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University Daily Kansan / Thursday, February 13. 1992
OPINION
Political talk tires voters, makes citizens indifferent
Nausea. An unpleasant sensation to be sure, but at least it is definitive. A quesay, sickening feeling that can come from ingesting something disagreeable. Or from ingesting something downright foul. I miss that feeling. Watching TV this morning, I did not feel revulsion at the idea that Bush already had won the Iowa caucus for the Republican party, but I had more of a vaguely dissatisfied feeling, like I'd forgotten to eat something. That the U.S. political process is merely a collection of dim-witted, burned-out hacks so incompetent that they could not tie their shoes without an assortment of handlers to instruct them, seems axiomatic. Where, though, are the villains? Formerly, we had Reagan, Nixon and Spiro Agnew. Real scum. Today we have Tom Harkin, Bill Clinton and George Herbert Walker Bush. The race for president of one of the most powerful nations on earth sounds like a Rotary Club meeting in Indianapolis.
How can the U.S. voter be expected to roll himself or herself out of bed, or take time after work to vote for such people? Today's politics lack drama, any sense of excitement. Partly it has to do with the media and poll-happy reporters who reduce every race to a series of apparently random numbers and percentages. Mostly though, it has to do with candidates seeking to be all things to all people. Yes politicians
Kevin Bartels staff columnist
always have sought to be Everyman, but with the eight-second sound bite and the commercials on TV and radio, the average voter is immersed in wave after wave of insane gibberish and pointless squabbling.
Politicians have caught on to the fact that what they say is no longer important. They merely repeat platitudes mantra-like to attract voters. All this was ushered in by Ronald Reagan, among others. But unlike Reagan, who openly acknowledged a belief in a biblical apocalypse and initially called the Soviet Union an "evil empire", Bush and his Democratic rivals have no such position to take. They are sympathetic to the common working person and that is all.
In a word, they are boring. At least after one and a half terms of Nixon, he was run out of town like a whining curator and replaced with Jimmy Curner, then with Reagan. Things began to decline at that point. Who would have thought that milquetto George would become the Big Kahuna? And don't try
to proffer David Duke and Pat Buchanan assubstitutevillains. Aredneck, neo-Nazi and a neo-isolationist are noreal threat.
We need somebody positively out there. We need some fire-breathing maniac who will threaten to drive the moneychangers out of the temple and smite the wicked. Where did these people go? Have we no life left in us? Have we all simply become degenerate, yuppie suburbanites who are endlessly sympathetic but also completely impotent? How long, O Lord, how long?
What has become the most frightening aspect of this presidential race is that it is tiresome. Dull. George Bush and his cohorts do not want you to feel nauseated, but anesthetized. The Democrats think that they can beat Bush by using the same strategy of unending, meaningless babble. Bore the masses into submission. A few candidates, however, have that old-time religion. You don't see them too often, but they're around. Take Lenora Fulani of the New Alliance Party. Now there's somebody with some style. She's angry. She's filled with righteous indignation. But she doesn't stand a chance. Her audience is already asleep.
Kevin Bartels is a Louisville, Ky.,
graduate student in English.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Deny Washburn's admittance
If university were allowed to join Regents system it would drain money from other schools
abill proposing that Washburn university of Topeka should become a state educational institution and come under control of the Board of Regents had its annual introduction into the state Senate. The bill, proposed by the Senate education committee, states that Washburn would become a separate Regents school in 1995.
Although the bill currently has not been scheduled for discussion, its very presence should make the Regents shudder. Washburn, currently a municipally supported institution, would be the only one benefiting from such a move.
Monetary support is the main reason Washburn wants to become part of the Regents system. The bill states that all property, money, rights and liabilities would become the property of the state — except for endowment property. It seems that Washburn wants the Regents to take care of its business and maintain its property, but the Regents get nothing in return.
If Washburn were to become part of the Regents system, it would be another drain on an already financially strained system. The Regents right now have six hungry educational mouths to feed, they don't need another competing for part of the shrinking state fund pie.
The very minute Washburn would became a state school, it would defeat one of the Regents main objectives: to eliminate redundant programs at Regents schools. There would be two law schools within 30 miles of each other. Which one would the Regents want to eliminate? We could only hope that the Regents would be loyal to its first law school.
The Regents need to take care of the its schools that it currently is responsible for before it takes on another.
Haitians unjustly condemned
Beth Randolph for the editorial board
The Bush administration unfairly stamps refugees as economic instead of political
With one word, the Bush administration and Supreme Court have condemned thousands of Haitian refugees to return to their embattled homeland where they face certain persecution for fleeing and criticizing their provisional government.
That word is "economic."
Unjustly, the Bush administration classifies most of the Haitians refugees as economic rather than political refugees. The difference is great.
By law, economic refugees are deported but political refugees are granted asylum. What makes a refugee political is a well-founded fear of persecution should he or she be sent back.
In the case of the Haitians, the persecution is well-documented. Though the State Department obfuscates the evidence, charges are widespread that returnees are beaten and imprisoned. The harsh tales of death and intimidation told by those who have daringly fled Haiti twice in recent months belie the administration's insistence
that economic instability prompts the migration.
Denying asylum to these people, who brave the sea in rickety, overcrowded vessels, reveals, perhaps, what the president means when he talks New World Order. After all the ballyhoo, it's still the same.
He plays deaf to the plight of the Haitians, and many wonder why.
Would he be more sympathetic if the Haitians were fleeing from a communist instead of a non-communist totalitarian regime? Or if Haiti wasn't the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere?
He is tightening the borders so as not to exacerbate our own economic woes? Or, is it that he finds the Haitians' skin color too dark?
Maybe it's just that he dislikes boat people, at least the unkempt kind. There are certainly some boat people he does like: He seeks to repeal a luxury tax on yachts costing more than $100,000.
With the $10 to $15 that the Red Cross gives each refugee, the Haitians may soon be able to take advantage of this great bargain, and then they could all sail safely to a country that cared.
Martin Scherstuhl for the editorial board
University too tough
The University of Kansas is a much tougher school than I thought!
Last semester, my first semester after leaving the Navy, was not an easy one, however. Difficulties included: 1) a calculus teacher who knew the subject very well but was not an effective teacher, 2) getting used to the idea of homework again, and 3) working weekends to pay my way through college, since I'm not receiving any educational benefits from the Navy, and my application for financial aid was turned down.
After I spent six years in the Navy Nuclear Engineering Program, which the Navy boasts as one of the most difficult schools in the country, and went on to become a knowledgeable and well-respected member of the nuclear engineering department aboard a fast attack submarine. I thought I could handle it.
After a lot of diligence, though, I was extremely pleased with my 4.0 grade point average last semester.
You can imagine my surprise today when I got a letter which reads in part: "You must be making Satisfactory Academic Performance to receive financial aid. This is required by law. Our records show that you do not currently meet required minimum standards. ... You
Perhaps things have changed more than I thought - a perfect report card places me on financial academic probation for which I was denied!
have been placed on financial aid academic probation this semester because you are not meeting these standards."
Has the reader ever seen a picture of the pale bodies of third-trimester babies being tossed in a trash can? I have. In another hospital, where the mother's love their children and the physicians save lives, these premature infants would receive specialized treatment. Why should they in their second trimester or even early first trimester be treated as less than
DavidSmart St. Louis
Lettersto the editor
Fetal discrimination
I am astonished when anyone, let alone the KU student body vice president, uses her position to attack those who are weaker and more vulnerable than he is, simply because these individuals are worthless and inconvenient in his eyes. Unborn children are human. They should be treated as such and not merely as a piece of tissue which could just as easily be discarded.
Is it too much to ask the Legislature to protect the lives of those who are unable to speak for themselves?
human and discriminated against unto death? Pro-lifers fight for the day when all people are treated as human, and each of us ends his or her self-conceived prejudice against those we somehow deem unworthy. When the public understands this, it will understand why prolifers strive against the abortion industry – even if they do not agree.
Gregory A. Glesser
Prospect Heights, Ill., graduate student
Legalizing abortions of babies unable to survive outside of the womb is just too ambiguous. There has been debate going on since the birth of the abortion issue about at what age a baby can live without the protection of the womb. Indeed, this is the focal point of the life vs. choice issue. There have been babies born extremely early in a pregnancy and yet have lived; and one of every 100 babies born in the United States after the normal nine months
Abortion bill useless
It won't work. The new abortion bill under debate in the Kansas Statehouse is useless and contradictory. Let me explain.
The second part of this bill creates stiffer penalties for those who practice their First Amendment right to free speech by picketing abortion clinics. This is quite hypocritical coming from a pro-choice member of the House who claims to be fighting for the "right" to have an abortion. I don't agree with many of the ways that pro-lifes exhibit their right. Nevertheless, they have that right to express their opinion.
don't live past the first month. Therefore, who is to say at what age babies can live outside the womb?
With all of my grips against this bill, I do agree with one clause: Women under 16 should receive counseling. I would prefer if this mandate would be extended to "unmarried women under 18," but the idea expressed by this portion is a very good idea. This counseling should be absolutely unbiased (neither affirming nor opposing abortion) and would definitely help these young women through what could be the most difficult time in their lives.
David Zimmerman
- Wichita freshman
Scripty check unfair
On July 17, 1990, my 46-year-old father was
killed in an automobile accident involving a semi-trailer truck. The truck driver walked away without a scratch. My family's lawyer told us that the highway patrolman could not give the truck driver a sobriety test because he did not see any evidence that the truck driver had been drinking.
Every day, my mom, my two younger sisters and I have to deal with the fact that my dad is never coming home. We will never know exactly what made the truck driver lose control of his truck, cross the center line and hit my dad's car. Maybe if they would be given that truck driver a sobriety test, he would be in jail today.
Now you're telling me that a Lawrence police officer can make me take a sobriety test just because I happen to come across one of the random checkpoints. Why is it that I would have to take a sobriety test, even if I wasn't doing anything wrong, and the truck driver who killed my dad was not required to take one?
I would like to know when Attorney General Bob Stephan and others like him are going to wake up and figure out that there's something wrong with this picture.
KANSANSTAFF
Jodi A. Habluetzel Manhattan senior
TIFFANYHARNESS Editor
VANESSA FUHRMANS Managing editor
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
Editors
Editors
News ... Mike Andrews
Editorial ... Beth Randolph
Planning ... Lara Gold
Campus ... Eric Gorski/Rochelle Olson
Sports ... Eileen Nelson
Photo ... Jill Jacqueline
Features ... Debbie Meyers
Graphics ... Jeff Meesley/Aimee Brainard
JENNIFER CLAXTON Business manager
JAYSTEINER Retail sales manager
JEANNE HINES Sales and marketing adviser
Business Staff
Campus sales mgr . Bill Belilegood
Regional sales mgr . Rich Hanbarhanger
National sales mgr .
Go-op sales mgr . Anne Johnson
Production mgrs . Kim Wallace
Marketing director . Lee Keeler
Marketing leader . Kim Claxton
Creative advisor . Leahen Clarke
Classified mgr . Kim Chin
Business Staff
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Loco Locals
WEEKS PASS - SHE NEVER
Writes... MEANWHILE, HIS
ROOMMADE DATEES TRIEGIRLS -
MANY MORE. HIS BEST FRIEND
GLEEPS FROM A NEW RELATIONSHIP.
SO, HIS FRIENDS ARE NO HOPE.
HE JUST KEeps THINGS IN AN
HER. NO HE HAS NO LIFE.
by Tom Michaud