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Wednesday, September 27, 1989 / University Dally Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
U.S. congressmen deserve pay raise after hard work
It's that time of year again for discussion of congressional pay raises. Instead of beating around the bush, congressmen should just take the plunge and give themselves the raise. Any displeased Americans should take a step back and rethink the situation.
Most congressmen do not lead extravagant lives. Their weeks are filled with long days and their weekends are even longer if they return to their district. The concept of 9 to 5 does not exist. As public servants, they have to on their toes 365 days a year. Their weeks are spent on Capitol Hill legislating, and their weekends are spent in their home districts campaigning.
Congressmen work hard. They have bills to pass, constituents to please and families to support. It is not uncommon for congressmen to maintain a household in the Washington, D.C., area and in their hometown. One of the reasons many of them keep their home in their district is to remain close to their constituents and in touch with their needs. You can bet if a congressman rarely returned to his district, he wouldn't be reelected.
Opponents are quick to point out all the perks that go along with a congressman's job, such as travel allowances, honorariums, a nice retirement plan and free medical care. However, opponents are not as quick to look at the job at its face value. Only a good public servant who exhibits dedication to his job and constituents is re-elected. And one who exhibits such dedication is worthy of receiving reasonable compensation for his service.
The fear of political ramifications has prolonged this issue to the point that it is a nuisance. Congressmen fearing the wrath of the electorate just keep sweeping the issue under the rug. We all know it's going to keep surfacing until the raise is approved.
The time used for deliberation is a waste of everybody's time and money. Let the deliberation end and let's keep our elected officials on their toes by keeping only the deserving ones in office.
Kathy Walsh for the editorial board
Libraries can censor books, but ideas can't be controlled
Garfield is on the run.
The popular cartoon feline has been chased from the shelves of the children's section of the Saginaw, Mich., library.
of the children's section of the Sagawn, Mien, library.
Banned Book Week, Sept. 23 through Sept. 30, has been organized across the country to call our attention to the problem of books being banned.
Other books listed as being threatened by the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee include:
▶ “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain.
▶ “The Lord of the Flies.” by William Golding.
▶ The Lord of the Flies, by William Gold
"Of Mice and Men," by John Steinbeck
▶ "The Bell Jar," by Sylvia Plath
▶ "Brave New World," by Aldous Hu
Drive In World, by Russell Hankey
▶ "The Catcher in the Rye," by J. D. Salinger
The people who want to ban these books are scared. They are scared that people will think and act differently from themselves. We want us to all think alike — just like them.
They are also arrogant. Arrogant enough to think that they can make choices for all of us.
To the student and teacher banned books represent a roadblock on the road to knowledge. To deny the student exposure to all sides of an issue not only denies the student freedom, but also insults intelligence and assumes that the student is not mature enough to make rational decisions concerning beliefs.
What can we, as part of the academic community, do about the banning of books? We can remember.
Remember the past and the previous abuses of our rights of expression. Remember when you leave the University that you may not be able to express your academic freedom as easily as you did here. Don't sit blindly by while other people make decisions for you.
And, to those who wish to control we read, you can ban the books, but you can't ban the ideas.
Brett Brenner for the editorial board
News staff
David Stewart ... Editor
Ric Brack ... Managing editor
Daniel Niemi ... News editor
Candy Nieman ... Planning editor
Stan Diel ... Editorial editor
Jennifer Corseur ... Campus editor
Elaine Bung ... Sports editor
Laura Huar ... Photo editor
Stephen Kline ... Graphics editor
Christine Winner ... Art/Features editor
Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Linda Prokop ... Business manager
Debra Martin .. Local advertising sales director
Jerre Medford .. National/regional sales director
Jill Lowe .. Marketing director
Tami Rank .. Production manager
Carrie Stantinak .. Assistant production manager
Cooper Townsend
Eric Hughes .. Creative director
Christi Dool .. Classified manager
Jeff Meesey .. Tearnets manager
Jeanne Hines .. Sales and marketing adviser
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Melville a challenge for censorship
Censorship is a lively topic right now.
September 23rd through the 30th has been designated Banned Book Week '89. There is the local story about the court ruling that gave control of the Haskell Indian Junior College newspaper, The Indian Leader, to the Haskell students and forbade the prior review or restraint of any of the paper's content by anyone not on the paper's staff. There is a nationwide furor about the sponsorship of the book, which it contains of a controversial photographic exhibit that contained sado-masochistic and sacrilegious images.
All of this has set me to thinking about censorship and our society's outlook on children.
My first experience with official censorship occurred at the parochial school where I spent the formative years spanning late elementary and junior high school. I chose Herman Mellville's epic Moby Dick for a fifth grade book report because my teacher ruled out the possibility of a report on a Hardy Boys mystery. Although I was daunted by the novel's length, and Melville's habit of pausing at length to instruct the reader in all matters relating to mid-19th century whalers and their trade, the power of the narrative and its characters was irresistible. I read the book with some difficulty, wrote the report with great difficulty and commenced to easier fare.
However, a classmate who checked out the book after I did was apparently offended by Melville's inclusion of such imprecations as "damn," and "in God's name." These entries are about as profane as any that Melville's dialogue lets us hear, and they recall the years of most 10-year-old innery kids. Vastly miserable were the maledictions that Melville's writing allowed me to furnish for myself:
"But what is it that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of his — these words best omitted here; for you live under the blessed light of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the
Stuart Beals
Staff columnist
adacious seas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of red murder, and foam-glued lilah. Ahab leaped after his prey.³
It's doubtful that my classmate's scorched sensibilities were in any condition to assist Melville here. The cited passages were virulent enough to be reported to the teacher, who soon confronted me with the offending text and sternly asked why I hadn't alerted him myself. His was as cold as mine, a failure of his realization. In this man's estimation, I was an accomplice with Melville in the promulgation of heresy.
The teacher's attitude betrayed the other side of censorship, the fear of others' agency and self-determination. Censors recognize that ideas enable and empower people to act autonomously. Those who would control others' behavior must either suspend access to different ideas and experience or modify that experience with "information" designed to alter the subject's perception of it. Another anecdote concerning the same teacher illustrated this to me the following year.
It fell to this man to instruct and counsel the presumably prepubertal male sixth-graders in the matters of sexuality and reproduction. One day the boys were ushered into, ironically, the school library for the anticipated lecture. For the most part the teacher dissembled; he skirted around the salient aspects of anatomy and function, and concentrated on the durable allegory of our bodies comprising the corporeal temple of God. I recall only one concrete reference to sexual activity,
when he gravely assured us that the unrestrained practice of masturbation would infallibly turn the self-abuser into a hunchback.
As it turned out, either the school elders were unaware of the tendency of succeeding generations to reach puberty at an ever younger age, or the prospect alarmed them into a temporary but fateful denial phase. Because of this miscalculation, many, if not all, in the teacher's audience that day had for some time been equipped to test his hunchback hypothesis with empirical rigor.
In the meantime, they appropriated a discarded plywood camel figure that had been used in a staging of the Story of the Three Wise Men. They embellished it with a confiding wink and the title, "Humpbacks," and smuggled the ersatz mascot to the next softball game with a rival school.
Because of these and similar experiences I now invariably invoke the term "parochial" in a pejorative rather than neutrally descriptive sense, and I mistrust those who appear to arrogate to themselves the authority to interpret what is orthodox, and what is heterodox and thereby by definition heretical.
On the other hand, as a parent I'm sympathetic to the notion that some, who are by nature at once more impressionable and less autonomous, ought to be protected from those who are more powerful and would exploit or even brutalize them.
That is, it seems to me that the rest of us have the responsibility and obligation to make judgments about the kinds of actions, and yes, ideas that may harm those in our care.
Looking back, I can acknowledge these motivations in my teacher. The trick, and the eternal challenge, seems to be how I can discharge that responsibility without slipping into the reflexive posture of the censor.
> Stuart Beals is a Lawrence graduate student in journalism.
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Black, but why not White?
The Kansan has devoted quite some space to the issue of racism so far this year. I would like to call attention to a racist practice of the Kansan: the practice of calling a person of African descent "Black" while calling an essentially homogenized person "white."
Would capitalizing "white"
carry connotations that the Kansan
supports "White" as in "white
Supremacy?" I think not. Then
why does this discrimination
exist? Only the Kansan can
answer, and it must answer
honesty!
It is already a handicap to be white. We have the dullest ethnic heritage of any group, although that comes directly from our entropic diversity (within whiteness). That diversity should be
recognized as in step with KU's recent "Celebrate Diversity" theme. Unfortunately, I have seen no such recognition.
Maybe, in the future, people will see white as White, a word not to trample on, but to smile at, along with Black, Hispanic, Native American and every other Capitalized ethnic group.
Rob Johnson
Wichita freshman
Sexism a two-wav street
Irony – utter irony — abounds. All too often, people become so worried about offending one group that they unknowingly offend another. The University of Kansas seems to have become the latest example.
Apparently, KU hired fourteen women in order to make the number of males and females on the staff a bit more equal. If these fourteen were hired because they were the most qualified, I'd be genuinely happy. I fear, however, that they were hired because of their gender. In trying to appear less discriminatory, KU decided to
Honestly, is this any better? Is it honorable to hire any person on the basis of gender, regardless of which gender it is? Is it morally right to appease one group by slighting another?
discriminate against men.
How about KU's hiring solely on the basis of qualification? If a man is best qualified, hire him! If a woman is best qualified, hire her! But preferential hiring can only be the same filth discrimination. The only difference is that racism. The difference hides this fifth under the guse of goodness and fairness: "Hire a woman before you hire a man; otherwise, you'd be discriminating." How ironic. How sad.
Scott Gruhn
Scott Gruhn Anchorage, Alaska, senior
Paper too critical of KJHK Grow unl
The University Daily Kansan has, seemingly without shame or concern, gone after a "certain campus station." Now, to put this thing on a level playing field.
this station was in some trouble with the FCC concerning some donor announcements it had run. That was news, and it should have been covered. It was. Perhaps too well. There's a fine line between responsibility and ridicule. I think the Kanan has crossed it.
Habitually.
A recent cartoon that ran as part of the "Camp Unheyed" strip brings that point home. The cartoon made fun of the supposed viciousness of a reporter at this raid on a restaurant that cartoon. I deeply reitent it.
I keepy reciept it.
Let's remember that this radio station, as well as the Kansan, is a learning laboratory for future journalists. Mistakes will be made.
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Oh yes, the reason I haven't named the station is to show the less-than-honest approach used in the cartoon.
Michael Bell Topeka senior
CAMP UHNEELY
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BY SCOTT PATTY