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Thursday, October 22, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Bottom line
KU basketball player Joe Young was just plain unlucky
Young may lose a year of his athletic eligibility because he mistakenly received financial aid without having enough credit hours transfer from a junior college. In early October, KU had to declare Young, a transfer from Dodge City Community College, ineligible to compete. Young was seven credits short of the National Collegiate Athletic Association requirement for junior college transfers.
But so should all students.
Athletic Department officials have said that they should have caught the mistake over Young's credit hours. In this case, Young had little control over the situation. The Athletic Department should learn from this unfortunate mistake.
Enrollment is just around the corner. All students should check their transcripts and credit hours with their advisers. Then, students should double check their records to make sure they are on target for graduation, scholarships or any type of eligibility.
Advisers and departments will do what they can to keep their students on the right path, but the biggest responsibility lies with the students themselves.
Students should know where they stand academically. It's their own college career.
Well worth it
Tragedy, despite the pain it causes, often brings two positive side effects.
One is that compassion and support — even from strangers — are readily available. The other is that people become alert to conditions that allow accidents to occur and take preventive measures.
In the case of Jessica McClure, the 18-month-old who fell down a well shaft in Texas last week, compassion came quickly from friends, neighbors and volunteers. People rose to the occasion and supported the McClures with untiring labor and with money for hospital bills
What has not happened yet is the second response to tragedy; taking steps to ensure that it will not be repeated elsewhere.
According to the state Department of Health and Environment, there are about 250,000 unplugged wells in Kansas. The possibility of repeating the Jessica McClure tragedy exists — indeed it looms. Records have not been kept on all abandoned wells in the state, but surely thousands could be located and sealed.
Besides abandoned wells, other areas of neglect are similarly dangerous to children. Old refrigerators, used plastic bags and sharp, rusty objects are often discarded irresponsibly. The McClure case should serve as a reminder to adults that the safety of children is in their hands.
or children is in their hands.
Our nation watched with compassion as a little girl endured a harrowing experience. Efforts to protect others would be well worth it.
Crime.
Lawless bill
Many U.S. citizens live in perpetual fear that they will be the next victims of robbers, rapists or murderers. Indeed, these fears are not without some foundation — crime is a serious problem in the United States today.
But unfortunately, the outcry for law and order may result not in justice, but in injustice. Citizens who now fear lawless thugs may find themselves victimized instead by unfair police practices.
President Reagan's newly proposed anti-crime measures would greatly weaken the exclusionary rule, which prohibits the use of illegally obtained evidence in court.
Already, police can forgo a search warrant if they can demonstrate "probable cause" for suspecting that a crime has been committed. Apparently, this is not satisfactory to the president. The new law would mean that an officer could search your car, your home, even your person, on a mere hunch or on the basis of your appearance.
Is this a victory for justice? If police need no longer have a warrant or probable cause to search, we can no longer claim to be governed by law. The individual officer becomes the final authority on your Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.
The need for better crime control should not prompt us to act rashly and foolishly. President Reagan may find it easier and cheaper to curtail civil rights than to find real solutions to the crime problem. But the costs of undermining constitutional guarantees are incalculable.
The president's bill is itself a crime.
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board.
News staff
Jennifer Benjamin .Editor
Juli Warren .Managing editor
John Benner .News editor
Beth Copeland .Editorial editor
Sally Streff .Campus editor
Brian Kabelline .Sports editor
Dan Rietlmann .Photo editor
Bill Skeet .Graphics editor
Tom Eblen .General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Bonnie J. Hardy ... Business manager
Robert Hughes ... Advertising manager
Kelly Scherer ... Retail sales manager
Kurt Messersmith ... Campus sales manager
Greg Knipp ... Production manager
David Derffelt ... National sales national sales
Angela Clark ... Classified manager
Rim Weems ... Director of marketing
Jeanne Hines ... Sales and marketing adviser
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Nosy press gapes at Robertson
A candidate's premarital sex life is nobody's business
Pat Robertson and I are from the same generation, are close in age and have some things in common.
Both of us served in the Korean War. Neither of us did anything particularly heroic or dangerous to the enemy.
Both of us were married in the same year, 1954. I was,22. Robertson was,24.
We both had kids. My first son was born in 1950. My wife and I waited because it was almost five years before my paycheck could support a small family. Robertson had his first child earlier — only 10 weeks after he was married.
I'm aware of this highly personal detail of Robertson's life because I happened to read it in The Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. It then became a big network story.
This isn't something Robertson or his wife wanted anyone to know about. They don't believe
It's not something I wanted to know about,
because I agree with Robertson — it's none of my business
I know that we've somehow reached the point where a presidential candidate's life is supposed to an open book, but I think that there are some limits. And in this case, I think we've barged
What is it, exactly, that this revelation has told us about Pat Robertson?
it's told us that while a young man, and before he became a clergyman, he and his future wife had premarital sex.
I'm not interested in knowing whether Ron and Nancy did, or Jimmy and Rosalynn, Jerry and
Betty, Dick and Pat, Lyndon and Lady Bird, Jack and Jackie, Ike and Mamie or any of them going back to George and Martha.
Nor am I interested in whether any of the presidential candidates, from either party, had premarital sex with their wives. It's none of my business.
Obviously, the people who run The Wall Street Journal think otherwise. They think it is their business since they went to the bother of digging up the evidence. I assume that reporters looked up old public records that show when Robertson married and when the child was born.
Does it tell us something about Pat Robertson's character, that overworked political word?
And the Journal thinks it is our business, because they told us about what they found. But what the Journal hasn't yet told us is why it is my business or yours.
Does it tell us he was a rogue? Not at all. He didn't wrong and abandon a woman. They married, have been together, appear to be happy, and their son seems like a fine young man.
Does it tell us that he'a a hyprite, because he now preaches against premarital sex? No, it
doesn't. As he freely admits, he was a bit of a hell-raiser as a young man. But when he became deeply religious, his views and personal conduct changed. There's nothing unusual about believing one thing when you're young, and the opposite when you get older.
As far as I can see, this doesn't tell me one thing that I really needed to know about Robertson.
This isn't in any way comparable to the Gary Hart case, in which a married candidate seemed to go out of his way to let the press corps know he was a suspect, then publicly challenged them to catch him.
If anything, there's something almost quaint about the Robertson disclosure.
Here we are, in an era when hundreds of thousands of unmarried couples openly live together — including stars of stage, screen and theater — come marry, others don't. Society barely shuts.
But here's Pat Robertson, having to go through the embarrassment of explaining something very personal that occurred between him and his wife Martha, a far more restrained and repressed decade.
Of course, I could be wrong. If so, I wish The Wall Street Journal would run an editorial explaining just why it was so important for you to hear me about the premarital relationship of the Robertsons.
And while they're at it, the editors of the Journal might also answer another question: Hey, guys, did you and your sweeties ever get it on?
Robertson's cover-up is his worst sin
Reverend misjudged stigma of skirting outright truthfulness
Pat Robertson turns out to be something other than a plaster saint after all. Seems his first child was born about 10 weeks after his marriage. There is only one proper thing to say on learning that a fellow has become a father within weeks of his marriage, and that is congratulations. By all accounts, Robertson has proved an exemplary family man and, despite his complaints about how mean the press is being by revealing this part of his past, I have yet to see anybody cast the first stone. For my part, I have seldom thought better of him; his marriage 33 years ago bespeaks a sense of responsibility in his private life that is too rare in his public performances. It's Robertson's politics, not his family life, that is disturbing.
As usual in these matters, it is not the original embarrassment that hurts, but the attempt to cover it up. Richard Nixon wasn't done in by a third-rate burglary he couldn't be held responsible for, but by his lying — and more than lying — about it. Candidate Robertson hasn't learned that lesson. He moved his marriage date up several discreet months when he was interviewed by the Washington Post not long ago. And that mistake doesn't date back 33 years.
The same candidate who once said, quite rightly, that it was "perfectly appropriate" to examine "every aspect" of a candidate's life, now complains that "it is outrageous to pry into a
man's past" when it is his own past that is being pried into.
And what must the formerly Reverend Robertson think of the American public if he found it necessary to lie about his marriage date — that we are a vast collection of prigs? What must he think of the American press if he didn't realize that sooner or later the real date would surface? Did he assume that newsmen were so lazy they would never check out a marriage license? Imagine the hubris a President Robertson would be capable of.
Grover Cleveland handled such matters much better in the campaign of 1884. When it was revealed that in his youth Cleveland, a bachelor, had fathered an illegitimate child, the opposition
Ma, Ma. Where's my pa? Gone to the White Horse Ha! Ha! Ha! Ja!
house, ha. ha ha. ha
Cleveland's reaction was simple. "Tell the
truth," he told his campaign staff. That's the policy Robertson should have followed instead of fiddling with dates. Cleveland's candor won him the respect of the public — and the election. It doubtless helped if he was revealed that he had been honored enough to acknowledge the child; and provide financial support. It definitely helped when his Republican opponent, James G. Blaire, was caught up in a financial scandal to which he responded with glib but unconvincing denials. That gave Cleveland's party a chant of its own: Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaire, the conti-
One of Cleveland's supporters explained the choice facing the American electorate in 1884 this way. While the Democratic candidate had an unblemished record, his personal history left something to be desired. In contrast, the Republican standard-bearer had led an exemplary private life but had corrupted public opinion. He was to advance Cleveland in the area he had ornamented, public office, and to return Blaine to the sphere in which he excelled, private life.
Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continual lair from the State of Maine.
In Pat Robertson's case, no one should hold a young man's ardor against him 33 years after he has proven a proud father and upright husband. It's not Robertson's personal conduct in the past that disturbs; it's his deviousness in the present, and what that bodies for the future.
BLOOM COUNTY
py Berke Breathed