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Friday, September 5, 1986 / University Daily Kansan
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It is difficult to follow rules and regulations that are seldom read and always hard to find.
But that is a problem, not an excuse.
It also is a reality for many of the members of Student Senate, a reality that has brought some sticky conflicts to light in recent days.
For several years, it has been nearly impossible to find an up-to-date, comprehensive copy of the Student Senate rules and regulations. Perhaps one never existed.
Records or almost any legislation handled by this governing body seem illusive, incomplete and often conflicting.
A prime example is the recent revenue code hearing flap.
Revenue code groups are large organizations, such as Legal Services for Students, that serve many students. They request an annual chunk of the student activity fee fund every two years.
Several senators brought to the Kansan a letter complaining about the Student Ex-
executive Committee overstepping its bounds in postponing some budget hearings until next fall.
The upset senators said that the hearings were supposed to be completed by Sept. 15, according to legislation passed by the full Senate during the spring.
StuEx's alleged misjudgments are almost beside the point. It is the camouflage and confusion that must be cleared up if this semester's senate is to accomplish anything in the midst of the smokescreens thrown up by student politicians.
Blood money
Neither the upset senators nor StudEx members could produce the legislation passed in the spring or an updated, printed version of the rules.
It's time for the Kansas University Endowment Association to stop signing its checks in blood.
the situation is further confused by the fact that everyone involved seems to be playing politics before the fall elections.
But StudEx members said the situation constituted an emergency and decided to act for the full senate and postpone the hearings.
Since its decision last year not to divest from companies dealing with South Africa, scores of black South Africans have been murdered. Just last week, 21 were slain during one bloody night in the Soweto township.
Yesterday, the South African government tightened its iron lock on the "free" foreign press. The latest round of restrictions, an extension of those imposed in June, has barred journalists from being "within sight" of any unrest, restricted gathering or police action.
When the new wave of government-sponsored murder begins, the press will only be able to speculate on the number of dead and injured.
The moral implications, the economic implications and the
sociopolitical consequences were all considered by the Endowment Association as it pondered its South African ties.
It decided to hide behind "prudent man laws," which demand that it invest the association's money in a way that maximizes the return on its investment. It claimed that its hands were tied. The law, it said, had left them no options.
Think again.
During the last six months, the State of California and the California Board of Regents ordered full divestment of their almost $12 billion in South African investments. They also had been "bound" by prudent man laws but decided to take a courageous step by acting in spite of them.
How many more deaths will it take to awaken the consciences of the Endowment Association trustees?
Divest now
The skids have been heavily greased for William H. Rehnquist.
Justice warrants scrutiny
The confirmation of Rehnquist, designate for chief justice of the United States, should be debated in the Senate next week. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole said. The Republican-dominated body is expected to approve Rehnquist's nomination.
The announcement came despite nagging questions about Rehnquist's stand on civil rights, his alleged intimidation of Arizona voters in the late 1950s and early '60s, his activities in the Justice Department in the Nixon administration and his legal dealings with relatives.
The questions raised in the Senate's initial inquiry and subsequent findings have not
been answered adequately.
The Senate should not avoid checking allegations of possible criminal activities simply because President Reagan wants a cheerfully done, rubber-stamp job.
Did Rehnquist attempt to defraud his ill brother-in-law in a probate case and then keep it secret? Senators still are seeking information that would answer this serious allegation.
Secondly, did Rehquist intimidate minority voters as a poll worker in Arizona between 1958 and 1964?
The questions are troubling, but the possibility of a nomination after a much-too-shallow review is more troubling. Such a quick slide through the last check point would be an abomination.
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Inmate wants better treatment
I've just read my morning mail, and I'm filled with feelings of guilt and remorse. It seems that I have hurt Brad's feelings.
You remember Brad, don't you? Brad Lieberman. He's doing a 20-year stretch in a state prison for a dozen or so rapes.
Brad just sent me a lengthy letter, criticizing a column I recently wrote about him and his complaints that he wasn't being treated properly in prison.
I wrote that column after Brad gripped to a soft-hearted state legislator that he wasn't given the opportunity to further his college education, study music, or have adequate recreation.
he's being deprived of these activities because he has placed himself in protective custody — isolated from the other prisoners — because he thinks they will hurt him
My knee-jerk reaction was that if Brad hadn't made a practice of rapping on doors, telling women he was a plumber checking for leaks, then raping the women he wouldn't be in prison.
I guess I was insensitive to Brad's needs, so I wrote a column lacking sympathy and understanding.
To me, that didn't seem like proper behavior for a young man (he's now 26) who had been raised in a prosperous home in the suburb of Skokie, went to excellent schools and led a comfortable life.
So, I advised Brad to serve the remaining 14 years of his sentence as best he could, and to remember that when he got out 'he'd be only 40 and
would have many prime years ahead of him. If he could just avoid knocking on the doors of ladies to whom he hadn't been properly introduced.
Now Brad has responded. I would like to print his entire letter, but it's so long that it would fill this and the next page. So I'll just try to summarize.
Mike Royko
Chicago Tribune
Brad again says that life in prison is pretty miserable. The prisoners form gangs, and if you aren't part of a gang, you could be at their mercy.
"I'm 6 feet 3 inches, and weigh well over 240," Brad says. "I am strong as an ox and can handle myself with any man, one on one. However, in this place, gangs come at guys with knives, clubs and sufficient numbers with which to totally devastate anyone they target."
I don't doubt that. But the question is, why are they after Brad? It's not because of his race, because he's at Menard State Prison, where the majority of prisoners are white.
Brad explains. Before he went to prison, he worked as a private security guard for a department store and a few other companies.
And, he says, he was so zealous in collarling thieves, felons and other wrong-doers that his reputation as a
fearless lawman has spread through the prison.
So, the other prisoners know that Brad — while working as a watchman in a department store — was responsible for sending many of their pals to jail. And they want to get even.
I wasn't aware that a department store security guard could send that many guys up the river, but that's what Brad says.
He goes on to tell how crowded the prisons are, how bleak life there can be, and how much better off society would be if prisoners could be rehabilitated, so they could be useful citizens when they get out.
I haven't read anything like that since the last 50 or so stories that were printed in Chicago newspapers about how miserable life is in prison.
He also says — and I know this will come as a shock — that he didn't commit any of those rapes. He was not the "plumber rapist," as the police and the press dubbed him.
Instead, he was a victim of "an overzealous news media only interested in out-sensationalizing competing news bodies . . ."
Maybe that's true. On the other hand, I don't recall that it was a reporter who nabbed Brad. It was the cops.
Nor did any reporters testify against him. The testimony came from women, such as the one who wrote me a letter that said, "Being one of his victims, I can certainly attest to his incredible ability to lie and
his cry-baby antics. I can still remember vividly waiting at the police station through the wee hours with 10 hour women, all of us his victims. Each of us positively identified him as the rapist. God only knows how many did not come forward.
"As far as I'm concerned, I would like to see him moved to some remote island of nuclear waste to spend the rest of his days cohabitating en masse with more of his kind."
But to get back to Brad's letter
He says: "The next time an ex-convict does something stupid and violent, you can accept part of the blame for wasting valuable journalistic power and influence by letting the very real and very huge problem go unexamined and, as a result, uncorrected."
In other words, I should not have written about Brad and his complaints to a state legislator about how unhappy he is, but about the big picture — that life in our prisons is not a cup of tea. Gosh, was anybody else besides me unaware that being in prison wasn't like a trip to Disney World?
And he concludes by saying, "I hope that you feel a sense of accomplishment. You accomplished nothing. You jerk."
That hurt, being called a jerk by Brad. I feel so bad that I think I'll go home and cry myself to sleep.
On the other hand, maybe I'll just stop in a bar, have a beer and chuckle awhile.
Mike Deaver's Secret Painting.
Provincialism is dying in the U.S.
Last week the country's governors got together at Hilton Head, S.C., to discuss what they considered were the most pressing problems facing their states. The dominant issues were education, economic development, environmental pollution, crime and drugs.
All important issues. But they missed a big one: provincialism.
Of course, some people may not think provincialism is that big of a deal. But I'll bet money that one of the most common questions asked on any college campus is: Where are you from?
It is one of the first questions people ask after they've been introduced to someone. It's a great way to shift the burden of conversation to the other person, forcing him into a biographical monologue. Also it's an easy test for sorting out new acquaintances, allowing you to decide whether you want to know them any better. Finding out where a person is from is the easiest pick-up line around.
Or at least it use to be. Some drastic demographic shifts have created problems. Recent surveys indicate that entire populations are
packing up and moving. For example, many of the residents of New York have moved to Florida, and a large portion of the populations of Chicago and Kansas now live in Colorado. Also, close study of the 1980 census has revealed that people now are living in Nevada, Arizona and Alaska.
Gil Chavez
Columnist
Now what all this has to do with the governor's conference is simple: it's an election year. Some of these guys are going to be making speeches to a lot of people who just arrived in their states.
But what if all those Texans driving mobile homes through his state suddenly decided to pull into the nearest RV park and take up permanent residence? Well, Lamm would be in hot political water right away.
So you can see that some of these governors are going to be in for a surprise, because provincialism is getting risky.
Politicians, however, aren't the only ones that should be concerned about provincialism. It's a problem that concerns us all.
With people moving around, it's going to make jumping to conclusions really difficult, and I'm sure no one wants that. In fact the shifts in regional populations already have taken a toll in many states.
The first to go was California. When it gave political birth to Ronald Reagan, it blew its reputation for being progressive and slightly decadent.
Soon to be on the casualty list is Colorado. Everyone in Colorado is an
expert skier, right? Well Kansas must be expert skiers too, because surveys indicate that Kansas is where most new residents of Colorado come from.
One hope, however, has emerged from the rubble of provincialism: it doesn't take long for newcomers to achieve the proper chauvinism concerning their adopted states.
Last summer one of my hometown friends, Jan, got into an argument with a stranger about rattlesnakes. Finally the stranger, who lived in Arizona for two whole years, told Tani that if he couldn't stand living around rattlers, then he should leave the state and go back where he came from. Well, Jan was so mad he probably would have done it, except that he had nowhere to go. He's 50 years old and hasn't lived anywhere else.
If that story doesn't choke you up, nothing will. It's good to know that all these newcomers are so eager to jump on provincialism's band wagon. If they keep it up, provincialism will be back bigger than ever, and we all can get on with snap judgments or stereotyping.
Mailbox
Set the story straight
The action taken by the Student Senate Executive Committee deserves more careful analysis than the article provided for the average student (Kansan, Aug. 25). It also demands a stern response.
The executive committee, by a $3 vote, negated action taken by the Student Senate this spring. This action would have begun preparations for
Fall Revenue Code Hearings. Although fall 1986 would have been earlier than the normal schedule for such hearings, it was considered necessary in order to implement the shift of elections to the spring semester by 1987.
Senate's timetable.
This would prevent the overloading of a newly installed Finance Committee with both revenue code and regular budget proceedings in a two-month period. The executive committee determined that an emergency existed and decided to alter the
What are the real reasons for postponement?
The hearings would become too political due to the fall elections. Translation: Senators and StudEx members should shy away from the controversial decisions they were elected to confront.
Let me suggest another solution. Rein in unelected administrative officials, and pay more attention to the running of student government in the summer. We need practical, long-
range thinking about the fiscal role Senate should and could play in the University.
The Senate is not a stage for disappointed second-rate actors who make up the script as they go; no, it needs and deserves something more in the way of responsible and responsive leadership and must provide the same to the student body.
Michael Foubert Lawrence graduate student
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