4
University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday., Feb. 4, 1986
Ignorance shouldn't be a security measure.
Secrecy isn't security
University officials have taken a 10-day vow of silence about what exactly has happened lately at the KU nuclear reactor.
Another flatbed truck with another cask was parked at the reactor center and left around 11:30 a.m.
On Sunday, there was more activity at the center. Again, the public was barred from the building.
It is known that Jan. 28, the reactor's uranium fuel was removed and hauled away in a 40,000-pound, fire-shielded cask on the back of a flaibed truck.
Security has been tight at the reactor, as is usual in the transfer of radioactive materials. The public was barred from the building when the fuel was removed, and students were told by a guard at the door that classes that day were canceled.
But no one will talk about what was happening.
KU officials say the public is
in no danger and that the tight security is normal procedure under Nuclear Regulatory Commission guidelines.
Robin Eversole, University Relations director, said detailed information about the activities would not be available until the middle of the month. She said the secrecy of the events was to protect the public.
The slogan "seat belts save lives" is not an empty one. Highway troopers often are quoted as saying that in years of working accident scenes, they seldom, if ever, unbuckle dead bodies from wreckage.
No statements have been issued concerning movements at the center. Only when an observer made an educated guess did Harold Rosson, coordinator for the reactor dismantling process, confirm last Tuesday that uranium fuel had been removed.
Some security measures are certainly justified when potentially hazardous materials are being transferred. Barring the public from the building is understandable.
But the public shouldn't have to wait two weeks to find out exactly what happened and whether there was any danger. Knowledge is not a risk.
Social gains in belt law
Yet, many Kansans have been reluctant to buckle up and so the state legislature is considering a mandatory seat belt law. People caught traveling in cars without their seat belts on will be subject to a $25 fine if the bill before the state senate becomes law.
Mandatory seat belt laws work. In other states and countries where the laws are in place, people buckle up as a matter of course. The 20-second action becomes a habit.
datory seat belt laws are another example of government interference in the private lives of citizens.
Some will argue before the Kansas legislature that man-
While there are valid civil libertarian arguments against such laws, this is a case where the harm to personal liberty is far outweighed by the private and social benefits of the restriction.
Kansas already has a law requiring children under 4 to be restrained in a car seat while traveling in cars. Kansas airline passengers already are required to buckle up as part of the preparation for their flight
A law requiring all passengers to be restrained while traveling in cars is no more offensive. Once the action becomes habitual, few will complain about the limits on their personal choice.
A fitting tribute
Pioneers of space ought to be so honored.
In the past, pioneers have been honored by landmarks bearing their names.
The seven people who died aboard the space shuttle Challenger were on a journey to explore the heavens and chart new territory. Their deaths have led to a deeper contemplation of space and its vast wonders and dangers.
But the tragedy of the shuttle explosion has overshadowed an incredible success in another area of space exploration.
Just four days before the Challenger disaster, Voyager 2 passed within 50,000 miles of Uranus, almost 2 billion miles away from Earth.
The unmanned spacecraft, which has been speeding toward this rendezvous since it was launched in 1977, began
beaming back sheaves of information on the mysterious Uranus only weeks before the shuttle disaster.
In these recent transmissions, astronomers have learned 100 times more about Uranus than they had in the two centuries since it was discovered.
Among Voyager 2's finds are 10 previously undiscovered moons, and schoolchildren in California are suggesting that they be named for the 10 American astronauts who have died in attempts to search the skies.
Naming the moons for the seven people aboard the shuttle and the three who were killed on a launching pad 19 years ago seems to be a fitting tribute for those pioneers who did their job brilliantly and died reaching for our stars.
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
Cliff Edwards ... Clearly manager
Caroline Innes ... Production manager
Pallen Lee ... National manager
John Oberzan ... Sales and marketing adviser
Letters should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words and should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, include class and hometown, or faculty or staff position.
Guest shots should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The
The Kanan reserves the right to reject or edit letters and guest shots. They can be mailed or brought to the Kanan newsroom, 111 Stuffer-Flint Hall.
The University Daily Kansan (USPS 650-840) is published at the University of Kansas, *Kansas* 118 Stairfather Hill, Lawland, Kan. 60405, daily during the regular school year, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and finals periods, and on Wednesday during the summer session. Second-class postage paid at the Kansas Post Office, Kansas City, KS. Subscriptions in Dresden County and $1 for alkons hours and $35 a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $3 and are paid through the student activity fees.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the University Daily Kansan, 118
Staifter-Fint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 66045.
--recognizing that an eagle is inside the egg. They don't talk about eagle fetus viability or trimesters or potential life. They don't recognize any difference between eggs and eagles. They are both eagles.
Just another bad call by the Court
My y-2-year-old nephew, Scott, is the coolest thing since airplanes. Being around him gives me intense joy. When I consider abortion, I can't help but think of him.
What are we doing with life — that most wonderful of gifts? Who has lied to us and told us that abortion is OK?
How much blood must cover our hands and our hard hearts before we realize what we're doing?
It wasn't always this way. Before the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, abortion was illegal. Fourteen years ago, abortion was considered murder. Fourteen years ago, we didn't consider these babies as hunks of tide.
But today, the federal government and the Supreme Court say they don't exactly know when this tissue becomes a human. They talk in vague terms as viability, and fetuels and trimesters. They ponder what would become of this tissue matter if allowed to live.
If you kill a bald eagle, you have committed a federal crime and may be punished by a stiff fine and up to one year in jail. If you destroy that same eagle's egg, you are still liable for the exact fine and tail term.
Yet this same government has no trouble deciding when an eagle becomes an eagle.
The government has no problem
It is only with humans that we seem unsure of what is and what is not life. We have been lulled into thinking that this murder is just another clinical procedure, done on patients. Human beings become tissue, murder becomes convenience and the whole process is somehow legitimized.
Tim Erickson Staff columnist
There arises a problem from this mentality. This tissue, that we refuse to call life, doesn't always die after it is aborted. It lies outside the womb, struggling to live.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, in a 1981 series, called this the "dreaded complications," and estimated that 40,000-50,000 babies a year live after being aborted.
This problem is dreaded because there is little case law to guide the
courts concerning "semi-humans" and their legal and moral rights. It is an unwelcome gray area for all concerned.
The following case histories are well documented and concern the "dreaded complications."
1975. Massachusetts: A physician was convicted of manslaughter for neglecting to give care to a 24-week infant that was aborted.
Witnesses said he held the infant down and smothered it. He was the first American physician ever convicted on charges of failing to care for an infant born during an abortion.
The conviction was overturned by the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
1979, Florida: A nursing supervisor told of a live birth where the infant was dumped in a bedpan without examination, as was standard practice.
"It didn't die," the nurse said. "It was left in the bedpan for an hour before signs of life were noticed. It weighed slightly over a pound."
Excellent care enabled the baby to survive. The child, now five years old, has been adopted.
But let's be cold and rational. Let's deal with the law. People will stand up and shout, "I know my rights. Keep your laws off my body!" They will proclaim their constitutional
rights as defined by the Supreme Court. They will use the law as their defense.
But this supreme lawgiver has a history of bad calls. From its inception, the Supreme Court has handed down terribly erroneous opinions. Roe v. Wade is just another bad call.
The same court that allows abortion said it was OK to own blacks in its 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision. It is the same court that upheld a ban on the Sunday sale of toy submarines and loose leaf binders in the 1961 McGowan v. Maryland case.
Three semesters of studying the Supreme Court has left me with an indelible impression. In their quest to define the law, they often pervert it
Just because the Supreme Court OKs something does not automatically make it right or just. It only makes it the law.
Higher principles are involved here. Abortion is not another form of birth control or a right of privacy. It is quite simply murder, regardless of what the Supreme Court says.
You cannot abdicate responsibility or morality by quoting the Court. The cries of 20 million murdered babies fill our ears, and in our acquiescence we are all found guilty.
Innocence of oil no longer affordable
It is remarkable how innocent we once were about oil. Before the great energy crisis of the winter of 1973-74, we pulled up to the pump and said, "Fill it up," and that was that. In even more innocent times, I remember pulling in for a buck's worth of gas and driving my imported beetle on it for a week.
How the world changed for American consumers after the mid-'70s. Presidents Nixon, Carter and Ford preached the gospel of "energy independence," and the experts predicted gasoline at the pump would hit $2 a gallon before the long lines thinned out.
The country was so sick of gas lines, many motorists were prepared to see the $2 price if that meant an end to roads and hassles.
Now we have a new scenario in the slippery world of oil, and this one is the most elusive of all. It is possible the price of crude oil could fall so low on the world market as to make us all sick, economically speaking.
At the most basic level, the large oil-producing countries are in the midst of a game of chicken, the object of which is to see who blinks first.
The chief antagonists are Saudi Arabia and Great Britain. But any number can play, and often do,
depending on the day of the week.
The big issues over which the large oil producers are battling it out are price and levels of productivity.
Because of the high levels of its reserves and its enormous per capita wealth, Saudi Arabia has long considered itself the natural leader among oil producers. It wants to impose discipline on the rest of the major producers for two reasons.
The large oil-producing countries are in the midst of a game of chicken,the object of which is to see who blinks first.
First, the Saudis argue that unless the producers are "disciplined," the world market price could fall drastically because world demand has remained low for the past five years or more.
Second, Saudi Arabia correctly reckons that the black gold in the ground will not be there forever. By holding down production, the Saudis argue, oil producers will get a higher
Robert C.
Maynard
Oakland Tribune
price and extend the life of their precious resource.
One thing and another over the years has prevented the oil producers from achieving consensus on this key point. Two major producers, Iran and Iraq, are in a wasting war. Some producer countries, Mexico and Nigeria chief among them, have yet to recover from the recession of 1982-1983 and the consistent slackening in world oil demand.
As if that were not enough, the Saudi goal is further frustrated by Great Britain's North Sea oil fields. The government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has consistently refused to play the oil game by Saudi rules.
Great Britain has sought to follow Thatcher's free market inclinations. Her government went further and dismantled the British National Oil Corp., the principal function of which had been to keep the price of North Sea crude oil artificially high.
As much as any target, the present oil glut is aimed at bringing Britain
into line. Saudi Arabia has led the way in flooding the market place with oil. In search of whatever dollars there are to be earned, the other major producers have followed suit.
Oil production is more than 2 million barrels a day in excess of demand. Thus the glut, and thus the potential worldwide disaster. The spot and futures prices fell below $20 a barrel last week, but a more realistic world price is probably about $24 a barrel, a good 15 percent below what it was a year ago.
As the price continues to slide banks holding the long-term debt of producer countries are becoming more and more nervous in the face of potential massive defaults.
If the world price were to hit $15 and stick for any period of time, the impact on such oil-dependent economies as that of Texas would be devastating. Indeed, in due course almost all sectors of the American economy would be affected.
Eventually, we might see a time when a buck got you more than a gallon of gas, but the economy would by then not be a pretty sight. That is why we cannot be innocent about oil anymore. Too good a deal on gasoline in the near future could be the sign of a disaster in the making.
Mailbox
King favored boycott
I want to make two comments on the discussion of South Africa last week.
First, your reporter missed probably the most important thing State Department spokesman William Jacobsen had to say Monday. Jan. 27
He said, when questioned about the official rhetoric of South Africa and the Reagan administration, "Don't take it too seriously." He said that included him.
It became transparent at that point that the purpose of his visit was to shed a crocodile tear or two, say to the
audience, "isn't it awful... but complicated" and attempt to convince the audience that there was no need to actively form solidarity with the South African struggle for human, national and democratic rights.
In other words, he came to slow the growth of groups interested in South America.
Phill Kline, chairman of the Kansas Federation of College Republicans, claims that opposition to divestment is not compatible with the ideals and vision of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Second, it never ceases to amaze me how people try to bolster their arguments by using the reputation of great men. It becomes ridiculous when the great man chosen is in total disagreement with their lack of action and arguments.
"No nation professing a concern for man's dignity could avoid assuming its obligation if people of all
On Dec. 10, 1965, Human Rights Day at Hunter College in New York City, King addressed the South Africa question and stated, "the time has come to utilize non-violence tully through a massive international boycott which would involve the U.S.S.R., Great Britain, France, the United States, Germany and Japan."
states and races were to adopt a firm stand."
In the same speech, King indicated his belief that foreign investment propped up South Africa.
It is obvious that King's ideal and vision are in complete disagreement with Phil Kline's argument for continued U.S. economic ties with the racist regime and the refusal of Chancellor Gene A. Budig to urge the Kansas University Endowment Association to break its ties.
Karl Shepard Kansas City, Mo. graduate student