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Wednesday, April 20,1994
OPINION
UN I V E R S I T Y D A I L Y K A N S A N
food
VIEWPOINT
Emporia High seniors deserve right to pray
The seniors at Emporia High School should be allowed to vote on whether their graduation ceremony will include a prayer. The school board made a mistake when it rescinded its own decision, after consulting with an attorney, to allow the senior class to vote on the content of the graduation.
What happened at Emporia High School is symbolic of the curbing of rights throughout the nation. In response to cries from the American Civil Liberties Union and other rights-oriented groups, the majority of Americans have succumbed to the fear of being sued. The tyranny of the majority that the founding fathers of the Constitution hoped to protect people from has been superseded by the despotic rule of political correctness. The actions of the school board are a product of this new rule.
If the majority of seniors at Emporia High School want a prayer at their graduation ceremony, then that should be their prerogative. People have the right to express their religion just as much as people have the right to express their agnostic or atheistic views. Suppressing the right of the majority of seniors to hear a prayer is more of an injustice than not allowing the prayer because a few seniors disagree with it. Furthermore, prayers in public ceremonies need not advance a certain religion or belief. Public prayers can be nondenominational or simply a moment of silence. Either of these choices will protect the school board from legal action, and either will afford the students the right to choose the content of their graduation.
Congress still opens each session with a prayer. Emporia High School seniors should be allowed to have one in their graduation ceremony if they want it.
CHRISTOPHER LIVINGSTON FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
NATO is helpless to stop ethnic strife in Bosnia
Recently, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization began to use air strikes in the former Yugoslavia. This was a poor decision, however, and NATO should cease its air strikes at once.
Intervention will not solve the underlying ethnic strife. The conflict in the former Yugoslavia has been going on for decades. Now that communism is nearly absent from the area, these old ethnic conflicts have been resurrected.
What will happen when NATO is gone? The conflict is like two brothers who fight all the time, except when their father is with them. When he's gone, the battle still rages.
NATO is only prolonging the war by intervening militarily and doing nothing to stop the primary cause behind the war. It may sound harsh, but NATO should simply let the stronger side win out.
The fact is this: War is hell. People die in war. People are hurt in war. By intervening, NATO is not doing anything to stop the evils of war. In the long run, NATO is increasing the evils of war by dragging it out.
This is especially true in a war in which neither side is an obvious ally or enemy of the United States. This war is between members of ethnic groups. If there was a just cause for which to fight, the situation would be different.
We should keep a close eye on the situation but not intervene. We should let the war come to an end on its own.
DAVID ZIMMERMAN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
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Oversensitivity is destroying the mission of the University
COLUMNIST
The best professors have one thing in common: They're offensive. They're not disgusting or repugnant, but they prod and cajole students with barbed and irreverent comments and statements.
One professor I knew had a God-given talent for provocation. He would use words as if they were sharp sticks, jabbing at our assumptions to see if we had any life. His*classes would dissolve into heated rounds of argument and counter-argument, both with the professor and with each other. Offensive? Certainly. I never learned so much in my life.
I wonder if this style of teaching and interacting is becoming a thing of the past at American universities. In this new, hypertouchy era of "sensitivity," it is reckless to offend certain people, no matter what the reason. Like "awareness," "diversity" and "multi-culturalism," sensitivity is one of those concepts that has been shoe-horned into campus discourse with little criticism or debate.
A friend of mine, a teacher here at KU, was recently accused of being both a racist and a sexist by one of his students. He was shocked because he is neither a racist nor a sexist by any definition of those terms. He had simply tried to prod this student into questioning some of her fundamental beliefs about the way the world worked, in a manner that only the most insecure, thin-skinned person could have found objectionable.
My friend was in no position to argue the point. Any accusation of insensitivity on racial or gender
issues, however unfounded, can be the kiss of death to a promising academic career. He therefore altered the "offensive" segment of his lectures, finding a less provocative way of expressing his points, and nothing more came of the matter.
It is a subtle poison, this "sensitivity." My friend's quiet alteration of his teaching methods kindled no outcry, no charges of political correctness. Yet it happened. How many other silent adjustments like this take place between teacher and student, or between students themselves?
What will happen to the mission of the University, its promotion of excellence and challenging intellectual conversation, if its foundation is slowly undermined by such compromises? When a teacher in a difficult position, like my friend, chooses different, more "sensitive" words, he or she no longer is requiring students to question or defend their beliefs. Given the current climate of opinion on most campuses, who could blame
them? But sensitive words are almost always bland and tasteless, like so much intellectual porridge, challenging no one and stimulating nothing. Sensitivity isn't just an abdication to weakness, or a curb on free speech — it is a slippery slope to mediocrity.
it is high time we dump "sensitivity" altogether. It only deters some from asking tough questions, while allowing others to nurse feeble insecurities. It creates an atmosphere in which honest debate is stymied and erroneous assumptions may go unchallenged. "Sensitivity" hinders learning and stops growth.
If someone accuses you of racism or sexism, tell them to prove it. If you are told you are "insensitive," ask, "What's your point?" As for those of you who feel offended or think some on campus has been "insensitive" to your point of view, the proper response is: good.
Brian Dirck is a Conway, Ark., graduate
student in history.
Smokers don't deserve sympathy
I am no longer afraid to die, for I have now truly seen it all.
In what will surely be remembered as a great moment in the history of chutzpah, those angels in the tobacco lobby have lashed out at McDonald's restaurants for — this is going to be good — selling unhealthy food.
So smokers, who find themselves huddled out back behind the dumpster sucking down carcinogens, are now being told by the tobacco lobby that they're sort of going through what Martin Luther King Jr. must have gone through. I'm not sure I follow, but I guess that's why I'm not a tobacco industry representative.
COLUMNIST
But let's start at the beginning. The latest reality bender from the folks who brought us "cigarettes don't cause cancer" is the notion of Smoker-as-Oppressed-Minority. Municipalities and private enterprise around the country are responding to alarming news about the effects of secondhand smoke by severely restricting the time, place and manner in which smokers can indulge in public.
Now, hold the phone. There are lots of behaviors we restrict in public for the good of the community. It is not acceptable to get drunk and cause a nuisance in public. It is not accepted behavior to pass gas in public. Public nudity is illegal in most places.
The difference is that drunks, gas passers, and nudists don't have powerful lobbies that tell them they're being oppressed.
Thus is the environment in which the Raleigh, N.C.-based Tobacco Growers' Information Committee issued a strong statement against McDonald's, which is in the process
of banning smoking at its company-owned and franchised restaurants. "Fast-food restaurants like McDonald's banning smoking is a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black," said the committee, although if I were sticking up for the tobacco industry I would not be so anxious to put the image of blackened carbon residue into anyone's mind.
I'll admit to being kind of a McDonald's aficionado. I've never claimed to live a particularly healthy lifestyle.
But — and this is important — I choose my poison. When I eat a Quarter Pounder, I do not exude invisible Beef Fat Rays that clog the arteries of those nearby.
Secondhand smoke, however, kills 3,000 nonsmokers and causes 300,000 cases of bronchitis and pneumonia in children every year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The Tobacco Institute, in a display of scientific rigor rivaling that of the Flat Earth Society, disputes these figures. But they cannot deny that it can be annoying to others.
Critics of the anti-smoking movement like to characterize it as a case of liberal do-goodism run amok, when in fact it is nothing more than pure self-interest. If smoking were a completely internal activity, no one would mind. Smokers would happily die as early as they like, and the rest of us would get more Social Security money. When an activity is directly harmful to those who do not choose to participate in it, then government and business have a right — some would say a responsibility — to regulate it or, if possible, eliminate the danger to the innocent.
Smoking in public should be treated as the nuisance that it is and be banned in public just like any other nuisance. Smokers who claim their rights are being taken from them retain the same rights as everybody else. They can walk into any restaurant in America and refrain from smoking. Just like me.
Paul Henry is a Tacoma, Wash., graduate student In Journalism.
Editorial on Fort Riley closure a cheap shot
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Furthermore, a Fort Riley closure would have very little effect on the farmers. It is the business community, not the ag community, that anticipates the most unemployment and bankruptcy as a consequence of a Fort Riley closure.
As the student body president at KState, I must write and admonish your editorial board for the editorial on April 8 regarding Fort Riley. Certainly, military cutbacks may mean taking hits in our local economy for the good of the country. But the editorial seemed positively gleeful at the prospect of Fort Riley's demise. When Matt Hood writes, "Now those same self-interested farmers are crying," about the base-closure rumors, I cannot help but perceive a degree of farmer-bashing — very disappointing in an agricultural state and probably a cliché in KU discussion circles.
Yes, we must all be prepared to take our lumps for the team. Your
paper's decision to endorse the closing of Fort Riley, however, is a parochial decision, aiming in between the lines to deride agriculture and other non-KU activities.
Support Fort Riley, don't sacrifice it.
Ed Skoog
Student Body President
K-State
Greek president resents accusation of coercion
I am writing in response to the letter to the editor by Kyle Gregory printed in the April 13th edition of the University Daily Kansas. I was very disturbed by the accusation leveted against our fraternity that pledges were forced to vote for a member of our chapter running for Student Senate. It is completely unreasonable to think an organization could coerce its members to vote for a particular coalition.
First of all, it would be impossible to find out who an individual voted for as the balloting is secret. If an
individual had been threatened as was alleged, he could simply vote for who he deemed fit without any knowledge of the chapter.
I have spoken to members of Kyle Gregory's 1991 pledge class, and they assured me that no threat of punishment was ever directed toward them. While our members are encouraged to support another member who may be running for student office, they have never been, nor are they now required or coerced to do so. Sigma Phi Epsilon strongly supports the rights of our members and of all individuals to vote according to their own conscience.
Daniel Mudd Lawrence junior Sigma Phi Epsilon President 'Anti-choice' term used incorrectly in column
I am writing in response to Christy Morris' opinion column in the April 11 University Daily Kansan. I found it very interesting to note Morris' use of the term 'anti-choice'.
instead of 'pro-life.' To me, 'anti-choice' insinuates that these people, myself included, are not for anything but against everything and are against a person's right to choose. On the other hand, 'pro-life' hints that these people are in support of a cause. Come on! Let's be a little more politically correct! It is degrading. Why didn't she label herself as anti-life? It looks bad, and since her column was designed to make pro-lifers look bad, hey, why not just stick in the anti-term anyway? And I do mean that her column meant to make pro-lifers look bad because one notices that Morris didn't mention anything about pro-choiceers who are radical and break the law.
I do not condone violence by either pro-lifers or pro-choiceors. It is against the law and infringes on the rights of another person. But I do disagree with Morris' lack of understanding; pro-lifers are not anti-choice. We believe that the rights of the mother do not outweigh the rights of the child that is being killed.
Kierston Stadler Topeka sophomore