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Tuesday, February 9, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Drinkers will ignore rhetoric
Soon, Kansas legislators will vote on a proposal to stiffen state drinking laws with jail sentences and higher fines. The Legislature should defeat it.
Presently, people under 21 convicted of drinking alcohol face a fine of up to $250, up to 40 hours of community service work, or both. However, under a proposal recently introduced in the Kansas House of Representatives people between 18 and 21 who are convicted of consuming alcohol would be punished with up to one month in jail and a $500 fine. A second offense could lead to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Those under 17 would not be affected.
Admittedly, the current law is weak, but jail terms are not the answer.
If approved, the new law would probably not be enforced to its full extent. As with most misdemeanors, a judge would likely sentence an under-21 drinker to jail and then put him or her on probation.
If legislators want to dissuade people under 21 from drinking, they should expand upon the present law. That is, the fines should be higher, and the number of hours of community service work should be increased. The laws should then be strictly enforced
The promise that they would be forced to pay a large fine or to paint fire hydrants would deter young people from drinking. An unenforceable, rhetorical threat would not.
Opinion
Alan Player for the editorial board
During black history month symbols of bigotry still exist
February marks the annual observation of black history month. But amid this celebration of racial heritage, news of intolerance is finding its way into newspapers across the country.
In Montgomery, Ala., the birthplace of the civil rights movement, 12 prominent black leaders were arrested last week as they attempted to remove the Confederate flag from atop the state Capitol. The flag also flies at the South Carolina statehouse in Columbia.
The Civil War has been over for more than a century. Why, then, does the symbol of slavery and racial subjugation still fly over Montgomery and Columbia? Sadly, despite 1954 Brown v. the Board of Education ruling, despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964, racism lingers in the South and across the country.
Prejudice has not been defeated, and it is not far from home. Less than 100 miles southeast of here, Nevada, Mo., remains a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization that has experienced a surge in membership in recent years.
In 1954 and in 1964, this country established beachheads against racial prejudice and drove it underground. Today its citizens must beat down once and for all the intolerance that seethes just below the surface throughout the land and that rears its head publicly in the ugly climate of the South
Before bigotry will loosen its subtle grip in the homes and the schools and the churches of the United States, it must be felled at the steps of the capitals of the South, still flying the flag of hatred and intolerance.
Katy Monk for the editorial board
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board
Other Voices
Contra funding won't bring peace
The goal of the United States in the region should be peace, and not simply sparing the continent from communism. And the best hope of creating peace is to support the regional peace plan of Costa Rica's President Oscar Arias Sanchez. U.S. funding of the contras is a wrench in the works of that plan.
We feel that in the interest of the United States and Central America, funding for the contras must not be continued.
The United States can exert influence to make sure Nicaragua complies, economically and militarily, but first Congress must give the plan a chance by cutting off contra aid.
The United States' best hope for peace is to give its full support to the Arias peace plan. The United States can do this by cutting off money to the contras, and then monitoring Nicaraguan compliance with the plan.
Congress has wasted more than money on the contras, but also time that could be used to work for peace.
Indiana Daily Student Indiana University
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K·A·N·S·A·N
MAILBOX
Tax act cut loopholes
The howls of outrage over the loss of cherished tax breaks have started as the effects of the 1986 Tax Reform Act begin to be felt. A recent Kansan editorial (Feb. 2) now joins the chorus, bemoaning the loss of the double exemption and the partial taxation of scholarship income. A little perspective on who benefits and who pays as a result of tax reform is in order.
What the 1986 Tax Reform Act did was eliminate most of the loopholes (the double exemption was one) that allowed upper-income families to reduce their adjusted gross income and pay a lower percentage of their actual income in taxes than low-to-moderate income households. In exchange for eliminating the loopholes, tax rates were increased, taking millions of working poor off the tax rolls and significantly reducing the tax burden on the middle class (median income $27,000). Heavy itemizers will pay more, but by restoring the link between adjusted gross income and actual income, tax reform has returned progressivity to the tax code.
Now, it is the state legislature's turn to follow the federal lead.
Allan Dietrich Long Director, Cartographic Service
Some alums aren't fans
As I sat in Allen Field House and watched the loss to Oklahoma the other night, I was extremely angered at what I saw. It wasn't the fact that we lost. No, I can live with that. I thought they played hard but just came up short.
No, what got me of the alumni. With over a minute left, they filed to the exits. They call themselves fans? That's ridiculous. Maybe they've forgotten about this team. Maybe these fair weather fans have given up on the Jayhawks. As the alumni were chided with chants of "Don't come back!", the students stood and cheered the 'Hawks on to the end. Who needs those alumni at our games?
After I read Jeff Euston's guest column in the Jan. 22 Kansan, I said to myself, "Thank God someone in the print media finally found out what AIDS is all about!" I felt compelled to write to the Kansan because I am completely sick and tired of the media hype about AIDS. I all hear about is how it's an epidemic
Hey University of Kansas Athletic Corporation, if they don't want to watch basketball, I know about a lot of students who would like their seats.
Tom Ferrara
St. Louis sophomore
AIDS: too much hype
and that if I have sexual relations with one person I will get it and die. This is just not true.
Television and radio ads do nothing but reinforce the disinformation that's already around. My favorite is a commercial on 106 KLZR. A man's voice tells us, "I'm a baptist minister's son from a small southwestern Kansas town. If I can get AIDS, anybody can." What they don't tell us is how he did he get it? Most likely he's a homosexual or a hemophilia or an intravenous drug user. We don't know. We're left to assume that it struck him completely at random, even an upright individual as a minister's son. Therefore no one out there in America is safe.
I must take the time to commend Euston for his column. I'm glad that someone in the media overlooked hype (what a startling turnaround that is for a reporter today) and went straight to the facts. And he's right, there are other things we can do with $4,000. Like may be fund the Secure Cab System, which is perhaps the only thing that Student Senate has done while I've been here that's worth a damn. But that's just my opinion, and I'm not syndicated. So check the facts for yourself.
Chris Seferyn Philadelphia, Pa., junior
Study center not needed
It surprises me a great deal that academic adviser Olga Evelyn and Athletic Director Bob Frederick think the athletes here at the University of Kansas need a new academic center. They propose a center that "...would be open nearly every day, and it would be supplied with its own reference sources, including encyclopedias and computers," according to the Feb. 2 Kansan.
I would remind Evelyn and Frederick that such a place already exists. It's called Watson Library, and anybody, athletes included, can study there at their own convenience.
It it surprises me even more, though, that Campaign Kansas is raising funds for such a center this spring. At this time, the faculty are underpaid, classes are overcrowded, and students are unable to get into the classes they need as a result. Spending thousands of dollars on an unnecessary facility that would benefit only a small number of students seems wasteful, as well as unfair to those of us who aren't athletes. Campaign Kansas should find a way to use the funds they raise that will benefit all students here, not just a small minority.
Katie Nagy Topeka sophomore
Katie Nagy
Homophobia irrational
Thank you so much, Mr. Doug Brown of Overland Park, for your astute and, I am certain, heartfelt proclamation concerning the rights of homosexuals. Your narrow, judgmental position only emphasizes more the need for legislation.
Your blanket statements comparing gays to murderers and rapists, your amazing statistics for which I would love to see documentation, and your wish to see your religious belief used
as a basis for "prosecuting those who desire to overthrow the laws of God," makes it frighteningly clear precisely who you stand. In some other era, we could simply substitute Jews, blacks, communists and even women, with their respective crimes against God, for the homosexuals in your letter. Your letter grows from the same oppressive, backward mode of thinking that has eternally attempted to set itself up as superior at the expense of human beings. While opinions like yours remain prominent, it seems especially urgent that homosexuals be given some sort of guarantee of the protection of their rights.
In the meantime, Mr. Brown, may I suggest that perhaps your irrational hatred for gays is motivated by fear and ignorance. Some of the most heinous crimes against humanity were born of these two things. Homosexuals are not lustful monsters. They are capable of love, hate, intelligence, ignorance, generosity, stinginess and even monogamy. In short, they are simply humans just like all the rest of us.
Carol J. Back
Joplin, Mo., senior
Morality is subjective
What Doug Brown wrote about gay rights was more than just an obscene attack against homosexuals; it was also an attack on those who feel strongly about civil and moral freedom for all people.
Let me clarify what I mean by moral freedoms, for I am no advocate of moral anarchy or states without law and order.
Moral freedom is the right to choose the source of one's own morality, be it a religion or a feeling of duty toward humanity resulting from one's own philosophy.
Some citizens assume that Christianity is synonymous with morality. When Brown states that "The condoning of sodomy is evidence that a nation has rejected God, law and order, and has opted for a hedonistic and anarchist society," he has forgotten that the laws of his God do not govern all people.
Morality is subjective. Humans worldwide, have for centuries, slept together without being married, used mind-altering substances and, yes, even found sexual uses for the anus. While I do not necessarily condone these realities, neither do I condo the notion that 90 percent of humanity is, as a result of failing to conform to Christian strictures (and to believe in a Christian conception of God), now confined to a Christian conception of hell.
In a society of 250 million, some acts must be controlled. Private acts between consenting adults should not. If the Doug Browns feel bad that they must live in a world where sodomy, abortion, premarital sex, non-Christian religions, agnostics and atheist exist, think how I feel. I have to live in a world where people use religious double talk to persecute others, all under the pretense of morality.
Amy Autdemberge Hutchinson junior
BLOOM COUNTY
COULD YOU GIVE OUR
CANDIDATE SOME GUIDELINES
AS TO WHAT SORT OF
BEHAVIOR IS POLITICAL
SUICIDE FOR A PUBLIC
by Berke Breathed
ADULTERY..LIKE HART'5.
PLAGIARISM..LIKE BIPEN'5.
RACIAL INSULTS..LIKE
JIMMY THE GREECK'5.
MIXING IN RELIGION..LIKE
ROBERTSON. CRYING..
LIKE PAT SCHROeder.