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Friday, September 18, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Win some, lose some
First the good news.
South Africa's President Pieter W. Botha introduced legislation that would permit blocks to elect representatives to a proposed national council to begin negotiations on a new political system for South Africa.
If passed, the council would include at least 15 blacks among its 30 or so members. The council also would assume authority on an advisory basis over black affairs, pending agreement on a new constitution.
Now for the bad news.
Ideally, if the legislation were passed, blacks could take part in restructuring the South African government to include more rights for blacks and someday spell the death of apartheid.
This week the South African government implemented new press curbs that may spell pre-publication censorship. Unlike previous press regulations, a group of "experts" will undertake a "scientific evaluation" of newspaper copy. Newspapers印刷-government sentiments will be warned, with a possibility of a newspaper shutdown or of an in-house censor.
Blacks are skeptical of the council that they would share with whites, as they should be. South Africa's history is wrought with human rights violations against blacks.
So, maybe Botha can draft a constitution that guarantees the same freedoms to blacks that are available to whites.
Thus, while Botha moves to grant rights to some groups, he continues to take basic rights from others.
And maybe the constitution will give the press the freedom to report about it.
Entrance examined
Obtaining admission to the University of Kansas may not be such a trivial thing for Kansas residents anymore. Stanley Koplik, executive director of the Board of Regents, is advocating a selective admissions policy that requires more than just a high school diploma for a Kansas resident to be admitted to KU.
The criteria Koplik supports are an ACT score of at least 23 or fulfilling Regents recommended high school requirements or graduation in the top third of the high school class. Other Regents universities may approve selective admissions policies, but at least four schools will continue their open admissions standards.
Koplik's proposal makes sense. It allows for the problem of inadequate facilities at some small Kansas high schools while ensuring that the graduating student has a solid foundation with which to begin his higher education.
If KU is to retain its reputation as a high-quality institution, action needs to be taken immediately. Koplik may not have all the answers, but he is heading in the right direction.
Basic benefits
Job hunters know to include vital statistics on their resumes, such as professional experience and references. Most agree, however, that the job interview proves pivotal in obtaining a job.
Robert Half Inc., a consulting firm, surveyed 100 U.S. companies and compiled a list of special privileges, or "perks," demanded by some potential employees. The responses were published in the Christian Science Monitor.
One person interviewed requested an office equipped with a refrigerator, projection TV set, VCR and a microwave. Another was less materialistic and only asked for 100 percent payment of his wife's law school tuition
A job-seeker with a sensitive palate demanded an office within walking distance of both a Chinese and Italian restaurant.
Others wanted to keep their noses to the grindstone, asking for a large office with no windows - interesting views are distracting.
Imagine the boss who hears this demand: payment for any time spent thinking about work on weekends and evenings.
Perhaps these requests could be incorporated into assertiveness seminars — where the painfully timid learn to scold a cat when it tips over a vase. In this case, the timid would learn — as the bold should — a lesson in diplomacy and subtlety. And compromise.
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
Dian Ruettelmann ... Photo editor
Bill Skeet ... Graphics editor
Tom Elenb ... 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 manager
Angela Gould...Classification
Ron Weems...Director of marketing
Jeanne Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
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Indecisive mind volleys views
Bork splits votes with strict interpretation of Constitution
Ever since Ronald Reagan nominated Robert H. Bork as the next associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, I've been debating with myself. The company has been interesting, but the results have been indifferent. It's been a pretty even match, and it's still in progress:
"The hearings on the nomination began Sept. 15, you know. The hour of decision approaches. Soon you'll have to fish or cut up the nominee. You'll have to grab a hand—and this on the other-hand that columns."
"You mean like this one? No, anything's better than this indecision. Let's go with our first instincts and come out against the nomination. It might be different if William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia weren't already on the court, but two narrow-minded, right-wing ideologues are one more than enough."
"Wa-a趴 a minute. Wait an hour. Rehnquist may be a narrow-minded ideologue and Scalia a learned one, but have you read some of Judge Bork's more unexpected decisions? Look at how far he's come on freedom of the press. His decision in Ollman vs. Evans went further than many a so-called liberal judge he. Recognized that a freshening stream of libel actions, which often seem as much designed to punish writers and publications as to recover damages for real injuries, may threaten the public and constitutional interest in free, and frequently rough discussion. Those who step into areas of public dispute, who choose the pleasures and distractions of controversy, must be willing to bear criticism, disparagement and even wounding assessments. What newspaperman would disagree with that?"
"Since when is freedom of the press a special interest? It's not as though it belonged just to the press, you know. First Amendment freedoms belong to everybody. And if Judge Bork's words are those of a narrow, right-wing ideologue, then Hugo Black was a fascist. This decision of Judge Bork's fits right in with the kind of unfettered freedom of speech I thought we were for."
blogger will that. "Don't try to appeal to my special interest."
"Well, if Judge Bork has come a ways, remember how far back he started. There was a time around 1971 when he claimed in a piece for the Indiana Law Journal, that only 'explicitly political' speech was protected by the First Amendment. He's grown some since, under the prodding of various confirmation hearings, but as late as 1984 he was willing to grant only that the First Amendment might be stretched to include 'many exceptions' to his original scientific debate. It's not clear whether he would include artistic expression under its protections. There's still no danger of confusing any of his decisions with Milton's "Areoagapita." He apparently thinks freedom of expression can be divided into zones — political, moral, scientific, artistic — with some under the swear of the First
Amendment and others not. He reminds me of a police department deciding to patrol certain parts of town and neglecting others — with the usual unwholesome results. He doesn't understand that freedom is all of a piece."
"But surely the ideas of every jurist develop over time, and it's not fair to judge a nominee on what he thought in 71. Hug Black started out as a Klausman back in Alabama. Judge Bork has come a long way since he opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
"Not far enough. He's finally realized that the 14th Amendment protects the rights of black folks but not the rest of us, specifically women or homosexuals or . . ."
'Every judicial appointment is a chance because the Constitution lives in the minds of men.'
"But he's being perfectly consistent with his own philosophy of original intent. If that post-Civil War amendment was intended to protect the rights of blacks, then we have no right to expand it to include the fashionable causes of the moment, however worthy or unworthy."
"Third, this is the perfect illustration of what's wrong with the doctrine of original intent as used, or rather abused, by the Borkians. They don't recognize that rights can grow or be discovered, that rights may be present in germinal form in law and develop with time and that if the Constitution didn't work that way, it would be a straitjacket instead of organic, developing law.
"First off, it wasn't the Civil War but the War Between the States. Second, blacks and women and all others not specifically excluded are entitled to the protections of the 14th Amendment; only Indians not taxed are singled out as violators; then only in regard to representation in Congress.
"Fourth: Do the Borkians really believe in original intent or just their intent? If so, why would they challenge the rights of women under the Fourteenth Amendment but not that of corporations? Neither is explicitly mentioned in the amendment."
'Fifth, even if original intent were the governing principle of constitutional law instead of just one of several, the Borkians haven't read the original very well. In defining the rights of citizens, the Fourteenth Amendment doesn't mention blacks or any other specific group but 'All persons,' and later, 'any person.'
"Okay, okay. Five good but not decisive points.
Of all justices, Robert Bork would be least likely to endanger the rights long and well established;
he is an advocate of judicial restraint . . . "
"Hold on. Don't conservatives have a right to nominate their kind of justice, too?"
"Sure. Just as the Senate has the right, indeed duty, to advise and consent — as well as advise and not consent. But is Robert Bork a conservative? His willingness and, more than that, his reflexive instinct to go all the way back to the roots of the law, and determine the original intent, or maybe just guess it at, makes him not a conservative but a radical."
"So was Hugo Black."
"Which is what worried some of us about Justice Black. Too often there was no inner constraint to his jurisprudence; he swallowed ideas the way the innocent do cherries, seeds and all. He was capable of following an idea right out the window, and taking American law with him. Judge Bork has the same sort of undiluted allegiance to ideas and the same innocence of history. Hugo Black and his colleague William O. Douglas used to be called 'absolutists' because they believed in following their reading of the Constitution absolutely — even if that meant overlooking details like the common law, historical background, and even the way language and therefore thought changes over the centuries. They were absolutist about the First Amendment but Robert Bork might prove absolutist about everything. Every court may need one radical who's always digging at the roots of the law, but this president already has appointed two and is trying for three. Soon it'll be like having a constitutional convention in permanent session."
"Doesn't the president's appointee deserve the benefit of the doubt?"
"You've got a point but not necessarily a good one. If we're going to give the benefit of the doubt in this case, let's give it to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Why take any chances with those?"
"Because it is unavoidable. Every judicial appointment is a chance because the Constitution lives in the minds of men. So it is incumbent upon us to find the best minds to interpret it, and no one doubts Robert Bork's intelligence, its sweep and power . . .
... and seductiveness.'
"That's just another way of saying he argues too well."
K·A·N·S·A·N
MAILBOX
This interior debate has yet to reach a conclusion, or even a focus. With the confirmation hearings, it doubtless is To Be Continued.
I wholeheartedly support Phillip Huntingstar in his efforts to inform people about safe sex.
Support safe sex
Interestingly enough, Mr. Gantz managed to unwittingly support a safe sex practice in his call for sexual abstinence. He offered that "a normal monogamous marital relationship" provides a safe haven for sexual expression beyond abstinence. Safe sex practices do call for a limiting of one's sexual partners, and a mutually monogamous relationship does reduce one's risk of AIDS. Safe sex practices do not require sexual relationships to take place within marriage and are not limited to heterosexual relationships.
A letter by Steve Gantz in the Sept. 10 Kansan stated that "sexual abstinence is the only realistic answer to avoiding AIDS." While sexual abstinence is a possible answer for AIDS prevention, it will probably be even less effective than prohibition was in preventing alcoholism.
Chris Dallager, Lawrence graduate student
Priority of education
Maybe the first inklings of finding a way to link college accreditation with students' actual learned knowledge, suggested by secretary of education William Bennett, will become the awakening idea that education is not just "what ya do" because you're a kid or a young adult.
Education is for knowledge — from the beginning. But again I read, in the Journal-World, that a worldwide study revealed that American students scored less than their English and Japanese counterparts — this time in science.
How may more millions of dollars need to be spent on surveys that bear a resemblance of ignorance to each other, before we as a nation are convinced that our education system is in serious trouble? There are a multitude of facets to consider if we are really to improve our nations' schools, but we must start somewhere.
So before the editorial staff limits their vision to the practicality of simply an idea, why not
stretch and look beyond to see where notions of change may begin. I think a shift in priorities is more necessary than a post-graduate exam, but clearly — I hope — intelligence and understanding are vital to the future care and well-being of our global village.
Sky Westerlund, Lawrence sophomore
Add-drop problems
Though I appreciate your quick printing of my letter about the enrollment process, your shortening of it distorted my arguments and removed my concern about enrollment injustices to students. It is not really possible to consider the drop-add procedure apart from the problems of the whole system. So I'll just make three brief points: First, students who have a need for and interest in a course may be unable to get in, while others can if they add just after someone has dropped. Second, with insufficient knowledge of enrollment changes and likely class size, instructors cannot fairly use green cards to correct inequities. Third, University governance should do a thorough review of the whole enrollment process.
William O. Scott, professor of English.
MR.BADGER by A.D.Long
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed