4
Monday, December 7, 1970
University Daily Kansan
A
KANSAN comment
A Deeper Problem
In many complicated situations, it is easy to point an indignant moral finger at obvious problems—and in many of these situations an "instant conscience" can underline the glaring difficulty or most of the dissection within a particular institution.
Unfortunately, such temporal criticism often skims over the underlying causes of violence.
It would be superficial, then, to limit discussion of the Student Senate, and the more visible problems within that body, such as the lack of accountability and outcome of last Wednesday's meeting.
The controversial amendment to delete the senate's $169,000 subsidy to the Athletic Department (which passed) underscored much of the worst behavior and problems inherent in a body that drives many long hours laced with tedium.
A critical look at the Senate is needed.
but not a sweeping indictment that only accentuates the difficulties within the system.
The problems the Senate faces are real and can't be ignored. Attendance is low, meetings long, and everyone holds his breath on quorum calls. Interaction between senators and their constituents is the exception rather than the rule.
These problems are not insurmountable. But before solutions are proposed, this question should be considered:
Is the concept of representative democracy feasible or desirable on this campus, or any modern university?
In the coming months the question will be considered on this page—and some conclusions may perhaps be reached and examples presented to this most pressing issue.
Tom Slaughter
New Supreme Court Stance?
Kansan Staff Writer
Definitions of Pornography
By FRANK SLOVER
Censorship takes many guises. There is the censorship of certain political volumes from government libraries; the censorship imposed on journalists in court can face a little bias as possible; and the censorship each person has chosen or another left sitting on the shelf. The most renowned form of censorship, however, is that which addresses itself to porchography of men's clothing the man on the street in just which ways his blood can be stirred.
In the early days of this country the legal view of pornography was under the influence of British precedents and developments there
For the last 37 years the Supreme Court has been interpreting the law to allow more permissiveness in the publication of so-called popular literature, according to some. According to others, the Nixon Administration condemned the findings held by a politic for those same years. In October, however, the Nixon Administration condemned the findings of the Federal Commission on censorship and the Nixon administration's findings held that most American censorship laws should be repealed.
A trend of suppression and reached an apogee on Anthony Cockstock, who has been called "the embodiment of Protestantism" (Jones 2016).
He sawiev everywhere and his watchwords were “morals, not art or literature.” In 1873, he pushed through Congress a bill popularly called the Cormstock Act and was assigned as a special agent to the Post Office Department to enforce it. That act serves as a basis for the ownership in the United States and many of its provisions are still on the books to be revived every so often by an outraged citizenry.
Relations Program
Lawrence has before it a fragile operation involving some of the internal comfort.
The opportunity is in the form of a police-community relations program now being developed for the city by the Menninger Foundation of Topeka. The program would attempt to build understanding between the police and minority groups including blocks and the police officer's office, through confrontation and various educational methods. In the words of city manager Buford Watson, the ultimate goal is to project police officers as protectors rather than oppressors.
Unfortunately it appears that selfish interests are behind some of the opposition the program is now facing, as the community interests of everyone.
The Lawrence City Commission authorized $24,860 for the program three months ago but at this point, the program is staleed and in danger of being reduced to mere forms of minority groups whose participation is necessary to make the program work.
Leonard Harrison, director of the Ballard Center, and whose cooperation was sought, has said he believes Lawrence officials are responsible for calling his voice had no voice in its formation, and therefore blacks should not participate.
George Kimbail, a leader of the "street people" has claimed that those members of the "street community" who wish to participate in the program will
"jeopardize" the rest of the community. In Kimball's view, if police want to be known as protectors instead of oppressors, they can do the job themselves.
The city has had no previous human relations program for its police and therefore is looking to this program as a real way of increasing understanding and communication between the police and those who see them as oppressors.
In addition, in spite of the thousands of written words, reports, and pleas for change, the city has almost no other law concerning levying the tension and conflict of this year.
This program offers more hope, it would seem, than the recommendations of the Kansas attorney general, made following the two deaths last summer. His report, advocating for the police more riot control training leadership and advocacy, has been an important reorganization, emphasized force rather than understanding. The Menninger program would attempt to treat causes instead of symptoms.
It is, of course, impossible for every member of every group to be completely satisfied with this program, but at the moment, this is a way for Lawrence to make genuine progress in fighting blind prejudices on both sides. A perfect program with no disagreement from members would be tragic if a few selfish interests succeeded in making this great effort to reduce tension fail.
—Bob Womack
Bad Karma
The Jean Crain Astounding Revelation Award goes to Pope Paul VI. When he arrived in Manila during his Asian tour he said he came because God told him to. But after an earthquake on his life and an earthquake it didn't occur to that God might be telling him to go home.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
An All-American college newsnapper
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the summer, Mail subscription rates: a semester, $150; year-end, $299. Mail subscription rates vary by location, goods, services and employment advertised offered on campus. Origin expressed are not necessarily those of the origin. Obligations are not necessarily those of the origin. Obligations are not necessarily those of the origin.
Newsroom—UN 4-4810 Business Office—UN 4-4258
Washington Window
The answer is of some interest because the nation is making a move to avoid poverty defined on the basis of a minimum human diet. But it seems to be moving far less economically between the rich and the poor.
BY ARNOLD B.SAWISLAK WASHINGTON (UPI)—Who is poor in the United States?
the poor those who haven't got the money to buy enough food who have the least money compared to the rest of the
Since 1964, the government has used a food yardstick to measure poverty. It is based on the number of households that must spend more than one-third of total income to buy a subsistence diet is poor. By 1969, with price adjustments, a city family can afford an entire house considered non-poor.
Monroe Dodd
Kansan Telenhone Numbers
By ARNOLD B. SAWiSLAK
Under this definition, the number of Americans living in poverty rose from 24.3 million in 1960 to 24.5 million in 1968. Most politicians love those figures, because they obviously understand how poverty is on the way to solution.
New Measures of Poverty
There are some, however, who say the government has been far too easy on itself in defining the problem.
The National Welfare Rights Organization, for example, bases
"... the nation is making dramatic progress toward ending poverty defined on the basis of a minimum human diet."
its estimate of the minimum income needed for the necessities of life on a Labor Department calculation called the "lower standard budget." In 1980, that budget was $2,750, not counting medical care.
Anthony Downs, a leading private expert, points out in a article that the Committee or Economic Development that the Labor department also "reduces" the "moderate" standard of living. In 1968 prices,
--that came to $9,361 for the urban family of four.
Downs does not suggest that the "moderate" standard replace the official "poverty threshold," but comments that the nearly 90 percent of the men them shows that the government's definition of poor is "extremely low." Without giving figures he notes that a definition of poverty based on housing rather than food costs, done by the Department of Government in 1968, resulted in "much higher" minimums.
Mortal lerol, in a housing study for the Urban Institute, set $130 a month as a reasonable rental cost. The study noted that would represent 41 per cent of total income at the poverty threshold and leave less than a per week for food, transport and all other costs.
Another group of critics believes that the whole approach to defining poverty is weak. These analysts are interested in income distribution throughout the world, but poor those whose incomes are in the lowest 20 per cent of the national ranking.
Cornstock set out on a glut of restrictions and prompted George Bernard Shaw to coin the term "Constomcky" after his work "Mrs. Mrs." (1875).
Cornstock brought literature about *contraception* under his definition of pornography and in his persecution of this menace to the authorities.
After his death in 1915, he was succeeded by John S. Sumner, who could, perhaps, be called a literary bigot of a lower order. He is reported to have lacked the vindictiveness and cruelty of his predecessor.
In 1929 the Boston case involving "Lady Chatterley's Lover" may be seen as marking the beginning of the thaw. It forced the Massachusetts abscessity law to change the wording of its clause, which states that a patient must have obscene, indecent language" to "a book which is obscene, indecent."
The landmark case occurred in 1933 and involved the novel "Ulysses" by James Joyce. It is seen as the turning point against (conspiracy) theory.
In the majority opinion, Judge Woolsey introduced the concept of the intent with which the work was written and whether it would sexually arouse a normal person. The court was of the opinion that a book should be judged on its "dominant effect."
There are two areas in the dissemination of obesity. The first is that of law.
Works on science, medicine, physiology and sex education were excluded from the statute. Later decisions elaborated on the precedent and first excluded literature on contraception, then mudisi magazines.
From the Ulysses decision the court has tended to increase the freedom of expression in published literature. The expansion of this freedom is a result of the court's recent decision.
In the 1957 Roth Case, the Court broke away from the Hickin in order to adjust the intent of the publisher and set the precedent for variable case determination. The Supreme Court has now said that such a thing as hard-core copyright exists and that the First Amendment does not apply.
Hard-core pornography removes constitutional protection as does "pandering." In the Ginzipind Case, concerning his Eros magazine, the director of the publication is accused of distributing the publication should be halted. Currently, anything that is not "hard-core" or "pandered" comes under the protection of copyright.
Along with the law, obscurity is affected by the prescribed administrative procedures. The Post Office and the Customs Department are the two most important administrative agencies in obscurity. Customs has relaxed its vigilance somewhat since the Ulysses case and no longer bans books at random. Part of the reason may be that the government and not the aggrieved who must go to court to exclude books.
The Post Office has not followed the same pattern and uses a harder line. An example is Postmaster-General Winton Blount's effort to encourage people to put their names on a list saying that they do not wish to receive unsolicited smut.
One of the main issues in the case of obscene literature is whether or not one man can tell another man what to read. Hardly anybody, professors in particular, will say that one man should have that sort of question of militer, however, is a more delicate topic and around this issue is much debated.
David Heron, director of University libraries, says he sees the issue of children and pornography as "the most difficult question" and that such issues must be handled with sensitivity.
He says that even censorship for minors "must be done without hurting their chances to experience a part of our literary heritage." Her is leon of any sort of censorship and believes that "Most Americans don't know the dangers of censorship."
"The hazard of being deprived of something is much more subtle than that of reading smut, which most of us have seen and know what it is," he says. "Americans have never really been in wide-scale jeopardy from censorship."
As for the effect of pornography on youngsters, Heron cities the book, "Love and Death," by Gershon Legnman, which makes the point that talking about and seeing procreation is better for the young mind than being exposed to violence.
The question of whether exposure to pornography tends to incite sexual illegalities is another main censorship issue. The research in this area has not proven whether smug in any of its forms acts as an incentive to relievelibelious tension or tends to raise it toward a threshold.
Heron, admitting to librarian's bias, says he thinks that "most convincing authorities have indicated that it doesn't incite people."
"Worth says he thinks that the studies show nothing conclusive but that books are meant to stimulate people and it exhortation is the best way."
"There can be as much danger from sexual fanaticism as from antisexual fanaticism," he says.
Charles Keating, the sole Nixon appointee on the Commission, appeared on a CBS newscast just after the report was released and warned that its recommendations put into effect the American population at risk. "The president as the deputy who abolished all censorship laws some years ago," he
Worth was not sure that the Danish experience had been all bad but saw the possibility that problems could arise if sex took on a role.
If all the laws were repeated in this country "perhaps there would be an explosion of pent-up feelings after so many years of repression," he said, adding that Scandinavians may be better equipped than Americans to handle full sexual freedom.
Heron saw Keating's comment on the Danes as one man's opinion and the level of degeneracy among the people of that country as a challenge to his own authority.
The minority view, which pitted three commission members, Keating included, against its findings was logical, according to Heron. Keating's sentiments were known and the other two were "men of the club" had been active in censorship committees and organizations.
Del Brinkman, associate professor journalism, notes that "the point at which something becomes pornography has changed quite a lot."
He points out that to his knowledge no more state movie censorship bouris exist and that Kansas has been the first of the states to abolish it.
Obscenity laws are still on the books, he explains and a "dirty" book or movie can be sold or shown under the fear of prosecution against them.
Because these laws can be enforced, the censorship issue is sensitive to "the mood of the country," according to Brinkman, who sees the need to keep it under control.
This is not the kind of country of the early 1960s, which was characterized by a freewebeling, progressive mood. This mood was characterized by an unrestrained, free spirit.
Griff & the Unicorn
SO, HERE WE ARE, ADrift ON AN UNKNOWN SEA IN A ROWBOAT, WITH NO FOOD, MAP, OR CLEAN WATER... AND NO LAND IN SIGHT ...
By Sokoloff
"Copyright 1970, University Daily Kansan"