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Monday, February 29, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Swaggart's righteous words have returned to haunt him
Jim Bakker is "a cancer on the body of Christ" and must be cut out of the Assemblies of God Church. At least that's the song Jimmy Swaggart was singing after Bakker's highly publicized affair with a church secretary.
but now the shoe is under the other bed, and Swagart is the cancer. Spewing tears of penance, he confessed last week that he had sinned. He made the announcement after Assemblies of God elders conducted an investigation focusing on "sexual moral charges... with other women."
James Hamill, a member of the general council of the Assemblies of God, described several photographs that led Swaggart to make his confession of "moral failure." Evidently, Swaggart was photographed as he drove to a motel and visited a reputed prostitute.
a reputed prosecutor. The hypocrisy of Swaggart's actions is outrageous. Not even a year has passed since Swaggart led the way in bringing Bakker's downfall.
And Bakker hasn't been the only victim of Swaggart's holier-than-thou attitude. Swaggart has a history of chastising other preachers for straying from the high standards of the Assemblies. He has even asked to be saved "from pompadoured pretty-boys with their hair done and their nails done who call themselves preachers."
Bakker was ousted from the PTL ministries, which he founded. But the going could be easier for Jimmy Swaggart The Louisiana district council of the Assemblies has recommended a three-month suspension and counseling for Swaggart, even though the organization's constitution and bylaws require at least a year's cessation of active ministry.
Could the $142 million that Swaggart's ministry brought in last year have prompted the council's leniency?
Money should not be a factor in deciding how to discipline Swaggart. If mortal men are going to stand up, clench their fists, sling sweat and scream for morality, then they should at least live by the creed they preach.
Alan Player for the editorial board
If the Jimmy Swaggarts are going to save the world from "hypocrites" and "false prophets," who will save the world from the Jimmy Swaggats?
Bill could be misinterpreted
It seems that some people will take advantage of anything established to help others. Sadly, that even includes laws dealing with abuse.
In Kansas, the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services received 27,000 calls in the last fiscal year from people reporting possible cases of child abuse or neglect. 18,000 reports turned out to be legitimate cases. The SRS was not able to confirm incidence of child abuse or neglect in 9,000 reports.
However, Bob Barnum, SRS secretary, said his department determined that about 450 of the 9,000 calls were motivated not by concern for children, but by vengeance. Barnum said such calls often originate from feuding divorces trying to embarrass each other. They try to use the state, which is required by law to investigate all child abuse reports, to carry out their malicious desires, he said.
A bill in the Legislature would make it a crime to knowingly make a false report of child abuse or neglect. Barnum says it is needed because the department doesn't have any recourse when it discovers that it is being used.
It's sensible that wrongfully and maliciously accusing someone of a crime should be illegal, just as false bomb threats and fire alarms are. But there is the danger that the bill could be misinterpreted by the public.
mistered by the public Child abuse is not very visible. It usually occurs behind closed doors and does not make itself known like a house fire. Because of this, authorities must rely on anonymous tips from neighbors, teachers and others who notice bruises or other tell-tale signs. The nature of the crime requires that outsiders be encouraged to report child abuse to the state. Because child abuse victims are just that — children — they especially need outside help.
The Legislature should be careful not to pass this bill without being sure it cannot be abused or misinterpreted by the courts and law enforcement agencies. It is very important that well-intentioned people know that they will not be prosecuted if their suspicions turn out to be unfounded.
Todd Cohen for the editorial board
The good that people do by reporting their suspicions, which may lead to saving a child's life, far outweighs the damage that could happen if someone suspected abuse but was afraid to call authorities.
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board
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Professor's view promotes apathy
College must provide more than training ground for future professionals
I would like to respond to Maynard Shelly's guest column "Difficult courses should be justified" because I believe it represents much of what is wrong in the contemporary attitude toward a university education. Shelly adopts the too-prevalent idea of college as mainly a training ground for future career professionals in accounting, engineering, computer science, etc. On the contrary, that sort of specific technical training should be reserved for the trade schools, Bailey Technical School, Tarkio College and those institutions which advertise in the back of many non-professional periodicals.
or many help, aid, or admitting. Admittedly, as a professional institution, a university (and particularly one which relies heavily on the financial support of its society) is obligated to prepare its graduates to respond to an increasingly technological society. However, the best way that an academic institution, as opposed to the technical institutions cited above, can prepare its students is not through offering them the specific, undifficult information automators require to perpetuate technology. Rather, it must provide them with the intellectual tools to confront technological society in terms of its causes, its means and its values.
The biggest con job of this century is not, as Shelly contends, convincing students, parents and administrators that courses in Plato and Shakespeare are valuable. The biggest con job of this century has been convincing the world at large that technological "progress" is always good, worth pursuing and inevitable. We are largely being convinced by con men and women who make money off our unquestioning acceptance of technological society and media babies whose values have been systematically lowered until material speed, speed and the least difficult
Ben Accardi
Guest Columnist
route top their priority list. Much of technological society may be good and useful; much of it probably is not. Students must be provided with the education that will better enable them to make those distinctions so that technological society does progress rather than simply accrete.
If we don't confront students with Plato's mandate that the "unexamined life is not worth living," or Shakespeare's question as to "whether its nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or... by opposing, end them," then our professional schools will continually produce graduates prepared for technological society only in terms of having certain facts and technical skills that will perpetuate technological society without having the philosophic skills to guide or control it. Shelly calls this perpetuation being intelligent rather than sounding intelligent. I call it having knowledge without having an intelligent scheme in which to use it.
What I find most dangerous about Shelly's column is that it was written by a member of the academic institution, which can only further justify for students an apathetic approach to difficult courses. Often I have heard the students in humanities courses I teach heard unlinchingly that the values of these concerns are "important and all that, but have nothing to do with my major." It is the attitude expressed in Shelly's column which promotes this general opinion among many college students that a decent
education is one exclusively designed to lead to a career in engineering, accounting or computer science and which they equate with a $40,000-a year income, a house in the suburbs, a generic spouse, 2,65 children, a Volvo and a videotape of "Robocop" to fill up those empty moments between 8 p.m. and midnight that might otherwise have to be filled with reading a difficult book or thinking a difficult thought.
Personally, I would prefer to know that the human being designing the technology that will enable me to defrost hamburger with microwaves in less than 10 minutes has the wherewithal and intellectual background to first ask whether that was a valuable thing to do and whether its value outweighed its potential danger. If the question is, as Shelly suggests, what sort of intelligence is more essential to an individual entering technological society, the answer seems (as few answers do) self-event.
I would suggest that the reason courses in English, history and sociology are so difficult is that they deal with difficult subjects under the assumption that difficult means are valuable in proportion to their end. Technology itself, to the contrary, is designed simply to make things easier. I believe Maynard Shelly is operating under the technological philosophy that the education most essential is that which provides the easiest means to its end. Were he taking the difficult course in Western Civilization, as some of his students undoubtedly have, he would have read Thomas Huxley's remark that "we should cast aside the notion that the escape from pain and sorrow (and difficulty) is the proper object of life" and thereby had at least the perspective from which to question that philosophy.
Ben Accardi is a Lawrence graduate student majoring in English
K·A·N·S·A·N
MAILBOX
Jones advances rights
I regret that some black citizens have damaged the constitutional rights of all U.S. citizens by preventing students from interviewing two Ku Klux Klansmen. In this case they felt free speech did not deserve their cause. Their actions will drive the class taught by Harry Jones off the KU campus.
I've known Jones and read his stories for 25 years in the Kansas City Star. It should be remembered that freedom of speech and freedom of the press, as employed by him, many times have advanced the black cause.
he covered the good and the bad of the black Panthers, often helping them voice legitimate complaints. Whatever his political differences with them, Panther leaders like Pete O'Neal saw Jones as a man of his word. So did some of his reporting targets on the radical right, though some on the crazy right fringe were not so fond of him.
He reported as closely as anyone on the creation of Leon Jordon and rise of Freedom, Inc., the first powerful black political group in Kansas City. Jones was on hand in front of Kansas City's city hall in 1968 when policemen, responding to a minor scuffle and without being ordered to do so, threw tear gas into a huge crowd of black students. That was the spark which ignited the riot that followed. Jones breathed the tear gas with the rest and was among the first to report the facts.
But, alas, Jones is not a dullard. Wherever he goes, things get interesting, and someone may complain. Still, few journalists ever have employed freedom of speech or freedom of the press to better purpose.
He wrote a book exposing the right-wing paramilitary Minutemen organization. His newspaper stories cut short a Minuteman plan to rob banks in support of their cause. He found out about the scheme from a Klan member who was also an FBI informant.
Jones won the American Bar Association award for a national series on prisons, which certainly benefited many black prisons. He won the Overseas Press Club award for a series on hunger in black Africa. Since leaving the Star, he has conceived and led the Prairie Village Peanut Butter Weekend, which is typical of his weird ideas, which has netted many tons of good food in one-pound jars for poor people.
Charles Hammer Shawnee resident
Youth need state aid
State Rep. Marvin Barkin has recently asked the governor to consider increasing funding for children's services. Gov. Hayden contends that funding is adequate. The governor is accusing Barkin of being partisan. As a social worker who works with youth, I believe we could do a lot more for our young people who are in the hands of the state.
Most people are aware of the growing rate of crime and the over-populated prisons and jails. The last number of years people have been complaining about the cost of welfare. Studies indicate that children who are inadequately cared for are much more apt to become long-standing liabilities to society.
We have an opportunity with the children to spend the wise dollar, to make the best investment we could make, and feel good about what we have done. On the other hand, money saved on children today will cost us geometrically later. Does it really make sense not to do the best we can for children? It is important for the children to believe that someone cares. Wouldn't it be nice if Kansas had the reputation for being the state that puts children first?
Robert Heckler Topeka resident
BLOOM COUNTY
THE MIGHTY
HUMANISTIC, RATIONALISTIC,
ATHLETIC SCIENTIST
PREPARES 5 TO GIVE HIMSELF
OVER TO AN ANNUAL
SPRINGTIME MOMENT OF
by Berke Breathed