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Wednesday, March 22, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Rock Chalk Revue earns praise for charitable work
The Rock Chalk Revue has paid off again, this year bigger than ever.
The 40th annual Revue pulled in a record $24,000, which they will present to the United Way of Douglas County tonight.
Each year, the people involved in the Rock Chalk Revue put hours and hours into the philanthropic production that too often doesn't get the recognition it deserves.
Many people view it as just another greek function. But organizers have been trying this year to get more non-greek participation so the Revue can be recognized as a campus production, not a sorority-fraternity talent show.
The students who help put together the Rock Chalk Revue deserve a lot of credit. The purpose of the three-day show is often forgotten by those who only see the flashy costumes and student musicals.
When the United Way receives that $24,000 check, the real purpose of the Rock Chalk Revue will be difficult to ignore. Those involved in the Revue should be proud of the work they have done for the sake of the community. And the community should be grateful that some college students make the time and effort to help.
Julie Adam for the editorial board
Marriage should concern love, not sexual preference
A big step toward increased gay rights would occur if a California proposal becomes law.
A proposal to change the California civil code would allow legal marriages between homosexuals. The current code defines marriage as a "personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman." The proposed change would read "between two people," which is similar to the code California employed before 1977.
California employees would be a legal benefit for homosexual couples. They would be eligible for tax exemptions and health plans. And although homosexuals now can adopt children, the new proposal would allow them to do so as a couple. It also would give them rights often reserved only for family members, such as visitation in hospital intensive-care units.
In these days of AIDS, when monogamy and safe sex are rightly encouraged among both homosexuals and heterosexuals, it is hypocritical to tell a homosexual couple wishing to commit to each other that they cannot do so legally.
convoking bokoresman for the Catholic Archbishop John Quinn already has said that the church is opposed to allowing gay marriages. He called marriage "a sacrament with deeply religious overtones."
But while many marriages begin with religious ceremony, many others begin with a justice of the peace. Marriage has its base in love. When two people love each other and want to share their lives, they then enter into a marriage that binds them legally.
If homosexual couples want to share their lives, they should be allowed all the rights and privileges of heterosexual couples. Even homosexual lovers who have lived together for many years are not allowed the legal rights of married people.
The basis for opposing homosexual marriages lies in the traditional view of marriage, traditional husbands and wives — the Ward and June Cleaver types. But the fear of the untraditional is the same as the irrational fear of homosexuality in general.
Many people are afraid that by legalizing homosexual marriages in California, the state would be condoning homosexuality. But it is not a question of condoning. It is a question of rights. And homosexuals are being discriminated against if they are not allowed the same legal rights as heterosexuals.
Jill Jess for the editorial board
The editors in this column are the opinion of the editorial board. The editorial board consists of Julie Adam, Karen Boring, Jeff Euston, James Fearquar, Cindy Hanger, Jennifer Hinkle, Grace Hobson, Jill Jess, Mark McCormick and Mark Tillford.
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MARLEY Chicagofluorine
Intervention should be last resort Proponents of invasion understate current drug war efforts
Mission: Invade South American drug-producing countries and cut drug supply lines at their sources, whether the countries like it or not.
whether the countries like it or not. Christopher Wilson implied that in his March 1 column, "Drug czar should utilize military." He discredited current efforts. I feel compelled to clarify his statements and fill in the facts about this important national issue.
Error: Wilson conceded that many lawmakers, and even the president, had hinted at using the military to aid our war on drugs. That concession understates congressional anti-drug efforts.
Fact: Congress passed a law in 1988 giving the Pentagon new responsibilities for interdicting the flow of illegal drugs in the United States. According to Army Times, the Pentagon has budgeted $300 million for the execution of this law.
On Feb 21, Rep. Nicholas Mavroules, D-Mass., chairman of a House Armed Services investigations subcommittee, told the head of the of the Defense Department's Task Force on Drug Enforcement that the war on drugs "ought to be an international emergency on our hands." Mavroules' suggestion, combined with the law and the Pentagon's budget, seems to be more than a hint.
Error: Wilson said that the military, "a practical and necessary resource," remained untapped in this drug war. That statement understates the Pentagon's anti-drug efforts.
Fact: According to an Army Times report, Marine Lt. Gen. Stephen G. Olmstead, the task
Gary Patton
Guest columnist
force director, told the House committee that the military had been active in interdiction of hostilities. The other 408 arrests.
The Pentagon devoted more than 28,000 hours of flight time to aerial surveillance for law enforcement agencies, an increase of 12,000 hours from 1987.
- Navy ships had 2,000 sailing days supporting the Coast Guard in interdiction activities.
- The Pentagon loaned $300 million worth of equipment to civilian law enforcement agencies and provided 26 utility helicopters to the State Department to support overseas drug interdiction.
■ In a Jan. 24 letter to Attorney General Richard厚唐, the Pentagon offered to loan 15 Navy patrol planes to law enforcement agencies.
■ In Oct. 1988, the Pentagon encouraged the governors of U.S. states, territories and possessions to develop wider plans to use their National Guard assets in drug interdiction. As of March 1, 51 plans had been received. The plan of 13 border and port states have been given priority and are under review by the Justice Department.
If no legal objections are raised, about $16 million from the Pentagon budget will be dedicated to finance those plans.
Those resources fall short of what may be needed to curtail the northward flow of drugs from Latin America, but they shouldn't be described as untapped.
Error: Wilson suggested direct, armed intervention to "attack this problem at the source." But such an action would undermine ongoing peace efforts in Latin America. A limited strike, like the one he suggested, would be construed as more than just a drug raid.
Wilson's proposal to "roll up our sleeves and unilaterally step in" suggests an all-out invasion by one of the Army's airborne units capable of forced entry against armed attack. I don't believe Americans would support this venture against Communists in Nicaragua or Cuba, much less our allies in Bolivia and other drug-producing countries.
The broad mission of our military is to maintain the peace by being visibly prepared for war. Border surveillance and interdiction units of other federal agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Agency, U.S. Customs Service and Immigration Agency, are also able to can be reinforced before we alert the military. Direct military intervention should be our last course of action on the war in drugs.
Gary Patton is a Lawrence graduate student in journalism.
Competition would enhance education
G george Bush must be serious about being an education president. He took a giant step in that direction last month at a White House Conference on education. It wasn't so much what he said but what he didn't say. Bush said American families ought to be able to choose which public school their children could attend.
What he didn't say was that government also should start subsidizing private and parochial schools. His silence on that idea, once a favorite figure in the education's, deserves a separate rate of applause.
Proportion now has been restored. In this increasingly centrifugal America, it's important to preserve the public schools, one of the last great unifiers of American society.
the trick is to use the free market to improve public education not erode it. But how can one preserve the integrity of the public schools, yet also introduce choice, innovation, competition and accountability? One way to do it is to expand the choices students now have but still limit them to the public system. Improvise: graft the free market onto government enterprise.
Some of the more adventurous states, such as Minnesota, have begun to do just that. Its governor, Rudy Perpich, campaigned for free choice for more than a decade. In Arkansas, Gov Bill Clinton's proposal to give families a wider choice of public schools is modeled on the Minnesota plan. Once students can pick their public school, and take up to $4,000 a year in
Paul Greenberg
Syndicated columnist
state aid with them, just watch those schools improve. Wonderful thing, competition.
Not many students actually have to change schools in order for this approach to bear fruit. The improvements that schools make in order to attract or hold the more discriminating families also will benefit those who don't much care or example these changes in their schools offered in Minnesota's high schools have quadrupled since this approach was inaugurated; surely that's not just a coincidence.
Until now, many states have used the stick to improve their public schools: comprehensive tests for students, basic tests for teachers, threats of consolidation for school districts that don't measure up. The carrot might be much more effective: The more customers, the more money, prestige and success. Just like private enterprise.
Care must be taken to see that open enrollment programs don't lead to more racial segregation. Chances are good that a freer market also could impower the poorest families, who were excluded from school. It could lead to more integration, not less. Lamar Alexander, who was an education governor of
Tennessee, noted that Grahamwood Magnet School, in a largely black neighborhood of Memphis, now has a waiting list of 200 students, many of them white.
Opening the market might do more than reward good schools; it also would pimpinp poor ones that now are likely to go unnoticed for years and are creating generation after generation of students.
In Cambridge, Mass., it is now standard practice to take a hard look at those schools that attract the fewest students. When found wanting, they get a couple of years to improve; principals have been known to be reassigned. The emphasis among educational administrators has begun to shift from making improvements to making improvements. Nothing shakes up bureaucratic habits like a dose of the free market.
Yes, but what would such a change do to the worst schools, the ones that nobody wants to attend? Residual schools, they're called in Educoanto. Wouldn't students in students but of public funds as their enrollment shrunk? Shouldn't some provision be made for the schools that can't compete?
A more pertinent question: Why have we taxpayers been condemning innocent children to such schools all these years? It would be public and irrelevant if they disappeared, or were reorganized beyond recognition. Few inferior products are as harmful as inferior education. Why tolerate it any longer?
■ Paul Greenberg is a syndicated columnist who writes for the Pine Blaff (Ark.) Gazette.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed