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Friday, September 4, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Panel studies airline bias
Handicapped advocates tell of humiliation, discrimination
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — During two days of federal hearings in Washington that ended yesterday, advocates for the blind, deaf, and people who use wheelchairs have complained that the airlines often treat people with disabilities in humiliating ways.
They also have said the carriers sometimes have insufficient equipment to handle special needs, such as handicapped people, accessible for people in wheelchairs.
The panel soon will write regulations designed to prevent discrimination by the airlines against people with disabilities. The government committee has been meeting since June and hopes to write proposed legislation by November the panel's members. From groups representing disabled people, the government and segments of the air travel industry.
An AIDS patient and an advocate for people with the deadly illness urged the panel to approve rules that would limit airline passengers with the disease.
"There have been and will be (AIDS patients) going home to die, unable to take airplanes," said Joseph Maier, an AIDS patient from Baltimore. "At this stage in our lives,
we need to be treated with dignity."
Mauro A. Montoya Jr., legal director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic's AIDS Program in Washington, cited the cases of an Ohio AIDS patient who had trouble finding an airline and an airline employee who was put on leave with pay because he had the illness.
"Certain segments of the airline industry have reacted with emotional, irrational responses, based mainly on public and private misconceptions of the disease," Montoya told the committee.
"I ask that this body include in their recommendations provisions prohibiting airlines from discriminating against persons with AIDS and those perceived to be affected by the disease," he said.
Montyna recounted the problems faced by Brent Anderson, an Ohio man suffering from AIDS who became ill during a visit to China in July. Several U.S. airlines refused to fly Anderson home, and his return was delayed. Eventually, he was flown back by a U.S. Air Force plane and died on July 25, less than two weeks after returning.
Montoya also said he is representing a United Airlines reservation
agent he did not identify who has been placed on leave with pay after informing his employers that he has AIDS.
"One cannot catch AIDS from sitting in an airline seat next to (an AIDS patient)." Montoya said. "Similarly, one cannot catch AIDS by speaking to a reservations agent with AIDS over the phone."
WITHIN "There are no rational reasons for the discrimination which has resulted against (AIDS patients) and others perceived to have the disease," he said.
there is no industry-wide policy for dealing with travelers who have AIDS, a member of the panel representing the airlines said during a break in the hearing.
Committee member Walter Coleman, an assistant vice president of the Air Transport Association, the airlines' trade group, said that an airline aware of a passenger with AIDS usually will ask for a doctor's note stating that travel is permissible.
When asked if the airlines discriminate against passengers with AIDS, Coleman said, "I don't think so. We're talking about the difference between what the airlines consider prudent and what is discriminatory."
Kemp drops 'racist' volunteer
The Associated Press
CONCORD, N.H. — Republican presidential candidate Jack Kemp fired a state senator from an honorary campaign post yesterday because the senator would not apologize for racial remarks.
"Let's move on and get on to the business of the campaign," Paul Young, director of Kemp's campaign in the leadoff primary state, said after Sen. John Chandler of Warner was dropped as honorary chairman for Merrimack County.
Chandler defended himself against racism charges by saying he was only concerned that race mixing would "mongrelize" the white race.
Chandler, 76, who is white, has been the center of controversy since last month, when he told a joke about the shooting. He also uses Jackson at several public events.
"The joke was repugnant, but certainly his reaction was even more funny." Mr. Chandler said. "We asked Senator Chandler for an apology and repudiation
because it is in contrast to everything Jack Kemp stands for."
Young said that he and state campaign co-chair Judith Thayer talked to Chandler yesterday and that he refused to apologize.
Kemp, a New York congressman,
demand that he apologize from
Chandler on Wednesday.
"There is no place in my campaign for ethnic, religious or racial intolerance or bigotry of any kind," a spokeswoman quoted Kemp as saying.
No one answered Chandler's phone yesterday afternoon.
Yesterday morning, before he was relieved of his volunteer position, Chandler said to Kemp, "Anything right or wrong me. I told him that a long time ago."
Asked if he had anything to apologize for, Chandler said, "I'm not going to say anything about it until I hear from him."
Young said Kemp did not talk with Chandler before letting him go.
Chandler before letting him go.
Kemp demanded the apology when
Chandler joked last month at various public events that Jackson had dropped out of the race when it was learned that his grandmother had posed for a centerfold for National Geographic magazine.
he learned that Chandler had apologized for the uproar he created but not for any racial slurs, said Mary Brunette. Kemp's campaign spokes-
Chandler later said he "almost threw up" when he saw Jackson kiss the white daughter of a campaign official in New Hampshire.
"If we have too much race mixing, it's going to wipe out the white race," he said. "We're far outnumbered by the blacks, browns and yellows."
Young said he does not think the controversy will hurt Kemp's cam-pilot.
"I think Jack's record is clear on his work with blacks and other minorities," he said. "That's the record people will look at when they vote, not a statement by an honorary chairman in a county."
Search may increase body count
The Associated Press
MOLALLA, Ore. — Six decomposing bodies, at least five of them the remains of young women, lay on a hillside yesterday as officers searched the brush inch-by-inch for more.
The search by nearly 50 sheriff's officers and Explorer Scouts was expected to last through the Labor Day weekend.
"You have to assume there are more bodies," said Clackamas County sheriff's Capt. Lonnie Ryan.
within 20 feet of a dirt logging road.
Meanwhile, authorities investigating the grim discovery on a private timber farm 30 miles south of Portland reported that four of the bodies were found in pairs.
1 two were within 12 feet of each other, and two were found a short distance apart 35 to 40 feet to the north, said Sheriff Bill Brooks. The fifth body was an additional 100 feet to the north. All were found Tuesday
The sixth, whose sex had not beet determined, was about a quarter mile south of the rest of town. He found Wednesday, was more decomposed than the others, said Deputy State Medical Examiner George Coleman.
The bodies would remain at the scene until investigators were satisfied they had discovered all the evidence. In doing so, acting state medical examiner.
Two botanists from Oregon State University and a forensic entomologist from Washington State University were involved in investigating the bodies had been on the slope.
The first body, found by a bow hunter Monday, was nude, but investigators declined to say whether the others were clothed. None had been buried, said sheriff's Lt. Donald A. Vicars.
Lewman said the first five bodies were of women probably in their 20s and 30s. The remains had lain on the floor, but still contained flesh, he said.
Each is being handled as a separate homicide case.
The Green River Task Force, investigating a series of killings in Washington and Oregon, has been in contact with the sheriff's office but has not entered the investigation, said task force spokesman Pat Ferguson in Seattle.
The Green River killer is believed responsible for the slayings of 37 women, most of them young prostitutes from the Seattle area.
Two bodies found in June 1985 near Tualatin, 20 miles northwest of Molalla, were linked to the Green River killer. The bodies of two teenage girls were found two months earlier at another site near Tualatin.
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