OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
53
October 19, 1983 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansan (USPS 605-644) is published at the University of Kansas, 181 Stauffer-Finn Hall, Lawrence, KA 6065, daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer sessions. Subscripteurs are $15 for six months or $24 for eight months. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or $24 in Daegan County and $18 for six months or $3 for eight outside the county. Student subscriptions are $3 a semester through the student activity folder. FASTMARTER. Send all subscriptions to: USPS, 209 Broadway, New York, NY 10017.
MARK ZIEMAN
Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM STEVE CUSICK
Managing Editor Editorial Author
ANN HORNBERGER Business Manager
DON KNOX Campus Editor
DAVE WANAMAKER MARK MEARS
Retail Sales National Sales
Manager
PAUL JESS General Manager and News Adviser
LYNNE STARK Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Advertising Adviser
Utility shutoffs ban
For those Kansans who are delinquent on their heating bills, the Kansas Corporation Commission's recently adopted policy on cold weather shutouts must come as some relief.
Monday the KCC instituted a rule that prevents natural gas and electric utility companies from shutting off their delinquent customers' service from Nov. 15 through March 30. The companies may also not shut off the heat on days in which the temperature drops below 32 degrees.
The policy arrived just in time. Last winter the KCC was forced to adopt an emergency rule governing disconnections because of fears that rising natural gas prices could leave many Kansans without heat.
The KCC staff estimates that about 12,000 Kansas customers are currently without electric or natural gas service. Under the new policy these customers will be able to have
their service turned on if they make a "good faith" effort to make payments on their back bill.
This entails that delinquent customers notify the utility of their inability to pay their total bill, and after making an initial payment of $25 or 45 percent of their most recent bill, whichever is greater, they must work out a level payment plan for future bills.
In addition, the customers must make a payment equal to one-twelfth of their delinquent bill and work out a payment plan to pay off their bill over 12 months. The utilities must also tell their customers about federal, state and local programs offering financial assistance for back bills.
The cold weather shutoff policy will not solve the problem of rising utility costs, but it is at least a concrete plan that will insure low-income Kansans that they won't have to face the cold winter without heat.
Drugs and baseball
Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Leo Gehrig — they were American heroes and adored by pee wee players who just knew that someday they too would be belting homers in the big leagues.
The legends of baseball, shrouded in the same type of myths that told of the happenings of Hercules and other gods, go back a long way. The baseball myths were passed down in the big print of those sports books given to us as youngsters. Although the stories were rooted in truth, society attached a glory to them, and the result was a rich history and even richer folklore. It was America's sport; it was baseball.
We read of the Iron Man's struggle against an incurable disease. We read about the pudgy Ruth pointing to the stands with his bat and a few moments later placing the ball in that very spot.
But the legends are fading
We now read about drug use and
bitter disputes over pay. What's worse, the youngsters now dirtying their pants on the diamond of the neighborhood ballpark are reading the same thing.
Money became a bigger part of sports than competition, and some of the players no longer just chewed tobacco but started taking somewhat harder drugs — one of them, cocaine.
We can understand it now. We're not so naive to think that all ballplayers have that clean-cut image. But what about the youngsters? Perhaps society is wrong for setting up sports figures as heroes for children. But, regardless, millions of kids look to those players as role models.
That, the players must realize. Even if they are just in it for the money, they must realize the responsibility of being heroes. To do otherwise brings shame to themselves and to their sport.
A royal performance
The Royal Lichtenstein Circus is gone now, and those who worked in its "giant one-quarter ring" are in another town, practicing their complementary magic for other people. This note of thanks doublelessly won't catch up with them as they wander across the Midwest, and most certainly won't be handy in 1986, when the circus next comes to town. But that doesn't really matter.
Such an attitude is refreshing for one of the University's regular troubadours. How many of us have been called "sinners," "sluts," or worse by fanatical preaching evangelists of the likes of "Holy Hubert" or Jed Smock?
And although the troupe of entertainers is led by a priest, Nick Weber, they don't make a point, as Weber says, of "bumming people out on religion."
The Royal Lichtenstein Circus performs for everyone everywhere. They park their three trucks in front of Watson Library and put on a show. They park them on the corners of inner-city streets, surrounded by bums and winos, and put on a show. They park them in school playgrounds, city parks, farmers' fields — anywhere — and put on a show.
The Lichtenstein method is low key, gladly trading in smiles and laughter rather than taunts and proselytization. They unpacked here Sunday night, put on a show Monday morning and packed up Monday afternoon, all the while doing nothing but making people happy.
That says a lot.
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 300 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 research position in office or staff. 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.
LETTERS POLICY
KU REMEMBERS.
Abusing the death penalty
BERKELEY, Calif. — Events have conspired lately to give the death penalty a bad name.
First, revival of the electric chair in Alabama was fouled up by technical difficulties. It took three pulls of the switch to carry out the first death warrant there in 20 years. Then the hanging of three black nationalists convicted of bombings in South Africa incited international controversy. And a couple of women dismembered when a stay was inspected minutes before a scheduled Texas execution.
Capital punishment, like any other instrument of state power, can be misused. But what does that prove? We have learned a great deal from the Soviet Union's abuse of the state "mental health" process, but only a fool would say the we must close our mental hospitals because they abuse theirs. Isn't criticism of the death penalty similarly misdirected? No.
Of course, South Africa is not alone. Its African neighbors execute
Sometimes you can judge the morality of a practice by the company it keeps: Executions hang out in the world's seedy neighborboks. Indeed, contrasting those with the more genteel ones, punishment with those that abstain is a course in moral geography we cannot ignore.
A recent Amnesty International survey of capital punishment provides an excellent starting point for such a tour. South Africa's hangings, for example, were far from an aberration. That country is listed as one of the world leaders in executions, averaging well more than 50 a year. Of the 132 persons executed in 1978, one was white.
with some regularity, as do other Third World nations. Military troops provide new opportunities for the death penalty in many countries, with responsibilities of both left and right find common ground in capita punishment.
Many nations are understandably reluctant to acknowledge widespread execution, including the Soviet Union and China. Other countries would have difficulty sorting out when informal government killing shades into officially sanctioned execution.
Still, the officially reported patterns do speak forcefully to the contrast between countries that execute and those that do not. The
FRANKLIN ZIMRING
Acting Director of the Earl Warren
Legal Institute ___
community of developed Western nations shows wide variation in laws regarding capital punishment but is nearly unanimous in avoiding execution. Only three of 15 reporting nations in Western Europe reported any executions during the 1970s — France, Greece and Turkey. The trend is clearly toward abolition of the death penalty.
Two non-executing nations merit special attention because of provocations they have endured without resort to capital punishment. Israel exists in fear of external force and domestic terror, and its government can hardly be regarded as softhearted; yet not since Adolf Eichmann has the prospect of an execution been real. West Germany
has a special legacy of governmental violence; yet its citizens suffered through a decade of kidnapping and bombing before being asked to fight fire with fire.
But what if Western Europe is wrong and proponents of execution are right? It is not unprecedented for consensus policy to be misguided. Might this be another mistake?
It is possible that the Scandinavians have missed out on a policy to enhance the social value of human life. But it is possible that Idi Amim's Uganda had embraced one? Are they here where we should be taking instruction from South Korea and other offenders?
The correlation between capital punishment and governmental human rights violations is so strong that the list of actively executing countries matches the offenders on other scorecards concerning torture and political repression. Can this be a coincidence? Or have we stumbled on a shorthand method of taking a society's moral temperature?
Much of the rhetoric in favor of revival of execution in America seems simultaneously arid and provincial, a species of neobarbarian chic. And the pattern of enforcement is intricate from law of political economy: Capital punishment thrives only where life is cheap.
Copyright 1983 the New York Times Franklin Ziming, on leave from the University of Chicago, is acting director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute at the University of California at Berkeley.
Senators can't hide records
WASHINGTON — Within the confines of the Senate, Alan Cranston, Ernest Hollings and Gary Hart are well-known figures.
But what these three U.S. senators have found, despite hustling around the country for almost a year, is that nobody really knows them.
Which brings into question, once again, whether the Senate can serve as a springboard for those ambitions enough to seek the presidency.
John Glenn, the fourth senator seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, is, of course, well known around the land.
But his name recognition does not stem from nearly 10 years in the Senate where he has achieved no more probably less, than Cranston,
Name recognition — as all four have found out — is invaluable at this stage of the campaign.
Gleem is known, rather, as the first astronaut to orbit Earth and it is more accurate to say his political views are similar to Camerau. Fla., not the Senate.
To a great extent, it dictates the standings in the polls and the polls, in turn, determine to a great extent
STEVE GERSTEL
United Press International
such campaign foundations as endorsements, the ability to get the best state organizers and most of all, the infusion of money
Nothing proves the point more than the late entry of George McGovern into the race. He may be remembered most for his disastrous loss in 1972 but remembered he is, and now runs third in the polls.
So, is the Senate a good spring board for the nomination? No.
The last senator to win a nomination was McGovern, the one before him was Barry Goldwater and before him John Kennedy Others, with congressional service in their pedigrees, have reached the White House, but not directly from the Senate or the House.
In 1980 alone, Howard Baker of Tennessee, Bob Dole of Kansas and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts met at the nomination from the Senate.
Senators can, with little trouble, absent themselves to go about the task of campaigning. What they can't escape, however, is their fear of being seen.
Even this early in the campaign, Cranston and Glenn have had to explain over and over their votes for President Reagan's three-year tax plan of a package that had many parts Democrats would support.
Recent indications are that not holding office — free to campaign for four years — may be the best option, but the campaigns grow ever longer.
Jimmy Carter won the Democratic presidential nomination and the White House in 1976 as an unemployed former governor.
That lesson appears not to have been lost on Baker. The Senate's Republican leader had announced he would retire when his term expired at the end of next year and that he was prepared to mount a four-year campaign for the GOP nomination in 1988.
Clark should bone up on geography
WASHINGTON — William Clark is bound to face some tough questioning at Senate confirmation hearings on a reintroduction assignment as secretary of interior
2018. 04.19 13:57:56
Opponents of the outgoing national security adviser surely will remember when his nomination as deputy state of came up for approval.
At that time, Clark displayed what some detractors considered a weak grasp of world affairs, being unable, among other things, to identify the leaders of certain African nations.
During his days at the State Department, and since joining the White House staff, he presumably became more intimately acquainted with international issues. Now, environmentalists are challenging his qualifications for the interior post.
For example, an official of the National Audubon Society, referring to President Reagan's description of Clark as a "God-fearing Westerner" and fourth-generation rancher," explores the impact of a ranch and understanding ecology are not exactly the same thing.
Part of the problem, I believe, is attire. Clark doesn't always dress
in conventional style for the role he plays in government.
Had he appeared at his previous confirmation hearings in striped pants, his appointment to a diplomatic position would, I am convinced, have sailed through the Senate with hardly a word of dissent.
DICK WEST
United Press International
That way, over ham and eggs, or whatever God-fearing Westerners eat in the morning, he could bone un on internal geography.
Next time, he is likely to be more appropriately clad.
Clark, as well is known, is fond of wearing cowboy boots. Footwear of that type is certain to create an impression of utility to run the Interior Department.
Nevertheless, confirmation hearings by the Senate Energy and National Resources Committee could be rough.
Before testifying as a Cabinet nominee, Clark might be wise to have breakfast at one of those restaurants where the food is served on the grounds of the United States showing the locations of all the state capitals.
At the State Department, and as national security adviser, Clark didn't necessarily need to know where there is the capital of South Dakota.
His primary concerns in his previous administration jobs were overseas or south of the border.
At the Interior Department, however, the outlook is more domestic and Clark will have all sorts of intramural controversies and will be a type of information committee members will be testing him on:
- In what state is Jackson Hole,
Wyo.?
- What is a snail darter?
- What is an antelope?
- What kind of fuel was involved in Teapot Dome drilling leases?
* Why is this important?
- What is the difference between yellow rain and acid rain?
- What does smog come from?
If Clark is going to speak for the president on environmental matters, he will need to know that trees are a prime cause of air pollution. Probably nothing in his previous experience has prepared him for that.