NATION/WORLD
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
7
Friday, September 10, 1993
Clinton targets funding gridlock
Federal aid to be more accessible
CLEVELAND — President Clinton ordered the formation of a new Cabinet-level board today to make it easier for states and communities to tap into federal coffers.
The Associated Press
"Washington has often gotten in the way, instead of helping," the president said.
The directive, signed by Clinton in the parking lot of a shopping center, is the first recommendation in a 168-page plan to "reinvent government" being implemented by the president. Other more sweeping proposals
require congressional approval.
Headed by Vice President Al Gore, the Community Enterprise Board will look for ways to cut red tape in federal programs that local governments now complain make it too difficult to apply for federal grants.
Clinton said that $226 billion in federal money goes back to state and local government each year.
"If we make a mess of it, we waste a lot of your money. And if we don't do it right, (local officials) can't do what you hired them to do," he said, with a grocery store and pharmacy as his backdrop.
The president and Gore, flying on separate planes, visited the Church Square Shopping Center.
The center was built on vacant property made attractive to developers by streamlining the city's foreclosure rules. Federal money was used to develop the land.
"As opposed to having boarded up buildings in downtown Cleveland, they now have productive commercial space, and it was achieved through a series of regulatory and red-tape reform." White House representative Dee Dee Myers said. "It's an example of the kind of things people can do when they work to achieve results and not just follow rules."
The White House called the center a symbol of how Washington can work better with local governments, one of the hundreds of goals outlined in the plan to overhaul government.
According to the report, the council
will comprise Cabinet level officials with leadership from Gore, the president, the Domestic Policy Council and the National Economic Council.
More than half of the report's suggestions need congressional approval. Legislators have lauded the report's goals, but many of the initiatives will not be addressed by Congress until next year.
Clinton and Gore went to a Virginia suburb of Washington on Wednesday to pitch their efforts to improve government purchasing policies. They will travel to California and Texas later this week to promote the package, specifically its provisions designed to update the government's technology systems.
Kevorkian to stand trial in suicide case
Charges follow first arrest under new Michigan statute The Associated Press
DETROIT — A judge yesterday ordered Jack Kevorkian to stand trial on a charge that he broke a new state law by assisting the suicide of a 30-year-old man suffering from Lou Grehig's disease.
Kevorkian, a retired pathologist who advocates doctor-assisted suicide for the terminally ill, is the first person charged under the law, which was passed to stop Kevorkian from helping people kill
themselves.
District Judge Willie Lipscomb said that the law is enforceable — despite criticisms that it is unconstitutional; and that there is evidence Kevorkian violated it. Arrangement was set for Sept. 24.
Kevorkian's attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, had urged Lapsch to dismiss the charge.
"To save a man's life against a man's will is the same as killing him." Fleer said.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief supporting Kevkarian. The group filed a constitutional challenge to the assisted-suicide ban soon after it took effect.
wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Tim Baughman argued that Michigan's ban on assisted suicide was enacted by an elected Legislature. He added that assisted suicide never had been recognized as a constitutional right.
Wayne County Circuit Judge Cynthia Stephens ruled the law unconstitutional in May, but the state Court of Appeals reinstated it in June while it considers the appeal.
Kevorkian has acknowledged supplying the carbon monoxide gas and equipment Thomas Hyde used to kill himself in the back of Kevorkian's van on Belle Isle, an island park in the Detroit River.
Kevorkian has aided or been present at 17 suicides since 1990.
Without a few 'yes'es, it's rape under Ohio college's rules
DAYTON, Ohio — There may be 'yes, yes' in her eyes, but unless her lips say the same thing — over and over — sex is a no-no at Antioch College.
The Associated Press
The small liberal arts school in Yellow Springs, Ohio, requires all students to give and get verbal consent before any type of romantic contact.
And one 'yes' won't do. Consent must be given for each specific act, from kissing to intercourse.
The policy — adopted in January at the school known for innovation and social activism — is aimed at date rape.
"What this establishes is, 'I did say no,'" college representative Jim Mann said. "It also establishes that if someone is drunk or passed out, they do not have the ability to consent."
Other schools are trying to define more clearly their policies on sexual harassment and other
offenses. But Caryn McTighe Musil, a senior research associate for the Washington-based Association of American Colleges, said she knew of no other college with a policy like Antoch's.
"I think what it's suggesting is that students talk to each other and communicate to each other about the relationship they want," she said.
Violators can be expelled from Antioch, which has 700 students, 70 percent of them women. But Mann said he knows of no reported violations.
"On one level it has been widely supported," he said. "On another level it has been greeted with some humor."
Jonathan Platt, a 24-year-old sophomore, told the Dayton Daily News that the policy is "well-cushioned in common sense."
"The policy is not radical." Platt said. "It's not asking too much from somebody."
Antioch developed a "relatively harsh" policy to deal with sexual assaults after an alleged date rape in 1990. Mann said. Under the policy, students can be removed from campus within 24 hours if accused of sexual offenses, and the alleged victims are assigned advocates to represent them.
The expanded policy reads: "Verbal consent should be obtained with each new level of physical and/or sexual contact or conduct in any given interaction, regardless of who initiates it. Ask, 'Do you want to have sex with me?' is not enough. The request for consent must be specific for each act."
Antioch has a history of innovation. It opened in 1853 with a pledge of equal rights for women. In 1971 it opened a law school in Washington to train lawyers in social activism. In 1987, it banned Peace Corps recruiters because, it said, the agency did not ban sexual discrimination.
Mars Observer staff uses humor as outlet
The Associated Press
PASADENA, Calif. — A milk carton taped to a wall in the Mars Observer mission office has a picture of the vanished spacecraft. Instead of a missing child ad, the caption reads: "Have You Seen Me?"
Three weeks after Mars Observer disappeared, engineers with humor and hope, as well as determination and new computer commands, still are struggling to save the $800 million mission, even though NASA's management is investigating its apparent demise.
"They're doing an autopsy, and we think possibly the victim is still kicking," said Leigh Torgerson, deputy chief of the spacecraft team.
Controllers lost touch with Mars
Observer on Aug 21, only three
days before the spacecraft was
supposed to fire its thrusters, enter
Martian orbit and start the first U.S.
exploration of the red planet in 17
years. The spacecraft, launched
from Florida last year, remained
silent yesterday.
Gloom has descended on NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where Mars Observer workers are suffering from the disappearance of a decade's work, face some layoffs and feel anxiety and exhaustion. Colleagues constantly approach them to offer support.
"It's sort of like you lost somebody in your family — the condolences you get," said Suzanne Dodd, chief of the mission planning team.
Nevertheless, workers recount the latest jokes from David Letterman, who this week quipped that NASA was launching a blood-hound with a ajetpack to hunt down Mars Observer.
"Humor helps relieve the tension." Dodd said.
Mars Observer's disappearance has revived criticism of NASA and renewed emphasis on the agency's failures, but "the thing that bothered me most is that some people
have given up hope — NASA, JPL management and the public," mission manager Sam Dallas said. "They're not close to what's going on."
Dallas and other engineers insist real hope exists that Mars Observer didn't suffer an irreversible failure but instead was silenced by a malfunction that might be fixed by transmitting new computer commands from Earth.
So day after day, the engineers meet to devise more theories of what may have gone wrong. During the daily command conference they review and approve new computer programs, which then are radiated into space in an attempt to restore contact.
Engineers doubt Mars Observer was destroyed, but they don't know whether it went into orbit around Mars. So the commands are radiated toward both Mars and the spacecraft's presumed position if it flew past the planet.
"There's enough hope that were not just going through the motions," Torgerson said.
Efforts to find Mars Observer will continue until late October, said David Durham, spacecraft team chief.
Dallas has proposed that, for the next year, NASA's tracking antennas should listen for Mars Observer once a week. It's possible the spacecraft could rescue itself with an onboard program designed to turn the computers off and on if power levels drop significantly, Dallas said.
The engineers note the U.S. Energy Department's Earth-orbiting Alexis scientific satellite was lost after launch April 25 but abruptly sent a radio signal six weeks later and was brought under control in July.
At some point, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration might use the Hubble Space Telescope to look for Mars Observer, although it's unknown whether the telescope could spot such a small object, Dallas said.
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