UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of the editors.
October 17.1979
Legal aid lacking
The complexities of students' lives are increasing, as are the legal problems associated with such an increase.
Landlord-tenant and consumer problems plague students who are often victimized solely because of their inherent transience.
Luckily, many colleges have had the use of Legal Aid Society offices for indigent students, and now an increasing number of universities are seeing the need for, and the ability of, university services programs for all students.
THE UNIVERSITY of Kansas is one of those universities. However, the KU Student Legal Services program seems to have cut itself short.
Worries about the court representation of students by a KU attorney scared administrators last fall enough that they fought for, and won, a gradual phase-in of the program through a three-step timetable that would mean more services to students with each phase.
Phase I, which is due to run out in March 1980, offers only advice on many legal issues and preparation of some legal documents.
PHASE II would allow Steve Ruddick, lawyer for the program, to file a lawsuit against the criminal misdemeanor cases and when they need a civil suit defense counsel.
If there are problems with Phase II,
however, they are not with the services to be provided.
No, the problem with Phase II is that it still continues to scare some administrators—and even some student leaders.
Margaret Berlin, student body president, says she would like to see the next phase implemented by January, yet she adds that she would not want Ruddick to have to handle big cases for fear it would bog him down.
SUCH A range of services, it is argued, would require another attorney-at least part-time. But then, that is exactly what was promised in
Additional funds obviously are needed, and now is the time to consider appropriating them. The Student Senate conducts its review of the Revenue Code and allocation of the student activity fee, from which legal services program is funded, in November. Some consideration of how to expand the legal services program as promised should be considered then.
Eighty-five students obtained assistance from the program in September, but another 37 were turned away. The places placed on Ruddick through Phase I.1.
A comprehensive legal service could have helped those students. In fact, it has been promised them. Let's not let a student get put on the back-burner again.
It was not one of the Senate's finest hours. That august body last week meekly followed the recommendation of its thoroughly cowed C ethics Committee in reaffirming the group's powerful members for crimes that likely would have put any other man behind bars.
The Senate did the wrist chitchaw in a 81 to 15 vote to "denounce" powerful Georgia Democrat Herman E. Talmadge. The Senate did the wrist chitchaw in the Ethics Committee that found "clear and convincing evidence" that Talmadge knew or should have known of more than $43,000 in claimed expense money and that the Senate would report $10,000 in campaign contributions.
CLEAR AND convincing evidence of that kind of behavior is enough to put most other politicians in jail, or at least drive them out. A national senator and a foreign diplomatic secretary. He is a cagely, powerful 23-year veteran of Senate warfare. He serves as the chair of the Senate Committee and is the second ranking member of the powerful Finance Committee which controls the nation's purse strings.
Spare the rod and spoil the senator
His seniority and powerful allies among the senior Democrats in the Senate obviously made him an object of fear for the junior senators on the front lines of the committee. In a report reportedly recommending censure, a much harsher form of wrist slapping, but backed down for fear of damage to their reputation, pushed a backlash that would have followed.
INSTEAD, THEY took the easy way out,
voting to denounce demotion.
That really isn't as bad as it sounds. A denouncement lies somewhere between the justification of punishment. Neither of these carry much weight either. A denouncement stands far short of any type of sanction the should impose, such as a loss of seniority.
A loss of seniority would have stripped Talmadge of almost all the power he had in the Senate and would have made him the
junior of every first term student. Clearer, less shaggy hair and avoid any loss of power and prestige and instead opted for the tone lashing that was administered to Talmudiaj last month.
dishonor and disrepute," Talmadge claimed that the Senate vote was a "personal victory."
Talmadge was on to shrug off the denouncement. The Senate, he said, was merely being critical of his conduct, which he found too blunt and evildoose in regard rather than intentional wretchedness.
john
COLUMNIST logan
who is gloating over being let off easily in his "personal victory."
Some justice will be done however.
Alimadaya pleaded $40,000 to the
Ada and Talimandaya factories
year in a campaign that will probably
reverse the Senate Ethics Committee's
Nonetheless, the decision to merely denounce the senator from Georgia ranks as an effect of the least honorable moments accusing the senate of being especially reprehensible display of cowardice on the part of the Senate Ethics Committee and supposed to be the watchdog of the Senate.
N. Y. Times Special Features
THA TALMAGE is gloating over the fear and impatience of the Senate is devious. Despite being accused by the full Senate of failing to get the Senate to concede that tends to bring the Senate into
By CANDY SCHULMAN
Violence starts as child's play
When a high school girl was pushed off a New York subway platform for no apparent reason by an unidentified teenager, many people wondered what kind of person would do such a thing. I remember one. I know. The assault could have been a former student of mine.
For three years I taught emotionally disturbed children in a school that funded, attended, and by the city and state of New York. Most of my students were women; backgrounds, and could no longer function in the public school system. For some, it was the last step before treatment.
The teachers all agreed that socialization came before reading and math
Public school children took field trips to museums: I took my class to the grocery store to teach them to how in line and count change. Instead of discussing literature, we talked about solving problems with words instead of fists.
"I accept the criticism because I believe that senators should be held to much higher standards than is commonplace," he said, according to a statement at others. "I also know how to take it."
"OH YEAH?" "a student might counter while practicing his technique. But the second says if someone hits me to close right back. No matter what.
If that watchdog has a fear of sinking its teeth into anything, then it is pretty useless.
THESE ARE hardy the words of a man who has broken the law or has violated the public trust and is truly repentant for what he has done. Rather, it sounds like a man
Violence was an integral part of their lives.
When one student brought a knick knife into school, the principal two hours to persuade him to give it up. Why the knife 'killed' her?
"I'll read about Joey in the newspaper one day," teachers sometimes say, despairingly, "in the police blotter."
THE VIOLENCE often began at home, parents beat their children. Ten-year-old Amy came into my class one morning when she was playing with her brother and mother for the parental reason. Distraught, Amy kept antagonizing others in the class, and I had to physically guard her so that her classmates couldn't hit her. Her social worker should have seen the situation and helped her. She could, she never time with Amy until late afternoon.
William, for example, had been improving both emotionally and academically for the first time in years when he was threatened by an older student. His teacher tried to keep him inside the classroom to prevent a fight. But William's mind became fixed only on retaliation, and he knocked over anything, including his teacher, that stood between him and the door. She might have been in the middle of a riot, but a third tutor for William punched her head several times, causing a concession has put her out of work for the rest of the year.
Too many questions were left unanswered.
WHEN WILLIAM was asked why he hit the teacher he was so
fond of, his eyes glazed over. "I hit my teacher?" he asked. "What."
Maybe the teen-ager who pushed the high-school girl off the subway platform has blanked out his act of violence, too. Like William, he may not have been in control at the time; he may not even remember the incident.
But even if the police find him, the problem will not be solved. He is just one of thousands who cannot find solace through parents and schools, who are in need of therapy and possibly counseling. They seemingly senescent acts of violence because it is all they know.
RUDY WAS a faint, harmless-looking boy who enjoyed sitting in my lap and listening to fairy tales; frequently he wrote me love notes. One afternoon he refused to leave when the afternoon bell rang. When I tried to coax him, he threw a pair of scissors at me. By the time the principal arrived, he was kicking, biting and cursing me. He said that I was a blank expression in his eyes that I had never seen before.
Rudy was suspended until a residential treatment placement could be found, a process which took months and meant he'd be at work all summer. Rudy had not left the hospital we discovered Rudy's father had left home. If our counseling staff had been adequate, Rudy might have had someone to talk to and help him get better.
Rudy couldn't even face me when he returned to pick up his belonius. He left behind one last note: "I'm sorry."
AND IT GOES on and on. Without preventive measures, how can we expect to exaltimate more acts of violence by violently troubled children? Problems must be identified early. Too often students reach junior high school before they are placed in special classes.
Well-trained teachers supplemented by workers and psychiatrists within the school are a necessity. Family counseling is a must, since it is impossible to help disturbed children who have to go home to drunken, psychopathic or indifferent parents.
Such was the case with Ellen. After being forced to accompany her mother while she had an abortion, Ellen's behavior became erratic, more aggressive than usual. Perhaps she was afraid that her mother would attack her when she violated, violent, throws desks and chairs around the classroom, deliberately provoking others. She was suspended until her mother agreed to enroll in her psychotherapy, a service that was not provided in our school. However, because her mother wasn't a therapist, Ellen was allowed to attend. The last I heard, she was roaming the streets. Today may
The last. I heard, she was roaming the streets. Today she may be roaming the subways.
Candy Schalman is no longer affiliated with the school described in this essay.
Maintaining our campus
Billboards visual menace to city
Every American's primary vocation, it sometimes seems, is to be a consumer.
Our senses are bombarded continually,
from all sides, with messages urging us to
smoke this, drive that, eat here, travel there, buv. buv. buv.
Most Lawrence residents don't object to that never-standing harassment, according to a study that was made public at last Tuesday's City Commission meeting.
The study was conducted by the Institute for Social Research at William Jewell University in Liberty, Mo., at the behest of Marilyn K. Brown, who owns all of 11 of Lawrence's billboards.
BILLBOARD'S - biaring reminders of society's commercialism - inure upon our view of the change, interrupt our view of the surroundings and make us involuntary.
The study showed that 66 percent of the people interviewed think billboards are useful. Sixity-one percent think billboards should be permitted in the city. Sixity-perhaps not in the City Commission should mind its own business and shop trying to get rid of the things.
The commissioners, who had been taking tough in their campaign to rid the city of visual pollution, seemed to be swayed by that majority opinion. They postponed the 22nd deadline, which was established two years ago, for Martin Anderson to remove signs.
AT LEAST, we should hope it was the study that changed the commissioners' minds about the billboards.
Surely, it could not have been Martin Outdoor's attack of a lawsuit that inspired the extension of the deadline to the end of the year. Tom Martin, owner of the billboard company, was at the commission to reiterate his plan—and his threat of a lawsuit.
Outlawing billboards is, in Martin's mind, an infringement upon his First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
NEITHER MARTIN nor the city com-
The possibilities for compromise with 11 billboards are almost endless.
mussoners want to go to court. So they have decided to negotiate a compromise.
They can take down the billboards on Massachusetts and they can take down the number of people have to look at them there. Or they can take down the ones on 21st Street, because they add up a lot.
Or they can remove the ones on the outskirts of the city, because they contribute to the urbanization of country-like areas. Or they can increase the size or the number of advertisements.
WHAT IS THE difference? The compromise, whatever its outcome, is sure to be arbitrary and capricious.
The issue facing the city commission is a simple one: should our urban landscape be littered with advertisements? Or should billboards be banned?
The commission should base its decision only on the original reason for drafting the ordinance—the removal of visual pollution.
Then, the commissioners should "get tough" and go one way or the other, and be ready to face the consequences.
To the Editor:
Not everyone at KU drinks beer
Perhaps this is an expression of "minority rights," but at the very least, it is a ripe.
This is directed at those social organizers obsessed with what can best be called "everybody-likes-beer-im". All too in my years at the University of Kansas, I was asked, "What temperature, where beer was served, but no alternatives—punch, cola, or others—were."
Two current examples will explain my situation. A letter I received from the Board of Class Officers during the summer urged me to buy a Senior Class card, promising 'free beer and free cola at class parties'. Then, we met three former teachers where we picked up our T-shirts, there was a beer truck, but the cola was nowhere in sight.
I asked the class president where the Coke and his feeble reply was, "I... think he had not arrived." The cola never arrive or that there was a misprint in the letter was unclear. However, from what I can determine, there was no and no cola at the Big Blue Rally as well.
I'm not sure what is worse—no beer alternative at all, or paying extra for what alternative exists. The latter has been announced for an All-Scholarship Hall
Halloween party downstairs. Beer is free; cola and other set-ups for mixed drinks will cost you something. This happened at previous class functions as well.
I'm not against people drinking beer, and I'm aware that lots of KUK folks do. It's just that some folks don't like beer or, for some reason or other, can't or won't drink it.
It seems unfair to me for these people to be considered as "outcasts," unwanted at social functions.
Who knows? Maybe by welcoming such people with an alternative to beer, they'll have a bigger turnout.
Richard Burkard Kansas City, Kan., senior
Letters Policy
The University Dayan Kaisan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters are received and not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is after a period, they should include the writer's class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kaisan reserves the right to edit the letter delivered personally or mailed to the Kaisan newsroom, 112 Flint Hall. Because of space limitations, the right to edit letters for publication.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
10257-96-44886. Published on the University of Maryland July August through May and December and Thursday December 3rd, 2015. Students must register for registration at www.maryland.edu/registration. Submit resumes to mail us for a six month or a year fee in Daughters of the Republic School, 1200 W. 6th St., Duluth, MN 55803.
Professional Registrar Send special address to the University Daily Kansas, Flint Hall. The University of Kansas Law School, NKU5482
Editor Mary Hoenk
Managing Editor Nancy Dressler
Editorial Editor Mary Ernst
Business Manager Cynthia Rav
Retail Sales Manager Vincent Coulis
National Sales Manager Carl Nelson
General Manager Rick Musser
Advertising Adviser Chuck Chowins
4