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Monday, April 17, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
All-white country club is no place for college athletics
Wade Houston, the new basketball coach at the University of Tennessee, was not offered a membership to the exclusive Cherokee Country Club, as had been the practice previously at the school.
The club's membership is all-white. Houston is black
The club's membership is all-white. Houston is black. The university has broken racial barriers by hiring Houston, but this recent episode is an embarrassment to the school.
Originally, Doug Dickey, Tennessee's athletic director, justified the club's stance, saying, "Obviously, Cherokee Country Club does not have black members and that is not an option (for Houston). We just have memberships we retain at the athletic department and it's our decision to do what we want to do with them." The school did not apply for membership on Houston's behalf.
The club has no policy excluding potential members on the basis of race, creed or religion, but the club's president said that he knew of no black members.
Lamar Alexander, university president, was correct in disassociating the school from the club. The Tennessee Board of Regents also took proper action in renouncing memberships such as those enjoyed by members of the Tennessee athletic department.
After the athletic director's comments had exploded in the university's face, both Dickey and Johnny Majors, Tennessee's football coach, quit the country club.
The Tennessee athletic department had provided $15,000 memberships to the athletic director and basketball and football coaches, who paid the club's monthly $225 dues and were reimbursed from a personal expense account.
But the fact that the school chose to affiliate itself with the all-white club is disturbing.
Nevertheless, it is sad that such an embarrassing incident had to take place before action was taken. Racism has no place in the world of college athletics.
The editorial board
Soviet actions in Georgia do not address problems
Writer Galina P. Kornilova, who gathered information from witnesses, said that hospitals were told to prepare for casualties two hours before the soldiers began to forcibly clear out demonstrators. She also said that Soviet soldiers used an unidentified chemical in the clash. Three of the casualties, she said, were a result of spraying or injection of this chemical.
If Kornilova's reports are true, the actions of the Soviet military bordered on premedicated murder.
Georgia's Communist Party and government leaders took responsibility for the violence and were replaced. But such actions do not alleviate the problem.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev responded to the tragedy by saying that such clashes inflicted damage to perestroika and democratization. Gorbachev remained firm on the government's stance of not allowing Georgia to secede.
Meanwhile, the Soviet government has imposed a curfew and has confiscated firearms in the republic. The city's streets are being patrolled by armed soldiers, supported by tanks and armored vehicles.
The military may eventually succeed in quieting the unrest if it continues to kill its own people. If that is the case, how far has the Soviet Union come since the czarist regime that opened fire on its own citizens on Bloody Sunday in 1917?
The editorial board.
News staff
Julie Adam ... Editor
Karen Boring ... Managing editor
Jill Janes ... New editor
Deb Gruver ... Planning editor
James Fuarqhar ... Editorial editor
Elaine Sung ... Campus editor
Tom Slitter ... Sports editor
Janine Swiatkowski ... Photo editor
Dave Eames ... Graphics editor
Neal Gerdes ... Art Features editor
Tom Eben ... General manager
Business staff
Debra Cole ... Business manager
Maimoa Pee ... Retail sales manager
Kevin Martin ... Campus sales manager
Scott Flegal sales manager
Michelle Garland ... Promotions manager
Brad Lenhart ... Sales development manager
Linda Proffer ... Production manager
Debra Martin ... Asst. production manager
Kim Coleman ... Co-op sales manager
Carl Cressler ... Classified manager
Mary Hines ... Sales and marketing
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What you can't see can hurt you
Stricter state emissions controls are necessary to stop health hazards
WASHINGTON - If a community made cigarette smoking a requirement for residency, the state would be outraged. The ensuing public debate and legal battles would drive people away.
But, through ignorance and inaction, many Kansas communities may be exposing their residents to a similar danger, and because there is no visible villain, people hardly blink an eye.
Kansas industries in 1987 released 24.3 million pounds of toxins into the air, according to a report released March 22 by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. That's 9.9 pounds for each resident.
The emission of large amounts of toxins is not in itself indicative of a health danger. Factors such as type of exposure, concentrations and the exposed population all define the problem. However, the presence of toxins in the air is a prerequisite for all such hazardous conditions.
The 1986 Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act requires a public inventory of atmospheric chemical releases by U.S. industries. Congress believed that if people had access to information on toxic releases from industries in their communities, they would act to protect themselves. Although this is a step in the right direction, the gaps in our knowledge still are expansive. And what we don't know can hurt us.
"I don't think anyone really has gone back to look at what the impacts of those prior emissions were," said John Irwin, director of air quality for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Irwin said that he was unaware of any studies assessing the health impacts of emissions on Kansans.
But the House report cites studies of similar pollution in other states, and the results are appalling. A Tulane University researcher reported that residents within a mile of chemical plants developed cancer at
Derek Schmidt
Staff columnist
more than four times the average national rate.
Greg Crawford, director of public information for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said Kansas had a good program of monitoring and controlling emissions as required by law. And he is correct. The problem we face is not from the enforcement of environmental laws, but from gans in those laws.
In Kansas, as in several other states, the controls on air toxins are focused on new sources of emissions and newly-revised sources of emissions, not on sources that were present before regulation.
"We have not established a program primarily because it requires a new regulatory authority and more resources," Irwin said. "I think this is the missing link at the state level."
The federal debate about air quality will be fueled by the House report, which noted a "serious public health problem" from the 2.4 billion - with a 'b' - pounds of toxins released into the air nationwide in 1987. But federal action is slow. The EPA has regulated only seven of the hundreds of common toxins during the 19 years since the Clean Air Act was passed.
During that time, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has set standards for alomst 400 toxins. The result is that workers are protected from workplace exposure to these substances, but nearby communities enjoy no such protection.
Their slow actions permit more slow poisons.
The Kansas Legislature will respond only if people push a healthy environment to the top of the public agenda. It will take a slap in
the face to awaken Kansans to the urgency of this issue. After reading the House report, my check is still burning.
Although I'm an environmental layman, one figure in this report caught my eye. About 40 tons of a chemical called phosgene went into the atmosphere nationwide in 1987. About 35 tons of that came from Kansas
Phosgene was used as a nerve gas in World War I, where it was responsible for the more than 80 percent of the war's gas fatalities. Today it is an industrial by-product.
The Vulcan Chemical Co. plant in Wichita was the source of the releases. A scrubber installed last year should reduce the plant's phosgene emissions to about 1 ton this year and to less than 1,000 pounds in subsequent years, according to Bruce Martin, manager of environmental safety and health at Vulcan's plant. Martin said that Vulcan had no formal emission-reduction plan but that several ongoing programs would reduce its toxic pollutants.
Cheers to Vulcan for working to cut down its wastes, but our lax monitoring and our ignorance about the effects of those wastes make assessing the values of programs like Vulcan virtually impossible. How clean is clean enough?
We don't know, and the absence of a state air quality debate makes it seem like we don't care.
By pushing air quality to the top of the state's political agenda, Kansas has the opportunity to earn national respect as the state that protected its environment instead of waiting to have to clean it up. The Legislature should plug the holes in our toxic-release law and improve our knowledge of toxic-release health effects.
For us involuntary smokers, it is the best way to kick the habit.
Derek Schmidt is an independence, Kan. junior majoring in journalism. He is in Washington. D.C., on an internship.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed