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Wednesday, June 14, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
The fact that some industry spokesmen are praising President Bush's plan for reducing emissions of industrial chemicals proves its effect will be strong.
Bush's plan is designed to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions said to cause as many as 3,000 deaths and an unknown number of birth defects and other health problems each year. The proposal calls for a 50 percent cut in those emissions by the year 2000.
For years, environmentalists' warnings that the planet is slowly dying of poisoning have fallen on deaf governmental ears.
Now, President Bush, upon learning that his resort home town of Kennewick港口, Maine, had dangerously high ozone levels last summer, has announced that the environment is "a moral issue" and promised to take action that will 'significantly improve every North American's quality of life.'
The Environmental Protection Agency has been dragging its feet since 1970 on its Congressional mandate to reduce the deadly emissions. The Reagan administration for eight years ignored environmental issues.
Bush was quick to point a finger at pollution in Boston harbor during his race for the presidency against Massachusetts. He said he would "say no" to the guard of his family's resort home.
The fact that he finally did means that the earth's environment has deteriorated to the point that even the most powerful man in the world can no longer ignore it. Let's hope that Bush's belated, feeble first step toward saving our planet will be followed by larger, more concrete steps.
Ric Brack for the editorial board
Congratulations, Shockers
Champs!
The state of Kansas has taken the national championship spotlight again, as Wichita State University has claimed the NCAA title in
The Shockers took the title Saturday, beating the Texas Longhorns 5-3, canning a season that was a constant battle for survival.
faced elimination in six of their 10 games of the College World Series. But the Shockers did not give up, even though the Texas team was well into the final round.
But the Shockers did not give up, even though the Texas team was undefeated in the series going into the title game.
The Shockers had already beaten baseball power Michigan and top-ranked Florida State twice.
Kansas has much to be proud of in the Shocker team. The entire country has taken notice of a school in our state.
You battled adversity, you showed the nation that Kansans don't give up when the chips are down.
And the Shockers are not only tremendous athletes. Many of the players have consistently made the Athletic Director's Honor Roll, a distinction that is rare among many coaches.
We remember the emotions that a national championship can arouse.
Bottle that euphoria. It is a feeling that you will seldom, if ever, be.
spouse or again.
Congratulations, WSU. You have done well for the state of Kansas.
Jill Jess for the editorial board
The editorials in this column are the opinion of the editorial board. The editorial board consists of Jill Jess, Ric Brack, Kirsten Boanak and Kathy Walsh.
Other Voices
Student bigotry rampant
The recent rise of racially motivated incidents on college and university community networks is particularly disturbing — and for now, the obvious reason.
The incidents of racial bigry have ranged from hate-filled graffiti scrawled on campus buildings to full-scale brawls between whites and blacks.
At least as troubling, however, is the overreaction on some campuses. The University of Michigan, for instance, has established a "speech code" that outlaws "insensitive statements" under threat of expulsion. The University of Wisconsin has adopted . . . penalties for students and faculty who make derogatory comments about a person's race, gender, religion or "sexual orientation." . . .
The proposed limits on freedom of expression, no matter how wellmeaning, should raise caution flags.
Since the search for truth entails free inquiry, any restraint on the exchange of ideas within the university community subverts the purpose of research.
The Arizona Republic
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The first sign of the Armageddon.
Regime support lost forever
China's hard-liners soon will be 'buried in self-dug graves'
the recent events in China have shocked people all over the world. Why? It was because the massive killing of
people all over the world. That meant a powerful killing of students and civilians was so unexpected and outrageous. The massacre was brutal, ruthless and bloody.
We saw the Chinese People's Party and government order the People's Army to slaughter the Chinese people. We had believed the Chinese Communist Party and government were for the people to serve the people. We believed the people would love the people and would never harm them.
The most surprising and unacceptable fact is that the people's army used guns and tanks that were produced by the Chinese people to shoot down and run over the victims (those same people) instead of using the weapons to defend them and safeguard the nation.
Those familiar with China's politics must have heard terms like "people's democratic dictatorship" and "autocratists and traitors to the people" used by the Communist Party and government. The bloody incidents in China last week should shed light on the real definitions of those terms
From news media all over the world, we've seen, heard and read plenty about what hap
The "people's democratic dictatorship", meaning the Chinese Communist Party and government, dictate to the Chinese people who love and demand democracy and freedom. "Autocrats and traitors to the people" refers to the current leader of these despots who totally betrayed the people.
Yu Kuejian
Guest shot
pened in China. But what could we see, hear and read from the Chinese media? Not a single word about the massive killing. Not a single picture of the killing of students and civilians by the terrorists.
According to the Chinese media, the pro-democracy demonstrators were counter-revolutionaries and the peaceful demonstrations were riots.
Without mentioning the slaughter of hundreds, probably thousands, of demonstrators on Tiananmen Square during the bloody weekend, the government-controlled media claimed that no
It did eventually give casualty figures for the
weekend. 400 soldiers and 300 others had died. Of
them, 172 were civilians.
Facing the "truth" as told by the Chinese government, we simply cannot help ask what it was all about. Where did the grisly scenes we saw on our TV screens come from? Why were there more deaths of soldiers who had tanks and guns than of students armed with sharpened sticks and rocks? And if only 23 students died, who were the "others?"
With those questions in mind, we simply have to ask where the truth is. Surely, you won't get it
from the Chinese government and the state-run media. We often hear and see the term "sheer fabrication" used by the Chinese government, but I would say that what the Chinese governors in the Chinese people and the world about what had happened in Beijing was the sheerest fabrication.
Deng Xiaooping, Li Peng, Yang Shangkun and their followers reappeared last week to praise the "excellent work" done by the army. They came out to praise the "excellent work" Are they insane? What kind of leaders are they? What kind of people's party and government are they?
Deng Xiaoping and his followers could claim a temporary "victory" in their brutal suppression of the pro-democracy movement on Tiananmen Square. But they forgot that they could not suppress the strong demands of the Chinese people for democracy in China. The Chinese people had no choice but to support and of this regime. A government without the support of its people is certainly doomed.
We should be optimistic about the future of China. The martyrs of the pro-democracy movement did not shed their blood in vain. The current hard-liners are digging graves for themselves and are being killed by the Chinese people in those self-dug graves. Final victory will belong to the Chinese people.
Yu Xuejian is a graduate student, majoring in communications.
The backroads keep their secrets
How foreign the 'country' can be, City Man, even with your fancy maps
"D
addy, can I have my bow and arrow?" asked the three-year-old in the car seat next to me. "Not now. Daddy's concern."
trating, " my wife said, circumciting the quees
from the crowd to an audience to anuse himself with a toy bow and arrow in his mouth.
In fact, both my wife and I were intently scanning the northwest Kansas horizon. We sought landmarks that seemed somehow both cryptic and prosaic.
You see, we'd just begin the last leg of that venerable family rite, the cross-country vacation. Eight miles ahead, the signs warned, the highway leading home was closed for repairs.
Faced with an extra hour of detoured travel, we adopted guerrilla tactics and plotted an off-highway route with the assistance of local intelligence. We'd stayed a couple of days at the farm of my wife's aunt and uncle, Mary Lou and Keith. Keith had grown up on the place and together they'd raised three children there, along with the cattle and wheat
"Go over the hills past the draw south of town," Keith had said the night before.
Mary Lou: 'You bet, you'll know where you're'
    then there's a mobile home, and the Lloyd
    Model.
Mary Lou: "Pretty soon you'll see a square yellow house over on the right."
Keith: "No, you pass some other places... you'll be able to tell it all, right."
Me: "Is the yellow house the first one we come to?"
Keith: "The one with the corral..."
Me: "How far for you?"
Me: " How far have we come by then?"
This was apparently a novel question judging by our host's mute expressions. They looked at each other and shrugged, more with their eyebrows than their shoulders.
"Well, make it a couple of miles," said Keith. My wife and I tried to look reassured
Mary Lou: "After a while you pass the new
Stuart Beals
Staff columnist
on the left "
Keinsorge place on the left.
The 'new' Keinsorge
place was built in '48.'
Mary Lour "Yes. Finally, you come to the John Brown farm." This last was spoken with an air of self-evidence that elevated the description to a national White House. Both our guides grew enthusiastic.
Keith: It's a good looking place...
Mary Lou: ".. A real nice looking place
There's a big barn and lots of machinery,
and a large warehouse."
My wife enlisted me with her eyes as she said "I don't think, we're not sure. how many miles is it?"
By now Mary Lou and Keith understood that we required remedial efforts. "Well, for people that need to know the miles," said Mary Lou, "we've got a county map."
Our retief was tempered when we found that it was a land abstract map of uncertain currency. It contained no legend, no miles to-the-inch scale, just squares and rectangles denoting parcels of properties. We wrote the numbers of properties on the map represented mile-square parcels and not quarter-sections, then...
Of course, local distances don't usually interest folk like Keith and Mary Lou. We live long in Chicago, but the city is this reason.
centers.
We guessed it was seven miles to the turn. This
On here, the metric standard is people/place,
not miles or kilometers: who has this place; who
rents that place; who was born here, married
whom from where, and was buried in what
place?
distressed our hosts; we could gauge their ebbing confidence in our navigating skill. After all, if the John Brown farm did turn the turn for us, no map or odometer could rescue us. Mary Lou found a way to describe the juncture definitively. "There'll be a windmill on the right."
Mary Lou then cautioned that the "new" Kleinsmerge place was set back from the road.
Keith was frowning slightly. Something in the last set of instructions, or in the way we received it, led to a confused response. I sure yet that we'd get through all right. Then he brightened, pointed as he confided to us.
"Now, let's be a little more specific for them, said Keith. Slowly, gaseg into the distance, he pictured it for himself and then us. "From the road, I'd say, it's...about a hundred yards."
"After you turn east, you go straight until you get to the Dresden road," said Mary Lou. "You'll see some transformers at the intersection. Turn right and you'll be more or less a straight shot to the Interstate."
"Those transformers will be on the southeast corner."
Now on the road, my wife checked our improved map against the passing landscape. "There's the square yellow house," she said. My imagination had extended the boundless to all the spaces that yellow lion cube on the high plains. The actual house resembled a mustard-colored rectangle.
We found the "new" Kleinsorge place. The John Brown Farm really was a nice-looking place, well kept and prosperous. Six miles after the turn we found the transformers.
In the process of following the directions, we found a new appreciation for a place, its people and its environment.
We found our way home.
Stuart Beals is a Lawrence graduate student in journalism.