. If we do this well, it evokes emotion and causes immediate response. The emotions vary from quiet contention to sadness to seething outrage. In today's Kansan, for example, most of the stories were written by staff reporters. This means more reports and more information that you need Like any paper that vigorously reports the news, the Kansan occasionally angers its readers. Sometimes their anger stems from our mistakes, which are rare but not tough enough to perceive to be mistakes or unfairness. This anger is understandable because we aren't perfect and because everyone has a different view of what a newspaper should be. Conservative groups on campus accuse us of giving news a liberal slant; liberal groups say we suppress free speech. Both are wrong On the editorial page, the situation is different. Unsigned editors, which appear on the lefthand side of the opinion page, reflect the views of editorial board. Board members include the editor, the managing News stories are written as objectively as possible. Bias undoubtedly appears at times, but it is unavoidable, usually imperceptible and hardly planned. When reporters are on deadline, the last thing crossing their minds is how to make their stories fit their political leanings. In their haste, perhaps some bias comes through, but usually it is eliminated in the editing process. In any case, Kansan staff members are politically diverse enough so that the course out over the course of a semester. editor, the editorial editor, the assistant editorial editor and several columnists. This group meets weekly to discuss issues and determine the Kansan's position on these issues. Columns appearing on the editorial page are the personal views of the writer, not of the newspaper. Guests columns and letters to the editor are welcomed. If during the course of the year you read strikingly diverse opinions on the editorial page, don't view it as inconsistent policy. Recognize, instead, that the Kansan seeks columnists with different views to inform readers and allow them to decide issues for themselves. Some hardline journalists think that if no one ever gets angry with you, you're not reporting the news. This is perhaps overstating the case and often leads to irresponsible journalism. You shouldn't look for a fight, but you should fight indifference. And you should report the news with vigor and competence. If you don't seem to want the information. Anyway, that's what were trying to do, with the hope that in the long run society will benefit from this information. So the next time you get angry at the Kansan, think of this column. If that doesn't help, give me a call, and I'll try to explain our position. The number is 864-4810. Maybe Goetz really isn't the bad guy "Yes, I have $5 for each of you." A short, simple sentence: "Yes, I have $9 for each br you." Already that sentence is becoming worded like "Go ahead — make my day." For it is the sentence that New York's so-called subway vigilante uttered just before he shot four teenagers. The shooter, a man named Bernhard Noedet, 37, has confessed to the crime and is awaiting trial. He was riding on a New York subway train Dec 22 when the four teenagers approached and surrounded him. First, they asked him for the time. Then, they asked him for a match. Then, they asked him for a cigarette. Then, they asked him for $5. "Yes, I have $5 for each of you," Goetz said. He stood up, withdrew a revolver from the waistband of his trousers and shot all four of them. He assisted two frightened women to their feet. He told a subway conductor that he managed to escape him off." That he outpaced of the car, jumped onto the tracks, and disappeared until he turned himself in last week. In the meantime, as just about everyone knows by now, the shooter became something of a New York hero — maybe a national hero. New York's police set up a telephone hotline so that citizens could provide tips about the shooter's identity. Instead, the phone line was flooded with citizens praising him, even saying that he should run for mayor. New York civic leaders were stuned; the man was clearly a vigilante, and the populace seemed to be firmly behind him. What does this mean? For one thing, the story has ramifications far beyond the boundaries of New York City. Many people who consider themselves to be compassionate, idealistic, liberal sorts heard about the subway shootings and found themselves saying, almost against their wills, "Good!" They felt vaguely ashamed as soon as they said it. Everything they had been taught throughout their whole lifetimes argued against applauding a man for taking the law into his own hands. Yet they were thinking it — "Good!" And they knew why. The BOB GREENE Syndicated Columnist law would almost surely not take care of what happened to that subway rider in New York. Had he merely sat in his seat while the four teenagers approached him, he almost surely would have been robbed and perhaps injured. Had he reported the incident to the police, they would never have been caught. And if they had, they probably would have been back walking the streets, and riding the subways, within days. One man phrased it succinctly, if ineleganly — "It's time that the punks and the scum learned that they aren't running things." The message was clear: If you don't want to get shot, then stay in your seat, and don't bother people who are only trying to get up to harass those people, you just might wink up getting a bullet in your belly. That's a rather sobering thought — and it's even more sobering to realize how many people there are who are instinctively endorsing it. Many of those people would never carry a gun and never have the nerve to shoot someone. But those same people feel great that someone else did it. Those shots in the New York subway seemed to represent the unleashing of a furious emotion that has been building up in this country for years — a combination of anger, fear and resentment toward the criminal elements who have almost casually taken over urban life. Had the four teenagers died — they are alive — the public reaction would not have been much different. Not many people would have grieved. By not grieving, of course, the public would have been endorsing the idea of capital punishment, without the benefit or a judge or jury, for the crime of public harassment. That is exactly what the public mood seems to be: There are too many people robbing hangings and robbing innocent strangers — if you do that, you do not deserve to be alive. The world will be no worse without you in it. In fact, the world will probably be better. What this goes against, of course, is the concept of the sanctity of a human life. We are all brought up being taught that a human life is sacred and that it is not up to us to determine whether a human life should continue or not. That is the philosophy behind opposition to the absolutism of the philosophy that, until very recently, was widespread in the United States. Now, more and more people are saying that capital punishment is fine with them — the more of it the better, as long as the crime rate keeps climbing. Until the subway incident in New York, though, capital punishment was thought of only as a recourse for capital crimes. With the subway shootings, people seem to be endorsing capital punishment on the spot, for the crime of bothering someone. Know this — the people who are applauding the subway shooter are not crazy, are not crackpots, are not eccentrics. They are regular people who have finally had enough of being scared. The debate will go on, and the details about the shootings and the accused shooter continue to be debated, but that will make the anger the rightous anger — that the incident has unleashed. Already it is the most symbolic national story of the new year. LETTERS POLICY 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 position. The Kansan also invites divisions and groups to submit guest columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kanson office. 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.