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Friday, March 11, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Avoid spring break tragedy by displaying responsibility
Spring break. It's the great body binge, the time when thousands of college students do their best to forget they have brains and concentrate instead on the pleasures of drinking, sunbathing and whatever else they really dig doing.
Ah, the pleasures of the flesh.
All the pleasures But practice the time-honored rule of "Everything in excess, nothing in moderation" this year and the fiesta may come to a screeching halt. College students increasingly are having to deal with the fact that the bouncers at this party mean business.
Police in most of the country's spring-break hot spots are far from lenient in dealing with underage drinkers, drunken drivers and over-21 partiers who buy alcohol for their under-21 friends. Excessive public rowdiness is frowned upon, too. This kind of behavior might seem to be a natural part of spring break, but any of these offenses can lead to fines, time in jail, court appearances and, yes, criminal records. And it doesn't happen just to the other guy, no matter how invincible many students feel.
Then there's balcony climbing. It's illegal in Florida for the very good reasons that it's deceptively dangerous and has led to tragedy. By one report, in the past four years alone, six people have died and 25 have been injured in Daytona Beach in falls from balconies. It's not worth the risk just to save a few steps or impress friends.
It all boils down to this: Spring break is a good time to have a good time, but it's not the time to get arrested or get killed.
Bye, kids! Have fun! Don't forget to write toothbrush? Razor? Condoms? Be good! Don't get too much sun! Be careful when you walk around at night! Don't take rides from strangers! Did you remember to pack clean underwear? Don't drink too much! Wear your seat belt! Call when you get there! We love you!
And don't die.
Opinion
Katy Monk for the editorial board
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board.
The editorial board consists of Alison Young, Todd Cohen, Alan Player, Jody Dickson, Katy Monk, Russell Gray and Van Jenerette.
Other Voices
Tea-and-crumpset standards of polite behavior and spirited, supportive crowds at college athletic events usually are radically contradictory. So, although Wichita State University's Low Brass Cheer would be wildly inappropriate at the symphony, there is nothing wrong with it at a basketball game.
WSU won't beat 'the hell outta you'
Complaints regarding the poor sportsmanship displayed by partisan crowds are probably well-founded, but that's the nature of the beast in college athletics. Watching the Shockers smash hapless opponents is a potent intoxicant, and a thunderous, enthusiastic cheer is a natural response to an exciting game.
Blaming President Armstrong's banning of the cheer for the alleged apathy at basketball games, however, is absurd. The apathy is in part attributable to the same malaise that seems to infect many other aspects of campus life at WSU.
Another reason for the spiritual doldrums at the basketball games is the small percentage of student seating in Henry Levitt Arena and the location of that seating. Students hold a fraction of the season tickets and student seating is practically in the rafters, so it's tough to generate lots of spirit under those strictures.
If the response the Sunflower has received to the Low Brass Cheer ban is anything to go by, both students and alumni overwhelmingly favor the return of the cheer.
It might be tasteless, it might be taunting or intimidating, but it's not as if, say, Creighton fans subjected to the cheer in Wichita don't have a chance for revenge when the Shockers play in Omaha.
The cheer should be reinstated. It makes a lot more sense than pretending we're at Henry Levitt Arena for an opera.
Wichita State University
News staff
Alison Young...Editor
Cohen Todd...Managing editor
Rob Knapp...News editor
Alan Pligler...Editorial editor
Joseph Rebello...Campus editor
Jennifer Rowland...Planning editor
Anne Luscombe...Sports editor
Stephen Wade...Photo editor
Richard Stewart...Graphics editor
Tom Eblen...General manager, news adviser
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Some speech must be restricted
Racial slanderers such as the KKK harm society and should be restrained
The Ku Klux Klan issue has gripped our interest with all the intensity of a morality play. It tests the premises of the Western civil libertarian tradition, premises basic to our University. The drama is fraught with irony.
Take Michael Foubert, creator of the Freedom of Expression forum that featured the KKK. Foubert is, I'm informed by one of his academic mentors, "one of the finest products of the Western Civilization program." A defender of the concept of democratic governance, Foubert nonetheless holds all three governance positions in his organization; president, treasurer and faculty adviser. (Neither faculty nor staff, Foubert is apparently an adviser to himself.) Through his three identities he embodies, by my guess, one-third to one-half of his organization's membership. Like the Klan, he keeps the size of his organization a secret. As one who espouses unrestricted debate, Foubert had for several days seriously considered limiting public entry into the "free speech" forum. As a proponent of truth, he has misrepresented the nature of the forum to faculty participants, causing several to cancel their appearances.
Projecting himself as a fervent anti-acit, Foubert gave an outrageously crude and racially slanderous statement to the local press. Relying on his "feelings" and suggesting but not revealing evidence, Foubert accused Lawrence's black ministerial leadership of conspiring to commit felonies by threatening and creating violence in order to run up security costs and thereby force a cancellation of the forum. Actually, prior to Foubert's statement, Lawrence's black ministers, the Ecumenical Fellowship, believing their point had been effectively made through the earlier cancellation of the Klan's appearance, had elected to protest the forum. Apparently, Foubert's Western Civilization background has taught him to fathom the mentality of the "darker populations." a long-standing justification of Western societies for their enslavement of the "darker continents."
Despite his inconsistencies, I accept Foubert's claim of his sincere commitment to free speech. However, sincerity is irrelevant to questions of principle. After all, no one ever doubted the sincerity of Hiller's commitment to Nazism.
Norman Forer
Guest Columnist
Principles are best judged in terms of their outcomes.
The liberal concept of free speech, stemming from the Kantian belief in the inherent moral autonomy of the individual, seeks to protect the individual from external interference. In practice, however, not all individuals are equally afforded such protection. Like most U.S. institutions, the University of Kansas, despite its ethos of good will, maintains a double standard of free speech.
In the past 19 years, I can recall only four instances in which outrage swept the campus community concerning an alleged violation of free speech. In all cases, gross misinformation was beneath the accusations. How ironic that blacks and Jews become the targets of such slander despite their historic role in advocating civil rights and free speech for all U.S. citizens.
Indeed, there have been many free speech and academic freedom violations at KU, but the violators usually were central and lower-level administrators, at times responding to the pressure of powerful non-University interests. (Decent, kindly Chancellor Gene A. Budg always has been true to his professional conscience despite the consequences). Although many of these violations involved blatant censorship and intimidation, they were met with minimal interest or indifference by those who are at once vocal about free speech in an abstract sense, while protecting KU's and their own images. Ironically, many at KU appear more concerned with the free speech rights of a Klansman than a social reform-minded student or professor.
The Klan is not simply an ideological organization but rather, like the past German Nazi party, plans and executes a policy of racial extermination. Like the Nazis, the Klan never publicly admits to its murderous intent. Consequently
there are laws throughout Western Europe and in thirty U.S. states prohibiting "group libel." As opposed to the "liberal" free speech tradition that focuses on the individual, "group libel" or the "communitarian" approach, is derived from the Aristotelian concept of the political nature of man. Accordingly, racial slandersers and inciters like the Klan are held harmful to both society and the individual and should be restrained. In the 1952 Beauhairstain case, the U.S. Supreme Court did just that. In the 1978 Collins (Skokie) case, the Court reversed itself, ironically using some of the same legal logic employed in the Beauharness decision. This issue is a central theme among political and legal theorists. It has yet to arrive at KU in any meaningful sense. Perhaps now it will. If you are unaware of the side on which you
If you are unsure of the side on which you belong on this issue, I suggest the following test.
Alongside extermination camp Treblinka, the run-off of the crematoria has pooled into a huge swamp still oozing with human fat and ash and rich with grass. (Life is tenacious.)
seniors, I bid you approach that place without trepidation. After all, you are trained to subdue feeling in the interest of knowledge. Look objectively upon this distillation of millions: lynched, clubbed, strangled, starved, crushed, hung, poisoned, bashed, broken, gassed, burned. (Research reveals variety.) Assure yourself that these acts were a product of one of the most cultured and scientifically advanced nations on earth — true sciences of Western civilization.
Prepare then a forum in the interest of free speech. Invite Nazi death camp personnel and Jewish survivors. Moderate the discussion. Perhaps a deal could emerge in case of future disagreement. Instead of murdering six million, split the difference, three million. Jews would be happier and the Nazis would save transportation costs, proving once again that free discussion, reason and moderation are the key to human progress. By now, scholars, you should know where you stand on free speech.
Bless you, students, faculty and townfolk, wearers of red ribbons the color of bleeding hearts who came forward by the thousands in affirmation of life.
Norman Forer is an associate professor of social welfare.
Column was fiction
As a graduate student in English and as a poet, I find Jay Frank's contention that English departments don't foster great writers misleading and ridiculous. Frank assumes that because a certain student's story didn't win with a fiction writing award and didn't meet with the approval of class members, the entire English department is guilty of ignoring creative genius. However, Frank tells us that the teacher of the class (for which the student had written the story) praised the work and encouraged the student. Already we see a flaw in Frank's logic. Moreover, since when are great
writers created by awards?
No department creates a great writer; a great writer creates himself or herself. Writing is a solitary act and, at best, an English department can encourage a writer and provide access to other influences. Through literature classes and writing workshops I've taken here, I have found many literary sources to draw upon as well as a supportive community that encourages me in my writing. Perhaps this is why so many of contemporary and fiction writers can be found in university settings. Rarely have I found a faculty member stifling "genuine creativity" for the sake of presenting a limited view of literature. Rather, in creative writing workshops, I've seen faculty members bend over backward to accommodate experimentation.
An English department is not a jeweler to mold and set the diamond (using Frank's analogy) of student creative genius; instead, it is the task of any serious writer to continually
mine his or her own imagination and experience and, from the coal, craft something valuable and endurable and brilliant. Frank states that the student story in the contest was judged "an interesting article" by an English department, though it reinforces a boring myth, is fiction but certainly not quality fiction.
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Lawrence graduate student
Clarification
A letter from Tedra Wilensky that appeared in the Kansan last week referred to a call she said was made by Stephanie Quincy to a KJHK radio program. The call was made anonymously.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed