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University Daily Kansan, March 21, 1983
Opinion
Let the tragedy end
Bradley Boan was not the only one who murdered two people at the University of Kansas Medical Center in 1981. That is what the families of the two victims are claiming.
The families of victims Ruth Rybolt and Mare Beck are suing the Med Center, state agencies, several individuals and corporations for $42.5 million in damages. They claim the defendants were responsible in part for the deaths.
The suits jab open what many hoped was a closed sore in the Med Center's history. The claim that so much could be responsible for the deaths is extraordinary. It is also ludicrous.
The suits state, in part, that Boan should not have been released from prison in 1980 after serving time for an
earlier attack, and that those responsible for Boan were negligent in not protecting the public from him.
They also claim Med Center security failed to spot Boan and allowed him to enter the center "unhampered and unobstructed."
To unintententionally let a psychopath intent on murder slip through the doors of a large public institution at night is tragic, but certainly not criminal. And to impose on so many people the responsibility of one wary looney, who apparently served his time in prison, is also senseless.
It seems that the families are not content to let Boan rot in prison by serving out two life sentences. Justice is not enough for them, not when they taste revenge — to the tune of $42.5 million.
Alumni Association actions aimed at helping students
There is an organization on campus that most students do not concern themselves with until after they have graduated. We perceive it as a group of gray-haired old men in pinstriped suits, telling the chancellor how to run the University, or the athletic director how to run the KU sports team. We can busy with our classes, jobs, or social activities to find out what this group really does.
The University of Kansas Alumni Association is the name of this organization. And to curb my curiosity, I took the opportunity to find out what the Alumni Association is all about.
As I entered the alumni office, which is inconveniently tucked away in the northwest corner of the Kansas Union, far from the eye of the student body, I realized what little knowledge I
JOHN BOWER
bad of the workings of the Alumni Association. It is something that I have heard a lot about, but never fully understood. I had numerous ideas about what I thought the Alumni Association did, but after learning about this organization, I found that I held gross misconceptions.
I thought that the Alumni Association was basically a group of KU graduates who donated vast amounts of money to the University. I also believed that it was the responsibility of the Alumni Association to bleed as much money from its members as possible. Another notion was the idea that the Alumni Association had no responsibility until after he completed his senior year and thus became a prospective member. As it turns out, I was wrong on all accounts.
The Alumni Association is not a fund-raising organization, but rather a friend-raising organization. It works as a vehicle of communication, attempting to keep alumni in touch with each other and with the University. Through meetings, reunions and publications, the Alumni Association informs alumni about current KU happenings.
Its publications are outstanding and have received numerous awards. Both the Kansas Alumni magazine and newspaper won first place in January at the Mid-America District Conference of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
The Alumni Association office is more an information center than it is a business office. The office has files on all KU graduates and even individuals who attended the University for only
a short time. If anyone ever wanted to celebrate some type of reunion, all he would have to do is contact the office and have the computer find all of the addresses that he is looking for.
There are more than 31,000 members in the Alumni Association, which makes it one of the largest alumni associations among public universities in the nation. The Alumni Association is also one of the oldest, celebrating its 100th birthday this year. There are 55 out-of-state chapters, which hold their own meetings and reunions in their own areas. The individual chapters work with the Alumni Association's main office in planning their activities.
These chapter meetings and regional reunions are not fundraisers, but rather a means by which alumni can stay in touch with one another. According to Alumni Association officials, it is an unwritten rule not to ask members for donations to the University.
"People don't join the Alumni Association to give money to the University, they simply want to stay in touch with KU," said Clair Kluezer. Alumni association field director." And it is our duty to keep our alumni informed about KU, and to tell them that the University is still interested in them."
He added that the K. S. "Boots" Alumni Campus Center was, however, one exception to the rule of not asking for donations. It has been financed by money donated from members of the Alumni Association and has been finished by next fall and will be open to all Alumni Association members and their guests.
"It will be kind of a home away from home where our alums can go and feel comfortable during special events such as Homecoming Day and Parents Day," Keizer said.
The Alumni Association is concerned with students long before they become prospective members. For example, the association, along with other colleges and universities, association, sponsors the Kansas Honors Program
This program recognizes high school students who are in the top 10 percent of their graduating classes, and each student receives a certificate and a dictionary. This is not a promotional program. It is a way to encourage the University. It simply is a way to encourage high school students to continue their education
The Alumni Association has been trying to become more involved with the KU student body and has plans to promote more student involvement during its centennial celebration of the institution officials said that they are constantly looking for ways to involve students in their organization.
I left the Kansas Alumni Association once with a feeling of enlightenment. My image of the Alumni Association had completely turned around.
The Alumni Association definitely raises friends more than funds.
KANSAN
The University Daily
The University Day Kannan (USS 658-406) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 66043, daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and final periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Subscriptions by mail are $43 for six months or $2 a year in Douglass City and $48 for six months or $12 a year in Waco. A student member paid through the student activity fee. POSTMASTER. Send address changes to the University Day Kannan, 118 Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 66043
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General Manager and News Adviser Paul Jes
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Matthew P. Langan
John Oberzan
Paul I. Paul
American gluttony must cease
Q: What is the difference between a wolf and a gluton?
A: One eats to live and the other lives to eat. Right now, Ronald Reagan's defense budget is a glutton, devouring every tax dollar in sight as if there were no tomorrow. But there is a tomorrow, in the great white dining hall of Capitol Hill had better realize that before the just dessert arrives.
The problem is not merely one of stealing from the “rich” social programs and giving to the poor defensive department; nor is it one of simply defending ourselves from the Soviet “threat.”
Clearly, Reagan and his peers of the past have used this "commipelbia" to mobilize support for the obscurity that a $1.6 trillion defense buildup illustrates, and we have followed along like so many dogs salvating at the sound of a bell.
However, there is a another bell ringing, and we must answer it before it is too late. It is a ringing that transcends national boundaries; from want and hunger of the masses of the world.
Today, 72 percent of the world's 4.1 billion people live in lesser developed countries, or LDCs, where adequate food and shelter are the exception rather than the rule. And according to the Global 2000 report prepared by former President Carter's Council on Environmental Quality and the State Department, the gap that now exists between the rich and poor nations will widen, leaving a smaller and smaller portion of the world adequately housed and fed.
"If present trends continue," the report said, "the world in 2000 will be more crowded, more polluted, less stable ecologically and more disrupted to disruption than the world we live in now."
There are several reasons for that gloomy projection. By the year 2000, the world's population of people and LDCs will absorb 92 percent of that increase and only about 25 percent of the world's resources.
This increase in population will double the need for water worldwide just to maintain the present status. Since arable (farm) land will increase by only 4 percent, much of that water can be irrigated or for irrigation to achieve the higher yields necessary to supply all those people with food.
The necessary increase in food production will also rely heavily on oil and gas for fertilizer, pesticides, power for irrigation and fuel for machinery. And while the world supply of oil and gas is sufficient to last through the year 2000, it is not evenly distributed.
This, in turn, will pose some very difficult economic and ecological questions. Economically, since the price of oil, gas and other
less prevalent forms of energy is expected to rise 150 percent by 2000, many LDCs will be unable to support their own energy needs. Already we are seeing in Pakistan the effect that this can have, where low-energy farming practices designed to meet the immediate, desperate need for food are actually resulting in damage to the land's ability to sustain crops.
Although greater yields, mostly in the United States and other developed nations, are expected to yield a 90 percent increase in production of food, prices also are expected to rise worldwide.
Meanwhile, the combustion of more fossil fuels will produce serious environmental damage in the form of acid rain and a 30 percent increase in global warming. However, scientists differ on the specific effect
that greater carbon dioxide emissions will have,
few would say that it will be beneficial.
Damage to the ozone layer that protects the earth from excessive ultraviolet exposure by aerosol emissions, gaseous waste from fertilizer production and high altitude air travel will damage the crops that we seek to increase and create a sharp increase in cases of skin cancer.
By 2000, it is estimated that 40 percent of the remaining forest cover in LDCs will be gone, partially as a result of the inhabitants efforts to meet immediate needs. Another 20 percent of all species of wildlife will disappear, primarily because of the loss of habitat.
The world is not nearly as stable as even the depressing images we see on the television news or read in the newspaper to indicate All of the problems mentioned above will be most pronounced in the LDCs, and finding solutions will not be easy.
"These problems are inextricably linked to some of the most perplexing and persistent problems in the world — poverty, injustice and social conflict," the report says. "New and imaginative ideas — and a willingness to act on them — are essential."
Pride in our national heritage is justifiable, but we must be willing to rise above the level of petty nationalism. As the biggest economy in the world, we must seek to lead it out of the misery that will surely continue to fester and grow until the poor have had enough of doing without food for themselves.
We are in a unique position to lead. If we don't, all the weapons in the world won't help us keep from bearing the violent rage of too many years of neglect in a single great upheaval.
To continue to live in peace, we must retreat to within a set of boundaries that are not drawn by hate, fear and greed and that do not separate hunger and poverty from gluttony and excess.
“This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no foolin’ around . . .”
The Talking Heads
Letters to the Editor
To the editor:
EPA needs environmentalist leader
The resignation of Anne Gorsuch Burford is a small step in the right direction, but I fear it may only serve to take the issue out of the news before the core of the problem can be attacked.
Over the last two years, the Environmental Protection Agency has fallen from weak to ineffectual. Burford reduced the agency's budget to one-half of what it had been during the mere administration and then refused to spend much of what was allocated to enforcement EPA rules.
Now the new EPA head will be appointed by the same anti-environment, pro-development coalition that appointed Burford, namely James Watt and Ronald Reagan.
Watt has repeatedly shown his preference for industrial over environmental concerns, most
Bob
Reagan promised in his election campaign to remove burdensome regulations from industry, regulations such as emission controls for the air pollution and pollution standards for other industries.
notably by opening certain regions of our national parks for development and in general by making previously protected land more accessible to developers.
Burford ran into trouble when she tried to carry out that promise. Or rather when she got
These men are not likely to appoint an environmental watchdog as the new EPA head.
If the removal of Anne Gorsuch Burford from the Environmental Protection Agency is to be helpful to the cause of environmental protection, it must be followed by the appointment of a pro-environment administrator and by the appointment of an agency willing to enforce its rules.
Donald Burke Fayette, Mo., junior
We bear some blame
To the editor:
Jean-Paul Sartre once said, "I would like to love my country and love justice too." His sentiment aptly expresses my feelings today.
The United States continues to actively support and encourage the totalitarian regime in El Salvador, euphemistically calling it an "authoritarian democracy."
Commission is said to be the cancer that must be excised before it can metastasize. And so the president wants to rush another $60 million in military aid to El Salvador. This is the same man who for years has condemned the practice of "throwing money at social problems."
The problem in El Salvador is social, and not simply martial. The fertile valleys are controlled by an oligarchical elite who raise crop crops while the peasants are left to scratch out a meager existence from the marginal land not good enough to grow coffee on.
Roman Catholic priests, nuns and lay workers have been killed in El Salvador simply because they were struggling to alleviate the evils of poverty and ignorance. And now our secretary of state condemns such people as simply "churning blood" for the poor in El Salvador improved." (Newswerk, March 14).
Poverty and oppression have naturally breed deep discontent, and now revolution. The Reagan administration seems concerned only that the revolution be stopped, but I doubt that will ever happen until there is some amelioration of the suffering of the people.
Does he really think any Catholics would want Soviet communism in Latin America? They want justice. They want to feed and clothe the poor. They must just economic structure, live in terrible poverty.
As for the revolutionaries, I'm sure many of them are indeed communists and are receiving aid that ultimately comes from the Soviet Union. You know, down you take whatever assistance is offered
The Constituent Assembly president of El Salvador, Robert d'Aubusson, once said that the communists are like fish who swim in the sea of people and so what "we must do," he said, "is to dry up the sea. And indeed this is what has been killed. The United States, as the financial backbone of the Salvadorean military, is directly responsible for this slaughter.
- I would like to love my country and justice too.
John Little.
Lawrence graduate student