Opinion
Kansan
Published daily since 1912
Jodie Chester, Editor
Gerry Doyle, Managing editor
Ryan Koerner, Managing editor
Tom Eblen, General manager, news adviser
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Justin Knupp, Technology coordinator
4A
Tuesday, October 6, 1998
Clay McCuiston / KANSAN
Editorials
City commission should uphold state's alcohol permit for tavern
Tonight, the Lawrence City Commission will decide whether to allow The Hawk to sell hard liquor and stay open until 2 a.m. The Hawk is under new control and has obtained a five-year permit from the state to sell alcohol.
Even though the bar is under a different controller, John Heleniak, a 29-year-old Lawrence resident, the city has made it clear that the bar will be under a strict eye.
Because the establishment has had problems in the past under the control of Jon R. Davis, a black shadow has been cast on the bar. It is unfair for the commission to punish a new owner because of what a previous owner did or did not do.
The city commission should allow Heleniak to operate The Hawk as a full-fledged bar, which would mean selling hard liquor and staying open past midnight. To not allow the bar to stay open until 2 a.m., the commission would be prejudicially restricting one
The new operator of The Hawk is applying for a city alcohol permit tonight.
establishment
It is not justifiable for the commission to preclude that the same problems will occur under Heleniak that occurred under Davis. Last year, when the bar was operated by Davis, it was cited by the Division of Alcohol Beverage Control 22 times for underage persons in possession of alcohol.
Davis relinquished his liquor license in December to the state. In January, the city granted him a permit to sell cereal malt beverages, but the bar had to close at midnight.
Heleni took over the lease in September and has been operating under a temporary license. If The Hawk is not allowed to maintain regular bar hours, it
will lose substantial revenue generated in bars between midnight and 2 a.m.
However, some residents of the Oread neighborhood say the noise of the bar and some unruly behavior by past patrons outweigh the owner's right to keep the bar open past midnight.
Bob Moody, commissioner, said that the city had a right to place conditions on the bar's liquor license. He said that residents of the area did not deserve to be subjected to renewed hardships associated with the late hours of the bar.
Although the commission should take into account the feelings of The Hawk's neighbors, it shouldn't base its decision on numerous violations that occurred under previous management.
The commission should permit The Hawk to sell hard liquor and operate until 2 a.m. for a six month trial period. Then the commission should rehear the case and determine what is necessary for the long-term permit.
Ann Premer for the editorial board
Pats on the back for monks and money
This week the Kansan editorial board would like to give two pads on the back for two very different gifts given to the University of Kansas.
This year, the Kansas University Endowment Association broke its previous record for annual contributions to the University by $7.8 million, donating a total of $44.4 million.
The largest percentage of the donations — 31 percent — went directly to students in the form of scholarships and fellowships, but a large chunk went to the much needed bolstering of teacher salaries. If the University is to live up to a moniker such as "the Harvard of the West," a prolific Endowment Association will be an
The Endowment Association set a donation record and Tibetan monks gave of their heritage.
integral part of that success.
However, our University has something Harvard doesn't and probably never will have: a lake. Its more of a pond really, but it allowed the University to receive a gift that is absolutely polar in nature to an Endowment Association donation — but just as significant
worked for 12 hours — only stopping for meals and tea — at re-creating a Buddhist design, maybe 600 years older than Christ. Their medium was finely ground granite marble taken from a Himalayan river and dyed brilliant shades of blue, yellow, green white and black.
On Thursday at the Spencer Museum of Art, four Tibetan monks
Sunday, the design was destroyed: swept away from the outside to the center, symbolizing the Buddhist belief as to the nature of death — into our very own Potter Lake.
The Kansan thanks the Ganden Jangst Monks for sharing their culture, art, tradition and spirituality, and for leaving a part of them with us.
Tim Harrington for the editorial board
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"Caution is the eldest child of wisdom." — Victor Hugo
Broadon your mind: Today's quote
How to submit letters and guest columns
Letters: Should be double-spaced typed and fewer than 200 words. Letters must include the author's signature, name, address and telephone number plus class and home-town if a University student. Faculty or staff must identify their positions.
Guest columnus Should be double-
spaced typed with fewer than 700 words. The
writer must be willing to be photographed for
the column to run.
All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Suffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Ann Premer (premer@kansan.com) or Tim Harrington (tharrington@kansan.com) at 846-4810. If you have general questions or comments, email the page staff (opinion@kansan.com) or call 846-4810.
Computer ownership shouldn't be monitored
Perspective
University of Kansas officials are disturbingly off base in their willingness to consider making it mandatory for students to own a computer.
tory for students to ov Provost David Shulen-
burger has recommended the requirement, which is being discussed by faculty. This is a bad proposal for the wrong reasons
Clay McCusinon opinion@kansan.com
The entire concept is elitist. Computers are expensive machines that become outdated quickly. Four years is an eternity in technological development.
A student may be able
A student may be able to scrape together the funds to purchase a computer at the beginning of a college career, but that computer will be obsolete junk by the time the student graduates.
The proposal assumes a computer is remotely affordable. In this age, a college education is required for many well-paying jobs. The University must not put more barriers in the way. The University should attract middle-to-lower income students, not drive them away with sneering and condescending restrictions.
I must note before going further that I own a computer. I used it to type this column. The summer before my freshman year, I decided to make the leap into the technological age.
I worked in fast food, served out my time and was paid minimum wage. Every cent I made that summer went to purchasing a computer. It's not a top-of-the-line machine and certainly not a brand name, but I was determined to buy it.
I resent the University making a personal choice into a requirement. It renders the time and effort I spent frying greasy food pointless.
The sacrifices I made to purchase a computer would be mandatory. I've always considered my computer somewhat special, signifying dedication and endurance. The University wants to take this significance away.
Officials will be quick to say they don't want to alienate students. They want to attract bright young minds, no matter the mind's income level. A campus with widespread computer ownership and access to the Internet will benefit everyone. Computers will be available at reduced prices to
freshmen.
This hype is the message the University wants students to hear and digest. But the action they're taking sends a message of its own: The University doesn't need the poor. After all, the poor can't afford computers, printers, Ethernet cards, Internet connections and overpriced software. Jayhawks are meant to come from suburbs, own nice cars and vote for moderate political candidates. Jayhawks who don't create waves.
Jayhawks who follow the crowd, and like everyone else, own new Gateway 2000s.
It is not the place of the University, supported by the tax dollars of rich, middle-class and poor to send messages such as this. This is a public institution. It is here to serve the people of the state of Kansas, no matter what those people look like act like, or bring home from the office.
There are deeper reasons for this proposal, however. Besides, the frightening prospect of the University cutting technology for students (think about it — why finance computer labs if everyone owns a computer already?) , there's the obvious public relations value. Great headlines could be churned out: "KU at forefront of technological revolution," "KU students among nation's most computer-savvy." The chancellor could give smiling interviews, expounding on the advantages of a plugged-in campus.
such publicity would be shallow and pointless. Like most publicity, it would have little basis in reality — aside from the reality administrators wish existed. It wouldn't help students learn, and it wouldn't help the University educate them.
nere is no defensible reason to institute this requirement. If a student has the resources to buy a computer, it's likely the student has one. If the student doesn't have the resources, it's not the University's place to make them a second-class citizen.
There is much to be said for computer ownership, but computers can't make students learn. They are, at best, tools. At worst, they're distractions from studies. To confuse the possession of a hunk of plastic, metal and silicon with the learning process is dangerous and short-sighted. If the University can't understand this distinction, it denies itself the opportunity to educate the people who could benefit most from college.
McCuiston is an El Dorado sophomore majoring in pre-journalism.
Uncovered JFK findings render useless information
The Assassination Records Review Board published its findings last Monday following a six-year trek into the U.S. government's mountain of records on the 1963 death of President Kennedy.
The U.S. government admitted this week that it covered up evidence in the John F. Kennedy assassination. In other news, scientists asserted that, yes, the earth is round.
Jeremy Doherty
Guest Columnist
Brace yourself. They concluded that the government withheld information from the public and obstructed the various investigations in the 35 years since the killing in Dallas.
It's curious that it took $8 million to arrive at a conclusion that has been on the record since 1979. It's also discouraging that the public has not raised any kind of furor about this obscene waste of tax dollars.
Created by Congress as a means of rebutting the popular conspiracy claims in Oliver Stone's JFK, the board did not have the authority to reopen the investigation into Kennedy's death.
Rather, it was a house-cleaning group charged with poring over more than 60,000 documents left behind by the FBI, CIA and the Warren Commission, which investigated the killing in 1964.
The fruits of the ARRB's labor are hardly earth-shattering. It discovered that Lee Harvey Oswald's mother sent money to the accused assassin during his visit to the Soviet Union. Further documents about the CIA's attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro also surfaced, which might have been news had it not been common knowledge for more than 20 years.
Those stories first came to light in the 1970s when Congress looked into the murders of both Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. That same investigation uncovered repeated accounts of the FBI's mishandling and destruction of key evidence, including an alleged bomb threat, written by Oswald, that literally found its way into the toilet.
Given that, one has to wonder what the board hoped to find in these long-hidden documents. A CIA file announcing the presence of government-paid assassins at the site of
Eyewitnesses who saw a gunman in Dallas placed him in only one location — behind Kennedy, in the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. One witness, Howard Brennan, later identified Oswald as the killer during his Warren Commission testimony.
Nineteen medical experts told Congress in 1979 that the autopsy photos and X-rays revealed evidence of only two hits to JFK — both fired from above and behind.
"There is physical, medical, ballistics evidence that leads you to conclude that one person could not have fired all the shots," Lesar said.
I'd love to know his source for this, particularly because all the evidence points to an inescapable conclusion: one man, acting alone.
But people don't want to hear the facts. Gunmen lurking in shrubbery and Mulderty conspiracies are sexier than an angry loser who killed a president for his own deranged purposes. But turning the country's loss into the half-baked plot of a James Bond flick only commits a disservice to history and to John F. Kennedy.
Finally, two ammunition experts determined in 1964 that all the recovered ammunition had been fired from Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle.
Fellow conspiracy advocates, such as James Lesar, a Washington, D.C., attorney, took the opportunity once again to proclaim their fairy tales about multiple gunmen and magic bullets.
JFK's murder? Proof that Oswald was a secret agent? Evidence that the Warren Commission conspired with space aliens to kill Elvis?
Conspiracy buffers are tickled with these new bits of minutiae. David Lifton, whose book Best Evidence asserts that JFK's corpse was stolen and then medically altered to hide proof of a second gunman, said the "new" information would allow research to continue.
"No one working on the Kennedy assassination today can ignore what the review board did," Lifton said.
Thanks to its "investigation," the board has ensured that the fascination with conspiracies will stretch on well past the millennium.
Doherty is an Olathe senior majoring in journalism.