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Friday, February 10, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Football recruits promising
Spring football practice is just around the corner.
Why is that something to look forward to?
One big reason is the 1989 recruiting class. On Wednesday, 25 student-athletes signed national letters of intent to play football at KU next year. And the recruits include several blue-chip high school players that address the team's needs.
This year's class includes student-athletes from nine different states. Ten players are 240 pounds or more.
Kansas football coach Glen Mason and his coaching staff have spent the last two-and-one-half months traveling across the country, talking to players at high schools and community colleges.
colleges
Mason and his staff should be congratulated for a job well done. Receiving commitments from 25 student-athletes, the maximum number allowed by the NCAA, on the first day is an impressive accomplishment. It shows Mason and his staff are serious about turning around KU's football fortunes.
Recruiting coordinator R.D. Helt also deserves credit. Helt spent last fall reviewing films and scouting players, and then set up times for the recruits to visit the campus.
This is the second consecutive year Mason and his staff have signed the maximum number of recruits. Bringing in 23 freshmen (including two from junior colleges) will help to alleviate the team's shortage of bodies.
So keep an eye on the football team this spring. You might be surprised next fall.
Jeff Euston for the editorial board
Journalism award a memorial to editor William Allen White
White was a KU student and later became the editor and publisher of the Emporia Gazette. He became nationally recognized for his editorship, political involvement in World War I and his friendship with Theodore Roosevelt.
The University of Kansas' School of Journalism carries with it a name that is rich in talent and tradition: William Allen White.
It is said that William Allen White was the greatest of all "country editors." He gave the profession of journalism courage. He fought the Ku Klux Klan; and in his 1922 Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial, "To an Anxious Friend," he defended freedom of speech.
Today, Charles Kuralt, host of CBS Sunday Morning, will receive the 1989 William Allen White Foundation Award for Journalistic Merit, in recognition of his contributions to journalism. In honor of White's birthday, Feb. 10, 1868, and all those who cherish the freedom of speech, the Kansas today reprints "To An Anxious Friend."
JULY 27.1922
You tell me that law is above freedom of utterance. And I reply that 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.
That is the history of the race. It is the proof of man's kinship with God. You say that freedom of utterance is not for time of stress, and I reply with the sad truth that only in time of stress is freedom of utterance in danger. No one questions it in calm days, because it is not needed. And the reverse is true also; only when free utterance is suppressed it is needed, and when it is needed, it is most vital to justice. Peace is good. But if you are interested in peace through force and without free discussion — that is to say, free utterance decently and in order — your interest in justice is slight. And peace without justice is tyranny, no matter how you may sugar-coat it with expediency. This state today is in more danger from suppression than from violence, because, in the end, suppression leads to violence. Violence, indeed, is the child of suppression. Whoever pleads for justice helps to keep the peace; and whover tramplems upon the plea for justice temperately made in the name of peace only outrages peace and kills something fine in the heart of man which God put there when we got our manhood. When that is killed, brute meets brute on each side of the line.
So, dear friend, put fear out of your heart. This nation will survive, this state will prosper, the orderly business of life will go forward if only men can speak in whatever way given them to utter what their hearts hold — by voice, by posted card, by letter or by press. Reason never has failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.
News staff
Julie Adam...Editor
Karen Boring...Managing editor
Jill Jess...News editor
Deb Gruver...Planning editor
James Farquhar...Editorial editor
Elaine Sung...Campus editor
Tom Stinson...Sports editor
Janine Swiatlakowski...Photo editor
Dave Eames...Graphics editor
Noel Gerdes...Arts/Features editor
Tom Eblen...General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Debra Cole...Business manager
Pam Noe...Retail sales manager
Kevin Martin...Campus sales manager
Scott Frager...National sales manager
Michelle Garland...Promotions manager
Brad Lenhart...Marketing manager
Linda Prokop...Production manager
Debra Martin...Asst. production manager
Jim Coleman...Co-op sales manager
Cari Cressler .*...Classified manager
Jeanne Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
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Congressional salary vote a scam
o which is it?
Did Congress vote down their own pay raise because it was the right thing to do or because they knew they could
to do or because they knew they could not get away with letting the raise take effect? For that matter, did Congress pursue the raise in the first place because they thought it was right or because they thought they could get away with it?
In the past few months, Congress has tried to get their money by not voting, attempting a premature vote and camouflaging the raise in smaller, more palatable increments. And now they've voted it down. I think it's a trick! Just like the kind that Art Grindle, that semi-scrupolous car dealer from my hometown, was famous for
So before they try to sell us the used idea again, or more likely, slip it to us while we're not looking. I thought it would be prudent to review some of the details and implications of public service, much as a customer of Art Grindle's would have.
For starters, any prudent shopper should ask what is the go-getter price for public service, and why. If the customer wants to
As the Washington Post revealed, most congressmen already make more than $135,000 a year, not including the honoraria and other peripheral profits. A former congressional aide reports that about 35 percent of congressmen are bonafide millionaires.
He went on to say that the vast majority of high-level federal executives, judges and congressmen make more than six-figure salaries, especially when tallied with the incomes of
Tom Wilhelm
Staff columnist
spouses who have high-paying government and private positions. By portraying themselves as the dedicated, but struggling, economic victims of the system, legislators have shown only that, whatever the going rate for public service is, it should not be determined by those who apparently have lost sight of their own earnings.
we should expect to get for our money in the future.
Another way to determine the appropriate price for public performance is to look at other federal employees who are required to do their jobs in the public interest with high degrees of duty, integrity and professionalism. Across the board, federal employees got a 4 percent raise this year after two years with a meager 2 percent cost-of-living adjustment. The thousands of public servants working in departments that receive the medical raise but with a reduction in medical and retirement benefits. Finally, it is interesting to note that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff manages his consummately important duties and otherwise serves the public interest on $70,000 a year and a Washington, D.C., housing allowance of $900 a year.
By attaching the price of public service to the specific aords of offices, duty and obligation can be addressed what
If President Bush can be believed and there really are an overwhelming number of qualified applicants for high-level federal positions, then simple supply-and-demand functions would uphold some kind of salary bid, rather than a ransom against the private business sector.
Another possible way to get a return on our investment in government is to demand rebates for any lack of integrity from highly paid public servants. Two hundred and thirty-three such complaints were filed during the past four years, ranging from drug use to misconduct with pages and secretaries. Fines could be leveled against those officials who were convicted of crimes. For further details, a campaign funds for personal use, as is the present arrangement with 50 percent of the House of Representatives, a refund for standard professionalism should be in order.
In a year when the top priority of the federal government is cutting the federal deficit, the close call we experienced in the bill for millions of extra salary dollars attached to the actual cost of running the same old government services in the same old way is an alarming signal. Voting down the raise is most likely a congressional decision from all the issues and Congress' semi-scrutinous behavior. If they were trying to sell me a car, I wouldn't buy it.
- Tom Wilhelm is a Lawrence graduate student in Soviet/East European Studies.
Legalized discrimination fuels tensions
The only thing wrong with the Supreme Court's recent ruling against set-aside minority contracts is that it didn't define the absurd practice of affirmative action entirely.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court correctly rejected a Richmond, Va., ordinance that secured 30 percent of all city contract finances for minority-owned businesses. In the case in question, the Richmond City Council refused the lowest bid on a public plumbing contract, citing the lack of a minority subcontractor. Against the city allegation that evidence of fraud had been unfairly excluded and that the 30 percent figure was arrived at arbitrarily by the council.
But in all its accuracy, the Richmond decision does not recognize completely the fact that affirmer action both promotes notions of racial inferiority, as Justice O'Connor asserts, incorrectly advancing the fallacy that racial minorities are somehow intellectually inadequate. And the Richmond decision also does not eliminate what Finkel should: legalized reverse descrimination.
demonstration. The Kansan recently ran an editorial, however referring to the Richmond decision as misguided, while blindly asking, "How is reverse discrimination possible when the disparity in representation is so great?" This is a common position of affirmative action proponents, but an argument that sadly misses the point.
The fact is, racism is racism and discrimination is discrimination, no matter who the victim,
no matter who the perpetrator. By advocating
legalized discrimination, such as affirmative
action, some in our nation are wrongly looking
to even the score, as Justice Scala suggests,
which only perpetuates racial divisiveness and
tension.
Christopher Wilson Staff columnist
I ask affirmative action proponents: If the law continues to separate people by race, ethnicity and sex, then how can you realistically expect the average citizen to be oblivious to these factors? And if affirmative action is truly affirmative, then how is it justified, in examples such as the Richmond case, that those with the best qualifications are rejected because of some prescribed race requirement? Doesn't setting aside anything — jobs, contracts, etc. — blatantly destroy the basic principles of competition that our nation so heartily espouses?
And clearly, set-aside jobs and contracts do not make minorities competitive, only quality education can do that. The Kansan is quick to point out a National Urban League study showing no progress economically for minorities since 1980. But affirmative action laws have been firmly in place
for more than a decade and our nation created 18 million new jobs during the past eight years, yet minorities have made no progress?
in truth, affirmative action has failed. This myopic practice actually has hurt minorities in many ways, particularly since it has incorrectly turned the focus of efforts away from making them competitive. And let's face it, if minorities are going to improve their lot in life, then they must improve their competitiveness. That means concentrating our society's efforts, first and foremost, on getting much better education that will lead to more college opportunities and better career opportunities. Once that occurs, and not until, minorities will begin to show real economic progress.
Set-aside contracts and jobs are nothing but a warped branch off the already skewed tree of welfare. And like welfare, affirmative action imposes a damaging stop-gap mentality while not actually providing the means to improve the situation.
If the Richmond decision ultimately leads to the death of affirmative action, then all Americans will benefit. We as a nation must move toward Justice Harlan's 1986 position of a "color-blind" society, otherwise, our irrelevant differences will continue as a factor and innocent people will be adversely affected, while the read problems remain unresolved.
Christopher Wilson is an Olathe senior majoring in political science and personnel administration.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed