UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
NOVEMBER 1, 1978
Yes to liquor-by-drink
Douglas County residents have a chance Nov. 7 to finally easel the Carry Nation era liquor laws that plague Kansas.
Liquor laws in Kansas are scandalously outmoded. County residents apparently thought so in 1970, when they voted overwhelmingly for a statewide liquor-by-the-drink proposal. But the county was out-voted by other parts of the state, and the proposal lost by 9,000 votes.
This time the county cannot be overruled by the rest of the state.
The proposition for liquor-by-the-drink in restaurants, which will appear on the ballot in 45 Kansas counties, is a local option that will take effect when a majority of a county's voters approve it. The proposal would allow liquor-by-the-drink in restaurants that get at least 50 percent of their revenue from food sales.
OPPONENTS of the measure complain that it would encourage alcoholic consumption. However, recent studies have indicated that although liquor would be more available, drinking would not become more prevalent. No studies have conclusively established a direct correlation between the availability of liquor and liquor consumption.
But the liquor-in-restaurants proposal appears to be the best offer county residents can expect for a long time—and is certainly preferable to current state regulations.
Liquor in restaurants, of course, is far from the perfect resolution. The perfect resolution would require an amendment deleting the "open saloon" clause from the Kansas Constitution.
Kansans have long endured the hypocrisy of the state's liquor laws which prohibit "open saloons" but allow liquor at private clubs. The referendum providing for liquor-by-the-drink in restaurants would help to remedy the archaic "dry" philosophy that sister Carry worked to establish in Kansas. The referendum deserves the support of Douglas County voters.
curemen. However, the liquor referendum is a one-shot deal. The law passed last spring by the Kansas Legislature provides an opportunity for counties to hold a one-time-only vote. It would require another law in order to put the issue on the ballot again.
The proposal faces a tougher test now that the state Supreme Court has begun hearings to decide on the law's constitutionality. But no decision is expected from the court until after the election.
New Milford terrified of panic in nuclear war
By GAKY ZEBRUN N.V. Times Feature
NEW YORK—In my town of New Milford, along the Housatonic River in western Connecticut, there are 14,000 residents. The town green, lined with several old stone and wooden churches, a grammar school, a few schools, and an office for small email addresses, about a half mile long.
War, one of the most persistent sources of catastrophe known to mankind, has always resulted in fear and chaos. But never before was warfare so insidious in human warfare, been so irreversibly terrifying.
To the residents of New Milford who are trying to live out a longing for stability and happiness, the news of their town's disaster-relief status gives them a stark awareness that possible worldwide catastrophe will include them.
this still relatively quiet town, struggling to keep traces of its New England character of solitude, has been designated a nuclear disaster center for displaced New Yorkers.
In the event of a nuclear attack on New York City, 100,000 city residents would be transported to New Milford. Besides this influx of people into New Milford, several groups of 10,000 New Yorkers would be evacuated into other smaller towns in the area.
COMPARED TO the ravage a nuclear attack would have on New York and compared to the millions of New Yorkers who would be killed or left infiltrated gravely in their streets, the city would be New Milford residents would, of course, be negligible. But today, at a time of peace in this town, a peace that has been unbroken since the end of the Revolutionary War, the picture of 100,000 panic-striking New Yorkers in the streets and houses here is
SO MANY RESIDENTS for so many years have been able to suppress this fact
as they viewed the tranquil foothills of the Berkshires, fished for trout in the many streams here, licked ice cream cones on the green or read about the world's problems as they sat, drinking cocktails, in the lounge chairs of their screened porches.
Of course, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after the announcement by the press that seven nations had manufactured the atom bomb and that 20 other nations have nuclear capability and after the marches on Seabrook, N.H., a few hundred miles north of here, fears of nuclear catastrophe are never completely avoided.
BUT AT A TIME of peace, especially in this town where residents respect the desire for solitude and for rural tranquility, scenes of nuclear panic are almost never imagined. And yet to this town would come 100,000 New Yorkers, ruined by material loss, grieved by death, broken hearts and shocked by the immediate presence of unthinkable brutality and destruction.
If 10,000 wrecked and terrified New Yorkers come to New Milford, no one will be able to consolate. In the city residents' renowned resilience to overcome all kinds of catastrophes, such as the garbage strikes, floods and hurricanes, we in our isolated town, have read about.
In the event of a nuclear attack on New York, there can be no consolation for anyone. There will be only the confusion of an unspeakable disaster. In time, there will be only the pity and the terror of wrecked human spirit. There will be a lawyer in a New Yorker who will say, "Come and see the blood and rubble in my streets, come and see the blood and rubble in my streets, and see the blood and rubble in my streets."
Gary Zebrun, a resident of New Milford,
Conn., teaches English as the Canterbury School.
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Editor
Steve Fratier
Managing Editor Jerry Sawyer
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Rex Miller
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AN ADEQUATE METHOD of identification has been suggested, such as tamper-proof Social Security cards or INS cards. Proponents of the identification cards deny that they would be similar to a national identification card system.
Immigration laws could be changed to allow more Mexicans to enter the United States. If 50,000 Mexicans already immigrate to the United States each year, why wouldn't immigration make more immigrants? But that solution would only increase Mexican immigration.
Suggestions have been made to give more economic assistance to countries like Mexico so that few persons would be forced to come to the United States for work.
Advertising Advisor Chuck Chowins
Because workers can find very few jobs, that pay well in Mexico—wages are reportedly only one-fifth of the U.S. wage—it is unrealistic to think the problem can be easily solved using only one method. A study by the University percent amount won't help matters either.
General Manager Rick Musser
IN A TESTIMONY before a Senate Judiciary Committee in May, Anthony Wayne Smith, president of the National Parks and Conservation Association, said, "It is the illegal alien who may defeat our efforts at the solution of our environmental problems." The same alien who may defeat our efforts to achieve full employment in America.
Several suggestions have been made for ways to solve or at least curb the problem, but the fence ranks among the worst of those solutions.
But a fence between the two nations should not even be considered. Mexican-Argentine outraged at the proposal. Both countries will have to work to solve the problem of illegal aliens. At best a wall would only damage between the United States and Mexico.
Border fence won't halt illegal aliens
UNDERSTANDABLY, the thought of such a fence has caused furo among Mexican-American leaders. Some predict a two-countries ability to be built between the two countries.
Each year the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service allows about 20,000 Mexicans to immigrate to the United States. Most of these are reported reportedly manage to immigrate illegally.
The APL-CIO has suggested criminal proferences for employers who knowhly write code.
A problem? It sure is. Many illegal aliens find work in the United States harvesting crops, washing dishes or cleaning rooma. Jobs that could be taken by U.S. citizens are being held by illegal aliens. Organized labor is trying to help them. The jobs are ones that Americans either refuse to do or won't do as cheaply as aliens.
In addition to the penalties for employers that knowingly hire illegal aliens, assistance could be given to employers that hire immigrants who are legal residents.
However, the INS has a plan that it thinks will stop Mexicans from illegally entering the United States. It's a bad plan, though, and probably wouldn't work anyway.
The INS reportedly wants to build a big fence along the border at El Paso, Texas—a 6.5-mile-long, 12-foot-tall steel and mesh fence that would interlock with a construct a similar barrier near San Diego.
Leaders of the League of United Latin American Citizens have issued a statement of "unanimous outrage," calling for a ban on $1.4 million, "a politically naive decision that
Other persons are concerned that a large population increase could be caused by the expansion of the population.
The IMS estimated that there are six million illegal aliens in the United States and, the service says, illegal aliens from abroad at least ten million U.S. citizens of jobs.
could prove to be a colossal political blunder."
Allen Holder
Ruben Bonilla, Texas state director of LULAC, said. "We began to think we were off base in criticizing the administration on maladministration of our job just when we had our hands up here comes a decision almost barbaric in overtones."
And, "It seems like the only walls existing on the earth are the walls of Communist China, the Berlin wall and now a wall on our own soil of America. If that wall is conceived in the same way it has no reason to be critical of human rights violations in Russia and South Africa."
across shallow parts of the Rio Grande river. For others it is a bit more complicated. Some hide behind the back of trucks in the city, while others might handle Mexican laborers into the United States.
ITS EASY to sympathize with Bonilla and his views. Besides, as he says, it is naive for the INS to think that Mexicans, after traveling to the U.S.-Mexican border, will be deferred by a 5-ml fence. More than 1,900 more miles of border can still be crossed.
Obviously it can't be too difficult to cross the border. Some persons驾或 swim
To the editor:
University rule denies right to read
After six months of investigation and study, various officials and a committee at KU have promulgated a "Policy Regarding the Distribution of Literature." Although the University somehow struggled along for 112 years, officials finally discovered that "there weren't any policies about the sale of literature." And apparently lacking more important resources, the University to regulating the flow of ideas in print as they earlier had decided to regulate the spoken word and even music.
Although suppression of ideas is not mentioned in the new policy statement, I think we must all bear in mind that the policy is not an endorsement by the officials the most江湖 involvement in freedom of expression was to deny Jonathan Kozol an invitation to speak at the Higher Education Week banquet, at least in part on the basis of his belief that feathers of certain conservative legislators.
Apart from the philosophical problems involved in the regulation of the dissemination of ideas, the new policy is, in conclusion, objectionable in several specific ways:
1. Major daily newspapers are given a privileged position in distribution. The new policy states that "newspapers who have been issued by a press service condessaion do not require any action or approval. . . ." Actually, the Union, according to Frank Burge, director of the New York Times newspaper for sales rights, meaning that the dailies are in violation of the new policy. In any event, the off-campus, larger newspapers receive a favored status for no stated reason.
2. Other located boxes for sale are to be provided, with priority going to students or educators; the boxes may also be given for this discrimination against daily papers that might be of interest to the KU community. No further guidelines are to be given that boxes are to be given this special privilege?
3. All sales of papers from locked boxes, except for the big dallies, must be approved by the Office of Student Organizations and Activities. The policy simply states that that
office may consider, in making its decisions,
"quantity to be distributed, population to be
served, frequency of distribution." In fact,
OSOA is given a free hand in making its
judgment. OSOA is also given the right to
consideration". Why should any
University office be telling us what to read?
4. Other literature sales also must be approved by OSAO; sales in residence halls and scholarship halls must be approved by the Office of Residential Health or the All Scholarship Residence Halls or the All Scholarship Hall Council. No standards are given for such approval.
5. Free literature can be distributed only outside University buildings. Does freedom of expression, therefore, stop at the doors of buildings? Why?
6. Free distribution from "OS unstaffed location" must be approved by OSAO, which apparently has the right to determine the number and location of such distribution
8. All appeals from any of these decisions will be heard by the University Events Committee, which, the reader will recall, ordered a guitarist to quit playing on campus a couple of years back. And the final say is placed before the chancellor for student affairs. Do we really want one person to tell us what to read?
7. Free distribution in residence or scholarship halls must be approved by ORP and AURH or ASHC. Again, no guidelines or other protection from capricious decisions
Such are the specific problems with the new policy. To my mind, however, the more serious shortcomings are philosophical in nature. To enumerate a few:
1. The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of the press, but that freedom is meaningless if it allows government to form the new policy, therefore, constitutes a kind of prior restraint on freedom of the press. Prior restraint has repeatedly been held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
2. More broadly, the University should be society's bastion for the dissemination of ideas, but in this case, it appears that our officials have asked the University general counsel to determine the minimum constitutional requirements involved and have
oeciled to allow no more than that. Such a procedure is inimical to one of the most important things a university should be doing. As in the Kozol incident, we are seeing a retreat from our most basic principles.
3. In any event, the new policy is thoroughly vague and gives absolute discretion to various bodies of censors, none of whom are bound by commitment to freedom of expression in the past.
The conflict over distribution of literature has been going on for two or three years, and I am saddened that so few individuals on campus, including the Kansas editorial staff, have perceived the threat to freedom of the press and to the exchange of ideas that are hallmarks of institutionality. We are our officials afraid, and why are we so welessly accepting their infringement on one of our most basic rights?
I personally never have had reason to distribute literature on the KU campus, but my freedom to read what I like is clearly at stake. In my opinion, therefore, the new policy is null and void. Free men and women do not have to ask anyone's permission to exercise their constitutional and academic rights.
Tim Miller
Assistant Professor in Religious Studies
KU rugby deserves newspaper coverage
To the editor:
We take a great deal of pride in ourselves, our organization, and the development of
The members of the KU Rugby Club would like the following statement to go on record concerning what we consider prejudicial treatment. We are not aware where the problem is rooted. It is our feeling that we receive the recognition that we deserve
the rugby ethic at the University of Kansas.
Our win-loss record for the season now,
stands at 12-2, our best season in recent
history.
The weekend of Oct. 21-22 we participated; in the Heart of America Rugby Tournament held in Kansas City. This is the only nationally recognized tournament in the Midwest and one of the few in the country. We are all gathered to compete. Our club placed second, which is the best any college team has done in the past ten years. We are equally proud of the fact that we were selected—by vote of the referees—as the recipient of the sportmanship award for the spirit, spirit, and enthusiasm of the field.
Lack of Kanasan coverage typifies what we feel is prejudicial treatment. We have been informed that in order to qualify as a member, one must provide information in by the "Sunday-Sunday Ruling." This places us, as well as other sports clubs, we believe, in the awkward position of meeting reporting deadlines, so we will not be on Sunday, not to mention in remote lands. We do not feel that the Monday sports review need necessarily be the last word in what has so recently transpired. Nor is this true for all members of Alameda we have been faced with for years.
This policy problem should in no way reflect upon the reporting capabilities of Michelle Brown, the reporter who covers the Heart of America Tournament interacting with our organization and the individual players. As a matter of fact, she did indeed write an article covering the Heart of America Tournament, which has already been tossed to the October breeze.
Finally, we are the first to admit that some of the social aspects of rugby do nurture various forms of unorthodox behavior. The fact remains that we do take ourselves and the rugby etic very seriously. We hope the University and those associated with it will do the same, if they haven't already.
Why don't you?
Gentlemen of the KU Rugby Club
Paul Dienerich
Faculty advisor to the KU Rugby Club