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Thursday, October 19, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN Housing project opponents have predjudice against poor
Misguided fear and prejudice have disrupted often-placid Lawrence.
Members of the Breezedale Neighborhood Association asked city commissioners last week to halt a public housing project planned for their neighborhood. Earlier this year, the commission approved plans of the Lawrence Housing Authority to build a four-bedroom house in South Lawrence at the 33-39 Winona Ave. lot. The house is part of a federally financed housing program that would scatter publicly built housing throughout Lawrence.
Some residents acrimoniously opposed the construction, and the housing authority agreed to scale the house down to three bedrooms. Still unhappy, residents of the neighborhood are demanding that the project be halted. These residents told commissioners that public housing would lower property values in the neighborhood. They also intimated that maintenance of the property would be poor and that the inhabitants would be undesirable.
The arguments almost would be laughable if they weren't so contemptible. The residents are arguing against one house. Anyone who purchased the lot would be able to build the house. It is doubtful that the residents would be complaining if the identical house was being built by a private contractor. Consequently, it seems the real arguments are the latter two, but even the residents must see how ridiculous these are.
Annual income does not guarantee impeccable upkeep of property. Pride in ownership and community, however, does encourage maintenance.
As for the questioning of character, that is simply blind prejudice against people who make less money than their neighbors. It defies logic. The occupant of the new house could be a single mother trying to raise children on a tight budget or any young family having trouble making ends meet. Neither is cause for public scorn.
Thankfully, the house on Winona probably will be built. The housing authority is nearly ready to submit final design and construction documents to the federal government. The danger comes in the building of the additional 25 houses to be built under the program. Strident opposition could delay and even halt the construction of the badly needed housing.
Lawrence needs the low-income housing to help residents of the community. It does not need residents clamoring for income-imposed segregation because of ignorance.
Daniel Niemi for the editorial board
Families, hopelessly ill need right to end life, suffering
End the suffering.
This is the third in a series of editorials concerning pending Supreme Court cases.
A case before the Supreme Court this term could decide the fate of people sustained by life-support systems. In the case of Cruzan vs. the Director of the Missouri Department of Health, two parents are fighting for the right to end the feeding of their daughter, who is in a vegetative state. The girl, injured in an auto accident, is neither legally dead nor terminally ill. A lower court sided with the state and ruled that she should remain on life-support.
At stake here is more than the fate of the victim of one tragic accident. The right of all of us to control our lives and the lives of those we love is at stake. Who should have the right to decide when someone, perhaps in great pain and with little or no hope of recovery, should be allowed to die? Who should decide the fate of the elderly who specifically request that they not be kept alive by life-support systems? Certainly not a government.
It would be the definition of hypocrisy for the Supreme Court, which left the Roe vs. Wade door ajar, to rule that an individual cannot control his own fate or that a family cannot end the suffering of a hopelessly ill loved one.
Families should not be required by law to watch loved ones suffer without hope as medical bills that can never be paid pile up. What is at stake is not the power to control one's death. It is the power to control one's life.
No one has more right to decide how much is enough than the girl's parents. And no one has less right than her government.
Stan Diet for the editorial board
News staff
David Stewart...Editor
Ric Brack...Managing editor
Daniel Niemi...News editor
Candy Niemann...Planning editor
Tom Dill...Editorial editor
Jennifer Corser...Campus editor
Elaine Sung...Sports editor
Laura Huser...Photo editor
Christine Winner...Art/Fashion editor
Tom Eblen...General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Linda Prokop ... Business manager
Debra Martin ... Local advertising sales director
Jerre Medford ... National/regional sales director
Jill Lowe ... Marketing director
Tami Rank ... Production manager
Carrie Slaminka ... Assistant production manager
Emily Townsend ... Co-op manager
Eric Hughes ... Creative director
Chris Doolt ... Classified manager
Jeff Messey ... Tearsheet manager
Jeanne Hines ... Sales and marketing adviser
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'Today' pair like another duo
I can't help it. Every time I see pictures of Jane Pauley and Deborah Norville, all I can think about is Stan Spaulding and Wink Hess.
Pauley and Norvile you know about. They are the women involved in the "Today" show meidrama-Pauley having worked on the program for 13 years, Norville having recently been promoted. There's hardly a day when you can pick up the paper and not see something about the two of them, and what the situation means to the future of the program.
Stan paulding and Wink Hess you don't know about. They were two very good reporters who worked on a middle circulation newspaper - a newspaper that is now dead - when I was breaking in. They were the first two reporters whose work I got to watch up-close. Total pros, both of them.
Let's start with Wink. Wink Hess was near the end of his career when I met him. He was an older guy, close to retirement, dour and quiet and often in a bad mood - a nice man who realized that he had gone as far in the newspaper business as he would ever get, and who seemed resigned to doing his job well and then getting out of the game. He was slight of build, and he wore a suit with suspenders to work most days.
Stan Spaulding was somewhat younger - not yet bitter, but probably aware that this might be as far as he was going to go, too. He had a good sense of humor, he was hefty and built like a side of beef, and his face was usually beet red. I don't know where he was born, but his accent would indicate either West Virginia or Kentucky.
Those two guys reported the news every day, and they didn't make mistakes. They excelled at what they did, and they did not consider what they did as very glamorous.
And it is Stan and Wink whom I think about when I read about Jane Pauley and Deborah Norville. Pauley and Norville are journalists - their salaries are paid by NBC's news division - so basically they are in the same business that Stan and Wink were in. I find myself wondering what Stan and Wink would make of the national publicity about
the "Today" women.
Bob Greene Syndicated columnist
I can envision those two guys sitting at their city-room desks, which were about 10 feet apart, and talking about it. In a way, Stan and Wink were the Norville and Pauley of that newspaper - Stan was the younger guy, Wink was the veteran. One of the most-quoted comments about the "Today" situation came from TV critic Tom Shales of the Washington Post. Shales, analyzing on-the-camera tension, wrote: "Norville sometimes has a self-satisfied smirk on her face. Like Eve, in 'All About Eve.'"
I can see Wink Hess calling over to Stan Spaulding - who undoubtedly would be eating a fried egg and bacon sandwich, carried in from Paoletti's restaurant next door - "Hey, Stan, people are saying you have a self-satisfied smirk on your face."
"Come on Wink." Stan might say
"I think your face looks fine," Wink might say. "But it is distracting our readers when they peruse our stories."
distracting our readers when they peruse our stories." Oh well. The news business has changed. I read in USA Today about a phone-in poll in which the readers of the newspaper and the viewers of "USA Today on TV" television program could call one of two 900 numbers. Calling the first number tallied a vote for Jane Pauley's journalism; calling the second number tallied a vote for the journalism of Norville.
I thought about Stan and Wink. "Hey, guys. There's this phone-in poll. Our readers are being asked to decide which of you they would report a story."
Stan would probably have ordered another acon-and- egg sandwich. Wink would probably have taken early retirement.
Bob Greene is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
School memories stay strong
Thomas Wolfe claimed you couldn't go home again. He may have been right. If home hasn't changed, you probably have. But you can go back to high school. I did last week for the first time since I graduated in 1954. You may have gone to a high school like C.E. Byrd in Shreveport, La. — a large comprehensive high school in a mid-sized city. Like many schools, it has gone through some changes in recent decades. But so have I; I discovered in the midst of the high school assembly that I'd forgotten the last lines of the alma mater.
I did some research for my return. Thumbing through a copy of a yearbook almost 40 years old takes courage. You risk releasing all those old memories and desires — not to mention that most useless of human emotions, regret. At my age, I'm not sure which I regret most — the indiscretions I committed in high school or those I didn't.
On page 10 of the 1932 Gusher there is a striking picture of Principal Grover Cleveland Koffman looking the way a principal should: larger than life, bright of eye and stern face. He is likely to be the camera. Clearly a man accustomed to command.
In another age Koffman might have been a captain of industry. He had a way of straightening out his stiff collar with his forefinger while turing his head that always reminded me of a bull preparing to charge. There was a natural force about the man wedded to a talent for organization that made everyone, teacher and student, want to be on his good side. Or if that wasn't possible, at least to escape his notice.
Koffman made a point of welcoming the freshman class each year to the City of Byrd, a phrase that was more than a figure of speech. The school awed freshmen the way a great city would — with its disciplined organization, diverse elements and unifying spirit. The metaphor was an inspired one on Koffman's part, and alumni never forget it.
Long before educational theorists had figured it out, Grover C. Koffman was demonstrating that the single greatest determinant of a school's quality is the quality of its principal. Byrd was tops. He knew it, we knew it and Shreveport knew it. Long before public relations, there was espit de corps; and Koffman understood that it had its substance in its word and shape the substance. And Byrd had substance. Koffman saw to that.
Facing Grover C. Koffman in the yearbook, as in life, was his assistant principal, Charles Ravenna, who now is executive director of the Byrd Alumni Association. Even in 1952, he was already dapper, and he remains the city of Byrd's eternal boulevardier. What Koffman demanded of us, Ravenna charmed out of us. He still does. I didn't get away last week without his planting the idea that I really ought to write a column about the U.S. high school, preferably Byrd. And he made it seem a pleasure rather than a task
In the current slough of what represents writing about U.S. education, it is the fashion to paint the past in
Paul
Greenberg
Syndicated columnist
nostalgic tints and sympathize with what today's students face. After all, the recreational drug of choice at Byrd in my day was Coca-Cola. But there have been other changes, too. In that 1923 yearbook, there are no black faces. Attending a high school assembly at Byrd today, a guest realizes that Byrd is more open, more comprehensive, more iridescent than ever.
In the 1952 yearbook there is a full-page advertisement for "Telephone Girls." That must have been one of the few occupations open to women after nursing and teaching. One of my favorite explanations for the widely perceived decline of teaching in the United States is that the state no longer has a virtual monopoly on the most intelligent women; they now can become lawyers, physicians and investment bankers, as well as teachers. The announcement of the homecoming Comic this year was an occasion for many mentions. If I got it right (and I may not have, being a member of the press), one of the mails was planning to study aeronautical engineering.
Byrd has had its troubles, too, like many old high schools in the middle of a growing city. But it has bounced back by emphasizing quality, by adding a magnet program in science and math, and most of all by emphasizing what Grover C. Koffman always did — he would tell students that we could measure up to Byrd, but we knew we were expected to. That spirit has been carried on by a principal named Lynne Fitzgerald.
What Byrd gave me and my generation was a feeling that we were part of a local aristocracy — not an aristocracy of wealth or position but of manners and merit. It gave us what psychologists now call selfesteem. And today's students are closer to fulfilling the old Jeffersonian dream of an aristocrat of merit arising out of an equality of opportunity.
Homecoming is not entirely a happy experience; a lot of educational experiences aren't. I was surprised to find memories of old humiliations so sharp. My worst mistake, it seems to me now, was that I didn't ask enough stupid questions or make any scenes. I'm confident that they will embrace an entirely different, individual, romantic folk all their own — which is what high school ought to be about.
⇒ Paul Greenberg is a columnist for the Pine Bluff (Ark.)
Gazette
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Lives outweigh rights
Ford Hoffman is right that the war on drugs may hinder individual freedom. Our government's function is to insure that freedom doesn't go too far, injuring individuals or society.
Our middle-class outlook can blind us. The government is not fighting drugs to eliminate art. It is not aiming at the college student's stash, nor at the middle-class at all.
The war aims at our suffering lower class. Poor neighborhoods have become as violent as Beirut. Children as young as eight,years-old are becoming "enlightened" by bacharge疼 (marijuana laced with coke), and serve as carriers for dealers). Mothers on drugs forget they have families, leaving children with nowhere to go and with no foundation. How many potential artists have never had a chance — dying of overdose or drive-by violence, or perhaps never having a vision beyond the needle or the vial?
Granted, other factors make the physical and spiritual graves of our lower classes. But we cannot deny that drugs deepen the holes. Yes, the war on drugs will affect the class rights. But it's a small prince's gift to you to live of a significant portion of our society.
Terl R. Stettnisch
Lawrence graduate student
Pro-choice not a reality
After the debate, I thought about the words "pro-choice". It sounds good, but is it a reality? In crisis pregnancy counseling I've seen that women aren't getting their choice in the decision. Many women are pressured into having an abortion by their families, friends and even employers. Boyfriends threaten to leave, and parents very often threaten to kick their daughters out if they don't abort their pregnancies. What kind of a choice is that? Circumstances and other people push them into a decision, and they are left with nothing but the memory of their dead, unborn children.
Ironically, the pro-choice movement has scarred more women than it has helped. These exploited women can't erase the guilt that will haint them for the rest of their lives when they see a child that could have been theirs. They can't "choose" for the guilt to so away.
Pro-choice? Who made the choice? We, the people? No, eight men and one woman of the time decided the fate of millions of lives.
Pro-choice? Does the victim of the abortion get any choice? No. The mom may say at all whether they will live alone. Wouldn't most of us choose life?
Carol Mader Lawrence resident
Composer misidentified
Your article about "In the Evening by the Moonlight" contained some misinformation that I would like to correct.
The song was indeed written more than 100 years ago, but not by Stephen Foster. The composer was James A. Bland. Bland composed more than 700 songs, and many consider him to be the most important composer of American popular music between Foster, who died at the outbreak of the war in Korea, or Carl M. Besidé "In no Evening." Bland composed such other well known standards as "Carry Me Back to Old Virginity" and "Of Dem Golden Slipers."
James A. Bland was Black, not white. Alec Wilder, a historian of popular music and a composer of popular and serious music, credits her work with the musicians she broke down the barriers to white music publishers' offices."
Most modern versions of Bland's songs delete the demeaning racial terminology that the composer used. The particular passage that was the subject of your article has been changed in modern versions to read, "You could hear my friends all singing." I hope the fraternity will make appropriate changes in the lyrics so that the song is as good a song, and it has an important place in the development of the American popular song. It would be sad and ironic if the work of this path-breaking pioneer should be lost to future generations.
Robert C. Casad Professor of Law
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