4A
Friday, September 2, 1994
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NAACP should review its past to lead today
MATT GOWEN
The NAACP will find the right leader if it follows the examples of its history.
Benjamin Chavis needs a history lesson.
"There's been a crucifixion," the recently ousted leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People declared after the group's board voted to dismiss him. In spite of the overwhelming margin, he cited "outsides outside our community" as responsible for his downfall.
He neglected to mention a few things.
His 16-month tenure with the group was rocky to say the least. In an effort to get the attention of Black youth, he sought help from Muslim minister Louis Farrakhan. He thought Farrakhan's fiery style would excite and attract young Blacks to the cause. The plan backfired when Chavis did nothing to distance himself from Farrakhan's militant and inflammatory rhetoric, which often angered more than it motivated. It made Chavis appear to be leaning toward a separatist stance, a position the board was clearly at odds with.
He began his leadership claiming to "redefine the NAACP" and to breathe life into the civil-rights fight. Instead he backed proposals the board clearly rejected, such as when he supported the North American Free Trade Agreement. He also had a habit of keeping secrets from the board. Chavis used NAACP funds to keep under wraps a sexual harassment charge brought by his former assistant, Mary E. Stansel, then neglected to mention the charges to the board.
He spent freely and had a free-wheeling style that made those loyal to the organization uncomfortable.
He combined the mistakes of an inexperienced administrator and a career politician.
Unfortunately, what will go unnoticed in the deluge of newspaper articles and TV packages about Chavis as a "loose cannon" is the fact that he increased both enthusiasm and membership dramatically during his brief time in office. He started with a myriad of good intentions but lost sight of the NAACP's need for direction.
We can all recall NAACP secretary Rosa Parks being arrested after refusing to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Ala. Her stand motivated the eventual boycott of the Montgomery city transportation system, a big first step toward integration during the tumultuous and violent civil-rights years. Remember the nine Black students who in 1957 fought to get into Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., and the NAACP state president who protected them and helped them state their case? Or what about NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers, who was shot and killed in 1963 for leading a demonstration on the streets of Jackson, Miss? Or Roy Wilkins, who led the organization through the trouble on the streets of Mississippi and continued effective leadership for 22 years.
Granted, the issues of today's political climate are much more complex than segregation in public schools
and the right to vote, but the NAACP has always managed to adapt and survive. While Chavis caused problems for the organization, he was by no means the only problem, and his dismissal will not change the group overnight.
Benjamin Chavis may have given the NAACP a shot in the arm, but the group needs to refocus its energy on finding a leader who can move it in a clearer direction, using the positive activism of leaders past as an example. Addressing the violence, poverty and racism that still plagues not only the Black community but the entire nation requires a team effort.
Matt Gowen is a Lawrence senior in jour nallam.
VIEWPOINT
University should support more internship programs
The University of Kansas needs to continue to support and develop additional opportunities for
students to get experience for college credit.
Book and classroom learning is a well-accepted part of a college edu-
retain more of what they have learned by applying textbook information to real life.
In addition to valuable experience, students
INTERNSHIPS
Books and classes are tools for learning the skills needed in any job. But experience is a necessity in starting a career.
cation but should be balanced with learning how to apply them to a career.
Without practical experience, students could graduate ill-prepared.
Some schools — such as social welfare, nursing and pharmacy have avoided this problem by requiring students to participate in for-credit experiences as part of their graduation requirements.
Other departments have also succeeded at developing programs to enrich students' educations. The department of biology has programs on campus and also arranges opportunities at the Savannah River Ecology Lab, the Topeka Zoological Park and at the Organization for Tropical Studies in San Jose, Costa Rica.
While, many of these programs have financial costs to the University, many people learn by doing, and students will
Law dean
could also gain possible contacts especially if their work is done as part of a community project.
This will benefit KU students. And, either way, the students, the faculty and the University will improve by the continuation and development of for-credit practical experience on campus and in the community.
If a better community or education is not enough incentive for University officials to develop or continue these programs, administrators should take note that these type of activities could attract qualified and excited visiting or full-time faculty members.
Michael Hoeflich already has promised to develop more community-oriented opportunities for students to practice law. Hoeflich wants to develop a legislative research bureau, a legal service for the elderly and an agribusiness program or an international program on technology.
ROBERTA JOHNSON FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
STEPHEN MARTINO Editor
CHRISTOPH FUHRMANS Managing editor
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
JEN CARR Business manager
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CATHERINE ELLSWORTH Systems coordinator
JEANNE HINES Sales and marketing adviser
News ... Sara Bennett
Editorial ... Donnelley Hearns
Campus ... Mark Martin
Sports ... Brian James
Photo ... Daron Bennett
Mellisa Lecey
Features ... Trial Care
Planning Editor ... Susan White
Design ... Nobuse Mann
Assistant to the editor .. Robbie Johnson
Editors
Ruainace Staff
Campus mgr ... Todd Winters
Regional mgr ... Laura Guth
National mgr ... Mark Masto
Coop mgr ... Emily Gibson
Special Sections mgr ... Jen Perrier
Production mgrs ... Holly Boren
Regan Overy
Marketing director ... Alan Stiglic
Creative director ... John Carlton
Classified mgr ... Heather Nielsaus
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Matt Hood / KANSAN
"Moment of silence deserves to be ignored
Well, I don't believe he was being intentionally sacrilegious. Understand that we were children surrounded by elders who cleaned themselves with a "warshrag" (now "washcloth") and shipped at "Wal-Marts" (now singular).
But this lyric pledge of thanks to the heavenly father soon diminished from my scholarly regimen, as did the pledge of allegiance and daily announcements.
Maybe I was a little too young, but there was something invigorating about starting every day of my first few years of grade school with the Lord's Prayer — wait, or was it that the kid that sat next to me could never get the words right? Hollow be thy name?
It was not a prayer that sparked controversy in a suburban Atlanta school last Monday, but simply a "moment of silence" mandated by the Georgia legislature.
Yes, prayer is not the label, and the person responsible for the legislature isn't even one of the Two Crazy Pats (Robertson or Buchanan), but a state senator concerned about violence.
The law was put to test by one teacher who continued to lecture during the "brief period of quiet reflection."
COLUMNIST
Although the law is full of good intentions of dealing with children and violence, there are other measures that can be taken, and they don't have to be government-mandated to work.
DAVID JOHNSON
Ideally, it would be great if teachers could be trained to listen to students more. The formative years of grade
Georgia senator David Scott said this moment of silence "would go a long way in calming down, toning down, setting a mood" for students. The law even directly states that it is not to be used for religious purposes.
But as a member of the Paranoid Left, I agree that this is just a step in the wrong direction.
Because the years in grade school can often be the only interaction with the outside world for some e children, these years are most important but are often served an educational cold shoulder.
The teacher, Brian Bown, said that he was not trying to prevent his students from observing the moment of silence but instead was setting a good example for students to stand up for their beliefs.
school is where all of my so-called problems started; my teachers were somewhat understanding but failed to connect in important ways other teachers did.
This story will have a happy ending. Even though not directly related to the church-state decisions of the past, this is Supreme Court material.
The danger lies in the fact that it sets a precedent for the as-yet uninvolved religious right, which may attempt to clone measures such as this one to veil their true intentions of bringing religion back into the classroom.
I hope that even though Bown did break the law, the law will be declared flawed and unconstitutional.
David Johnson is a Coffeyville senior in magazine Journalism.
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
Serbs believe they call shots
— the United States, Britain,
France, Germany and Russia —
can easily convert the war
between Bosnia-Herzegovina's
Serbs and Muslims into a proxy
conflict between the Christian
West and the Islamic world.
So far, however, the Muslim countries have displayed commendable restraint in the face of provocative strategies, such as last weekend's farcical referendum that seem to be designed to allow Bosnian Serbs to consolidate what they have seized through violence and bloodshed.
But, there can be no lasting peace if Bosnian Serbs can so easily outgun the government. The United States has threatened to lift the arms embargo against Bosnia. It is time to act on that. Much of the trouble can be traced to the Bosnian Serbs' conviction that the government is at their mercy and that the Americans' bluff is easily called.
It may not yet be the feared clash of cultures, but the pussyfooting of the "contact group" countries
The Straits Times Singapore
World will have to control births
The World Conference on Population, which will be held in Cairo, is the third of a series of conferences on this subject. At the first conference, held in Bucharest in 1974, the Chinese Republic, speaking on behalf of the Third World countries, emphasized that the aim of the summit was to work on development issues and not on demographic ones.
Nowadays, the increasing birth rate has become a nightmare for all poor countries, countries that are aware of the fact that by 2010 there will be 7.2 billion people on planet Earth. Two-thirds of which will have to rely on the fragile and almost nonexistent Third World countries' economic structures.
How long will a peaceful coexistence be possible between that fifth of the global population controlling 84.7 percent of the global production with the other fifth that is in control of only 1.4 percent of it?
The countries participating at the Cairo conference have to deal with three main problems: how to feed the increasing number of starving people, how to plan a development project able to deal with this amount of people, and finally, how to educate this mass of people in terms of moral and rational principles.
There is, however, a more general moral question.
La Voce Milan, Italy
HUBIE
By Greg Hardin
LOOKING AT THE STARS MAKES ME THINK OF LONG
WHEN MEN WERE
MEN AND THE WOMEN
WERE OWNED.
BUT NOW GIRLS ARE FREE — CANDO AS THEY PLEASE!
60 WHY WITH
ME DO THEY ONLY
JUST TEASE?
I'M A NICE GUY!
I DO GIRLS MANY
GOOD WORKS!
SO WHY ON WHY DO
THEY STILL GO OUT
JERKS??