UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
February 22.1979
The public's business
Understandably, members of the Kansas press turned out in full force at a meeting of the Kansas House Federal and State Affairs Committee on Monday to praise a bill that would strengthen the state's open records law.
The press representatives argued that the bill would help reporters more easily obtain information from state officials and help the press better inform the public.
"AN INFORMED electorate," a spokesman for the Kansas Press Association said, "is the best, most solid foundation a democracy can have."
Although that reasoning is quite valid, the importance of the open records bill is not limited to the press and its news-gathering functions. Open records should be as important to the individual as they are to the press, perhaps even more important.
Individuals have the right to know what information governmental agencies have about them, and how they can be protected. The records laws help ensure that right
THE BILL now being considered by the committee would broaden the list of records that fall under the law, require agencies to provide copies of records at a reasonable cost, stiffen
the penalty for violations of the law to a Class A misdemeanor and require an agency to take action on requests for records within three days.
The bill also would allow persons denied access to public records to petition a district court to forbid an agency to withhold records.
According to testimony at the committee meeting, the bill would change the definition of a public record from any record required by law to be kept and maintained, to any record kept by a public agency.
AT ISSUE, along with the bill are fundamentals of democracy—the right to know what one's government is doing and the right to know what information the government has gathered about oneself.
The bill would not endanger an individual's right to privacy. On the contrary, it would help strengthen it by providing a check against unnecessary governmental information collection and surveillance.
The intention of the proposed open records bill is not merely to aid the press in its job, although it may appear so to many people. The bill, most importantly, would help ensure that the public's business, as conducted by state government, is truly the public's business.
In an effort to draft a charter defining the role of United States intelligence activities, the U.S. Congress has stirred up a debate about what role the Central Intelligence Agency would have on college campuses under such a charter.
But allowing such actions could compromise an instructor, student or university administrator, and also could possibly infringe the academic freedom of the university involved.
Congressional sources say the charter would allow intelligence agencies to use American scholars traveling abroad for "operational assistance," provided a senior official at the school's institution were notified of any paid relationship.
SEEN. BIRCH BAYH, D-Ind., and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says "fundamental constitutional rights of speech, press, assembly and privacy are at stake" in the predicament between having a public opinion on education upon academic and other freedoms.
The idea of a charter came from a 1976 investigation of the Intelligence Committee, which determined activities, including smearing individuals for various reasons, spying on citizens whose views did not fit the FBI's idea of patriotism and disrupting constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.
Colleges must shun CIA involvement
Several universities have already protested adoption of the charter, and the University of Kansas was invited to join in the protest. In response to the activity, KU was one of many universities that decried FBI actions in the late 1960s and early 1970s after it was subjected to covert intelligence activities that violated the university's and faculty members' individual rights.
A DOCUMENT released by the FBI in November 1977 said the FBI had tried to create divisions among New Left groups at KU during that turbulent period. Among the actions taken by the FBI was sending letters to the parents of students involved in radical activity, and making a statement in an attempt to disrupt the activities of another and to campus publications.
Such activities by the FBI did more than
Khomeini's U.S. image distorted
N. Y. Times Feature
By RICHARD FALK
PRINCETON, N.J.—Part of the confusion in America about Iran's social revolution involves Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. More than any Third World leader, he has been depicted in a manner calculated to frighten.
President Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski have until very recently associated him with religious fanaticism. The news he sent to the defiant him in 1982, which efforts to defame him back a 1,000 years, with virulent anti-Semitism and with a new political disorder, "theocratic fascism," about to be set loose on the world. About the best he has fared has been to be called "Irush's Mystery Man" by critics.
THE HISTORICAL RECORD of revolutionary zeal degenerating into excess is such as to temper enthusiasm about Iran's future. Nevertheless, there are hopeful signs, including the character and role of Khomeini.
An early test of his prospects is being made by the outbreaks of violence in Tehran and elsewhere in the country. Some chaos at this stage of the revolutionary conflict was virtually inevitable, given the cleavages and climate of intensity in Iran.
It is uncertain whether koh菱丽 can control the extreme left, where she lives in an abandoned building. What happens in the next few days is likely to determine both whether the movement's largely new political record will be spolied further and whether a new political order can be succeeded.
IN RECENT MONTHS, before his triumphant return to Tehran, the ayatollah gave numerous reassurances to non-Moslem communities in Iran. He told Jewish community leaders that it would be a tragedy if many of the 80,000 Jews left the country. Of course, this view is justified by his hostility to the USSR and the rest of the shah and its failure to resolve the Palestinian question.
He has also indicated that the non-religious left would be free to express its views in an Islamic republic and to participate in political life, provided that it does not "commit treason against a lightly-vested leader," as he said in a lightly-revised reference to anxiety about Soviet interference.
What the left does in coming days will likely indicate whether it will be seen as treasonous.
TO SUPPOSE THAT Kohmien is dissembling seems almost beyond belief. His political style is to express his real views about democracy, and he is an avid philosopher.
He has little incentive to suddenly become devious for the sake of American public opinion. Thus, the depiction of him as fanatical and reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false.
What is also encouraging is that his entourage of close advisers is uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals.
FOR ANOTHER THING, the key appointer to the provisional government include Mhdi Bazargan, the prime minister; Karim Sanjabi, leader of the National Front political federation; and Daryush Farouhou, deputy leader of the National Front; they are widely respected in Iran outside religious circles, share a notable record of concern for human rights and have positive economic outcomes that result in modern society oriented toward satisfying the whole population's basic needs.
In the political background, of course, is a strong, active sense of defence to the views and indemnity of Khomeini.
It is inconceivable, for instance, for someone as devout as Bazargan to govern without manifesting, naturally and without any compulsion, acute sensitivity to the values of Shite Islam, including responsiveness to Khomeini's views.
YET, AS EVERY religious leader is quick to underscore, the Shite tradition is flexible in its approach to the Koran and evolves interpretations that correspond to the changing needs and experiences of the people. What is distinctive, perhaps, about this religious orientation is its concern with resisting oppression andromoting social justice.
As if to contrast its vision with that of the shah's rule, Khomeini said recently, in France, that in any well-governed society "the ruler does not live very differently from the ordinary person."
For him, to be religious is to struggle for these political goals,
we the religious leader's role is to insure politics, not to govern.
Therefore, it is widely expected that he will soon go to the holy city of Qum, a removal from the daily exercise of power. There he will function as a guide or, if necessary, as a critic of the republic.
IN LOOKING TO THE future, Kohmini has spoken of his hope to show the world what a genuine Islamic government can do in behalf of its people. He has frequently made clear that he scorns the idea of Islamized governmental governments in Saudi Arabia, Libya and Pakistan.
Despite the turbulence, many non-religious Iranians talk of this period as "alism's finest hour." Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on non-violent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately hopeful path to overthrow our own country. If this is true, then indeed the exotic ayatollah may yet convince the world that "politics is the opiate of the people."
Richard Falk, professor of international law at Princeton University, recently visited the Ayałailah Ruhabol Khomini in
limit radical action. The FBJ actions were
clear violations of the most fun-
mous international right of U.S.
Students and faculty on other campuses are realizing that the CIA charter being considered may involve the same violations on their campuses.
AT GEORGEOTOW University, Prince-
son University and others, there have
been many of these.
At Harvard University, Princeton and Georgetown, student resolutions have called for an end to covert CIA activities on campuses, which Georgetown students have said posed "serious threats to the integrity of our academic community."
position to any CIA involvement. Both students and faculty say that connections with the CIA have dragged U.S. universities and foreign intelligence and foreign policy failures in Iran.
CIA spokesmen have insisted the agency must maintain relationships with the U.S. academic community because it needs its expertise. CIA Director Stanfield Turner promised Harvard that Harvard that he refused to accept Harvard's "guideline" restricting CIA action.
BUT IF universities are to remain tree to pursue their academic studies abroad without commitments to the government, they should not have allied with the CIA. Professor Thomas Ricks, an expert on Iran's nuclear program, said an open institution." Knowledge gained by research "must, by its very nature, be public knowledge."
If those of us in the academic community help to restrict the amount of knowledge available to the general public, are we not forced to restrict our academic freedom?
The question becomes, then, whether we choose to maintain academic freedoms and reject the drafting of an intelligence charter that would restrain that freedom.
The answer now lies with the students and faculty of America's universities.
Disco mania is equal to boredom
To the editor:
I was impressed by the Kansan's piercing insight last Friday into Lawrence's disco scene. The writer begins her article by explaining some common anti-disco feelings.
In conclusion, the writer says: "You can't
beat the beat. Why not dance to it?"
Some people, she says, believe disco "mindless and dehumanizing." But others support it, "perhaps because they are enthralled by disco's supposed decadence." Does this mean that if we're enthralled by disco, then that makes it enjoyable and worthwhile?
Because, disco is cheap beer, obnovious music and dark, smoke-filled rooms. And
She defeats her own cause. Entralled means "to be charm by." Decadence means "a process or condition of decay." So disco supports must be charmed about decaying. Now, if this isn't mindless and dehumanizing, I wonder what is.
Mark Buchanan Kansas City, Kan.. senior
And it is big business. Disco promoters, like Ace Johnson, are getting rich by burying the old music and diverting our attention from more enjoyable, less expensive social activities
Did they study together, watch television, go out to dinner? Did they go bowling, ice skating, or swimming? Honestly, was there a void in their lives only disco could fill?
Still, I'm somewhat confused. If disco is "in," then something else must be "out" to make room for it, right? What did America went disco?
Bilingual education fiscally impractical To the editor:
Disco doesn't fill any human void with real fun or relaxation. I think it replaces real pleasure with real boredom. Rather, disco is boredom raised to a fine science.
I very much appreciated Philip Garcia's remarks in last Monday's Kanson on the topic of bilingual education in the United States. He clearly describes the predicament of student and non-students' skillful in a language other than English," he said. Garcia noted that educational and employment opportunities in this English-speaking country.
While Garcia correctly points out that the most common arguments offered against the idea of the future are
UNIVERSITY DAILY letters KANSAN
As the figures Garcia quotes indicate, there are at least 30 "language other than English" whose partisans have every right to be educated in their language.
accommodate persons "more skillful in a language other than English" are cultural ones, he seems not to have mentioned the fact that he was an assistant on even the best of intentions: money.
But the cost of duplicating even the most basic parts of our educational system in a few of these languages, not to mention the cost of translating between cultural contexts, prevents us from trying, except in regions like our states that border Mexico. We need to learn how we can make education may come close to outweighing its costs, in both economic and social terms.
When people "skilled in one of 30 languages other than English" desire full education or employment in an English-speaking country, they are more likely to counter the U.S. the traditional cost-efficient American "melting pot" solution has been for these folks to pick up whatever degree of proficiency in English and U.S. language is deemed appropriate to their needs and goals.
If these people tend to lose some part of their previous "home country" acculturation, they may reflect part of the culture of their own grandparents immigrated to this country.
My grandfather's parents came from
Alisse-Lorraine, and he spoke German and English. He was educated in U.S. schools and universities, where the instruction was in English. By the way, lots of Kansas communities maintained, at their own local initiative and expense, bilingual education in English and German until World War I and Germany very unpopular to be of German ancestry.
I had to learn what little German I know in college, where I also took the trouble and the pleasure to continue the Spanish I started in junior high school. If I want to participate in those cultures, it's up to me to learn those skills.
I don't feel any responsibility to provide either 30-language or bilingual educational programs at the tremendous cost they would entail, although improved efforts to teach useful and necessary skills in common language are certainly appropriate and worth the expense.
This is an economic and not a cultural decision. Although as Garcia points out, the cultural impact of such realism is unmistakable. I don't blame the state for neither legislating nor funding bilingual education programs. The fiscal reality is that unless many students other than English yearly in Kansas were unable to learn basic skills in English, bilingual education, as such, would be impracticable.
John Scott. Jr.
Lawrence graduate student
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
(USPS 600-640) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and released on Thursday during June and July except Saturday, and Sunday and holiday weekends. Second-class mail is $15 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $1 for six months or $3 a year in the county. Student subscriptions are $2 a semester, paid through the student activity center.
Sind changes of address to the University Daily, Kasson, Flint Hall. The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 60045
Editor Barry Massey
Business Manager
Karen Wenderott
General Manager Rick Musger
Advertising Adviser Chuck Chowins
STATE U.
BY T. M. ASLA