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Monday, April 28, 1975
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
No smoking, maybe
Kansas has an antismoking bill,
finally. Gov. Bennett let the bill
become law without his signature,
expressing reservations about its
clarity and propriety, but at least he
did let it become law.
The bill allows the designation of certain public areas as no-smoking areas and levies a $25 fine against offenders. Bennett is right that there is confusion about who has the power to order the no-smoking designation, but perhaps that can be cleared up in the near future. The important thing is that somebody has made a start towards recognizing people's right not to breathe smoke in public places.
The standard argument against such a bill is that people have a right to smoke. Perhaps, But isn't this like the fabled case of the judge who fined a man for sitting another on his bed for smoking? "Your right to swing your arm, sir, ends where the other man's nose begins!" So it is.
Realistically, this bill will help nonsmokers little. It is likely to be seldom used and enforced. As a case in point, it is illegal to smoke in most of the classrooms at the University, but how many classes have you had in which the rule was enforced? Most instructors make a gesture toward enforcing the rule on the first day of class, offering to forbid smoking if someone in the class requests it. But very few people outside of those who become physically ill from smoke will back a roomful of smoking classmates or worse, an instructor who poses the question with a cigarette in his own hand.
So Kansas' attempt to clear the air in public places for non-smokers may not actually produce that result. But it is a step in the right direction, because it's coming in coming sessions to provide mandatory application in public places. A lot of people will say it's about time. —John Pike
How do you deal with hatred? That's the question that came to mind the other day when the other person gave me extra junk mail.
Quiet anger destroys hate
The mail was sent by a worker for the National Socialist white People's Party, the American Nazis. It contains some amazing examples of hatred at its ugliest. The first reaction upon reading such stuff is to dash off an angry editorial about bigots who write such vitriol.
BUT I THINK the most effective way to combat hatred by the Nazis and their intellectual kin, the Ku Klux Klan, is to quote some of their propaganda. No indignant editorial of mine could cause a reader to feel reulsion as complete as that felt upon reading their propaganda.
The following are quotes from a Nazi flyer urging policemen to join the party:
"Are you sick and tired of hearing about 'police brutality' from the swarms of
"HELLO? OPERATION BABY-LIFT? THIS IS LITTLE ORPHAN THIEU...I WANT TO BE EVACUATED ALONG WITH MY ONLY WORLDLY
PROGRESS!"
"You are expected to let the Reds and Negroes curse you, spit on you, throw bricks and bags of excrement at you, and still keep your cool. If you so much as crack a woolly head with your nightstick, you're
"You KNOW what the Black is really like. And you KNOW what the only REAL CURE is to destroy the race and our nation."
degenerates in the streets—and from City Hall and Congress too?"
liable to find yourself facing a civilian review board or a disciplinary committee."
In a story about Edward Levi's becoming Attorney General who brought you Addil Hiler and World War II write;
In their newspaper, White Power, the Nazis hit hard at their traditional enemy, the Jewish people.
Not all the hatred from the NAZIS is reserved for blacks. No, the Nazis have plenty of blind hatred to spread around.
"Out of a nation of 160 million
White Aryans, Gerald Ford seems to have been unable to find one qualified American to head the powerful Justice Department. Instead, he chose this Jew (Levi) as the nation's top law-enforcement official, with control over America's secret police, the FBL from this post, the new Attorney General will be able to intensify efforts to force integration and
THE NEWSPAPER SAYS attorney William Kunster has urged "Blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Indians and children to destroy, rape and kill White men, women and children."
The Naziis aren't alone in their battle to "save" the "white race." Equally crude and hateful garbage spews forth from such organizations such as the Knights of the Klu Klux. This version of the KKK distributes almost identical poison prose. It also attacks blacks, the "Jewsmedia" and "the jive" generation with the long hair and the stoop
special rights for Blacks and other non-White minority groups."
This exalted publication also has a section called "Jews in the News." Some items from this section are:
"Jews have control over White House communications these days as walrus-nosed RON NESENS speak for the puppet Jerry Ford and 31-year-old BrandiEs University alumna SHEILA RABB WEIDENFELD does the same for Betty Ford."
shoulders," and it glorifies "White Western Christian Civilization."
So what do you do about such hatred, such stupidity? Ignore it. Violent denunciation of such racist trash may release some of the disgust it engenders, but it also heightens the threat of propaganda and their "solutions" for society's problems.
Suppression, making such organizations illegal or outlawing their propaganda only makes them thrive. To rescind their First Amendment rights to repponant racist rankings, is no answer. Indeed, it would only fan the hatred.
THE GOOD SENSE of most people is the best weapon against racial hatred. The Nazis, the KKK and such groups are their own worst enemies. Most people, even with their prejudices, can see through the insanity of fascism.
So let the haters rave. If they're ignored, their hatred will widen and more desperate. Eventually, it will consume them.
How not to study society
Controversy continues over "Man: A Course of Study" (MACOS), the fifth-grade social studies program subsidized and promoted by the National Science Foundation. Some educators call MACOS to denounce it. Some taxpayers defend the expenditure. Others resent it. There seems to be no middle ground.
Sheilah Campbell Burgers taught this course of study for one year in the public schools of Sheffield, Mass. Her personal experience carries a ring of bell-like conviction. After one year with MACOS, she writes, "I refused to teach it again." Let me yield the floor to Burgers:
"After having read nine teachers' manuals and 31 books, after having seen the 21 course films several times and after having worked with 75 fifth-graders, I felt that MACOS not
Readers respond
To the Editor:
In light of David Crockett's editorial of April 16 concerning the Lewis Hall incident, there is an additional observation that should be made. I have followed the Kansan coverage of the election, and I must admit that although I've never understood the Kansan's news policies, I question them even more now.
YOU ARE IN the wrong decade, Bill Gray. Go back to the 1950s and '60s where you belong. Then, it was a matter of getting publications in news stories when they weren't necessary, as in such situations as the incident at Lewis. Granted that Gray may have been ignorant of this ethical standard, but surely Oracle or PB on someone on the copy desk should not have been.
Not a brawl
SO SOME GIRLS were in disagreement over something and tempers flared, but a two-column, blaring headline for The New York Times that Kansan must have been hard up for page one news that day! When the police finally caught up with the men allegedly involved in numerous campus burglaries, recovered about $1,500 of property, the story made page two or three. Many more students were affected by this realization what happened at Lewis.
I also noted that the lable of the incident proceeded from incident to scuffle and ended as sensational, don't you think?
THE "APARENT" RACIAL overtones that developed with the story are most questionable. They were seeded in Bill Gray's head, fed on the front page of the Kansas and then in Douglas
County Court, where they multiplied during the trial and grew into monstrous sentences that Judge Elwell handed down.
Florestine Purnell
Maybe I have been assuming too much in assuming that the Kanas is supposed to be run like a real, live newspaper with the headline on it, the staff. If that is the case, what's the purpose of the paper?
Kansas City, Kan., Senior
Lewis Hall press coverage attacked
Inflammation
I would like to comment on the recent convictions growing out of the Lewis Hall incident. Minor disturbances of this type (for whatever reason) are often referred to receiving publicity on the KU campus. They seldom result in prosecution, let alone conviction and jail sentences for one of the parties. This is for the simple reason that both parties are simply guilty of inflaming the community, best policy is just to break it up and let things settle down.
To the Editor:
But what has happened here? Rather than letting things settle down, the incident has been pushed into court, and a ridiculous handout is handed down. I doubt whether either party is more guilty than the other, but it appears that the victims" (the Wastell sisters) are not the cause of being white. And Kauska is supposed to be a free state.
James Aber
Bridges exist
James Aber Lawrence Graduate Student
A juxtaposition of black news and white news is not easily defined, especially when there are many differences in much attention. However, with
To the Editor:
a certain cautious but resinous bit of truth I would like to correct any assumptions that a difference between the two does not exist.
When the coverage of a Lewis Hall incident carried the respectability and privacy of a few individuals out of academic seclusionism, and when the effects of student reporting are so devastating that it becomes diacritical of student affairs in making black students victims of legal intricacies of Yellow Mountain there exists a gap in black journalism and white news.
THE INCIDENT WAS an alleged assault on white students by black students. In the '68s a tour with the color of the persons involved as its initial variability could be unmasked, ushering in a follow-up by a man who designates whom. This is a new day and age and new tactics are molding our society.
Like polarization: "The two white women refused to comment on the incident"; "the black women said they thought Security and Parking had made two reports of the incident, one with the white women's stories and one with the black women's stories, but the incident hadn't started as a racial incident, but was being turned into one" (Feb. 28 Kansan).
ISEE BACK JOURNALISM and white news as being a useful communicative influence. Bill Gray work hard on the Lewis Hall story and got controversies. The story carried a juxtaposition that may have led to criticism of University students. When those black students were convicted, Judge Mike Elwell convinced a determinate percentage of the black students at KU.
Instead of defining an incident, Gray diagnosed a scuffle. Instead of using the Buckley amendment to the advantage of fellow students, Gray used it against the black students at Douglas county Attorney said in the March 7 Kansas that his investigation into the incident had been hampered by the University's interpretation of the Buckley amendment. Steps were then taken to break the secrecy. Subpoenas were given to Dykes and a representative of the Dean of Women's office. With this overbalance of unsympathetic personification the
students at Lewis Hall or anywhere else stand no chance.
With the ineffable Buckley amendment and the inexorable, resourceful, relentless efficiencies of Judge Elwell and Justice Burkertow, the students at Lewis Hall had no chance.
Dwight Thomas Lawrence Senior
With the preserved sensationalism of Gray for the Kansan, four University students were convicted of misdemeanors, thus proving once again what is wrong with white reporters doing black journalism.
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Editor
Associate Editor John Pike Campus Editor
Crair Stock Dennis Ellsworth
Business Manager
"How are the children controlled? Bruner knows psychology well. Children are at their most passive, and they learn from them, 11. They like films, games, role-playing; they like animals
classroom. Except for projects, homework is discouraged. Manuals are kept at school for professional use only. Adult intervention, therefore, is minimal use.
Dave Reeves
Advertising Manager Assistant Business Manager
Debra Abbachary
Caroline Howe
"The method of teaching is inquiry. The teacher asks questions; the student finds answers to them; and the method since Socrates, but
only restricted academic freedom but also inhibited the development of my students by presenting a negative, one-sided and dishonest picture of man. In short, MACOS is a brainwash–clever, well-executed and lethal.
By James Kilpatrick
(C) 1975 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
Jerome Bruner and his friends have developed a new twist. The teacher is not permitted to initiate the questions; all questions come from manuals—and manuals must be followed exactly. All answers are found in course books and films. Outside sources cannot be used because material concerning the course content (the social sciences, cooking, fishing, salmon, baboon and the Netsikl Eskimo) is understandably nonexistent at the fifth-level grade. Input and output are thereby totally controlled.
and they not only empathize, they identify with them. In a matter of days they speak fluent baboon. They readily learn that the physically strong survive at the expense of the weak. And if they do not learn this from hours of filmed violence, which ranges from the mating ties of the bobcat to the fresh caribou blood by the Eskimos, they learn by role-playing and games.
"Hunt the Seal' is a simulation game; it takes a week to play. The victor must have used his own survival. He can do this
only by 'starving' his co-payers. The price of survival is killing; the lesson is re-enforced by the story of the old woman who was left on the ice to die because she did not contribute to her society.
"The book word for this is 'senilicide', a tough word for fifth-graders, but they got it. They approved and defended abandonment of the old woman. At this point I deviated from the manual and asked one of the children what he would call this word." He gulped and answered, "murder." (I was reprimanded for infusing irrelevant questions into the program.)
"DEFENDERS OF MACOS insist that the teaching materials give children an opportunity to compare different life styles, to become tolerant of other moral values. The defenders never mention that 10-year-olds have not studied Western civilization and have no formal training in the history, technology or social sciences of their own life. The only moral values children in MACOS are taught are the moral values of a primitive, nearly extinct tribe—and those of the baboon.
"in terms of tax dollars, the price for MACOS, thus far, is $6.5 million. What is the price in the child of our future?"
THERE'S ONE OPENING: PRESIDENT FORD NEEDS A CADDIE!