4A
Thursday, October 19. 1995
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
THE ISSUE: GREEK GPAS
Competition leads to lies
Many members of fraternities and sororites have claimed that other Greek houses often lie about their grade point averages. If this sad attempt at trying to be tricky really happens, then fraternities and sororities should not even bother with GPA competitions.
Some fraternity and sorority house presidents have said that other greeks used various techniques to misrepresent their average GPAs.
Chapter members who no longer participate in house activities still may be kept on membership lists if they have high GPAs.
There is no standard criteria for determining who is an official member, and no one reviews membership lists carefully to verify that individuals who are listed are legitimate. Without set criteria for membership, there is no reason to review the lists.
If this manipulation actually occurs, why do fraternities and sororites even keep track of their supposed GPAs? One only can guess.
Greek houses who cheat to win GPA battle have ruined the credibility of honest houses and hurt themselves.
Because there is little benefit to lying, the likely explanation is that lying is part of a juvenile popularity contest. People who would lie about something of marginal importance probably think that a wave of young rushees are going to flock to their houses because of a difference of one-tenth of a point.
If this childish lying takes place, it most likely hurts only the liars, who could be sacrificing their houses' integrity if they get caught.
The accuracy of the average GPA of each house should be more closely monitored to lend credibility to the greeks' competition. The Panhellenic Association and the Interfraternity Council need to set up a thorough and effective way of regulating the lists.
IAN RITTER FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
OPINION BRIEFS
Events demonstrate unity
Despite Louis Farrakhan's suggestion that women stay home and Black feminists' accusations that his Million Man March was sexist, many women attended Monday's rally in Washington. D.C.
As Rosa Parks spoke from the podium and cameras scanned the crowd, it was clear that women were not and could not be excluded from discussions about family, morality or racial harmony.
Still, many students thought that they were not allowed a voice in what
Farrakhan called the business of men.
However, on-campus activities focused less on race and gender and more on responsibility and unity among Blacks and others. This is a positive step.London Bonds, academic services coordinator for Supportive Educational Service, said, "Involving the Black man will result in more cohesiveness in the family. This is a beginning that will have a positive impact on Black families, and ultimately, on America."
Med Center should be praised
A University of Kansas Medical Center scientist successfully duplicated the human strand of HIV in monkeys recently. Until now, scientists and researchers have been unable to infect monkeys with HIV. The only virus that monkeys previously could be infected with was called SIV, which is only similar to human HIV but never has caused the type of AIDS seen in humans. The new strand,
called SHIV, is a major breakthrough in AIDS research.
Now that HIV has been duplicated in monkeys, it will allow researchers to test the effectiveness of vaccines, treatment and medications that would benefit humans suffering from HIV and AIDS.
The KU Medical Center should be commended for this much-needed discovery. With it, this world will move toward a cure to this horrible virus.
KANSAN STAFF
COLLEEN MCCAIN
Editor
DAVID WILSON
Managing editor, news
ASHLEY MILLER
Managing editor, planning & design
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
Jeff MacNelly / KANSAN
Justice is colorblind more than people think
Is it true that the legal system is rigged so that white males with money can get away with all sorts of terrible crimes?
This is what we have been hearing from the admirers of O.J. Simpson, who keep popping up in television interviews and on talk shows.
Editors
It's usually phrased something like this: "Rich white guys have been doing this for years, so why not O.J.?"
Analysts say that this lack of equal injustice for all is one reason African Americans were so delighted that Simpson was acquitted. When something is repeated often enough on TV, it's soon accepted as gospel.
News & Special Sections .. Deedra Allison
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And maybe it is true. But maybe it isn't.
The problem with trying to compare the Simpson case with others is that there are no reliable statistics on rich white guys accused of killing their wives. Or on homicidal rich African-American guys, either.
Although murder is less costly and more decisive, a guy risks being caught and having his lifestyle seriously altered.
We know that a greater percentage of African-American men go to prison than white men. But that has nothing to do with wealth. African-American men commit more crimes.
The fact is, rich men seldom murder their wives. Why should they? One of the benefits of being rich is that you can dump her, hire lawyers to do the haggling, pay her off and still have enough money left to buy a hairpiece and gold chains and run off to an island with a young bimbo.
He had unsuccessfully tried to hire someone to kill his ex-wife. So they prosecuted him for soliciting murder.
The white judge believed the white cops and the white prosecutors, and the white judge delivered the sentence.
But occasionally, a rich white guy decides to take the chance. And when he is accused of the crime, it is
And his two adult white children said they wished the sentence had been harsher.
And off to prison went Kelly, who didn't leave behind even one teenyweeny clue.
If Kelly watched the O.J. trial, he probably asked his lawyers: "Why couldn't you find me so kindhearted a jury?"
Kansan article shows insensitivity to race
I don't know. Maybe white suburban cops just don't like rich white guys.
So how do we explain the outcome of these two cases? As rich white guys, they could afford smart lawyers. Why were they found guilty?
Oprah or Koppel ought to do a show about that.
COLUMNIST
In some ways, the case was similar to the murder of Nicole Brown.
Not long ago, a Chicago executive named James Kelly was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
prison.
big news, and we usually read about it.
Kelly's ex-wife was stabbed to death near the front door of her suburban home.
Mike Royko is a syndicated columnist with the Chicago Tribune.
And from what I've seen, being white and rich doesn't get a wife killer much sympathy in a courtroom.
There were no witnesses and not a speck of physical evidence that Kelly did it. No bloody clothes, no hair, no limousine driver, no DNA, no Kato-man or pooch.
him: "Two years ago, retired millionaire J. Nat Davis spent much of his time golfing at the Knollwood Golf Club in Lake Forest (Ill.), getting rubdowns at the Evanston YMCA and dining out at various North Shore eateries.
So how did they nail Kelly without evidence?
"When the chill of winter arrived, he would head to his home in Naples, Fla., for more golf and the leisure he had enjoyed since his retirement at age 55.
You may remember J. Nat Davis, a North Shore swell. As a Chicago Tribune story described
They went to court with skimpy evidence compared with that presented against Simpson.
And he was very clever. When he shot his ex-wife, he didn't slop blood and DNA clues all over the place or go for any goofy rides in a white Bronco. He plugged her in the privacy of her home and dumped the murder weapon in a forest preserve lagoon. He would have pulled it off if some white suburban cops, on a brilliant hunch, hadn't found the gun.
"In the midst of this idyllic life, Davis also spent a great deal of time plotting the murder of his ex-wife."
But a white judge, a white prosecutor, a white jury and the white cops sent white millionaire Davis to
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
I write this letter in response to the exploitative Oct. 10 headline "KU football players arrested in connection with robbery." The Kansan has once again blurred the lines between news and encoded bias against minority groups. Whenever I turn to the "on the record" section, which details asserted on-campus crimes, I never see any names or pictures of suspects. Does the Kansan publish the names and photographs of the accused only if they are football players? It also seems to me that the Kansan overlooked its perpet-
uation of the stereotype that young Black males are violent criminals to be feared. Some people might not find a connection between the story's placement as the day's top headline and the color of the suspects. Consider that the article sharing the top-row headline with this one is entitled, "Think tank to discuss Black men." The Kansan might not even consciously have decided to run these two stories side by side. In doing so, those in charge show their equation of young Black males and crime. I would also like to say that within the framework of the point I am trying to make, the argument that the "Think tank" article was a "positive" portrayal of Black men, while factually correct, is completely irrelevant. If you notice, I have not addressed the texts of these articles, only their strategic presentation. Keep in mind that in most cases, one sees a headline or picture but does not read the accompanying story.
Ultimately, I must ask the question: Would the Kansan have printed this story in this manner if the suspects were white? I do not think so. The Kansan's editors showed a real lack of integrity. Didn't you people learn anything from the O.J. Simpson case?
Michael Ezra Rockville Centre, N.Y., graduate student
Michael Ezra
'Gay rights' is not the right term to describe equality for all
You hear it every time you turn on the television and there's a story on the upcoming Supreme Court decision on Colorado's Amendment 2. You see it every time you open up the University Daily Kansan or the Lawrence Journal-World, and there's a story about the petition
drive to challenge the addition of sexual orientation to the Lawrence human relations ordinance. The mainstream media can't seem to get it straight (as it were) — extending civil rights to people based on sexual orientation is not the same thing as "gay rights." Nonetheless, this
inaccurate term is used with wild abandon in the mainstream press.
Rush Limbaugh can say what he will to the contrary, but the reality is that the media remains backwards on sexual orientation. To call laws which protect people on the basis of sexual orientation, "gay rights" legislation ignores the way in which these laws are written. Everyone has a sexual orientation, and this sort of law gives everyone recourse for being discriminated against on that basis. Heterosexuality is a sexual orientation too, and if someone discriminates against you because you're straight, the law is on your side.
Unfortunately, the media's fixation with calling such legislation "gay rights" confuses the issue. It's not a matter of gay rights only — it's also a matter of lesbian rights and bisexual rights and yes, even straight rights. For a profession whose supposed guiding principle is to reveal the truth, journalism today opts for a sensationalistic, inaccurate term to refer to this movement, and in doing so does the disservice of misinforming the public it is supposed to enlighten. If the press is really so interested in presenting the truth to the American people, then reporters and editors must start questioning whether the words they're using are really accurate representations of the concepts they refer to.
My undergraduate degree is in journalism. One of the reasons I ended up not pursuing a career in the field is because I became frustrated with the way so many journalists spout platitudes about ethics and truth while steadfastly refusing to consider using accurate terminology. Instead, so many journalists focus instead on snazzy buzzwords and catch phrases. In the end, it's the public that suffers the consequences.
Media ethics are thrown out the window in the name of so-called "balance" when it comes to reporting on sexual orientation issues. When we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day every year, the newspaper stories don't go out of their way to quote some white supremacist for so-called "balance." Stories in the press about the recent Rosh Hashanah holiday didn't feature quotes from anti-Senites for "balance." Why, then, do reporters and the editors they work for feel the weird need, when reporting on lesbigay-related stories such as the recent National Coming Out Day observance, to hunt down some redneck homophone and let him grouse about how he disagrees with the whole thing and thinks all queers should live miserable, closeted lives? That's not balance. That's heterosexism, if not outright homophobia.
Chris Hampton is a Lawrence graduate student in higher education.