4A
Tuesday, August 22, 1995
OPINION UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
THE ISSUE: TEEN SMOKING
Smoking ads bad for young
In an effort to curtain teen smoking, President Clinton has suggested that cigarette manufacturers and their advertisers stop baiting the youth of America with slick ads, cartoons and freebies designed to lure them into smoking.
The bottom line is that children and teens should not be subjected to cigarette advertising. Vending machines and self-serve displays should be eliminated allowing only over the-counter sales. Outdoor ads should be prohibited within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds, and ads in magazines with significant youth readership should be limited to black-and-white text with no pictures.
Images of young, beautiful women enjoying a smoke, or Joe Camel just being his cool self have lured a whole generation to smoking. Federal research last year found that smoking among eighth graders had increased by 30 percent since 1991. Prior to the 1988 premier of the Joe Camel ad, smoking among 14- to 17-year-olds had been decreasing steadily. Tobacco companies spend more than $4 billion per year to advertise, promote and glamorize a product
Clinton's warnings to cigarette producers is a positive move to protect the health of children and teenagers
that all legitimate medical research suggests will kill you.
The government spends an estimated $120 million a year on anti-smoking efforts, mostly medical research. No one spends billions of dollars to publicize the fact that smoking-related illness accounts for 390,000 deaths every year or that the original Marlboro man, a smoker, died of lung cancer. How cool is that?
Many kids believe that if cigarettes were really dangerous, they wouldn't be so easy to get. Or they believe that they can't die or get cancer. Some just don't care.
That really is the point of the President's effort, isn't it? With barely a nod to the truth, cigarette manufacturers portray their product as romantic, sexy and cool. All the while, they feed the fantasy that cigarettes will not doom the user to a slow death.
In the long run, President Clinton's proposal will be applauded. Advertisers are not in the business of looking out for our best interests. Somebody should be.
BRIAN RUNK FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD.
THE ISSUE: MULTICULTURAL CENTER OPENS
Center encourages sensitivity
The University of Kansas has placed itself on the cutting edge by encouraging its students to learn about diversity and to increase their marketability in the future.
KU's Multicultural Resource Center will debut Sept. 6. The center has been in various stages of planning since 1991, and it is good to see that what began as a dream is now a reality. The center will offer workshops, speakers and a resource room all in the interest of providing students a positive environment to deal with issues of race and gender.
KU is one of the first universities in the Midwest to offer an all-inclusive center. The center, which is available for all students to use, will encourage students to interact with each other and to overcome their anxieties and fears about different groups.
Students' marketability increases when they learn to overcome anxiety and interact in a multicultural world
The world has became a smaller place with the advances of mass communications, and KU students will be well prepared to relate to different people. Because of these skills, the marketability of KU students is increased. This center is the first step toward preparing students to work in the diverse world.
Every student should be sure to attend the opening and take advantage of all that the center has to offer. R LAWRENZ FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Matt Hood / KAN$AN
Tired wedding traditions in need of some spicing up
Like an infectious plague, marriage has swept away a large number of my friends recently. Most succumbed to the bug after years of exposure to the same mate.
Good friend that I am, and not one to turn down free food and drink, I spent a few weekends this summer traveling the matrimonial circuit. I drank, ate and danced my way from Belleville, Kan., to Boston with surprisingly little difference between the ceremonies and receptions.
I'm not writing about the "official" similarities from the Martha Stewart Fascist Wedding Handbook where nuptial planners learn the correct flower arrangements and dance order for the bride. (By the way, always use white flowers when in doubt because Martha Stewart suggests that they disguise any white trash taint. Also, the groom gets the first dance, followed by the father of the bride, the father of the groom, the CEO of the largest corporation, any senator and, finally, any mafioso in-laws.)
Mothers, aunts and nearly-related women friends of the family fight over those details, driven by some bizarre Miss Manners strand of genetic code.
HEATHER LAWRENZ FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
No, the similarities I noticed involve practices not outlined by any wedding etiquette book. I find more remarkable the rituals that us regular folks, the typical wedding-goers, bring to the festivities.
We go with the innate understanding and behavioral pattern
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necessary to function at any wedding. Every male, led by the boys in the band, leers at the bride during the garter belt undressing. Every best man gives a semilame, sickeningly heartfelt toast. Every guest, young and old, arrives knowing how to
chicken dance. And the single friend, the guy who couldn't get lucky if he was the towel boy for the new NASA six-month sensory deprivation module for female astronauts, can't even sign the guest book without having at least three women ask him if he wants to skip the chicken entree and go right to dessert.
My mom, an expert on societal norms, informs me that all weddings/receptions have the same look and feel because people (parents and friends of parents) have set expectations about what should happen at weddings. I asked, "Mom, genius social anthropologist that you are, don't folks understand that the gig gets boring if it's the same thing from one wedding to another?"
"That's not the point," she said.
"People enjoy the familiarity of certain behaviors at things like weddings and funerals.'
In spite of the support Mom has from hours of Discovery Channel watching, I don't buy it completely.
The time has arrived for tweaking a few time-worn traditions. I offer a few examples for an alternative matrimonial celebration.
First, wedding parties should be only ex-boyfriends and ex-girl-friends. The best man should be the bride's most recent ex and the maid of honor should be the groom's most recent ex. This ensures an eventful rehearsal dinner and the unlimited potential for a scene at the ceremony itself.
Second, make the groom's family and friends wear blue while the bride's family and friends wear red. Promote competitions between the two parties during the reception such as "Red Rover," a wedding-cake-eating contest, and a "Close the Open Bar" competition. Imagine the excitement when the red team yells, "Red rover, red rover send the groom's lard butt uncle Leo on over." This would be a terific icebreaker before the buffer line opens up.
I've shared only a few thoughts on, changing a tired tradition to fit our new times, but feel free to come up with new innovations of your own. If you're short on single friends, I take invitations. Don't forget to tell me whether to wear blue or red.
John Martin is a Lawrence second-year law student.
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Newt's world: Women belong in the basement and out of sight
The rotunda of the United States Capitol is considered to be a place of honor for such great American men as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Spiro Agnew. Spiro Agnew? In spite of the fact that someone like Spiro Agnew has a statue in
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the rotunda
there are
statues
of women there. I
suppose visitors
walk away from
the Capitol with
the impression
that women
haven't done
much more for
this country
than sew flags
and shred documents.
A few weeks ago, the wife of
a senator's aide was on her way to the restroom in the basement of the Capitol when she made a discovery that shocked her.
It was a three-ton marble statue of three women, turned around so that the names faced the wall and couldn't be read easily. The women depicted in the statue were the most instrumental leaders in the movement to win women the right to vote: Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
The statue of Mott, Stanton and Anthony was presented to Congress 74 years ago in an elaborate, but apparently hollow, ceremony. Since then, these great American women have resided in the bowels of the Capitol. In spite of five separate resolutions to move them upstairs, the women who gave half this nation the right to vote still collect dust in the basement.
Moving the statue requires a vote in both the Senate and the House. The Senate recently passed yet another resolution calling for the move. The approval of the House seemed guaranteed until your friend and mine, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, came into the picture.
Joan Meacham, president of the 75th Anniversary of Woman Suffrage Task Force in Washington, D.C., said Gingrich's reason for balking was that he didn't want to be associated with, in his words, "a bunch of liberal women."
Liberal women? Along with various Republican women's groups and the League of Women Voters, one of the biggest backers of getting the statue out of the basement has been Concerned Women for America — evangelist Beverly LaHaye's radical right group.
I never thought I'd be in agreement with Beverly LaHaye on anything, but I guess Newt has a way of bringing us women together for a cause.
What reason could he possibly have for not wanting this statue brought out of the basement?
Gingrich's office tried to gloss over the Speaker's now-customary pigheadedness. "He's in favor of suffrage," the press officer offered apologetically in a recent telephone interview. That's very nice of him, but we aren't asking him for the right to vote.
Frankly, given Gingrich's continued obstinacy and inexplicable behavior, I'm glad we don't have to.
Chris Hampton is a Lawrence graduate student in higher education.
KANSAN STAFF
COLLEEN MCCAIN
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Classified mgr .. Heather Valier
HUBIE
By Greg Hardin