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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Thursday, Nov. 14, 1985
Trouble in Lexington
There's trouble in Lexington, the ol' Kentucky home of the basketball Wildcats.
Last month, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported widespread payments to athletes from boosters and other violations of NCAA rules involving the University of Kentucky basketball team.
Wildcat fans, who are downright rabid in their devotion to their team, didn't cheer the Herald-Leader's stories. And the paper certainly expected to get more than few pasty phone calls and letters.
Since it published the reports, the Herald-Leader has received two bomb threats. More than 300 readers have cancelled their subscriptions. One man even threatened to beat his paper boy with a baseball bat if he tried to deliver the paper.
But in this case, the fans went overboard.
The newspaper's employees have been spat upon and verbally abused. Their front lawns have been covered with toilet paper, their cars sabotaged.
Leader's reports. Some of the players interviewed in the stories have since said they were misquoted or their comments were taken out of context.
In Lexington, the fans seem to object more to the paper's right to print stories critical of their basketball heroes, than to the facts included in those stories.
But because of the newspaper's stories, the NCAA has begun an investigation into the Kentucky basketball program. On Tuesday, university officials imposed new rules on coaches, players and boosters that are stricter than NCAA requirements.
The Herald-Leader's stories raise an important question: What happens when the press reports unfavorably on a popular public institution?
Readers must remember that their right to comment goes hand in hand with freedom of the press. They may disagree with reporters, but should stay within the boundaries of fairness and human decency.
There's a big difference, after all, between letters to the editor and bomb threats.
Cutting ahead in line
About 200 athletes streamed through the enrollment center in Strong Hall last week. KU officials bumped them ahead in line so they could enroll in spring semester classes that wouldn't conflict with practices.
Their indignation was justified, their assessment accurate.
The move upset many students who saw it as special treatment for athletes.
But students who hold jobs or are involved in other time-consuming activities can't meet their commitments when they're in class, either.
The University offers these students no pat solution to scheduling problems. They're left to fend for themselves.
KU and Athletic Department officials say early enrollment for athletes can't be avoided. Coaches can't drill players in pass patterns and fast breaks, they say, if professors are drilling them in math and sneech.
A chart labeled "Who gets to enroll first at Lawrence" appears inside the back cover of the Timetable. It explains that seniors and degree-seeking graduate students enroll first, followed by juniors and on down the line.
Most upsetting about the athletes' enrolling early is that other students received no official word about it.
It also tells how, to ensure fairness, students with the same class rank enroll according to the last three digits of their student numbers.
Nowhere does the chart mention that athletes go to the head of the line on the first day of enrollment.
For KU officials and coaches, bumps the athletes ahead probably prevented a few scheduling conflicts.
But it compromised the University's reputation as a place of equal opportunity — where nobody supposedly gets special treatment.
Rising cost of fake IDs
The cost of downing a few drinks could go up for those who use fake identification to enter Lawrence bars.
The ABC fined the owner for allowing an underage patron into his bar, so the owner sued in small claims court to recover his loss.
Last week a Lawrence barowner received $500 in a civil suit against a KU student who had used a fake ID to enter the bar and had been caught by agents of the Kansas Alcohol Beverage Control division.
When an owner tries to make sure customers don't use fake IDs to slip past the bouncer at the door, a fine can be unfair as well as costly.
For those owners, any amount is too much to pay for
someone else's illegal act.
In some cases, bar owners are lax in their responsibilities and carelessly let in underage students out of greed or laziness.
They are the real targets for the law that fines owners when minors are caught in a bar.
But if owners scrupulously check IDs and are still fooled by believable — but fake identification, they are justified in trying to get back their money.
Minors found guilty of using a fake ID usually face only a mild fine on their first offense.
But the threat of a costly settlement in a civil suit could turn an apparently harmless deception into a expensive night on the town.
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
Retail sales  Campus sales
Megan Burke
National/o-co sales
John Oberzan
Sales and marketing adviser
**LETTERS TO THE EDITOR should be typed, double-spaced and less than 300 words. Include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, include class and hometown, or faculty or staff position.**
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Black conservatism no longer a rarity
It was 1968, the year of riot and protest. The letter invited coverage of the first national meeting of black conservative Republicans in Washington, D.C. Intrigued by the potential counterpoint to the activities on the streets and the campus, I requested permission from my editor to cover the event.
"No way," the editor responded. "I would no sooner have you cover that I would a convention of three-headed calves. It may be a phenomenon, but a representative trend it is not."
Odd though it might be to some, the rise of black conservatism is now a decided trend among young blacks.
It is startling to many other blacks to hear Murdock refer to affirmative action programs as "covert racism" or to hear him defend the administration's constructive engagement program. He is in favor of prayer in the public schools and the entire panoply of the far right agenda.
Right. A harsh critic of Ronald Reagan, Murdock accuses the president of abandoning the conservative agenda.
Deroy Murdock of Los Angeles is 21, a senior at Georgetown University and an evangelist of the New
In a recent, lengthy profile in the Washington Post, congressional conservatives and their supporters were lavish in their praise of Murdock.
He has attracted a great deal of attention.
"Let me tell you something," said
Orrin. Orrin R-Utt, for whom
Robert C.
Maynard
Oakland Tribune
Murdock worked as a part-time aide. "This young man is going to be a major leader in this country someday, He has that kind of personality. I think Derey is going to be a U.S. Senator someday, maybe even more than that. He can go right to the top. He's that good."
To some degree, Murdock is regarded in some quarters as being about as unusual as a three-headed calf. Just the same, the reality is that the number of right-wing blacks in the United States is growing. And it is growing fastest among young blacks.
HELLO?HELLO?——IT WAS REAGAN AGAIN,WARNING ME ABOUT THE GROWING INSURGENCY HERE. HE MUST HAVE HUNG UP WHEN HE REALIZED I HAVE EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL!
In 1980, public opinion polls indicated that only 10 percent of blacks approved of the job Reagan was doing as president. In 1985, that number he jumped to 30 percent for blacks to be appointed to 30 percent for those below the age of 30.
Joseph Perkins, 26, an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, said, "Young blacks like us don't have the baggage of bygone years. We're role models to the extent that we're demonstrating that it's not just racism that's not a cultural malism of the liberal establishment to be successful."
Two distinct factors help account for the emergence of a new, conservative middle-class black American:
I'm a realist, Mr. Schneider, not a person who reads a couple of newspapers and thinks I'm Mr. It. You should look on the other side of
Second, conservatism is where all the action is today, and it is natural that some bright, ambitious young black people will gravitate to that action. In doing so, they know the field is wide open because there are still few black conservatives against whom to compete.
First, the opening of the doors of opportunity closed during the days of legal segregation. To the extent blacks are free to pursue the goals of American society, inevitably some will choose a conservative ideology.
It also is important to keep in perspective the fact that the black communities of the United States historically have been more conservative and religious than many of their white allies in the old civil rights coalition. Indeed, until the advent of the New Deal in the 1930s, the overwhelming majority of black voters were Republicans.
You called the way coach Gottfried handled it a "dirty flashe" and "an embarrassment to the University." Maybe that's the way you look at it. With a negative disposition always look at the negative side of the coin.
For years, many of the legates of that old black GOP tradition have been arguing that blacks made a strategic political error by becoming so overwhelmingly and predictably Democratic.
TV movie sugarcoats reality of AIDS
NBG's Monday night movie, "An Early Frost," about a young man who contracted AIDS, accomplished some of its apparent purpose. It would have accomplished more had it risen above the syrupy formula of made-for-television movies.
Now, to the astonishment of many political observers, conservatism is on the rise among young black people. And they are a lot more common than the three-headed calf.
Clearly "An Early Frost," the first movie-length program about AIDS, intended to give information and correct misinformation. Because many people wrongly think that AIDS spreads through even casual contact, the movie properly emphasized the falsity of that idea.
It also acknowledged the emotions likely to be found in AIDS victims, their families, their friends and others. In this purpose, the movie achieved less success, although it managed to sketch several viewpoints.
Like most made-for-television movies, "An Early Frost" used stock characters and predictable scenes. A TV movie about AIDS was a good move, but it numbed its own emotional power by adhering to the weary pattern of most of its counterparts.
Mailbox
Second, the circumstances surrounding the situation concerning my eligibility go deeper than what you read in the newspapers. You're on the outside looking in, Mr. Schneider, and you shouldn't even comment on what you know so little or nothing about.
It would have been extremely easy for coach Gottfred to turn his back on Dane Griffin and me and stand with the multitude. But he did what he honestly felt was right.
The fact that I'm married, have a 15-month-old son and another on the way, might have played a role in his decision. But again I say, Mr. Schneider, he did what he felt was right in his own heart.
Dan Howell Staff columnist
How many men do you know who would dare go against everybody, just because what he feels in his heart is right?
In defense of Gottfried
I'm writing this letter in reply to one I read in the Tuesday, Nov. 12, Kansas concerning head football coach Mike Gottfried.
First of all, David Schneider, the things that make coach Gottfried a great man, you could never understand. The Bible tells about a woman about to be stoned by a great multitude of people until Jesus said, "Let he that has not sinned cast the first stone."
Here is the "doctor provides basic medical facts" scene. Here is the "mother isn't going to let family fall apart" scene — first played opposite father, then in a reprise, played opposite daughter.
Reliance on formulaic scenes is safe, and they make a movie understandable. Even the fiction that people walk around ready to reveal and explain their emotions at any moment has its place.
But the movie went even further in trying to make people more comfortable with the presence of AIDS in our society.
"An Early Frost" may have gotten to a frost, but the rest was Indian summer. It never even got close to winter. It never皱直 straight on with the inevitable death of the main character.
Even the movie doctors said it: As things stand, everyone who gets AIDS eventually dies. Usually it's within two years, but sometimes it takes five. At the end of "An Early Frost," the barely-changed hero is headed back to Chicago to resume near-normal living — fortified by a new acceptance by his parents.
In other words, the movie provided some useful facts and humanized them. But its basic message — AIDS isn't so bad — was a whitewash.
Made-for television movies must, by some law, be heartwarming. That's why "The Day After" almost didn't get on the air — even though many experts said it portrayed a much too hopeful outcome of nuclear war.
These movies show almost every setback as reversible. The day that AIDS becomes reversible cannot arrive too soon, but it hasn't arrived. A realistic movie about AIDS should deal honestly with the death of the main character. This one didn't even try.
"An Early Frost" also tided up the subject by making the main
character a professional person with an exclusive love relationship and, in the end, a loyal and loving family. Minor characters faced different problems, but those were glued over.
Even the acronym "AIDS" has a cute little neatness that masks dangerous power, like "MIRV" or "PAC." But people in our society are mistrustful of such packaging any more.
People didn't believe it when officials said Three Mile Island posed no danger. They don't trust official reports on military spending, toxic waste cleanup or food inspection either. People can sense a sell job.
Using a television movie to educate was commendable. Using it to make AIDS somehow more acceptable was not. It is ugly and the majority of cases arise from ugly situations — having homosexual relations with more than one person or sharing needles for using illegal drugs.
In the long run, the cause of public education on any subject is best served by truth. "An Early Frost" gave us truth with a sugarcating.
Home is where farm crisis is
I have reached a definite milestone in my life. With a lot of struggle, persistence and conscious effort, I have come to grips with my heritage. I am no longer ashed of the fact that I was born and raised in Kansas. But it hasn't always been that way.
Once in Amsterdam, I sheepishly had to admit to a New Yorker that I had spent a little time in Kansas. That was the end of intelligent conversation. The rest of the evening deteriorated into stereotypes.
When I was living in Southern California, people there thought I was a native to the area. Maybe it was the blond hair that threw them.
Last summer I met a French girl in Scotland. When I told her I was from Kansas, some dim light went off in her head. "I have heard of Kansas," she declared.
"Yes, yes, that's it!" she screamed when I mentioned The Wizard of Oz. "You look like someone from Kansas."
Her perceptions were astonishing when you consider that she had never seen Kansas and thought the whole world
Tim Erickson
Guest shot
revolved around Paris
Now I have come back home to a land and people I love. I have finally accepted that my heritage and life are inexorably tied to Kansas. And I've come to believe that this state will never be what many want.
We want wine coolers by the billions, Las Vegas in Holton, the Kentucky Derby in Wichita, Silicon Valley in Lawrence, Boston culture in Manhattan and Texas oil in Neodesha.
We deny the thing that makes Kansas a state — its farming. Yes, I mean the stop-pigs, milk-the-cows, plow-that-field agrarian living. Lorshan and Treflan and Pioneer Seed. John Deere and Hesston and International Harvester.
Our heritage was formed under a blazing sun. Single-bottom plows turning the virgin prairie. Immigrants speaking broken English. Sod houses and bitterly cold winters. Traders on the Marais des Cygnes and outposts in Bourbon County.
Yet we are letting the farm economy go to hell because
Rachmaninoff isn't played in western Kansas. We think that Teakikovsky should be favored over the closing hog prices.
Some will shout and scream if you confuse Johnson and Wyandotte counties. To my mind, they're the same place.
We're a farm state. Lawrence is more an aberration than the norm. It is a great place to live, but it doesn't really represent Kansas. We need more land to want to the unparalleled number of foreclosures our farms are facing.
We're a farm state. Our beleaguered Farm Credit System is ready to go belly up and all we want to do is go to the Plaza.
We're a farm state, yet we turn our backs on the problem. Our banks are closing in record numbers and we don't care. Land prices drop 20 percent in one year and we shrug our shoes. We'll probably recognize on Pretoria than recognize the quickly approaching darkness.
Our country cousins can't make a profit, and we say "Too bad."
They are screaming for some sort of equity and we are plugging our ears. Their indebended continues to overtake their ability to pay, and all we want to do is slam dance to the Violent Femmes.
We're a farm state. And we're bleeding to death.
that coin, the positive side. If you do,
you'll see an exhibition of courage.
right is wrong, Again, Mr, Schneider,
right is in your heart.
Coach Gottfried is always trying to instill and implant into all his ballplayers that right is right and wrong is wrong. Turning your back on wrong because you're scared to do
Coach Gottfried is an extremely visible person, doing a job that is becoming increasingly more difficult because of people like you. People like you sit back and watch, then criticize someone doing his best.
Faceless cowards behind ink pens come a dime a dozen. Problem, visible people with courage are scarce. That's why 10 years from now I'll be proud to have known coach Gottfried and will have forgotten you.
Lynn Williams KU running back