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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Thursday, Nov. 21, 1985
A harmless game
The seemingly playful game of assassin almost came to a dead end last week in McColum Hall.
A desperate caller tells KU police that a woman is sitting in the hallway talking excitedly on the phone, with what appears to be a sawed-off shotgun in her hand. And she keeps dry-firing it. Click. click. click.
The caller doesn't know why the woman has the gun or whether it is loaded.
One officer chambers a round of ammunition and points his gun at the woman.
Two KU police officers rush to McCollum. They run to the floor where the woman still talks on the phone, still fiddles with the gun.
From the end of the hall, the officers tell the woman to drop her weapon. The woman, startled, starts to stand up. The gun is still in her hand.
And the real-life consequences of this popular predatory game suddenly become clear: The police officers think the gun is real. And they are ready to fire their
weapons, which are real.
Fortunately, the incident in McCollum ended with no shots fired. It could have ended in tragedy.
Perhaps KU police could have avoided this confrontation if they had consulted hall security monitors or other staff members before storming into the hall.
And when police respond to an emergency situation, every split second counts.
But the person who reported the woman in the hall called the police directly. She apparently was frightened enough to call the police instead of the front desk.
Assassin — played with dart guns, water guns and even cream pies — has its roots in TV fantasy. Its players think killing can be fun when there's no blood, no bullet holes.
But in this case, the game of assassin almost became deadly.
When people kid around with life and death, it's only a matter of time before the game backfires — and the close call turns to tragedy.
A poorly timed letter
Just as President Reagan was beginning his final ascent to the summit, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger saddled him with baggage that reminded some people of Reagan the Gunslinger's anti-Communist days.
Last week someone leaked a letter that was from Weinberger to the president. Some White House spokesmen seem pretty sure Weinberger or one of his closest aides was the leaker.
Weinberger implied that such cooperation would only limit Reagan's responses to Soviet cheating.
The letter warned Reagan not to give in on certain issues at the summit; not to extend the unratified SALT II treaty, which expires Dec. 31, and not to limit Star Wars research and testing according to a strict interpretation of the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty.
Whatever the merits of these concerns, this was an odd time for someone in the administration to make them public. For weeks Reagan worked to convince the world that he approached his meeting with Gorbachev willing to listen with an open mind.
But this ABM — anti bargaining missive — fired from within Reagan's own ranks confirmed the Soviets' worst suspicions about the U.S. attitude. They pounced on the letter as proof that behind Reagan's words about peace and promising beginnings was a posse of hard-liners hell-bent on heading the Soviets off at the arms impasse.
The letter gave the Soviets new ammunition in the propaganda skirmish that came to a head in Geneva. And it certainly didn't increase the life expectancy of SALT II.
Whether the leak sprang from Weinberger's camp or his Defense detractors is immaterial. Either way, the Pentagon shot itself in the foot and wounded the peace process at the same time.
A celestial link
Comet watchers come in all sizes and ages. Some may live until the next return of Halley's Comet in 2011. A few were alive when it appeared in 1910.
Comet watchers wear dress clothes, fatigues, pajamas and everything in between. Some talk in low tones, as if in the presence of a mystery, while others laugh or sing Christmas carols to pass the time in line.
Saturday night, the weather finally allowed them to unite in their quest. They became part of history and the universe. It made no difference that the comet looked like a piece of lint.
All of them seek an experience stated succinctly by the T-shirts on sale at the observatory: "I saw Halley's Comet."
In this age, fascination with
the comet no longer stems from terror. But the fascination persists because Halley's Comet satisfies a hunger for connection and certainty.
Contemplating the orbit of Halley's Comet connects this disconnected age with centuries of wondering witnesses. It connects the imagination of Earth's inhabitants with the unimaginable reaches of space.
Most important, perhaps, it connects the people of Earth with each other. No event since Apollo 11's moon landing has focused people's minds so much on this planet as a planet — modest, fragile and precious.
The comet is worth seeing for the experience of seeing and being joined to millions of others in a curiously human claim: "I saw Halley's Comet."
Rob Karwath Editor
Duncan Calhoun Business manager
John Hanna Michael Totty
Managing editor Editorial editor
Lauretta McMillen
Campus editor
Susanne Shaw
General manager, news adviser
Brett McCabe Sue Johnson
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National/Co-op sales
John Oberzan
Sales and marketing adviser
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Remembering the day Kennedy died
Where were you on that day in 1963 when you heard that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas? Anyone who remembers at all remembers that day.
For me, it is a dual memory. The first president for whom I voted was killed. But something else happened that day — an event that marks for me the point between two different Americas. One was the old Jim Crow America, with its "white" and "colored" signs in the washrooms and other, subtler signs of segregation.
Often you only found this out by challenging the barrier. That could pose the risk of physical pain sometimes and emotional pain every time. Being turned away from a restaurant on a hungry night always took a little slice out of your soul.
As I entered adulthood and the newspaper business, those barriers were falling, but the pace then was slow. One of the problems posed by that slow transition was that some things were open to blacks (we all said Negro then) and some things were not.
But I am getting ahead of my story. Coping with the shock of that November day had been difficult for us in the little town of York, Pa., where I was trained as a journalist. The story coming over the wire
would not have been believable if it were not for television, which made it somehow seem more real. Finally, a little after midnight, the newspaper came out. It was confirmed in black and white. We stood around staring at the newspaper.
Robert C.
Maynard
Oakland Tribune
"Listen," he said, "I know this place in Baltimore. It's got great Greek food and fantastic belly dancers. It's just the thing to pull us out of this mood."
My boss of that time was an adventurer, an editor who guided his institution on the general theory that the editor edits best who edits least. Higgins simply could not go home that night. (John Kennedy had been his Harvard classmate.)
We were on the sidewalk outside the offices of the York Gazette and Daily. It was a few minutes past midnight. The chill of the night was nothing compared to the chill that came from thinking of a president shot dead.
"It will do us both good to get our minds off of this," Higgins said.
"Jim, do you realize you are inviting me to a nightclub that does not serve Negroes? You're putting me on."
The first sign of trouble came when the headwaiter seated 10 people who came in after us and left us standing by the entryway, craning our necks to see the dancers.
Perhaps 20 minutes passed. The headwaiter asked us what we wanted. Higgins said we wanted a table. The headwaiter said he had none. We pointed in unison to an empty one not 10 feet away.
"That one is reserved," said the headwaiter.
headwater.
"For whom?" asked Higgins.
"For a member of the club," said the headwaiter.
"What club?" asked Higgins.
"Oh, didn't you know? This is a private club. Members only." said the headwaiter.
The headwaiter maintained it was a club now, even though it wasn't when Higgins had been there the week before, and even though a man sitting near us did not remember that he had joined that night.
"Just tonight? He joined tonight?"
"Yes," said the headwaiter. "Just tonight."
"Terrific. We want to join tonight." "Oh sorry," said the headwaiter. "You can't. Not tonight."
'Why not? You just said the guy
over there joined tonight."
"Yes, but you see, the president is gone."
gone:
"The president is :one?"
The problem is one:
"Yes. Only our president can make you a member, and he has gone home for the evening."
Higgins exploded. "If you still have a president, you are lucky. We lost ours tonight. So fine, we will wait for your president. Call your president." And before another word was said, we were sitting at that empty table "reserved for a member."
The Baltimore City Police arrived in five minutes. As I saw the swarm of blue uniforms coming through the door, I asked Higgins whether he wanted to take another minute and review our position as journalists about to make news. He said he didn't give a damn. I said, fine. I was just a reporter.
The owner emptied the joint. Soon, it was the two of us and the headwaiter and the police. Then all but one of the policemen left. The one who remained said he could do nothing for us or against us. He left.
The owner appeared, a short and dapper man who said we had ruined his establishment and would be called to account shortly. Then he left. The headwaiter said he might as well go and get his topcoat.
We had the joint to ourselves with nothing to eat or drink and no music or dancers.
"I guess we should go," I said to Higgins.
We decided we might as well go and face them. We came to the front door, and a roar went up from across the street. There stood perhaps 25 angry patrons. As we moved toward the corner, the mob moved behind us, and the curses sounded closer and more sincere.
"There's a mob of men out there," he said
When we reached the corner, we encountered the last officer to leave the establishment. "I'm sorry you gentlemen didn't have a nicer evening in Baltimore," he said, "but I hope you come back sometime and give us another chance." With that, he made an odd gesture. He tipped his cap to us.
At the tip of the officer's cap, 50 sets of headlights came on at once. Uniformed police officers appeared from the rooftops and out of cellar windows — or so it seemed at the time. They surrounded us and marched us to my car. They escorted us until we were miles away.
Anyway, said Higgins, it was a nice drive.
Oread fitting name for hill of learning
Mount Oread is a curious name for this mass of limestone up which and upon which we toil. It's curious partly because "Oread" comes from the Greek word for mountain. It's a bit like saving "Mount Mountain."
In Greek mythology, oreads were nymphs of the mountains. I'm not about to suggest how that might apply to KU. Anyway, the connection is indirect.
I became curious about the name through mistakes in its use. The mistakes that I know of have to do with addresses on Oread Avenue (not Street). Recently I saw a mailing label at Ecumenical Christian Ministries, 1204 Oread Ave., that changed the "O" to "D" and thus read 1204 Dread Ave.
Some days, that says a lot about studies in a university.
I've also seen mail for Oreade and Orread. A telephone caller once asked me for confirmation that the address was on OH-reed.
At Adams Alumni Center, 1266 Oread Ave, a worker told me they got a call from a delivery service questioning an address at 12660 Read Ave.
Oread just isn't an everyday name: And the oreads of Greek mythology, like most nymphs, were less than prominent as a group.
The most famous by far was Echo. She was struck mute by Hera, queen of Olympus, to stop her from talking about the divine philandering of Zeus, the king of the gods.
The stories vary, but in one Zeus gave back what he could — the power to repeat things others had said. When Echo fell in love with Narcissus, a self-centered youth, it led to tragedy, and she wasasted away until she had only a voice forlornly repeating others' words.
Some days, that says a lot about studies in a university.
The story may be classical, but its moral level hardly explains why a school in Worcester, Mass., was named the Mount Oread School. But it was, and about 30 people associated with that school established Lawrence on Aug. 2, 1854.
Those people, sponsored by the anti-slavery New England Emigrant Aid Society, spent the night of Aug. 1 on the hill and named it after the school at home.
Dan Howell Staff columnist
The choice of site, based on an earlier trip, probably was made by Charles Robinson, who became the state's first governor in 1861.
The hill had at least two other names, both derived from its shape. Clifford S. Griffin, professor of history, wrote in his history of KU that the hill once was called Hogback Ridge. Another report says it was known as Back Bone Ridge.
Some days, that says a lot about studies in a university.
As a plaque near Lindley Hall states, the Oregon and California trails probably came over the hill from the south at that point. Sydney Prentice, an 1896 graduate, collected reports of pre-settlement travelers for The Graduate Magazine in 1919.
Prentice's accounts show travelers awed by the beauty and abundance of the Wakarusa Valley. Only if came
out Warruzera, Wackarussi and Wakarruski at various times. Among other physical features, writers praised the Golden Valley to the east, where the Kansas, or Konza, or Kaw joined the Wakarusa.
The name of the Golden Valley lives on in the alma mater: "Far above the Golden Valley. . ."
But the University of Kansas didn't begin until 1866, after slavery-related wars and repeated arguments about the school's location with Lecompton and Manhattan.
Famous visitors to Mount Oread always marveled at the expanse of land it made visible. Horace Greeley, on his 1859 tour of the West, wrote of "a magnificent view of the country for twenty miles in each direction."
Walt Whitman, in 1879, effused on "that vast Something, stretching out on its unbounded scale, unconfined, which there is in these prairies, combining the real and the ideal, and beautiful as dreams.
"How freeing, soothing, nourishing they are to the soul," Whitman wrote.
Mailbox
Some days, that says a lot about studies in a university.
Need for conscience
The letter to the editor by Katy Monk, Nov. 12, displays some rather odd assumptions regarding the purpose of a university and the role we, as students, are to play within its structure.
Ms. Monk assumes that a "good working relationship" is in "diametric opposition" to exhibiting a social conscience. With reasoning such as this, one could hardly expect her to understand arguments based on the writings of Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr., and Gandhi. One has such a relationship only where mutual respect is present.
Who will the administration respect more — leaders who take a public stand and weather the criticism, or those who bushy dodge controversial issues to avoid antagonizing any faction of voters?
Such a public stand does not preclude constructive criticism, but may encourage such efforts as occurred with the 1960s civil rights movement.
Looking back upon that social movement, would Ms. Monk prefer student leaders who ignored suffering and injustice until after the election, or those leaders who speak out and -act when their conscience dictates?
A university exists to encourage independent thought and personal growth. Sometimes that growth results in active, daily implementing of classroom lessons on social leadership.
Leadership is a nebulous thing. One often finds it where it is least expected.
This is not to say the leaders of the Common Sense Coalition have no social conscience, only that they've carefully hidden it from public scrutiny. Perhaps they should advertise "Conscience" on their buttons also, so we can all rest assured that they possess it as well.
Andy Ingram Toneka senior
Extremist opinions
I really don't know how you let more than a paragraph and a half of Dennis Highberger's Nov. 15 letter slip past you. Mr. Highberger's letter was riddled with clichés and unsupported opinions.
At best, this is an opinion. It should be stated as an opinion and not as an outright fact.
he starts out with the advocate of all the anti-apartheid demonstrators by saying that they all know "all too well the purpose of the university in American society" and rails on for half a column about what he believes that purpose is.
Very little of the letter has to do with the subject with which he started - anti-aspartheid demonstrations - even though he sometimes does get back on the subject.
Mr. Highberger's letter gives the impression that the protesters are all fanatics wanting to overthrow the government. Mr. Bode's letter supports protests and diversion more
Mr. Hiberger should speak for himself. I am insulted by his insinulation that my four years of study at KU were nothing but "proper training" to "oversee the system of exploitation on non-European people and of the earth itself."
On the other side of the page is a much shorter letter by John Bode. It also supports the protests and divestment, but it does not contain the rhetoric in Mr. Highberger's letter
clearly, concisely, coherently and probably more accurately.
Furthermore, Mr. Bode brings up some logical points favoring divestment. Mr. Higgherger does not. What I had left after I cut all the rhetoric out of Mr. Higgherger's letter was the first paragraph, the first half of the eighth paragraph and the sentence, "I disagree."
Instead of being printed, Mr. Highberger's letter should be clipped, framed and hung in an honored place in the Hack Hall of Fame.
There is, I feel, no place in a newspaper, even on the editorial page, for such extremist rhetoric and outright bad writing.
There is no place for it even if it is from someone with as much notoriety as Mr. Highberger, and especially if it is from a former student body vice president.
I guess we need extremists on both the left and the right to keep those of us who are moderate from looking like extremists, but it's difficult to swallow.
Spencer M. Simpson, Jr.
Baltimore, Md.
graduate student