But by the very nature of contact sport, where physical combat is most often within the roles, there will be flareâ€"ups, spontaneous reaction_s and so on. Respective leagues, teams and officials must be held responsible for such behaviour, but it must also remain a selfâ€"regulating aspect of the game. And yes, it‘s true, the job being done now isn‘t a sufficient one. _ a mmz 1P m 2 c _ B e o d y h alnaate _ . .. * .." C \,;,‘f, ‘ uc s â€6 & o Aaae ‘ww w ids ioe raggs | . Nee AAOH wve«ww oo .1 s PE Ja« .;.,.::Sg..:_fgs.s 9 x«g s k e P ? :&w; ips e :g? EV %,ï¬Ã© gamme fromagpee Ti T R o $ * $ 2 «sep The bleeding hearts scored a moral victory Tuesday over those who favor the belief "spare the rod, spoil the child," when the Law Reform Commission of Canada made public its working paper on assault laws. Based on summaries of the report in the media Tuesday, it would appear the Commission has come forward with a number of solid, if nonâ€"binding, recommendations. But there were at least two areas that it touched on that are controversial, to say the least. One, corporal punishment in our schools, and two, the role of the legal system in sports viâ€" olence. Corporal punishment can still be an effective disciplinary tool, not so much in usage as in symbolic nature. Granted, habitual corporal punishment is wrong and a sign of far deeper behavioural problems, but the occasional crack on the knuckles â€" or the threat thereof â€" can do the trick as well today as it did 30 or 50 years ago. Certainly the 59â€"page report had every good intention, but stating that teachers who discipline their students with a strap should be charged with criminal assault is an outlandish remark. Let us remember we are not talking about the dark ages of teaching/discipline when a good switching was a daily occurrence, often for the most trivial acts of misbehavior. Both school boards in Waterloo Region currently permit principals to use the strap as a last resort, and administraâ€" tors concur that is precisely the spirit adhered to; if all other avenues have been explored, the strap may still be used as a last resort. No one gets their "jollies" from using it. The arguments will rage ad nauseam about the proper method of treating violence in sport. There is no question there are a lot of acts to be cleaned up, both at the professional and amateur levels, but the courtrooms of the nation have no place in ruling on the rough stuff connected with the context of the game. Second Class Mail Registration Number 5540 Didn‘t we all grow up with the warning: "get it at school, and you get it twice as hard at home."" Wasn‘t that enough to make us walk the straight and narrow? It should still be. One of the most ridiculous arguments is that athletes ‘‘could never get away with that kind of stuff on the street."‘ It is patently absurd to equate violence in sports with street brawling or the like, no matter how similar the two may appear. Are body slams legal on the street? They are in wrestling. is crossâ€"checking legal on the street? It is in lacrosse. Are crunching bodychecks legal on the street? They are in hockey. PAGE 6 â€" WATERLOO CHRONICLE, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6 Sensationalistic media coverage has done a grave disservice to sport through exploitation of the seamier side of the games, the aspect of violence. To be sure the powers to be are equally to blame when they promote or at least suffer the goonish fools gladly. They say it adds to the color. Nonsense it does. published every Wednesday by Fairway Press, a division of Kitchenerâ€"Waterioo Record Ltd., owner 225 Fairway Rd. S., Kitchener, Ont. / (am | address correspondence to Waterioo office: I â€"2 45 Erb St. E., Waterioo, Ont. N2J 1L7, telephone 886â€"2830 ‘ é“ Waterioo Chronicle office is located in the Haney, White Law Office kh _ C Building (rear entrance, upper floor). Parking at the rear of the An assault building. Open Monday to Friday 9:00 a m. to 5:00 p.m Publisher: Paul Winkler Manager: Bill Karges Editor: Rick Campbell established 1854 â€"It is written Boy, the world is in some mess today, isn‘t it? With two world wars in this century, and the oceans of blood shed in them, not to mention the limited wars in Korea and Viet Nam, you‘d think mankind would come to its senses, sit back and say, ‘"Hey chaps. Enough is enough. Let‘s sit back, cultivate our own gardens, and have a few centuries of peace and friendship. Let‘s relax a little, try to make sure everybody has at least two squares a day, stop burning up irreplaceâ€" able energy, and make love, not war." Not a chance. All over this planet people are starving, shooting, burning, blowing up, raping, multilating, and demonstrating, all in the name of some nonâ€"existent ideal, such as freedom, or nationalism, or language, or religion, or color. And nobody is making a nickel out of it all, except the purveyors of weapons. World War I, with its millions of dead, produced a bare decade and a half of peace. It also signa‘lled the beginning of the end of the fairly fair and benevolent British Empire, allowed the beginning of the massive internaâ€" tional communism, and by its punitive peace terms, laig the foundations for World War II. Has it smartened anybody up? Not exactly. Today we have Iranians beating on Kurds, Chinese glaring at Russians, Cambodians hamâ€" mering Laotians, blacks fighting blacks all over Africa, Jews and Palestinians toeing off, dictatorships in South America, India in turâ€" moil, revolution in Central America, Irishmen blowing up each other with giddy abandon, old Uncle Tom Cobley and all. We don‘t seem to learn much, do we? The United Nations, a noble idea, conceived with a touch of the greatness man can aspire to, is a joke, albeit an expensive one, merely a political soundingâ€"board for every new pipsqueak nation that wants some publicity, along with plenty of All ‘over the world, in vast areas of Asia, Africa and South America particularly, there are probably 300 times more refugees, orphans and just plain starving people than there were at the beginning of this century of enlightenment. That one produced as little, or less. It vaulted Russia and the U.S. into the great confrontation that has been going on ever since. It wrote finis to the British Empire and reduced that sturdy people to a drained, impoverished, thirdâ€"class power. It split Europe down the middle between two philosophies, communism and capitalism. It launched on the world the final weapon by which mankind could write kaput to his own species. "I wouldn‘t be caught dead with my name on stuff like that." Bill Smiley War times Syndicated columnist interview, proving we‘re often our toughest Young Waterioo cartoonist Steven Jones, trashing some of his works prior to a Chronicle But these were flawed by other events and attitudes: the backing of rightâ€"wing dictators around the world: the loss of face in Korea; the treatment of Cuba; the meddling in the affairs of other nations; the fairly indiscriminate supplyâ€" ing of arms to anybody who could pay for them; rand finally, the abortive, badleyâ€"burnedâ€"fingers mess of Viet Nam. > At home right now, the States has growing inflation and unemployment, belligerent blacks and hardline unions. Abroad, ‘"it has lost a great deal of credibility, and seems to be pushed around by anybody who has plenty of oil. There is still a great, latent vitality in the States. With strong leadership, and a renewed sense of purpose, the Yanks can make a tremendous comeback, as they have proven more than once. For our sakes, they‘d better. Despite what our ubiquitous nationalists blather, Canada is riding on the coattails of the U.S., and you‘d better believe it. If they suffer, we suffer. If they bleed, we hemorrhage. and narrow, either. let‘s be neighborly. For the simple fact is, that if Canadians get all upright and righteous and miserly, refusing to share, they could walk in and take over this country and help themselves. And nobody, nobody in the world, would lift a finger to stop American imperialism is coming home to roost, and there are a lot of vultures among the roosters. Cuba is an outâ€"spoken enemy. Mexico, sitting on a huge oil deposit, is cool, considering past grievances. The Philippines are gone. Japan and Germany, the losers in W.W. II, are the winners in the economic war. The U.S. dollar is no longer the international monetary stanâ€" dard. The Panama Canal is going. But let‘s not forget the tremendous power that lies in that great, halfâ€"stunned nation of the Western hemisphere, the U.S. of America. The giant may be slumbering, having nightmares, twitching in his sleep. But he‘s far from dead. The U.S., which emerged from W.W. II as a great, powerful and wealthy nation. has been terribly weakened, chiefly by its external affairs policies, or lack of them, and the meddling in foreign affairs of the notorious CIA. Let‘s not give it away: our gas and oil and water and hydro power. Let‘t trade shrewdly, like a Yankee. But let‘s not get mean and stingy and narrow, either. let‘s be neighborly. foreign aid. End of sermon. â€"SEE PAGE 5