OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
April 3,1984 Page 4
The University Daily Kansan (USP 650-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffater Flint Hall, Lauren, KS. 6045, daily (usprs.org) the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer session, excluding Sunday, holidays, and final periods. Second postage paid at Lawrence, KS by mail are $12.99 each, and first postage paid at outside the county Student subscriptions are $1 a semester paid through the student activity fee (POSTMASTER). Send address changes to usprs.org.
DOUG CUNNINGHAM
DON KNOX
Managing Editor
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Editorial Editor
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Slapping wrists
Bus-pass forgery is more than a violation of the University of Kansas Student Code of Rights and Responsibilities.
It's also a crime.
But the Student Senate Transportation Board last week decided to overlook that fact when it rescinded a decision to press charges against 24 students caught using forged bus passes.
This about-face occurred after KU administrators and the Douglas County district attorney recommended that the University resolve the problem. Said Caryl Smith, dean of student life, "It's a matter of the integrity of the University to handle its own matters."
So instead of facing criminal charges, the students will appear before a University hearing panel and will face what appears to be little more than a slap on the wrist: First offenders could receive a maximum fine of $70.
The most disturbing aspect of this decision was the role played by the father of one of the students who had been charged with forgery.
"It's like trying to put someone on the electric chair for stealing bread," he said, referring to the maximum penalty for forgery of one to 10 years in the state penitentiary.
The father said that he appeared before the board not to eliminate punishment for his son but to look for a just punishment.
More important, the board's decision establishes an unfortunate precedent. Will the University now assume jurisdiction over other criminal cases involving KU students?
It's unlikely that any of the students charged with first-time forgery would have received punishment harsher than a suspended sentence had the courts been allowed to determine guilt or innocence.
Unfortunately, members of the board succumbed to this emotional appeal.
Forgery is a crime, not a violation of student rights. It should be dealt with in the courts, not by a University and its administrators.
Hope for just actions
A U.S. district court judge's recent actions offer hope that justice may yet flourish in these times.
The federal judge, Prentice H. Marshall, has ordered the city of Chicago to expunge as many as 1 million disorderly conduct arrests because the seizures were unconstitutional.
Most of the cases, which took place over the last five years, involved blacks and Hispanics.
The ACLU charged that the city's police department unlawfully arrested and jailed thousands of blacks and Hispanics on disorderly conduct charges to keep them from congregating on city streets.
The former deputy police superintendent of Chicago was the main target of a suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
After city lawyers in Chicago failed to respond to the suit, the
judge also ordered them to notify every person whose record is being expunged that he can sue the city for damages.
The price of justice will not be cheap for the Windy City. The ruling is expected to cost Chicago as much as $1 million to print and mail notices to the hundreds of thousands of persons affected.
Rather, he was committed to seeing that the system of justice in this country be applied fairly and equally - something that the unlawful, mass arrests in Chicago contradicted.
But cost was of little concern to the judge.
Although the expense of the police department's error will have to be borne by the taxpayers of Chicago, the amount is a small price to pay for upholding this country's system of justice.
Idealism is forsaken
Many students at the University of Kansas walk around in a fog, oblivious to important world events. They do not seem to care much about issues such as U.S. aid to El Salvador, huge deficits or election-year politics.
The reasons for this apathy are hard to define. Students deserve a reprimand for letting conservatism and economic anxiety, among other things, stifle their courage to take risks and search for questions instead of simply answers at the University of Kansas.
As William Allen White once said,
"If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel,
who attack life with all their youthful vim and vigor, then there is
So much in modern society needs to be changed that students who ignore their duty to advance justice and fairness are denying the world its chance to become a safer, more equitable place to live.
something wrong with our colleges."
Some people do question, refusing to simply accept decisions the government makes. But aside from these small pockets of protest about Central America, nuclear war, X-rated movies and free speech, most students seem to have accepted modern life without question.
As White said, "There must be a clash, and if youth hasn't enough force or fervor to produce the clash the world grows stale and stagnant and sour in decay."
The University Daily Kansas welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten on one sheet of paper, double-spaced and should not exceed 200 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 home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan also invites individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
Death on a dark road
Three young women were killed Saturday morning in Kansas City, Mo. They were thrown from their car when it struck a tractor-trailer
The jury is still out on the fourth young woman, critically injured, who is lying in a St. Joseph Hospital as I write this.
News reports say that the westbound car lost control and skidded into the eastbound lane. Somewhat of a misleading phrase, it was actually the driver who lost control of the car.
Whichever way it is termed, three young women are dead, and many lives are saddened because of it.
Their lives showed such promise. They were college-bound, some with promises of scholarships, all enjoying the waning days of their youth, counting the days to their graduation, to their freedom.
LETTERS POLICY
The tragedy is that it's such a typical story: A carload of high school friends lay loose on a firefighter's light. They were the best, their friends lament.
it seems as if wrecks are accepted as an inevitable fact of owning or driving a car. When we sit in driver's education class, they show us gory movies, designed to shock us into driving safely.
I remember it vividly: seeing a patrolman weep at the side of the highway; the carriage of a head on collision; a shapeless mass covered with a blanket. I also remember one to leave in the middle of the movie
And then some physics equation ended it. An equation involving velocity, friction and a curve.
Usually, other factors add to that equation — alcohol, drugs, excessive speed — but they aren't mentioned in this story.
A friend of hers had recently died in a car wreck. The message is: this can happen to you.
years ago. My friend was driving, and we were laughing and telling stories.
HARRY MALLIN
Seat belts. You've heard it so often, but they probably saved our lives. Seat belts and engineering, kept the roof from caving-in, saved
Staff Columnist
And it almost has. It was a black, lonely stretch of highway a couple of
Some nocturnal animal chose that time to cross the road. We swerved, lost control and ended upside down in a ditch. Besides a few brushes, we were unscatched. The car, on the other hand, was totaled.
Would seat belts have saved the lives of those young women? I wonder how many people have lived though a wreck with a tractor-trailer. But, of course, we'll never know in their case.
It bothers me to watch television and see so many TV stars setting bad examples for the children of America. "Knight Rider," the classic story of boy meets hot rod, is the worst offender.
Here is a hero, loved by millions of yard apes, who hardly ever wears a seat belt. The entire show is built upon the premise that reckless driving can be fun. The seventh-grader inside of me says "neato." The 22-year-old realizes it's bad news.
Yet, I'm no angel when it comes to wearing seat belts. My first two cars didn't even come with seat belts. They were built in an age when fatal automobile accidents were thought of as unavoidable.
The seat belts in my car now are used about half the time. I hope I'm using them the right half.
But this isn't one of those endless tirades on wearing seat belts. You've heard that one enough if you don't wear them, you will. It's your own life.
But when it comes to driving a car, remember that you're piloting a projectile that weighs more than a person. You're piloting everyone's road, not just your own.
We live in a world where a car is more than a means of transportation. For some, it is a status symbol. For a young man or woman, it is a rite of passage. For others, it is a vehicle of freedom.
For three young women in Kansas City, it was the second-to-last vehicle in which they would ever ride.
Senator Hart works on a new signature..
ETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letter misguided
In response to the article "A narrow vision," I also find it amusing how people can hear and see exactly what they want.
First, why have a black student union anyway? If we have a black student union, let's have a Jewish, or any other possible student union.
To the editor:
It is just this coverage that I had hoped would inform the student body of the organizational and factional problems that have beset the Senate and influence both the student and those students who are masquerading as student leaders to take some constructive action.
I would like to applaud the frequent and thorough coverage Student Senate and its issues have received since last spring.
Why further aggravate the problem by segregating and forming a black student union?
The Rev. Martin Luther King demanded equal rights for all I don't think that you can justify this thought. Maybe you could if you split the money you may receive among all minority groups.
Stand by Senate
The University established a student union to combat student problems. Why don't concerned students feel they have this medium to achieve their goals?
To the editor:
Isn't that discriminating against other minorities who won't get financing? Cheri, I not only think you're doing something, but that you shouldn't get a dime.
If Student Senate will finance such an organization, then they should fund a wide variety of student unions. Why even finance a black student union?
Steve Cumbow Chicago. senior
This has not happened, however,
and many are seeking to rapidly
discredit the newly elected administration before it, or the Senate, has had a chance to recover.
The BSU letter to the Kansan, regardless of its validity, did more harm than good through the use of personal innocuity.
Finally, in the March 27 Kansan was a story about the Finance Committee allegedly breaking the open-meetings law because groups are not allowed to attend deliberations once they have made their budget presentation.
Student Senate, quite frankly, need a break, folks; get off its back. Make your criticism if you will, but make it constructive. Make it positive.
Resignations of some Senate staff members came at a most inportunity, although it should be noted that these were pre-planned and not made in order to hurt Senate.
What is interesting about this and other trivial claims is that the procedure examined here has not changed significantly in the five years I have been at this University. The procedure has been shown to be both fair and productive considering the size of the task.
I think that what is different is our new administration, and many are seeking to gain advantage by intimidating or otherwise coolly manipulating the workings of the Senate.
The spirit of a liberal arts institution demands cooperation and compromise — try it.
Yet, suddenly rights are being violated? What is different now?
Charles D. Lawhorn
Kansas City, Kan., senior
To the editor:
New list of rules
overnight guests; and asexual students may have guests of either sex. That should take care of it.
Here is a suggestion for resident hall visiting rules: heterosexual students may not have guests overnight of the opposite sex; homosexual students may not have same-sex guests overnight; bisexual students may not have any
Wichita special student
Ruby Baresch
To the editor:
To the article
In regard to the article by David Swafford about the Saturday night showing of the X-rated movie "Emmanuelville" and the subsequent University Daily Kansan editorial, I think that the "protesters" have been misrepresented.
Negative picture
Mr. Swafford depicted the protesters in a negative way. I was curious to find out just how he would portray us. Mr. Swafford portrayed them as being "who have not have done so without "reporting" out and out falsehoods.
First of all Mr. DePeake never mentioned the city's fire code — he came out because he was distressed to see us there. Six women never surrounded him, never called him a rapist or a woman hater.
Furthermore, Mr. DePaepe was never spat upon. Mr. Swafford did not bother to report the TRUTH as to why we were there.
The reason I was there was not to "intimidate" but to educate Pornography that contains scenes of violence that women is danger-
Many rapists admit that they viewed this kind of material prior to raping their victims but I don't understand what this of them. Absolutely the Kansan isn't either.
The Kansan on Tuesday took what Mr. Swafford wrote as gospel and laSED out at the protesters by accusing us of "attempts to control attendance at the movie show-aggravation and prosecution."
Mr. Swafford had an opportunity to report exactly what we were doing there but instead decided to use shoddy and biased journalism.
To the Kansan I say get educated, understand the facts or appear as you have on this one: ridiculously one-sided and ignorant.
Nancy L. Cullis
Novato, Calif., graduate student
Nancy E. Caruso
BSU is trying to halt racism at University
Until I was six years old,
"I never" must only ask to me.
"nigger" was only a word to me. I knew that the word was a derogatory term for blacks, but it had never been applied to me. The word had no more special meaning than a host of others I had heard
All of that changed one day on an elementary school playground when a freewheel-faced classmate, for no apparent reason, decided to show off his vocabulary. I told my teacher, who scolded the boy and made him apologize, and the incident was over.
But every now and then, that word and the embarrassed and angry flush I felt when I first heard it come back to me. In the past few weeks I've heard the word in my mind again.
MICHAEL ROBINSON
It's not that anyone lately has called me a nigger, although my six-year-old classmate certainly wasn't the last to do so, but the recent flap about the Black Student Union $10.34 budget that cost them some friends and colleagues, have brought back the memory. I won't try to argue that BSU deserves the money simply be
Staff Columnist
cause it is a black organization.
This is not a question of number
of members or breadth of jurisdiction
Is there racism at the University of Kansas?
you was wrong to try to claim the $19,000 on the grounds that black students pay that much in activity fees. But all of us need to take more important issues that are obscured in the squiggle over money.
The only black student in a computer science class is given the sign on "lynch."
Some people may think that the question is easy to ask and that discrimination is an easy charge to make. The truth is that it's not a pleasant feeling to think that your fellow students are racist.
And the charge of discrimination always draws attention first to the complainer. "He must have some axe to grind. He always takes things the wrong way. She's got a chip on her shoulder."
But what does it mean to say that some KU students, or faculty members, are racist?
Racism doesn't simply reside in the professor who gives blacks lower grades than whites, or the student who won't sit next to a black classmate. It's more and less like, more flarrant and less flarrant.
"The majority of white people that I've come across don't think racism exists," says Cheri Brown. BSU president, "What we're trying to do is culturally educate people."
A black student sits down at a desk and reads on it that "Kappa Alpha Psi (a black fraternity) equals niggers."
Minor stuff unless it's directed at you and reminds you each day that there are people who think less of you, even hate you, because of your skin color.
Racism is more than a cause, it's an effect. As much as anything, it's the feeling it leaves you with. The person who it apprehended to it.
The Black Student Union, as a student organization, is in a good position to start that kind of cultural education, if it goes about it in the right way. Sponsoring a conference for black students in the Big Eight and Racial Tolerance Week and conducting workshops on racism are good places to begin.
These projects may or may not justify the $19,000 request, but unless Student Senate chooses to be blind and dumb, it must acknowledge that racism is still a problem in this country, a problem the Senate hasn't addressed before now.
At a time when the Senate's credibility and relevance are at issue, senators have a chance to involve themselves in something like headquarters, the Rape Center, or other institutions top and others — that directly affects and can help improve the lives of KU students.
Giving money to BSU won't stop the emotional pain of a child on a playground, but it might help some adults. And if the members of a university community are unwilling to address the problem of racism, who will be?
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