4A
Opinion
Registering kegs is a step in the right direction
Tracing beer to buyer is not a panacea, but paperwork will instill more caution
K eg. Such a simple word brings to mind thoughts of parties, friends, good times and, most of all, alcohol. A keg is 16 gallons of a college student's best friend: beer
friend: beer
Unfortunately beer is an illegal substance for anyone under the age of 21. It's not much of a secret, but underage drinking is rampant at almost any university. When underclassmen are exposed to a new environment with new freedoms, drinking is usually the first thing they do.
The University of Kansas and the City of Lawrence are combining efforts to help curb the problem of underage drinking. Last week, the city commission asked the Joint City-Universities Task Force on Alcohol Abuse Prevention to formulate a proposal for keg registration in Lawrence. The task force most likely will propose an ordinance that will allow the city to trace a
keg's buyer by requiring paperwork when the kegs are sold. The buyer would then be held responsible for underage drinkers. This proposal would be a step in the right direction to decrease underage drinking by putting a tighter stranglehold on underage alcohol consumption at and around the University.
Several counties in Kansas already have similar ordinances, but discussion of such a proposal is causing a stir in Lawrence. Some might argue that the proposal would put a damper on keg sales and only add to the endless number of alcohol-related rules and regulations already in place. Beer distributors have complained that the ordinance would place an undue burden on the retailer and that keg registration is not a proven tool for curbing underage drinking.
However, these concerns are outweighed by the potential benefits of
such a proposal that would function as more of a scare tactic than an aggressive move to battle underage drinking. Placing sole responsibility on the buyers would force them to monitor underage drinkers, if they allow any at all. They might even have to go the extra mile and card people at the door. As long as buyers start better managing their parties by making sure people are responsible, the proposal will have done its job.
It's true that there are already many alcohol laws on record at the University and in Lawrence. However, these policies are not fully enforced. One example is the University's zero-tolerance policy. In a 1998 survey conducted by the KU Office of Institutional Research and Planning, 14 percent of students said that the policy wasn't enforced, and 36 percent said that they didn't know what? And while fraternity and sorority residents are subject to the same
rules, some complain that most greek organizations are often let off with a simple slap on the wrist.
If the city and the University want to make more moves toward preventing unsafe and unsafe environments for students, more power to them. Even though this proposal may not stop all underage drinking, at least someone's trying.
Eric Borja for the editorial board
Impending doom meets reality in Y2K anticlimax
Author's Note: While Y2K was fairly disappointing in its lack of explosions, total decline of societies and towering 900 foot Jesuses, we all passed into the new year wondering if this was it, unless of course we had been watching CNN all day and had seen every other time zone turn the clock with no problems. This is a tale of what if the lights had gone out that night? What would it have shown about our lives and the public administration of doom-coming?
Scene 1: A public street
Chorus: (all lines sung) We're gonna die. Dear Lord, we're going to die. Y2K is gonna ruin our day, and we're gonna die.
Male No. 1: Did you hear? the presidents and CEOs of every Fortune 500 company join the government in saying the Y2K bug is solved.
Chorus: We're somewhat sure we're going to die. With mild reservation, we will die. Live high on the hog soon. We'll be dead like a dog because we're somewhat sure we're going to die.
Male No. 2: Check it out guys.
Jerry Springer's topic today is:
"YZK: Why it won't kill us ... while I'm having your baby."
Chorus: We're not gonna die. Hot
damn, we're not gonna die. Jerry
would know, so we're not gonna go,
and we're not gonna die ... 5 ... 4 ... 3
... 2 ... 1 ...
(lights go out)
Female No. 1: Oh my God, we're gonna die.
(noises of looting, shouting, etc. in the dark)
Scene 2: An apartment dimly lit by a candle, filled with computers, TVs, Nintendo 64s, etc.
Lyle: (enters with stereo equipment) Well, that was some quality looting.
Ed: Indeed it was. But did you bother to loot food or water while you were out, or to consider how none of this stuff works without the power being on?
Ed: So how could you forget food
and water while getting all this use less stuff?
Lyle: Mostly because I'm an idiot.
There is rusting in the dark.)
Lyle: Quick, grab the gun. It's over by the PlayStation.
Ed: You looted a gun?
Lyle: We need to protect what's ours.
Ed: (grabbing gun) I'm sure every one wants THX sound for their now- useless TV.
(War enters from side)
Lyle: Freeze dirt bag
Nick
Barktoski
columnist
opinier@kansan.com
War: Whoa, chill out
Ed: Who do you think you are?
War: I'm the horseman of the apocalypse.
Lyle: The horseman of the APOCA-LYPSE?
Ed: THE horseman of the apocalyse?
War: Yeah, I'm War, the
horseman of the apocalypse.
Ed: Aren't there usually four of you?
War: Yeah, but we got downsized.
Ed: Downsized?
War: Well, some moved to the private sector. Death took a vice presidency at the Disney corporation. Pestilence bought into Starbucks. Finally, the guys in charge decided we could get by with a single horseman. Poor Famine. She was tossed out on the streets.
Lyle: Why didn't you leave?
War. Well, I've got to get the apocalypse under way, but since I'm only War, I figured I torch the nukes.
War. It was the '60s, I was getting kickbacks from defense contractors. I didn't think I'd actually have to work later on.
Ed: From where?
Ed: So why are you here?
Oddly, the U.S. government doesn't hand out that info.
Lyle: Bummer. But look on the bright side. I was able to loot beer while I was out.
Ed: You couldn't get the vital supplies of life, but you looted beer?
Lyle: Pretty much.
War. Yeah, the too (time passes)
Ed: Eh, throw me one.
War: What do you mean she hooked up with the Professor? Mary Ann was all about Gilligan.
Lyle: Are you nuts? Gilligan was a loser. The Professor was a man's man.
War: He couldn't even fix a twofoot hole in a boat!
Ed: Death played chess, probably a Shakespearean scholar. I get to wait out my impending doom listening about '60s sitcoms.
(more time passes, the electricity comes on and War is lying on the ground)
Ed: I'll stick to cleaning up your puke instead. Whoa, did you kill War?
Lyle: Naw. He just can't hold his liquor.
War: Uh ... what's that light?
War: The electricity has come back on Shoot. I'm gonna be in trouble when I get home.
Ed: Electricity. It's what powered the 20th century.
Ed: So no apocalypse?
War: Guess not. Anyway, I gotta be going. Lyle, you're a good man. Let's go drinking sometime. (he leaves)
Ed: Wait, if you had been responsible and picked up food and water, we'd be dead now. Your lack of consideration just saved the entire world. (he shivers)
Lyle: Huh? Cool, the animated blood spurs 20 feet in this game!
Barkoski is a Baseer senior in journalism and English.
AIDS ravages South Africa while U.S. plays politics
South Africa is suffering from a severe epidemic that is threatening the health of the entire nation. More than 13 percent of the population is infected with HIV.
An estimated one million AIDS-related deaths have already occurred in South Africa, nearly double the number of people who have died of complications from AIDS in the United States. Unfortunately, the standard drug therapies used in the West to treat HIV/AIDS patients are well out of the price range for the vast majority of South Africans. These drugs, now prevalent in the West, could slow the epidemic in South Africa significantly.
In 1997, faced with a rapidly growing health emergency and the need for such AIDS medicines, the South
African government passed an amendment in which its Ministry of Health could begin compulsory licensing and parallel importation of affordable drugs.
Parallel importation is a process in which South Africa could import the desperately needed drugs from countries where they were available for far less than a drug company would charge in South Africa. Compulsory licensing would allow South Africa to require a drug company to permit local manufacturers to produce generic versions of the drugs to fight HIV/AIDS, thus also reducing drastically the price of the drugs.
Kyle
Browning
guest columnist
opinion@kansan.com
In reaction to South Africa's efforts to bring the much needed drugs to its people, more than 40 major drug companies jointly filed a suit in South Africa's Constitutional Court in which they claimed their rights were being infringed upon. This suit barred the amendment from taking effect and the drugs from reaching suffering South Africans. The International Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), though, allows both compulsory licensing and parallel importing by countries faced with a national emergency. South Africa's health minister repeatedly assured the affected parties that South Africa would abide by all the stipulations of such international laws.
However, Western governmental groups, such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health, developed most of these AIDS drugs with taxpayer money. The marketing rights of the drugs were then given to private firms, allowing them to make huge profits from drugs they did not invent. U.S. law clearly permits the sharing of drugs it invents with other countries and would thus allow the United States to provide the proper drugs to South Africa without worry of violating certain companies' intellectual property rights.
So, the Clinton administration could have made generic AIDS drugs available in South Africa at any time.
Instead, the administration did all it could to prevent South Africa from exercising its rights under TRIPS.
Al Gore, co-chairman of the United States-South Africa Binational Commission, took the side of the drug industry and stalled the efforts of South Africa by claiming that he wanted to make sure international agreements were obeyed. What Gore ignored was the fact that South Africa had repeatedly assured him that it would do just that.
Gore's actions seem to have been influenced by his close ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Lobbying firms have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from pharmaceutical giants to lobby Gore in the last few years.
Peter Knight, a longtime Gore aide and adviser to his presidential campaign, was a lobbyist with drug industry clients that paid his lobbying firm $180,000 in 1998. In 1997 and 1998, the drug industry gave more than $300,000 to the Democratic Party and Gore's political action committee. Other drug company lobbyists donated a total of $11,100 to Gore 2004 in early 1999, right after consumer and AIDS activists began putting pressure on Gore's office to change his South Africa policies.
This issue is why AIDS activists disrupted many of Gore's speeches on the presidential campaign trail this past summer. The vice president and the pharmaceutical industry played politics, trying to protect corporate profits while South African AIDS patients paid with their lives.
Gore, according to a 1999 State Department report to Congress, spearheaded an assiduous, concerted campaign to stop South Africa from making low-cost AIDS drugs available to its millions of infected citizens.
Unfortunately, this issue is not limited to South Africa. Our government still has not sent a clear signal to Thailand that it can proceed with the production of generic AIDS drugs without fear of U.S. trade sanctions, and the drug company giant Pfizer is threatening to sue the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Doctors Without Borders for bringing into Kenya a generic version of a powerful drug for AIDS-related illnesses.
Happily, although curiously, on Sept. 9 the drug companies announced they had suspended their suit against South Africa, acknowledging the processes for compulsory licensing and parallel importing. U.S. government representatives also claimed all was now well between our two countries, and Al Gore has begun to push for more funds for AIDS patients with the usual rhetoric and election-time promises. Thus the Clinton administration, Al Gore and the drug industry put two years of pressure on South Africa for nothing.
During those two years an estimated 300,000 South Africans died because of AIDS complications.
Browning is an Overland Park junior in political science.
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Feedback
Jaybowl's demise disheartening
My name is Catherine Meissner and I, too, am writing about the Jaybowl. Five years ago, I came to KU as an undergraduate, alone and without a job.
The Jaybowl took me in and gave me new friends and a new competitive sport. Since then, I have taught classes, thrown birthday parties, seen beer sales disappear, met new friends and bowled in several nationwide competitions. The Jaybowl means so many things to so many
I agree that the cyber cafe would be great. It is disheartening to see other universities, even smaller than this one, with so many recreation opportunities and then to see that our Union, the STUDENT Union wishes to decrease our choices even more. I know of many clients who have come to the Jaybowl because we have no smoking and provide cheap
Catherine Meissner Fargo, N.D., graduate student
people. It is my "cool" job besides teaching French. I cannot express what it would mean if the Union decides to totally do away with the lanes and center.
CLEAR RUN:
Please take Tom Partridge's suggestion and come SAVE the JAYBOWL.
Rudge's suggestion and come SAVE the JAYBOWL. This one place saved me from being alone and broke. What does the Jaybowl represent for you? Thank you!
clean fun!
Broaden your mind: Today's quote
“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.” — Harper Erinstein
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