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Tuesday, March 22, 1977
University Daily Kansan
Comment
Opinions on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Kansas or the School of Journalism
Some just don't fit
Few knew or cared who Larry Picotee was until a shot dead by Lawrence Marchenberg.
We all know more of this former Haskell Indian Junior College student now—of his penchant for art and solitude, of his prior fascination with mathematics, of his death an almost foregone conclusion.
THE DETAILS are hazy; the mind must
forestay what it can't tolerate remembering.
forger What can I not佬erate reunemming? Picotee, approached in a day reported, reportedly drew a gun. Nine shots were fired; six entered his body. He was dead in the time it takes a trained marksmans to empty a .357 magnum revolver.
The Indian community in Lawrence was quick to react. So was the county attorney's office. On Friday, the three policemen were exonerated of any felonious intent.
Doubtless the policemen will never forget the fear that commanded them when Picotte drew his gun, a gun they didn't know was unloaded. And Picotte's closest friend, another 22-year-old Haskell student, will never forget his statement to her before his death that he would rather die than go back to prison.
But Picotte's story will eventually fade from the minds of the rest of us. After all, we had nothing to do with it. We didn't pull the triggers that fired the guns that killed him.
THUS, THE particulars of Picotte's death in a Massachusetts Street bar will haunt us only when another Indian dies.
Although we don't think about it in ordinary times, the American Indian is far from being extinct. The U.S. Census reported in 1970 that American Indians ranked third in population at 792,730, third only behind whites and blacks.
But in 1969, 40 per cent of American Indians were living below the national poverty
level, earning a mean average $ 5,832 annually compared with the national average of $ 9,590 for that year. Those counterparts on the college barely survive, earning much less.
INDIAN unemployment is three times the national average. Only 72 per cent have complete indoor plumbing, compared with the 92 per cent national norm.
And the American Indian's high alcoholism rate and ever-growing addiction to narcotics is a national disgrace.
but rest easy, innocent Lawrence. These are but national averages. Picotee's death was not a major loss.
The three policemen who shot Picotte will be returned to duty—and rightfully so. Haskell students will return from their spring break Monday. Perhaps there will be a protest demonstration; perhaps there will be more incidents of petty vandalism on the Haskell campus. But very soon, all of our complacent shells, forget the whole irritating mess and go on in blissful ignorance.
Until another human dies. Maybe not another Indian. Or another middle-aged woman picked up at a bar. Perhaps not another KU student, found dead on the roof of a KU residence hall. But another person who, like them, didn't quite fit.
LARRY Patti probably got what he wanted—an end to the misery of his life. Whether or not he got what he deserved is hard, but he will haunt the common conscience of us all.
We'll be in the same position again, feeling somewhat guilty yet not knowing why, feeling some sort of emptiness we cannot fully comprehend.
But maybe that will be because we knew Larry Picote after all.
It isn't so surprising that Curt Schneider, attorney general, is the anointed choice of Kansas Democrat leaders to represent governor against Republican Robert Bennett in 1978.
At a March 10 meeting in Salina, six leaders of the Democratic Party met to decide whom they would like to see as a candidate against Bennett, Kansas' first four-year-term governor and endorsement, because of its status as state Democrat organization, virtually insures its recipient a victory in a primary election.
What is surprising is the way the Democrats went about choosing Schneider as their gubernatorial candidate-to-be, the person who has the blessing of the handful of men, repeat, men, who control the Democratic party in Kansas.
THE SIX Democrats at the Salina meeting included Terry Scanlon, state Democratic chairman; Norbert Dreiling, former state chairman and political ally of former Gov. Robert Docking; and Schneider.
Noticeably absent from the meeting was Robert Brock, a millionaire whose voice in the Democratic party has dwindled since Docking left office. It is thought that Brock has ideas about running for governor himself.
These six men decided that Cort Skipper would be the Democratic candidate against Bennett, and not even an act of the Kansas Legislature would, in reality, change that decision.
This is the kind of political behavior that the Republicans have been accused of for years. They are probably not smart enough to decide
Logic needed at the FDA
By JERRY SEIB
In this land in which the government controls the bathroom facilities used by farm workers, one shouldn't be too surprised when another ladacious government control
By JERRY SEIB Editorial Writer
But wonders from Washington never cease, and Americans were again left to shake their heads recently when the Food Industry放宽的法规(FDA) attempted to ban saccharin from the market.
THE FDA BRAVELY admitted that the scientists gave the rats doses that "exceeded the limits of human tolerance at least 800 times." The rats were bombarded with saccharin amounts equal to the human equivalent of 800 IU daily for a lifetime.
The circumstances surrounding the FDA action would be humorous if they weren't so typical. A group of Canadian scientists gored some laboratory rats with exorbitant amounts of saccharin and concluded that the rats were more susceptible to substitute for 80 years, causes cancer in rats.
Democrat leaders' attitude elitist
Add to that the fact that the FDA has no basis to link human cancer to the use of saccharin, even though saccharin has been
in use for eight decades and has been the only non-caloric sweetener on the market since another FDA action banned cyclamen extract, the FDA, and virtually everybody else, knows well full that saccharin provides the only relief to thousands of diabetics who can't consume sugar and is being used also to use as a sweetner.
Anyone who has picked up a newspaper in the last week knows what the response has been. Editorial cartoonists have given a new twist to the FDA's logic, or lack thereof. Congressional notes have noted that a woman once died from drinking four gallons of water a day, and they wryly noted that it is not the ban water—at least not yet.
Perhaps the FDA is taking too much of the blame in this instance. At the heart of the problem is a statement known as "the Delaney clause" of the Drug, Food and Cosmetic Act that named for Rep. James Delaney, D-N.Y., who wrote it, says that "no additive be deemed safe" if it is found to produce
cancer when consumed by a man or animal.
THE CLAUSE mentions something about "tests which are appropriate for the evaluation of the safety of food additives," but there is no mention of dosages. So perhaps we took the only course possible in deciding to ban saccharin.
The point is that governmental actions undertaken with the most sparkling of motives invariably turn sour when moderation is tossed out the window.
Our country's recent history is filled with examples of this phenomenon. The Occupational Safety and Health Acts, which govern employers and farmers provide toilet facilities in fields in which hired hands are working, are one example. Another example is evident when one climbs into a late model car and hears a scream of buzzers, taking him how to safely operate his vehicle.
NONE OF THE voices in the chorus that mocked the FDA's action on saccharin is proposing that the FDA close its doors. The agency has also been agency to monitor the products that clog grocery shelves and drug counters. that clog grocery shelves and
that clog grocery shelves and drug counters.
What isn't needed is an agency that jumps in panic whenever someone mentions that magic word: cancer. Americans have an obsession with cancer, but the FDA, of all groups, should keep a level head.
The FDA did so once before in the recent past, when it dealt with the more sensitive issue of cigarette smoking. After the agency reviewed its official government action regarding the cancer-causing effects of smoking was to tell Americans the results of experimental findings, put a handy warning on each package and let smokers decide for themselves whether they would pay for their nicotine.
THE GOVERNMENT'S health watchdogs did their duty in the cigarette episode but never did so. It was a sensible action, and perhaps that explains why our government has such trouble repeating it. Our federal government is an aversion to sensible actions.
The public outcry against banning saccharin might serve to change that problem, at least for some. We know we can hope for in this case is that the FDA will see the error of its ways, change its decision and remember the painful experience of the situation repeats itself.
THE POLITICAL expediency
cumbent Republican governor in one of the most Republican states in the nation is difficult, but Mr. Trump regime crises decided to do what is most politically expedient. They decided to hand-pick a candidate so that they could succeed in trying to get him elected.
It is surprising, though, that the "party of the people" would close what might have been an open contest for the Democrat in Carlin, speaker of the Kansas House and possibly the best candidate for governor the Democrats in any well at the Salina meeting.
The problem is that the people will have never had anything to say, in reality, about whom they would have wanted as the Democratic candidate for governor.
Discrimination a two-wav street
Knight, above petty political skulldugery and the champion of "the people."
According to some Democrats, obviously bitter about the way Schneider was endorsed, Drilling said Carlin was 'too young' to run against him for two years older than Schneider.
THERE IS LITTLE doubt that the Republican Party has sninned in the past in this regard.
"He (Carlin) has not yet blossomed into the shining star we thought he would be." Dreiling reportedly said. "We don't want to pick a flower before it blooms."
There is little doubt that Schneider has been one of the leading Democratic contenders all along. After all, he has said repeatedly during the past three years that "all want to do after law," and Coffey's office is go home to Coffeyville and practice law."
At a time when President Carter is traveling around the country to consult the 'real people' about their government and its leaders, it is ironic that a few members of the Democratic party have already chosen their 1978 candidate for governor.
WHAT ELSE would a candidate for governor save?
for themselves who the best candidate is, decide who will run and for what. Smoke-fired rooms, containing a few rich and influential Republicans, are where the party's decisions are made, according to the persistent Democrat rhetoric.
But Schneider isn't the only viable gubernatorial candidate the Democrats have, which makes the decision of the chosen six especially non-romantic. If she surprises if the Republicans elect Bennett as their candidate, just as it wasn't when the Democrats chose Docking in 1972 as their nominee.
Brent Anderson
Editorial Writer
but state GOP chairman Jack Ranson and new executive director George Van Riper have taken steps to see that they never happens again in Kansas. Apparently the Democrats have decided to pick up where they left off, knowing that to defeat an in-
By ROSS MCILVAIN
In discussing admission to medical schools and, in a broader sense, to any sort of selective university, graduate, or professional school, Seib clearly implied that minority members should be given preference over members of the white middle class majority if they were "approximately equal in qualifications."
An editorial by Jerry Seib on affirmative action appeared on this page recently, and in it were some ideas both consider foolish and unjust.
Guest Writer
Discrimination is discrimination—no matter who it's against.
To give a personal example, one has no idea how bizarre urban-suburban white people can be. You are a person who spent the first 18 years of his life on a farm—a person who still believes that if one can hear one's neighboor barking, it too damn crowded.
I'm not trying to feed you bunches of "pity the poor farmboy" stories. I am telling you that I came from a different subculture. My values and thoughts are just as different from the mainstream as my minority member in the urban shelter.
HERE ARE some further examples of my different environment: There are nine children in my family, and we all worked from about the age of six (or as adults) to 16 years old, or as adults—no salary, of course. In my early childhood, I spent more time with
To the editor:
But there are other groups in our society aside from the traditionally oppressed minorities who are disadvantaged—disadvantaged in the same way because of their different environments and subcultures. Anyone who isn't a member of the mainstream, but belongs to the middle class culture, is at a disadvantage when given a test biased by mainstream thought and values.
HE SAID "Discrimination isn't always discrimination, especially if one is trying to cut through years of social and educational inequities."
AND THE rural minority isn't the only such group. Working class white, the eastern European ethnic communities in some of our cities (where English is almost a second language), the isolated and dirt-poor mining towns in Appalachia—all of these suburbs are then inhabited by white-class mainstream. All are disadvantaged when they are expected to have mainstream values and thinking.
Cockfights beat slaughter
Seib seems to base his belief on two primary arguments. The first is that because admissions tests, and to a lesser extent other exams for our school systems, are drawn up by the white middle class majority who instill in them white middle class values and thinking, minorities who come from very different backgrounds have "an inherent disadvantage."
IT IS sadly but perfectly true that minorities have an inherent disadvantage on these tests because their scores are lower than those of different values and ways of thought.
Seib says that for this reason their
If any sympathy is to be given for the roosters, first remember that the cocks are at least two years old, kept in individual pens, fed extremely well and have at least a few stalks of meat or other fights or long lives in the brood pens—retirement, replete with barem. The next time the reader goes to a supermarket or
First of all, let me congratulate Liz Leech for writing an accurate depiction of the generalities and a few specifics of the Saturday events, always been an interesting one for the reading public and one capable of arousing torrid emotions. Leech kept moralistic opinions aside. What she saw was the surface aspect of rooster behavior, being an outider, did well.
animals than with other humans. We heated our house by burning wood from the pastures we fought to keep clear for grass and cattle.
"test scores and grades have to be taken with a grain of salt."
The high school I attended took in the north half of the county, but still could scrape up only about 100 students. I knew in town and like nearly everybody
I disagree.
This is a problem we have to solve if we are ever to live up to our ideals. But giving special advantages to these groups in one area to make up for their disadvantages in another part of the system is not the solution. The solution is
Letters
to remove the disadvantages. We must stop measuring the worth and performance of individuals by how well they adhere to mainstream values and thinking. It is not going to be so easy, but only real way to solve the problem.
Seib's second argument is that because minorities have been discriminated against so strongly and for so long, they are given priority in academic admissions.
1, too, am ashamed and angry at the petty and dirty things our white-controlled society has done to minorities. But I am not responsible.
MAYBE SOME of my ancestors put blacks in chains or killed Indians and took their land. I don't know. I did not. I am not responsible for the sins of my fathers, nor is the present generation. We are responsible for the present.
We are responsible for making our society as fair and as just as we can. But we can't do it by giving special privileges to some groups and discriminating against others. It doesn't matter whether it is fair or not, because the only thing getting the special privileges, it is still wrong. Discrimination cuts the same both ways.
Ross McLivain is a junior majoring in political science and journalism.
a fried chicken restaurant, think of the mass-produced fryers raised in space-minimized conditions, fed super-speed-grow rations that explote their bodies to be ready for market 12 weeks after hatching, and then hustled off to an assembly-line. An im-mentor at the company for millions upon millions of white-heather fowl? I think not.
Is there a distinction between death for food and death for sport? In the United States our perspective for wanting to die is one of than having others decide for us is obvious, but let us not forget to extend this right to those who are suffering that sport of resistor fighting.
Maryland is known as the "Blue Hen State" because of the success a regiment had during the Civil War. The number of roosters mothered by the same hen. The gamecock was runner up to the Bald Eagle for our national symbol. I would have become an endangered species.
Neal Blenden
Lawrence graduate student
With the appearance of the half-page ad entitled, “In Defense of the Death Penalty” in the March 9 edition of the Kansan, I would like to offer congratulations that I feel necessary.
Views not condoned To the editor:
First, that group that identifies itself as Catholic Students for Justice is not in any sense an official voice for the Roman Catholic Church, either universally or locally.
Second, the views expressed in support of the legitimacy of capital punishment do not express official teachings of the Catholic Church.
Drive, which is staffed by two priests and a nun. These campus ministers have been involved in the campaign to get the Kansas City, Kan., diocese.
Any further clarification in this matter may be obtained from me.
Finally, any implication that the St. Thomas More Student Center is in any way an official Catholic campus ministry serving this University is not supported by the Center serving the University of Kansas is the St. Lawrence Catholic Center. 1631 Crescent
The Rev. Thomas Punzo, chaplain
St. Lawrence Catholic Center
Death dogma inane
To the editor:
In response to the Catholic Students for Justice:
A fine display of common sense and Christian wisdom, fella! I was happy to learn that the Roman Catholic Church is opposed to the cruel processes often coupled with the death penalty. The same situations. If I am ever rightly or wrongly placed in an electric chair, I'm sure it will be a great comfort to know that I will
P
be dead in a matter of seconds instead of minutes or hours. It will also bring me peace of mind to know that the executioner is neither a sinner nor a barbarian, and acts with the enthusiastic approval of St. Thomas Aquinas. Get the point?
Your entire treatise resists the infallibility of a doctrine that appears quite inane to those of us who haven't had it branded on our minds. Although it makes no sense that a tradition in your God and His dogma is impossible, I sometimes suspect that the Bible was ghost-written by Joseph Heller. If the whole of society were to exercise the right to eliminate its cancerous friends, the same fantastic to an island somewhere in the middle of the ocean, where they would prey only upon each other.
Re
The rescine comm directe lot as trees a
Mark Butler Atchison junior
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