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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Monday, Feb. 10, 1986
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
To an anxious friend
You tell me that law is above freedom of utterance. And I reply that you can have no wise laws nor free enforcement of wise laws unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people — and, alas, their folly with it. But if there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and the wisdom will survive. That is the history of the race. It is the proof of man's kinship with God. You say that freedom of utterance is not for time of stress, and I reply with the sad truth that only in time of stress is freedom of utterance in danger. No one questions it in calm days, because it is not needed. And the reverse is true also; only when free utterance is suppressed is it needed, and when it is needed, it is most vital to justice. Peace is good. But if you are interested in peace through force and without free discussion — that is to say, free utterance decently and in order — your interest in justice is slight. And peace without justice is tyranny, no matter how you may sugar-coat it with expediency. This state today is in more danger from suppression than from violence, because, in the end, suppression leads to violence. Violence, indeed, is the child of suppression. Whoever pleads for justice helps to keep the peace; and whoever tramples upon the plea for justice temperately made in the name of peace only outrages power and kills something fine in the heart of man which God put there when we got our manhood. When that is killed, brute meets brute on each side of the line.
So, dear friend, put fear out of your heart. This nation will survive, this state will prosper, the orderly business of life will go forward if only men can speak in whatever way given them to utter what their hearts hold—by voice, by posted card, by letter or by press. Reason never has failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.
William Allen White
Emporia Gazette, July 27, 1922
At the end of this season, college basketball will lose a great coach and an even greater man.
Fond farewell
The assistant coaches, players and students at that other school out West will miss Hartman next year, and all of college basketball will be affected by his leaving.
He is an honest and fair man in a profession where those attributes are much needed. He's been personally responsible for shaping hundreds of young men into finer athletes and finer people.
He also wins. A lot.
Jack Hartman last week announced that he will retire at the end of this season after 30 years of first-rate coaching, the past 16 at Kansas State.
At K-State, Hartman has coached three Big Eight championship teams and seven NCAA tournament teams. He has taken two squads to the
final eight of the NCAA tournament and has felled plenty of giants along the way. By the end of the season he will have nearly 300 wins at K-State and more than 500 career wins.
Since announcing his retirement, Hartman has said publicly that he worries about the image he is leaving behind. He said he feared that people viewed him only as a stern, stone-faced grouch at the side of the court, when he actually enjoyed small children and long hours spent fishing.
But he has accomplished far more than the record books can prove. He has provided a role model for other coaches to study and learn from.
He need not worry. Those who know him also know that peeling back the rigid exterior reveals all of the soft spots and special feelings that make him a really good man who also happens to be a great coach.
A state with financial troubles needs to look at previously rejected alternatives to help its sluggish economy. Kansas is such a state.
The Legislature is considering a state lottery to raise money for education and ease the state's financial woes.
The proposal now goes before the full House. It must pass both the House and the Senate by two-thirds vote to be placed on the November ballot.
The House Federal and State Affairs Committee approved a proposal last week that would allow the Legislature to permit, license, regulate and tax horse and dog races.
Another source of needed income would be a constitutional amendment to allow parimutuel betting on horse and dog racing.
The Legislature's control over taxing of the races means
a healthy increase in state revenue.
Horse or dog races also would give a boost to state tourism, and bring in out-of-state dollars as bettors flock to the races. This would be especially true if a race track were built near the Kansas City area.
Lotteries and pari-mutuel betting can be negative experiences for a state if handled improperly, or by the wrong hands.
But, as Rep. Michael Peterson, D-Kansas City, says, "We don't legislate morality. We can set policy. We can start programs."
Peterson is right. The state would have control of who runs race tracks because it must issue licenses. But the Legislature first needs to concern itself with finding ways to help the state's economy.
Part-mutuel betting is a safe bet as a quick and easy way to give Kansas a monetary spark of life.
News staff
Michael Totty ... Editor
Lauretta McMillen ... Managing editor
Chris Barber ... Editorial editor
Cindy McCurry ... Campus editor
David Giles ... Sports editor
Brize Wardill ... Photo editor
Susanne Shaw ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Brett McCabe ... Business manager
David Nixon ... Retail sales manager
Jim Williamson ... Campus manager
Lori Eckart ... Classified manager
Caroline Innes ... Production manager
Pattie Lee ... National manager
John Oberzan ... Sales and marketing adviser
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Shuttle crash affects media, young people
Even before she became a journalist, my daughter had reservations about the way reporters sometimes behaved in pursuit of a story. We watched in Washington during Watergate as television crews chased principals in the scandal down alleys after Sunday worship.
Out of college and four years into the business, reportorial decorum or lack thereof — still is one of her favorite subjects. Because she works for a newspaper in New England and we live in California, I usually hear her complaints and observations by long-distance on Sunday nights.
Five days after the shuttle crash, she had a different opinion of the performance of the press. Despite all the commentary that was poured out by the media, I had not heard anyone make the point that my daughter made quite the way she made it.
She said the nation's journalists did fine jobs and remained on excellent behavior throughout the tragedy. Watching lots of television, she said she was proud of the manner in which journalists respected the privacy of
Robert C.
Maynard
Oakland Tribune
the families of the Challenger astronauts.
At Concord High School in New Hampshire, when the reporters were asked to leave the auditorium, they rose as one and departed, she said. Teacher Christa McAulife's students and colleagues were able to grieve in peace.
Because she remembers media stakesouts in Washington, she was startled to see the press display such hard-hitting images of one of the biggest stories of our time.
The press, she thinks, is not receiving the credit it deserves.
Even so, there was one bad habit journalists covering the tragedy had not broken, especially in New England. It is what we call at our dinner table the inevitable irrelevant comparison.
"Give me a break," my daughter said. "I cannot stand to hear or read once more about how this tragedy touches us the way the Kennedy or King assassinations did. This was an event unto itself. In my mind it compares to nothing.
"Why do we always have to make things fit into classes and categories? Some things defy all previously known categories. That was Challenger and the deaths of the seven."
School children were gathered in classrooms across the country to watch Christa McAuliffe go into orbit and send back lessons from her classroom in space. Instead, they received an instant lesson on the fragility of life. I agree with my daughter; many aspects of this tragedy have earned it the designation unique. And even that word sounds trivial.
Social psychologists will have to tell us one day why it is that the Challenger tragedy has made so many young people eager to go into
space. You would think the opposite would occur.
Not so, said my daughter. She wants to go.
"I guess I've seen the worst that can happen to you," she said. And it was over quick. When you think about it, that's not a bad trade. You risk instant, probably painless, death. But on the other hand, imagine if you make it, what it must be like to be out in space."
Christa McAuliffe's death on the edge of the future has made many young people aware of the fact that a new frontier is beckoning, that their generation will ride rockets into the 21st century.
So when daughters tell fathers how they feel about space travel, those are not altogether theoretical feelings. Daughters could become part of a larger plan before fathers fully adjust to long-distance from New England.
Manson's futile parole battle continues
Well, Charles Manson is back in the news, as good-humored as ever.
For the sixth time since his imprisonment in 1971 Manson was rejected parole. However, he has shown that his image has changed. No longer is he a psychopathic young hippie murderer and cult leader.
Now, he's a 51-year-old, scruffy fellow who wears a swastika on his forehead and says he spends his time making dolls of scorpions with the power to torment. He said this in a speech he wrote and delivered to the parole board Tuesday. And the speech goes on.
If released, he promised he'd move to Libya, Iran or join the revolution down south somewhere to try to save his life on Earth. He said his dream remained one of worldwide revolution.
After plea for parole, a three-member panel of the California Board of Prison Terms held a private conference for almost an hour. After serious consideration, they decided not to release him.
The question remains, why was parole considered in the first place?
Evan Walter
Staff columnist
Did some attorney dimly hope that Manson could perform the impossible and act like a normal human being for a short time in front of the panel? Possibly they then could forget his nsychopathic record.
Also questionable is why it took the parole board so long to talk over something like this. Unless Manson thought his promise to endure revolution in Libya or Iran would make his release appealing to the panel, his pared sounded more like a request for mental asylum than freedom.
The Manson case is repugnant, but there also is in a dry sense some humor in it, particularly in the demonstration of the courts. Observe.
Here is a short summary of the facts.
In 1969. Manson, along with four of
his worshippers, were convicted of slaying actress Sharon Tate and six other people. Manson was given a life prison sentence, almost two years later.
Psychology experts studied Manson and concluded that he suffered delusions of grandeur and had an extremely distorted view of reality. They used words such as "megalomaniac," "psychotic" and "schizophrenic" to describe him. Also, they discovered he lacked any, compassion for other people, as if the murders don't already tell that.
His name has been used in various psychology textbooks to typify the most dangerous types of mentally deranged individuals.
And now, keeping in mind that life sentences often don't last 20 years, he returns requesting parole. Stephen Kay, the Los Angeles County chief deputy district attorney, describes Manson as "a caged, vicious, wild animal who, if released, would once again be free to prey on innocent victims."
Manson then goes in front of the board to give a 30-minute speech,
confirming every word of Kay's statement.
The panel then supposedly takes a long, hard look at the situation to reach a decision most people would take two minutes to make. For all we know, they may have spent the time drinking coffee and talking about their families.
They then decide he'll go back to prison, but comfort him by saying he'll be eligible for parole again in three years.
That is perhaps the best way to deal with Manson. Because what happens if within the next three years, Manson discovers the trick that psychopaths often do — to act normal and repentful for 30 minutes in front of the parole board and somehow manage to gain parole?
No one wants to see him, once again strike California — or Libya or Iran — as one of the most notoriously celebrated crazies resuming work on his life dream of world revolution.
A different dream exists in the minds of free men with common sense — that Manson never discovers that trick.
Mailbox
Article misleading
The article "Findings of drug abuse may not lead to firing." (Kansan, Feb. 4) is quite misleading. I particularly object to the description of provisions in the Federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that relate to alcoholism and drug addiction as "a loophole in employment law."
Alcoholism and drug addiction are, however, treatable conditions. A person whose job performance has been affected by abuse of alcohol or other drugs can return to full efficiency following successful treatment
Alcoholism and drug addiction are indeed listed among handicaps in the 1973 Act, and handicapped individuals are protected from being refused employment or fired on grounds directly related to their handicap.
It is fully reasonable, and has been, common practice for much of the past decade, that an employer require employees whose job performance is affected by these handicaps to take action to improve their job performances, or lose their jobs.
Nothing in the Rehabilitation Act prevents such a course of action; the handicap has been recognized and an appropriate probationary period allowed for the employee to deal with the problem. Unlike the "drug testing" described in the article, no invasion of privacy has occurred, since the intervention has not focused upon substance abuse but upon job performance.
Many large corporations have found that treatment—often through company-funded Employee Assistance Programs—makes good sense. It protects what may be years of company investment in a valuable employee by returning him or her to full efficiency. Often, treatment is less expensive than training and developing a new employee.
The Rehabilitation Act continues to protect employees even after successful treatment. Under its terms, a past history of alcoholism or drug addiction is considered irrelevant to whether an individual can perform a specific job. The law does not protect an employee whose job performance remains inadequate because of abuse
of alcohol or other drugs.
George Wedge associate professor English and linguistics
the entire tone of your article, especially its description of the carefully reasoned inclusion of alcoholism and drug addiction as handicaps as "a loophole in employment law," reflects a blantant misunderstanding of the law and its intent, as well as ignorance of how the law has worked over the 12 years of its existence.
It is not, as the current jargon would have it, a matter of choice — it is really a simple matter of life or no life. All pregnant women know a life-
Right to life
I applaud Tim Erickson's column on the error of the Supreme Court on the abortion issue (Kansan, Feb. 4). I applaud the Kansan for publishing it. Would that we spoke this frankly about all issues in the life of the nation rather than skulk in the ignorant shadows of euphemisms and newspaper.
exists inside of them; it becomes a matter of conscience whether a woman acknowledges that life as human.
The Supreme Court, in its slip-shod Roe vs. Wade, danced around the term "life," refusing to rule on "when life begins." Yet it went right on to say that a woman could nevertheless destroy what is obviously potential life up to the third trimester.
That is pure contradiction. And that is what we are living in this country: we spout about equal rights and human rights when we cannot even admit the frightening evil in ourselves of our unfeftened willingness to extinguish innocent life.
It is only when people such as Erickson raise the cry, when we begin to address the uncomfortable reality of creation, that we will be ready to grant abolition to unborn life, the same abolition as blacks received from the slavery of being tagged as non-humans.
Scott Bloch
Scott Bloom Lawrence third-year law student