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Tuesday, March 15, 1994
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
10
VIEWPOINT
Navy right to give women full-time combat posts
Last week, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower became one of the most advanced ships in the U.S. Navy. The reason: about 60 women were assigned to permanent duty on board. More are to follow. This represents the first time in history that women have been assigned to combat ships full time. This step should be applauded as a great move toward equality.
Not everyone views the policy as such a great leap forward. There are concerns that women will be a distraction or harmful to morale. A similar argument was used a generation ago when African Americans were officially incorporated into the military. The argument is just as misplaced today.
Others worry that women are subject to greater dangers than men in combat situations. If women are captured, they could be sexually mistreated. However, the women who serve in the Navy do so by choice.In the opinion of women who long have been discriminated against by the military, this opportunity outweighs the possible dangers.
Another argument is that the introduction of women into a previously all-male environment will present too many logistical problems. Such physical and structural challenges should not stand in the way of the moral and ethical responsibility of establishing equality. It always will take a certain amount of energy to overcome the apathy of stagnating stereotypes. Equal opportunity and equal status both are goals worth the extra energy of adaptation.
The Navy has always used the most modern advancements of science. The inclusion of women represents an advancement toward equality. It's time the Navy's philosophy caught up with its technology.
Quotas don't improve discrimination issues
MATT HOOD FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
A federal judge made the correct ruling last week by rejecting a proposed quota system that would have ensured more African-American judges in Georgia.
Governor Zell Miller and plaintiffs said they had reached a settlement in which the governor would appoint African-American judges to meet a 30 percent quota statewide. The judgess would stand for election after serving one term.
The proposed settlement effectively would have taken the power to appoint judges out of the hands of the people and placed it in the hands of a single person. The governor would be able to appoint judges at will with no immediate check on his power.
The check would occur later, when the judges came up for election. Those judges who had been appointed could be removed by a majority vote. The proposed settlement could create a never-ending cycle.
Quotas attempt to create a solution for past discrimination by aggravating a second problem, reverse discrimination. The effects of past discrimination are nothing compared to the continuing inclination of people to judge others based on age, sex or color of skin.
CHRISTOPHER LIVINGSTON FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
There is nothing that says a person of one skin color cannot represent or fairly judge a person of a different color. Those who advocate that racial quotas can even the score champion the beliefs that were the source of the injustices of the past. There is no doubt that African Americans have been subjected to unfair treatment in the United States and that they must be compensated, but quotas enforce a way of thinking that will lead to more injustices still.
KANSAN STAFF
BEN GROVE, Editor
LISA COSMILLO, Managing editor
JUSTIN GARBERG Business manager
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
BILL SKEET, Systems coordinator
JENNIFER BLOWEY Retail sales manager
Editors
Editors
Asst Managing Editor ...Dan England
Assistant to the editor...J.R. Claiborne
News ...Kristi Fogler, Katie Greenwald
Todd Seiffert
Editorial ...Colleen McCain
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Photo ...Doug Hesse
Features ..Sara Bennett
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Freelance ..Christine Laue
JEANNE HINES Sales and marketing adviser
Business Staff
Campus sales mgr...Jason Eberly
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Special Section msr...Shelly McConnell
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Gretchen Kootenholmld
Marketing director...Shannon Reilly
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Left-lane slowpokes threaten a cherished American institution
I would like to take this opportunity to lament the demise of a cherished institution, a symbol of democracy in the United States of America. The Passing Lane. I tried to convince myself that it wasn't true, but in vain. Countless hours on highways around the nation have finally proven that the average driver today would rather indulge his or her personal driving habits than conform to a cooperative system of highway driving.
Now don't get me wrong, there is the driver who will obligingly move into the right lane when he or she spots a rapidly moving vehicle bearing down on them. But it seems to me that most drivers A) have no rearview mirror, B) play warrior war with car occupants using the rearview mirror, C) have no perception of speed, or D) relish the sound of screeching brakes and the smell of burnt rubber.
I don't want you to think that I'm sort of demon race car driver who has no patience with law-abiding citizens. On the contrary, often my desire is merely to reach the posted speed limit, let alone exceed it. I do realize that the term "limit" refers to a maximum speed, implying that lower speeds are acceptable. But folks, the law demands at least 45mh.
Considering the capabilities of cars these days, I'm not sure where the problem is. Granted, the occasional driver may have a volatile bomb hidden under the hood or a ton of bricks stowed in the trunk. Most cars, though, do accelerate fairly well. An acceleration is a change in velocity. Force equals mass times acceleration. Acceleration equals force divided by mass. Therefore, throw some mass out if you can't accelerate. Occupants are negotiable.
Cars are easy to accelerate. You just press the little pedal to the floor. The
sluggish speeds on highways today indicate to me that many American drivers have extremely weak ankle muscles. Maybe along with health care reforms, Clinton should establish a National Ankle Strengthening Program.
Like I said earlier, what concerns me most about slow drivers is the passing lane issue. Too many people choose to cruise along in the left lane regardless of their speed and the speed of traffic around them. My brilliant knowledge of physics tells me that a car moving at 65mph will overtake a car moving directly in front of it at 55mph. This leads to a complicated word problem: If Jimmy drives east at 55mph, and Mary, .5 miles behind Jimmy, drives east at 65mph, when will they collide, and where will the bodies of Jimmy's children land? Also estimate the possibility and cost of collision repair for both vehicles.
A dilemma ensues when a slow-moving vehicle blocks the left lane. Should the vehicle behind it ride on the first car's tail until it changes lanes? Or should the driver pass on the right? My mom always tells me to
just show down and follow the person in front. I tried it once. I was almost rear-ended by a hostile, aggressive chain of vehicles when the smart guy in front of me decided to brake for no apparent reason.
I suspect that the reason many people drive below the speed limit is, because A) they are paranoid of law enforcement officers, B) they like to take in the scenic fields, rock cliffs, or inner-city graffiti of the surrounding area, or C) they dropped the tape they wanted to hear in the back seat and can't reach it. That's fine, if they're in the right place. The left lane keeps traffic moving and should only be used for passing, not to leisurely tool around town in. If we let the Passing Lane die, we deny ourselves the ability to choose what speed we want to drive at, and we also increase the danger factor. I'm not advocating reckless, high-speed driving. I want to resurrect the Passing Lane and restore America's right to choose.
Allisha Aorra is an Overland Park freshman in biology and English.
THE NAVY ADJUSTS TO HAVING WOMEN ON BOARD
Comment triggers painful flashback
It didn't work.
I had to bite my tongue. I hoped that it would bite back memories of Carrie, as well.
A fleeting comment, probably just a passing thought intended to amuse a friend, brought back memories that still are stabbing at my heart as I write this column. Memories and anger.
COLUMNIST
It was my senior year in high school when I received a phone call from an old friend of Carrie's.
"I was just about to give Carrie my weekly call, I said. "Do you want me to call you back and tell you how she is?"
Carrie had moved away our senior year to a small Kansas town. It was hard. After all, we had spent practically every moment together, sometimes until 3 a.m. But I called her once a week, and it was as if she was still at my house, watching bad horror movies.
"What? WHAT!!!!!" I screamed into the phone. I demanded an answer. And yet the cold sweat that was draping over my body was telling me that I didn't want to hear it.
The silence over the phone chilled my heart. The silence and then the crying.
"She was killed in a car wreck," the friend said. "She's dead, Dan. A drunk driver hit her head on.
"We think she was killed instantly, so she didn't suffer...(He began crying again).-Anyway, I just wanted to tell you."
I crooked out a small "Thanks, man." Then a raw, burning scream ripped from my throat, scratching my voice. It was a primal scream, the voice of pure pain.
I forgot the visitation, when I reached out, and, with her mother's
In my time as a Jayhawk, I forgot that pain. I forgot what it was like to wake up at night, trembling and cold, with images of Carrie's blood-soaked head smashing through a car windshield.
permission, clipped a strand of her beautiful red hair. I forgot her red-haired grandmother entering the church and falling to her knees at the sight of her dead granddaughter, the one with her red hair, the one she always considered to be so special.
That fleeting comment, "Why don't we just get drunk and drive all around Lawrence this spring? We could see how many swirls it would take to get us home," has made me relive the pain. The pain and the anger.
I traveled 120 miles to go to that visitation. With every mile I drove I envisioned hitting the man responsible for Carrie's death. Splattering him all over the road.
My blind anger made me smile.
I went to that visitation to pay my last respects. But I also went because I wanted to see the man who killed Carrie. So when we arrived, and after I cried with my friends and her family over Carrie's ivory coffin, I went over to the town's sheriff, who was standing with his hat in his hands. His white face looked old. The nightmares that were running through his head apparently had aged it.
"You see this all the time, but every time you see this you carry it around
for weeks," he said.
I wasn't in the mood to share anyone else's pain. I was too caught up in my own.
"Where is he?" I said, my voice making him jump. "I have to see him. He has to know what he had done."
"Son, he does," the sheriff said. "He said if he had only known the danger of drunk driving instead of joking about it, he might never have gotten behind the wheel."
I choked up. I had wanted to kill this guy. Now I felt sorry for him.
It wasn't the sheer stupidity of his drunk driving that killed Carrie. It was the ignorance behind it. He thought it was something to make fun of, to play with.
That fleeting comment made me realize that KU students don't take drunk driving seriously, either. They think that it's a game. Which, I guess, is understandable. I also thought that it was a game, until a phone call shook me out of my ignorance.
I only hope it doesn't take the death of one of their friends before they wake up.
Dan England is a Lenexa senior in journal
ism.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
'Unqualified' students should not be left out
Contrary to what Richard Boyd and J. J. Andre suggest in their March 9 editorial, the Kansas Legislature made the right decision in rejecting a bill that would bring qualified admissions to the University of Kansas.
Boyd and Andre suggest the University use criteria such as grades, test scores and essays to prevent "unqualified" students from gaining admittance to the University.
The University should not exclude "unqualified" students, however. "Unqualified" students have as much of a right to an education as students with better grades and higher test scores. "Unqualified" students' parents pay the same
taxes to help finance the University as more academically inclined ones. In addition, "unqualified" students may have even more potential to grow intellectually than others and thus have even more to gain from attending the University. To only allow academically successful people to attend the University would be like allowing only healthy people to go to a medical clinic.
Boyd and Andre suggest that the University eliminate "time and money spent on remedial or 'weed-out' classes for unprepared students." If the authors really think that such students should not have access to the same resources as other people, they should go further than qualified admissions. They should suggest that the Legislature pass a law to have everyone in the lower 50th percentile of the ACT
executed so that they will not use any resources that "qualified" students may need.
The authors state that with qualified admissions, "KU would be perceived better nationally." But qualified admissions do not truly enhance the quality of a school, they only enhance the school's appearance of quality.
The authors also state that qualified admissions would attract more bright students to the University.
The true value of a school lies in the amount of intellectual improvement it fosters in individuals, regardless of the starting point of those individuals. Using qualified admissions to boost the perception of a school is like Estee Lauder refusing to sell its products to ugly people and claiming that its products make people beautiful.
However, the University is better off without elitist students who refuse to associate with less intelligent people. In addition, there are bright students who have low grades and low test scores. Qualified admissions would deter those students from attending the University.
or boyd and Andre think that one can measure academic "qualification." I would like them to let me know right away who the smartest person on the planet is. Maybe we can write to that person and let her or him settle this debate. In fact, maybe the rest of us can stop educating ourselves. Perhaps the world should just have one university with the world's smartest person in it. Then we will have truly achieved qualified admissions.
Megan Sooter Lawrence senior