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Friday, September 11, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Destructive doves
Diplomacy flies out the window when three presidential hopefuls talk about Nicaragua.
Senate Minority leader Bob Dole calmed his acid-dipped tongue considerably since his sarcasm in 1976 as a vice-presidential candidate.
But with primary dates looming, his comments during last week's trip to Nicaragua were reminiscent of that old bite.
Dole debated with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega about negotiations between the United States and Nicaragua.
To Ortega's assertion that the boss of the contras is the U.S. government, Dole replied, "Then maybe we should negotiate with Cuba, since they are your bosses."
Hardly the voice of tact.
Hardly the voice of fact.
And the Rev. Pat Robertson has chimed in
Robertson proposed last week that the United States support an invasion of Nicaragua to replace the Sandinista government.
He wants the U.S. to set up a government-in-exile and help the exiles wage a "war of independence." But of course, he said, he does not advocate the use of U.S. troops.
And a third presidential candidate, Rep. Jack Kemp, R-New York, traveled to Central America on Tuesday to convince leaders there that the peace treaty they signed last month was "fundamentally flawed" and "a recipe for disaster."
Peace in the world is a dream for most.
Peace in Central America is crucial to the United States. But peace doesn't seem to be on their minds.
The party's over
Hazing can kill.
Hazing can kill. Naturally, it should be against the law. Last year, Kansas took that step and the Kansas Legislature passed an anti-hazing law. Now it's Missouri's turn.
In Kansas, the crime carries a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. Missouri's law, which takes effect Sept. 28, carries a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail.
Missouri will become the 27th state to wipe out the "harmless fun" image that many people associate with hazing. Besides just being plain stupid, hazing is dangerous, and the results can often be tragic. Jumping from balconies, exercising all night or being forced to drink alcohol can only lead to pain, injury or even death.
Missouri's law, which prohibits acts that "recklessly endanger the physical or mental health of a student or prospective member of an organization," goes a step beyond the Kansas law by including mental health.
At the University of Kansas, a spokesman for the KU Interfraternity Council said he thought hazing was less apparent than it used to be. Hazing stretches beyond fraternity and sorority initiation to any type of organization. However, policies from national house headquarters coupled with hazing laws could have doubled the effect.
The remaining 23 states should follow the smart examples set by Kansas and Missouri.
Losing credit
it seems William Bennett can prove only the smart students receive degrees.
The secretary of education has a new plan that would require accreditation agencies to be a better watchdog over the nation's postsecondary schools.
postsecondary schools Currently, colleges are required to disclose information about graduation requirements and verify graduation and job-placement rates.
But Bennett thinks the goal should be to discover "what students actually learn." Certainly, this is a noble idea in theory, but is it really all that practical?
the accreditation agencies now look at a college's library volume and the number of faculty members with doctorate degrees as a basis for accreditation. This policy creates competition among schools to provide better libraries and faculty.
But an attempt to discover what students have learned after several years of college would require some sort of post-graduate standardized test.
Bennett seems to forget the volume of information acquired in college, not only academically, but socially as well.
Thus, the idea to prove that students have "x" amount of knowledge is unreasonable, at least, and impossible in reality.
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board
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Bork stance aborts consistency
A good friend once told me the reason he voted for Reagan.
"The way I saw it, all those domestic issues like prayer in schools and abortion would never make it past his desk, while the defense spending and things I support would go through," he said.
The problem with an issue like abortion is that no one can talk about it without getting emotional. From the far right to the far left, mention the word abortion and tears will be shed.
Right-to-life groups, for instance, have always had a penchant for melodrama.
But while I watched the movie, I kept wondering what this scenario would look like without a sanitary hospital and a trained doctor on hand. Much more gruesome, I'm sure. Or what a sad movie this would be if producers had dealt with the child abuse that can occur because of unwanted pregnancies.
If Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell had hung on another two years, he might have been right. As it is, abortion has again become an issue with the nomination of Robert Bork.
I once sat through a showing of "Silent Scream," the movie anti-abortionists tout as an undeniable argument for their cause. The movie gruesome, but what an abortion looks like the inside out.
The object is to repulse viewers from the prochoice view and then shower them with emotion so thick they may feel the need to towel off later. It's a very successful formula.
These issues, it struck me, didn't seem to bring these people to tears as easily.
Those on the other side of the issue are not above playing for emotions either.
he playing for hotshots either. After U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy heard about the Bork nomination, he almost had a baby himself. If Bork is confirmed, according to the Massachusetts senator, this country will quickly hop on the "A-train" to Hell.
The problem with this Bork hysteria is that it has clouded the actual issues at stake.
Bork's position on abortion is not anti-abortion, as conservatives are told, nor is it prochoice. His position is that the abortion issue is the government's job to decide, it is the state's jobs.
The consequence of such a Supreme Court decision would not be the abolition of abortions; it would mean varying abortion laws from state to state.
One of the many problems with this would be, as with other state-run programs, that each state would perform abortions according to
different requirements. A sub-standard abortion could be very harmful to the mother.
Furthermore, varying state laws could drive women from one state, where they are unable to have a legal abortion, to a bordering state with more lax abortion laws. The flight resembles an 18-year-old on the hunt for a six-pack a few years ago.
Bork's states'-rights position on abortion is not articulated in the Constitution. Nowhere does it assert that national policies on health care are an unnecessary usurpation of states' rights.
Bork has made a series of other questionable calls in his day. Among them is his 1971 article interpreting the First Amendment so as not to include types of speech that are apolitical.
His 1964 article condemned the Civil Rights Act because it forced stores to serve people regardless of their race. His position was that government had no right to tell merchants how to conduct their businesses. He has since changed his mind.
In 1984 he refused to step down and ruled on a court case despite cries that he was biased. Bork was three votes away from receiving a reprimand from the American Bar Association for his behavior.
Supreme Court justices have some of the most crucial opinions in this country. Can we afford a justice with such a poor record of judgment? Let's hope the Senate takes a good long look when the hearings start this month.
History scoffs at Little Rock's racism
It has become a kind of historical pageant by now — the ritualistic observance of another anniversary of the Little Rock Crisis of 1957. (Orval E. Faubus, chief architect and apologist.)
What happened cannot be altered, but people's response to it changes, and in this case that is the good news. Defiance of law no longer holds the same charms; the end of racial segregation is seen as the blessing it was; the old political montebanks grow transparent. The Little Rock Crisis is nothing to celebrate, but the way it is perceived 39 years later certainly is.
The most insignificant part of history may be what happened in the past. It is how those events are interpreted that tells us something of a society and where it is tending. Orval Faubus's version of events this year might as well have been taped long ago.
"Yes, sir. Keep the niggers out!
"Do you know what your orders are
There is no sign of growth; the only change may be in rhetoric. To hear him tell it for the n-th time, he called out the National Guard only to keep the peace he disturbed, not to enforce segregation or integration. It's an explanation that wasn't very convincing even when it was new.
congruent positions. Whatever Faubus's formal position then or now, there is no doubt who was the mob's hero, and for good reason. To quote a brief but telling exchange reported at the time between a National Guard officer and one of his troopers:
Gov. Faubus had got his message across. And he would be rewarded for it. The man proved politically invincible in Arkansas for the next decade, winning re-re-re-election. He retired undefeated and might have remained so if
he hadn't tried for a comeback or two or three. Time and the judgment it may lend finally caught up with him. When he gives his rectal of the crisis now, the old admiration on the part of the audience has been replaced with knowing smiles and even the first signs of pity. The man seems unable to go anywhere without dragging the chains of 1957 with him.
Even and sometimes especially when the subject isn't mentioned, it is palpably there. The bargain he made becomes clearer over the years and decades: a transient popularity in exchange for a permanent footnote in American history under Law, Defiance Of.
Called on for his anniversary comment, Orval Faubus has added to his practiced repertoire one more explanation for what he did: "to induce in some manner the federal government to assume responsibility for its own court order." If that is so, he certainly succeeded. All Dwight Eisenhower was the sight of roiting ("disgraceful," he snorted) to send troops in.
There has been considerable speculation about whether racial segregation ever offended the general, but disorder certainly did. Nor did the international publicity afford Little Rock
accord with Dwight Eisenhower's idea of what the United States should symbolize in the world. Maybe that's what induced the federal government, to quote Faubus this year, to assume responsibility for its own court order.
Unfortunately, the good name of Arkansas was tarred in the process; the Little Rock Nine weren't the only ones done injustice in 1957. The ailing publisher of a little paper up in the Ozarks came a lot closer to expressing the real spirit of this state when there was a little war, and the fact that it was part of the state. While recuperating from surgery, Miss Elizabeth Burrow wrote this in the Ozark Spectator:
"All too frequently white people have black hearts. I first learned that in school here in Ozark, where a few town kids used to pick on the country kids. That was all so long ago. I thought everybody would be different by now. Just as we have a superior class of Negroes here, so I'd thought our white citizens were extra special, too. Most of them are, thank God. . . Our integration is not noble. It's simply horse-sense. . . Of course the (black children) will make it all right. But the worry is over our own conscience. Will we white people make it all right? Here's a malignancy worse than my cancer, and I wouldn't swap with you."
Now that's the spirit of Arkansas — none of your sloppy, sentimental do-gooder folderol, just plain dealing and horse sense. In her simple words there is the recognition that race hate can be more disabling than any physical sickness, and that to exploit it is beyond understanding and beneath contempt.
K·A·N·S·A·N
MAILBOX
Elitist attitude
Apology expected
The article in the Kansan for Sept. 9, concerning advising makes remarks about scholarly faculty members in African Studies that border on libelous. None of the African Studies faculty that I know speak anything but flawless, cultivated English.
The poor taste shown by Brad Taylor calls for an apology from him.
Oliver Phillips, professor of classics
Bravo!
Bravo
When I read Jerri Niebaum's article I found myself so interested that I couldn't put it down. Not only did she defend her position, she left an ending that allowed little rebuttal from any smoker.
smoker.
I am not writing this letter in defense of smokers. I realize that smothering others, and if asked I always quickly extinguish my cigarette. What I would like to discuss is your elitist attitude that shines through your article like a burning star.
Never before have I been so offended by the sheer smugness of an article. Not only do you want us to stop smoking anywhere you may roam, but you won't allow us to smoke at all. To
this I can only remind you that I have my own rights to do what I choose, within the law.
Yes, I do have my own mother to take care of me. Such wonderful journalism may be great for a campus newspaper, but I wouldn't use this as an example of your capable style when you graduate. You'll be walking the streets and digging in the trash barrels behind Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants looking for food. A little fatherly advice in return for your matronly ways.
Frederick Dee Haag, Wichita senior
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed