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Wednesday, July 6, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Grumbling in Britain about U.S. garbage
In the United Kingdom's Parliament last week, a lawmaker criticized a recent agreement between his country and the United States that allows for the disposing of U.S. trash on British soil.
According to Environment undersecretary Colin Moynihan, 1.5 million to 2 million tons of garbage from the U.S. East Coast is to be shipped annually for five years to a soon-to-be created dump on 390 acres in Warrington, the home constituency of Chris Taylor, the Parliament member who objected to the plan.
"Who would pick up the bill if the Colorado beetle infected the Cheshire potato crop?" he asked.
But the Cheshire County Council approved the plan some time ago and plans to build a 130-foot-high dump to accommodate the waste.
Taylor, a Conservative, said that the U.S. should find a place "in their deserts, perhaps, to deal with their own garbage, rather than add to our own environmental problems."
Although a Briton's answer to the problem is to get up in Parliament and make a fuss about it, the Nigerian government seems to have the right idea: Vigilantes patrol the coast, blocking dumping of any material by foreign countries.
But dumping of U.S. garbage in other countries has been going on for years. The government of Guinea, in West Africa, reported finding 15,000 tons of toxic ash said to have been shipped from Philadelphia and dumped on an island near the Guinea coast by a company from Norway. Other African countries are grumbling, some very vocally, at seeing garbage other than their own in their countries.
Remember the famous garbage barge of last summer?
Denied haven by a myriad of states and countries, the barge skipper returned to New York, where he finally had the stuff disposed of, some say where it belonged.
An idea whose time might have come is to dispose of trash in space, maybe even on the moon. Certainly Mr. Taylor and the Nigerian vigilantes would approve of that measure.
As for now, other countries will have to settle for keeping or destroying U.S. garbage as long as they are willing to accept the money they receive for doing so.
David White, managing editor
Regulate tanning industry
Not only are millions of people in the United States damaging their skin in the sun, but millions also have been participating in the unsafe practice of using tanning beds. Some users refuse to believe that the damage will happen to them, and other users are not even aware of the risks involved.
As a result, we are the generation that is going to have to suffer the consequences. Kansas has no legislation concerning the regulation of tanning beds. But legislation is needed to educate tanning bed users and to enforce safety regulations on tanning parlors.
Because of our warped idea that beautiful skin is tanned skin, approximately 5 million people in the United States have used this electric sun, and each year, thousands of people have had to make emergency visits to the hospital because of tanning bed-related injuries. Most doctors say the real damage will start appearing 10 to 20 years from now, and most college students are not concerned with future effects.
Tanning beds use the harmful ultraviolet A ray, which some parlor claim tans skin safely. On the contrary, UVA is the ray that causes wrinkling, aging skin. It causes skin rashes, allergic reactions to some medications, eye damage and skin cancer. It also weakens the body's immune system and lowers resistance to disease. A tanner soaks up more UVA rays in one half-hour session than by sitting in the sun for a week.
Despite those dangers, Ohio is reported to be the only state that regulates the tanning industry. U.S. Food and Drug Administration safety standards that include warnings to wear goggles and limit exposure are rarely enforced.
Today's tanners will pay the price tomorrow. These health risks could be minimized if states would consider legislation concerning the regulation of tanning beds. Measures need to be taken on the national level as well because the long-term dangers definitely outweigh today's "fashion."
Jill Ferguson, editorial writer
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KU, Haskell try to better relations
By Kathleen Faddis Staff Columnist
Just a few miles from the KU campus, located on a grassy, treeless landscape, is a treasure trove.
That is Haskell Indian Junior College - it treasures the wealth of American Indian wisdom, its traditions, legends and customs. That wisdom is in the oral tradition, stories that were told to the students in their youth that were passed from generation to generation for hundreds of years.
Haskell, the only federally operated college in the United States, was set up by the federal government 104 years ago to educate and train young American Indians. Its students represent more than a hundred recognized Indian tribes from about 30 states, from the Southern Florida Seminole all the way to the Northern Alaska Athabascan.
Haskell and the University of Kansas have stood side by side for more than a hundred years, with little contact between them.
At long last, the schools are embarking on a new partnership, one that should reap benefits.
This spring, representatives from both schools formed a committee that is the first formal institutional contact between the schools. Past cooperative efforts have been on an individual basis, and the cooperation ended when the person who originated the program left.
The committee will pave the way for more cooperative programs, better recruitment, and shared curriculum and staff.
For many of the students, especially those from remote reservations, Lawrence is their first taste of urban life and U.S. culture.
For Haskell students, KU has a storehouse of valuable resource material in the libraries and museums, something that a small junior college cannot provide.
Both schools stand to benefit from first institutional pact
Many of them suffer severe culture shock. The added exposure to the University would broaden their experience and make the transition easier, whether they went on to jobs or to a four-year institution.
KU also stands to benefit by this partnership. From 1977 to 1987, enrollment of American Indian students at KU dropped by 32 percent. In just one year, from 1986 to 1987, the number dropped from 191 to 106 students.
The problem many Indian students say they have with KU is the overwhelming size and impersonal nature of the school. Increased cooperation and contacts between the two schools should improve not only their academic performance, but also the drop-out rate of Indian students.
Already in the works is a plan that will place an Indian KU graduate student in the KU admissions office to identify potential Indian students. KU also plans to send a staff member to Haskell each month to answer questions. Still in the discussion stage is assigning Haskell students interested in KU to a University faculty member to advise them while at Haskell and at KU.
Faculty and staff from both institutions should benefit from the sharing of programs, skills, resources and information.
The joint committee is a good first step, and it is hoped the cooperative effort will not end there. In 1974, the Association of University Residence Halls sought to improve relations between the schools with a KU-Haskell week. Students from both schools were invited to picnics, a basketball game and a canoe trip on the Kansas River. Perhaps something
like this could be tried again
Haskell's spring Powwow, which attracts tribal dancers from all over the country, and Thunderbird Theater, a student theater group that tells the traditional Indian stories in song, dance and pantomime, are both valuable and entertaining ways to become acquainted with Indian culture.
Increased contact with American Indian culture and the Indian way of thinking is probably the greatest value of the partnership to KU.
Recent archeological discoveries are causing some to believe that Indians have been in North America more than 70,000 years and that man's closest ancestor might have originated in the Americas, rather than Europe, as was previously believed.
For Indians, the natural world holds the meaning of life. They live in harmony with nature, rather than trying to control or contain it. In his book "Where is the Eagle?" William Coffer wrote:
"When the white man views a mountain, he ponders, 'Mountain, how can I conquer you?' An Indian, looking at the same mountain, asks, 'Mountain, how can I live with you?' "
Maybe we, who have tried so hard to tame this earth with science and technology, need to start listening to the intuitive wisdom of Indian elders.
Chief Seattle of the Dwamish Nation gave this advice to President Franklin Pierce in 1855:
"The whites too shall pass — perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild
horses tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket — gone! Where is the eagle — gone! And what is it to goodbye to the swift and the hunt — the end of living and the beginning of survival."
We are only recently understanding the accuracy of Seattle's predictions and initiating recovery programs. Our air has become contaminated with smog, the water has become polluted, wildlife has become extinct and the forests are vanishing. And now, we also must deal with the warming of the earth by a great effect," caused by gases released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.
It would not be the first time we have heeded Indian advice. In 1744, the governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia met with the chiefs of the Five Nations of the Iroquois, Canaanatege, the leading Iroquois chief, had the following advice to the colonies:
"We have one further thing to say, and that is we hardly recommend union and a good agreement between you and our brethren. Never disagree, but preserve a strict friendship for one another, and thereby you as well as we will become stronger."
This country used that advice in forming the union of the 13 colonies. Benjamin Franklin was said to have copied from the League of the Five Iroquois Nations in his Albany Plan of 1754. Some of those ideas were also possibly incorporated into the Constitution.
It is a good time for us also to take Sealea's advice. Best wishes to both KU and Haskell on a prosperous partnership.
Kathleen Faddis is a Lawrence senior majoring in journalism.
First Lady is heroine of Regan's book
By Paul Greenberg
Columnist
For weeks now, the stand-up comics have been telling astrology jokes. Commentators looking for the cheap laugh have only to mention Nancy Reagan and maybe something about Aquarius. Every cartoonist worth his ink has done his Nancy-and-Astrology number. Every office wit and cocktail-party philosopher has worked up a repertory of astrology gags. In short, Don Regan has had his revenge.
In his combination memoir, apologia and poison-pen letter, the decidedly former chief of the White House staff painted Mrs. Reagan in vivid colors. She emerges as the star-ruled Dragon Lady of the Administration, dictating important decisions by the Zodiac. It was Nancy Reagan who finally succeeded in having Don Regan dismissed from his post; now, he is inviting the country to dismiss her as a silly, superstitious woman with entirely too much influence. Mrs. Reagan has paid a high price for playing with horoscopes; she might have done better to take up crossword puzzles.
But Mr. Reagan might have only the next-to-last laugh. A brief review of the record, even the one available in his book, says more about Nancy Reagan's judgment than the author might have intended. Namely, that
her advice to her husband has proven remarkably sound:
■ It was Nancy Reagan who urged the President to fire William Casey, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency who managed to bollix or perhaps even inspire the Iran-contratemps.
It was Mrs. Reagan who told her husband to dump Pat Buchanan, who as the resident White House ideologue, the Yigor Ligachev of this Administration, was only preaching to the converted and antagonizing everybody else, including many who might have been won over to the President's cause.
President's candidacy.
■ It was Nana Reagan who told the President that Raymond Donovan, the labor secretary who would be mired in a nigh-endless trial before winning acquittal, had become a liability and needed to step aside. Her advice was finally followed, but not before the White House, too, had been subjected to a long and embarrassing ordeal. This president doesn't seem to realize that there is a higher standard for a Cabinet position than simply not being a crook. Being a constant source of controversy and embarrassment is also good reason for resignation. Mr. Donovan might have been done a great injustice, but that is no reason for his punishing a national administration, too. Right now, the president seems to be making the same mistake where Ed Meese is concerned. And although the attorney general
might resign eventually, it won't be until after he has thoroughly embarrassed the Administration.
until after the embarrassed the Administration.
■ It was Nancy Reagan who warned her husband that the trip to the cemetery at Bitturg would missfire and that the mission was to recover old wounds that had been incased in opening doors. That's what happened when it turned out that the President of the United States was laying a wreath at a graveyard where members of the SS were buried. Don Regan was all for the president's trip to Bitturg, which was all too typical of his judgment as chief of staff.
A letter to the New York Times the other day pointed out that Don Regan actually made a strong case for Nancy Reagan's good sense. If just his bare-bones facts are correct, Mrs. Reagan's counsel has been moderate. It has been far-sighted. It has reflected a political savvy all too rare in the president's second term. Put aside Mr. Regan's editorializing, and Nancy Reagan emerges as the heroine of his book. She comes across as not only zealous of the president's reputation and fiercely devoted to her husband — characteristics not unusual in presidential wives — but also as a woman of common sense and political sensitivity.
Not the least of Mrs. Reagan's insights was her realization early on that the White House needed to clear the decks after the Iran-contra scandal. Instead, the president prolonged and inflamed the brouhaha by hanging onto its chief players: Oliver North, John Poindexter, and, yes, the man who presided over this ripple effect — Chief of Staff Don Regan. As the Tower Commission was later to conclude, it was Mr. Regan who allowed the Iran-contra affair to grow from scandal into chaos.
The contrast between Nancy Reagan's approach to that scandal and Don Regan's was made clear not long ago by David Abshire, the presidential counselor who was brought back from NATO to report to the Tower Commission. As he noted, the chief of staff and the president's wife took quite different approaches to the scandal:
"... Regan, throughout the Iran-contra crisis, seemed more concerned with his own welfare, how he would come out, than with the president's.
"Nancy Reagan, far from the meddlesome and overly protective person Regan describes in his book, was anxious mainly that the facts are aired, the crisis passed, and the broader business of government resumed as soon as possible."
Don Regan needed to resign long before he did. And he might not be able to forgive Nancy Reagan for having been right. The record indicates that Mrs. Reagan is less a Dragon Lady than a Mary Worth, a steady font of sensible advice.
Paul Greenberg is a syndicated columnist who writes for the Pine Bluff Commercial in Pine Bluff, Ark.