Editorials
Tuesday, July 6, 1999

Accreditation report
should jolt UH-Manoa

The issue: An accreditation committee has found serious problems at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.
Our view: The UH administration must address shortcomings noted in its leadership.

THE University of Hawaii-Manoa got a wake-up call when the Western Association of Schools and Colleges decided to review the institution's accreditation again after only three years. The period between accreditation reviews can be as long as 10 years. The decision underlined the findings of an accreditation team based on a visit in March that UH-Manoa has serious problems requiring stronger leadership.

The problems stem in part from 11 to 12 percent budget cuts and inflationary losses over the last four years, which have caused considerable distress. This has been compounded by complaints about lack of communication with faculty and staff and scant participation in decision-making.

The committee said, "A more sensitive and effective approach is needed to develop community and consensus for resolving the university's fiscal problems." It reported that some faculty and administrators "view the central administration as unresponsive, perhaps even aloof, and isolated."

The problems even extend to the Board of Regents. The committee observed that individual regents, "intentionally or unintentionally, inappropriately imposed or threatened campus actions."

This is a particularly disturbing finding. If the regents themselves act improperly, it can hardly be surprising if morale suffers.

There is a pressing need for what the committee calls "hard decisions on differential budget cuts and reallocations." It said, "The extensive library cuts are especially damaging now that staff are unavailable to teach students the tools to reach an issue."

But decisions on budget reallocations must be made in ways that win faculty support, the report said. That isn't easy, given the painful realities.

President Kenneth Mortimer responded that the university will use the accreditation reports as a basis for discussing and debating UH-Manoa development. Senior Vice President Dean Smith said he will meet with the faculty senate and Manoa deans and directors to work on recommendations in the report.

An atmosphere of distrust seems to have settled over the Manoa campus. It would be naive to think that any organization could undergo severe budget cuts without discord and alienation, but the problem is evidently acute at UH-Manoa. There is a need for Mortimer and his top staff to become both more receptive to suggestions and more vigorous in their leadership.

It takes no brilliant insight to see that their task would be made easier if the state government stopped bleeding the university financially and gave it the funding it needs to maintain itself.

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Shooting spree shows
persistence of hate

The issue: A lone gunman killed two people and wounded seven in a series of attacks on racial and religious minorities.
Our view: The perpetrators of hate crimes must be punished severely.

ALTHOUGH Americans pride themselves on their tolerance, hatred and violent fanaticism still plague the nation. The Fourth of July holiday weekend festivities were marred by a shocking series of attacks by a lone gunman on members of racial and religious minorities -- blacks, Asians and Jews.

Two people were killed and seven wounded in the attacks in Illinois and Indiana. The assailant died of a self-inflicted gunshot while being pursued by police.

The gunman had ties to a group called the World Church of the Creator, which features Nazi-style salutes and skulls on its Internet site. The sect's doctrine proclaims that whites are a superior race but are in danger of becoming extinct if they do not act to defend themselves.

Such twisted fanaticism underlay the murderous rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., the brutal slayings of a black man in Texas and a homosexual in Wyoming last year and the 1995 bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City.

These crimes were committed by people who were blinded by the hate-mongers. For all the progress this country has made in tolerating and accepting differences among its people, there is still a highly dangerous fringe capable of spilling blood to appease their hate, whether of minorities or a government they view as oppressive.

The easy availability of guns in the United States probably contributed to the latest violent rampage. But no guns were involved in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the dragging of a black man, James Byrd Jr., behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas, or the fatal beating and burning of a homosexual, Matthew Shepard, in Laramie, Wyo.

There is no shortage of violence in America's history. The nation likes to think it has put such episodes behind it. But there are still and perhaps always will be people susceptible to appeals to hatred and fear, and others seeking to exploit these feelings.

Today the haters are even more dangerous because the weapons available to them are more powerful.

There is no way to provide total protection against such twisted personalities as Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, or the latest addition to the list, Benjamin N. Smith.

But there are measures that can be taken. Educators and social workers should try to reach out to troubled people and persuade them of the folly of blind hatred. Efforts to deny them access to guns and explosives should be strengthened. But if they still succeed in killing, they must be punished severely.

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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