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Wednesday, July 20, 1994
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
poesie1
VIEWPOINT
Higher testing standard is right call for athletes
The NCAA Presidents Commission recently supported a proposal that will raise the minimum SAT and GPA requirements for freshmen seeking to play college sports.
The proposal and the Commission's support deserve a standing ovation. Universities should concentrate more on scholarship than on slam dunks.
Current standards for eligibility require a 700 SAT score and 2.0 GPA for incoming freshman. Effective August, 1995, a prospective college athlete will need a 900 score on the SAT if his or her GPA is 2.0, or a 700 with a 2.5 GPA.
The proposal has drawn criticism. The Black Coaches Association opposes the stricter scale, insisting that standardized tests are racially discriminatory.
Standardized tests have come under fire for their middle-class, Eurocentric slant. But with these criticisms comes the impetus for reform. These tests have been and will continue to be revised.
Arguments of biased testing aside, the issue becomes one of standards. Universities are academic institutions. College athletes should expect an academic standard to accompany the prerequisite of athletic ability.
Admittedly, academics are notably absent from our minds in the final seconds of a close basketball game, or as a Hail-Mary pass spirals towards the end zone.
But as much as college sports can bring a campus together, we need to remember the main purpose of the college campus. It is a place of academics and selfactualization.
It is appropriate in this scholastic atmosphere that athletes meet a stiffer academic standard.
MATT HOOD FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARI
The bishops are not just attempting to prevent abortion coverage; they are attempting to impose their moral and religious beliefs on the entire nation.
Roman Catholic bishops last week announced plans to mobilize followers to oppose the inclusion of abortion coverage in any health-care reform bill.
Pamela Maraldo, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the bishops are threatening "to hold the promise of universal health coverage for all Americans hostage to their extremist position on abortion."
Abortion is a legal right and a woman's choice. It is reprehensible for the Catholic Church or any group to attempt to keep a woman from exercising her legal right and personal choice.
According to President Clinton, three-fourths of private insurers currently cover abortion. Since it is covered, it should continue to be covered under a universal health-care plan.
Seventy-two lawmakers do support abortion coverage, and they should be applauded. In their letter to Speaker Tom Foley, they said they would oppose removing abortion coverage from health reform bills because it would treat "women as second-class citizens."
The bishops argue that abortion coverage would force people to subsidize something with which they morally disagree.
If the Catholic Church is so concerned with economics, it should consider the implications of preventing abortions. Tax payers could be stuck with possible welfare payments for a legion of unwanted children.
KATIE GREENWALD FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
DAVID STEWART
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Politics of malice are dominating the information superhighway
The sheer amount of invective hurled at the president is astonishing. He is supposedly a communist, a socialist, and a godless, treasonous liberal. He's portrayed as an oversexed and dissolute man deviously plotting to destroy Christianity and corrupt every child in America with the "evil" doctrines of homosexuality One guy likes spelling his name with a
By purchasing a new modem for my computer last month, I built my own little on ramp to the information highway. Everyone said how much fun it would be, especially when I joined an online service and gained access to the electronic bulletin boards. One can hold conversations with people all over the country, on any subject. How exciting.
After spending a few days perusing the boards on national politics, I must say I am disappointed. Actually, appalled would be a better word. These bulletin boards are like talk radio with spelling errors. Participants spend almost all their time ranting endlessly and incoherently about Bill Clinton. If my computer could foam at the mouth, it would every time I boot up my online service.
of malice, and it's coming to a radio. television or computer terminal near you.
What's troubling about this is not the fact that some people don't like Bill Clinton. Criticism of a sitting president is nothing new or especially dangerous, and there are plenty of rational reasons for questioning the current administration and its decisions. But what one finds in the politics of malice is not rational. Is it reasonable to accuse the president of harboring communist sympathies in this day and age? Could any sane person really think that the first lady is gay, or that her husband is having his critics murdered one by one?
"K for some reason, and another swears that Clinton is an Arkansas mafia don. Many of the comments about Hillary are not repeatable, even Chelsea receives her share of abuse.
It turns out that the small army of reporters who were covering the trip stole most of the towels, but that small fact never seems to have made it onto the boards.
Worse still, some of the president's more unscrupulous foes are trying to plug into the politics of malice and use it for their own purposes. Some Republican congressmen seem to have pledged their lives to feeding this monster.
Now, maybe these folks are just crackpots who don't deserve serious attention. But combine these bulletin boards with talk radio and Rush Limbaugh, and one sees something which is both new and disturbing.
Day celebrations. The senator called this "evidence of the administration's arrogance of power." The online boards were lit up for days over this latest act of presidential perfidy.
One senator recently devoted a lengthy and impassioned speech to accusations that Clinton staffers stole some bath towels from the state rooms of an aircraft carrier during the president's trip overseas for the D-
These things constitute the fetid underside of American political discourse, a network of ignorance and cynicism connecting many Americans together with a mutual distrust of government in general and Bill Clinton in particular. It is the new civil religion of the suspicion, the politics
This would be pretty trivial stuff were it not for the fact that such silliness is increasingly dominating everyday conversation about the president and the nation.
The politics of malice are becoming a familiar, mainstream component of American public life. They are a constant, relentless debauching of the political process, an irrational and poisonous destruction of those very institutions of government which Americans have historically valued very highly. And now they have gone online. Maybe the information superhighway isn't all its cracked up to be.
Brian Dirk is a Conway, Ark., graduate student in history.
" HOUSTON - THAT'S ONE SMALL STEP FOR
MAN ONE SMALL COKE AND EXTRA FRIES...
Strike could inspire new pastimes
Picture a sports fan dressed like Paul Revere, riding his horse through the streets of Lawrence crying out, "The baseball strike is coming! The baseball strike is coming!"
No, this isn't some strange dream or sick fantasy about being a member of the Village People. It's a serious matter which is about to take away the national pastime from those of us whose lives revolve around the game of baseball.
No specific date for the players' strike has been set. But negotiations between the players and team owners are at a standstill, and play could stop anytime between now and Labor Day.
For the benefit of those who aren't up on the latest developments, here is a little background information. The collective bargaining agreement between the players and owners expires this year, and the economics of big league baseball have brought the two sides to gridlock.
The players have enjoyed seeing, through free agency and arbitration, the average major-league salary increase to $1.4 million. The owners want to implement a salary cap to
keep the increases under control. This move would allow all 28 teams to share revenues and prevent small-market teams, such as the Royals, from losing money each season. Both sides are reluctant to back down. A players' strike is imminent.
My reaction will be exactly the same thing as my father's after the 50-day players' strike back in 1981: boycott all games for the remainder of the season. That means, if the strike begins next week and ends in the middle of August, no more trips to Kauffman Stadium in 1994. If the strike wipes out all of this year, I will refrain from attending games for the entire 1995 season. One person missing five to
nine games really won't hurt any of the teams' pocketbooks too much, but if others join in this boycott, perhaps a point can be made.
The strike will obviously free up hours of my time and that of other baseball fans, so here are some suggestions for die hards to fill the space usually reserved for watching and/or attending games.
First, take the extra money reserved for trips to the ballpark and rent some baseball movies and highlight tapes. The pain and longing for a good game will be wiped away by catching "Field of Dreams" or "Bull Durham."
Instead of watching Ken Griffey, Frank Thomas and Matt Williams chase Roger Maris in the home run derby, learn about the great hitters of the past on video.
Another activity would be to dig out those old baseball cards and look through them a few times. You may be surprised at what valuable treasures have been locked away in that closet or attic.
Another option involves taking up some new hobbies like stamp collecting or, the always challenging, underwater basket weaving.
My personal belief is that the 1994 baseball strike would cause the popularity of the Canadian Football League to skyrocket. Since the World Cup is over and there really isn't another major sporting event going on, Canadian football is the obvious replacement for the American pastime.
The CFL has expanded to several U.S. cities in the past two years, most likely in anticipation of the baseball strike. After over a month of watching CFL stars like Doug Flutie and Todd Marinovich lead their teams across that 110 yard field, the NFL will be nothing.
Finally, baseball fans will be able to catch up on all the "Roseanne" reruns they missed by watching "Sports Center" every night. If anyone still has some time left, maybe they could actually do some studying.
Instead, dress up in revolutionary garb and ride through the streets like a truly fanatical sports fan.
Tom Erickson is a Baton Rouge, La.
sophomore in journalism.
NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Government should send the clipping chip to delete
Computer hackers did not even wait until high noon to begin their showdown with Uncle Sam. They appear to have beaten him to the draw before he even loaded his computer.
With the Cold War over, Washington's cloak and dagger crowd needed something to keep them busy. They came up with computer spying.
The Clinton administration wants to make it easier for law enforcement officials to eavesdro on communications, including those
among computers and fax machines. So the techno-spies came up with something called a "clipper chip."
The idea is that computer and fax machine manufacturers would be urged to voluntarily install the chips into their machines. The chips would electronically scramble transmissions among machines so that, theoretically, eavesdroppers could not tap in and read private communications.
But there's a kicker; federal government would have a set cf electronic "keys" to decode the transmissions. Uncle Sam could listen in whenever he desires to do so.
Federal officials say there would
be no loss of privacy. They insist court orders would be required before they could tap into communications.
Computer enthusiasts have not waited for a showdown over whether the "cliper chip" is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, however. A scientist at one major computer manufacturer says he has developed software which would allow scrambling of electronic communications so that even the government would not be able to decipher the transmission.
Civil libertarians have their doubts. The whole scheme sounds to them as if Big Brother missed his 1984 deadline by only a decade.
Our advice to Uncle Sam: Forget the idea. "Clipper_chips" indeed may allow government snoops to read communications among law-abiding computer and fax users. But anyone with something to hide will find a way to outfox the chips. That may have occurred already.
Instead of trying to invade the privacy of computer and fax users — and unnecessarily adding to the cost of data processing devices — government should toss its "clipper chip" into the electronic wastebasket.
The Parkersburg Sentinel West Virginia