University Daily Kansan
Thursday, September 22.1977
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unaged editorialists represent the opinion of the Kansas editorial staff. Signed column represents only the views of the writers.
Free press triumphs
Freedom of the press won another victory — albeit a small one — at the University of Kansas Tuesday night.
The Student Senate Communications Committee defeated a bill that would have recommended that the University Daily Kansan run a regular column written by the Senate about the Senate. The Kansan's punishment for refusing to run the column, presumably, could have been loss of Senate funding.
funding.
A Senate-produced column, the bill said,
would help educate students about the Senate
and insure that its activities were well-publicized.
punctified.
Stripping away the euphmism, the bill would have meant that the Senate could use its powers of allocating student activity fees to dictate how student organizations use the money. Requesting that the Kansan run a Senate-approved column while holding a monetary tax over the Kansan's head in the face of the request would be more painful in the face of the commitment; it would be a precedent that could allow the Senate to spell out how other activity fee-funded organizations run their ships.
ships.
THE SENATE could seriously consider such a bill, because of the role that student activity fees play in financing the Kansan. Each year the Kansan receives an allocation — 680,600 this year — from activity fee funds. This allocation is, of course, only a part of the Kansan's budget. But it is a healthy part.
In return, students receive a daily
newspaper, run by and for students, on campus five days a week.
campus livre. The Senate effectively determines how larger activity fee allocation the Kansan receives each year. The bill requiring publication of a Senate column was a step toward using the power of the dollar to control the Kansan.
control the凯萨 On the other hand, this is dangerous enough. The Kaisan is the strongest watchdog of the Student Senate. But the underlying implications are even more dangerous.
plications are even more important. What would stop the Senate from placing strings on its allocations to, say, the Commission on the Status of Women or the Campus Veterans? They too would be vulnerable.
AND IF THE Senate fears that its activities are not well publicized, the fears are infounded. As one of the committee members remarked wryly Tuesday, it sometimes seems that the Kansan publishes a story every time a senator sneezes.
In the first 17 issues of the Kansas this fall, there were 20 stories about the Student Senate. The glare of public light indeed shines on our student leaders.
shines on our student leader.
To put the mandatory-column bill in perspective, it should be noted that the legislation was proposed last spring and left dormant over the summer. It reappeared this fall only because all bills that were not disposed of last spring were automatically reborn this fall.
In its first crack at the bill, the Com-
munifications Committee killed it. Students
must hope that no similar bills pop up again.
The skylight of Lawrence has been disfigured by a 180-foot communications tower that the people of Lawrence do not want.
The tower rises far above the golden valley, dwarfing the city of Douglass. It stands as a last tribute to the city commissioners who first opposed it and then bowed in respect to Douglas County commissioners.
County commissioners are responsible for placing the tower at its site in the parking lot outside the Enforcement Center, Eleventh and New Hampshire streets. The justification is that the county's Emergency Operations Center needs the tower.
Last April the tower was steepe in controversy. The Lawrence City Commission and the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission jointly approved county commissioners to allow construction of the tower at the judicial building site.
tower.
The tower was raised last week. It will give the county a backup radio system if normal police and county communications are knocked out during a disaster.
THE CITY commissioners objected to the tower's height. It is, after all, eight stories high. Residents of the judicial building obstructed the entrance of the tower and echoed the commissioners' objections.
But the city eventually yielded to the county. When planning commissioners asked whether the tower could be moved to another location, county commissioners
New tower is bitter reminder
"Well, Hildy," mumbles the man as his wife shuts the door. "Did you get the sweetner for my tea?"
Saccharin is buyer's business
It's an old home. An aroma of canned fruit and afghans filters through the air. As the front door is opened from the outside, the elderly man house is creeping in desperate for his favorite chair, the one with the worn-out upholstery.
"Good Lord, Hildy," retorts the old man. "What's it gonna be? Cancer or diabetes? Cancer or diabetes? Don't you know that saccharin is the only artificial swetterer left on the market for the millions of diabetics like me?"
"No, Leo," sighs a winded Hilly. "I decided not to. I guess all those nasty reports about how saccharin causes cancer and how Jimmy wants to put warnings on everything that contains it have gotten the better of me."
"Leave her out of this, Leo," demands Mildly. "Hides, she's not fat. She's just got calcium deposits. Lots of them."
"AND DON'T forget the dieters who want a sugar substitute. Like your teacher the girls in the cafeteria, you热 so hot hot cats for saccharin."
Rick Tbaemert
Editorial Writer
"Hildy, I just read that more than 35,000 people a year die of diabetes. Do you want me to become a statistic, Hildy? Well, that's probably what would happen if you stopped buying my sweetener just because you're going to die in the box. Those warnings are malarky, Hildy. Nobody pays attention to them. Do you think people who buy cigarette stock stop buying cigarettes? Oh, Wogash, Hildy. They just want to rip it open and start puffing away."
LEO PLOPS himself in his chair and offers a "Why me?" glance to the heavens.
"Go ahead and pout, Lep. It don't do you any good. As long as there is, or is going to be, a warning on products, I'm not going to buy them. You can if you like, but I'm not going to be accused of nailing your coffin when you bite the dust."
"What in the Sam Hill has gotten into your brain, woman?" Leo musts himself to a stance, once again. His
dagger-like glare is unending. "I've had saccharin for years. Do I have cancer? No. Do I look like I am not the victim, I am not because of that. Saccharin has been good to me, and I'm not going to chuck it aside because some studies suggest it could cause cancer, not that it did."
"DO YOU remember what those studies were about, Hildy? In Canada, they took a bunch of bats and shoved saccharin down their gullets until they croaked. And they found that rats ate the meat. But they were rats, Hildy Little fuzzy rats. And except for your brother, Dingus, people are not rats."
"Then why is Sen. Edward Kennedy so concerned. Today he told the press that to not put a mask on would outsize it was going against every health official in the country. You believe Sen. Kennedy, despite his good family. Everybody believes Sen. Kennedy."
"I don't," grumbles Leo
"I haven't proved anything
about cancer in humans. In
fact, they have proven that
they can determine that anything
causes cancer. It is an
unpredictable disease. Marriage
"LISTEN TO this warning they're going to put on saccharin products. It says, 'Warning: This product contains saccharin. Use of this product may increase your risk of developing cancer. What do you say to that?'
"Tell the animals that wander into the grocery store, Hildy. They're the ones who should worry."
could cause it for all we know. It causes drinking, I know that for sure."
"Don't you have any scraps, Leo?" without a smile. "TV radio and magazines, they will sween themselves to an early grave."
LEO SETTLES himself into his chair like a bird in a nest.
"Ain't nobody gonna tell me what I should or shouldn't buy, Hildy. It's my boat. I'll sail it how I please. Now why don't you run back over my coat, saccharin, okay? And while you're there, buy me some apricots. I have the pits with my tea."
"Hilly, there's too many commercials already. Advertising that tells people what's good for them are about as nauseating as Mrs. Olson's coffee pedaling.
John Mueller
Editorial Writer
responded by arguing that such a move could increase by $50,000 the cost of buying and installing the tower. The purchase cost was $3,622, about what the county had expected to spend.
Despite the wishes of neighborhood residents, city officials approved the tower in May after deciding that it complied with Lawrence's comprehensive land-use plan. The approval ignored how the tower changes the character of
THAT THE TOWER conforms to a land-use plan is a firmly justification for its existence near the judicial building. Mere repair should not replace reason when officials make decisions.
the neighborhood by overwhelming its existing buildings and aesthetics.
The lower illustrates a bitter fact about city government: People who try to influence it often accomplish nothing. Every time Lawrence city commissioners think about ignoring the views of those elected them, they should look at the one communications tower. Then they will remember the time they slighted their constituents because of ill-considered pressure from the government of Douglas County.
The tower is an eyesore. Its location is attributable to the fiscal conservatism of county commissioners whose concern for dollars does not always make sense.
officials. The next time the county tries to cram an unacceptable project down the throats of people in Lawrence, what will guarantee continued city opposition to the project?
No one is questioning the value of having the tower. But building it near the heart of downtown Lawrence raises
questions about the relationship between the city and county governments. Can a county legitimately deny a city its right to develop as it wants to be developed because it lacks right to live in a neighborhood that looks the way they want it to look?
BY BACKING down on the tower issue, the city has been saddled with an unattractive lemon. But more importantly, it may have set a precedent for future relations with county
Most taxpayers want their elected representatives to save money. They do not, however, vote. Most voters are made solely to save money.
Honor societies no honor now
To the Editor:
Letters
If alumni pressure did indeed influence these decisions, these
It's distressing to see Sachem Circle and the Owl Society vote to continue discriminating in a ridiculous arbitrary manner. Sex is a genetically determined trait that has no bearing on scholastic accomplishment or community service. I assume that Sachem and the Owl Society stress these two factors when considering members of our community, but have every right to limit themselves by sex. However, this limitation renders them relevant as an honor society for people who can roll their sleeves on you to protest against your on the back, tell each other that you're not, but don't expect to be taken seriously.
groups have all the more reason to be proud. They have shown remarkable skill in compromising their alleged intelligence and conscience in monetary markets by "documentation" that can be given for continuing human sacrifices or refusing to use a telephone.
too. I suggest he reconsider his participation in this light. Debra Watson
These two groups can go their merry way, without affecting anyone else. However, Chancellor Archie Dykes, with the Sachem Circle, implies University support. He is a representative of the University of Kansas during the war and performs public functions. Unfortunately, what he does in private groups is scrutinized
Debra Watson Nashville senior
Bakke case is irrelevant To the Editor:
The Bakke case should have no bearing on decisions made concerning KU's affirmative action concerns and therefore such a peculiar case as the Bakke one has been chosen to determine the fate of affirmative action cases may be determined by such an unusual case.
We at KU-Y are increasingly concerned that all affirmative action plans will be called into question in light of this particular case. We deplore this situation and we believe action plans will not need revision after the Court hands down its decision in the Bakke case. So, now is the time to consider the best way to take action plan. And, it is the opinion of the KU-Y that they should be included.
Bill Wise KU-Y board member
Punishing with time creates prickly problems
By DAVID J. ROTHMAN
N.M. Films Features
The case was typical—armed robbery with three prior felony convictions—and so was the outcome. Two judges and a probation officer were involved in their discussion limited to a succession of numbers: 20 years; no, 12 years; would 16 be right? The decision was 14 years, just for such a crime and record.
But try to translate this exchange into everyday terms, and the fantastic nature of
what yardstick did the participants follow as they debated time? Were they thinking in terms of length or of length of schooling? Or military service? And what did the legislature that drew up the statutes have in mind? Did 14 years represent the majority of students for mortgage or half the work years to earn a pension?
criminal-justice proceedings becomes immediately apparent.
MOST OF US structure our world of time in very brief two-
And whether one believes the purpose of punishment is incapacitation (to rid the streets of troublemakers) or commensurate deserts (giving criminals a reprieve, if deserved) the problem of calibrating time remains no less difficult.
Yes, yes. serious crimes should carry more time than minor ones. But where should the scale begin and end? How long
or three-year segments. But in the world of criminal justice, time seems to move to its own special but obscure rhythm.
Yes, serious crimes should carry more time than minor ones. But where should the scale begin, and end? How long is long enough?
is long enough? How is one to equate time and crime?
THE BASIC issue of deciding appropriate lengths of sentences mostly has been ignored. And this failure is not a matter of course. American sentences, paradoxically enough, are two to three times greater than those set in other languages, and the time actually served is longer. Europeans generally dish out time in tablespoonfuls, we use buckets. This time-conscious approach is often upon entering the courtroom.
Because the question is at once so fundamental and troubling or perhaps because the question is so unreal, the current debates on sentencing have avoided if吸附 has focused on disparities among judges passed by different judges and on the arbitrary nature of indeterminate, minimum-maximum sentences that allow parole boards to fix dates.
We were the first country to equate time with punishment. In the decades immediately following the revolution, legislatures eager to substitute republic humanitarianism for
British barbarism, dramatically reduced the number of capital crimes. Penitentiary terms replaced the gallows.
However, legislators were nervous about the venture. When they set the first sentences, the death penalty was very much in their minds. So if murder once brought execution, now it carried life, and the penalty moved from the scale penalty downstream. Arson brought 20 assault, 10. These terms might seem long, but from the vantage point of the death penalty they were lenient.
OVER THE next century and a half, new justifications emerged, but long sentences remained the rule. In the pre-Civil War decades, reformers took to a rigorous prison routine (the lockstep, steady labor, pervasive stress) and rehabilitated inmates. They established to legislators that, each lesson took time to learn and that sentences should not fall below five years.
And in the post-Civil War decades, as immigrants filled urban ghats with foreigners, no one was ready to shorten sentences. At best the
allen was a frightening figure,
at worst, he should remain
locked up as long as possible.
Beginning in 1900, and persisting until the 1707s, progressive reformers—the inventors of the indeterminate sentence and parole—applied the standard of therapeutic time to criminal justice, and it was a highly elastic standard.
TRUSTING THE skills of psychiatrists and social workers to adjust the deviant, they were prepared to ignore the clock and the calendar and for release only upon cure.
Minimum and maximum terms were their concessions to political and constitutional objections. If they had their way, all sentences would have been one day to trial, criminal or legal reformers; no one told a doctor when to discharge a patient and no one should tell a parole board when to release an inmate.
Just when American society is becoming so precise in its everyday use of time, when people are shaving seconds off a work sequence and men and horses were racing not only against each other but also very nebulous and flud notion of time into sentencing.
C
AND THEY ALSO created large-scale scaffold. In some jurisdiction, *prison* is a place for the expiration of the minimum term; in
An tary se heart Elem e depair and r of Kar
others, at two-thirds of the minimum; in still others, one-third of the maximum.
Whether the current reaction against indeterminate sentences and the ethics of rehabilitation is more effective than reconstruction of the criteria in punishment remains unclear.
Leo that began medic
N h
The impr
diseas
it.
Some propensities of fixed sentences intend to shorten time, but the goal remains, to have an accurate hidden item on their agenda. Others, I suspect, believe that legislators in revising sentencing will actually be more likely as they readily did in California.
Ha mach Sayl Serv fall.
ALL THE WHILE, the public remains whileed. It assumes incorrectly that the "real" term in an indeterminate sentence is prior release on parole is coddling the criminal. And the public has never been able to figure out how a life sentence can be vague and inflated nature of time in the indeterminate
sentence has made it seem cheap and worthless.
The arguments on types of sentences had better directly confront the matter of lengths of sentences in our language. We are attempting to reform our reforms. Furthermore, we should rationalize time in criminal justice to bring our intellectual sense of it into focus.
It is doubtful whether any of the purposes of punishment, even incapacitation, are served much better by a 10-year rather than by a one- or two- or three-year sentence.
We need more ideas about community corrections and community mental health, of reintegrating the deviant into society. We ought to think too of community time, of reintegrating our codes and courtrooms into society.
David J. Rothman, professor of history at Columbia, is completing a book on induction and its alternatives.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas daily August 29, 1958. Subscriptions are valid until July and January except Saturday. Sunday and holiday subscriptions are valid from April 30 to June 6th. Subscriptions by mail must be a member or $12. Membership is an annual fee. A year outside the country. Student subscriptions are free. A year outside the country. Student subscriptions are free.
Editor Jerry Selb
Business Managet Judy Lohr