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Opinion
University Daily Kansan, February 3, 1981
Students hurt the most
Don't bother sitting in Memorial Stadium this fall to see Missouri come to town. You'll be all alone if you do. That's because this year when the Jayhawks host the Tigers, it won't be on familiar Mount Oread but rather in a chiefly pro bowl-Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo.
Oh, technically the decision to move the game to Arrowhead won't be made until a Feb. 18 meeting of the University of Kansas Athletic Board. But even members of the board admit they'll just be rubber-stamping a decision made previously by KU athletic officials.
The move is based upon the premise that there's more money in filling a 78,000-seat stadium than there is in filling a 51,000-seat one. And Arrowhead's strategic position along the Mason-Dixon line between KU and MU alumni should ensure a large turnout from both universities.
But moving the game ignores the reason Memorial Stadium was built—namely, to
host football games. It also ignores the problems KU students would face in transportation just to see their home team play a "home" game.
It should be interesting to see how the athletic department explains to students living in the shadow of their home stadium why they will have to travel 45 miles this year to see the Jayhawks have a home-field advantage. It's the students who are shortchanged by the plan; could the additional revenue raised possibly weigh more than student's wishes? The answer expected come Feb. 18 is "yes."
Topping off the injustice to students, MU has declared that the Arrowhead game won't be a reciprocal event; they plan to keep their home games against KU in Columbia. None of this home away-from-home illiness for the Tigers.
Elimination of contraception contradicts right-to-life cause
Perhaps Dorothy, who was from Kansas and wanted above all else to get back to Kansas, said it best: "There's no place like home."
The abortion debate is aired show. Its well-earned lines have faltgled even the most critical parts of it.
We've heard it all too many times before: Our new president Reagan smiles redundantly and burles platitudes like, "I notice that all the people who are for abortion have already been born." Pro and anti forces masquerade under *the schemisms of *prior choice* and "right to life," the persistent people toughen toke signs painted with slogans that read like bad magazine ads.
JUDY
WOODBURN
Americans have decided to close their ears and wait for the coin toss or whatever it is in Congress that will decide the whole issue for a second time in less than ten years.
After all, abortion rights probably don't mean too much to the average college woman. She's either not yet sexually active, of if she is, she's got contraception and family planning information available just a stone's throw away at Watkins Memorial Hospital.
But it hasn't always been thus way at the University of Kansas, or anywhere else for that matter. A little more than 10 years ago, contraceptive prescriptions were available at Watkins only to the women who sported a ring, fourth finger, left hand. The women who didn't have them they had to worry. A lot. Things didn't change until they called the February Sisters took it upon themselves to help make available at KU something many people now take for granted.
They say history repeats itself, though, and it seems that the late Margaret Sanger's work at making contraceptives available and acceptable in American public has been jammed into reverse.
The people working to shift the gears in Kansas are a group called Right To Life of Kansas, Inc. They have recently asked the Kansas Legislature to stop funding not only abortion activities, but also any state-funded agencies that provide contraceptives and literature to young women. That includes Watkins Hospital.
What's worse, it also includes Planned Parenthood, a nationwide family planning organization with chapters in Kansas. Planned Parenthood provides contraceptives, injections, and screening. PAP smears and anemia testing at $50 married or unmarried clients in Kansas alone.
Right To Life's opposition to family planning clinics seems ill-conceived. Withdrawing funding from Planned Parenthood would also cause problems for other programs, like the one that educates
teenagers about the consequences of their sexual behavior, or the program that helps mothers and children from church, community and single parent families to be the sex educators of their own children.
The opposition to contraceptive clinics seems even less consistent with Right To Life's professed goal of eradicating abortion. Even the most vociferous advocate of the right to choose an abortion would agree that nobody really enjoys having one. The ideal solution would be to eliminate the need for them in the first place, and the right to choice would not be most pragmatic way to accomplish that would be to improve the quality and access to contraception.
But the Right to Life movement isn't overfellowing with practicality. And its goal is not simply to make people more capable of taking care of themselves.
As Melba Madden, executive director of Planned Parenthood of Kansas puts it, "Nearly a generation of people have learned to take family planning for granted. Few people realize the threat to contraception implicit in the Human Life Amendment."
The amendment to ban all abortions without exception has already been introduced in Congress. It reads: "The paramount right to life is vested in each human being from the moment of fertilization without regard to age, health, or condition of dependency."
Because legislation protects the fertilized ovum from the instant of conception, it effectively spells the demeis of the intrauterine device and certain types of the Pill that work by preventing the implantation of the egg in the womb.
Science has provided precious few family planning alternatives as it is. The loss of a couple of them would surely result in that many more unexpected, and tragically unwanted, children.
Of course there remains the option that nobody but Ann Landers and the Right to Life people give much lip service to: it's called "said no," and no Constitutional amendment can take the day it away from anybody. It's a noble and commendable answer for the people who choose it.
But the "new chastity" isn't much of a choice for married couples who must depend on public family planning clinics for contraception. Approximately 85 percent of Planned Parenthood's clients nationwide fall below federally established minimum poverty levels.
Chasity doesn't work for the young people who haven't gotten the kind of education that will help them take responsibility for sexual activity, and who won't get that kind of education in public schools if Richard Schweiker, the new president of human services, has his way. It doesn't work for the young people been cast from the same moral die as the Right To Lifes have been.
And it's a moral decision that the government should not be permitted to make for anybody. Ever
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Let Indians hold peyote ceremonies
We know they are here among us, but we choose to ignore. When we feel the guilt of trespassing on their soil, we turn and walk away. Confronting them is tantamount to being silenced by a crime; the twisted themes of liberty and fraternity, of divine rights and manifest destiny.
We all know the history of the American Indians: their unfettered dominion over this providing soil, their enviable communition with all living creatures, their subsequent innocence of the ways of the European colonialists. We know of the broken treaties and the spilled blood. We know of our wrongdoing, so we try to amend and appease them. We know how we can give them our glorious green money for their native woven blankets, their legendary handmade pottery or their well-rehearsed performances of authentic rain dances.
So Attorney General Bob Stephan's asinine—asinine is too polite a word—remarks last month about the Native American Church's religious sacraments should have come or may not recall, had this to say about the Indians' employment of peyote in their ceremonies: "I understand that it is part of their religious mumbo-jumbo. But it doesn't mean anything to me."
Stephan's remarks stemmed from a decision by a group of Kickapoo Indians to form a chapter of the Native American Church of North America in Brown County. Kansas law prohibits the use of peyote for any reason, religion notwithstanding. At the same time, federal law ensures the unrestricted use of peyote by the Native American Church. Consequently, peyote is used only on the Kickapoo prairie in Brown County. Indians who live off the reservation must travel across that arbitrary dotted line separating Kanans from Kickapoons before their religious pursuit is met with quiet introspection.
which irides hallucinations in those who ingest it. Peyote ceremonies are simple affairs, marked only by the recurrent chanting that enhances meditation. Church members use paye not to distance themselves from reality, but to gain a clearer perspective of their often desperate existence. A paye ceremony is a far cry from, say, the alcohol-maddened revelry of your average Western night on the town.
Peyote is a psychotropic cactus button
A number of issues cloud the controversy. I paye istey use guarded by the First
KEVIN MILLS
Amendment? As attorney general, does Stephan have an obligation to enforce the letter of the law, or should he be lenient in harmless circumstances? To date, no one has been prosecuted. Why is Stephan wasting his time on the innocuous religious practice of a much-maligned people when there are real criminal acts to contend with?
The relative merit of religions is another issue at stake. Many churches use wine as a sacrament, and the government has always accepted such practice with open arms, even during Prohibition. Separation of church and state was perhaps the most prudent decision made by this country's founders; America, after all, is chiefly composed of the descendants of the first settlers supposedly has no say in how we pray to, how we pray or even if we pray at all. So when a top-ranking elected official, like Stephan, passes moral judgment on a religion other than his own, a basic trust has been breached. What if a government official had said to the
pope during his U.S. tour, "I know that holy
prayer has the circumstance,
but don't sprinkle it on lawn."
As I said, that Stephan uttered such foolery is hardly surprising. Indians have never enjoyed the full rights of U.S. citizens, so why should they now? The heart of the matter was, is, and will remain, this: Do we have the right to force any of our laws upon the unborn child? We've gathered their land, stripped their skin from it, covered in legends, all the time denying their freedom. Hey, you may say, what better freedom could they have than our fine old American freedom? Well, our American freedom was meant for we Americans, who we have usurped our way into worldly prominence. It was never meant for the original proctors of this land, the Indians. There is no common law. Our people are only our ground, this stolen property, on which we stand for various grandiose rights and we grovel for simple existence.
If you think I'm overstating the case, I'm not. Consider the remarks of Kickapoo tribunal chairman Steve Cadee: "We'll take whatever measures necessary to prevent anyone from coming on to our land and anything that's Native American religion." The words do not bode well for future relations.
Jean-Paul Sartre had an acute understanding of the relationship between conquerors and the conquered. Of the oppressed natives, he said: "they dance; that keeps them busy; it relaxes their painfully contracted muscles; and then the dance can keep up with their knowing the refusal they cannot utter and the murders they dare not commit."
Continued oppression of the native Americans can only lead to more violence. Wounded Knee was not an historical accident but a result of grittiness can efface the marks of violence only violence itself can destroy them." Remember, we were the violent ones first.
Letters to the Editor
Both sides respond on gun control issue
I am writing in response to your editorial comment "Muzzle guns for good." You began your article with logic; yes, indeed this is a controversial and important topic and should be addressed so, and that a remedy of some type need be implemented by our legislature in Washington. Even your suggested course of action—tighten laws of purchase, manufacture and possession—maintains some semblance of logic.
To the editor:
But that's where it ends! Once again, the sportsmen of America are attacked. If you had any idea of what the concerned sportsmen of America mean to the continued protection of wildlife, of wildlife management and the ongoing threat to our youth about gun safety, you would never know that we have trained our rifles and blow away little bunnies and woodchucks. No amusement lost."
The accumulation of revenue generated from hunting licenses, updage game stamps, taxes on the sale of ammunition, along with numerous donations to wildlife organizations, as well as some federal assistance, has led to tremendous improvements in the management of wildlife.
At that point, your editorial fall flat on its face and exposes the inability of yourself to express an opinion with logic and common sense. You want to be able to criticize someone of so much crime—poverty—could be eliminated through some form of gun control. Nice and euphoric in its illogic! Perhaps you should go to work for the National Enquirer, because you've been fired as a teacher for the talents (reserved) are up to theirs, in the gutter!
Bill Boyle Lawrence
Lennon's martyrdom
To the editor
Just a few observations for Peter Somerville
1. Chapman had been hanging around for days with a shotgun or rifle slung across his shoulder; or
    on.
and his non-gun control position. It seems unlikely that Mark David Chapman (accused of shooting John Lennon) could have assassinated Lennon.
2. Chapman had been screened for mental illness before buying the gun; or,
4. The airlines had been more thorough in x-raying his luggage.
3. Chapman had been required to undergo a 30 day "cooling off" period after buying the gun; or,
Finally, Somerville states, "Isn't it a shame we can'n't have all this mourning (for Lennon) for the soldiers of the war that fought here? I am afraid Somerville missed the point of Lennon's life. World War II never really ended. Our ally then (the Soviet Union) is our enemy today. Our enemies (Germany and Japan) are our allies. I certainly hope that Lennon martyrs in this war lasts longer than those who died in World War II."
John G. Odell
John G. Ouen Lab technician, microbiology
To the editor:
Background checks should be tightened
In Peter Somerle's recent editorial against gun control (Jan. 26), he included the following quote by the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association: "The crime (John Lennon's shooting) took place in New York, which has perhaps the most stringent gun laws in the country." What anyone failed to mention was the gun used to kill John Lennon was purchased in Hawaii, which does not have such stringent laws.
Gun control does not mean the abolition of legally purchased guns; rather, it means stricter checks of potential owners and more complete registration of guns.
K
A question to consider is, if one truly is a gun target shooter, why would these measures be necessary?
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What do the gun control laws of New York have to do with the murder of John Lennon? The crime did take place in New York City. However, the gun control law was repealed in Newsweek (Dec. 22, 1980), Mark David Chapman, accused of Lennon's murder, bought the gun he allegedly shot John Lennon with in where all he had to do was show he had no criminal record before obtaining both license and gun.
Perhaps true criminals would not be prevented from obtaining guns by gun control. However, Mark David Chapman was not a criminal (he had no criminal record) and went through acclimation to think something is wrong with these channels if they allow mentally ill people to obtain guns.
Channels defective
In his column "Gun control' won't control murders," Peter Somerville uses to defend his position against gun control a quote from Haron B. Carter of the National Rifle Association, stating, "The crime (the murder of John Lennon) took place in New York City, which has perhaps the most stringent gun laws in the country."
To the editor
Obviously, in this case, gun control could have controlled murder.
Lisa Hoerath Boulder, Colo., junior