FRIDAY, APRIL 20; 2012
PAGE 5
opinion
FREE FOR ALL
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 "We have a test on Friday! But on Thursday we are starting a new lesson to confuse the heck out of you right before the test!" — Teachers
It amazes me how many people over the age of five still chew with their mouths open. Seriously.
To the couple in Chem 184: Will you stop coming to class if you are going to just kiss and giggle every time? Thanks.
Holy crap. A hawk just swooped down, grabbed a squirrel and ate it on top of a light post.
Just saw a guy wearing the joker makeup while driving. Is Lawrence the new Gotham? And if so, who is Batman?
How cool would it be if we replaced our buses with a trolley system?
There is nothing better than having your friend, who is dressed in drag, give you a lap dance for charity.
To the guy in my Chem lab who says he sees me all over campus but never says hi; maybe you should.
The hot dog man is going to make so much money on 4/20.
Jay-Z has 99 problems. Our exam tomorrow has 150.
The Arby's turnover text thingy still works! Score!
That awkward moment when you fart in a public place and forget that you're wearing headphones.
Not everyone's legs are khaki-colored
Just a few weeks left and I realize I've been misspelling my TA's name this whole time.
A good rule of thumb for how far you can go is whether or not you would do it in front of your father. Editor's Note: Looks like you aren't having kids.
Take the 'R-word' out of your vocab
Sometimes I ride my bike so fast, bugs splatter all over my shirt like a car windshield. I don't mind. It makes me feel hardcore.
EDITORIAL
Just saw a psych study that was labeled "brian study," instead of "brain study." Is that the first part of the study?
I thought someone glued a fake cockroach to the wall of one of the stalls in Haworth, but then it moved.
Saw a guy sleeping under a tree today.
I can't imagine what the squirrels are
planning on doing to him.
Well, I guess the Hawk doesn't except Beak 'Em Bucks.
The FFA editor is a girl, right?
Girls "creeped out" by Dan the bus driver. Get over yourselves. Dan is a happy, old guy who really cares about people.
The director of the first and second "Anchorman" movies has committed to leave the R-word out of the new installment. His tweeted promise is one gesture closer to deleting the R-word for good, but it isn't enough to stop here.
Club 'Schutz smells like my tattoo shop.
If I can smell the Axe you're wearing, it means you used too much.
I saw you staring at me. I'm not interested, and if you were looking closer, you would have seen the ring on my finger.
Chances are that most students have heard or used the R-word without thinking twice. Although it started out as slang derived from the medical term "mental retardation" it has become offensive for individuals and family members with intellectual disabilities.
Campaigns against the R-word, like "Spread the Word"
to End the Word" have been around for quite a while, but although they've been working hard, they've failed to end the R-word thus far.
"I think that most people don't understand how insulting the R-word really is, and they use it without thought," wrote Dr. Michael Wehmeyer, a professor of Special Education at the University, in an e-mail.
Angela Hawkins for the Kansan editorial board.
as a reader have been made aware. It's your turn.
SIGN THE PETITION
Remember that this isn't about inconveniencing you. This is about respecting others regardless of society's views. Find another word; there are plenty to choose from.
What isn't often talked about is the referencing of words with similar backgrounds as everyday insults. Wehmeyer references "imbecile, idiot and moron" as words that once referred to a person with a disability.
Sign the "Spread the Word to End the Word" pledge:
As the words are introduced, they're a better alternative than the old, insulting word, but over time, people begin to misuse the word and turn it into something it wasn't meant to be.
If the national campaign for ending the R-word isn't enough, how can we delete the R-word from the national vernacular? Start with yourself.
Make a conscious effort to keep the R-word out of your personal vocabulary. Inform people around you who use this term.
"It is through efforts to make people aware of the inappropriateness of the term and the offensiveness of the term that people become aware and begin to monitor their use of them," Wehmeyer said.
By reading this editorial, you
EQUALITY
Deaf individuals should not have to compromise
My parents do not consider deafness a medical condition, disability or a bad draw out of the genetic bag of luck. It is a cultural identity integral to who they are; their identities do not center around being deaf, but being deaf factors into who they are as much as their religion, race, gender, etc. My parents don't condemn cochlear implants as a whole, but they dislike the way that their culture is being swept aside as some sort of aliment to be fixed.
Recently, a friend of mine sent me an article on Facebook from NPR about cochlear implants (one entirely discussing only on how cochlear implants have improved the quality of life for the Deaf). She and I got into a discussion about this skewed perspective. There was questioning and answering in comments on it from others about what could be bad about cochlear implants, but it all remained civil. That is, until someone I knew likened the position of those in the Deaf Community against giving cochlear implants to children to being the same as the disabled community condemning stem cell treatment for children with spinal injuries.
I felt upset, flustered, and above all, angry.
I am not completely against cochlear implants and neither are my parents. Doctors have good-intentions with this technology, I know. But cochlear implants are being given out as if they are a cure-all for the Deaf. It treats being Deaf as a condition and not as an identity, a group of people within society who suffer from an affliction rather than being treated as a demographic culture within society that shares a language, shared attitudes, values, and political stakes.
Comparing children who are born deaf to children with spinal injuries is NOT an appropriate comparison. It doesn't impair your quality of life. Being Deaf is not a life-threatening condition. It causes challenges, to have to navigate society differently, just as those who belong to the LGBTQ community, or those who are racial minorities in a white dominated culture, or believers in a religion that clashes with the Christian majority in the west. Deaf people do not wish to be separated from the Hearing world, far from it. They want to be able to interact with the whole of society; they don't want to compromise a part of their identity in order to do so.
What if the medical community found a way to produce feelings of hetero-normative attraction within a gay person by some sort of drug or surgical process. Would we expect the Gay community to embrace whole-heartedly the fact that they can now be straight?
THE FIRST HALF
This might seem like an
extreme example to some, but the issue is extreme. Many don't realize that the Deaf Community views themselves in this light, as a group of people who's social and political voice is being silenced in the discussion of cochlear implants. Cochlear implants are serious, particularly when the number of young children receiving them is frighteningly rapid. And this push to the Deaf to conform to the hearing world's norms allows society to remain comfortably in the status quo.
By giving a child an implant when very young, it says, "The Deaf Community is not a community you want to be in if you can help it." By having the discussion in the media and medical community focus on the improvement of quality of life, it says "Living life as a Deaf person is a lower quality of life." By focusing so solely on the voice of those Deaf in the media who support cochlear implants says "this is what all Deaf people think."
This is not admonishing Deaf adults who choose to have an implant. It is a personal decision, one that I believe should be decided by the individual in question, not done to a child as a solution to a problem.
My father was born Deaf, but he didn't learn sign language until he was 10-year-old. My father didn't have a means of language until 10 years into his life because when he was growing up, the mode of deaf education was one that tried to fit Deaf children into the hearing world. The Deaf Community have made astounding progress in the past few decades in rights and increasing their political agency.
But the way the talk about cochlear implants is going makes me think that a few years down the line, there will be no talk of teaching children sign language or about getting involved in the Deaf community. They will not ask "What do you think about cochlear implants?" but rather "So when do you want to schedule your surgery?"
EDITORIAL CARTOON
Gwynn is a freshman in English from Olathe.
BY MARSHALL SCHMIDT
INTERNATIONAL
US drug usage cause violence in the Americas
Today is 4/20, and as college students, I probably don't need to fill you in on the significance of this day for many across campus. According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, an estimated 30.6 percent of US adults aged 18-25 have used marijuana in the past year. That's a surprisingly large portion of the college-aged population reporting illicit drug use. The intent of this column is not to pick a side in the drug decriminalization debate and is certainly not to advocate for illegal behavior. Rather, it aims to inform on the very real international implications of the US drug habit.
At $144 billion, the North American market for drugs is the largest in the world, according to the World Drug Report. To put this into perspective, our black market drug trade is more valuable than the GDP of 72 percent of the countries in the world. There's a lot of money in selling drugs, no surprise there. Considering that this market is 16 times more valuable than the global market for coffee, it shouldn't be a surprise when farmers in Central and Latin America or the Caribbean, the primary origins of US drug imports, elect to grow marijuana or coca instead of coffee or other agricultural goods. The US demand for drugs distorts regional economies and brings criminal activities and violence to communities across the Americas.
Many proponents of marijuana decriminalization argue that compared to other substances, pot isn't that harmful to people or society. In fact, several credible and nationwide studies, including a recent report by UCSF, have shown that marijuana is less harmful than most other drugs, including tobacco. So it probably isn't a stretch to argue that a hypothetical drug trade based solely on marijuana would be largely benign and very mellow.
But most international Drug Trafficking Organizations, or DTOs, don't exclusively traffic marijuana. Like any good business, they have diversified into other markets like cocaine, heroin, MDMA (ecstasy) and methamphetamine. Clearly, these are a bit more harmful and attract a much more dangerous criminal element. So with money to be made by selling all of these substances, DTOs are currently waging territorial wars versus each other and nation states in order to gain a larger market share of the US demand for drugs. Think of these skirmishes as corporate take overs, but substitute lawyers and boardrooms for Kalashnikovs and political assassinations.
Much of Central and Latin America is currently caught in the midst of bitter drug-related violence, which has significantly increased in recent years in response to increased drug consumption (note: research has correlated the economic downturn with increased drug use). This violence is part of
why the US Department of State recommends that you don't travel to Mexico or much of Central America for a vacation this year. In fact, according to the United Nations, of the top 25 countries in the world with the highest murder rate, 23 are in Central and Latin America or the Caribbean. San Pedro Sula, a Honduran city and major drug distribution point, is among the most dangerous places on the planet after recording 159 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011.
This violence is simply a response to the massive demand for drugs in the United States. We cannot blame our Southern neighbors for drug-related crime; as "entrepreneurs," they are simply validating the free market's laws of supply and demand. Instead, we must realize that our addiction is fueling drug trade in the Americas and the hundreds of thousands of deaths that are associated with it each year.
President Obama returned to the US late last Sunday after attending the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Columbia. Though a Secret Service sex scandal dominated the coverage of the event, a much more important topic of discussion was the US hunger for drugs and its effect on the Caribbean and Central and Latin America. Though this was officially foreign policy trip, Mr. Obama would do well to realize that stopping drug-related violence abroad is also a domestic policy issue.
Loving is a senior in chemical engineering and economics from McPherson, Kan.
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THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Members of the Kenan Editorial Board are Ian Cummingsa
Lisa Curran, Jon Samp, Angela Hawkins and Ryan
Schlesener.