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Tuesday, February 2, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Embezzler must be forced to pay back KU on Wheels
Between 1978 and 1982, Steve McMurry ripped off more than $257,000 from the University of Kansas. And unless a system is devised to regularly garnishe his wages, KU never again will see that money.
McMurry embezzled $257,051.17 from KU on Wheels while he was director of the campus bus system. He was arrested, forced to serve 17 months in prison, and was paroled under a stipulation that he make a "reasonable effort" at restitution.
Since his 1984 parole, however, McMurry has repaid only $2,010. At that rate, it will take him more than 383 years to pay back the money he stole. That is not reasonable.
McMurry apparently spent all of the money, and he now lives in a Denver suburb. In July, he will be off parole, and his Colorado parole officer, Larry Cavnagh, is skeptical that McMurry will continue parking, even on his petty payments.
"After his discharge on parole, there is no jurisdiction," Cavignah said.
A Douglas County Circuit Court judge ruled that KU was entitled to restitution in the parole agreement, and this ruling should be enforced
KU should get back what was stolen from it, and McMurry's wages should be the source. A certain amount of money should regularly be taken from his paycheck and given to KU on Wheels. It's obvious that he will not voluntarily make the restitution payments, so he should be given no choice in the matter.
The University deserves to be repaid — right down to the last 17 cents.
Alan Player for the editorial board
Tax reforms harm students
The 1986 Tax Reform Act is a classic when it comes to students and their parents. One has to wonder who dreamed up the new law. Not only are the filing rules confusing, but the logic behind exemptions also seems to be the product of a cynical mind. It's as if the Internal Revenue Service hires someone to sit in a dark corner beneath a picture of Ebenezer Scrooge and write new rules.
College students are an easy target for the taxman. Never mind the establishment's emphasis on investing in the future; the IRS wants its money now. Students should worry only about term papers and examinations while the government goes through every pocket looking for loose change. To most people, a scholarship award means an opportunity to further their educations. To the IRS, a scholarship for a student represents a winning lottery ticket for Uncle Sam.
The elimination of the double exemption benefit that had been used by college students and their parents in the past is another example of government schizophrenia. Just in the past few months, the Reagan administration has proposed an increase in Pell Grants and a College Savings Bonds program to encourage higher education. If the government really wants to encourage higher education, they should stop penalizing those who work, excel and get into college.
The IRS says that most students won't have to pay much under the new rules. Well, if it's not that much, then perhaps the tax collectors should put their hands back in their own pockets. They shouldn't worry though; once graduation time rolls around, most college graduates get jobs that pay taxes through the nose.
Van Jenerette for the editorial board
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board.
Other Voices
Court decision contradicts education
Society has set all kinds of age limits, assuming that age and maturity are always synonymous. They aren't.
District or Kuhine
maturity are a ways' study. The Supreme Court case — Hazelwood School District vs. Kuhlmeier
would be used for this argument.
The case arose in 1983 when Robert Reynolds, principal at Hazelwood East High School, refused to allow publication of stories dealing with teen-age pregnancy and how children deal with divorce.
Reynolds and the court argued that the stories were written during a journalism class, so the paper wasn't free to run the stories. By denying publication of the stories, Reynolds, in essence, was contradicting the intent of education.
The Daily Nebraskan University of Nebraska-Lincoln
News staff
Alison Young. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Editor
Todd Cohen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Managing editor
Rob Knapp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . News editor
Alan Player. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Editorial editor
Joseph Rebello. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Campus editor
Jennifer Rowland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Planning editor
Anne Luscombe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sports editor
Stephen Wade. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Photo editor
Richard Stewart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Graphics editor
Tom Ebel. . . . . . . . . . . . General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Kelly Scherer...Business manager
Clark Massad...Retail sales manager
Brad Lenhart...Campus sales manager
Robert Hughes...Marketing manager
Kurt Messersmith...Production manager
Greg Knipp...National manager
Kris Schorno...Traffic manager
Kimberly Coleman...Classified manager
Jeanne Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
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NOTICE:
DUE TO THE INSISTENCE OF THE EDITORS OF THE DAILY KANSAN TO PRINT AN OVERABUNDANCE OF STORIES RELATING TO CONDOMS. WE FEEL THAT THE FOLLOWING NAME CHANGE IS TIMELY AND APPROPRIATE.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY CONDOM Fri day JAN 8, 1974
VOL 9V 92
UBS 6.97
Experts agree: condoms could've prevented this.
Basketball era ends at 55 games
KU should shake off the loss and think about streaks to come
treak dies at 55.
S break uses at 35. Fifty-five games of Allen Field House inhospitality ended Saturday. Kansas State beat Kansas 72-61.
Those fans that stayed on the single-note death knell of the final horn looked through blank eyes at the scoreboard like hard-luck stockbrokers looking at the electronic ticker tape after Black Monday. It took a moment to realize that it was too late for a rally.
We knew the Wildkittens had been hot, but I suspect that most of us smugly relied on home-court magic to pull the Jayhawks through. We yelled and screamed and tried to do our part, but nothing helped. Teams have bad days; perhaps hostile home crowds do, too.
The loss was a landmark of sorts for the KU Class of '88, whose members had attended home games for four seasons and never seen the Javahwks lose. Thousands of KU students
The 'Cats played the better game, and they got what they deserved: the victory and the honor of breaking the longest home-court collegiate winning streak in the nation.
But that kind of rationalization does little to help matters. So for those who watched 5-10 turn painfully to 5-1 and cared, perhaps a round of "Shake it off"'s would help.
Despite the anguish of losing to a traditional rival, it's better in a way that K-State did the dirty work and killed the Streak. What kind of feeling would we have been left with if Hampton, or a team of similar obscurity, had come into the field house and caught us on an unspeakably bad night?
Rob Knapp News Editor
watched their team lose in person for the first time
When it was over, as the K-State players and cheerleaders led a relatively restrained celebration near the scorer's table, my roommate turned to me and asked with a straight face, "Is this when the world ends?"
Perhaps he took it a little hard. But when the phone calls from his friends in Manhattan began to descend on him like wadded-up newspapers at the end of the visiting team's introduction, I realized that he had more of a personal stake in KU·K-State games than I did.
Shake it off, Steve. Shake it off, all of you distraught Jayhawk fans. We'll get 'em at Ahearn.
Post-game interviews were a new challenge for the players. Talking to reporters in the home locker room had always consisted of explaining how to keep up intensity during a blowout or marvelling at how everything fell into place during a late rally.
After losses, the words come tougher.
After tossing the wrist three times, Jeff Gueldner, whose three-point shooting kept K-State within sight until the final 2 minutes, tried to keep the Death of the Streak in perspective.
"Sure, that means a lot to everybody." Guild-
ner said. "But more than that, it's another loss in the Big Eight, and we've got to fight through that."
Kevin Pritchard played a shaky game, and he sounded a little shaky on the radio. "I really feel bad more for Danny and Pipe, those guys that have been very nice to me," I know how much it meant to them," he said.
Pritchard assessed his own performance in one short sentence. "I blame the game on myself."
Shakur off. Kevin. We'll need you Wednesday night against the Soprans.
Shake it off, Danny, Pipe and everybody else who helped build the Streak. KU basketball fans appreciate what you have done.
And despite the "No cheering in the press box" maxim that goes, with covering sports, reporters for a university newspaper sometimes find it hard to forget that they cheered at KU games long before they began writing about them.
No one wanted to write the story that appeared on page 13 yesterday.
Frank Hansel didn't want to write it three seasons ago. Matt Tidwell didn't want to the season after that.
I didn't want to write the story last season. I missed the opportunity by a few inches, the same few inches by which Oklahoma's Tim McCalister missed a three-point basket at the horn. Elaine Sung, writing only her second game story about a game at Allen Field House, got the dismal honor. Shake it off. Elaine. Saturday was the excep-
lion, not the rule.
Rub Knapp is a Tulsa, Okla., senior majoring in
K A N S A N MAILBOX
Rhetoric fans the fire
I am extremely disturbed by some of the rhetoric in recent letters and guest columns about the current situation in Israel and the West Bank. Everything is blamed on the Jews as if they were a homogeneous mass working together, without any help from the rest of the world, to destroy the Palestinian people.
It should be apparent that the Jews are not a homogeneous mass whose goal is the destruction of the Palestinian people, that violence has been and is occurring on both sides, and that it is not only the Israeli army causing problems for Palestinians. As I write this, the Sabra wa Shatil refugee camps in Lebanon, where Lebanese Christian militia slaughtered so many people a few years ago, is ringed with Syrian troops who are not exactly there for the residents' benefit.
The situation in the Middle East — in Lebanon, in Gaza and the West Bank, and in the Iran-Iraq war — is extraordinarily complicated and is causing immense human suffering. Self-righteous rhetoric and casting all members of a major religion as the villains can only make things worse. If Zeta Mattioni-Najib
wants the United States to cut down its foreign aid to Israel because of the Israeli army's recent actions, that is her right, and it is a proper subject for debate. But casting her side of the debate in inflammatory rhetoric increases the already high level of paranoia on all sides, leading to further violence.
In fact, both Palestinians and Israelis want the same thing — land and peace. Until each side can recognize at least some legitimacy in the other's claims there will be no peace. The rhetoric needs to cool down considerably for this to happen.
Judy Roitman
conference of mathematics
Shop and sell classes
I am torn by the debate over the add-drop period. As a faculty member, the issue presents real dilemmas. I am always concerned and uneasy about students who, in the past, have joined class three or four weeks after the semester begins. Student educational experience is hampered. Getting other student's notes, reading assigned materials and catching up on missed assignments never really compensates for the missed classroom experience. It also results in a kind of waiting game for myself; holding back key content until everyone is on board.
On the other side of the dilemma is the notion of the student as a consumer. I believe that is a legitimate issue. Students should have some opportunity to "shop" for classes and teachers,
since content and teaching competence clearly interest. Looking for courses of genuine interest, teachers who can entertain as well as enlighten, and educational experiences that forward one's goals seems legitimate. To assume all of the "shopping" has to do with easy classes or easy grades is condescending and, I would guess, largely in error.
The dilemma is not easily solved. I have one idea that might be worth thinking about. Treat the first week of classes as a "shopping period." The classes can be focused on an overview of the course, opportunities for students to question course objectives, goals and requirements, and faculty "selling" students on the course. Attendance, assignments and evaluations would be ignored during this period. Once this period passes, both faculty and students can begin in earnest the educational process.
I know some courses may already be content overloaded, but most creative faculty can find educationally sound compromises. I am reluctant to suggest another outcome, but it may be the case that some poorly taught courses may drop by the wayside. So, I would recommend a two-week add-drop period, the first week of which is designed as a consumer "shopping" period. Students enrolling during the second week will know that they take some risk of missing essential materials, and faculty can get to the business of serious teaching earlier.
Professor of Social Welfare
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed