Editorials
Tuesday, July 28, 1998

UH should reconsider
Division I athletics

MAJOR universities outside the Ivy League generally make their headlines on the sports pages, triggering alumni donations that aid university programs. More scholarly achievements are recognized within the narrow confines of academia. Just the opposite seems to be happening at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, where scientific accomplishments gained worldwide attention while the NCAA Division I sports program may be on the brink of extinction.

Academic headlines get no bigger than those made last week by the team of researchers, headed by Ryuzo Yanagimachi, the cloners of 50 mice. The biological breakthrough quickly led to an international business deal involving the Scottish researchers who cloned Dolly the sheep. PPL Therapeutics Pic, the company set up to use the Scots' technology, has agreed to work with ProBio America Inc., the Honolulu firm working with the UH scientists, to develop genetically engineered pigs whose organs could be used in human transplants. The arrangement is sure to enhance Hawaii's reputation as a venue for scientific research.

Spirits are not so high in the UH Athletic Department, still reeling from the defection two months ago by the nucleus of the Western Athletic Conference. Hawaii may have been invited to the exodus if the Rainbow football program had been stronger. Five consecutive non-winning seasons, resulting in a decline in ticket sales, had to be a major factor in the snub, although UH has done well in nonrevenue sports. "The reason the eight schools bolted is business," football Coach Fred vonAppen told the Star-Bulletin's Paul Arnett. "This is business. And if we don't start thinking in those terms, football could disappear from the local landscape in as soon as five years."

The University of Hawaii has been left in a shell of a conference, and its chances of being admitted to a major athletic league any time soon are nil. Without such membership, an effective effort to recruit top athletes needed to maintain a competitive Division I football program is next to impossible.

University officials need to reassess their goals and determine whether a major-college football program is realistic. They may want to take the lead of many colleges and universities that compete in basketball at the highest level without participating in Division I football. As the team of Yanagimachi & Co. has shown, a university's barometer for success does not rise or fall on Saturdays.

Aloha to ‘Aloha’

THE latest tree to fall in a forest of bad economic news is Aloha magazine, which is suspending publication after 20 years. "Aloha, The Magazine of Hawaii and the Pacific" reached about 225,000 mostly mainland readers, and was printed every two months. But now publisher Rick Davis has acknowledged that a steep loss in ad revenues and a lack of support by state officials have led to his painful and inevitable decision to cease operations indefinitely.

A bad omen for Davis' Davick Publications came last year, when it lost the publishing rights to the HVCB's travel planner book, "Islands of Aloha." Winning the competitive bidding process was a Canadian company, which meant that Davis said aloha to about 30 to 40 percent of his business.

How unusual that this state administration often spouts truisms about supporting local firms and, in fact, believes that the bidding process should sometimes favor Hawaii firms or even companies headed by good friends. Yet, in this case, it had no qualms about awarding the publishing contract for a magazine about Hawaii to a publishing firm outside Hawaii -- in Canada, no less.

While government shouldn't be expected to bail out every private company through subsidies or special treatment, state officials shouldn't be surprised they have cultivated a reputation of being unhelpful to local small businesses. Ask Rick Davis.

Starr’s investigation

ANOTHER court decision reminding President Clinton of his equal standing under the law with other Americans has put him in a weak position as he squares off with independent council Kenneth Starr. Following a subpoena of Clinton to appear before Starr's grand jury, the White House is seeking a compromise, but Starr should be able to set the terms. The spectacle of the president appearing in person before a grand jury could be avoided with a videotaped deposition of Clinton taken under oath.

Starr's subpoena of Clinton is the first ever of a president to testify before a grand jury concerning allegations of criminality -- in this case whether Clinton lied under oath during a deposition in the Paula Jones cases about sexual activity in the White House. The issue is whether Clinton perjured himself or tried to get Monica Lewinsky to commit perjury, in either case an obstruction of justice if it occurred.

If Clinton were to challenge Starr's authority to enforce the subpoena, the courts surely would side with the independent prosecutor. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the president's claim that Secret Service agents could not be forced to testify before the grand jury, and a U.S. appeals court has required White House lawyers to testify as well.

The appellate ruling rejecting the notion of attorney-client privilege exercised between the president and lawyers on the public payroll is an important ruling with consequences that should reach other levels of government. Hawaii's attorney general invoked the privilege in 1986 in refusing in a civil case to comply with a Star-Bulletin subpoena of files in a fraud investigation that had been brought to a halt a few years earlier.

The notion that White House lawyers have a special relationship with their boss is as specious as the claim of client privilege made for Secret Service agents. Government employees, including the president, must be treated according to the law like all other citizens.

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Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited Partnership

Rupert E. Phillips, CEO

John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher

David Shapiro, Managing Editor

Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor

Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors

A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor