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Tuesday, October 21, 1986 / University Daily Kansan
Destructive tradition
In 1984, it was called a "near riot." This year's mayhem is being referred to as a "destructive mlee."
Semantics aside, the vandalism and violence after each of the last two KU-K-State football games in Manhattan has become a dangerous and ridiculous tradition.
This year, more than 6,000 drunken students and other revelers packed into Manhattan's tavern district — affectionately known as Aggieville — after K-State pounded the Jayhawks 29-12 on Saturday afternoon.
Windows were broken, a car was overturned and burned and mindless idiots chucked beer and wine bottles from the tops of buildings onto the crowded streets below. Thousands of dollars of damage was incurred and several injuries were reported.
Witnesses said the "near riot" in 1984 was more violent — one police officer was stabbed, several others wounded and 24 people were arrested — as nearly 8,000 people went haywire. But both uprisings have made KU and Kansas
State look bad.
It would be easy, sitting over here in calm, quiet Lawrence, to place all of the blame on our rival to the west. But it would not be so.
Opinions
KU students were arrested right alongside K-State students in 1984 and again this year.
So while the blame must be shared, it is the leaders of Manhattan, including student leaders, who will be burdened with most of the responsibility for solving the situation.
Police officers simply cannot be expected to handle thousands of drunk football fans storming through a bar-filled, two-square-block area.
Manhattan's merchants, student leaders and police officers have agreed to meet this week and discuss their options, much as they did in 1984. This time they must be more successful.
And any solution will have to include an effort by students to stop the mayhem. The idea of a cross-state rivalry is fine, but this growing tradition of destruction must be stopped
Whooping cough is back
Health department officials say the recent outbreak of whooping cough, which has affected 97 Douglas County residents and killed one Topea infant, may continue for months. Students and Lawrence residents need to take precautions against contracting the highly contagious respiratory infection.
The first step in prevention should be a call to parents or a family doctor to ensure that you have been immunized
Whooping cough is not always easy to identify because the infection begins with symptoms similar to those of the common cold. But the initial runny nose and cough can lead to diseases such as pneumonia and post-infectious encephalitis within two weeks.
Watkins Hospital records show that most KU students have been immunized with DPT, the vaccine for whooping cough. Jody Woods, a nurse at Watkins, said foreign students who had not been immunized needed to watch closely for symptoms.
Because of the increased risk of side effects, however, the department of health discourages people older than seven years old — who have never been vaccinated with DPT — from getting immunized. The risk of contracting these side effects, which include high fever and brain damage, increases with age.
Instead, those who have not received the vaccination need to be aware of the symptoms and consult a doctor immediately if any occur.
Political futility lesson
After 46 days, four veterans of the Vietnam war who were fasting on the steps of the Capitol in Washington to protest the United States' involvement in Nicaragua decided to begin eating again.
The United States government hasn't changed its policy on Nicaragua, but the veterans say they have met their goal through the hundreds of letters and individual acts of solidarity their fast has inspired around the country.
Two of the four, Charles Liteky and George Mizo, were near death. Liteky, who turned in his Medal of Honor at the beginning of the fast, was told he would die within two weeks if he did not eat; Mizo lost 45 pounds, 25 percent of his body weight. With Brian Willson and Duncan Murphy, Liteky and Mizo ingested nothing but water for the entire 46 days of the fast.
It's probably the only way
these men can ever hope to see peace in Nicaragua. They learned the hard way the futility of fighting the Reagan administration on the Nicaraguan issue. Like it or not, the administration supports the contrast; even to the point of looking the other way when illegal mercenaries decide to take matters into their own hands and deliver aid themselves.
Heroism on the wrong side of an issue is conveniently ignored. With Congress' adjournment this week, the veterans could have died on the Captiol steps for their cause and no one would have noticed except the schoolchildren and tourists who visit the monument.
Change isn't in Reagan's plans for Central America. But disinformation and outright lying are. Where will it all lead? Another war? More protests? More veterans?
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News staff
Lauretta McMillen... Editor
Kady McMaster... Managing editor
Ted Gurke... News editor
David Silverman... Editorial editor
John Hanna... Campus editor
Frank Hansel... Sports editor
Jack Kelly... Photo editor
Tom Eblen... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
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Sidney Dewey... Classified man
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Beverly Kastens... Traffic manager
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I'm filled with dread at the thought of the trauma millions of Americans will soon be enduring.
We will all be lost in the mourning
The ABC network has said that host David Hartman will be leaving its morning show in February.
In making the announcement, a network vice-president saidly said;
we win miss him, and so will millions of Americans who look to him and Good Morning America that all is well with their world and their lives."
Shortly after hearing this news, I was lunching with some friends, and I mentioned it to them.
One of them moaned: "I don't know if I can take it. When I get up in the morning, will you assume me that all is well with my world and my life?"
"That's easy to say. But I remember the morning I was just having my first cup of coffee when my teenage daughter told me she was pregnant. When I asked my wife what we were going to do, she threw her bottle of tranquilizers at me, said she was moving to California and walked out.
You'll have to hang tough
"t called my boss to tell him I'd be late for work, and he told me not to bother because I was fired anyway. I
dropped my coffee cup, and it landed on my dog's head and he bit my foot.
"I limped into the living room in a daze and turned on the TV set and saw David Hartman. I think he was interviewing the author of a best-selling book called 'The Artichoke Diet.'"
Mike Royko
Chicago Tribune
"And suddenly I was assured that all was well with my world and my life. Thanks to David, I could cope." The man truly has a gift.
"I feel the same way," said my other lunch companion. "Sometimes I'll bring in the morning paper and read depressing headlines about terrorists, farm foreclosures, famine, nuclear buildups, floods and higher taxes, and I'll start experiencing anxiety."
"And I'll hear on the radio that rush hour traffic is backed up to the Canadian border, and remember that yesterday the doctor gave me my annual checkup and told me I should get a second opinion from an
'But all I have to do is turn on David Hartman, and he'll be sitting there so calm, interviewing the author of the best-selling book: 'Pomegranates — The Secret Of Sexual Potency.'
embalmer, and I'll notice that the cat confused my hat with his litter box.
"And I'll know all is well with my world and my life."
Just then the waitress came by and said: "Did I hear you mention David Hartman?"
She turned pale and said, "I don't believe it. For years, I have been getting up in the morning, knowing that I am going to have to spend the entire day waiting tables, my feet throbbing, my varicose veins getting worse and the Greek who owns this place pinching me every time I walk by.
Yes. It has been announced that he wa- soon be leaving the morning
"I get on my bathroom scale and I'm still 30 pounds overweight from compulsive eating because I'm nervous from worrying about not being able to pay my therapist for treating me because I'm ashamed of my body.
"Does anyone care? Not my drunken bum of a husband, three
years without a paycheck, stealing my tip money and sitting in a saloon buying drinks for floozies until all hours of the night. or My son. All he cares about is going dancing with his fiance, a guy named Rudy.
"Then I'll turn on my TV and see David Hartman sitting there, interviewing the author of the best-selling book, 'The Secret Path to Wealth — Cleaning Swimming Pools,' and I'll know that all is well in my world and my life."
After leaving the restaurant, we were still discussing this national calamity when a frail panhandler approached us. As I handed him a dime, he said "Excuse me, but did I hear you say David Hartman is leaving the morning show?"
That's right.
He shook his head and said: "What will I do. In the morning, I often ask myself whether the quest for financial success is really worth all the stress and strain of life in the fast track. Then I turned on my TV and
You watch David, and you know all is well in your world and your life.
You're not alone pal, you're not alone.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
Reagan in Reykjavik: a bold refusal
Ronald Reagan has returned from Iceland to face the slings and arrows of outraged critics bitterly disappointed that he didn't bring home Peace In Our Time. Here the Soviets made him an offer he couldn't refuse — and he did.
The very critics that lamented, deplored and ridiculed his Strategic Defense Initiative now are disappointed that Reagan didn't cash in on this remarkably valuable asset at the first opportunity. There may be one conclusion to be drawn from all this hubbub: it's going to take some of us a while longer to become accustomed to having a president of the United States who isn't a sucker.
It took considerable resolve, ingenuity and unity to bring the Soviets this far. Not until the deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles in Western Europe did they evince an interest in reducing their SS-20s in Eastern Europe. Not until Star Wars left the movie screen for the drawing board did the Soviets appear serious about arms reduction. Correction: They were always serious about reducing American arms, just not theirs.
By the time of the weekend summit in Reykjavik, the Soviets were showing great interest in agreeing to eliminate nuclear arms. As any student of Soviet diplomacy will note, that isn't the same as their
eliminating them. If Ronald Reagan had signed on the dotted line, the world might have gotten a treaty as effective as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty the Soviets are now violating at Krasnoyarsk or the Helsinki records, which are still as abstract as the talk about rights in the Soviet constitution.
Paul Greenberg
Columnist
This kind of bargain Reagan could refuse. Particularly since, in order to get it, the West would have to give up a way, maybe the only way, of keeping the Soviets honest: this country's Strategic Defense Initiative.
There is much talk just now of a failed summit. But imagine what a "successful" one would have produced if the Soviets had their way; another arms control treaty that might prove as reliable as the ABM treaty now being violated. But this time the United States would have agreed to forget any strategic defense. If that is success, what would be dangerous failure?
If Ronald Reagan had accepted the Soviet offer at Reykjavik, he would
have violated more than sound negotiating strategy, he would have made an agreement that goes against the national character. For an American president to close off his country's options, and particularly scientific options, would have been to go up against the nature of this open, questing society. The Soviets may believe they can tell scientists what not to think, but Americans ought to know better.
The question at Reykjavik wasn't the how to prevent the next stage of the arms race, which is strategic defense, but how to control it. That stage already has arrived. The Soviets themselves were the first, and remain the only, nation to have an operational anti-ballistic missile system in place — and they've been working on their own vdrission of Star Wars for years. The genie is out of the bottle, and the dynamics of both sophisticated science and simple curiosity are such that it's not likely that genie is going to be forced back in by one more suspect treaty. That's one reason it's more realistic to seek a balance of power than try to outlaw power itself.
No analysis of what happened at Reykjavik, or rather didn't happen, would be complete without a word of admiration for Reagan's own analysis as presented to the American people last Monday
evening.
In 20 minutes, he turned the mood of the country around, restoring perspective and morale. He was able to present a clear history of a terribly complex process along with a confident vision of the future. He was firm without being bellicose. He mentioned what has not been mentioned enough in all the talks about this connection between freedom and peace. It's unlikely the world will ever have one without the other.
But most impressive was Reagan's reasonable tone, his willingness to leave the door open even in Mihkah Gorbachev not only rejected but ridiculed Reagan's argument that offensive missiles should be phased out as a strategic defense for both countries is phased in.
"It would have taken a madman to accept that," she sneered the secretary general. "But madmen are in hospitals." Except in the Soviet Union, of course, where they may be crowded out by dissidents. But that's another column.
The difference in tone between the two leaders was as different as their approaches to arms control. Anyone who wishes that the Soviet approach had prevailed might consider this question: which has proved the better guarantee of peace in this century — a treaty signed by the Soviet Union or a strong America?
Mailbox
Fundamentally wrong
Steven Gantz obviously has little understanding of the Meese Commission on pornography, which was excused in his Oct. 13 letter to the Kansan.
The commission did not study pornography It conducted a witch hunt with freedom of expression as the victim to be burned at the stake. The commission's "objective" was not to enlighten us with the truth. The objective was to conduct a kangaroo
court with biased findings to satisfy the Fallwellian mentality of the closed-minded, dogmatic fundamentalists.
For example, 54 witnesses testified to the "evil's" of pornography (whatever they are) while only four were called upon to defend it. Also, the Meese Commission on Pornography was vastly underfunded, especially compared to former President Nixon's pornography commission which, incidentally, did not find any relation between nonviolent pornography and violence. In fact, countries such as Sweden had fewer sex-related crimes when sex magazines were legalized. So who's to say what evil powers magazines that contain pictures of naked women have upon us?
Only violent pornography is related to violent acts. That is because of the violence, not the nudity. When was the last time some cleavage made you want to rob a bank or commit murder? This issue of violence being related to pornography and violence. In fact, countries such as Sweden had fewer sex-related crimes when sex magazines were legalized. So who's to say what evil powers magazines that contain pictures of naked women have upon us?
nography was what Gil Chavez attempted to point out.
I find the entire issue as evidence of the many fundamentalists who fear the important truths - which are never as black and white as they wish others to think they. Let us remember what Pascal said: "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions."
J. David Gordon Oklahoma City graduate student