OPINION
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16,2004
www.kansan.com
STAYSKAL'S VIEW
Wayne Stayskal/KRT CAMPUS
Free for All
Call 864-0500
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
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(whispering) I'm in geology class and I have no idea what's going on.
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So, there's a stain on my shoe and I'm 71 percent sure that's throw up.
Is it really necessary for the KU Parking Department to have walkie talkies? I mean, the car's parked, it's not going anywhere. What's the deal with that?
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On behalf of everyone in McCollum, I'm gonna play the world's smallest violin and I'm gonna play the world's saddest song on it for everybody who lives in Templin who was woken up by their fire alarm.
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To the chick who left her blue underwear on the sidewalk: You might want to pick that up.
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To whoever made that painting out on Wescoe: Just want to say, "Bush, four more years. Enjoy it."
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Nude, enrollment sucks
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Yeah, Bush won and nobody's moving to Canada. Want to know whv? Because we're all staying here to start a revolution.
Hey, that girl in my math class: We should go out some time.
Long live Frank Zappa. What the world needs is another moustachioed rock star.
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The girl from the Old Navy commercials is totally in my business statistics class.It's so annoying, she loves statistics.
TALK TO US
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雨
Henry C. Jackson
editor
864-4810 or jjackson@kansan.com
Holy smokes! I just saw a coyote sprint across 18th Street, I guess it's called Bob Billings Parkway, whatever that means. Two days ago, I saw a bobcat. What's going on?
Ryan Adams, that was the most bizarre, obscene, weird concert ever and it totally rocked. Way to go, dude.
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I'm tired of all these secrets. I'm tired of living to my family and friends, so I'm just going to admit it. I love Britney Spears. I love her white trash marriage, I love her white trash wedding, I love her new album. She re-did Bobby Brown's My Perogative. I love you, Britney!
This might be a personal opinion, but why do all hippies drive Subarus?
Why is it every time I see or hear that Phillip Morris "Quit Smoking" ad, I feel like having a cigarette?
If they ask you to take your top off, get the money first.
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Yeah, its 2:00 on a Thursday morning and I'm walking on Jayhawk Boulevard and there's a thong in front of Watson Library, that's awesome.
Louise Stauffer and Stephanie Lovett opinion editors 864-4924 or opinion@kansen.com
Justin Roberts business manager 864-4358 or advertising@ansan.com
Jennifer Weaver sales and marketing adviser 864-7656 or jweaver@kansan.com
Is it just me, or does every time you hear
Chaka Khan's name, you think, (singing)
"Chaka Khan? I'm every woman..."
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Hey, let's hear it for architecture students and you people over at the Kansan for being the only people up and about on campus at 3:00 in the morning.
Stephanie Graham
retail sales manager
864-4358 or advertising@iansan.com
Donovan Atkinson and Andrew Vaupel
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Kenni Attkinson and Andrew Veage
managing editors
864-4810 or datkinsoon@kansan.com and
avapeil@kansan.com
Malcolm Gibson
general manager and news adviser
884-7967 or mgibson@kansan.com
I'm leaving this message simultaneously on two different phones, isn't this gonna be really fun? Except the phone on the left is a second faster than the phone on the right.
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I just want to say thanks to cute boys who sit next on me on the bus and smell good.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
Laura Brarr, Terry Bean, Ryan Good, Anna Gregory, Jack Henney-Rhoads, Kally Hollowell,
Nate Karlin, Jay Kimmel, Taylor Price, Noel Rasor, John Scarow, John Tran, Anne Weltman
and Michelle Wood
OK, enough with the political bullshit banter. The election's over.Get over it!
The Kansar arrives the right to edit, cut to length, or reject all submissions. Letters to the editor should be no longer than 200 words and guest columns should not exceed 550 words. To submit a letter to the editor or a column, e-mail the document to opinion@kansan.com with your name, homestown, year in school or position and phone number.
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Genetic engineering "flaws" form of stripping right to life
Hard copy:
Kansas newsroom
111 Stauffer-Flint Hall
While the United States has condemned and battled ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, Sudan and other nations for humanitarian purposes, our society is teetering on the brink of condoning genetic cleansing here at home. In fact, there is not much resistance or opposition to the concept of killing imperfect babies or of stripping people with disabilities of their civil rights, including their right to life.
NOT UNHEARD O
including their right to advancements in biotechnology and genetic engineering and testing have opened the door for a new avenue for discrimination against people with disabilities. Medical professionals are using improved medical techniques, including amniocenteses, to test for certain genetic "flaws" and disabilities in embryos created in vitro before implantation and fetuses during the early months of pregnancy.
months of pregnancy. Often, when an embryo is found to have a disability or to carry an undesired gene, it is discarded. Women pregnant with "affected" babies are being offered, and even pressured to accept, abortions by medical professionals because these professionals assume that these women will not want to have disabled babies.
This process fails to take in consideration that amniocenteses are not infallible. They can be inaccurate about whether the condition actually exists and about the severity of that condition
This form of genetic cleansing is gaining momentum in the medical community worldwide.
unity worldwide:
"A baby should be killed whenever
TARA SHUPNER
opinion@kansan.com
some physical or mental defect is discovered before or after birth," said M. Rietdijk, a doctor physician.
Medical professionals and insurance providers are increasingly pressuring women to obtain testing for their fetuses and to terminate pregnancies if the test results are unattractive.
These medical professionals who use abortion as a means of ensuring a perfect, healthy baby are guilty of violating their Hippocratic oath to "reject abortion that deliberately takes a unique human life."
Furthermore, these medical professionals have an obligation to provide fair, non-discriminatory, educated counseling to women carrying potentially disabled babies. Unfortunately, these professionals fail to meet that obligation. There is no medical, financial or social support for women who face raising a child with disabilities. Because of myths, misconceptions, and stereotypes, these women become afraid and hence more predisposed to accepting the option of abortion.
accepting the option of Genetic cleansing does not stop with embryos and fetuses. There is a real
danger of genetic cleansing expanding to include infants, children and adults.
In fact, it is already happening. A hospital in the Netherlands approved euthanasia for children under twelve who have incurable illnesses. This broad term can be construed to include disabilities. In 1997, 8 percent of all infants who died in the Netherlands were killed by doctors.
Something is wrong with our society when people are seen as disposable merely because they are different from the socially accepted standard, and when doctors actively play God by practicing infanticide and euthanasia.
We need to reject the entire concept and process of genetic cleansing. Our society as a whole needs to embrace diversity and reject genetic cleansing before it becomes worse.
before it becomes worse "Everyone has a right to respect for their dignity... that dignity makes it imperative not to reduce individuals to their genetic characteristics and to respect their uniqueness and diversity," said the 1997 Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights.
the Human Genome and Aids Leave people with disabilities their dignity. Don't accept the notion that medical professionals have every right to arbitrarily give or take away the gift of life. Above all, don't help certain individuals proliferate in our society the view that people with disabilities are imperfect, undesirable, and unwanted mistakes.
Shupner is a Lenexa senior in journalism and English. She is deaf.
Affirmative action not fair, it's racist
Liberals were practically frothing at the mouth when I wrote a column arguing in favor of racial profiling in airports. This time, I'm arguing against racial profiling in college admissions, but I've got a hunch they'll still be mad.
FRESH ARRAH
"Today we proved that race does matter, that we still see color and people will judge us by our color of our skin," declared Robert Page, Director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, at an affirmative action panel about a year ago.
ARRAH NIELSEN opinion@kansan.com
ago.
What better way to not see or judge based on color than a colorblind admissions process? But affirmative action supporters object to a colorblind admissions process because they think — correctly — that were it not for racial preferences, fewer non-Asian minorities would be admitted to top schools.
schools.
I've been privy to numerous "so-and-so never would have been admitted to professional school if they weren't black" conversations. Maybe, maybe not. Here's what we do know. During a period of several years, the University of Michigan School of Law admitted black students with grades and LSAT scores dramatically lower than white and Asian students who were automatically rejected.
According to a study by the Stanford Law Review, in 1999, a black applicant with a LSAT score of 154 and a GPA of 3.5 had about a 90 percent chance of admission. A white applicant with those same numbers had only a 2 percent chance of admission. That much was conceded by the University of Michigan, the Michigan state court and the United States Supreme Court.
But wildly disparate standards for
admission are not unique to Michigan or law schools. A recent Center for Equal Opportunity study found that the extent of race-based double standards is widespread.
This month, the Stanford Law Review contains a study of the impact of affirmative action by UCLA law professor Dr. Richard Sander, a self-described Democrat and life-long affirmative action supporter. He reveals that while 80 percent of white law graduates pass the bar exam the first time around, only 45 percent of black law graduates do.
At elite law schools, 52 percent of black students rank in the lowest 10 percent of their class while only 6 percent of white students do. Sanders argues that the poor performance of black students at elite law schools is not due to race but to a mismatch between their academic ability and the caliber of their institution. Admitting black students who were by no stretch up to snuff with their white peers academically set them up for failure.
According to Sander's findings, "Eighty-six percent of all black students who attended accredited law schools would have been eligible for admission at one or more law schools in the total absence of racial preferences."
The point isn't that black students
can't or shouldn't be admitted to law school,but that they are being admitted to law schools that they are underqualified to attend.
Once the most qualified applicants have been selected, the only way to diversify the pool of admittees to increase the representation of a particular group is to lower the criteria for admission. To do it any other way is a mathematical impossibility.
Coach Bill Self could meet a quota requiring that fifteen percent of his players be Asian. But he could not do this without compromising the quality of his athletes. We can offer a variety of theories to explain the lack of world-class Asian basketball players. What we cannot do is pull world-class Asian basketball players out of thin air. Because even the best recruitment program cannot recruit individuals who are largely nonexistent.
Faced with a dearth of academically qualified non-Asian minorities and pressure to achieve diversity, admissions officials have two options: Admit students strictly on a colorblind system of merit (in which case fewer minorities will be admitted), or lower admissions standards for minorities. It's clear from the evidence mentioned above that many admissions committees have been opting for the latter. Is it racist to insist that non-Asian minorities meet the same standards as everybody else? Or is it racist to insist that they can't?
Cordozo Law School professor John McGinnis puts it bluntly: "We interview people who would not be given a second thought if they were white, for the applicant pool for minority scholars is far, far weaker."
Nielsen is an Andover senior in anthropology and history.
Kansan should have covered Veteran's Day Thursday
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
I'm worried about you, Kansan. I think your calendar might have a problem, because I know that as a university newspaper that claims to have the highest credentials and objectivity, you would not fail to cover any aspect of Veteran's Day knowingly. (hint, sarcasm) How could you fail to say one word about Veteran's Day in the UDK on Thursday? (But, I don't mean to overlook the remembrance ceremony announcement that you put in the
Kansan a week too soon.) I am not a journalism major, but even I know that this would have been an excellent time to highlight the contributions that some of our current KU undergraduates have made to this country. There are students amongst us that have participated in operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and many other places. I have met them, and I did not have to look that hard to find them. KU even has a full time staff person in the Registrar's Office dedicated solely to handle all the students that utilize G.I. Educational benefits to attend KU. I
dare you to print not one word about Martin Luther King Jr. on Jan.17.
Karl Rubis Lawrence graduate student in history
The Kansas welcomes letters to the editors and guest columns submitted by students, faculty and elumi.
the kansas reserves the right to edit, cut to length, or reject all submissions. Letters to the editor should be no longer than 200 words and guest columns should not exceed 650 words. To submit a letter to the editor or a column, e-mail the document to opinion@kansas.com with your name, home-town, year in school or position, and phone number,
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