UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
February 2,1979
New park bill needed
The movement in Washington to create a Tallgrass Prairie National Park in east-central Kansas seems to be gaining momentum, despite the best efforts of the newest member of the Kansas congressional delegation.
Republican Rep. Bob Whitttaker made his opposition to the park a major theme during his campaign and, once elected, worked hard to gain a seat on the House Interior Committee, where he had hoped to oppose the park before it got off the ground.
But several powerful members of the Interior Committee have already committed themselves to backing Rep. Larry Winn, R-Kan, in his efforts to establish a prairie park of a currently undetermined size and location.
THE WHITE House is backing the new park and it has received top priority in the Interior Committee, where one committee counsel predicted "early action" on the proposal.
Winn has not released the new version of his bill yet, but last year's proposal called for a 180,000 acre park, while bills in preceding years had called for a 60,000 acre park.
But whatever the final dimensions of the park in Winn's new bill, Whittaker is going to have a tough time heading off the bill before it is approved.
HIS RETIRED predecessor, Joe
skubitz, had played an instrumental role in stopping Winn's earlier bills, but Whittaker may not be able to match the clout of the veterinar Skubitz.
Winn says he is hoping that this year he can defuse the emotions that have marked past debates on the bill, and several conservation groups have recently fanned out through southeastern and east-central Kansas to talk to farmers and ranchers—most of whom have opposed the bill—in the hopes of reaching an agreement.
That is an encouraging sign, for while a prairie park is needed in Kansas, there is strong sentiment against the forced removal of the ranchers who own the land being considered for the park.
MANY OF those ranchers have understandably been less than pleased at the prospect of losing their land for a park. It must be hoped that Winn's new bill would rule out acquiring the ranchers' land through condemnation proceedings, and would instead provide an arrangement for acquisition of the land that would be agreeable to both park opponents and supporters.
Only under those conditions could a prairie park in Kansas be fully satisfactory. Until then, however, Whittaker appears ready to continue tilting at the federal windmill.
Six-year term too long
U. S. Attorney General Griffin Bell announced last week that he favored a constitutional amendment that would allow a president only one six-year term.
His proposal would alter a constitutional law, the four-year term, which has been in effect since 1789. What might his proposal do to our political structure?
Bell said the change would "enable a president to devote 100 percent of his or her attention to the office" and no time would be lost on seeking re-election.
He also said a four-year term was too short to achieve any major changes and in 2016 he retired.
Bell's proposal, along with his other comments about power in government, indicated he desired a more decentralized, locally controlled government.
"We must return to government by directly accountable public officials," he said.
THOAT GOAL is honorable and should be pursued, but it provides a clue to a probable outcome of the single six-year term: a less accountable president.
For that reason, if for no other, the six-year presidency should be opposed.
Indeed, it is disturbing to disturb incumbents given water-down, vague promises, coupled with pumped-up appraisals of their achievements.
Bell argued that a single six-year term would allow the president more time to develop long-term, steady planning and implementation, which our government needs.
By necessity, much of the president's fourth year, if he seeks re-election, is spent campaigning, emphasizing himself as the leader of an experienced leader among the candidates.
HOWEVER, his proposal would also allow more time for a president to pursue his or her personal goals—goals that might not coincide with the public's goals.
For example, the nation has recently serrulated every decision President Carter made in 2015.
Jake
Thompson
his proposals. Carter is uneasy. He attempts to put the public's concerns foremost in his decisions because the public coarsen when he does not.
The tension between the president, Congress and the public is necessary to insure the constitutional tenent of representation by the people.
The public keeps him on edge.
Under the six-year term, the president would be able to relax, take time to develop programs, even ignore an angry and upset colleague, so that he can hold no viable threat over the president.
As it now stands, a president who seeks re-election must push for public approval to extend his term.
UNDER THE current system, the public constantly is questioning Carter and his
It is through this ever-present system of examination that Carter stays accountable.
Bell hoped to reduce some of the pressure on the president that is present under the four-year system. But because of his responsibility, he should feel should perfectly at ease in his job.
The current system requires the president to remain in close contact with diverse interest groups, trying to balance their concerns through representative legislation.
It is exhausting, but necessary, to find a balance between those opposing forces who are more dominant.
But under a six-year term, a president would be less accountable to all sectors of the government and public. The present government, with all its faults, is still the best system.
Sand changes of address to the University Daily Kansan, Flint Hall. The University of Kansas, Lawrence. KS 6045
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But about the only thing they have decided
what the solution won't be—and that is
butter.
Advertising Adviser Chuck Chowins
Nearly 25 years after the U.S. Supreme Court's 1984 landmark decision in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education that "separate public schools from private schools and thus unconstitutional, America's public school educators are still fumbling for an answer to how to best guide their state schools."
Indeed, the basic issue, as stated in the Brown case, is the equality of educational opportunity. But because of the newness of nearly all of the magnet school programs it remains to be seen whether magnet schools will be the solution to the problem.
Gensral Manager Rick Musser
UNIVERSITY OF Chicago Sociologist James Coleman, whose views on the necessity of integrated schools for equal education initially began the busing issue but who later has defined the faults of busing, says, "The apparent solution requires going back to the fundamental issue of equal education. Every child should have an opportunity to attend a school other than the one that is imposed by residence."
Magnet schools were initially born out of a desire by white parents to find an alternative to busing after conceding that their system will never be able to return to its old ways. However, they now seem to be working toward a more positive end.
Magnet schools deserve chance
The solution from 1964 to 1964 was to quietly ignore the ruling. Then the came 1964 Civil Rights Act which not only gave the Department of Health, Education and Welfare the right to bring suit to force employers to pay higher wages, but gave them the power to withhold federal funds for education from school districts which did not adhere to the Brown decision.
But what can be seen is that positive steps have to be taken now to protect that right of equal education without destroying the founders' legacy. That's what depends — America's public school system.
FINALLY, THE solution since 1973, following a 1973 Michigan Federal District Court ruling, has been to bus students to meet the demand that all public school districts, in the North and South, deserateg.
From 1964 to 1971, the solution was to limit desegregation efforts to the legally segregated schools of the South. After a 1971 Supreme Court ruling that segregation was declared a legitimate law to do just that.
And so the busing of America's public schools began. The only problem was that busing presented an unacceptable solution—primary white parents in Northern cities.
The voluntary busing program seeks integration by creating magnet schools that offer advanced programs to qualified students who live anywhere in the city, and by setting up more than 100 part-time career counseling, cultural and remedial programs.
ke, Dallas, Buffalo, N.Y., Minnesota,
Seattle and both Kansas City, Kan., and
Atlanta.
Although two-thirds of Chicago's 512 elementary schools remain either 90 percent white or 90 percent non-white, in just three months the new programs have drawn 18,100 students to desegregated courses for the first time.
IN CHICAGO, the nation's third largest school district with 512,000 students, school administrators have decided against busing and in favor of magnet schools—a gamble that could have cut their $1.2 billion annual budget in half.
Magnet schools have emerged as the primary device to promote racial desegregation in other cities such as Louisville, Ky., Boston, St. Louis, Milwaukee.
And the magnet schools seem to be the best bet that the currently weak and unequal school system will be changed to the better and just system it always should have been.
Thus, with the failure of the busing solution, American educators have struck upon a new solution, that holds some degree of success in operation they see now is the "magnet school."
But the ironic thing is that busing had been legally authorized in all states by 1919, and by 1970—one year before the busing for desegregation began in the United States were bused to school. In fact, busing was so wonderful to the National Education Association that there was no busing continuity home to school life than may be observed on the bus."
Busing was widely accepted then because basing in 1938 meant white children to white schools and black children to black schools. Not until the late '60s and early '70s did parents begin to excite the wonders of send children to school in their own neighborhood.
The commission also found that desegregation works better in smaller districts, that there has been a disturbing amount of re-segregation in some areas, and that the proliferation of private schools threatens to undercut the backbone of public education — education if Congress caves in to demands for tuition tax credits for public schools.
BUT THE busing solution has not worked. It cannot unless there is positive cooperation between all parties involved. But the busing plan is in-bred difficulties of obtaining cooperation.
In 47 school districts surveyed by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, the Christian Science Monitor reports, 15 have experienced substantial "white flight"—which is defined as a 10 percent or more drop in white pupils.
MNYEAUY
@MYNYEAUYTANMA
Free press vital to maintain justice
By DANIEL SCHORR N.V. Times Feature
SAN FRANCISCO-Many Americans seem ready to believe—so soon after Watergate!—that reporters endanger national security by finding out about things that have been leaked. The fact that the most outrageous security violations have nothing to do with the press.
Like Ambassador Graham Martin, bitter about Vietnam, roaring around North Carolina with a trunkful of secret documents that got lost with his stolen car. Like the CIA lay a dozen copies of its hot-satellite manual wandering away, one to be sold to the Russians, unmissed for years. Like the CIA analyst passing top-secret documents to Sen. Henry Jackson's staff to help fight an arms control treaty.
Traveling around the country, I am rarely asked about these things, but I am frequently asked whether the press does not spill too many secrets and whether it hasn't become the news media's "triumph" in news media' is a game that any number in any position can play. It makes soul mates of President Carter and Mr. Nixon, Mr. Nicox's former speech writer Ray Price talks of his career as a public figure, Jody Powell, President Carter's press secretary, sneers at "the imperial press."
IN HIS recent interview with Bill Moyers on public television, President Carter talked about "the irresponsibility of the press." Bert Lance, now under grand jury investigation, says he has been the victim of a lawsuit or biased reporting" of a kind that could threaten to censorship in this country, and he is strumming a chord of popular sentiment.
We are getting to the point where a politician will be able to run against the news media as he used to run against communism, crime or corruption—issues no
longer available to some of them. The press has a fair target, it is being hit with the wrong angle.
There are dangers in a situation where the press, instead of being criticized, is turned into the enemy. If the press becomes totally unreliable, the function of public watchdog will be destroyed.
IT IS TIME to take an open-minded look at this gulf of unease and suspicion that has opened between the people and their press. I have no final answer, but I have some tentative thoughts, and they have to do with the evolution of the press, both in terms of economic concentration of newspapers and the development of technology, in order that the reporter to a large entertainment enterprise, an enterprise that is widely perceived as exploiting violence, sex and audience susceptibilities for bigger ratings and greater profits.
The press, once typically antiestablishment, is perceived now as itself a huge establishment. The picture of a great company is often the brainwashing audiences, making and breaking public figures is hard to reconcile with a band of gallant gaffes, exposing the corrupt and powerful, goading the pampons, encouraging the college so that they can wage our war for truth.
"THE PRESS," wrote Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, "has a preferred position in our constitutional scheme, not to enable it to make money, not to set newsmen apart as a favored class right to fulfillment to the public's right to know."
If we could somehow convince the public that it is their right to know that is primarily involved in what we do, I think we would be better off just not doing it. But it getting harder and harder to do.
It is only six years since Watergate, and I wonder what the situation would be today if
a vast cover-up conspiracy were in progress. With confidential sources in danger, would there be a "Deep Threat" to blow the company? With jail term for contempt, would there be a reporter to write the story? With the possibility of newsroom searches and runoff fines for contempt, could you count the number of magazine and broadcaster to put out the story?
CONSIDER THE LARGE consequences of drying up confidential sources and giving reporters their comeuppe, making it easier for those in authority to manage the news. Our news media can be an imprague, as we see with prone-prise and sometimes downright smug.
But it is the only press we have, and
crucial times it has helped to save our free
money. I want to tell you about it.
fulfillment of your function, depends on a fragile thing called private. Ours today is more fragile than yours, but yours is also being questioned.
Privilege ultimately rests on society's recognition of its value. We live in times of passion when many values are being challenged. If the free press is eroded in the name of justice, then justice will surely be eroded next. There cannot, ultimately, be any victory for a civil liberty at the expense of another civil liberty.
Daniel Schorr, a columnist for The Register and Tribute Syndicate of Des Moines, resigned as CBS correspondent in 1976 after having been suspended for his role in the publication of a House Intelligence Committee classified report. This article is adapted from an address to the California State Bar Association.
REPORTERS WHO WRITE THE WE WHO LABOR HERE SEEK ONLY TRUTH