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University Daily Kansan. February 26. 1981
Opinion
Minority coverage, issues important to Kansan's staff
As of late, the Kansan has made substantial progress in its coverage of minorities. Yet progress has not been substantial enough.
Like most newspapers across the country, the Kansan faces problems in covering minorities—and covering them fairly. The Kansan has a commitment to
DAVID LEWIS
Editor
provide an adequate voice for minorities, but sometimes a lack of communication and planning have hampered this commitment.
Take the Kansan's Martin Luther King coverage earlier this semester. Numerous students—black and white alike—rallied in honor of King's birthday, but only a photograph was buried in the back pages of the Kansan.
Only a week later, a different, smaller group of people protested President Reagan's policies, receiving front-page attention. Although the poor coverage of the King rally was not intentional, it was inexcessable.
Yet minority coverage has improved this semester. Two reporters were assigned to the minority affairs beat in an attempt to beef up minority coverage. During the past month alone, the Kansan has focused on the minority angle in stories concerning tutoring, financial aid and housing. More such stories are on the way.
The Kansan has featured personality features on several minorities, including prominent blacks such as Bernard Franklin and Marilyn Ainsworth. The
Why? Not simply because minorities are minorities. The stories were run because minorities and their interests are important. The Kansan has an obligation to serve the best interests of its readers.
Kansan ran an in-depth story on the Black Student Union.
In the spring of 1978, the Kansan had no black staff members. This semester the Kansan has seven black staffers who fill both news and editorial positions.
Black history has been ignored in the history books, although blacks have played an important role in the development of our country. This month's activities have given us all a chance to realize that blacks have made significant contributions to our culture and history.
Much of the increased minority coverage this semester is because of Black History Month, an important event—not only for blacks, but for all races.
Granted, the increase is not overwhelming, but the Kansan has increased its minority representation. We hope the trend continues; there's no reason why it shouldn't.
Black History Month has made it easier for the Kansan to cover minorities—in this instance, the black minority—this semester. The true test for the Kansan, however, will come when Black History Month ends this week.
From slavery to the unique civil rights movement—a revolution that conquered oppression with peace—black history has touched all of our lives. And its activities like Black History Month that the Kansan must continue to cover.
After all, the Kansan didn't designate only February as minorities' month. Minority concerns won't be any less important to us in the months ahead.
Heart research, development receiving greater attention
New York Times Special Features
By ROBERT G. WLEZIEN New York Times Digitized Edition
STONY BROOK, N.Y.-Allthough research and development leading to an artificial heart have been federally funded for 17 years, the project had received little attention until recently. The low profile may have been forced on it by lack of money, perhaps by the desire to get on with the work before the device became an
Heart disease afflicts 30 million Americans and kills about 1 million of us every year. It is the leading cause of death in the U.S.
Thus, the number of people likely to be affected, and the gravity of that effect, warrant fully open discussion in anticipation of the availability of the new technology.
But recent news about permission to experiment on humans raises questions about this biomedical technology that need to be answered soon, especially because the University of Utah's artificial-heart group is preparing to perform the first implant in a human.
The heart is an organ that has more than just functional significance. Replacing a hip or knee joint, or attaching an artificial limb, is one thing, but attaching a strap with the very essence of humanity through the ages.
The artificial heart will not merely keep its recipients alive, it will also carry with it a long list of secondary concerns—legal, ethical, economic, social, psychological and philosophical—that may well alter our concept of ourselves.
Certainly initial experiments will forego this goal. The implanted pump that the Uiah group intends to use will be pneumatically driven by tubes that pass through the chest to an outside airway, and then to a collection of having to recharge batteries or "plug in" to overwhelming, traumatic psychological event?
Though the researchers seek to minimize the noise and vibrations and maximize the performance of the machine, will they succeed to the point where the patient will feel natural?
There will be recipients who will rejoice at having "beaten death," and there will be others who feel dehumanized by the knowledge that existence relies on an electro-mechanical maneuver.
As Dr. Robert Jarvik of the U.S. group said in the January issue of *Scientific American* "Patience is key."
During the human-experiment period and later when the artificial heart becomes medically acceptable, decisions will have to be made about who will receive the available hearts. These will be life-and-death decisions comparable to the dilemma that faced the administration of kidney dialysis when the artificial-kidney machine was first introduced.
A 1973 assessment of the artificial-heart program put the cost at $50,000 per operation and concomitant care. At an annual inflation rate of 10 percent (conservative for medical care), this estimated cost has more than doubled. Who can afford $100,000?
psychological counseling to help them adapt to a situation pew in human experience."
At that time, selection committees made up of ordinary citizens at each dialysis center chose among the applicants: who would live and who would die. The criteria is generally used to distribute scarce medical resources; medical-based on immediate need; random-first-come, first-served, or some type of lottery; social worth—whose benefits will best offset the commonwealth to the greatest degree?
Will the artificial-heart program follow the kidney-dialysis precedent and require federal legislation amounting to $5 billion? The number of patients served could easily be 50,000 per year.
To whom can we entrust such delicate decisions?
There is no universal agreement about when a person is dead. Each time that guardians want to "unplug" a patient, respirator-supported life is challenged in the courts. Since, conceivably, an artificial heart will go on beating after other vital organs fail, what legal or moral imperatives will there be for attendants to recharge the heart's batteries?
Who will make the decision to stop its beating and what guidelines will describe the proper timing? What long and terrible pain will be suffered by people who contract diseases, such as cancer, that might afford them the relief of death more quickly if they had a natural heart?
As members of organized society and as individuals we have to make decisions, to set policies.
Robert G. Wlezner, a lecturer at the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences of the State University of Brooklyn, is assistant director of a project in which social implications of technology are studied.
When the artificial heart becomes available
what we think about it.
we should already know
what we think about it.
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About 20 protesters stood outside a dance sponsored by the Gay Services of Kansas this Saturday. They displayed a banner reading, "Why does KI sanction seduction?"
Anti-gay protesters are hypocritical
A marmo handed out by the protestors said that sodomy was prohibited by Kansas legal statutes, and the University should not tolerate it, which are accompanied by criminal behavior."
Doug Lamborn, a Lawrence resident and former KU student who attended the demonstration, said that the goal of the protesters was to give the taxpayers some control over the kinds of people allowed to use public buildings.
"We fully endorse the constitutional rights of every American," Lambard said. "But when it comes to using public property, built and supported by taxpayers, the general public should perhaps have a little more say in not allowing it to be used by certain groups whose aims will destroy the family unit and ultimately the structure of society itself."
That's dangerous. It leaves wide-open the question of who will decide what groups threaten family life and society, and what criteria will be used.
Doc Norton 01
JANE
NEUFELD
I think that University officials will simply ignore the slush of misinformation and
Quick, what's the telephone number of Lawrence's nearest Recruiting for Deprivity Center? I've never heard it. Or perhaps it wasn't even owned by "Hey, freshman. Want some candy."
propaganda the protesters pass off as facts about homosexuality. The Gay Services of Kansas was recognized as an accredited student organization in 1972, and as such they are permitted to use rooms in the Kansas Union.
Because it is choice that keeps the ranks of homosexuals full, he said, homosexuals must recruit members, although he said he didn't know how the recruiting was done.
Officials are not likely to start a pitched battle by revoking recognition of GOSK.
I don't believe it, not for a minute. If a recruiting movement was out there, I would have run across it by now, considering all the low-life bars and slassy parties I've been to.
Lamborn said he had talked to people who had "come out of the movement" and agreed that homosexuality was a matter of choice. He also said he felt the same discount factors of environment and heredity.
Psychiatrists, religious leaders, sex researchers and homosexuals themselves have debated the "learned vs. inherited" differences in personality, apparently know something no one else does.
But opinions of the protesters should not go unchallenged, because they are not just condemning behavior, they are advocating homosexuals' legal right to public buildings.
One of the reasons the memo gives for regulating homosexual gatherings is that people are recruited to be homosexual at such events.
The memo states, "Because it's a learned behavior, and not inherited, no one can join it."
Another argument in the memo, that homosexuals have higher rates of alcoholism, venereal disease, suicide and depression, indicates that the organization that homosexuality is a matter of choice.
Probably homosexuals try to talk people into going to bed with them. So do heterosexuals, and that's a fact. Propositioning is not brainwashing.
Lamborn read a quotation from a magazine article that said, "Most of us in gay life don't hear about a suicide without automatically knowing there's a good chance the person was gay."17
Perhaps some people feel that homosexuals without knowing what lies in store for them.
You'd have to be stone-blind or more stupid than a cabbage not to know how homosexals are thought of in our society. The image is not just unfavorable, it is cruel caricature.
To say that homosexuals have high rates of suicide, depression and alcoholism is to say that they are vilified and mocked in today's society.
If you couldn't go to a dance without having protesters outside, you might be depressed, too. Enough condemnation might make you vulnerable or suicidal.
but according to the protesters, homosexuals are not only morally, but also legally.
Are we going to quiz禹osexuals at the doors of public buildings to see how their sex education works?
Sodomy is indeed illegal in Kansas. However, sodomy does not refer to the generals, the sexual partners, but to the arrangement of partners' persons who they are having sex.
Perhaps the distinction is that sodomy is described in the memon as "an integral part of the body" (Bishop, 1986). To define what integral part means. Maybe anyone who engages in seduction only every
couple of months or so could still dance in public buildings, but after that, he's on his own.
The sodomy statute is clearly not one that can be enforced unless we fill our police force with voyeurs or install hidden cameras in people's bedrooms. In fact, last December the Court ruled a law prohibiting sodomy between consenting adults unconstitutional.
I think the fact that the homosexuals depart from what we have been taught is "normal" disturbs many people. There's no way homosexuals can fit into the "let's get married," heart, have three children and make love twice a week in the accepted position" kind of life.
But that's a narrow standard to try to obey. Anyone who succeeds, and avoided all impure thoughts and deeds, may cast the stone at the rest of us and I will add to my list of people to be canonized, right up there with people who never cheat on their diets and always read over their class notes the dav they take them.
No, we would not allow a group of Druids to use a public building to sacrifice a virgin, but we're setting an awesome precedent if we allow the buildings groups because we disagree with their murals.
But for the rest of us, a little tolerance might be more becoming than condemnation. Who gave us the right to say our morals are decent, and any others are deviant?
People who talk about restoring public morals usually mean they want to bestow that quality to the people.
The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a case on whether state university buildings could be used by student groups for religious worship and study.
Religious groups are as vulnerable to objections to their morals as any other group.
But no group has a guarantee the public will approve of its morals.
If the majority ever decrees who can use public buildings, the fringe groups from the left and from the right will be the first to go. Conservatives should be fighting just as hard as liberals for the right of everyone to have his own beliefs.
Efficient urban policies needed in America
NEW YORK—The President's Commission for a National Agenda for the '80s recommended in December that the struggle to revitalize our older cities be abandoned. Yet the opposite will be pursued. The whole country will be weakened more if the decline of these cities continues.
New York Times Special Features
By JOHN V. LINDSAY
After having served 17 years in three areas of the public sector—the Justice Department, Congress and City Hall—hold a view of urban issues, shaped by experience, that is distinctly different from what government meets public needs—not more government or less government but rather better government.
There are five major urban policy areas that require sensible, decisive action by the Reagan administration: economic development, public safety, intergroup relations and grass truss.
Second, Washington must abolish all federally mandated programs and relieve states and local governments of the fiscal burdens that are brought about by the war. While mayor of New York City, I sued the government to invalidate the entire welfare system, which imposes its costs on states and local governments and then sets discriminatory government schedules for different areas of the country.
For example, untargeted across-the-board tax credits for new plant construction would give manufacturers economic reason to abandon the downtown and build facilities where they are least needed. Federal policy should produce employers who encourage to expand in those areas—urban suburban and rural—where employment rates have fallen below a certain level.
First, metropolitan centers must be made attractive to investors and employers. When tax cuts and abatements are instituted to induce the creation of new jobs—as they must be—care must be exercised to prevent employers from moving out of cities.
Any program to deal with poxy must be made available to the agency's administration and uniform in its application.
Third, with crime rates at the highest level in history, is it any wonder that fear of crime has become an American preoccupation? Washington has allowed funding for law enforcement to be a priority, and halt both the interstate traffic in handguns and the international commerce in narcotics.
An idle generation roams the streets, estranged from the institutions and customs that use to bind communities together; they constitute small armies of hustlers that must be quietly but also must be given the chance to work and the hope of entering the mainstream.
Fourth, if the hallmark of a civilized society is the degree to which its citizens are safe from violence, we have indeed become a less civilized nation, and the absence of constructive local efforts in protecting even more dangerous. Fuses are short and people are quick to shout, even shoot, at one another.
Urban areas, which have become the repositories of the poorest of the nation's poor, will never be able to deliver essential services or keep local taxes low enough to compete as long as they are oppressed by such federal mandates as welfare and Medicaid.
By licensing handguns, by curbing the arms factories in South Carolina, Virginia, Florida and Georgia that produce 70 percent of the handguns that are illegal, by bringing the government's narcotics strike force up to full complement, and by rebuilding and restructuring crime-fighting funding, the government can move effectively against crime—as it must.
This will not be easy,but Washington can at
least begin by shaping policy to bring employment back to cities. In this regard, our new leaders in Washington might read the report of the Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders (of which I was vice chairman) in which 11 federal agencies, including the state and democrat, conservatives and progressive—inious recommendations for reducing the incendiary possibilities that polarization produces.
Lamentably, the subways and commuter rail lines in New York are a public disgrace. They are fifty, crime-ridden and mechanically unreliable. And the buck seems to stop nowhere. The system is working; this system cannot be restored to health without a strong federalmass-transit policy.
Fifth, a decent transit system is basic to jobs—and to safety. Cities with mass-transit systems provide the best alternative to automobiles and represents a line of defense against America's inflationary dependence on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
A wrong policy is the current one that appop-
tates mass aid on the basis of popu-
lation rather than
I am familiar with most major world cities and have participated in urban conferences in many of them. The central governments of most of these countries assume direct responsibility for their cities' well-being. Our federal government must play the same role—and play it well.
John V. Lindsay was executive assistant to the attorney general of the United States (1955-1957), member of Congress (1959-1966) and mayor of New York City (1968-1974).
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