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Friday, May 5, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
School board should scrap proposal for drug testing
Welcome to high school. Here's your locker combination, new textbooks, class schedule and a plastic cup for your drug test.
But the proposal would infringe unnecessarily on a student's rights and, if passed, should be a warning that everyone's right to privacy could soon become endangered.
This may become a common occurrence in Board of Education decides to require its high school athletes, cheerleaders and coaches to pass drug tests. The board should that those students were role models for the school and should be forced to submit to such tests.
to privacy could soon become certain. There are cases where drug testing is necessary. For example, it is crucial that public transportation employees be drug-free. And even employers have the right to know whether the productivity of their businesses is being affected by drug use. In many cases, drug tests are an element of a person's contract, a right employees forgo in exchange for compensation.
compensation.
In a university setting, testing is sometimes understandable as well. Many athletes are living on public scholarship money and give up some rights for that privilege.
But high school is something altogether different. In high school, athletes are students first and, because they don't receive money from the school, have not given up their right to privacy. Extracurricular activities should be privileges for all students. Drug tests infringe on the right to participate in those extracurricular activities free from the suspicion and stigma that drug tests engender. $ \cdot $
Second, the high incidence of incorrect drug-test results, which occurs 10 to 20 percent of the time, can irrevocably harm the reputation and future career of students.
Under the plan being considered in Parsons, students who fail a drug test would receive a 30-day suspension. If a parent or guardian requested a second test, the athlete would be retested. But what if the second test is wrong? Or what if a college recruiter visits Parsons during the suspension of an unjustly accused athlete? Even if the second test is negative, 30 days is a long time to be away from high school sports, many of which have competitive seasons of less than two months.
months. Parsons Board of Education members should remember that they work with schools; if a drug problem needs solving, maybe education is the answer.
maybe education is the rest of us, we should fight against the encroachment of our privacy. Once we have given up our rights, they will be much harder to get back.
Jennifer Hinkle for the editorial board
The end of a school year brings satisfaction, anxiety
"School's out for summer . . . "
Well, sort of. Even with lots of work yet to be done for finals and projects, and even with summer school looming on the horizon, there is something satisfying about the last day of class.
class.
With it comes a feeling that all college students have experienced many times. The end of school used to herald the beginning of long summer days of play. Now attention is focused on planning for careers, summer jobs, internships, travel or simply taking a needed break and going home.
travel or shop. And as they pack, students will look around their rooms, wondering where all the stuff came from and how they will ever fit it into their cars.
the frenzy of last-minute details consumes leaders of student organizations and living groups as they work to train their replacements.
Those anticipating the walk down the Hill already have picked up their plastic bags with wrinkled graduation robes and colored tassels inside. Many of those who graduated in December will be coming back to participate in Commencement. Family and friends will descend on the town to wave at their favorite grads during the eternal academic parade.
After the ceremony, Lawrence will settle into a summer pace of less traffic, and parking on campus will be readily available.
After the ceremony, Lawrence will settle into a summer place of less traffic, and parking on campus will be readily available. And in a short time, the feeling of endings and goodbyes will subside . . . for a while.
Karen Boring for the editorial board
News staff
Julie Adam...Editor
Karen Boring...Managing editor
Jung...News editor
Deb Gruver...Planning editor
James Farquhar...Editorial editor
Elaine Sung...Campus editor
Tom Stinson...Sports editor
Janne Swatkowski...Photo editor
Dave Eames...Graphics editor
Neil Gordee...Art/Features
Tom Ebn...General manager, news adviser
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Debra Martin...Asst. production manager
Kim Coleman...Co-op sales manager
Curt Grossman...Classified
Jeanne Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
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U.S. interests must have priority
Covert operations, support for non-democratic regimes may be necessary
overt operation.
C overt operation.
Those two words seem to send a chill up the spine of most U.S. citizens. In the realm of international politics and foreign policy. Most Americans simply don't want to believe that it is a secretive or secretive government's interest in our nation's interests.
In fact, the question of covert actions leads to a much wider debate concerning the actual gals of such activity and the overall goals of our foreign policy. Some Americans become quite upset when it is revealed that our government has made another country's internal affairs our goal.
I think, however, that we should concern ourselves with hostile activity in other nations and that it is essential that we take action to eliminate the threats — covert operations are necessary tool. It is imperative, no matter what the bleeding hearts of the United States say, to promote our goals and interests around the globe.
Many fail to realize that our world is neither kind nor gentle and that as a superpower and the leading defender of democracy, we must some- day believe that we have no more severe conditions that ensure our peaceful survival.
More to the point, the United States should support forces that will serve its nationalistic needs. We must look on the world scene with a realistic eye and understand that, after all, it is the survival of the United States and the continuance of our domestic freedoms and security that should take precedence over anything, and everything, else.
Christopher Wilson
Staff columnist
Staff columnist
That is why covert operations are necessary, and that is why we must stoop to support non-democratic elements in pursuit of our objectives. We do each in the hope that our goals, our values and our beliefs will be victorious in the end. There are very few things that think we can justify the means, but in foreign policy, the challenges and extreme consequences for failure warrant such an approach.
We must be certain beyond doubt, however,
the official officials are the ones making the policy decision.
A textbook example of a place where we should have ensured victory was Nicaragua, where President Reagan led us down the correct path. No one liked the fact that it was necessary to interfere in Nicaraguan domestic affairs, but the threats posed to the United States and our Latin American allies by a Soviet client state in our country called for direct, and sometimes covert, action.
Some fail to understand that defeat of the Sandinistas would have meant more stability for the region, and in turn, less of a threat to our nation. And it didn't really matter whether or not the new government in Nicaragua was democratic. Sure, the United States should definitly
support democracy wherever possible, and the contras certainly offered a better chance for real freedom in Nicaragua than did the Sandinistas.
But much more importantly, a contra government in Nicaragua would have relied wholly and completely on the United States for its survival. And in such an instance, we would have had a great deal of influence over the direction of its policy, and we would have been able to pressure it into democratic reforms while answering security concerns. With the Sandinistas, oppression is still present, yet we have no influence and our security remains in jeopardy.
10ose in America who believe we should take a passive, isolationist role in the world have a dangerously naive opinion. They fail to recognize that U.S. power is constantly threatened and that aggressive foreign policy measures are an absolute necessity. Hiding under the sheets is no way for the world's greatest nation to preserve its security.
My position is not one of paranoia but rather one of concern for America. I see outside and within our country constantly working to understand the long-term security interests of the United States.
We must reject the voices of weakness and indecision in favor of policies that put a premium on providing our nationalistic needs. Throughout history, our country has endured unresolved problems and are to continue down a successful road, we must not turn our backs on the challenges of today.
Christopher Wilson is an Oatle senior majoring in political science and personnel management.
Reverse the decline of the English pub
The big issue in Britain these days is the pub. It may be in danger of becoming an endangered species in the land that gave the world that civilized institution, one that over the centuries doubtless has afforded its inhabitants a good deal more comfort, humanity and rationality than, say, the House of Commons.
Writing in the London Evening Standard a year after the war, George Orwell described his favorite pub, The Moon Under Water. Forty years later, it sounds even more edilic. What was it like? "To begin with, its whole architecture and fittings are uncompromisingly Victorian. It has no glass-topped tables or other modern miseries, and on the other hand, no sham roof beams, no wooden panels masquerading itself. The grained woodwork, the ornamental mirrors behind the bar, the cast iron accents, the florid stained dark yellow by tobacco smoke, the stuffed bull's head over the mantelpiece — everything has the solid comfortable匀iness of the 19th century."
Even by 1946, the deplorable trend to turn the English pub into something else was well under way. Now, to quote Derek Harris of the Times of London, "There has been a wave of establishments linked to a variety of themes from the colonial to the disco." A disco pub. It sounds like the kind of English pub that would serve cold beer.
The Moon Under Water didn't serve dinner but, to quote George Orwell's description of the place,
Paul Greenberg
Syndicated columnist
"there is always the snack counter where you can get liver-sausage sandwiches, mussels (a specialty of the house), cheese, pickles and those large biscuits with caraway seeds in them, which only seem to exist in public houses." You could get draft stout with it — the soft, creamy sort that goes best in a pewter pot. And most of their all-middle-aged women, known most of their customers by name but addressed them unti-facile because of their address, never, never by anything as racy as "Ducky". Nor did they ever make the "mistake of serving a pint of beer in a handleless glass."
The decline of the English pub was already so well-advanced in Orwell's day that his little essay on the honey delights of an English public house was more nostalgia than description.
Pubs tied to one brewery now account for 46 percent of all beer sold in Great Britain. The beer trade is dominated by six big breweries with Bass alone holding a share of the market share. It will be hard to find that the price of a pint has gone up 15 percent in real terms over the last decade. She says they'll always be an
England, but it's hard to imagine that it'll be the same as standardization as a McDonald's or a Holiday Inn.
The latest study of the emerging Beer Trust by Britain's Monopolies and Mergers Commission has recommended that the Big Six be made to sell the 22,000 pubs tied to their product. In the future, each brewery could own no more than 2,000 pubs apiece. (The biggest six breweries now own almost three-quarters of the pubs in the country.) Lord Young of Graffham, secretary of state for trade and industry, sounds amenable to the reform. Or as he put it, it is "momentary." The change will be a major manifestation. The free market may yet be the salvation of George Russell's mythic English pub.
If the big breweries are required to relinquish their control over the pubs, and local flavor is re-established, it will be a great day — and evening. This is not just a commercial or political issue but a cultural one. To quote Dr. Johnson, "There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced, as by a good tavern or inn." Maybe in time there will be a resurgence of pubs like The Moon Under Water. Here's hoping one of them — complete with garden, friendly but not familiar barmaids, and a wide choice of beer, stout and ale, but with no nelly or handleless glasses — will be called The George Orwell.
*Paul Greenberg is a syndicated columnist who writes for the Pine Blow (Ark). Gazette.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed