4A Thursday, December 1, 1994 OPINION UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN VIEWPOINT Helping families in need brings holiday spirit to all Many of us will scout the malls this holiday season,looking for the perfect gift and hiking up our credit card bills. But some of us don't have that option, and it's not because of lack of credit. Some Lawrence residents won't have happy holidays because of financial difficulties during the year. Deciding which presents to give is the least of their problems. But you can help, even if you give only one hour of your time or donate a couple of dollars. The Kansas and Burge Unions have Angel Trees, where people can select needy children's names for whom gifts can be purchased. And there are several other programs in Lawrence, as well. According to the United Way, there are adopt-a-family programs through these centers: Ballard Center, Emergency Service Council, Indian Center, Penn House, Salvation Army, East Central Kansas Economic Opportunity Corporation and the Senior Center. HOLIDAY GIVING Warm hearts with good deeds Another program in Lawrence is Warm Hearts, which helps low-income families pay their winter fuel bills. December is a month of giving, no matter what faith you are. And just a small effort on your part can make all the difference to a family in need. The Senior Center also sponsors Operation Snow Shovel, a program to help clear driveways and sidewalks for the elderly and disabled. ROBERTA JOHNSON FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD. Counties should provide free HIV testing for all Early next year, Douglas County will be part of a tri-county effort to provide medical services for low-income residents with HIV. The federally-funded program will include free screening of blood cell counts and various illnesses and referrals to about 20 doctors in the area. The service will not turn away those patients who are taking experimental drugs. Free testing by area health centers should be made available at least once a month. These 20 doctors should be commended for helping. They will hardly make a profit from this—they will be reimbursed by the government up to $600 annually for each patient they treat. And while their efforts form a positive step, these doctors' work is hardly enough. Patients will not seek medical relief from HIV unless they know they have it. And sometimes even the FIGHTING AIDS Detection could save lives $19 fee charged at Watkins Memorial Health Center is too costly for those who are worried they may have contracted HIV. Instead, many who are infected may go through life as before and possibly infect others with the fatal disease. Condoms aren't a catchall solution to the AIDS crisis, either. A failure rate for pregnancy does exist with condoms, and viruses are far smaller than sperm. The costs of extra tests are far less than the lives that rot away for years because of AIDS. For these reasons, area health centers should provide free AIDS testing at least once a month. And there is no accurate way to know how many people are infected with HIV unless we offer free testing. Already, nearly 800 people in Kansas have died from the deadly disease. ROBERTA JOHNSON FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD. KANSAN STAFF STEPHEN MARTINO Editor CHRISTOPH FUHRMANS Managing editor JEN CARR Business manager CAMERON DEATH Retail sales manager TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser CATHERINE ELLSWORTH Systems coordinator JEANNE HINES Sales and marketing adviser JEANNE HINES News...Sara Bennett Editorial...Donella Heame Campus...Mark Martin Sports...Briag James Photo...Daron Bennett Mellissa Lacey Features...Tracel Carl Planning Editor...Susan White Design...Noah Musser Assistant to the editor...Robbie Johnson Editors Business Staff Campus mgr Mark Masto Regional mgr Laure Guth National mgr Mark Masto Coop mgr Emily Gibson Special Sections mgr Jen Pierer Production mgr Holly Boren Rogan Every Marketing director Alan Stiglio Creative director Danny Glas Classified mgr Heather Niahsa Letters should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words. They must include the writer's signature, name, address and telephone number. Writers affiliated with the University of Oklahoma are required to submit proof of identity. Guest columns should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The writer will be photographed. The Kansan reserves the right to reject or edit letters, guest columns and cartoons. They can be mailed or brought to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. Today is World AIDS Awareness Day. It is a day to recognize those we have lost to a frightening disease without a cure. AIDS affects us all, gay and straight, non-drug users and junkies, promiscuous and prudish. Could we have a moment of silence? A trend in observing this day has been to create moments of silence and darkness. Artists have begun to declare the day A Day Without Art, and you may notice some instances of this declaration around campus. Even if you refuse to value yourself enough to stay alive, consider your friends and family; they are the people who will miss you when you are gone. It's because in the silence we remember those who have left us and those who were taken from us. In the darkness we feel the loss. EDITORIAL EDITOR But why silence? Why darkness? It is also because AIDS is a silent killer. HIV sneaks up in the darkness, under the covers and in the alleys and sneaks inside the human body without letting anyone know. Then anywhere from six weeks to 10 years later it emerges. But we still walk around like characters in an horror movie,walking into obvious danger without even thinking. We've seen others die, some of them our friends, family members or lovers. But we don't have the sense to keep the same thing from happening to us. We still take risks. Please take a moment today to be still and observe World AIDS Day. And while you are silent, think about the darkness. The darkness is the result of a lack of light. DONELLA HEARNE I would like to use my space here to cry out to you as I would to the characters on the screen. "Don't go in there! Take some protection. Just get We all know that HIV kills. We know the facts; they've been drilled into us by every newspaper or TV show. I am going to preach to you one more time about the risks of sex, drugs and general stupidity. out of there!" But if we know this, why is it that the biggest increase in HIV cases has been in the age group of 18-24? And why do we refuse to wear condoms or make our partners wear them? My hope is that today you will notice some silence in the world. You will notice some voice that has been silenced. You will think about an artist or an athlete who will no longer create something from which we can take pleasure. And when you think about those who are or are soon to be absent from our world, think about your own talents. The contributions you make are too precious to risk for a night of passion or a good high. Don't let your light go out. Your light shines out into that darkness and makes someone's life brighter. If you use intravenous drugs, never accept a needle second-hand. If you are sexually active, use a condom. And if you have doubts about whether you already have HIV, get tested. Choose to contribute to the world. Choose to live. Donella Hearne is a Wichita senior in news- paper Journalism. Jeff MacNelly / Chicago Tribune LETTER TO THE EDITOR Plush suites not what team needs As Bob Frederick and his buddies are planning a way to build two levels of "suites with plush seating" that I and most KU students will never be able to sit in. I can't help but ask : Are they thinking about improving the football program? improving the football program? I know we have been doing a lot to ensure that KU's football team has new uniforms, a new addition onto Parrot training center and that Glen Mason can kick the Wheat Meet out of Memorial Stadium. I agree with the idea of providing good facilities, equipment and services for our athletic teams, but Does it make sense that good football programs are built from the ground up and not from the suite box down? Hell, we can't even fill the stadium, and our athletic director wants to build suites for rich alumni. Perhaps it's for the best, because anyone who wants to fork out $50,000 a year to sit in their own suite is probably too good to cheer on the Jayhawks anyway. Charles Menifee Lawrence junior Memories of visit to Berlin still fresh The first time I went to Berlin it was like stepping onto a movie set for a Hollywood spy thriller. My family lived in West Germany at the time, and so we drove through the corridor that connected West Germany and West Berlin. It was cold and wet, typical for a German November. Several hours passed before we reached the gateway to Berlin, Check Point Alba. We were given a briefing about driving in East Germany, which included such details as never turn off on any of the exits along the road, never go above or below the speed limit and never take a picture of anything. We drove through a maze of road barriers until we came upon a small hut and a gate over the road. We stopped. A Russian guard came out of the hut and stood in front of the car, tall and erect, at attention. (Because my mother was an employee of the Department of Defense, we were on military orders and had to follow military protocol.) Our driver got out of the car with our orders and passports, saluted the soldier and handed him the paperwork. After studying the instructions our government had prepared, we left the checkpoint and started out for Berlin. Soon barbed wire fences grew up on either side of the road, then tall cement walls, and then out of nowhere, the road opened up onto a wide space. Guard towers stood every so many feet and search lights scanned the surrounding darkness. The two of them went into the small hut and another Russian soldier came out. He was not allowed to physi-cally touch the car, but his nose came within inches. He walked around the car several times, looking HEATHER KIRKWOOD through each window. He slid mirrors under the car to check underneath and then stopped and looked through my window once more. I had never met anyone from the Soviet Union before. My father had been a bomber pilot, and the Russians had always been the enemy. There I was and there he was, only a few years older than I, with a machine gun slung over his shoulder. We got permission to continue through the corridor, the gate lifted and we were off. Soon the lights from the towers disappeared into a thick darkness. It took about two hours to get to Check Point Beta and repeat the process with the Russian guards. Soon we were in West Berlin, a bright and colorful place that was still very crowded, even at two o'clock in the morning. The next day we went into East Berlin for the first time. We passed through Check Point Charlie, a place that no longer exists. I remember watching the white line marking the border on the pavement as it passed under the bus and I clenched my passport in my hands. The East was very different from the West. It was drab and dark. The stores were all the same, simple counters with a few goods on the shelves behind them. We could not speak to the people, but we watched them with a great deal of curiosity. Some of the buildings on the small residential streets were left unrepaired from the war. I remember that on one building, the balconies on the apartments had fallen right off into the street. I made several trips to Berlin before the Wall fell, one about every two months. When the wall fell I had been in the East only a week earlier. That night we had gone to the officers' club for dinner. The radio was on, but we were not paying any attention. When we heard the announcement made, not one of us even acknowledged it because we assumed we had not heard it correctly. The next morning my mother woke up screaming from the living room as she watched thousands of people pouring over the wall on television. We sat and watched it for three hours before even saying anything about what had happened. It was so amazing. Everyone had such a feeling of exuberance! Within a week a Trabant (East German car) was parked at the end of our block. It wasn't long before the roads were full of Trabants. They struggled to keep up with the traffic, and as we passed them we would wave because we were so thrilled to see them. When we visited East Berlin, the Russians in the museum told us that the wall was built to keep the West out. The Americans always laughed to themselves about this. They always thought, "Don't you know you are a prisoner here? Don't you know that wall was built to keep you from going west?" Now I understand what the government officials at the museum were talking about. The wall may have kept people form emigrating to the West, but more importantly it kept the West out. How else could you even try an economic system like communism with such outside influences as West Berlin? Some people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, and some people remember where they were when the Challenger space shuttle blew up, but I will always remember were I was when the Berlin Wall fell. Heather Kirkwood is a Wichita junior in magazine Journalism. MIXED MEDIA By Jack Ohman