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Wednesdav April 8. 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Cast your ballots
In the last Student Senate election, 3,523 students voted for president and vice president. That's almost 14 percent of the students enrolled at this University. Considering that the Senate is in charge of $1.2 million of the students' money, would you trust only 14 percent of the student population to decide how that money was going to be spent, and more importantly, whether that money was going to be spent wisely?
That is only one big reason why it is imperative that students go out and vote today and tomorrow. There are many other reasons as well. The Senate has instituted some worthwhile programs at the University. The Vietnam Memorial, Student Legal Services and SecureCab are just a few of the successful projects to come out of previous senates.
Student Senate, contrary to popular opinion, is not a make-believe organization. It is a real organization, deciding on real issues and playing with real money — the students' money. Students, therefore, need to be concerned about where their money is going and how it is being spent.
Benefits and limits to bill
Voting does not take much time or effort. Booths have been set up in many places on campus for the convenience of the students. It is not too much to ask to take five or 10 minutes out of the day to vote when so much is riding on the outcome of that very ballot.
Agnes T. Frog's defeat turned into a victory for Lawrence last week when the Senate joined the House of Representatives in overriding President Reagan's veto of a $88 billion highway bill.
The Lawrence victory came in the form of $7.2 million that will be used for a proposed southern Lawrence trafficway. Agnes T. Frog had become the fictitious spokesman for people opposed to the trafficway. Opponents argued that the bypass would harm the Baker Wetlands, a wildlife refuge that is home to the endangered Northern Crawfish frog.
While the override will benefit Lawrence, it did not come without a price. An amendment to the bill allows states to increase the speed limit on rural stretches of highways to 65 mph.
The increased speed limit will have to be accepted. However, state officials still have
to make vital decisions. The bill allows each state to set up where the 65 mph speed limit will be in effect,
In everyone's best interest, it would be wise to confine the 65 mph speed limit to rural and less conjected areas, in the hopes that it will save lives.
Many people already exceed the 55 mph speed limit when they are driving on the nation's highways. Let's hope with the increased speed limit, people will pay extra attention and care to their driving. Drivers need to exercise caution, instead of continuing the practice of exceeding the speed limit.
The thought of getting home faster will be appealing to a lot of people, including KU students, but just because Congress has legislated drivers to push the gas pedle a little harder doesn't mean they have legislated drivers to think less when they drive.
A victory for humanity
It may have been a big loss for Gov. Mike Hayden, but Friday's 22-18 defeat of a bill that would reinstate the death penalty in Kansas was an important victory for humanity and justice.
Hayden said he was disappointed that senators defeated the bill when Kansans overwhelmingly favored restoring capital punishment. But the senators showed courage in taking a stand different than that of the majority. A good lawmaker does not blindly follow the will of the majority.
The rights of the minority must be protected, especially in a matter of life and death.
In 1985, a nearly identical Senate, gaining only one new member since then, passed a similar bill by a 24-16 vote. The difference this time appeared to be the lack of a certain veto by the governor, which served as a safety net for senators in the past. Because the bill's passage surely would reinstate capital punishment, the issue turned into one of conscience instead of politics.
There were differing reasons why senators were opposed to capital punishment. Some were concerned by the high cost of the system at a time when the state is experiencing budget problems. Others were worried about mistakes in the judicial process which could lead to the death of an innocent person. Still others were alarmed at statistics which show that blacks are much more likely to receive the death penalty than white defendants.
Any one of these should have been enough reason to stop the reinstatement of "the ultimate penalty."
Whatever the reason, senators showed a deep regard for human life, an awareness of the gravity of the issue and a lot of courage.
News staff
News staff
Frank Hansel . Editor
Jennifer Benjamin . Managing editor
Juli Warren . News editor
Brian Kaberline . Editorial editor
Sandra Engelland . Campus editor
Mark Siebert . Sports editor
Diana Dullmeier . Photo editor
Bill Skeet . Graphics editor
Tom Eblen . General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Lisa Weems . Business manager
Jinie Hardy . Ad director
Denise Stephens . Retail sales manager
Kelly Scherer . Campus sales manager
Duncan Calhoun . Marketing manager
Lori Coppel . Choreographer
Jeffrey Luminski . Production manager
David Nixon . National sales manager
Jeanne Hines . Sales and marketing adviser
Opinions
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Teen-age suicide not to be taken lightly
Every successful person rises to his own level of incompetence. Ronald Reagan was a good light bulb salesman for General Electric, but he is incompetent as president. Bruce Willis and Don Johnson, popular television stars, are flops at singing. And Mike Royko, a successful columnist whose columns I usually admire, is a failure as a counselor for suicidal teen-agers.
Gil Chavez
Columnist
In his column that appeared in the Kansan on March 25, Royko displayed a total lack of competence at his new job. If we can take his column at face value (much of what Royko writes seems to be exaggerated or made up), then we know his secret to handling suicidal people. First, make it clear that you don't give a damn. Then make them feel worse than they already do by telling them that they are self-pitying, vain wimps.
then forget it. It's not your problem anyway.
If this does't cure them, tell them about some guy who survived the loss of his family and his legs, but who hangs on because he has two grandsons to live for. If that doesn't work,
Royko's comparison of the old man and the girl lacks any appreciation for what it is like to be a teen-ager. The man is old enough to know that the only thing more futile than a life of total misery is a life cut short by suicide. But there are a lot of teenagers who don't think the way, who cannot see past tomorrow. They are filled with hate for this wonderful world, which, for them, seems as empty as death and considerably more painful.
I'm not saying that things weren't tough on teen-agers and young adults when Royko was young. But he has been a big boy for a long time and things are very different, grimly different now.
Royko says it's nonsense to think that teen-age suicides are a national crisis. But they are, and they have been for a long time. Since 1960, the mortality rates have decreased for every age group except one, 14-to-24-year-olds. This age group's death rate has skyrocketed. Suicide is its third most common cause of death.
There is a reluctance to admit that society is destroying its youth. People would prefer to believe that they have a good time, like "Happy Days."
But growing up isn't like that.
Many adolescents are abused or abandoned by their parents. Others run away and support themselves through prostitution. Droves of them die in drug overdoses, traffic accidents and murders. And some are so driven to succeed that failure is a death sentence.
And it's getting worse. My mother has encountered children at the school where she teaches who have attempted suicide. These weren't acts of vanity, but serious attempts to end what seemed unbearable.
When I was 18, I didn't think I'd make it to 19. It wasn't because I didn't want to, but so many people I knew weren't making it that I didn't see any reason why I would. Sooner or later, I thought, I'd be run over on the street, or blown away by a nut with a gun. And if these things didn't happen, we'd all be nuked into oblivion.
In the years since then, a car did come around a corner and toss me like a broken doll to the pavement. And I did meet a nut with a gun, but he didn't shoot me, though he seemed to really want to. (I am still waiting to be nuked.)
But these things didn't make me feel that life had no future. When I was a teen-ager, it was what I saw happening to others that sometimes led me to despair. I resplained when I
saw the world crushing my friends, when I tried to ease a friend's terrror after she had been assaulted twice, when I heard that an old friend was beaten to death, or that another was incinerated in his car.
There are more examples, but they would only belabor the point. It's easy to become buried in the trash when you put up you during your adult education.
The transition from being a child to an adult is dangerous. For many who won't behave, it seems that their backs must be broken before they will act like adults. Afterwards, they're much less caring, much more callous and they make it clear they don't care about anybody else.
Royko assumes so much in his arrogant, ignorant view of the world. He needs to stay with something simple that he can deal with, such as Ronald Reagan. It would have been hard for him to accept that girl. And it would have been such an important thing for her — even if she was only looking for attention.
From my education as an adult, I have learned that justice is too much to ask from an unjust world. But I can wish; and I wish that someday Mike Royko is a knotted old man in some old folks' home, and a young nurse shows him the same amount of kindness he showed that girl.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
Q: Why did the lame duck cross the highway (bill)?
Battling worth of the media and the ministry
A couple of Sundays ago, ABC's Sam Donaldson and the Rev. Ferry Falwell got into a brief, but illuminating, snarling match on the issue of accountability, which is a long word for the short question: Are you worth your keep?
Arnold Sawislak UPI Commentary
Donaldson noted that some people believed that television evangelists are taking advantage of the poor and using their donations "to line your own pockets and live high on the hog."
"I can only speak for Jerry Falwell and only God can speak for the rest, as far as I'm concerned," Falwell replied. "I receive nothing from this ministry except salary and I've been here 31 years."
Donaldson asked, "What is your salary, Reverend Falwell?"
Without a pause, Falwell
replied: "My salary is $100,000." Then he asked, "How much do you make, Sam?"
Donaldson: "Well, I make quite a bit. Reverend Falwell."
Falwell: "You make more than I do."
Donaldson: "But then again, I don't make it from people who send in $10 and $15 and $20 a week. I make it from a money-making corporation, which, of course, can cut me off any time."
Fallwell: "You do, indeed, Sam, and might I add you a lot less accountability than most of the proachers you're criticizing."
God knows Donaldson needs no help from this corner, but Falwell's comment, which appears to suggest that unlike a clergyman, the TV newsman is not responsible to his audience, begs rebuttal.
In truth, Donaldson operates on the razor's edge of an accountability system known as TV ratings, which purport to reflect the pleasure and preferences of a gigantic
"congregation." And while Donaldson may have a nice long-term contract, he can be jerked off the air at the drop of a couple of rating points.
'I can only speak for Jerry Falwell and only God can speak for the rest, as far as I'm concerned," Falwell replied.'
Compared with members of Congress, who have from two to six years to please their constituents and assure their livelihoods, TV preachers and TV newsmen are in the category of lion tamers and
high-wire walkers.
But no one seems to worry more about accountability, or how to avoid it, than members of Congress. They will go through the most absurd gyrations to avoid being put on the spot — framing parliamentary situations so they can cast votes both for and against controversial propositions — and otherwise passing the buck on every possible occasion.
The recent congressional pay raise was a prime example of what is referred to in semi-polite company as CYA. Having long since dodged responsibility for proposing pay levels, Congress, or at least not only a law, to vote against a salary increase and still get the money.
So now, members of Congress are going to get a 16 percent pay raise and be able to say they were against accepting it. That is a bit of hypocrisy worth the combined attention of the Rev. Falwell and the reporter Donaldson.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed