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Monday, November 10.1975
University Dally Kansan
Pot issue to stay
Things will never be NORMAL in Kansas in spite of recent efforts by State Rep. Michael Glover, D-Lawrence, and Washburn University law students.
NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, is a lobby working for legalization of marijuana in Kansas.
One's pessimism about relaxation of marijuana laws stems from a historical reluctance by the Legislature to confront the issue.
Glover has tried to change Kansas' marijuana laws since 1972. He may be primarily a one-issue legislator, but he has been stubborn about that one issue.
Marijuana should be decriminalized. It makes no sense to put people in jail for smoking marijuana. The current black market in drugs is totally evil, though, and can never be reduced to a tolerable level while more possession is regarded as a major crime.
No one can say with certainty that marijuana is harmless. Even after "definitive" research has been done, people will be debating the question.
Some who oppose relaxation of marijuana laws think that such a move might lead to increased use of marijuana. But it seems more likely
that it would lead to decreased abuse of the drug, also.
The argument that the illegality of marijuana use makes it more attractive may not be original, but it is probably true. The drug will never be abolished; there are too many people using it for that to happen.
The real drug problem, and one that has to be eradicated without delay, is the use of heroin and other dangerous drugs. Jail sentences aren't the answer to the heroin problem, but they Diget in the only way tousive use of drugs in the only way to reduce the self-destructive tendencies of those who turn to dangerous drugs.
The mystique of smoking marijuana would probably disappear if marijuana laws in Kansas were changed. What would probably remain would be the occasional use of marijuana as a sub-study or childbirth aid. There would still be some abuse of marijuana, just as there is widespread abuse of alcohol.
Marijuana laws in Kansas will be eventually relaxed. But this is one idea whose time has not come, at least in this state.
Ward Harkavy Contributing Writer
THE CASE OF KAREN ANN QUINLAN
Even the sick deserve to live
By DBEBIE GUMP
Associate Editor
Fourteen-year-old Anna
Vulgarem can't talk. The
cancer that has spread from her brain to her spinal cord won't let her see or hear either.
Kansan Forum Bennett slights fair-credit issue
Congress passed the Fair Credit Act last week. The act banned discrimination against bankers and laid down antidiscriminator guidelines to be followed by credit insurance.
discrimination against women when they seek credit.
This week, Gov. Robert Bennett, in response to the new federal enactment, said he had been charged with "assault" aimed at eliminating alleged
Bennett's ingnorme and apathy on the subject are appalling.
Bennett said he was personally unaware that any problem existed in his job, and it had been his experience that persons with good credit ratings, whether male or female, could get
credit ability and credibility
Camille Ellet, city employee for Kansas City, Kan., did a study on credit discrimination
The Kansas Advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has done exerted an effort to discriminate. The commission has compiled a report that contends that Kansas women encounter stress when they apply for credit
But people who believe in the manifest destiny of our civilization are no longer the overwhelming majority they once were. An ever-increasing number of people are coming to believe that the myth of progress is just that—a myth.
This, in some people's eyes, made him a Cassandra.
Revolution and baptized liberally with a romantic belief in the perfectibility of mankind. It taught people to think about the future and the present and give them a garden about or laugh at the past.
This philosophy survived two world wars and a great depression. It branched out to affect almost every facet of our society. In government it taught us that if we spend enough money and time we could solve any problem, from going to the moon to making everyone love us. The same lesson it taught us that "bigger" and "newer" were intrinsically better. In foreign affairs it taught us that everyone should want to be like us.
The British historian Arnold Toynbee, who died last month at 86, was accused by some people of being a pestemist. Toynbee said that Western civilization wouldn't last forever and that it was showing signs of deteriorating.
The idea of progress as we know it was born of the mating of Darwinism and the Industrial
Toynbee's world view stands up to inspection
can't even move the lower half of her body.
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Lawyers appointed to represent Karen Ann asserted that if the court allowed the women to open the floodgates to court-sanctioned euthanasia. Where would the line be drawn, they asked, between who has a disability to recover and who has no hope?
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Doctors say that there's no hope for Anna and that it's just the fact that she's Vulgarmore stoically accepted their decision but she has also realized that she is too precious to be discarded lightly; so, she sits by her daughter's side and savors the time she has with
One attorney put it this way: "That is a God-like decision and you would be opening the gate to the death of hundreds of millions of people across this country who have a very low quality of life.
Her mother, who quit her job as a nurse to be Ama's constant caregiver, she goes to ease her daughter's pain. She feeds her through a tube and changes her linen; in effect, she has become her daughter's
MRS. QUINLAN HAS testified that her daughter asked not to be kept alive by extraordinary means. We can not only not define "extraordinary" means—for who would have thought vaccinations ordinary?—but also we can't put words into Karen's mind of young people, detecting the thought of growing old and feeble, have wished for an earlier death and then lived to a ripe old age, loving every minute.
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THE CASE WENT last week to the judge, who expects to rule within two weeks. Because he has agreed that Karen Ann is both legally and medically alive, the decision hinges on who has the power to end a life that medical evidence has no hope of being fulfilled.
In answer to the doctors who think there's no hope of Karen Ann's recovering, look at Gene Tipps in Texas, who woke up from an eight-year coma last week. And he began to wonder whether her son would awaken, termed his recovery miraculous.
"It scares me," says the mother, who is waiting for her child to die. "Sometimes I feel like running and screaming."
Mrs. Vulgamore is one who has decided that we have no such right.
Mrs. Vugamore is in debt to the bitter tune of $7,000 and she's suffering almost as much as her daughter.
"IF THERE IS ONE chance in a thousand, one chance in a hundred thousand, one chance in a million, one chance in what right do we kill that life?"
A TOTALLY DIFFERENT atmosphere surrounds the case of Karen Ann Quinlan, a 21-year-old who has been in a coma since April. Doctors generally agree that Karen, who lies in a fetal position in her hospital bed, will probably remain in a vegetable-like condition as long as she is breathing the respirator. Her parents have filed suit, asking that the respirator be unplugged.
Karen Ann's court-appointed guardian, Daniel Coburn, said, "I'm not a miracle worker, but he is fine." He added that million, I believe we should take it, even if Karen dies on the last she will so out fussing."
It seems contradictory for a race that has but one tenet to cling to, that of the sanctity of life, to erase its entire history of medical training and end Karen Ann's life. Millions have questioned the purpose of man, who has been only one definite answer given—to create and maintain life. It is the one irrefutable guideline by which we have lived for centuries.
Going out fighting is going out with dignity.
AND AS FOR WANTING,
a dignified死 for Karen Ann,
what dignity can be achieved by
the act of nulling a plue?
The Quinian's decision to try to turn off the respirator was undoubtedly the hardest one they will ever make, one they might live to regret, even if Kagen Ann doesn't.
They base their request on the grounds that Karen Ann wouldn't have wanted to be kept alive under such conditions, that they have no hope that she'll recover and that they want their daughter to die a dignified death.
And suppose, just suppose, the doctors are wrong about Karen Ann. There's no turning back after the plug is pulled.
Jim Bates
in Kansas City early in 1973. Her study showed the need for fairer treatment of women in credit transactions in that study.
Publisher Business Adviser
David Dary Mel Adams
The University of Kansas Commission on the Status of Women has also done research in this area. Every credit institution in Lawrence was questioned in order to determine her great discrimination occurred in lending matters.
The lessons, however, are beginning to wear a little thin. The world's resources, we are finding out, aren't enough for one United States, let alone a whole world of United Stateses. The rising expectations of the world are keeping the GNP growing every year, production has to increase, even if this means planned obsolescence in car styles, useless electric knickknacks and advertisements to make people buy things they'll never need. The philosophy of material possessions is running into some cold fact that some things have limits.
The study concluded that discrimination was present in these areas: weight given to working wife's income if she is of childbearing age, counting of almamy and child support as part of a woman's income, in the spouse's right to obtain credit
EVEEN IF PROGRESS could go on forever economically, it still might grind to a halt. Marx to the contrary, a civilization is designed to be able to earn economic values. Even if our civilization were economically sound, it still would have a big hole in it. It is this hole, a lack of resources, that will possibly fill with witchcraft, Jesus cults and the SDS.
An extreme example of credit discrimination in Kansas was a University of Kansas woman who was highly paid, who, upon applying for credit at a Lawrence department store, was told her loan was necessary for the credit card application to be processed.
If the governor is unaware of credit discrimination against women, she is exposed to these studies. There is a real and necessary need for women to be able to obtain credit on an equal basis with men.
Toynbee realized the importance of a spiritual core for a civilization. He also realized—and tried to tell people—that our civilization won't immortal or unique. Like all human beings, we have trouble realizing that other civilizations have value.
WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND that 1685 is as important in the long run in 1975. Both were real, and so we the people living then. We the people living now. The United States isn't the world, nor is our civilization eternal. If America collapsed, the world would go on. The collapse would have an effect on history, of course, but eventually the world would end us. We time stumble on.
Whether Bennett is unaware of credit discrimination in law, he has no apathy is secondary to the startling fact that our governor doesn't have any knowledge issue vital to many Kansans.
The future isn't black, of course, and it certainly isn't a good idea to go through life waiting for the imminent collapse of our civilization. Nevertheless, it is very useful to know that we are not the Apha and the Omega.
Bennett's education in this matter is essential. Women's work is often not apt to enclose the governor on this subject but to push for the enacting of anticriminative credit laws in Georgia.
Getting Bennett to support fair credit laws would be a great advantage in the coming legislative session. With or without the governor's support, an attempt must be made to get credit discrimination laws passed in Kansas.
Readers Respond / Shockley defends position
I am engaged in a campaign to open closed minds to the serious threat of dysgenics, the retrogressive evolution through the disproportionate reproduction of the genetically disadvantaged. This phenomenon may have been the result of past civilizations. However, my focus is upon the human misery that may result for children who are brought into the world by nobly intended welfare programs.
To the Editor:
These children are not equipped by genetic potential to rise out of their miserable environments. This threat in the case of the black minority, I have summed up my position on this in 13 words that I have sometimes used as a debate tool to diagnose the American Negro tragedy of statistical IQ deficit.
I am aware that stating such an objective subjects me to an attack as being a racist. I deny that the racist label does apply to me. Racism impiles force and superiority. I have often stated that many blacks are superior to many whitees. Indeed, there are probably low genetic quality segments of the white population that pose a dysgenetic risk to the most genetically disadvantaged) as severe as that for blacks. Appalachia may
In contrast, some ethnic groups out-perform the white national average in terms of political strength, being those of Russian ethnic origin as tabulated in census bureau reports. But on a percentage basis, American groups are most threatened by dyslexia.
provide examples, but good data are hard to obtain.
What I am actually demanding is scientific, dispassionate diagnosis. A proposed name for such research is "Raceology"—not racism. Diagnosing the cause of the statistical Negro problem was being the tragedy of American Negro disadvantages.
If my own opinion that the cause of the tragedy is preponderantly racially genetic findings such as manic traitstained by the research that I plan to propose at the debate at UCSE and Washburn University, and that I would have proposed had I appeared at KU; a second factor that than compensated for by the knowledge that the new scientific facts will contribute to eliminating prejudice. Thus, no matter how it turns out, sound evidence for our members of our society, regardless of their race.
William Shockley
I have recently employed the
Copy service cues To the Editor:
services of a local commercial copy service that specializes in fast job turnaround. I have learned two things which might be of interest to other students being to use similar services.
First, you need to count your copies prior to leaving the copy service building, before paying, if possible.
Second, you need to have a copy of the order and you need to specifically state in writing on the order any special requests for a rag content, etc.). You have no legal recourse from the failure of the copy service to follow verbal agreements that can cost you your money ($50 to $100 for copying a thesis) and your time it does result in a double order for the copy service).
Jim Ambrose Lawrence graduate student
Default two-sided
To the Editor:
This is a letter in response to the editorial written by Paula Jolly, and printed in the Karsan on October 29, which was endorsed by Mr. Jolly personally, have not decided whether the federal government should get involved in New York City's fiscal problems but do feel good that he should be expressed. Jolly has presented the negative position, and I will attempt to discuss some of the
problems which could be avoided by federal involvement in the crisis.
First of all, the argument that a New York City default could cause fiscal problems for cities across the nation, is not new. Since 1970, New York has. Since a major city like New York City has never defaulted no one knows what will indeed happen if it does, therefore, the theory that all other major cities should be a valid one. Nevertheless, it is something to think about. Another thing to think about is that many of the holders of New York City municipal bonds are older people who afford the loss, but people like you and I, and many are elderly people who have invested in municipal bonds as a means of income upon retirement—if the money they will lose their money.
My final point is that in all the
technical rhetoric and economic jargon, many have forgotten about the eight million people that live in the city. It is true that New York has mismanaged its budget and many unnecessary civil servants, but those workers do have families and what will they do when the city defaults and they no longer have jobs? If they don't need to work and others, about the evils of fiscal management just doesn't seem to solve the problem that these people are presented with. I am not assuring that these people are going to receive federal intervention, but I do feel that there is a human aspect to this question and that it, along with the other important variables, should be carefully considered before any games to a conclusive decision.
Reggie Robinson
Salina Freshman
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