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University, Daily Kansan, February 1, 1983
Opinion
一
A skeleton gets thinner
He's at it again.
President Reagan meant it when he said in his State of the Union address that he was planning to put a lid on domestic spending. But when it comes to student loan programs, he is taking the idea a step further.
For next year's budget, the president has requested $143 million in student loan reductions and a cut of $224 million in vocational education.
If the president gets his way in the fiscal 1983 budget, student loan programs will not only be held steady, they will be cut back by $900 million.
Here at the University, those federal dollars help to finance National Direct Student Loans and Guaranteed Student Loans and, according to the office of student financial aid, those reductions would hit KU's graduate students hardest.
The graduate students must find themselves in a particularly difficult situation. University budget cuts have left many of them off the state employment rolls already, and those that remain find their job security precarious at best.
And the budget cuts may have
tangibly hurt KU's graduate student program if last fall's survey of University graduate programs by the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils has any accuracy. The University's programs consistently received scores in the '40s and '50s on a 100-point scale.
If the president's call for loan reductions come as no surprise, his proposals for cutting vocational education should seem curious at a time when the United States must try to develop as great a skilled workforce as possible to compete in the international market.
Education may be one of the areas in which the president is trying to reduce federal responsibility and place more on the states, but it is evidently not working, at least not in Kansas.
But in light of Reagan's proposed $126 million cut in money that is used to provide basic reading and math skills to the poor, the common thread which runs through his attitude toward education begins to become clear.
What is less clear is how that attitude squares with his rhetoric about a rejuvenated America.
High liquor age not answer to highway death problems
In past years the bill has failed, but this year it has a very strong chance of passing.
A bill to raise the drinking age from 18 years to 21 years for all alcoholic beverages is once again going to be brought before the Kansas Legislature.
The proponents of the bill justify raising the drinking age by saying that it will greatly reduce alcohol-related teen highway deaths. These prohibitionists offer no other solution to the problem than raising the drinking age. They believe that this will be the cure-all to reducing the number of teen traffic deaths due to alcohol consumption.
Raising the drinking age is an oversimplified solution to a very complex problem.
Kansas has unique laws concerning the legal age to drive and the legal age to drink. Unlike
JOHN BOWER
most states, Kansas grants driving permits to 14-year-olds, and at age 16 a person can get a driver's license.
There has been a lot of publicity surrounding the issue of raising the drinking age and justifiably so. However, the proponents of the increase in the drinking age have clouded the issue somewhat. They often point to studies done in other states in which the drinking-age laws have been changed.
Gov. Carlin proposed that a commission be set up to study the problem of drinking and driving in Kansas rather than taking action on the basis of inconclusive studies that have been previously attempted.
Rather than raising the drinking age, there are other ways to remedy the drinking and driving problem. One alternative is stricter law enforcement and punishment for drink and drive in addition to the money that it will spend on the new drinking law could be spent now to enforce the present one.
In comparison studies, the percentage of traffic-related deaths for those between 18 and 20 is no higher in states that allow 18-year-olds to drink 3.2 beer than in states where legal drinking begins at 21. There has never been a study done in a state, like Kansas, in which 18-year-olds can buy 3.2 beer and 21-year-olds can buy hard liquor.
Another way driving while drinking may be reduced is through alcohol awareness programs. The state should help fund more organizations that try to educate people concerning alcohol and alcohol consumption, such as BACCHUS (Boost Alcohol Consciousness Concerning the Health of University Students). Alcohol programs during driver education classes in high school may also help individuals understand the dangers of driving while intoxicated.
The point is that there are no simple, clear-cut solutions to this problem. Before going to such an extreme as raising the drinking age, there should be studies done in Kansas to determine whether the consumption of 3.2 beer is causing teen deaths on the highways.
There have been other proposals by legislators to increase the legal drinking age to 19 rather than 21 so that high school students could not legally drink. This, however, will not curb a high school student from drinking it. Just will force the student to get someone a year older to buy the liquor for them. The prospective would be able to law the market and buy the liquor themselves. If this happens, and the person is arrested, will he or she be tried as an adult or a minor?
Increasing the legal drinking age is not going to deter those who want to drink. In fact, it may encourage an individual to want it more. According to a sociological study in 1965 on initiation rites, the hardest part is not wanting it but wanting it. Additionally, if the person is drinking just as a statement of rebellion, raising the age will only encourage the person even more.
Whether or not the bill to raise the drinking age from 18 to 21 passes depends entirely upon those whom it will directly affect, people between the ages of 18 and 20. If you don't think that this bill should pass, then contact your state representative and tell him or her how you feel.
The bill has more of a chance of passing than it had in years. Unless you make your voice heard, the vote will not pass.
"Old enough to fight . . . "
Late teens old enough to drink
"People try to put us down,
Talkin' by my generation.
Just because we get around,
Talkin' by my generation.
"My Generation The Who
The Who
A lot of attention has been focused in recent months on the problem of drunk driving. Along with the latest brouhaha, there is again the clamor to raise the drinking age.
Proponents of the measure claim that highway fatalities will be reduced once all the presumably irresponsible teenagers are off the road. They argue that little to combat the problem they claim to fight.
cruise. They choose to ignore that more than 90 percent of this nation's drunk drivers are more than 21 years of age and that youths will continue to drink and drive, regardless of the law.
to drink a glass of wine. Edward Bloustein is the president of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., where studies on this problem have been done. When the state raised the drinking age there from 18 to 19. Bloustein spoke against it.
Drunken driving has not become a problem in just the past few months — for as long as there have been cars and drunks it has been a national pastime. It is only recently that lobbying efforts, often led by families of victims, have spurred legislators into action.
Bluestein said that all such a law would do is force the teen-agers from legal drinking establishments into cars or rooms. Are we to believe that the results would be any different
Little evidence exists to show that there are any benefits from such a law, he said. Many who have studied the problem suppose such a change may create more harm than good.
Already several states, including Kansas, have taken measures to try to curb this potentially dangerous activity by establishing stiffer penalties for people who are caught driving while intoxicated. In Kansas, other suggestions such as the establishment of a lesser, but still serious, "OWI" law and a higher drinking are have been suggested.
But to use the privilege to deprive a class of adults of their drinking privileges will only serve to
further orate respect for Kansas' already incomprehensible liquor laws. It is not surprising that the conservatives and religious groups who have long sought to foist their perverse morality upon the rest of us are behind this legislation.
MATT BARTEL
What is surprising, and dishearing, is that many legislators who have in the past supported the rights of all individuals, regardless of age, may be forced by the pressure lack of care, mistaken moralists to in favor of the bill. All politicians, who can support more highway deaths?
The issue is not highway deaths. Certainly, for even one person to be killed on the state's roads is a tragedy we must seek to solve. For the death to involve alcohol makes it even more difficult.
But the issue is really one of fairness and responsibility. Stiffer penalties, more certainly
enforced and combined with improved educational programs, are the answer. Depriving teenagers of legally obtained alcoholic bev- erties only create a new group of lawbreakers.
Our 18-year-olds deserve better than to be treated as children, whether the issue is drinking or voting or anything else. The argument that an 18- to 20-year-old is not responsible enough to be cared for is often used to justify nearly 14,000 Vietnam casualties in this age group, and deserves to be buried alongside.
Today nearly 25 percent of America's armed forces personnel are under 21. Before we ask these young men to take another human life or to lay down their own, whether the choice be just or unjust, we must be willing to treat them as adults.
To say that 18 is old enough to kill but too young to handle beer or hard liquor is hypocrisy in its finest hour. These arguments of irresponsibility were raised and defeated when the 26th amendment lowering the voting age was passed and ratified in less than four months.
The 18-year-old vote has done this nation a great service, and a nationwide drinking age of 18 would do the same. After all, how are we to instill these young adults with a proper sense of responsibility if we refuse to extend with one hand the privileges of adulthood while forcing the obligation of registration for military conscription upon them.
To think that a ban on liquor sales to teens will take care of the problem of teen-age drunkenness is shortsighted and naive. By allowing the young people to make the choice instead of attempting to make it for them, we will do ourselves a far greater good than all the legislative morality put together.
Accidents and deaths reduced
High age slows drunk drivers
No one deserves to die because a drunken driver hapazhary operates a vehicle. Several recent studies of the drinking age show that in the states with lower drinking ages, the number of alcohol-related car wrecks and fatalities increased among young people. Surely, to save lives the drinking age should be 21.
Between the years 1976 and 1981, several states reversed their laws and changed their legal drinking ages to 21. New Hampshire showed a 75 percent decrease in fatal nighttime car crashes after its drinking age was raised. Alcohol-related accidents occur most often at night.
Obviously, some people between the ages of 18 and 21 can not handle their liquor.
TOING! TOING!
The biggest problem with some drinkers between the ages of 18 and 21 is their inexperience with alcohol. A mix of inexperience, alcohol and driving subjects a lot of people to the risk of dying in a car crash caused by a drunken driver.
Careless young people need to learn that when everyone goes out to whoo it on Friday and Saturday nights, not everyone can consume their
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The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters.
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
TOING! TOING! TOING! TOING! TOING! TOING!
--put at the bar or the keg party. Someone has to drive home.
$$$$
TOING! TOING! TOING! To...CHOMP!
JAN GUNN
Too often that person is drunk.
Too often, the drinking age to 21 will not hurt. Changing it as much as they think it will. In fact, it might even be wholesome for them. If you drink, think back to a time when you were really intoxicated. Getting drunk out of your mind accomplishes a lot for you — you get a headache, blurry vision, bloodshot eyes, dead tired and sometimes vomiting spells. The first couple of
times are a fun, new experience, but after that if you regularly drink yourself into a stupor, you are an alcoholic.
Some may think that they are too old to have their parents administer their first alcoholic beverages to them. Mom and Dad give milk to babies, not alcohol to young adults. The problem is a lot of people aged 18 to 21 are not young adults. They're just old babies.
Implementing the drinking law for 21-year-olds does not mean those who are younger will not drink alcohol. Teen-agers find ways to get liquor. With a raised liquor law, it will just be harder for them. It will encourage young people to experiment with alcohol in their own homes, a safe place to see what it feels like to be intoxicated.
Instead of young people experimenting with alcohol and then taking it to the streets, everyone would benefit if parents or guardians would introduce their teenagers to alcohol. Instead, they would experience with alcohol inside their own homes, they may better learn the good and bad effects of alcohol.
Maybe when you are 18, trying to establish your adulthood and making people take you seriously, being able to buy alcohol seems important. It really is not all that important. Friends or employers who say you are an adult in personality, not whether you are an alcoholic or drinked ice tea.
To them, alcohol serves a purpose — to get them "wasted." There is no possible way to measure maturity, but the road studies show that some young adults get too drunk to drive and then drive anyway.
and then drive away anyway.
The saying "old enough to fight in a war, old enough to drink." has become trite. That is no longer the issue. The issue is that if you are old enough to drink it does not make you old enough to kill other people in alcohol-related accidents.
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