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University Dailv Kansan
Opinion
Tuesday, Aug. 27, 1985
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Let the sun shine in
In America, a person who threatens and beats another must stand public trial for assault and battery.
So turn the wheels of American justice: In the sunshine, for all to see.
Not so, however, at the University of Kansas.
This summer, as the fate of the campus chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon hung in limbe on charges of hazing, the University shrouded its hearings on the charges in secrecy. Only a week after the gavel fell, stripping SAE of all KU affiliation for two years, did the campus learn about the matter.
Today, few know what happened inside 1301 West Campus Road sometime in April. Only rumors.
And outside the circle of the SAEs, the former pledges who reported the hazing and administrators at the hearing, no one likely will ever know what prompted the University to slap the 82-year-old campus chapter with one of the harshest fraternity punishments ever.
What's sad is that KU students, faculty and administrators should know.
The men at SAE call themselves the Kansas Alpha chapter of the fraternity. The KU chapter. Their house is that sprawling brick place across the street from Carruth-O'Leary Hall.
And SAE, although technically separate from the University, has for years carried the name of KU to national and regional fraternity meetings and around campus at University-sanctioned events.
The fraternity nearest to campus.
The SAEs have built floats and paraded them down Jayhawk Boulevard for homecoming. They have fielded sports.teams for intramurals at Robinson Gymnasium.
They have participated in spring and fall formal rush for men and in other campus activities.
The fraternity is listed in the KU phone book under "organized living groups."
SAE has used the University of Kansas' name.
So when SAE — or any other campus group — is charged with breaking campus rules and soiling the University's name, all of campus needs to know the particulars.
— they should realize that one of the surest preventions is the threat of open earrings.
And no one on campus will know whether justice is being served by administrators until disciplinary hearings, like trials anywhere in the United States, are conducted in the sunshine.
If administrators want to wipe haze off The Hill — and they apparently do from the looks of the SAE punishment
But it really didn't matter. After all, no one outside the ring of principals could judge whether the punishment fit the crime.
Hearings such as the one that produced the suspension should be open. Students, faculty and administrators should be able to witness the proceedings. Campus and local media should be able to cover them.
Once again, no one knew about it until later.
Shortly after receiving their suspension, the SAEs appealed. Chapter members and alumni argued that their punishment was too harsh. In July, the University denied the appeal.
Any campus group surely would think twice about breaking University rules if its members knew they might be paraded down Jayhawk Boulward for their actions.
Like homecoming floats.
Yesterday, the University of Kansas began its academic year with a convocation that gave plenty of insights into the nature of the University.
The excellence of KU's academic work shone in the presentation of awards to seven faculty members for excellence in research or teaching.
Budig spoke of the role of the humanities as a backdrop for announcing the largest gift for humanities education ever received by the University. The Hall Family Foundations have given $3 million, boosting a challenge fund drive far beyond its goal.
This generous gift, a highlight in the continued support of KU by people connected with Hallmark, should enhance the exploration of humane values here.
Among the various disciplines, Chancellor Gene A. Budig said in his address, the humanities naturally have a pivotal, crucial position. University education, he said, is a wide-ranging search for understanding of what it means to be human.
We hope that the application of humane values also will be an appropriate part of the structure of new programs it enables. Education in the humanities benefits from endowed funds, but investment of those funds particularly should reflect the goals of humanities education.
The role of such education, as the chancellor said, is to interpret human history and achievement and assign meaning to the work of other disciplines. That priority suggests that the humane values of Western culture could interpret, among other things, the use of endowment money.
To put it another way, it would be unfitting to invest funds given for humanities education in inhumane ventures. Investment decisions are an important expression of values.
As always, the receipt of a large gift is only the beginning of education made possible by that gift. Now it is up to the University to apply that gift prudently, imaginatively and humanely.
Rob Karwath
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Technology can't alter human nature
Our 10th-grade teacher spoke with the sort of eagerness you tend to remember years later. "In the future," he said in a voice filled with excitement, "candy sold in movie houses will be made out of material that will not rattle like cellophane, so annoying now to your neighbor in the theater."
He said that to get a laugh out of his students. His larger theme was that a host of post-World War II technology was on the horizon and that we as students who would live until the cusp of the 21st century had better prepare our minds for this fantastic future.
The spine-tingling excitement so many people felt those days has been transformed over the years by several stark realities. Of course, our teacher was correct. Such a world of information would be born. His future is our present. The chilling
His central point about the future was his prediction that we would see a day when the world was literally tied together by computers that would serve our every need and bring us into — and these words I shall never forget — "a universe of intellectual communication that will span oceans and leap mountains." He believed in "one world" and said the computer and the jet engine guaranteed its ultimate fruition.
reality is how wrong he was to assume such a world would be an intellectual and human nirvana.
Along with the blessings of so much information and communication
Robert C. Maynard
Oakland Tribune
The reason we greeted the early stages of the New Age with such innocence, I think, is this: Some of the teachers and thinkers of those times made a naive misjudgment, best seen in hindsight. They mistook the transformation of the information order as being synonymous with a transformation in human nature.
Our possibilities for mobility and information have been vastly expanded, but the capacity of people to deal with the implications of such an
have come the terrors of technology and weaponry capable of destroying the globe many times over. The New Age has brought, too, the creation of powerful chemical compounds that present a host of new environmental concerns about their manufacture, use and disposal.
You need not look at such large matters as global warfare to see evidence of this. Not long ago, there was an example that spoke volumes. It was a small item in most news newspapers.
expansive universe is still trying to catch up.
The story said that personal computer owners who used various electronic bulletin boards should beware of the "Trojan horse." This turns out to be a form of computer vandalism.
At the end of the desecration of his work came the words, "arf, Arf,got
In the very spirit of my teacher's vision of the intellectual community of the future, one of the benefits of owning a personal computer is being able to join electronic bulletin boards. These are exchanges of information for people of varying interests. Some people place software programs in the public domain that you can simply copy from a bulletin board for free onto your own computer.
The Trojan horse is a vicious prank in which an innocent-appearing program on the bulletin board, once taken into your computer, will erase every program stored on it. One man saw 900 programs built over half a lifetime vanish before his disbelieving eyes.
you." It is interesting how we could have foreseen the benefits of science to the good side of human nature, and yet we paid almost no attention to the fact the human community also has within it maniacs and sadsists.
It takes an odd turn of mind for someone to want to cause the destruction of the work of a total stranger. Here, the villain doesn't even have the pleasure of witnessing the agony of his or her victim. It is sheer, silent perversity.
The vandalism is distinct from hacking because the individual can derive no known benefit, except through imagining how innocent people have ingested the program and seen their work destroyed.
In an insidious twist on the Trojan horse, one of its new companions does not zap all your programs at once. Instead, it gradually degrades them over a long period of time.
My teacher was right to extol the glory of the new age, and I cannot fault him for not anticipating a simple fact of life: Not all humans are good. Now those who enjoy the intellectual companionship of electronic bulletin boards will have to develop a new skill in detecting new dangers. Looked at that way, technology has not changed the fundamental facts of life much at all.
Advocates of drug use disorient students
Is the use of illegal drugs conducive to gaining a higher education?
Is there a difference between drug use and drug abuse when talking about illegal drugs? Is promoting drug use to freshmen really a good idea?
According to a new student publication, KU Disorientation Handbook, the answers to the above questions are yes.
But to an intelligent, informed and mature adult, the answers are no.
Dennis "Boog" Highberger, one of the producers of the manual, told a Kansan reporter that there was a difference between drug use and drug abuse.
When it comes to illegal drugs, there is no difference and Highberger is kidding himself if he actually thinks that there is.
Drugs destroy society. Using life-nalgal drugs alienates that person from the rest of society. He becomes trapped in his own little world, seeing things that aren't there, and believing things that aren't true.
The advocacy of using illegal drugs is reckless and irresponsible. Nothing good comes from it. Only shattered lives, families and careers.
The section on drugs starts off by stating that drugs "are an essential part of the college experience, but unfortunately many of the best ones are illegal."
Drug abuse is a big problem among teenagers. Freshmen who get off to a rocky start might be conned into thinking that smoking a little of this, snorting a little of that and injecting a little of the other will solve all of their problems.
The manual also assures new students that since drug busts in Lawrence are infrequent, the user shouldn't have to worry about "the long arm of the law."
Total nonsense.
However, many students each year discover that "the long arm of the law" is a little longer than they thought.
Most infuriating, however, is the
suggestion that future issues of the handbook should be financed by KU students. To use student funds to advocate the use of illegal drugs insults moral decency.
Victor Goodpasture Staff columnist
So much controversy surrounded the manual's advocacy of the use of illegal drugs that Highberger wrote a one-page "clarification" — Salami and Consciousness.
What he basically says is that the world would be a much better place to live if people were stoned on drugs all the time. Then peace and love would flourish and war and hatred would never exist again.
It's nice to see that utopian thought still exists on campus these days.
He continues by stating that we are
the first culture in history to attempt to control mind-altering substances.
Hey! Maybe that's why we are the most advanced culture in the world.
Basically, his argument centers on legalizing all drugs so that one could have "access to other states of consciousness." What he fails to realize is that if everyone is in another "state of consciousness" — stoned out of his mind — then society fails to function properly.
Most of society agrees that the use of illegal drugs is wrong. However, in a free society such as ours, there is always a small radical element that tries to pervert the norm.
If that small radical element determines that the only way to succeed in life and find true happiness is to get high on artificial mind-altering substances such as illegal drugs, so be it.
The rest of society prefers to ge high on life.
18-year-olds too young for a lot of things
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For many years this country has operated under the obviously mistaken impression that an 18-year-old has developed enough common sense to be able to assume the responsibility of adult. This impression was correct. An 18-year-old lost their right to drink 3.2 percent beer.
The new law is a good one, a much needed step in the direction of saving America from bad people. We have not, however, gone far enough.
If an 18-year-old cannot be granted the right to drink alcohol, then surely there are other, more important rights that he should be denied. Someone who would drink irresponsibly also could vote irresponsibly. The right to elect the leaders of our nation is probably the greatest responsibility of any citizen. Yet, if we cannot trust an 18-year-old with the right to drink, then voting definitely is out of the question. Why, a nation of irresponsible 18-year-olds might elect a group of irresponsible
congressmen who would in turn take away the 18-year-olds' right to drink. Or, they might elect a B-grade movie star president.
At the age of 18, many people begin working. Danger threatens when teenagers are allowed to intrude in business. Certainly, no businessman
Jay Wiegman Staff columnist
in his right mind would entrust the care of expensive office equipment to anyone so young. The turmoil and damage that would result would be awful. Eighteen-year-old construction workers would pose a particularly serious hazard. Picture a rebellious young street worker chasing after little old ladies, children and other innocents with his trusty jackhammer.
The people who don't start work right after school generally go off to college. But we still haven't hit the magical age of 21 and most certainly cannot be trusted on our own. Therefore, our parents should move on as soon as possible. Right into the dorms. Our little brothers and sisters could be TAs.
There used to be only three sure things in life: death, taxes, and the right to drink 3.2 beer when you are eighteen. Eighteen-year-olds may not be able to drink anymore, but they still get to pay taxes. This, however is another part of adulthood that should be taken away from them because of their irresponsibility. We are talking about a veritable danger zone. Undoubtedly your typical teenager takes poor care of his or her checkbook. When the checks are written to the IRS they probably will bounce, sending the economy into financial collapse.
Allowing 18-year-old men to fight for their country is another practice
that must immediately cease and desist. Drinking and fighting always have seemed to go hand in hand, anyway, and without one the other would just seem out of place. Seriously, we can't trust 18-year-olds who aren't responsible enough to drink to fight a responsible war. Besides, we'd probably turn around and shoot at the wrong people. Instead, we should reserve that privilege of patriotism for the congressmen who so easily can
decide our rights and capabilities for us. I'm sure the boys in Washington would be more than willing to do their part.
I wonder whether we still should be allowed to drive.
If this all seems a wee bit silly to you, it should. Maybe I should have my right to write a newpaper column taken away from me.