UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan edition staff. Signed columns represent the views of the editorial staff.
APRIL 2,1979
Death penalty barbaric
We are said to be human beings—rational, compassionate creatures. Yet we continue to act like barbaric uncivilized animals.
We are said to hold life sacred. Yet we continue to ask for and approve laws that allow us to pluck the lives of our fellow men.
We are said to be seeking peace and harmony with all people. Yet we continue to seek a legal sanction to kill. And we call it capital punishment.
Today, the Kansas House will consider adoption of a death penalty bill. It is approved, as most political observers say it will be, we cannot call it murder. The judge will be little more than vengeful, irrational animals—perhaps even worse.
DESPITE WHAT may be said on the House floor by death penalty proponents, there can be no logical or emotional defense of a death penalty. It is morally wrong.
Capital punishment contradicts all that we hold true as a society. In science, we seek to save and lengthen our lives. In government, we seek to improve the human condition and protect lives.
What, then, is rational about killing a human at punishment for a crime? What is rational about killing a human at punishment for a crime?
Some might say a death penalty would act as a deterrent to serious crime, particularly murder. But studies do not support this theory.
"Centuries of history leave any deterrence at all a matter of doubt," according to Judicature, the journal of the American Judicature Society. "And psychology confirms that persons contemplating commission of crime are either not thinking of punishment or are confident that it will not happen to them."
THE KANAS SENATE approved a conference committee report last week that would provide for a sentence of death by lethal injection for convictions of first degree or felony murder.
Because conference committee reports cannot be amended, the House is faced with a yes-or-no vote. If approved, the bill will go to Gov. John Carlin, who has been opposed to the governor's proposal. The governor has said he had not ruled out signing a bill that would meet constitutional requirements.
It is not too late to stop the death penalty in Kansas. But there is no time for hesitation. Call your legislator and ask your opposition to legalized killing.
Only 63 votes are needed to approve the bill and earlier this year the House passed a different death measure, 82-42.
Today, the rationality of man is on trial in the Kansas House. Don't let human reason fall prey to the animal. Now is the time to act.
America should protect natural wilds of Alaska
BY CECIL ANDRUS N.Y. Times Feature
ByCECILANDRUS
WASHINGTON—The debate over Alaska National Interest Lands has been ongoing. It is important that conservationists. That portray misses the point: At least two-thirds of Alaska will be open for development. The real issue: If the rest will be protected for all Americans?
Two years ago, the administration called for designation of 92.5 million acres of wilderness in the U.S.'s largest areas. Within these proposed boundaries lies wild, mostly untouched territory. This includes the nation's highest mountain and glacier, its greatest mass of high peaks and glaciers.
No one can seriously argue that these places do not have national importance. In fact, some argue we seek protection for too little of Alaska.
THE PROBLEM we took seriously, though, was striking a balance in land use. We developed and applied two basic principles. First: Include only areas of true national significance, and use watershed or ecosystem boundaries to be sure that they will remain as healthy, self-sustaining habitats. Second: Exclude areas of purely economic value whenever possible.
By applying these principles, we achieved a unique plan. We located and marked for protection places that will continue to stun future generations with their beauty, natural productivity and historical significance. Also, more than 90 percent of Alaska's high-potential onshore oil and gas production areas remain available for exploration and development.
LAST MAY, the House of Representatives, passed an Alaskan lands bills. 277-31. An end of filibuster threat blocked a bill that would authorize a statutory protection for our proposed areas about to expire. President Carter decided too much was at stake not to act and exacerbated the situation in Alaskan lands. Under emergency powers, I withdrew 110 million acres from all claims. Subsequently, Carter designed 66 million acres under provisions of the Antifactures Act.
The genesis of Alaskan conservation goes back more than 40 years when there was a
call for protection of all land north of the Yukon River. Little thought was given to that proposal, though, until oil was discovered on state land at Prudhoe Bay in northern Alaska, and its impurious wilds were threatened by construction of the Trans-Akla pipeline.
LEGISLATION TO clear land titles for the pipeline and settle Alaska native claims struck a bargain between Alaska and the rest of the country: America would support development in Alaska if Alaska were to move to conservation there for all Americans.
While this bargain indicated that selection of Alaska's vast 104 million acre statehood grant might be slowed to allow native Americans to gain a sound economic future. But many Alaskans and their allies in the resource industries now seem to have forgotten the agreement between Alaska and the United States.
Too often conservation has been an effort to salvage some remnant of beautiful land or a small population of once-numerous animals. In Alaska we have a second land, the Tundra, a healthy, productive lands, simply by allowing them to continue in their natural state.
Few nations ever are favored with the chance to make a decision to protect their natural heritage. If we decide to reject this opportunity to conserve and develop, we will remember with which our grandchildren will remember us. Let's do it right, for once, the first time.
Letters Policy
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters: should be typewritten, double-spaced and not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is afar with the university, the letter should include the university logo, home town or faculty or staff position.
The Kansan reserves the right to edit letters for publication.
Cecil Andrus is secretary of the interior.
A one-time carpenter and carpenter spent some six months researching the subject of hydrogen weapons manufacturing. While doing his research, 36-year-old Howard Morland, a freelance writer, learned the skills of the most deadly weapon—the hydrogen bomb.
Irony apparent in free press debate
Morland's discovery, based on information gained legally, and often with the help of Department of Energy officials, has set off one of the biggest debates concerning the question of freedom of the press and authority since the Pentagon Papers case in 1971.
The issue arose when the Justice Department asked Progressive, a monthly magazine published in Madison, Wis., to not publish its article, "How the Hydrogen Bomb Works."
WHEN MORLAND and Progressive's editor, Erwin Knoll, refused to suppress the article, the Justice Department asked a federal judge in Milwaukee to issue a restraining order on the article, stating that it violated provisions of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. The department maintained that the article contained "secrets of hydrogen weapons manufacture—"restricted data" as defined by the Atomic Energy Act.
"Disclosure of this information," Justice Department lawyers said, "would increase the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and thereby severely undercut the arms control and disarmament policies of the United States."
Last week, U.S. District Judge Robert W.
Mary
Ernst
Warren issued a preliminary injunction to the company, which thought the article was violation of the terms.
But there are several ironies involved, and each point to a dilemma higher courts will face in deciding where freedom of the press ends and national security begins.
MORLAND, FOE of nuclear weapons, had written the article with the opposite stance in his book. He accused him of. He was accused of contributing to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The Progressive contends that the university did not intend to show people how to build a hydrogen bomb in their backyards, but to educate the public so that it might "better be able to make decisions on such issues as the need for underground weapons testing." In fact, Michigan had no more technological equipment than the chemistry and quantum mechanics while working on his degree at Emory University in Atlanta.
The article did not show Idi Amin, Uganda's tyrannical leader, how to build a bomb, the Progressive argues, as Judge Warren had said he feared it might.
A SECOND IRONY is that although the Atomic Energy Act prohibits dissemination
The constitutional problem, then, is not stolen documents or Morland's access to classified material. The problem exists because Morland's review of available results is resulted in a description of the hydrogen bomb that is dangerously close to the mark.
of secrets about hydrogen weapons, Morland obtained all of the information openly and sometimes with the help of the government.
What Morland did, said Knoll, could have been done "More swiftly, more efficiently and perhaps more accurately by any modest foreign intelligence agency."
So, while most might agree that a court could and should prohibit publication of any secret government paper explaining the technology of a nuclear weapon, should the courts prohibit publication of an article based on public sources, gathered by the press, only because the product comes too close to material the government thinks is secret?
SUCH A QUESTION delves further into the heart of the constitutional protection of freedom of speech than the Pentagon Papers case did.
The government has claimed that even if some information is never in government custody, Congress had intended to have it "classified at birth." This would mean that it isformation concerning the design, construction, and atomic weapons could be prohibited by the government by decree whenever it was so inclined.
A final怒叫 by that by filing suit, after not doing so when other magazines published explanations of atom bombs, the government asked to ban them. The government did in fact, hit on the "secret of the Hearst" close enough to it to cause great worry. The purpose of Morland's article was to explain the hydrogen bomb, not to present a "make-up" for it and to dictate or corrupt leader in the world.
HOWEVER, THE Justice Department has now drawn enough attention to the article to imply, or possibly to confirm, that information is sufficient to inform construction such a weapon.
No sane person wants to see a model for a hydrogen bomb make its way into the hands of someone such as Armin—that would certainly have disastrous results. But there has been little evidence to show that this weapon if moriland's article were printed.
Yet the government has convinced a federal district judge that prior restraint of speech is necessary for national's security. As the case makes its way to a Supreme Court hearing, more concessions are in order.
Whether the case ends with the publication of Morland's article or not, it is certain to be one of the most important events in the affairs of the press in national security areas.
And for every question the courts may answer in this controversy, an equal number of unanswered ones will likely remain.
TA credentials sufficient for teaching
To the editor:
A letter appeared in the March 20 issue of the Kansan criticizing the quality of learning at the University of Kansas anssim instructors with "little or no experience" were a major cause of the problem because it was the lack of knowledge and knowledge of pedagogical techniques.
I do not dispute that there is a teaching problem. On the contrary, the quality of teaching around here seems to have reached an all-time low. However, it is my duty to negotiate that the large number of teaching problems have a major cause of this problem is unjustified.
Secondly, the writer of the letter states
UNIVERSITY DAILY letters KANSAN
Firstly, the writer of the letter implicitly assumes that grade- and high-school teachers have college degrees in their fields many teachy assistants do not. This is untrue.
Almost all TAs and Asls are at least a baccalaureate degree in their field or in a closely related one. Those few who are undergraduates have been deemed by their departments to be especially well-prepared in the area that they are teaching.
STATE U.
BY T. M. ASLA
that TAs and AIs have not formally studied education. This, perhaps, is true, but (a) KU professors are not required to have preparation in the field of education and (b) it has been my experience that getting an education curriculum does not a teacher make.
As a former student of education, I must comment that I found most formal education courses to be a little impractical. I do not want them to remember a few semi-illiterate secondary-school teachers who were prepared in education, supposedly, who would have given me much more. I have to have five.
Yes, we may assume that on the average, professors have a broader and deeper knowledge of their field than a graduate student. But of what use is a vast knowledge if the individual lacks the ability to communicate it?
If the course is a fundamental one, a graduate student in the field can be expected to know the basic material well. In fact, a strong case can be made in favor of a graduate student who has pathy with students, themselves being students, and their having the subject matter fresher in their memories. Finally, this is true because a graduate student pursuing state-of-the-art research is forced to learn much more, much and perhaps more than a professor.
If an individual (a) prepares ahead for each meeting with students, (b) is available to consult with students, (c) puts a little effort into designing projects and assignments, (d) listens to feedback from the students, (e) stays present during on time, and (f) possesses a reasonable proficiency in the language in which the class is taught, then this person
will most likely be a reasonably good teacher.
Colleen Kitchen
Assistant instructor of computer science
Carter should pacify opposition in party
Jimmy Carter is not in an invenable spot, but he is positioned to make history and save his job. His future is threatened more than ever because of the Republican Party by any American hopeful.
To the editor:
If Carter can re-secure his liberal, labor and Southern allegiances (no small task), he will be vulnerable to Republican attacks only in the electoral college.
Carter should mobilize vice president Walter Mondale, ex-darling of the liberal Democrats and labor, to pacify liberal Democratic dissenters.
Kennedy himself will not run, because he wields more power outside the White House than he would from within. If Kennedy could, and he can, save Carter's and the Democrats' hide in 1980, his power would be even greater.
Mondale would then be positioned to make his own bid for the White House in 1984. Teddy Kennedy, D-Mass, should also be enticed to rally support for Carter in most all wings of the Democratic Party in return for national health insurance concessions.
Carter can save himself by following a "Rose Garden" strategy in 1890. Carter's campaign in 1890 will be very different from his 1870 efforts, mainly because he is now a man of color and not an indignant outside knocking away at the Washington establishment.
A decision by Carter to campaign exclusively from the White House—an idea Gerald Ford should have more fully accepted. For example, Revive Carter's reputation as a stylish, straight-talking leader, an image that has failed since he closed his fire-side chat and gave up on his job.
A no-campaign strategy that included return of federal election funds would fit perfectly in Carter's austerity plans and move the deficit solidly to the quadrennial hustling.
This strategy leaves Carter vulnerable in the primaries, but he is vulnerable there anyway. Party insurgents and their energized脐engers can unset the existing powers—as Lyndon Johnson learned in 1988, Democratic establishment learned in 1976.
By not actively campaigning, Carter could turn a liability into an asset, as he
Carter's political pick is not so sour that he cannot save himself by following the conventional wisdom of electionering. More good might result however, if he did follow these steps. If he lost, an admirable precedent would still be set.
And, if he lost, so what. Who would want to be president now anyway?
Doug Carter
Needham, Mass., graduate student