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Tuesday, May 1, 1990 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Flag-burning again
Old issue sees resurgence in Kansas Legislature as legislators jump on false political bandwagon
Editor's note: Unlike the Kansas Legislature, the Kansas editorial board does not have time to rehash the flag-burning issue that was brought up again last week and has passed the House and Senate, both in special session, costing the taxpayers extra money. Consequently, the board has decided to rerun its flag-burning editorial, which appeared Sept. 15, 1989 and Feb. 27, 1990.
ere they go again.
ignites such a situation. There are better things to worry about. In case of billion-dollar budget deficits and the reappraisal issue, is this the only thing the legislature can find to do?
Here they go again. It's time for someone to blow out the flame before this flag-burning issue ignites further.
constitutional rights of symbols
The representatives think that by voting for
legislature, we educated public should get worried when our representatives jump on a bandwagon that promises to do little but ride straight over our constitutional rights of symbolic sneech.
an anti-flag-mutilation bill they will be gaining votes when they run for re-election. If they think we want our rights to be restricted because of the recent flag-burning furor, so be it. But that kind of pandering to poorly thought-out public opinion deserves to be punished.
issued.
representative who votes for a bill or amendment that would restrict our rights to any kind of speech should be re-elected.
Period.
Granted, burning a flag may offend some people. That's the point of burning a flag. It may be immature, but it's symbolic speech and it's protected by the First Amendment.
and it's proof
A bunch of protesters may not have much better to do than set fire to a flag, but we should hope that our representatives in Topeka have more to worry about than what those protesters are doing.
p. Maybe someday this issue will burn itself out.
The editorial board
Briefly stated
Two home, six to go. One by one U.S hostages are being released by their Middle East captives. The hands-off policy in dealing with terrorists has proved to be the effective way in bringing home innocent citizens. Once all hostages are home, then the possibility of normal relations with Middle East nations can exist.
It's time to stop paying attention to what Mark Creamer has to say. Last week Creamer was found guilty of possession of marijuana for a September incident in which he smoked a marjijuana cigarette at the Douglas County Judicial & Law Enforcement Building. He now has announced his candidacy for the U.S. Congress. He has generated much attention, but wise people should not support him.
Looks wasteful
Recycling more important than Union aesthetics
B because the bins for aluminum cans are not aesthetically pleasing,some people say, we should not worry about recycling.
cling.
According to officials at the Kansas Union,
the two recycling bins in the Union, which
some students did not know existed, are
enough. If there were more, the Union, in its
beauty, would be desecrated.
Octavia O'Dea, a custodian in the Union,
said she picked up nearly 100 empty aluminum
cans a day. Obviously the two bright yellow
bins in the TV room and the Jaybowl are not
enough — at least not where they are.
It will not be convenient to recycle in the near future. It will take a little effort. It may also take some not-so-authetic bins in places that aesthetes, such as James Long, director of the Unions, and Jeff Morris, former student body vice president, deem unpleasant.
Recycling aluminum is just a small part of acting locally to save our environment. We should concentrate on the existing effort to recycle aluminum rather than invoking a sanctimonious defense of beauty and obstructing the efforts of those who care.
Liz Hueben for the editorial board
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Reaction disturbs
As a former KU civil rights activist during the 70s and a vice chairman of Lawrence Congress On Racial Equality (CORE) during 1964-65, I was somewhat dismayed by the strength of the reaction at the student where a student insulted a Black woman at a KU fraternity house. It brought to mind an incident from my past.
in 1987, my parents and I moved to Port Arthur, Texas, which still maintained a segregated school system, and I enrolled in Thomas Jefferson High School as a sophomore. In September of that year, President Elaine McCain ordered Little Rock to enforce a desegregation order and the event galvanized racist elements in my school.
During wood shop one day, I learned that a Black high school student was alleged to have insulted a white girl in the neighboring town of Orange. First reports were that he had called her names but the story soon escalated into a physical assault and eventually into attempted rape. By the next morning, talk was all over the school of the need to protect "our" women and wood shop began producing an ample supply of billy clubs on the wood latte.
Groups of students congregated around cars after school and everybody laughed when someone fashioned a noose, which they tied
to the front bumper of someone's 1949 Plymouth. Another student brought a pistol to school. The consensus was that something needed to be done.
Fortunately, the affair blew over without trouble. Aside, from the race of the principals involved, the offense proved trivial, and there were no professional agitators about to keep it infiltrated; advancements in the law never over-ventured the experience was one that eventually led to my own commitment to the civil rights movement three years later.
The issues that caught my attention at the time were the unfairness of applying a different standard to individuals because of their race and the sense of entitlement that comes from victimization. It has been my experience that most of the crimes committed by one person are, rightly or wrongly, "because of what they did to us." In small children this is expressed as, "He hit me first!"
When I learned of the KU incident I was taken with the similarities of the two cases, and it really made me stop and think. Outrage, indignation and demand from a group of people were here forPerhaps we haven't come as far as I had thought, or perhaps we've gone full circle.
There is an idea afoot today that racism is so terrible that no matter what it takes to uproot it, the ends justify the means. But there is a paradox when the means are merely another form of racism. What is eliminated is not racism, but only certain manifestations, a kind of counter-racism, if you will, which merely switches the places of victims and victimizers rather than bringing victimization itself
to an end.
to an end.
George Bernard Shaw once said, "It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars, that, breed their own kind."
I think this is true with all intolerant, crusading and moralizing movements against specific vitals. In the process of driving the demons of bigotry and prejudice from the land, it might be wise to drive them from their deepest soil to accept new seeds and abet yet another round of recriminations and persecution.
The answer to extremism is not more extremism, but rather to show a better way. I thought we had learned that lesson.
Laird Wilcox Former KU student
Gay awareness
Why do the activists in the gay community care about what the public thinks? Do they honestly think that most people actually care about gay peoples' sex lives? Or anyone else's for that matter? And why should anyone in this country be subjected to hearing about one special interest groups sex life? I really can't think of anything less appealing on foist my spirit upon on or expel those private life to the world. Who would care? It's only of interest to my partner and myself. No one else needs to know or be concerned. I don't believe that mature individuals, no matter that sexual orientation, need to
nave public attention, or put on public displays of a sexual nature. Leave it at home.
Can you imagine a parade of people holding banners proclaiming slugs of blatant heterosexuality? No one would show up! How about a Clothes If You're Straight Day? How anisine can you get? These activities mainly are an attempt by people who have an identity problem to get attention.
I'm not homophobic, whatever that means, but I like the sound of it. It's a great buzz word like "liberally" or "conservative." Just because I simply couldn't care less who sleeps with whom doesn't mean I conduce homosexuality. don't, but it just isn't an issue. As a matter of fact, I believe most people consider it a non-issue, even more mature members of the gay community. It's not as gay people as a group are virgilege or financial downright. If they are, I might be inclined to listen. As it is, I am sick and tired of hearing a bunch of whinners complaining about how badly they are treated. What a bunch of crap. Quit wasting time and resources on such trivial matters as your personal life. If I want a soa opera, I'll watch TV.
All the energy that is directed into making gay activism an issue could be concentrated on making life a little easier for those people with real problems. Starvation, homelessness and potable water are real issues in the U.S., but I guess that would require real commitment and desire to become a part of the solution and not one of the whinners.
Lawrence Junior
Ken Kirklin
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Other Voices
Analysts are just getting down to reading all the fine print in the massive Clean Air bill. As one might expect, lawmakers have tucked in all kinds of perks or exemptions for species and species amendments are udderly a-moosing. Take, for example, the section on cow exemptions.
Cows exempt (burp) from clean air bill
Cows, like other creatures, generate stomach gas. They burp and make other noises because of that. Cows give the gas is released, it called methane.
But farmers don't have to worry, because the U.S. Senate has wisely exempted cows and other farm animals from the requirements of the Clean Air Act.
(No, we are not making this up.) Congressional Quarterly reports that the bill, as originally reported out of committee, required a study of various sources of methane, including farm animals, which supposedly
are among the nation's largest producers of the gas.
As the Senate debated the measure, cows were granted an exemption. The move drew sarcastic comments from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who said without the exemption, cows would need catalytic converters to reduce emissions.
It is funny, but it is also an example of how silly federal regulators can get sometimes. What if the study had found that cows do produce huge amounts of methane? What could we possibly do about it? Put them on a low-gas diet? Issue cow-sized antacids? Or, as Grassley suggested, maybe we could install gas collectors or pollution control units on the cows.
This sort of silliness goes on too often in Washington, and it probably would be funnier if we weren't paying so much for it.
From the Flint (Mich.) Journal, April 20.
BY SCOTT PATTY
HOW ALL GRADUATES SHOULD DRESS FOR THE WALK DOWN THE
CAMCORDER TO REVIEW
WHAT YOU DON'T REMEMBER
THE NEXT DAY.
- ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES ARE NOT ALLOWED ON STATE PROPERTY. (Also, DON'T FORGET - GRADUATION IS ON A SUNDAY - BUY YOUR BOOZE EARLY.)