Opinion
Kansan
Published daily since 1912
Julie Wood, Editor Brandi Byram, Business manager Laura Roddy, Managing editor Shaunae Blue, Retail sales manager Cory Graham, Managing editor Dan Simon, Sales and marketing adviser Tom Eblen, General manager, news adviser Scott Valler, Technology coordinator
Wednesday, November 9, 1999
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PATRICK O'CONNER / TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES
Editorials
PASS
Kansan report card
Edwards Campus — KU's Johnson County satellite to offer undergraduate degrees and a master's in international studies — in addition to its current graduate degree fare. Good move to adapt to current education needs.
Black Law Student Association — Conducting a food drive just in time for Thanksgiving. Students should take notice and pitch in on the effort.
- Suicide awareness activities — Campus groups unite to raise awareness about suicide.
Thanks for highlighting a silent killer.
Shepard verdict — Second murder gets life prison sentence. As Shepard's father said, the criminals are locked away and now is the time to heal.
FAIL
**Varsitybooks.com** — Online textbook retailer charged with false advertising finds itself in messy lawsuit. Our dream of affordable textbooks remains unfulfilled.
Junior high kids — A study shows that 20 percent of junior high age kids are smokers. We blame Harry Potter.
Texas public schools — Sixth grader gets an A for writing a story about getting high and shooting his teacher, then gets suspended from school. Silly Texans, is this what zero tolerance is meant to do?
Society too easily ignores needs of country's impoverished families
In 1996, 20.5 percent of U.S. children were living in poverty, according to a Census Bureau report released last week. The standard income used by the bureau to recognize poverty was $16,036 per year or less for a family of four. (It should be noted that this income did not include personal government subsidies.) We think that one in five children living in such conditions, even when potential welfare is added into the equation, simply is not acceptable.
Regardless of the ideological direction of the remedies for this problem, something must be done. We cannot continue to celebrate our current good fortune while so many are excluded from it. Whether you support government programs to ease the situation or private activities, we as a nation must act.
This country celebrates good fortune while 20.5 percent of its children live in poverty
Although much effort and personal discipline contribute to an individual's success, it is also likely that good luck plays a role. This luck may come in the form of being born into a dominant social group or living in an area with high economic growth. This reality of chance is compounded for children. As the saying goes, you can't choose your parents.
A compassionate society must recognize the need to help the less fortunate. We each must see that we, too, could fall on hard times and that our children would suffer from this. By creating various mechanisms to help poor children, we provide security for our own.
By taking immediate steps to aid impoverished children, the privileged class also will be helping itself in other ways. For example, it is well documented that children raised in poverty are more likely to commit crimes than those who were not. Thus, by easing their current impoverishment, we would be protecting society from future abuses.
This is a complicated issue, and it is one which this editorial has perhaps oversimplified. Nonetheless, the fact that something must be done about child poverty remains clear. Whatever the means, the end must be an improvement of our current situation.
Erik Goodman for the editorial board
Kansan staff
News editors
Chad Bettes ... Editorial
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Juan H. Heath ... Online
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Brad Hallier ... Associate sports
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T.J. Johnson ... Wire
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Micah Kafitz ...Marketing
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Matt Thomas ...Creative
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Broaden your mind: Today's quote
“There’s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comey in the streets?” Dick Cavitt, mocking the TV-violence debate
How to submit letters and guest columns
**Letters:** Should be double-spaced typed and fewer than 200 words. Letters must include the author's signature, name, address and telephone number plus class and hometown if a University student. Faculty or staff must identify their positions.
Guest columns: Should be double-
spaced typed with fewer than 700 words.
The writer must be willing to be photo-
arched for the column to run.
All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Staffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Chad Bette, on 877-492-4924.
If you have general questions or comments, e-mail the page staff (opinion@kansan.com) or call 864-4924.
Wanted: worthy man without alcohol crutch
Perspective
My roommate — we'll call her Janielle — has an incredible personality. She's hilarious, rambunctious and spunky. Giving. Caring. She's determined to be a marine biologist even though she's from Kansas. The lack of an ocean can't thwart her dreams. She's emotional but strong. She makes
onal but strong. She bakes cookies on Sundays.
Janielle also happens to be beautiful. She has huge, brown eyes and dark, shiny hair. She has fair skin. Straight teeth. Hygiene to boot. Long eyelashes. Cute little hands and feet. Voluptuous curves. I mean, eye-poppingly voluptuous.
Sarah
smarsh
columnist
opinion@kansan.com
Janielle can't get a date.
She doesn't stink or anything. She doesn't even have any annoying habits, really. Well, sometimes she smacks her gum. But it seems as
though lots of gals and guys with much larger obstacles, such as long toenails or criminal records, are landing romantic attachments left and right. So what's the problem here?
Janielle doesn't drink alcohol.
Let's all ponder that. Yes, a student who doesn't drink — at the eighth biggest party school in the universe or whatever they say. It's more common than you think. In fact, most of her friends don't drink either.
So, what does alcohol have to do with dating? Too much, I think. There was a *Seinfeld* episode once that touched on the subject.
Jerry: What percent of the population do you think is datable?
Jerry: No way. More like five. I mean, have you been to the driver's license bureau?
Elaine: So, if only five percent of people are dating material, how are all these people hooking up?
Jerry: Alcohol (laugh track)
Burry. McCormack (a biracial author)
Basically, drinking is an essential element in the blossoming of the average couple. First, there is booze on the first date to ease the tension. Next, inebriation often leads to sexual intimacy because a) alcohol tends to make people more brazen and b) drunk people usually are horny. Alcohol is a common factor in the couple's social outings — parties, nightclubs and the like. Actually, alcohol often becomes the demise of those very relationships because of the actions it's been known to cause — yelling hasty words, cheating and drug use. That's a whole other issue though. When focusing on the "getting together" step of the dating mess, one can see how hard it would be for a nondrinker to find her soul mate when everyone's hitin' the hooch so hard.
Janielle has a lot to offer. She is one of the best people I know, and I wish she could find a partner who has the courage to bond with another human being without getting hammered. I mean, what would you possibly do? TALK? GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER? Dating is a difficult enough challenge for anyone; it's virtually impossible when you won't play the alcohol game.
In fact, Janielle has had a number of prospects since she left her first big relationship about a year ago. But they never worked out. Even if the guys aren't initially alienated by her sobriety, she is alienated at the prospect of being his designated driver on their first date.
I myself am lucky enough to have found someone with ideas similar to my own. Now I hope some nice young gent will call my roommate. The four of us can make it a Blockbuster night and have fun being the bunch of bachelor dorks that we are.
I'll drink to that.
Searching for a soul mate, dreaming of completeness
Smarsh is a a Kingman sophomore in English.
What is the nature of the complex entity called human? What, if anything, will make us happy or content in this turbulent world? And what exactly defines the good life? After centuries of philosophical discussions and scientific inventions, the answers remain as complex and elusive as ever.
Can wealth, success and a high-profile job make us happy and content? I don't think so, unless we can share it with a special someone. What is more beautiful and pure than the merging of two hearts into a complete whole?
To find that special love and sense of oneness, I think, is the truest and purest feeling and miracle we can hope for in this world. It is easy to dream and chase the stars, but, unfortunately, reality is much more complex. The more we twist and turn amongst the world's hardships, the more unattainable and elusive the search for our soul mate may seem.
But the key is to keep our hopes and dreams alive. However independent or strong one is, I believe deep
Ramin
Ansari
guest columnist
opinion @ kansan.com
down we all have a fear of loneliness and a need to be loved.
But where is our "one" and when exactly, if ever, will fate cross our paths? We all know how hard it is to find a fulfilling relationship. We seem to be eternally trapped in an endless maze of dating rituals, two-faced pretensions and unspoken thoughts. Just think of the many schoolmates, coworkers and strangers you run into every day; opportunities come and go and the world's random beat goes on.
But, what can we do? We can not read people's thoughts or break down the masks and barriers they put on for the world. Wouldn't it be great to truly know what someone thinks of you? How free and liberating you would feel from the vicious circle you create from what you believe others see you as. Good or bad, true or false, you would simply know it.
Wouldn't it be a dream if we could all lift up the curtain and breakdown the barriers of the way we present ourselves to the world? We will do it whether we wish to deceive and take advantage of someone or simply because of the limitations we either have or feel we have. But, of course, to wish for a world devoid of these is pretty unrealistic and futile.
The world is full of misery, hardships and barriers and the more we search for our soul mate, the more disillusioned we may get. But by relying on honesty and simplicity as our pillars of strength, we need to strive toward making our dreams our reality.
If honesty, simplicity and truth were the main guiding lights we lived by, I guess they would not call it earth anymore. However, despite the obstacles and hardships, honesty and simplicity are the keys by which we can hopefully find our other half. As Jewel, the popular singer, states in one of her songs: "What is simple, is true."
In the words of *Ally McBeal's* John Cage: "The world is no longer a romantic place. Some of its people are; however, and there lies the promise. Don't let the world win, Ally McBeal." As we continue to wish on the stars, hopefully some day they will smile back at us and hand-in-hand with our earthly angel we could make pure, sweet melodies.
Ansari is a Lawrence graduate student in pharmacy.
Feedback
Cuba policy not about democracy
In response to the recent editorial about Cuba, I want to comment that while the embargo imposed by the United States is obsolete and might even go against international law, it is not true that it was implemented with the intention of promoting respect for liberal democratic values. In fact, anyone minimally acquainted with the historical record knows the embargo (or blockade) was a measure designed to protect the property of large landowners and agroindustrialists and, above all, to deter any other country in the region seeking a greater degree of self-determination.
The editorial board's position implicitly presents the embargo as if it was a well-meant, disinterested but not wise policy by a freedom loving government. This idea is very common but misleading, given the fact that the U.S. government has been very prone to support, tacitly or actively, several right-wing dictatorial regimes in the past.
The main driving forces of foreign policy are not ethical or atruiscal but political and economic interests. Those are the way of real politics in our world—and I am not saying it should be otherwise (that is another issue). Of course all this may sound a little cliché, but I have to say it because I am tired of constantly finding smart American college students that are so fantastically naive. Perhaps it has to do with the extraordinary strength of certain myths in this country. The media contributes greatly to distort reality, probably not always out of bad faith but because they are just as blinded by myths and ideology as those who had vested interest in perpetuating this state of
Examples abound; the Somozas in Nicaragua, Franco in Spain, Batista in Cuba and, above all, Pinochein in Chile, whose rise to power owes a great deal to the tireless campaign waged by the CIA for a period of three years. (It was one of the biggest and most successful covert operations ever undertaken by the agency in its history).
affairs. This may be a universal problem, but just to make a comparison, the British seem to be a lot more realistic: Margaret Thatcher, Lord Lamont and the Tories are unapologetically in favor of Pinochet's release, whom they consider the "only political prisoner in the UK" and a victim of a "judicial kidnap" (Thatcher). Of course, Kissinger thinks likewise; the difference is that these things are not commonly published here. For instance, a few months back, certain journalist from New York obtained the documents telling about a meeting of Pinochet and Kissinger in Santiago and made an elaborate interpretation of the meaning of this interview. She sent it to major newspapers and political magazines in the U.S. (The Nation, The New York Times), and nobody published it. She sent it to El Pais, in Spain, and The Guardian in London, and her story got published the very next day.
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Mauricio Navia Lawrence graduate student
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