The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 12

Page A12, Friday, December 8, KRON BEACON JOURNAL HOW THESE. 4ggg C. Knitfu (867- 1933 et C. Leach FJilor i FOUNDl'D APRIL 15, 1839 John L. Dotson Jr.

lkiblishcr jihtumathdwKvnjourriLil.com MYCUEUT FRKSJVWG "IRE WILL OF THE TBCBE. Finality in Florida? The arguments have been made. Will the candidates permit the Florida Supreme Court the final word? hief Justice Charles T. Wells let it be known at the start of yesterday's oral argument in the contested presidential election that he and his colleagues on the Florida Supreme ourt felt the presence of another set of justices. On Monday, the Supreme Court had asked the Florida court to explain more early its earlier decision to allow manual recounts.

Chief Justice ells wondered: Do we really have a role in this case? Yardmarkers and yardsticks They do. Even attorneys for Al tEg and George W. Bush agreed, le next question (asked hopefully) whether the Florida justices will ve the final word. They've tried to find closure, vising a reasonable approach before lanksgiving, allowing three counties conduct hand counts yet keeping in nd the state obligation to certify evidential electors by Dec. 12.

The stices interpreted the law. They tempted to resolve ambiguities in nflicting statutes. The Florida court may want to ck with its original remedy. If a anual count wasn't completed in liami-Dade County, the decision to uit rested with the controlling legal uthority (to borrow a phrase), the ounty canvassing board. Neither side as argued that the Miami-Dade anvassers abused their discretion.

If the Florida justices do side with ne Bush team, Al Gore will have little ause to push forward on any legal ront. He may be right that more lorida voters intended to vote for the Jemocratic ticket than were officially He may be tempted by the shenanigans in Seminole County, where Republican operatives repaired absentee ballot applications, rescuing thousands of votes for Bush. Once the misdeeds are identified, attention turns to a reasonable remedy. Cast aside thousands of absentee ballots? That is extreme. A statewide hand recount has been the logical solution.

The notion again seemed to intrigue a few of the Florida justices. Unfortunately, the Bush campaign has long rejected the option. The Gore team may wish it had been more forceful in pushing the idea (although it sees the obvious advantage in counting Broward Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, heavily Democratic counties). Judge N. Sanders Sauls ruled that no ballots could be manually counted unless every ballot was counted.

Florida law isn't quite so simple. It permits candidates to contest tallies in specific counties. Bush passed on the Kent State University has turned college football on its pointy helmeted head, becoming the cover school for what is supposed to be right about college athletics. While other schools were receiving bowl berths last weekend and that includes Marshall University in Kent's own MidAmerican Conference Coach Dean Pees and his 1-10 Golden Flashes found themselves on the front of the New York Times sports section. STEVE LOVE In the national press, as well as here, Laing Kennedy, Kent's athletic director, and Carol Cart-wright, the university's president, have been lauded for handing Pees a two-year contract extension based not on his work on the sideline (3-30), but on the classroom success of players (a team grade point average of 2.74) who are sticking with Kent through hard times in impressive numbers (42 of 46 recruited scholarship players remain after three years).

There is much to admire both in the administration's steadfastness and Pees' emphasis on discipline and academics. Yet somehow, these very attributes change the yardstick by which a coach should be measured. At Kent, they're using a 12-inch ruler. There are ample excuses (or reasons, if you prefer): The need for stability (no Kent football coach has lasted longer than four years in almost four decades); change hasn't changed anything (Kent has had only one winning record in 23 seasons and the man who produced that Glen Mason immediately departed for a better job); values matter more than victories. Of all the college football coaches I've known and I've known a few -none has had values more fully formed and realized than Gerry Faust.

(A disclosure: I not only wrote about Faust as an Akron Beacon Journal sports columnist, I wrote a book, The Golden Dream, with him. That makes me prejudiced, but I do know the guy.) Faust's values so perfectly matched Notre Dame's that the university with the most revered of football histories LAWYER TAV RESIDES OF SHOW POINT OF VIEW took a chance and hired him straight out of Moeller High School in Cincinnati, a coach without college coaching credentials. When he left Notre Dame five seasons later, no one who knew Faust thought less of him. Just the opposite. People respected him even more.

His players graduated. (He led the nation that at one point.) The administration and alumni (sheepskin and subway) loved him for the way he represented Notre Dame and still he had to go. By the only yardstick that ultimately matters in big-time college football (and that includes any place that spends the money that Kent does on the sport), Faust had failed. He had not won enough games, and he knew it. Professors should be judged on what students do in the classroom.

Counselors should be judged on their ability to motivate and steer students in the right academic directions. And coaches should be judged on what their teams do on the field. They are hired to recruit players and to coach them. After three seasons, Pees deserves mixed reviews, and not simply because of his 3-30 record. A defensive coach who was courted by successful football schools during the past off-season, Pees took over the Kent offense at one point last season.

He apologized for the result. There are talented assistant coaches, even those who rise to the rank of offensive or defensive coordinators, who lack that sometimes mysterious something that makes head coaches. Bud Carson is arguably the best defensive coordinator ever to work in the National Football League. But his transition to head coach of the old Cleveland Browns proved rocky, in part because of a less patient boss than the ones with whom Pees is now blessed. It hasn't always been so at Kent.

Paul Amodio, Kennedy's predecessor and the man who did the most to plunge Kent to the bottom of the barrel, made Art Modell look like a genius judge of coaches. (In the Sagarin football rankings, only three Division I-A programs are ranked below Kent: Buffalo (to whom Kent lost), Louisiana-Lafayette and Louisiana-Monroe.) In trying to step off the coaching carousel, Kent has overreached for reasons to extend Pees' contract, which had two years remaining on its original five. The school gave Pees credit for the VOICE OF THE PFflPIF there to fix any problems. I haven't been pummeled with rocks, nor have any of my children been hurt. I might want to move if that happened.

But that could happen anywhere. A complex as large as the Waterford has a lot of people living in a close-knit area. I suppose if you mind your own business, keep your children in check and be a conscientious resident, chances are you won't have a lot of problems anywhere you live. Janice McCorkle Akron Gore needs to recognize election's imperfections I am utterly opposed to Vice President Al Gore's continuing attempts to overturn the presidential election results. I watched in disbelief as counters held ballots up to the light, allegedly determining voter intent, but only in heavily Democratic counties.

Then I was disgusted at efforts to exclude overseas ballots from our military. I was horrified that for 40 percent of overseas ballots, these efforts succeeded. Now I'm just angry. No human endeavor is perfect, not even an election. But this election has E-M A I vopthcbeaconjournal.com To: Akron recruiting and retention of players willing to go to class.

(Don't even ask why someone would not want the education for which his football scholarship is paying.) Then, three days after the contract extension was announced, Pees fired two of his assistants, including Todd Murgatroyd, director of football operations who had previously been in charge of recruiting those players who keep going to class. Pees inherited both coaches he fired from the staff of Jim Corrigall, another coach whom people liked, who had the right values but got fired anyway for not winning enough games. (He won eight in four years, or twice as many as Pees' pace.) None of this should be taken as anti-Pees. The problem is one of sending the wrong message while trying to do just the opposite. Kent wants people to know that academics matter more than athletics, yet it, like the majority of schools fielding Division I-A football teams, pours more money into the sport than it gets back, directly or in the form of recognition.

Now, when the national recognition does come, it is as a result of Kent's decision to judge its football coach not on how he coaches football but on how smart his players are. If Pees applied the same criterion, he would start those with the best grades rather than the strongest and fastest athletes. Pees has been through a lot this season. His wife, Melody, was treated for cancer. There were times when he spent his days at practice and his nights at Akron General Medical Center.

Faust had an experience like that when he coached Akron. His father was dying in Dayton. So Faust would climb into his car after practice and drive to Dayton and then return, hardly sleeping. Faust kept his commitments. He did what Pees is doing and he still got fired, because he didn't win enough games at Akron, either.

When the boss uses the right yardstick on a football coach or any other professional, it can be painful if the employee doesn't measure up. That's the lesson Kent should be teaching, whether the students happen to be athletes or not. Love is the Beacon Journal chief editorial writer. He may be reached at 330-996-3744 or e-mailed atslovethebeaconjournal.com been rechecked several times now, with rule changes benefiting Gore. Even so, he has lost every time, yet he continues to fight on.

I do not wish to stand by and watch him continue bending the rules until he finally wins. But I feel helpless as this man continues to manipulate our legal system. What can we do? I can only hope that enough people protest loudly enough, so Gore finally steps down. Paul Bergstrom Canton Gore: The 'John Hancock' of all-time sore losers Just as "John Hancock" is commonly used by Americans to stand as someone's signature, we'll soon be hearing the comment, "Don't be an Al Gore," on playgrounds across America. Because of his signature's famous flourish, Hancock almost has the patent on the signature.

Gore will equal that on being a sore loser. It's a sad irony that a man who wanted nothing more than to be president all his life will be remembered more for losing than for all the good he has accomplished. Bryan Bowman Canton john S. Knight 1894 1981 Michael Douglas AiKKate Ixlitor n.liHif:bs!tlcbc:ia)iij(Hini;il.cim chance. Gore picked three.

Indeed, desperate as the vice president may appear, his attorneys cratted an argument that neatly wove law and common sense. David Boies, in arguing the Gore case, noted that vote totals must be revised if they are based (as the law states) on the "rejection of a number of legal votes sufficient to change or place in doubt the result of the election." In a race as close as the presidential contest in Florida, care should be taken to examine those ballots rejected by the counting machines. In Palm Beach County, that process (involving a fair assessment of dimpled chads) found a net of 215 votes for Al Gore. In Miami-Dade, the number was 158. Those votes were not included in the final tally, because Palm Beach missed its deadline by two hours and Miami-Dade suspended its hand count.

They are, nonetheless, known to the court and the public. Add them to the total, and Bash leads by a mere 164 votes with 9,000 or so votes that did not register yet to be examined by hand. The matter that should most concern the vice president is the inclusion of legal votes that remain uncounted. The Florida Supreme Court has justification for including the hand count of Palm Beach and requiring Miami-Dade to renew its hand count of contested votes. That could be accomplished in days.

Would that change the outcome? If it didn't, Al Gore should gracefully give up the fight. If George W. Bush found himself behind? The Republican majorities of the Florida legislature appear ready to enter the fray. The Bush camp would certainly pursue its legal options, even to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Republican majorities in Congress would be poised to act, knowing the Florida governor (yes, brother Jeb) would have the last say on the state's electors. Then again, as accurate and credible a count as possible would carry its own influence. The Florida Supreme Court should have the final word. out on a citywide scale, how to provide heating and lights for business and home, how to, for that matter, just incubate businesses. Once, before Slobodan Milosevic and his repressive, centralized government, Subotica knew how to do these things.

The city was, in fact, a model for Szeged. Now, after a decade of budding democracy and self-sufficiency, it is Szeged that serves as Subotica's mentor. The cities lie only about 30 miles apart. In the middle, at least figuratively, is Akron, providing advice, offering a blueprint of a city that works. Not everything in Akron is applicable to Subotica or even to Szeged.

But the experts the planners and engineers understand one another and have been able to translate the differences. After Serbia's Dec. 23 elections, Kern expects the decentralization of government to begin in earnest. Akron cannot provide the money. What the city and Mayor Don Plus-quellic do offer Subotica is the know-how to use its resources and freedom.

a third of their activity fees for bringing entertainment to campus solely on the folk fest. Students' tastes generally don't run toward folk music; the spending prevented booking the sort of bands the college crowd craves. Last year, student sponsorship came to $80,000 yet fewer than 700 of KSU's more than 21,000 students attended. In February, the Undergraduate Student Senate cut off funding. Tonight, at least 16 venues in Kent will host live music in all its varied folk styles.

Tomorrow, well-known musician Tim O'Brien and his Crossing Tour band, featuring Grammy Award-winner Mary Chapin Carpenter, headline the concert in the university student center ballroom. Besides featuring established artists, Kent State's Folk Fest is a great showcase for new, young performers. Wiser now, the festival is 34 years old and counting. Making cities work Akron shares its most valuable resource: knowledge A tenant whose home is the Waterford This isn't sister-city stuff in which Akron and Subotica, Yugoslavia, and Szeged, Hungary, are embarked. Those relationships Akron has them with such cities as Chemnitz, Germany, and Kiryat Ekron, Israel tend to be built around cultural exchanges and gaining a better understanding of one another.

This relationship is grittier, more elemental. Though public officials from Subotica and Szeged who visited Akron last week took in the sights and the culture (Riverdance got good reviews), city officials were able to offer Imre Kern and his Subotica colleagues something more useful: examples of and insight into how public institutions work. This relationship, sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development and administered by the International CityCounty Management Association, is the first that involves three cities and is turning out to be a model on which others are designed. Subotica has to relearn how to take care of itself, how to take the garbage Strummin' a new tune Kent State Folk Festival goes on anyway, for 34th time After reading the Nov.

26 story about the Waterford apartments headlined "Unruly teens disrupt complex," I felt I could give another tenant's point of view. I moved into the apartments in May. The apartments are beautiful and well-designed and accented. I really enjoy living here. I have made many new friends and so have my children.

We switch kids (playing at one home, then at the other). We borrow milk and butter and lend out sugar and flour. My children are invited to birthday parties for new friends. Most people who live here really care about where they live and how they live. We watch where our children go and with whom.

We baby-sit for each other and help out when help is needed. Sure, there are troublemakers, and, yes, the police have been called. We nave security personnel who drive around the complex all night, keeping any trouble in check. There will always be those who like trouble and those who want no trouble. The Waterford's management has always been helpful and willing to work with tenants.

The maintenance crews are always seen working on some part of the complex and, with one call, are SEND YOUR LETTERS Letters should bear the writer's full signature. Those that are faxed should also contain signatures. All letters must have the writer's address and daytime telephone number. All letters are subject to editing. Folks who pay the bills call the rune.

Difficult though it may have been for Kent State Folk Festival sponsors to learn this year's tune, they did. Now, it's performance time. With that, the 34th edition of one of the nation's longest-running college folk fests takes place this weekend, after some wondered whether the event could survive the termination of funding by the university student body. Indeed, this year, the festival involves the Kent community in a larger way, a way it always should have. Instead of entirely on campus, including tonight's and tomorrow night's concerts and tomorrow's day full of music workshops, much of the festival is happening throughout town at bars, cafes, coffee shops, even a school auditorium.

They have stepped up to help longtime supporter WKSU (89.7-FM) sponsor this year's festival. Many students objected to spending LETTER Voice of the People Beacon Journal P.O. Box 640 Akron, OH 44309-0640 FAX 330-996-3520.