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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, March 3, 1986
The Jayhawks' day has come. The Big Eight title has returned to Allen Fieldhouse.
Season of glory
The season is not only satisfying for a team that has settled for no better than second-best since 1978, but also for students who have suffered with the Jayhawks through those years.
Those were the days when the Jayhawks were lucky to crack the Top 20. Now the KU team is ranked second nationally, poised to strike at the top position.
If any word can describe the Jayhawks' glorious season, it's class.
This team has exhibited class in everything it's done. This is the team that showed respect for retiring Kansas State University coach Jack Hartman by not over-celebrating, even though the Jayhawks had just won the Big Eight title.
This class was carried to
Norman, Okla., where the Jayhawks soundly beat the Sooners on their home court. Anyone who remembers the antics of Wayman Tisdale and his cohorts in Allen Field House probably wished the Jayhawks would have rubbed the Sooners' noses in it after the game.
Superpowers don't have allies, the foreign policy axiom goes, they have interests.
But a truly class act doesn't lower itself to the level of its competition. The Jayhawks didn't, quickly leaving the floor after the game.
Whatever the results of the coming Big Eight and NCAA tournaments, the University of Kansas and the team that represents it can be proud of this season.
As this team heads for more national exposure, people across the nation will soon see that the Jayhawks deserve to win it all. It's time the national championship left the East Coast and headed for Lawrence.
So when Filipino supporters of Corazon Aquino took to the streets last week to defend the rebellion among military officers, the United States quickly lost interest in Ferdinand Marcos.
Abrupt loss of interest
Marcos must have been surprised that he could no longer wheedle and cajole support from the United States. He held two crucial military bases hostage and he acted as if he believed the bases made him secure from all but the lightest criticism from the Reagan administration.
A growing communist insurgency fed daily on Marcos' repressive rule. The communists, who predict U.S. military intervention by the 1990s, found Marcos to be a more effective recruiter than any of their other propaganda campaigns.
The United States could no longer risk associating with Marcos.
This year has so far proved
to be a bad one for those dictators who have grown accustomed to unrestricted U.S. support.
First Jean-Claude Duvalier in Haiti, and then Marcos, were hustled from their countries one step ahead of their angry citizens.
Human rights activists have long argued that supporting anti-democratic regimes was not in the best interest of the U.S. They point to Iran after Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and Nicaragua after Anastasio Somoza as examples of the anti-U.S. governments that can follow such dictators.
The administration, if it will,
could draw these conclusions from the fall of Marcos. Better yet, it could apply the lesson to other dictators, such as Augusto Pinochet in Chile, who still bask in U.S. support.
These tyrants should be warned that only governments that allow free elections and free speech merit U.S. backing. It's in our own best interest.
There was jubilation in the tiny island of Grenada when "Uncle Reagan" visited the excited populace on the third anniversary of the American invasion.
Nicaragua not Grenada
Not being one to miss an opportunity to take a dig at the Nicaraguan regime that he finds so offensive to the cause of liberty and justice, Reagan of course drew comparisons between that country and Grenada in the days before its "liberation."
In a speech to the cheering, flag-waving crowd, President Reagan said he would not be satisfied until all the people of the Americas could join in the "warm sunshine of liberty and justice."
Reagan is apparently intent on reliving his one foreign policy success by playing a similar role in Nicaragua, but he won't get off so lightly there.
although 19 American soldiers lost their lives in the brief invasion and another 115 were wounded. Reagan and the Pentagon would do well to remember our Vietnam experience. Loss of young, innocent American lives is the inevitable result of intervention in other countries' business. And success is not always guaranteed.
Grenada was a pushover
Heady with success on his return from Grenada last week, Reagan asked for $100 million to support the counterinsurgency of the contras opposing the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. It's a small step from such support to active intervention as we found out in Vietnam.
Grenada was a risk that appears to have paid off. Let's not let it get to our heads. The past is a powerful teacher and it is unwise not to heed its lessons.
News staff
News staff
Michael Totty ... Editor
Lauretta McMillen ... Managing editor
Chris Barber ... Editorial editor
Cindy McCurry ... Campus editor
David Giles ... Sports editor
Brice Waddill ... Photo editor
Susanne Shaw ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Brett McCabe ... Business manager
David Nixon ... Retail sales manager
Jim Williamson ... Campus manager
Lori Eckert ... Classified manager
Caroline Innes ... Production manager
Pallen Lee ... National manager
John Oberzan ... Sales and marketing adviser
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Authorities unable to prevent murder
Young criminal finds justice too late
The system of dealing with young, big-city criminals can be screwy. If you don't believe it, consider the adventures of a precious kid named Vandell.
By only his 15th birthday, Vandell had put together an impressive police record. Several muggings, a couple of burglaries, a few cases of damage to property
Even his own mother was afraid of him. There were no tears from her when Vandell, after banging somebody on the head for a wallet, became a ward of the state.
The problem was, the state of Illinois doesn't do much with young musks like Vandell.
He hadn't killed anybody, so they couldn't keep him under lock and key.
No foster parents would take him in. Not unless they wanted to wake up with Vandell squeezing their throat.
So Vandell went into a state home — kind of a tax-supported flonhouse for young menaces.
This meant that Vandell had a warm bed, three square meals a day and a roof over his head.
It also meant that he could come and go whenever he chose.
So a few days after Christmas,
Vandell chose to be hanging
around an apartment building
near Chicago's lakefront.
Hs managed to sneak into the lobby, which was unguarded, and got on an elevator with a cheerful boozer named Eugene Meyers, who was 58 and living on a veteran's disability pension.
Vandell gave Meyers the old "I need a dollar to get to the airport to meet my mama" routine.
Meyers said he didn't have any money on him, but he'd go to his flat and set a buck for the kid.
When they got there, Meyers unlocked the door and told Vandell
Mike Royko Chicago Tribune
to wait. But Vandell, who is chunky and strong, pushed his way in, punched Meyers a few times and took off with $50.
Using Meyers' description, the cops tracked down Vandell to the state home and pinched him.
to kick down Meyers' door when a janitor spotted him and called the cops, who grabbed him.
The next day, there was supposed to be a juvenile hearing to consider keeping Vandell in the Audy Home. But the cops didn't show up. The judge said without their testimony he had no choice but to send Vandell back to where he came from.
After a couple of weeks under
Right. He was back in the state home, with his warm bed, three squares and freedom to come and go.
After a couple of weeks under lock and key in Audy Home, Vandell went to juvenile court and pleaded guilty. The judge ordered him to stay away from Meyers and Meyers' home. Then he turned Vandell over to the state.
And the state, of course, sent Vandell back to the same state home, where he had his bed, three squares and freedom to come and go.
lock and key in Audy Home, Vandell went to juvenile court and pleaded guilty. The judge ordered him to stay away from Meyers and Meyers' home. Then he turned Vandell over to the state.
And the state, of course, sent Vandell back to the same state home, where he had his bed, three squares and freedom to come and go.
A couple of weeks later he went back to the same apartment building. Not being imaginative, he figured that what worked once could work twice.
Meyers wasn't home, but that didn't stop Vandell. He was trying
Vandell was becoming a creature of habit. So only four days later, he got back into the same apartment building at about 7 a.m. and knocked on Meyers' door.
That early, Meyers usually wasn't thinking too clearly. He figured that the janitor was knocking. Nobody else ever visited him.
He opened the door and, as Meyers said later, he was greeted by a stiff punch in the teeth from Vandell.
But that was just the start of it. Vandell was mad. During the first mugging, he had warned Meyers that he'd get even if Meyers called the police.
He kept that promise. He drew a knife and stabbed Meyer's in the chest. Then the neck. And finally near the eye. He grabbed some pension money from a drawer and left Meyers bleeding on the floor.
Meyers managed to drag himself out of his room and down to the lobby. He was sitting in a chair, bleeding, when the building manager found him.
He was alive. The ambulance took him to a Veterans Administration hospital, and doctors did what they could to patch him up.
When the police questioned him, he told them, yes, it was that same persistent kid.
Three days later, Vandell returned to the state home and the police were tipped off. He told the cops that he had gone out of town to visit a friend, and gosh, he didn't know anything about the stabbing.
This time, though, he was held in the Audy Home on a variety of serious charges — attempted murder, home invasion, robbery and so on.
But they locked the door on Vandell just a little too late. Meyers spent 19 days in the VA hospital, clinging to life.
He didn't cling hard enough. A couple of days ago. Mevers died.
"He was a nice guy," one of his neighbors said. "He drank a lot, but he was always happy."
Now, the prosecutors are considering trying Vandell as an adult on a charge of murder. That means he can be locked up in prison for a long time.
Mailbox
I guess that's some progress, although the late Meyers might not agree.
We'll still be paying for his room and board, but at least he'll have to stay out of other people's hallwaves.
U. S. guilty, too
Dear Victor Goodpasture
Dear Victor Goodmanstreet,
It is with great reluctance that I am writing to you voicing my opinion about your column (Kansan, Feb. 27) because I know that you relish the controversy your column produces.
You propagate ignorance, stereotypes and misunderstanding. You are as guilty of propaganda as you so righteously claim our "enemy" the Soviets are. How easy it must be to see the world in your tragically simplified fashion, in terms of "us" and "them," totally foregoing the infinitely complex relations in the most simple events.
Can you honestly tell me that the U.S. government is not guilty of the same vice? Hasn't our government manipulated the media, only allowing a certain amount of a story to be advantageously leaked to the media giving the "liberal" media the false satisfaction that they have accomplished their journalistic imperative of reporting these prefabbed stories?
Your respectful critic in the world.
I regret to inform you of what you already know, of what you build your journalistic credibility so delicately upon it. It is my sincere hope that you don't read my letter for it is sure to inspire in you the notion that you have accomplished your sacred mission and roused the "bleeding-heart librals and their comrades the liberal-biased media" into action.
Frank Jurden Lawrence editor
Program benefits KU
Today there are 14 students enrolled in the University of Kansas ("Recruiting methods to be studied," Kansan, Feb. 25) who would not be here if it were not for a program currently financed by the U.S. Department of Education called Upward Bound. The purpose of Upward Bound is to identify, recruit and select high school students with academic potential who meet income guidelines to participate in a project that will aid the students' achievement in high school and help prepare them for college.
Upward Bound provides tutoring, counseling and an intensive six-week summer college prep program intended to encourage students to pursue post-secondary education. As seniors, Upward Bound students enter the Bridge Program. Immediately following graduation they take regularly scheduled classes at KU.
Paul D. Travis program director
Next summer there will be 22 Bridge students in the program. Our students are recruited from eight high schools in Topeka and the Kansas City area. Upward Bound has 70 students, including alternates, on its current roster.
TV is culture
A source of culture is exactly what TV is. It may not be the culture that Wooten is interested in, but TV is undoubtedly culture in the most vast sense of the word.
It never ceases to amaze me how educated people misuse or misunderstand the word "culture." Wooten writes that "the TV industry has never pretended to be a source of culture."
In response to Stephen Wooten's letter "Advertisers ruin TV" (Kansan, Feb. 27):
David R. Leach laborer supervisor facilities operations
If Wooten is willing to spend the time and money on TV viewing he will find that it can be almost anything he wants it to be. If not, I suggest that Wooten read books. There are all kinds of culture to be found in reading, and some of it is mindless drivel.
Wooten also writes of reaching a much larger audience by directing improvement and the addition of higher-quality programming. The TV industry is constantly trying to reach a larger audience by giving the general public what they want: entertainment first and information second, not by cramming someone else's idea of culture down our throats.
Informed editorial
I am writing to express appreciation for your lucid and informed editorial, "Unfounded Fears" (Kansan, Feb. 24).
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome threatens the health of not only individuals, but also the mental health of communities. However, as an individual can take self-protective steps against contracting AIDS, so can a community find ways to protect itself against contracting AIDS, so can a community find ways to protect itself against generating AIDS-related hysteria.
One important protection is provided when responsible local editors publish dispassionate research-based editorials concerning the disease, as exemplified by your editorial.
The Kansan, which currently provides the best of such journalistic leadership in town, serves the community well by helping to build a rational public understanding of the complex medical and social dimensions of AIDS, before Lawrence copes with its first publicized case.
Geoffrey H. Steere associate professor American