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Mondav. April 11. 1994
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Dining services shows no respect for religion
The dining services' failure to provide Jewish students in residence halls with matzo during the week of Passover was unacceptable.
During the weeklong celebration of Passover, Jewish people avoid eating products that contain yeast, and matzo is an unleavened bread. Passover began March 27 and ended April 2. Matzo, however, was not available in residence hall cafeterias until April 6.
Barbara Quintero, assistant director for dining services, offered two reasons for the dining services' failure to provide matzo. Quintero said that matzo was not available through normal purchasing routes and that students were responsible for notifying the dining halls of their need for matzo. Both of these explanations are weak excuses
Students shouldn't have to remind dining services to respect their religious holidays. In the future, dining services should put forth the small amount of effort necessary to respect all students' religions.
Although matzo was not available through "normal purchasing routes," the dining service was able to purchase matzo from Dillons and from a kosher food service in Kansas City. The time and energy necessary to purchase matzo was minimal and should be outweighed by the importance of respecting this Jewish holiday.
The argument that it is the students' responsibility to notify the dining halls of their need for matzo is inane. Passover is an annual holiday. Jewish students need matzo during the same week each year.Accordingly, the students' need for matzo should come as no surprise to the dining halls.Merely checking a calendar should alert the dining services to students' need for matzo.
Striker replacement bill unfair to companies
COLLEEN MCCAIN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The Clinton administration is beginning to work for passage of the Workplace Fairness Act, better known as the striker replacement bill. This bill would prohibit the permanent hiring of workers to replace those who are striking for economic reasons.
It is incorrect to believe that under the current system workers are casually being thrown out of jobs by greedy employers. Of the less than one percent of labor disputes that lead to strikes, only about three to four percent of strikers are permanently replaced. Companies have an interest in keeping well-trained workers, and permanent replacement is the last resort.
When striking workers have their jobs guaranteed, little incentive exists for them to avert or end strikes. This bill could cause strikes to proliferate, and American businesses would suffer. Many businesses could relocate overseas to increase their hiring flexibility and escape inflated wages. This costs America jobs.
Still, it seems to some natural to take the side of workers in labor disputes, but the federal government has no business making labor laws that give one side an advantage over the other. A level playing field should be the goal. But this bill is designed to ensure that companies are placed at a disadvantage in negotiations.
When strikers are permanently replaced, America does not lose jobs. Instead, they are given to other American workers who want to take the jobs at the offered wage. The striker replacement bill, therefore merely favors some workers over others. Congress should let jobs go to those willing to do the work for the wage offered and refuse to pass this bill.
SEAN FINN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
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POINT/COUNTERPOINT
Activities of anti-abortionists characterize their movement
When I went to my first pro-choice rally in 1989, I realized how much I believed in the freedom of choice. It appalled me to see how many women were dying, physically and spiritually, because of the lack of complete access to their constitutional right to an abortion. Now, five years later, reading about the increased violence surrounding abortion clinics and abortion providers, my beliefs have been strengthened.
In the last decade, an increasing number of violent acts have been committed by anti-choice activists, including bombings, death threats, arson, burglary, kidnapping and murder. Controversy surrounding the issue of legal abortion has led to a war zone that has divided our nation. The acts of violence, committed by persons from all walks of life — business people, the retired elderly, parents, etc. — have become the foundation of the pro-choice movement's efforts to invoke the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute.
Anti-choice protesters have constitutional rights, and those rights must be considered. However, the patients and staff at clinics also have rights, which are consistently disregarded by many protesters. Historically, laws have ineffectively attempted to define the limits of the right to protest. Where do one group's rights stop and another's begin? As a proponent of the pro-choice movement, I believe that a protester's rights end
No one would argue that violent opposition cannot be defended on the grounds of free speech. The question facing us, however, is the connection between "free speech" — the speech which incites people to commit these acts — and the acts themselves. All citizens have the right to their opinions and to express those opinions legally under the First Amendment. However, boundaries must be set when those rights begin to infringe on another individual's rights. Blocking access to clinics, invading a physician's privacy, stalking patients and similar actions are not protected forms of expression under the First Amendment. Acts which violate criminal laws are simply not protected forms of speech. Thus, the problem does not lie within the perimeters of peaceful protests but rather within those "crusades" which lead to criminal acts.
Organized anti-choice groups clearly have more than picketing clinics on their agenda. Protesters at clinics often are encouraged to pursue identification of both patients and abortion providers through the use of invasive methods. Due to past incidents of violence and threats, abortion providers and their staff now find it necessary to hire 24-hour security and wear bullet-proof vests.
when one individual threatens the safety of another.
Anti-choice groups often manipulate the doctrine of civil disobedience to justify their actions, such as picketing the private homes of doctors. The principle of civil disobedience, however, mandates nonviolent and passive opposition to a law through a refusal to comply with it on grounds of conscience. Certainly the anti-choice protesters claim to act on grounds of conscience. The goal of many anti-choice groups is not to passively oppose a law, but instead to dictate the adaptation of their own viewpoints. I am not questioning the rights of an individual to peacefully pray on public property. What is at issue is nationally recognized groups openly planning and carrying out blatant violations of the law. Using crime as the means to justify the ends does not comply with the nonviolent doctrine of civil disobedience.
Extremist tactics, such as those employed by anti-choice groups, often further the cause of the opposition. (For example, the anti-gay tactics used by the Rev. Fred Phelps are so vitriolic that they have caused increased support for the gay movement.) However, after witnessing the escalating violence in the last year, the pro-choice movement will no longer accept the "peaceful" claims of the anti-choice movement.
Christy Morris, Englewood, Colo., senior in women's studies, is a member of the KU Pro-Choice Coalition.
I have been strenuously pro-life of my life. I know that abortion is the taking of a human life. What I do condemn also is the attempted murder and the violence against abortion doctors, patients and other employees. It is these actions of a few that develops a stereotype that is encouraged by most of the mass media.
The pro-life movement is not composed of only radicals. One example of a man who defies the stereotype is writer Nat Hertoff, who is an atheist liberal yet believes that abortion is wrong.
The pro-life movement, in my eyes, is composed of three different groups, which are not distinct but have boundaries that can be drawn to distinguish them.
The Policy Wonks center on legislation as the means to end abortion. They might not discourage picketing, but they avoid it themselves.
The Moderates are involved in picketing and supporting legislation, but they do not practice unlawful civil obedience for various reasons. Both the Policy Wonks and the Moderates support education, speakers, films and other means to educate people about the evils of abortion.
The Radicals vary in their means to end abortion. Members of this subgroup would shout "hallelujah" when they heard a clinic had been bombed or an abortionist had been shot. They achieve notority by making life difficult for clinics and their patients. Bullhorns, picketing at doctors' homes, and showing the remains of an aborted child to politicians who support abortions rights are examples of what dominates the radical wing of the pro-life movement. They appear less concerned about changing people's hearts as they do about ending abortion directly.
The radical pro-life movement has a counterpart on the "pro-choice" side just as spirit-minded as any pro-lifer. These radicals yell obscenities, and police officers sympathetic to the abortion rights movement have been known to abuse those who have been engaged in both peaceful pickets and civil disobedience. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has been asked to investigate a few of the most outrageous instances of cruel treatment of pro-lifers arrested for nonviolent sit-ins.
Whateachpro-life group seeksisan
GUEST COLUMNIST
end to abortion. Which one, in the long run, will have the most success? As events like the shooting of Dr. George Tiller occur, my feeling is that changing people's hearts will achieve more good than violence or other radical means will ever accomplish. In any social movement, the conscience of the populace must be raised in order for an injustice to end. Bad public hurts the cause.
I don't oppose nonviolent civil disobedience, but in these times when the mass media itself admits its bias, the cost is too high in increased polarization and hardening hearts to gain the benefits of directly stopping abortion with radical means. Never is it going to be morally right to commit violent acts to stop abortion.
In order to maintain the gains and advance the front line, the pro-life movement needs to work to improve the welfare and the cultural and societal climate we live in. Most "pro-choicers" keep ranting that pro-lifers do not care about women and children except for the nine months when a woman is pregnant. But just look at Lawrence. Hannah's House is a home for unwed mothers, and the Crisis Pregnancy Center gives guidance to pregnant women. A great effort has been made in the last 15 years with this vocation, but there is a long way to go. I would hope that "pro-choicers" would listen to this evidence and actually help these women who do not choose abortion.
My call is for people to take another look at the pro-life movement without the filtering of the media and for pro-lifers to strive for peaceful action. Imposing legislation and using violent means are worthless unless people realize what a tragedy abortion really is. : : : : :
Tom Grelinger, Kansas City, Kan., senior in computer science, is a member of KU Students for Life.
IF YOU BELIEVE HILLARY CLINTON TURNED $1,000 INTO ALMOST $100,000 WITH NO INSIDE INFORMATION LET ME INTRODUCE HER BROKER!
Body piercing can be an expression of self
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
In response to Mr. Shirk from Iola ... I personally have a big, fat, juicy 14-gauge piece of metal crammed through my septum, what you would refer to as my nose. I do not think that I have a problem with low self-esteem, rather, I know it takes quite a bit of self-esteem to feel confident enough to pierce something that the whole world can see and disapprove of.
You obviously have a problem with low self-esteem because you cannot open your mind and see that this society is so comforted by conformity that some people refuse to be part of it at all. Body piercing is exactly that, a way of expressing individuality in a society that is bent
on being the same and unexpressive. Not being like everyone else in this world is not a way of saying, "I have low self-esteem." It, in fact, is screaming, "I AM COMFORTABLE WITH MYSELF, AND I LOVE WHO I AM!"
So, I have one piece of advice for Mr. Shirk from Iola: maybe if the time comes, when you are not frightened of the fact that people in this world are becoming individuals instead of one of the crowd, you too will pierce something, I recommend a Prince Albert.
Shannon Kochenour Leavenworth junior
Critical thought absent in editorial on Limbaugh
enjoyed reading the March 31 article "Lack of critical thought com
Henry's central hypothesis, that the right wing has "abandoned critical thought" and is characterized by metal "atrophy," is supported (and only very loosely and superficially) by one very qualitative opinion — that "it is easy to pick out a dittohead because they use only about a dozen different phrases when arguing politics, all of which are taken verbatim from oft-used Rush quotations." This argument (or rather, opinion) is the only real line of "evidence" that Henry uses to support his hypothesis, and he hardly supports the contentions that he makes. For one who is not scared of Rush, but of
mon in the ranks of Limbaugh lovers," by Paul Henry. I am a member of the "right" which Henry "describes," and I enjoy listening to "progressives" such as Henry. I wish to address one point that he makes.
his fans, it is interesting that Henry uses almost all of his space to criticize Rush, and supports his central hypothesis with only one, short, feeble, opinion-based paragraph. I also find it amusing that Henry attempts to bamboozle readers into believing that the right is characterized by a lack of mental muscle by using the same tactics — let me do your thinking for you, ignore the data — for which he is attempting to criticize conservatives!
Surely all will agree that one of our most important responsibilities, as citizens and as students, is to think critically. Yet any person who accepts Henry's hypothesis is surely abdicating this fundamental principle.
Gene Rankey Kirkwood, Mo. graduate student
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