Page 4 University Daily Kansan, April 29, 1982
Opinion
Good news semester
I've taken to calling spring 1982 the "good news, semester." It has been uneventful, but there's still something going on.
During the semester, there were important and complex stories to cover—such as the preparation for KU's new pre-enrollment system, or the letter of inquiry the NCAA sent KU administrators or the fight for approval of KU's budget.
Spring 1982 might seem a little bland to those who advocate the gum-ho, muckraking, write-it
But there were few big stories. And no big scandals. None of the stories that editors think about when they eat, study or brush their teeth. None of the stories that dreams about when they finally find sleep.
VANESSA HERRON
today-and-think-about-it-tomorrow brand of journalism.
Part of the reason that there were so few crimes to contend with could be that many crimes never happened.
One story, which was published last month,
illustrates the point.
On a midwinter day, a Kansas reporter swept into the newsroom breathlessly telling of a doctor she had heard was prescribing a drug improperly. The story she whipped up was well-written and exciting—but editors decided it also was unprintable.
A few weeks later, after a lot of fact-checking and rewriting, the story was quietly published on
It contained the same facts it had before, but it was a little less breathless and a little more fair.
Kansan editors faced a similar decision on the day several KU football players were arrested. Editors met, then thought for a long time: How should the story be written and displayed? Should it be on page 1 with a banner headline? Or on the sports page? Or should we publish it at
In the end, we decided to run the story unobstructively, just as we would publish a story on any other sport column. Then we took another sports column that examined the effect the incident would have on the team.
And we didn't regret our decision.
The biggest problem that editors had to face reached its climax at the end of the semester. That problem, the publication of all salaries, was unprecedented.
it took much longer for the staff to compile the
lists than the editors had anticipated. As the last week of classes approached, the editors met again to weigh the possible effects of the salaries' publication.
Would it seem that we had published the list, then retreated before readers could react? Would it be as if the Kanass was simply trying to double it? Would it cause more harm than good?
We didn't have ready answers, and we didn't have the power to force the future. We did, however, have the strong belief that the end result of the list's publication would be positive.
In the days after the list was published, the Kansan received angry phone calls and letters. Administrators weren't as friendly as they used to be. But the deans of the School of Journalism, who had absolutely nothing to do with the salaries, bore the brunt of the criticism.
(monday, after the classified salaries were published, a dean leaked weakly against his door and asked me, "There isn't a third part, is there?" )
Now, the hailstorm of criticism already has diminished. Some professors have said they approved of the Kansan's decision. And we still doubt that they can benefit from the knowledge we have given them.
One of our only regrets is that after this semester, Kansan staff members will not be able to work with Rick Musser, associate professor of journalism. Musser's official title is "general manager" of the Kansan and his unofficial title is "Uncle Rick."
Paul Jess, the professor of journalism who will take over as general manager, is talented and knowledgeable, and at Kansas parties, he can handle it as well as the next man. But Musser still will be missed.
With Musser's guidance (and sometimes when his guidance was tactfully withheld) staff members learned about reporting and citing, they learned how to present evidence they learned, the newspaper steadily improved.
On Jan. 14, in the first Kansan, I outlined my plans for the semester. The Kansan was going to feature more local news and more news about people who are affected by policies. And the new staff was going to uphold the Kansan's fine national reputation.
They did. This semester, Anne Calovich, a Kansas reporter, won first place in news writing in the Heist Competition—the Pulitzer Prize of college journalism. Her efforts and those of other staff members helped the KU School of Journalism place third overall in the competition.
On some days, the staff members did not meet all those goals. But they kept at least one promise I made for them—they always tried their best.
Just as I predicted four months ago, our best was more than good enough.
Some help to build insight others only tear it down
The cycle of experience giving rise to the reflective moment has been both breadmill and
I have between times been enrolled as an undergraduate and a graduate student, been disenrolled as well as disenrtrailed, visited, and finally returned and graduated.
I felt a sincere moment of deja vu Monday when the bus containing me and my fellow glee-clubbers rolled down the grass-lined back entrance to the main campus, Mainsdrive Math.
I was singing second tenor as a sophomore in my high school choir during our annual field trip in 1971 when another bus rolled up the drive and revealed the Hill to me for the first time.
W.J. ANDREWS
ferris wheel. The treadmill side is a frenetic abyss wherein no matter what you know, pretend to know, or are supposed to know, knowledge is as a tricked and tricked into parsing. And insight is a fantasy.
The ferris wheel side is a flowing sensation of academic euphoria and personal growth. In
Both sides have been, without a doubt, rewarding, depending on what one perceives as
Rewarding for me are the experiences that have opened doors and twisted knobs in this mechanical gray mass between my ears called "brain."
Even more rewarding are the rooms these doors opened on, and the lights these knobs turned on, so that I might rummage through the newfound space for insight, and see it at all
Insight shows up when the going gets crazy and your dendrites and axons are screaming. The edge of perception is cutting at the tie-ropes of your essence.
The hard part is to let go and realize that those ropes only hold up a curtain that keeps one from seeing insight that lie beyond points at which normal curiosity is satisfied, points beyond
which one might normally be unafraid to pursue his "self."
But this dangerous mission of hide and seek with the unbounds of your inner workings is well known.
Each nudge bumps you along the rhythm run through life, propelling you in the direction of your desired destination.
I received a vademag, catalyzed by my glee-club v. that has been—for me—quired delayed in court.
I used to think the world was full of good people, and good people gone bad because of circumstance-making good people and victimized people.
But I've realized there are also a few fools.
Fools are insincere. They continually attempt to pull back other people's curtains, because they are afraid of pulling back their own. They have neither the strength nor perseverance to break their own social structural on their own lives, so they define themselves by the breakdown of another's structure.
They find a person whose structure is sound, so that when they break it down they can say, "Look, he slipped and fell, so I must be better balanced than him."
A fool is someone who wastes his life, the
sacrifice. They can be found everywhere, even in
the streets.
But the thing the fool never realizes—his inherent mistake—is that this process of sabotage is merely an experience the good man has made, and the bad man has the expense of the fool. Sincere is as sincere does.
It is as if to mention there is a Catch-22 to sincerity. If you are sincere you will suffer sometimes, but gain great rewards. If you are saddened, but gain not, but remain a fool, and a stranger to yourself.
And the fool will always be a fool, and when finally left alone, will crumble. Fool funerals are unreliable.
This final piece is neither warning nor advice,
but indulgence. It is reflection. The recognition of
these things has been the result.
The best bet is to pull our curtains, together,
thanks for helping me pull mine Kansas. I love
them.
KANSAN
The University Daily
Goodbye to the fools.
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2002 MIAMI NEWS
Parent's rights went too far for Doe
"Care for a baby?"
"Well, I don't know... I've already had two softer really rough."
More and more, parents of newborn infants have been answering that question with the same detachment as if an acquaintance had asked, "Care for a cigarette?"
"No thanks.
"But it already lit."
"No thanks."
But it's already in.
"Well, snuff it out, damn it."
An unnamed baby died two weeks ago because it had had no food or water. The baby did not die among the huddled masses in Calcutta with its ragged mother wailing in the shadows. It died inside the sterile walls of a Bloomington, Ind., hospital, beneath the faint hum of flourless tubes. It died because its parents did not care to keep it.
We must refer to the infant as an "it," because the hospital and courts have withheld details of the case, including the baby's sex. But to use the pronoun "it" is ironically fitting: the parents evidently did not see their child as a person.
The baby was born with Down's syndrome, as are more than one in a thousand. It would have had retardation and, possibly, physical defects. The baby also was born with a blockage that required an operation before food could reach its stomach. Its chance of surviving the operation were 50-50. A flip of a coin, to live or die.
But the coin stayed in the parents' pocket. They would not allow the operation, nor would they give custody of the baby to others who publicly volunteered to adopt it. The Indiana courts affirmed and reaffirmed the parents' right to let their child die.
To the courts and the press, the baby became known as "Infant Doe." Two weeks ago Infant Doe did just as frantic appeals reached the Supreme Court. So the Court did not rule in the case. Now Infant Doe, God rest its soul, is a hypothetical legal question.
Hypothetical legal questions do not grow up to play baseball or hopscotch. They grow up to haunt those who rely on our courts for justice. In America, why hypothetical legal question becomes more acceptable? Precedent a Precedent is a grim, over-bearing fellow to deal with, not at all like a
laughing boy with a baseball mitt (yes, boys with an syndrome can do and laugh boy and baseball)
Right-to-lifers are outraged that Infant Doe's doctors and parents refused him food, water and corrective surgery, but doctors point out that decisions to let someone die are made in hospitals every day. The patients' ages and the odds that they would survive and possibly recover, if treated, vary. Their outcomes do not.
The question that looms over life-support machines is, "Who has the right to choose, and makes the choice, when the patient cannot?"
The considerations that weight the answer are different in each case. I know of at least one case in which the answers were clear-cut: my brother lay in a coma with his spinal cord
BEN JONES
blocked. The monitors showed no brainwaves. My mother, a nurse, signed the papers, and his life-support system was shut off. His condition was hopeless; it was the right thing to do.
The awful question cannot always be answered precisely, but clearly there comes a point where the chances of survival warrant the cost, effort and anguish of an operation or a wait. Infant Doe's were 50-50—two-to-one—decent odds at any racecet.
The dilemma of whether to let die or not to let die is hardly the same in Infant Doe's case as it is, say, for an old man in acute pain and hopelessly tied to an electronic body. An old man's condition likely will only become worse. His withered body has spent itself.
An old man's mind also may be gone, rendering him incapable of choice. But a baby can grow and be nourished into someone able to understand his life, because it is to deny that infant eventual choice. Even
infant kings, by monarchial tradition, kept
in name until they were old enough to reign.
For parents to make an irrevocable choice for a developing human being is a crime rationalized by the fallacy that the sum product of an infant is either hereditary or en-
The heart of the argument of whether parents have the right to let their child die (it is ghastly to use such words in such an analytical tone, but that is what we have come to) lies in where there lies in the tiny, beating heart of a newborn baby something else from its parents, nor from their ancestors, nor will come from its future experiences and surroundings.
Imatness in a being means the existence of self-determination, of free will. If the child contains something original which its parents did not give it to, they cannot claim the infant is individual, with their custody. The baby is an individual, with individual rights, the same as anyone else.
Or, perhaps, they could not bear the thought-five, seven, twelve years from now—that somewhere in Bloomington, Ind., there would be a blue-eyed, freckled kid growing up, playing in a tire swing under an elm tree, a kid with a shaggy mane. For them, his would be a haunting face to face.
Deny inattentance, and you deny free will. Deny disobedience and your responsibility toward
duty and perils.
Because the hospitals and courts have withheld so much of the case information, it is hard to guess why the parents allowed Doe to die, and harder still to understand why they refused to give up the child to those willing to raise it, thereby ridding themselves both of trouble and of fear. Perhaps he had taught them that old and retarded children before, though their other two children were born healthy. That would seem to point to some compassion.
Perhaps the parents think a retarded life is not worth living. That is hard to believe of people who had bad exposure to retarded drugs or vaccines, and that it can demonstrate their absolute right to the child.
Letters to the Editor
McCollum Hall president responds to critic
To the Editor:
Once again, I am very proud to see an active University that takes an interest in affairs that occur daily here on our great campus. After reading the letters in last Friday's University Daily Kanan, I feel there is a need to respond to the letter sent by one of our students, Salma Bulla (who, by chance, is a senator in the McCollum Hall government).
1. There are no discrepancies concerning the hall elections. I did, in fact, win the election by almost a 2 to margin in regard to my nearest opponent and the other candidates running for president.
I would like to clarify all the things Bull stated in her letter. First, I want to thank Jim Lehner for the fine job that he did in reporting the story in the April 5 article, "McCollum Hall leader wants change." It is toward these two articles that I will address my points.
3. I know and trust the work of Lehner as one of your better reporters, if not one of the best reporters that the Kansan has on its staff. I make this statement based on the stories that Lehner uses in his books. He is certain that he does not use paraphrasing when he establishes quotes in his stories.
2. As far as the words that I have in my vocabulary, the words "reputation," "classify," "infux," "outdated" and "facilities" are indeed very common words. I know these words, but I use them frequently.
4. In the interview with Randle Messner, it was quoted that, "Nick Oropesa has been a hellraiser in the past and will probably be in the future—he's done a lot to improve the hall."
and the "other 600 people" ask what hall improvements I have been responsible for.
I have strived to bring back some of the social life into McCollum Hall. By this I can say that there have been activities not only for American students, but also for foreign students to enjoy. These people know me and have trust in me to represent their interest fairly in the hall government rather than representing just my own interests.
If I am correct, I overheard Bull saying on a prior occasion, "Why don't we have a clock in our cafeteria?" Once again, I was the person most responsible for getting that new clock that is now in our cafeteria! Bull, now you can see the correct time of day so that you can make it to class on time to continue your learning experience.
The television on the seventh floor lobby was broken down and beyond repair. I was the one responsible for getting a new one. I didn't see or hear from Bull when her floor brought the problem to the attention of the hall government (Bull is a resident on the seventh floor). I know this new television is used heavily by the floor, and it has also seen Bull washing it at various times.
6. 1 wholeheartedly agree with Buil that I
never knew whose campaign posters would be torn down next. As a matter of fact, I was putting posts of other candidates back up after they were torn down, and I even though I don't know who lore them down.
5. With regard to Messner being a candidate for the position of hall justice, I would point out that bulb has forgotten that Messner is a second year law student and a fine acting attorney, and has all the qualifications to be a hall justice. Hurry, hurry! The judge should the most administration, and I reappointed him because of the outstanding job he had done in the position under the past administration.
7. Bull hops that both current and outgoing Executive Board members stand up to me. I say that Bull is misinformed. Our current board is not only working smoothly, but we have already accomplished more things than the last administration. I don't get off when Bull says that to "be a dictator" and get rid of the other board members and cites my refusal to work with them. To this I say that Bull is being held accountable for our current board is not only strong but also one of the best boards our hall government has had in a number of years.
8. Finally, I want to address the fact that I have the most security write-ups this year. I believe that these write-ups are in conjunction with policies that other residents and myself believe to be bad policies that need to be changed so that all residents might benefit.
So in closing, I can only say that a lot of people must have confidence in me or I would not have been elected. I can see that working with the candidates accomplish great things in this hall government.
So let's face the real facts. I have a record of working to improve our hall. Last but not least, I repeat my goal to make McColum Hall the residence hall at the University of Kansas.
Nick Oropeza, McCollum Hall president