UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kanan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of
APRIL 11.1979
Veto shows leadership
In these cynical times, it is unusual and sometimes shocking to find a politician acting on personal beliefs rather than on political considerations.
But that is precisely what faced Kansas residents last week when Gov. John Carlin vetored a death penalty bill passed by a majority of Kansas residents.
Carlin, who had pledged during his campaign for governor that he would sign any constitutional death penalty bill sent to him by the Legislature, said in his veto message that he was philosophically opposed to the taking of a human life.
"I AM AN optimist," Carlin said. "I believe that society can find a way to deal with violence without using violence."
In vetoing the death penalty bill, Carlin left himself open to charges of breaking campaign promises and deceiving the Kansas electorate. And his critics wasted little time in leveling those charges at Carlin.
Senate President Ross Doyen, R-Concordia, called Carlin's veto "a clear example of his callous disregard
for Kansas citizens and their expectations."
But since his inauguration in January, Carlin has displayed the ability to make tough decisions without an excessive amount of consideration for the resulting political fallout. And that means that Kansas might finally have a leader who will lead rather than grovel before special interest groups and political pressure.
It's about time.
And that means that in the end Kansas might finally have a governor who is more interested in results than in appearances, more concerned with people than with votes.
While Carlin's opposition to the death penalty probably ends the possibility of Kansas adopting a capital punishment law during his term as governor, it does leave Carlin vulnerable during his re-election campaign in 1982.
Educators ignore need for 'productive idleness'
BUT WHILE Carlin may have ignored the will of a majority of Kansans, he did pay heed to the dictates of his own conscience. And given his stable motives for the decisions of many our politicians, that is no small deed.
N. Y. Times Feature
By KATHRYN TIDRICK
WASHINGTON - Why do intelligent and competent Americans who have spent many years in a series of reputable educational institutions study English, the Irish people to be fundamentally uneducated?
I think it's because Americans work too hard.
As a result they lack a sense of measure, an instinct for what is of value in the life of the mind, that only comes with years of productive idleness.
A GOOD school mainly helps by providing concentrated doses of essential information and then pointing the student in the right direction.
I HAVE often heard parents of elementary school children complain that their children were doing mostly "busy work" for homework.
From an early age they have spent so much time writing term papers, studying for tests and pursuing independent research that they have never had a moment to themselves.
I mean by "productive idenity" time spent in undirected reading, uninterrupted thinking, and aimless talk. It is in these idee an eligent person becomes an educated person.
Less work, but more concentrated and purposeful work, probably would be better.
The wise teacher knows that the mind must be given space in which to grow. The wisest teacher 1 ever had, who was the chairman of my department at London University, always told his first-year students that he expected them to spend a week on their formal studies; the rest of the time was theirs to use as they liked.
It will seem eccentric to parents worried about declining test scores to suggest that children ought to do less schoolwork. Yet a close look at the kind of work they do would be more intellectual value would be lost if 50 percent of the assignments were never given.
Some of these tedious and time-
consuming assignments are clearly supposed to be "he", "fun," and to count more as
My daughter, 10, still knows the difference between work and play and regards the assignments as work. I wonder if the teachers know the difference, though.
The ghost of Puritan New England stil walks in America and turns up in the most surprising places, such as child-centered classrooms where students play is enshrined as orthodoxy. Real intellectual play, the kind that ultimately produces the Theory of Relativity, has very little to do with classrooms, but it provides a real hazard—the dead hand of instruction is clamped upon it. It is hard to think of a better way of discouraging children from reading than asking them to write down a weekly book on the alphabet in practice in American elementary schools.
When I hear such things I feel not only angry but afraid. How am I going to protect my daughter from a school system that has been so badly damaged by education but also leaves no time for her to educate herself? What kind of a person will learn these hours are programmed for her in this way.
In moments of extreme discouragement I almost long for the anarchic freedom of the old unreformed English public schools, where boys were whipped through Latin but had time, if they were so inclined, as Byron was, to read "huge amounts of history," all the British poets, French (Houssaye, English and French philological), 4,000 Allowing for some Byronic exaggeration, it really doesn't sound like a budding.
If my daughter ever has time to read huge amount of anything I shall be very surprised.
Kathryn Tidrick is an English psychologist
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KANSAN
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Nation must heed accident's warning
But events in movies rarely happen in real life, right? Unfortunately, the world now is grimly aware that they do.
It depicts nuclear power hazards, possible overheating causing meltdown of the core, and cover-ups stemming from failure of its containment.
The "China Syndrome" is just a movie, right?
Three separate human errors recently caused low level radiation leaks from the Three Mile Island nuclear power station near Harrisburg, Pa., mistakes that have led scientists to call it the worst nuclear accident in history.
The accident jeopardized the lives of 1 million people living in the plant's region. More than 180,000 people evacuated the area, fleeing from something they could not see, feel, touch or smell.
A NERVOUS American public received conflicting reports of the danger from plant operators who were too guarded and from Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials to be honest, but were unsure of the danger themselves.
The Three Mile Island accident was too realistically frightening to be a movie script.
"I don't think there is any doubt that it will make it much more difficult to license nuclear plants," said Walter Meyer, engineer and chairman of public information for the American Nuclear Society. "We now have a public to what I consider a very severe accident and they now feel the feeling for the consequences of a severe situation."
MEYER IS right. But, in the middle of the Three Mile Island crisis, Energy Secretary James Schlesinger urged Congress to speed licensing for nuclear plants. Despite the accident, he said, there is no way around nuclear power if the nation wants to reduce oil imports from the Middle East.
Those three errors, along with faulty plant construction,
surely will alter the course and threaten the construction
of a building.
Jake Thompson
Schelsinger's statement is heartless at best, but one that is frequently spayed by bureaucrats and military leaders because it goes to the core.
We were lucky this time. No one died outright as a result of the Three Mile accident. Whether persons contaminated with the low level of radiation later develop cancer may never be traceable to the accident.
Yet, one thing is certain. If nothing is in drastically tight safety checks and precautions in nuclear plants, or halt construction altogether, we will face greater threat in the future.
IN THE United States, 72 nuclear reactors are in operation. Within the next decade 110 more are planned for construction. The nation will be risking a much greater cost of accidents, simply on the basis of number of plants in operation.
Will we be so lucky next time human error interferes with what pro-nuclear people call 'inaffable' back-up 35%?
When the next mysterious hydrogen gas bubble forms as a faulty plant beams an uncontrollable amount of radiation into the air and officials again fear a meltdown, will they be able to stop it?
The human risks and financial cost do not outweigh the economic benefits of nuclear power. The Three Mile Island accident japonicized lives and some officials estimate it would cost $150 million to repair and decontaminate the plant. It cost $1 billion to build and had only occurred operation four months when the accident occurred.
One would hope, even demand. so.
As a result of the Three Mile Island accident, Americans will be more skeptical when nuclear plant builders and NRC officials assure safety of a plant. Credibility of the nuclear industry was heavily battered by officials from the Metropolitan Edison Co. who continually played down the danger at Three Mile Island.
SOLAR POWER is the primary replacement for nuclear power, but scientists require more money to manage it.
State and national politicians were alarmed and are beginning to agitate for greater safety controls in all areas.
Because human error can circumvent back-up systems, if given special circumstances, the nation should take a cue from the near-disaster at Three Mile Island and push for intense development of alternative sources of energy.
"THERE WE no measurable release of radiation into the atmosphere," Don Curry, a spokesman for Metropolitan Edison said at noun on the day of the acetylene leak in an orderly manner with no consequences to the public).
That threat and cost was for one plant, one accident.
The reports were so conflicting that President Carter issued a gag order to the company requiring them to keep his office closed.
What if there were 200 nuclear power plants? The threat magnifies and costs could be staggering.
Further development of nuclear power should be halted by the federal government. Will it, as predicted by some groups, take a large number of deaths from a nuclear disaster to change the one-track minds of our federal officials?
One hopes not. The federal government should concentrate its energies and finances away from nuclear power. The threat to public safety and cost are not worth it.
To the editor:
Risks of a nuclear future too great
As a result of the accident at the three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, I would like to question what the American people know about nuclear energy and who is saying it.
In a recent Kansan, Hobart Woody, KU nuclear reactor operator, and Russell Mesler, professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, echoed the opinions of government and industry around the country.
Woody contends that in everything we do there is an element of risk involved and that we can't have progress without nuclear power. He also remarked, "I don't think people are too afraid of nuclear power. They just don't understand it."
Mesler contends that the accident will somehow increase public confidence in the nuclear industry. Presumably, because in spite of it up to six separate systems failures, the NRC and the engineers were able to keep the reactor from melting down. This includes a certain hydrogen gas bubble, planned for in any contingency plans. What other potential problems lie in waiting, unplanned for in other plants?
I have no quarrel with spending $25 billion over 10 years to send men to the moon, as we have reaped many unexpected benefits from that investment. Money invested in the moon will give us only more power to waste and more waste to somehow dispose of.
I personally take offense to Woody's remark that people don't understand nuclear power. I admit I am not a nuclear scientist, but there are reputable nuclear scientists in the world. The great majority of anti-nuclear people not mere romanticists urging the nation to regress to the Stone Age. In fact, alternative energy sources will require substantial advances in technology and studies have been done on the economy and can stimulate the economy and provide jobs.
The government and industry tell us that
by closing so many nuclear plants we would have to import so much oil to compensate. Now, we don't want that, do we? They don't tell us conservation is the best and safest means of insuring energy for the future. Evidently, they believe the American people will not take it upon themselves. Maybe their current use of electricity has condensed since 1983, but our standard of living really increased commensurately since then?
In America, we would not like to depend too greatly on any one source of energy for what are now obvious economic and social reasons. Yet, this is just what the government has done for many years. We nuclear power for the next 30 to 40 years. If we think the power companies have too much control now, we had better stop and think about the real possibilities we now have to decentralize our energy sources, or expand it with freedom through increasing dependence.
We can individually decide whether to risk driving our cars down the interstate, and most of us frequently do. But what if it was a power outage or had to drive the Indianapolis 500 to work every morning? As each of us weigh the risks of nuclear power, consider the following remark by Mike Gravel, scientist at MIT: "It's not going to boil water." Jeff Miller
Overland Park junior
Protest by rejecting alumni membership
To the editor:
On March 30 a group of concerned KU students met in front of Strong Hall to protest our Endowment Association's policy of investing in corporations which do
business in racist South Africa. The viewpoint favoring divestiture was voiced peacefully if not quietly to Chancellor Dykes and the rest of the administration.
To complement this expression of opposition, I now suggest economic pressure be applied. The senior class of 1979 has already received its first invitation to join the Alumni Association. I recommend all members of the Alumni Association the Endowment Association divests. If the class of '79 can make its disapproval of our endowment association felt by the Alumni Association, I am certain Mr. Wintermote, director of the Alumni Association, will send a letter to President of the Endowment Association. The boycott can be done in two simple steps:
1. Refrain from joining the Alumni Association. Seniors intending to become lifetime members are especially urged to bovcott the association.
KU has been good to me. It has given me both an education and many friends. Someday I intend to support KU by becoming a dues-paying member of the Alumni Association but not until KU sheds itself of this current disgrace.
2. Write a letter to the director of the Alumni Association, Mr. Dick Wintermort, declaring your boycott and explaining what must occur before your first dues are paid.
Stephen Wolk
Stephen Wolk Lawrence special student
To the editor:
Professor questions death penalty stand
I am a trifle puzzled by your editorial of April 2 which describes the death penalty as barbaric and uncivilized. Resounding is indeed, but this is sort of rhetoric insulted?
forget that the death penalty has for centuries been part and parcel of criminal justice both in the West and in many other parts of the world.
The best argument against the death penalty, in my judgment, is that it is irreversible. Make a mistake, and there is way to rectify it. But we must never
Must these cultures and civilizations all be branded as barbaric? While it trust none of us condones indiscriminate killing, I do not think it will markly ease our consciences to know that all murderers will confine themselves to the rest of their days confined behind bars.
To any educated European of the 13th century, that might have seemed like cruel injustice, I would all of us doubtless agree that to the leftoon off-scottare is a trifle injudicious. Precisely how then do the apothecaries of mankind propose the awake reader to crime? W. Keith Percival
Professor of linguistics
I attended the Intercollegiate Association for Women Students Convention at KU from March 28 to 31. Coming from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, known as the Southern Part of Heaven, I didn't know much about it. midwestern university, I was impressed!
Convention delegate impressed by KU
To the editor:
The students and community are very lucky to have the Emily Taylor Resource Center on campus. You are also lucky to have its staff and strong student support. I urge you to take advantage of it and help it whenever possible.
I would like to thank all those who worked so hard to put the convention together. I've never learned so much in so little time and I know that we must share problems, ideas and support.
Your campus itself is beautiful. It leads me to think of KU as the midwestern part of heaven. Thanks for your hospitality. Keep the faith. Alice Thompson
Association for Women Students Chapel Hill, North Carolina