Monday, March 2, 1987
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
Nebraskan
University ol Nebraska-Lincoln
Probable cauise
Patrol just doing their job
The question: Did the Nebras
ka State Patrol and Saund
ers County sheriffs depart
ment have probable cause to
pull over the buses chartered by
the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity in
mid-September? Saunders County
Court Judge Everett Inbody be
lieved the police did leading him
to decide last Tuesday that evi
dence obtained will be allowed
in the test case of Ryan Kennel.
Inbody made the proper deci
sion; the evidence, cans and bot
tles recovered from the buses,
should not be suppressed.
Kennell, charged with minor
in possession, was among 135
people ticketed for alcohol vio
lations. All passengers on the
four buses were ticketed for
minor in possession or procuring
for a minor. But in October the
Saunders county attorney deci
Letters
Criticism orAmerika' can't excuse facts
1 am writing about some ol the arti
cles written by Charles Lieurance. What
strikes me particularly is the cynicism
about the ABC miniseries "Amerika."
This is not a controversy of conserva
tive vs. liberal; this is something much
more important, a controversy of human
vs. antihuman. I was in my early 2()s
when the Russian army attacked Cze
choslovakia in l!)(iH, and my relatives
experienced the Russian invasion of
Hungary in 1 )")(. Definitely it was
much worse than what was presented
in "Amerika." By using strong words
and good style, Lieurance tries to cloud
the facts and persuade readers that his
view is the right one. But no words can
excuse the millions ol murders that
took place in the name ol ideology.
Maybe in the minds of some people this
excuse can be made, hut the cold tacts
of oppression and death will always
stay as a reminder. Or can somebody
argue that those who were killed were
Devaney won without an indoor field
I always have been a fan of Corn
liusker football and a student season
ticket holder. However, as our university
faces increasing budget cuts, I feel the
priorities of many people at I'NL and
across the state are wrong.
NT's object as stated in its charter,
"shall be to afford to the inhabitants of
the state the means of acquiring a
thorough knowledge of the various
branches of literature, science and the
arts." Its purpose is not to generate
revenue for the state or to provide "a
million people in Nebraska escape
from the day-to-day grind of jobs and
budget cuts," as Rod Morrison stated
in his letter Feb. 25.
I am upset when the cost of my
education continues to increase while
the quality of the faculty and facilities
continue to decline. Now I am being
asked to help pay for a recreation
center I will never see completed. It
Sennett smug, sanctimonious on AIDS
James Sennett (DN, Feb. 28) seems
to be correct in claiming that "homo
phobe" does not adequately describe
him. "Sanctimonious nincompoop" is
far more accurate.
Those people who are in long term
monogamous relationships married
or not, heterosexual or homosexual
are not at risk for AIDS. Such people
are grateful for their good fortune, but
that good fortune hardly gives one the
right to condemn the temporarily less
lucky: the divorced, the sexually unini
tiated, the uncommitted. Surely Sen
.MTKorlx-lik, Editor, i?J 1760
James Holers, Editorial Piuic Editor
Use Olscn, Associate X'trs Editor
Mike Keilley, .Wry S'i'trs Editor
Joan Kt'zac, ( V D'k Chii f
ded that no tickets would be
filed against 74 of the passengers.
The fate of the remaining 00,
minors whom police said had
alcohol on their breath, hinges
on Kennel's test case. Kennell
volunteered as the test case.
The Daily Nebraskan reported
that Kirk Naylor, Kennell's attor
ney, moved to surpress the evi
dence obt ained during a Decem
ber hearing. He tried to prove
through witness testimony that
the police had no reason to stop
the buses.
Charles Wagner, Saunders
deputy county attorney, said po
lice had probable cause to stop
the buses. The police had infor
mation that members from an
Omaha fraternity would be drink
ing on a public roadway when
they came across the Phi Psi
buses.
killed humanely? During World War II
some prisoners were accompanied to
the execution place with music. Can
somebody think about something more
cynical?
In the '50s, some people believed in
Marxist-Leninist ideology. At that time
we made the tragic mistake of believ
ing communism was acceptable because
of systematic disinformation put forth
by communists. But it is particularly
absurd to believe this today when so
many examples of injustice in coun
tries dominated by communism are
available.
My point is that it is also absurd to
characterize something that is violent
as "moderate," and criticize the sys
tem that protects your right to free
speech as "paranoia."
Oto Urban
graduate student
veterinary science
would make more sense to increase
funding to the academic departments
so faculty and stall would have a
quality working environment and stu
dents would have a quality faculty from
whom to learn.
I believe the football team should
have the best facilities possible and
the university community needs better
recreation facilities, but we should
make education our first priority. Bob
Devaney didn't need an indoor practice
field in order to win a national
championship.
If we continue to make football our
first priority, the day will come when
there will be a "for sale" sign in front of
UNL and a professional team playing in
Memorial Stadium.
Michael H. Turner
senior
ag economics
nett is not suggesting that people
marry in order to enjoy "safe sex"; that
is prostitution without the integrity of
an honest whore.
Sennett can sit back and thank God
he is safe from the scourge of AIDS. He
is not, however, to be commended. The
energetic folk who provide informat ion
on relatively safe sex to those who are
not so safe and smug are to be com
mended. Frances W. Kaye
associate professor
English
11
Getting a little backbone in Marky David Chapman 's bunk
Last month in People magazine's
ad nauseum profile of Mark Dav id
Chapman, the loon who blew away
John Lennon in December 19S0, I
learned something terrible. Chapman
was a camp counselor. At a VMCA
camp. At the same VMCA camp where I
was sent as a child to, as my father put
it, "give me a little backbone and a
stronger constitution." Chapman was
my counselor.
At first this didn't surprise me in the
least. I've always found camp counsel
ing a suspect occupation. Why would
any young man or woman want to spend
the suit ly, sensual days of summer with
a bunch of shrieking little boys and
girls, when they could be out Haunting
their hormones with people their own
age? Besides that, what better oppor
tunity for a twisted, highly organized
individual with sexual needs well out
side the laws of human decency than
an isolated retreat full of potential
catamites.
.lust to be fair, I'm sure there are
many truly caring camp counselors in
the world. I'm sure they see playing
with children all summer as a semiluc
rative chance to spend a lot of time
outdoors, get lots of exercise and suck
water-moccasin venom from a 12-year-old's
leg.
Certainly in the Chapman barracks
there were always adventures to be
had. At this time Chapman was going
through a spiritual dilemma likened to
Christ's moment of doubt at the Garden
of Gethsemane. It was '69 or '70 and the
Beatles were history. Mark, or "Marky"
as the other counselors called him, was
Ambiguous treaty leaves public,
government with different interpretations
There is a stoiy, no doubt too good
to be true, that W.C. Fields was
found reading the Bible on his
deathbed. Asked what he was doing, he
replied, "Lookin' fer loopholes."
The Reagan administration, in sim
ilar health, has sat down with the Anti
ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, a doc
ument less uplifting, but far richer in
ambiguity. And in an obscure adden
dum, it thinks it has found salvation.
Most of the world understands the
Ant i-ballistic Missile Treaty to prohibit
testing, development and deployment
of anti-ballistic missiles. So did the
Reagan administration, until October
1985. Now the administration, wanting
to do advanced testing for the Strategic
Defense Initiative (SDI), has found a
loophole. Agreed Statement I) allows
testing of ABM systems based on "other
physical principles" than those known
when the treaty was signed in 1972.
This loophole opens up on some
exotic casuistic corridors. What exactly
are "other physical principles"? Most
people understand that to mean "Star
Wars" stuff, like lasers or particle
beams, which are based on directed
energy principles. It is odd, therefore,
that what the administration seeks to
test under a "broad" interpretation of
the ABM treaty is a system that shoots
projectiles at Soviet missiles and des
troys them on impact.
The "physical principle" at work
here is kinetic energy (hence the
name: "kinetic kill vehicles"). Kinetic
energy, known in 1972, is the physical
principle that underlies the bow and
arrow.
Which leads the Pentagon lawyers to
respond that the new physical princi
ple is not in the shooting down, but in
the picking up (i.e., the sensing mech
anism). In 1972, ABM systems used
radar to pick up their target. Today's
SDI sensing mechanism is optical or
infrared.
Is this what "other physical princi
ples" means? God knows. The negoti
ating record is exceedingly muddy.
Moreover, the w hole exercise is another
depressing triumph of American legal
ism. (With a fine irony: Regarding the
ABM treaty, liberals are the upholders
of "original intent," while conserva
tives are the "judicial activists" a
neat switch of their usual positions.)
at camp with
a big fan of the Beatles, but he knew
John needed some breathing room.
Marky wasn't sure about Voko, either.
Was her conceptual caterwauling really
music? Marky didn't know but what
was OK for John was OK by him.
Marky spent a lot of time brooding.
Word had it around camp that he
deliberately threw the canoe race and
that he wasn't paying attention during
the three-legged race so he "said Jeff
and Newt won, instead of me and
Tommy Tornado. He wasn't, the most
popular counselor, but, heck, he was
the leader of our barracks and we tried
to like him.
Charles I
Lieurance
.9,
1
Marky had a real thing with being
famous. At night he'd cut out pictures
of celebrities, hang them by his mirror
and try to mold his face to look like
theirs. By the end of the summer, the
skin on his face had the consistency of
silly putty. Just to make him feel better
we all told him he looked like Montgo
mery Clift. Occasionally we were con
vincing enough to get him to come out
of his cabin and go on nature walks. He
told us all the wrong names for trees
and fauna and for years I thought dan
delions were really poison ivy. Just last
week I found out that chipmunks wer
Only the United States would turn its
strategic future over to lawyers. Per
haps that is why we turn out nearly as
many lawyers as engineers. Our trea
ties need as much work as our cars.
In fact, the real argument has nothing
to do with the words "other physical
principles." It has to do with the spirit
of the ABM treaty and the meaning of
SDI. The ABM treaty sought a strategic
arrangement under which both sides
renounce defenses in the belief that
mutual vulnerability makes for stabil
ity and deterrence. SDI seeks invulner
ability. These are inherently contradic
tory ideas.
Charles
Krauthamrfiti
So long as SDI was pie in the sky, one
could live with the contradiction. Less
than 18 months ago, Secretary of State
Shultz pronounced the debate over the
two treaty interpretations "moot." It
will remain so, said State Department
legal adviser Abraham Sofaer, until
"the SDI program has reached the
point at which . . . engineering devel
opment, with a view to deployment,
become a real option."
The administration now believes the
option is real. It is forcing reinterpre
tation of the treaty because it now
knows where it wants to go with stra
tegic defense. It wants partial and
immediate, meaning by the early 1990s,
deployment of a kinetic energy system
based on existing technology. That sys
tem is now busting to get out of the lab.
It will soon be ready for full-scale engi
neering development.
But you can't do that under the ABM
treaty. Up to now the engineers have
had to make do with what the lawyers
call "sharp practices": skirting the
edge of the t reaty by performing exper
iments that are deliberately down
graded and distorted to stay within the
letter of the law.
This makes for the worst of both
worlds, distorting both the treaty and
SDI program. It leads to absurditites
NT" A
7
Clarle
en't baby bobcats. It had become
apparent to us by the second week of
camp that our counselor was playing
poker with an Old Maid deck. A loon.
About 10 slices of head cheese short of
a loaf.
Marky began to teach us what he
called "Native American"' rituals some
time in July. One kid was actually
smart enough to ask if the pentagram
really had its origins in the Sioux rain
dance. The kid was a Boy Scout and he
said he had a merit badge in Indian
rituals and that very few "Native Amer
ican" rites required the sacrifice of
milk cows. But still we dressed up like
Indians, in the middle of the night,
sneaked into the surrounding farm
pastures and led cows to our barracks.
Then Tommy Tornado came up missing
in the morning roll call.
Believe me, I'm not t lying to cash in
on Marky's well-earned success. I mean,
if you've got the unmitigated gall to
snuff a major celebrity, you should at
least be able to tell your side of the
story. And after all, the story of the
paranoid schizophrenic is always 10
times more interesting than the tale of
some normal joe with a nine-to-five
cross to bear and not a malicious bone
in his body. Marky was our leader that
summer. He was our barracks com
mander, the man responsible for my
backbone and firm constitution. I'm
just happy to have had a part in his tale.
I wonder if Tommy Tornado is.
Lieurance is an English, philosophy and
art major and a Daily Nebraskan senior
reporter.
such as occurred during the latest
"Delta 180" SDI test. An anti-ballistic
device picked up a rocket fired from
earth and tracked it, but when it came
to shooting it down, the ABM had to
turn around and crash into a different
satellite. Shooting down the rocket
would have been a violation of the
treaty.
The SDI wizards, both legal and
technical, are running out of sharp
practices. Enter the "broad" inter
pretation. It is an unfortunate move. The
administration should have the cour
age of its convictions. If it really wants
to deploy SDI, it should drop the
Jesuitical exegeses and act unambigu
ously within the terms of the ABM
treaty: withdraw. The treaty permits
withdrawal on six-months notice.
Such a move would have the virtue of
focusing the issue. We could then have
a real debate on a real question: Which
conception of deterrence makes more
strategic sense, that offered by SDI or
by the ABM treaty? An honest debate
on principle is better than a slither
through the loopholes. Unfortunately,
slithering is easier.
1987, Washington Post Writers Group
Kraut hammer is a senior editor with the
New Republic.
Unsigned editorials represent
official policy of the fall 198& Daily
Nebraskan. Policy is set by the Daily
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