CAMPUS/AREA UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, February 21,1994
3
Club pushes lighter marijuana laws
Martin Altstaedten / KANSAN
KU NORML says benefits of drug outweigh harm
Thomas Trower, Lawrence resident, participates in a "Hemp Rally" at the Lawrence Court House. Members of KU NORMAL attended the rally yesterday in support of the legalization of marijuana.
By Angelina Lopez
Kansan staff writer
Passersby honked, gave thumb-ups and yelled cat-calls to the people holding signs that declared, "Save Trees, Free Hemp" and "Marijuana Amnesty."
Members of the University of Kansas chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and other marjuania supporters stand outside Douglas County Courthouse at 11th and Massachusetts streets on Sunday to support the legalization of marijuana.
"Sometimes we get the great All-American gesture," said Thomas Trower, KU NORML member and Lawrence resident. "But it's usually 95 percent positive to 5 percent negative."
Nicole Lighthorn, KU NORML member and Mission Viejo, Calif., sophomore, said that through these demonstrations and other activities, such as benefit concerts and literature distributions, KU NORML hoped to achieve its main goal — educating people about the benefits of marijuana.
"There are over 20,000 potential uses for marijuana," she said. "But marijuana has a negative image. There's a lot of propaganda covering up a great plant."
Since its formation three years ago, Lightburn said, KU NORMEL has promoted the environmental and medical contributions that marijuana could make.
For example, she said, one acre of marijuana would produce the same amount of paper that four acres of trees produce. Marijuana paper could also be made for half the cost of regular paper.
Medically, Lightburn said, marijuana can relieve pain. Marijuana also can alleviate the nausea that can prevent AIDS and cancer patients from eating, which only weakens them further.
KU NORML's end goal is the full legalization of marjuana, Light burn said. To promote legalization, KU NORML is signing and circulating petitions that support the Voter Initiative Bill, which would allow voters to vote directly on legislation without going through politicians. KU NORML also supports the Kansas Cannabis Crime Prevention Act, which would fully legalize marijuana and grant amnesty to those currently imprisoned under marijuana drug laws.
Lightburn stressed that KU NORMAL wanted marijuana legalized for the products it could produce and not the entertainment it could provide.
"KU NORML is not a smoking club," she said. "Our focus is on education. However, it should be a matter of personal
choice. You should be able to smoke if you want to."
Some of the members do smoke, but they want to point out that there have been no reported deaths because of marijana use.
"If we're going to have a war on drugs, let's at least make it consistent and fair," Trower said. "Hundreds of thousands of people die yearly because of alcohol and tobacco."
Lightburn said the only negative side effects of smoking marijuana were the legal penalties.
The next KU NORML meeting will be at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Regionalist Room in the Kansas Union.
Not just for smoking
Hemp can be used for
cloth: more durable than any manmade cinth
fuel: converted into biomass, can be used as fuel
used as food
food: high in amino acids and protein, the
■ paints and varnishes; produced from the seeds' oils
- protecting the soil soil; with very deep
  roots; it damages soil erosion
paper; can be durable; also it is the most common paper used in bibles
canvas; used as art canvases by Rembrandt and Van Gogh
medicine: relieves menstrual cramps, painse and headaches
KANSAN
Source: Nicole Lightburn
Students to voice concerns about health care
Conference in Omaha will address questions of Midwestern schools
By Heather Moore Kansan staff writer
They no longer are covered by their parents' insurance, and they can't afford their own coverage.
Many students have fallen between the cracks in insurance coverage.
Student Senate passed a resolution Wednesday that voices its support for the Central Collegiate Health Association Conference in Omaha, Neb., which will address these issues.
The resolution said that the Clinton administration and its health care task force had failed to address students' health care concerns.
One goal of the conference is to recognize
students as separate from working adults. A second goal is to place students on committees concerning health care. The last goal is to let students have more representation in reforms and laws.
Tonya Cole, liberal arts and sciences senator and sponsor of the resolution, said the conference was part of a nationwide movement that the University of California-Berkeley had begun to
"We're not going to sit back and let people decide without hearing
"I'm going because KU has peer advisers and a student health advisory board," she said. "KU is at the forefront, and other schools want to know how we run these."
ensure that concerns were addressed.
our concerns.
Cole said.
KUliberal arts and sciences senator
tonya cace
Tonya Cole
Students should be on the committees.
Cole said that Watkins Memorial Health Center might not be directly affected by the health care plan.
"If we go about this in an organized fashion and have our facts straight, they will lie
Cole said she thought that people would listen to student concerns.
ten," she said. "We've been working on a national campaign to give them something to think about."
"It would still be a student health facility, but there could be mandated guidelines," she said. "The plan would more directly affect students' being insured. I've found that we have to drop students from insurance because they don't have six hours and can't afford to buy it."
Sherman Reeves, interfraternity council senator, said support was important.
"One person is representing KU on important student issues regarding health care and needs support for that cause," he said. "Students are being overlooked and need to stand up for themselves."
Amy Patton, CCHA student affiliate for Pittsburgh State University, said that this was the first time students from the Midwest would meet to talk about health care.
"We need a network to discuss issues, compare programs, insurance and services," she said.
Patton said the price of student health care would be affected by the health care plan.
Kansas native dives through Black poetry
Visiting professor uses research in instruction of two English classes
By Denise Nell
Kansan staff writer
John Tidwell never learned to swim.
When he was growing up in Independence in the 1950s, African-American children were not permitted in public swimming pools.
"The only way to learn how to swim was to go out to rivers, which I didn't find attractive," he said. "So I just never learned."
Tidwell, who is the Langston Hughes visiting professor at the University of Kansas this semester, now fills his free time taking swimming lessons three days a week through the Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department.
John Tidwell
Carol Prentice, assistant to the vice chancellor for academic affairs, said the Langston Hughes visiting profes-
To accept the position at the University, Tidwell said, he had to take a semester of personal leave from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he is an associate professor of English.
This semester at the University, Tidwell is teaching English 570, Disparate Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, and English 574, Contemporary African-American Literature, 1945 to present day.
In his classes, Tidwell focuses on authors such as Sterling Brown, Jessie Fauset and Frank Marshall Davis, an author whom Tidwell has researched extensively.
Davis was a black poet and a journalist who was born in Kansas. Tidwil interviewed Davis before Davis' death in 1987 and edited his book "Livin" the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet." He is now editing another book by Davis, "Black Moods: Selected Writings by Frank Marshall Davis."
Tidwell will close the Black History Month activities March 2 when he gives a lecture, "Frank Marshall Davis and the Politics of Black Art."
Zamora Jenkins, Bennett, Colo., senior, is taking Tidwell's contemporary literature class. She said that because Tidwell had spoken to and had known Davis, discussing Davis' book was more interesting.
"He's very interesting and very knowledgeable," she said. "It's easy for us to raise our hands and ask questions. It's like he's on our level, but at the same time he's very professional."
Tidwell was born in Independence in 1945. He lived there until 1964, when he went to Washburn University in Topeka, and he got his bachelor's degree in English in 1969. He received his master's degree at Creighton University in 1971 and his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in 1981. He has worked as a professor at several universities and was a visiting professor at Yale in 1985. He has been working at Miami since 1993.
At the beginning of this semester, Tidwell loaded up a trailer with books and clothes and drove 11 hours to Lawrence, leaving Mandie, his wife of six years, behind.
Tidwell said he talked to his wife, who is the assistant prosecuting attorney for Butler County, Ohio, about three times a week.
The two are adjusting to their first long-term separation, Tidwell said, but he still gets homsick sometimes. He alleviates his homesickness by taking swimming lessons, doing research and visiting his mother, who still lives in Independence.
"There's always mixed feelings," he said. "There's the excitement of having the prospect of coming back to my home state, but also the feeling that I'm leaving."
Tidwell said that he liked the University and that he thought his 60 students here were responding well in his courses.
"This is a wonderful field to be in," he said. "There are so many possibilities."
A trade worth making!
Do you have a veteran Macintosh that is still in decent shape, but just doesn't get the job done anymore? Well, for a limited time you will have the opportunity to trade that feeble old-timer for a new power-hitting Mac at the Union Technology Center. Here's how:
Step 1: Call 1-800-992-0796 and speak with a representative who will estimate the worth of your old system.
Step 2: Set up an appointment with the representative between February 22nd and February 25th. On these dates representatives will be at the Union Technology Center to evaluate your old machine.
Step 3: Receive a voucher for the amount of money your system is worth as determined by the representative, good toward any Macintosh system offered by the Union Technology Center.
Step 4: Bring your voucher in to the Union Tech Center before March 31st, 1994 and use it toward the purchase of any new Macintosh Computer.
So, take advantage of this great trade and treat yourself to a powerful new Macintosh at the Union Technology Center, because a trade like this don't get any better, and systems like yours aren't getting any younger.
1-800-992-0796
Macintosh. It does more. It costs less. It's that simple!