OPINION
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
PUBLISHED DAILY SINCE 1912
CRAIG LANG, Editor MARK OZIMER, Business manager
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Tuesday, March 11, 1997
Editorials
Forced premarital counseling intrusive, invasion of privacy
College is a time to prepare for the future by getting ready for a job. For some students, preparing for the future includes meeting the person they will marry. But for those who plan to get married in Missouri, Michigan, Arizona or Florida, a test may be required first.
That's because legislators in these states want to make sure that your first marriage is also your last. The Show-Me state and others are enacting legislation that would require couples to show the state, through an approved marriage counselor, that they are truly compatible.
This is in response to the country's high divorce rate and all of the factors that follow such a split. Two such factors are the expense states must incur in tracking down deadbeat parents to pay child support and in supporting some newly single parents through welfare and Medicaid.
Some Missouri legislators want to make sure your first marriage is your last.
But welfare has already been cut, keeping the state from expending more on these people. Also, a large number of deadbeat parents were never married to their partners in the first place, so this bill would likely have little effect.
Besides that, this bill represents an invasion of privacy. Although most people would agree that the divorce rate is much too high, this does not mean that it is the state's job to correct the problem.
Marriage is a private institution, a covenant between two people who, ideally, plan to spend the rest of their lives together. For many couples, premarital
counseling could be beneficial. However, a state law to that effect is likely to lower people's receptiveness to any advice simply because it is perceived as being an intrusive formality. Although the proposed Missouri law would only require couples who didn't get the counselor's approval to wait 60 days to be married, the next step could be an outright ban on non-sanctioned partnerships.
If the Missouri law passes, other states are likely to follow suit, and some have. This level of intrusiveness is a threat to our rights to privacy. Because counselors have to be approved by the state, this bill would practically amount to having a state inspector question your love and commitment. And like some Missouri automobile inspectors, who will pass any car for enough money, this could ultimately be a field for corruption.
MEREDITH TOENJES FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
New Army standard is not solution
The U. S. Army is going to make more people eligible to be all they can be. But why?
Last week, the Army announced that it would allow people to enlist who have not received their high school diplomas. The number of people allowed to be in the Army without diplomas has risen from 5 percent to 10 percent, according to the Associated Press.
But recent problems the Army has faced need to be corrected before the standards to join are lowered.
At face value, this may seem like a good policy. Without a diploma, finding a stable job in the United States is next to impossible. These new eligibility terms could allow people who were not able to graduate from high school for whatever reason to have a second chance at employment. Experience in the Army then could help these people
The Army has other problems to solve before it lowers its criteria.
to either finish their education or find better employment opportunities, which may fit their qualifications.
But the Army doesn't seem to be doing this simply for the sake of giving more people job opportunities.
Two main issues that have gained considerable attention in the media, sexual harassment and the government's refusal to diagnose illnesses suffered by Gulf War veterans, are fueling the lowering of standards for recruitment.
Probably no one thinks that working in the Army is going to be a safe job without possibility of danger. But no one applies for a job to be sexually harassed, and no one wants to be lied to about what may be causing their illnesses.
The attractiveness of joining also is decreasing for women who don't want to be sexually harassed and people who are afraid of not knowing exactly what
dangers they will be exposed to.
If the Army truly wants to gain more recruits, severe problems in the organization need to be corrected. On the chance that the sexual harassment and other allegations happen to be false, a skeptical public needs to be convinced of their nonexistence.
Giving more people the opportunity for work is always a good thing. But if the working environment is unstable, then those open jobs aren't going to be filled.
But a simple boost in the amount of people who can be hired seems like a weak marketing ploy.
KANSAN STAFF
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Columns
College offers training useful for politicians
In his well-known essay, Robert Fulgrum contends that the basic tenets of peaceful human civilization — don't hit people, for example — are learned in our first year of school.
know to live,I learned
Fulgrum says all I needed to knn in kindergarten. But I've found that all I needed to know about politics. I've learned in college.
College is a great training ground for aspiring politicians, where the skills requisite to a successful political career are subtly pounded into your brain. Think back to your first college class and how hard you worked, perhaps even for a meager grade. Then look back to the last class you took and compare
them. You probably spent more time on the first class. This is the first rule of politics: never do more work than is absolutely necessary. This isn't efficiency. It is indulgence, and it abounds in academia.
In college you also learn to use more words than needed to express what you want to say. As William Jennings Bryan, an 1881 alumnus of the University of Illinois, once said, "Do not compute the totality of your poultry population until all the manifestations of incubation have been entirely completed." I'll bet the English faculty loved him. Well, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of idiocev.
If you use more words than necessary, it is hard for others to understand you. Thus, while people are trying to decode what you said, you have moved on to your next stream of drivel, and the result is total confusion. People tend to think that if they don't understand something, the fault is theirs. This is the second rule of politics: all blame, fault and responsibility must be shifted to someone else.
Good politicians, like academics, also use meaningless studies to make an obvious point. This practice refines the shift strategy to "qualified shifting." If you move the responsibility to an expert, say someone who holds a doctorate, then the likelihood that you will ever be doubted is "statistically insignificant," a favorite term of academics and politicians.
I discovered the value of qualified shifting when, as a sophomore, I realized the awesome power of the Ph.D. A distinguished professor was telling my class about the trouble he had pressing the small buttons on his watch to set it to daylight savings time. He said he solved the problem by buying another watch exactly like it, setting one of them an hour faster and alternating between the two. "When you have a Ph.D," he said, "you can figure these things out." It was a turning point in my educational career.
But at some point, even well-trained politicians run into situations where these normal obfuscations won't work. Here, the appropriate dodge strategy is one students see daily in class: the overly broad question or overly broad answer.
When discussion lulls, good politicians will ask a question that makes whomever has been speaking start again. Then the politician looks for other details to nitpick or simply nods as if everything is now perfectly clear. The speaker will then feel redeemed that he has explained it successfully and will not ask more questions to further confuse them.
If you are directly asked a question, you give an overly broad answer. The first thing you do here is praise the question. Because it doesn't take much of your brain to speak, you briefly task your cerebrum and begin to devise a usable answer. Next you can either broaden the issue into a topic you actually know something about or admit ignorance in the name of truth. "Well," you would say when employing the latter strategy, "I don't know what that means."
"That" could mean farm subsidies or population growth models. Add a touch of superficial profundness. And while they are thinking their question is stupid, and this corollary variable statement: "What is 'that' anyway?" This sounds like you not only know what you are talking about, but it also appears that you are about to forage in that direction and expose the questioner's own ignorance (see, shifting). The questioner simply will shrug off the question, and another possible discovery of your absysmal ignorance will be avoided.
And that, I submit, is the point of both college and politics.
Andy Obermueller is a Liberal, Kan., junior in journalism.
Community spirit makes it hard not to love'Hawks
I've made an observation: Basketball is an infectious most.
ious sport.
This is so a challenge I have only a passing nod to the Super Bowl, can become such an enthusiastic fan.
It has to be if someone like me, who usually gives
OK, I admit, it helps to have the No.1 team in the nation.
But it's not just the game. It's the atmosphere. The sense of spirit within the community is amazing. As an outsider, I can say that without bias. Never before have I been in a place where practically everyone in the community holds such admiration for a team. And the
that is something for Lawrence to be proud of.
In a world where we don't know our neighbors and are standoffish to strangers lest they mean to do us harm, this invokes a warm feeling.
Community spirit is everywhere. And it's not just for Kansas basketball, but for all the University's athletic teams. Everywhere I am surrounded by Jayhawks. I see the Jayhawk mascot while eating at Molly McGee's and while working out at Total Fitness Athletic Center. I've seen Jayhawk picture frames, Jayhawk-shaped pasta, even Jayhawk Christmas decorations. Commerce Bank offers checks with the Jayhawk logo. I see people, young and old, students and non-students, donning Jayhawk apparel and talking Jayhawk shop talk.
However, basketball draws the most devotion.
However, basketball draws the most devotion. Students plan study breaks around games. Employees gather around TV sets during lunch breaks. Some people simply tune in to the radio while they continue to work. The Lazer, Lawrence's very own 105.9 FM, is one of two radio stations making sure that's possible.
Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar, 2520 Iowa St., reserves a spot for Roy Williams when he does his radio show there. People come early just for the show. Non-smokers sit in smoking sections, and non-drinkers sit at the bar. All want to hear the man whom many believe is responsible for the Jayhawks' success.
Of course, Coach Williams and the team, from starters to walk-ons, merit this enthusiasm. Williams' genuine concern for his team comes through. And the players' sportsmanship attitudes are to be commended.
The spirit of it all is transferred to everyone, even passing visitors. I find myself at games, grimacing about lost shots and clapping spasmodically about good plays. And this enthusiasm carries over into televised games, especially when watching it with other fans.
And let's face it, the Jayhawks are a conversation piece for me, dare I say a bragging right. Whenever I mention that I attend the University of Kansas to a guy friend back home, nine out of 10 times the first thing he says is about basketball. Never mind that the University has a top-ranked journalism program; as far as these guys are concerned, I could be getting my masters in underwater basket weaving. I am attending a school with the top-ranked basketball team in the nation.
To be honest, had I come all the way to Kansas and not attended a basketball game, I'd be laughed right out of California by every guy I've ever known
So what does this California transplant have to say to the Jayhawks as they venture into March Madness?
In the words of a local Bagel and Bagel advertisement, "Schmear 'em Hawksi!"
Elena Maculuso is a San Francisco graduate student in Journalism.
Letters
Ebonics lecturer didn't support his argument
The debate about how Ebonics should be treated in schools hinges somewhat on whether it is recognized as a language. Arguments on both sides have served more to confuse than to clarify, and Robert Williams' lecture, *Ebonics: Myths, Realities and Science*, on Feb. 10 did nothing for clarification. Those in search of reason left the lecture hall disappointed.
Williams' main argument for Ebonics amounted to the following: "The purpose of language is communication; Ebonics communicates; therefore, Ebonics is a language."
Unfortunately, Williams never took a course in basic logic. His argument is just as implausible as the following: The purpose of a car is transportation; legs transport; therefore, legs constitute a car. This exemplifies the fallacy of undistributed middle.
Legs do not constitute a car, but
Next, Williams tied Ebonics to African roots. West African languages, he said, do not employ formulated double-consonant sounds. Slight differences in phonetics, however, hardly constitute the basis for a separate language, especially considering how much more important syntax and semantics are to language, both overwhelmingly retained by overwhelmingly retained by Ebonics from standard English. Yet Ebonics advocates resist its classification as a dialect or slang.
Williams offered an example of Ebonics: "The hawk ain't jivin' outside," meaning "The wind chill is cold outside." However, that phrase demonstrates sufficient deviation from yet important retention of elements
a means of transportation. Similarly, Williams' argument merely asserts the obvious that Ebonics is a means of communication — no more, no less. The most amazing aspect of his defective argument, however, was not that he used it but that the audience appeared to accept it.
The under-educated in many countries routinely commit the same errors in speech that characterize Ebonics. Those include the misuse of subject-object pronouns, shortening of words and sentences and incorrect verb conjugation. It is irresponsible on Williams' evidence to classify Ebonics as a language, for the reasons that the under-educated in many countries are criticized, namely, the misuse of their standard language.
of standard English, syntax and semantics, both important to dialect. Furthermore, it involves the humorous and extensive use of metaphor that characterize slang.
I left the lecture hall still waiting to hear a sensible argument for Ebonics, one based in reason, not advocacy. For from advocacy springs zealotry, and from zealots we can hardly expect truth. I look forward to that argument — and to further clarification.
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J. Ramon Ziadie Miami graduate student
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I