Tuesday, March 4, 1986
University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
9
Suggestive speech debated
United Press International
WASHINGTON — A sexually suggestive speech nominating a teenager for student government was disruptive, crude, vulgar and not worthy of protection under the First Amendment, a lawyer told the Supreme Court yesterday.
But acknowledging that past high court rulings have said students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door, William Coats, representing the Bethel School District near Tacoma, Wash., told the justices that schools could regulate indecent speech.
"There was no political issue being discussed. It was a crude joke." he said of the campaign speech at issue. The school district brought the case before the justices in an effort to overturn a March 1984 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling said the punishment meted out to student Matthew Fraser, including a three-day suspension, for giving the speech was unconstitutional.
Attorney Jeffrey Haley, representing Fraser, said the speech was protected by the First Amendment. Haley also said sex was not a forbidden topic for students and was, in fact, of great interest to teenagers.
Fraser, who plans to become a lawyer, attended the high court hearing. After the argument, he said he hoped the court would guarantee high school students the same free speech rights as everyone else. A ruling in the case is expected by July.
"If sexual innuendo can be limited, what cannot be?" asked Fraser, 20, who now is a political science major at the University of California at Berkeley. "We need to make sure students can give speeches some might find inappropriate."
The case began April 26, 1983, when Fraser, then a 17-year-old senior at Bethel High School, nominated a friend for school office at an assembly attended by about 600 students. The four-paragraph speech used no obscenities, but school officials said it was sexually suggestive and disruptive.
Typical of the speech was a portion promoting the candidate by saying he was a man who would go to the very end, even the climax, for each and every one of the students.
The speech was met by hoots and hollers from the students, and some students simulated sexual acts.
Shortly after the speech, Fraser was suspended for three days and his named was removed from a list of candidates for graduation speaker.
Fraser, a recipient of the "Top Speaker" award in statewide debate championships for two years, complained. Officials refused to lift the suspension. Then, along with his father, he brought suit in federal court charging his rights had been violated.
The court agreed, lifting the suspension and ordering he be allowed to speak at commencement. Fraser had been elected graduation speaker on a write-in vote. The ruling was upheld by the appeals court.
Rep.says missile cost is 'phooey'
United Press International
WASHINGTON — A key Republican congressman said "phooey" yesterday to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger's written certification to Congress that a new air-to-air missile could be produced for $305,000. He argued that the price tag could be triple that figure.
A Pentagon analyst who said his cost estimates were overruled by top Air Force brass also sharply disagreed with the certification, which saved the controversial missile program from termination by Congress.
Rep. Denny Smith, R-Ore., cochairman of the 133-member House Military Reform Caucus said, "It's really outrageous that Weinberger would certify this cost. The AMRAAm is a golden B-B that's likely to cost between $500,000 and $1 million each.
"Ah, phoey. It's never been proven on any missile before. No one has any idea what the costs will ultimately be."
The analyst predicted each copy of the Air Force's Advanced Medium Range Air-to-air Missile would cost between $400,000 and $700,000.
Weinberger certified in writing to Congress on Friday that 17,000 of the AMRAAMs could be produced for $5.2 billion. The Pentagon has requested $796 million to begin procuring the missiles in 1987.
The Air Force says the 12-foot AMRAAM, which would be mounted on the outside of Air Force F-15s and F-16s or Navy F-14S and F/A-18 fighter aircraft, is superior to the similar Sparrow missile, which must be guided to its target by the aircraft pilot. The AMRAAM has a built-in radar, enabling the pilot to better fight several enemy aircraft at once
The Pentagon analyst, who declined to be identified, attributed the decision to disregard his higher cost estimates to a macho attitude and a desire for prestige among senior Air Force officers who desperately want a successful weapons program.
He said the Air Force officials assumed the tooth fairy would cause costs to decline sharply once production begins.
In addition, a defense industry official familiar with the program said it would be very, very hard for Raytheon Co., which is producing the missile along with the Hughes Aircraft Co., to guarantee Weinberger's cost estimates.
But a Senate armed Services Committee staff member said Weinberger's estimate was certainly reasonable and was studied "very closely by very competent people in the Pentagon."
Those who criticize the missile program are "conducting a dishonest campaign," said the committee aide, who declined to be named. "If you scratch the surface, their arguments are more sophistry than truth," he said.
Spokesmen for both Hughes and Raytheon declined to comment.
The issue underlying the different cost estimates is the extent to which the contractors will be able to reduce production costs over the long run.
Supporters of the Pentagon's estimate say that economies of scale and improved production methods most likely to be developed over the next 10 years will yield a cost reduction from $13.9 million per missile in 1986 to $205,000 by 1996 — a 98 percent drop.
Critics say that such a dramatic reduction in cost has rarely if ever been achieved before.
Allergists assemble at meeting
The Associated Press
PHOENIX. Ariz. — Some people continue to live with pets that make them sick, allergists say.
Doctors who attended the 42nd annual Congress of the American College of Allergists said recently that many of their patients were pet owners who would rather get medical care for their animal allergies than part with their dogs and cats.
Lawrence Chiaronte, a professor at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., said he had decided to become an allergist because one of his best friends in school had wanted to be a veterinarian but was allergic to dogs.
"Today he's a vet and he's still wheezing." Chiarmone said.
He said he knew many veterinarians and pet owners who were allergic to domestic animals.
If the people cannot or will not avoid contact, he advises them to improve air filtration systems in their offices and homes, to vacuum and dust more often and to limit contact with allergy-causing pets.
He also injects many patients with liquefied, purified animal material and hair.
Cat allergies are the most common, and a large number of drug companies at the session were marketing injectable medications.
Robert Lonegan of ALK of America said cat saliva was the main human irritant. It is found on cat fur because the animals groom themselves with their tongues.
"There are 18 allergic antigens in cats," he said. "Why do people who are allergic to them keep cats in the house? Probably for the same reasons they keep their children."
Ron Glinerd, an allergist from Ann Arbor, Mich., said he recently had completed a study on dogs that showed canines — even within one breed — varied widely in their ability to irritate allergic humans.
Dog allergy medications are not effective in relieving pet owners' symptoms because most of the commercial medication preparations are made from mongrels, and they are missing some of the allergy-causing proteins found in dogs of other breeds. he said.
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ANOTHER CREATIVE SUPPLY-SIDER SUCCESSFULLY MARKETS HIS WARES
the predominantly white and successful supply-siders now in national control are quite an imaginative lot. In the February 1st Journal-World, weekly columnist Jenkins Lloyd Jones provides us with a particularly creative helping of supply-side vitriol. Mr. Jones begins his effort by citing a 1985 Chicago Tribune series which "examined the apparently intransigent problems of Chicago's hard-core underclass, chiefly black and chiefly located in the near southside." Mr. Jones then attributes the following opinion to Timothy J. McNulty, author of The Great American Millstone: "A new class of people has taken root in America's cities, a lost society dwelling in enclaves of despair and chaos . . . (whose) members don't share traditional values of work, money, education, home, and perhaps even life."
Who other than a dedicated supply-sider would seriously claim that those of us fortunate enough not to be members of the "hard-core underclass" today agree on what constitutes "work . . education . . and . even life?" Millions of Americans vigorously object to our economic system's categorizing as work the sale of trashy tabloids, defamatory pornography, and in some circumstances sexual services. Others are concerned about the many educational institutions which periodically award diplomas to enrollees who know nothing about science, mathematics, history, and geography and in some cases are unable even to read. And the rejection by many of a scientific de'inition of life has resulted in a Supreme Court decision which enables physicians sometimes to kill with impunity and a significant national schism. But only a dedicated supply-sider could allege that such divisions of opinion as these are confined to a particular segment of an ethnic group.
According to Mr. Jones, those responsible for Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" felt that federal action plus money would make possible a War on Poverty in which "The noxious tenements would be pulled down and in their places would rise clean, tax-built high rises with subsidized rents to."
'break the poverty cycle.' Schools would be homogenized by court-ordered busing to increase understanding and spread middle-class outlooks and values. Welfare would put a floor under incomes, presumably eliminating fear and discouragement and promoting self-confidence."
By concluding "It didn't work," Mr. Jones ignores the fact that most of the structures in each urban ghetto are still antiquated because only a few "noxious tenements" were destroyed. When Mr. Jones implies that "court-ordered busing" with a different clientele could have transformed our ineffectual public schools into entities which convey information and promote traditional values, he overlooks their now universally recognized failure to do this with many middle-class and privileged students. While Mr. Jones holds that the provision of welfare eliminates fear and discouragement while promoting self-confidence, all the governmental studies about which I've read concede prolonged unemployment can fundamentally alter an individual's personality by undermining his confidence.
Mr. Jones continues to heed the call of his creative juices when he says: "As better educated and ambitious blacks put distance between themselves and the ghetto-dwellers, Dr. William Shockley of Stanford, A Nobel Prize Winner in physics, expressed a fear 'dysgenics', i.e., a widening gap of native ability, leaving the deprived more deprived than ever. For this he was damned as a racist . . . Yet Shockley was only enunciating principles upon which all animal husbandry and plant genetics are based, and that is that it is possible to breed down as well as breed up. And breeding down is in full flower."
The selective breeding process Mr. Jones carelessly refers to is used to transmit certain desired characteristics through several animal or plant generations. Although obviously taken with this process, Mr. Jones mentions neither those characteristics whose transmission he considers most important nor the governmental organ best qualified to direct this de facto revolution. Mr. Jones apparently has forgotten why Dr. Shockley "was damned as a racist." In the late 1960's, Dr. Shockley aroused considerable controversy by claiming blacks were intellectually inferior to whites and thus their higher rate of reproduction had a "dysgenic" (detrimental to man's hereditary qualities) effect on the populace's collective genetic wealth. In short, Dr. Shockley was labeled a racist because of his blatant commitment to racism.
We should remember that Mr. Jones is a supply-sider and supply-siders frequently fantasize. Because they claim our national problems would evaporate before a thriving private sector, supply-siders must rhapsodize about "industrial development" and "free enterprise" while depicting most governmental attempts to assist the needy, conserve resources, and perform in the public sector, as sterile and foredoomed to failure.
While professing concern about violent crime, public education, legalized abortion, and deficit spending--public problems which only will fall before determined governing bodies--supply-siders blissfully call for exploitive industrial revenue bonds, "enterprise zones," and a diminished government even less able to deal with the profound problems before it. In order to successfully market his wares, Mr. Jones engages in considerable revisionism. Although creative supply-siders measure a product's success by its salableness, it is Mr. Jones' steadfast refusal to acknowledge the factual in his offering which actually is important.
William Dann
2702 W. 24th Street Terrace
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