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Friday, March 8, 1991 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Freedom of speech
City instigates wrong answer to real problem; censorship won't stop racism of city officials
Chris Mulvenon, former representative for the Lawrence police department, has learned a lesson. The pen is mightier than the sword. And his pen caused his reassignment.
The city has taken steps to squelch discriminatory remarks, Archie Bunker attitudes and harmful stereotypes by implementing a five-point policy that addresses unacceptable behavior.
However, the first point of the policy requires that all articles written by city employees be filtered through city manager Mike Wildgen.
And this plants the first seeds of censorship.
Mulvenon wrote an article for the Fraternal Order of Police magazine in which he criticized a Wall Street Journal reporter who linked the deaths of several American Indians in Lawrence.
He wrote, "In truth, the only evidence pointing to a serial in the deaths was cereal malt beverage."
Common sense should have told him that the subject of murder was not a joke. And only Mulvenon knows whether his words
"cereal malt beverage" were intended only as a pun on the word "serial". But the American Indian community felt as though it was another example of racism.
Mulvenon's remarks were grossly insensitive. But the city should not limit city employees' freedom of speech. This sets a dangerous precedent.
Voices should be heard. Opinions should be expressed. To appoint Mike Wildgen the moral judge of city employees' written words will sanitize all viewpoints.
Perhaps William Allen White said it best,
"...you can have no wise laws nor free
enforcement of wise laws unless there is free
expression of the wisdom of the people —
and, alas, their folly with it. But if there is
freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and
the wisdom will survive."
If Mulvenon's article had been censored, yes, he still would have his job and yes, the city would not have suffered embarrassment. But censorship will not kill discrimination — it will slither underground.
The City Commission's five-point plan is one point in the wrong direction.
Elicia Hill and Jennifer Schultz for the editorial board
Suffering continues
Ground war may have been short, but damage to humans and environment will go on for years
T the ground war in the Persian gulf lasted only 100 hours, but the environmental damage and human suffering resulting from it may unfold for decades to come.
In Kuwait, 550 oil wells are burning out of control. Some may do so for more than two years. Smoke from the infernos is drifting toward India, threatening to diminish the monsoons that country's people rely upon. The rains that do fall will be tarnished by the pollution in them.
And sunlight available there and throughout the hemisphere will be cut some as it filters through smoke particles trapped in the jet stream.
The long-term effects on citizens of Iraq and Kuwait have begun with a cholera
outbreak caused by a lack of water and working sewers. Photos of Kuwait City have shown the beginning stages of widespread starvation.
In the gulf itself, the water is thick with oil, the very substance that was fought over during the past seven months. Marine life is expected to suffer for decades, and some never will recover.
The Iraqi and allied nations unwittingly have provided the following lesson to future warring nations: War costs no longer can include only body counts and equipment losses. No longer can battlefields be cleaned and cities rebuilt within months or even years.
Rich Cornell for the editorial board
Editorials reflect the opinion of the University Dally Kansan editorial board. Editorials appear in a box on the left edge of the page. Editorials reflect the majority opinion of the board but not necessarily the opinion of the signed author.
Opinions expressed in guest and staff columns and cartoons are solely those of the author or artist. Views expressed in columns and cartoons are not necessarily shared by the Kansan.
Bill overburdens bar owners with impossible responsibility
Wint Winter Jr. wants to make bouncers into baby sitters.
The state senator introduced a bill last week that would make bar owners accountable for things that happen within 1,000 feet of their establishments. The bill appears to be his response to neighborhood residents who dislike the throbbing, gray building known this month as the Power Plant.
Some solution. Bar owners throughout Lawrence are fretting because their interpretation of the bill calls for them to control every random party down the block. But Winter said last week that an owner would need to keep in check only those who had been in the bar that night. And the law would pertain only to dangerous activities.
That makes it easier on the bars. Bouncers could ask patrons as they entered the bar whether they intended to create danger havez that night. If so, the bouncer would ask, would have wreaked in the establishment, within 1,000 feet of it, or in another neighborhood? Appropriate action could be taken on a case by case basis.
I hope the bill fails. Bar owners have enough trouble taking care of their patrons while they sit in the bar. Why and how should they take care of them when they stop off at a convenience store for chips?
But if the bill does make it through the Legislature, Winter's concession to include only that night's patrons makes sense. No one should be held accountable for what goes on in my Oread apartment.
Managing editor
Rich Cornell
If bar owners were responsible for dangerous situations, a Power Plant representative would be sent to my house. Even the kitchen sink is dangerous.
Upon arrival at the sink, the unfortunate representative presents oatmeal sealing a breakfast bowl to a glass. A banana peel is plained across the left drain. A sour odor emanates from a limp dishrag.
And the barkeep is supposed to tell my roommates and me to clean up our mess. While at it, the barkeep might as well question our hygiene habits and choice of television programming.
Foolish? Yes, to most of us. But the state, as usual, is at least one step ahead of the rest of us. As it prepares a plan to prevent danger near bars, it reaches for the throat of education.
Just Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee told the Board of Regents that spending in its fiscal 1992 budget, if approved by the full Legislature, would be cut by $40 million while tuition increased by $7 million.
Perhaps the cuts are needed to shift revenue spending to non-educational matters, as ensuring that bar owners baby-sit their neighbor's children can get from the change. Those who will suffer from the loss of Career Work
Study, the statewide off-campus program matching Regents students and local employees, could join up with other institutions. Bar, Tavern and Tavern Work Study
Money for the program would come from bar owners and the Regents budget. Students would study by day and prevent dangerous behavior from taking place near bars by night. A model of capitalism.
Meanwhile, the state slogs onward. New roads are being built under the belief that corporations will wait in line to set up shop in Kansas once comprehensive road improvements are completed. Especially attractive to lawmakers and business leaders is the telemarketing industry, consid- ered as one of the fastest revival of Kansas' economy. It seems that someone told them that customers preferred the neutral dialect found here.
Maybe the executives and their neutral-speaking employees won't notice that the state considers bar neighborhood behavior a more pressing concern than affordable, quality educations for those who frequent them. The corporations and their employees are less likely to Kansas' economy and tax base will grow, returning more money to education.
Until then, behave near bars. And be sure to give your legislator's name and telephone number to every telemarketer who calls you. Our friends deserve to know their plans are shaping the state as they envision it.
- Rich Cornell is an Olathe senior majoring in journalism.
Padre or Lawrence? It's not an easy choice, is it?
Hands up, all those who are going away for spring break. Actually you don't have to put your hair down because it's pretty obvious anyway.
You are the ones with the smug expressions on your faces and the clothes two sizes too big because you have been spending every available moment losing weight for your spring debut in swimwear.
You are the girls with that faint trace of a sunbed session — or 20 — squeezed in between those aerobic sessions and hair appointments.
Well, let's face it, there's nothing more tragic than a girl with a sauce-pan haircut and huge rolls of white, fatty flesh stuffed optimistically into a micro-bikini trying to find holiday romance in Cancun.
You are the guys who have been spotted down at the laundry for the first time this year washing your collection of fun t-shirts. What good idea is it to wear a particular color of "I am Only Here For The Book" "You So, Better Look."
Clare
McGinn
Staff columnist
After 20 Beers, "You Can Have Me For A Keg Of Beer" and "Sophistication Is — Beer With A Cherry In It"?
So, as you sit in class listening to yet another meaningless lecture from that boring old drone who has made your life hell since January, your thoughts drift naturally to your chance to escape from the irrelevances of school life. Spring break offers plenty of scope for the imagination and experience of eight-page paper on some academic twiddle and thoughts of beach games and serious drinking in Daytona, you know where your priorities lie.
And just in case people dismiss your week away in the sun as being
culturally and intellectually meaningless, you can direct them to the mental development that the traditional spring break offers the average student. For instance, any philosophy student struggling with the concept of nihilism can throw away Descartes and Fichte and point to the wet T-shirt contest as proof that life ultimately is meaningless.
As you probably have gathered by now, I am staying in Lawrence for spring break, and I'm not bitter about it. Oh no, my not. I don't resent those lucky scumbags who are heading toward sun-drenched beaches to frolic with gay abandon on golden sands, under azure skies, while dipping into the cool seas on a whim. I really don't hate, with a dark and poisonous venom, every person who will party the night away embroiled in a beautiful haze of alcoholic euphoria. Because I know that there are plenty of fun things to do in Lawrence — aren't there?
While some of you are out on mega-belly-burning sessions, lying
'Spring break offers plenty of scope for the imagination and, if it is a tosup between an eight-page paper on some academic twaddle and thoughts of beach games and serious drinking in Daytona, you know where your priorities lie.'
on the beach coming to terms with "the morning after the night before," we, in Lawrence, will be thinking of you — and hoping that freak blizzard conditions have set in and you have goose bumps similar to the Himalayan mountain range.
While you are out trying to marinade your liver in vast amounts of alcohol and dancing the night away, we, in Lawrence, will be heading down for one of those fun Campus Connection picnics to do wild and crazy stories like confess our sins, swap Bible stories and go for a spring break baptismal dunk in Clinton Lake.
Next week should be so much fun on campus. The residence halls will be closed so, for a whole week, we are
not going to have to hear horror stories about the strange concoctions served under the guise of food. I'm just amazed that people can eat so much chicken — chicken in a basket, chicken in a trash can, chicken in sweaty socks with a side salad, chicken in a cookie dish, fried chicken livers in Jayhawk boxer shorts and, for vegetarians, salad without the chicken.
And, as Lawrence has so much to offer the educated palate, spring break should be a veritable festival of eating for those of us left behind. In other words, go away to follow vulgar purge in will miss out on becoming members of KU's most exclusive club — the "God, I'd Eat anything Toe's Pig
Out And Be Decadent For a Week Gourmet Circle."
Finally, let us not forget the basketball. Right here in Lawrence, in the luxury of our own homes, parked in front of our television sets, with acres and softs of sofa to sit on, we can watch Kansas win the Big Eight title and there won't be a Bench Hog in sight - sheer bliss!
So, if you are going away to do fun things in sunny climbs for spring break — have a good time, but please tell me about it when you get back
If, like me, you intend to soak up the heady atmosphere of Lawrence with its unpredictable climate, its scintillating nightlife, its thrill-minute, devil-may-care, what-the-hell, let's-get-down-and-be-groovy atmosphere, then there will be a quilting session at my apartment next Wednesday. See you there!
Clare McGinn is a Belfast, Northern Ireland, exchange student majoring in American literature.
KANSAN STAFF
CHRIS SIRON
Editor
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
RICH CORNELL Managing editor
Imaging edits
AUDRA LANGFORD
Business manager
MINDI LUND
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JEANNE HINES
Sales and marketing adviser
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