The University Daily Kansan emphasizes the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 2007 WWW.KANSAN.COM
COMMENTARY: Plan B should be used in emergencies and not as regular birth control. Its over-the-counter status is wrong. See Kansan.com for more opinions and Free for All comments
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
PAGE 5A
》 OUR VIEW
Sex, relationships trump career
Universities may prepare students for a career, but they do not commonly provide students with lessons on maintaining a happy and healthy life outside of their careers.
Relationships and sex are important aspects of life. "When students graduate they're going to spend eight to nine hours a day at a job," says Dr. Dennis Dailey, a former professor of human sexuality at the University of Kansas. "They are also going to spend eight or nine hours with family, in relationships, in bed. Anything you can do that enriches that part of their life is worth doing."
Less than 10 years ago, Dailey taught a University course on human sexuality that was popular, controversial and often wait-listed. Today, Dailey works as a sex therapist and continues to teach a course on human sexuality at the Ecumenical Christian Ministries, 1204 Oread. His non-credit class, Human Sexuality in Everyday Life, is well attended by students and non-students who want a more holistic understanding of sexual relations. Some even take the course multiple times.
The class' popularity is not the only sign that there is a greater need for sex education.
Daily said 50 percent of marriages ended in divorce and a large percentage of couples suffered from sexual dysfunction. As a sex therapist, Dailey also has found that many of his clients would give up the wealth and the status they earned through their careers to have more positive relationships with their families and spouses.
University students are often provided with opportunities to pursue exceptional careers. Dailey accurately asserts that many students lack sufficient means to study the part of their lives that will determine their happiness even more than financial gain. In an increasingly superficial and materialistic society, many lose sight of the importance of meaningful and intimate connections. Sex, as an act solely intended to gain physical pleasure, becomes unsatisfying.
Fortunately, students at the University have the opportunity to learn about this aspect of life as well as their future careers. To learn more about Dr. Dennis Dailey's course, students can contact the ECM center by phone, at 843-4933, or in person
— Alison Kieler for the editorial board.
FREE FOR ALL
Call 864-0500
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Hey Free-for-All, if you do decide to get up and plow Lot 91, like the person asked, tell me if you find a cell phone.
number has been doubled: Tom and my wife.
To the residents of 19th Street who built a snowman with a case of beer in his hand: You rock. Thanks for making me smile.
If sorority girls can wear rainbow-colored sweatpants with shirts that don't match along with their Ugs, boys can wear Uggs too.
I was wondering why the girl at the counter at the University Book Shop was sporting a K-
State shirt tonight. I'm surprised that's part of the dress code there.
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Usama bin Laden supports Uqq boots.
Grant Snider/KANSAN
I'm calling to thank the guy who helped me get my car out of the ice patch at Allen Field House today. It was so gentleman like.
Okay, I have a question. Who in the hell lives in The Reserve and vacuums at 11 o'clock at night?
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Today I cooked some Tyson chicken on a George Foreman grill, and I laughed a little bit.
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> COMMENTARY
Unwrapping cool
I'm uncool.
I can't decide if I'm uncool by choice, or because I don't try to be, but the result is the same. Until recently, my only friend on MySpace was Tom. Now that number has been my wife.
BRANDON MINISTER
KANSAN COLUMNIST
OPINION@KANSAN.COM
When I was younger, being uncool was pretty, well, uncool. My parents would try to cheer me up by telling me that uncool people end up ruling the world. "Look at Bill Gates," they said. "That guy is like a black hole of coolness. Once you cross his event horizon, there is no return to cool."
Celebrities are notorious for describing how uncool they were in high school. They say they were "geeky" or "awkward". What they really mean is, "I wasn't as successful as I am now". Because in no universe would Brad Pitt or Halle Berry ever quality as uncool. Will Smith has so much superfluous cool that, upon hearing a Third World nation was suffering a severe shortage of cool, he took a damp in a freezer bag and shipped it there with instructions to bury it in their uncoolest city and water it every day for a week. Today that city is known as Dubai.
Being cool is difficult to master because it's so nebulous. What is "cool," anyway? It's what everyone decides is cool, yet changing your tastes to match is the least cool thing
you can do. You can't force cool.
In the end, cool must come to you unexpectedly and unsolicited, like a Nobel Prize or malaria. You have to pick a persona and wait for popular culture to decide that you are cool. One day you might wake up and your ugly purse or those awful shoes will miraculously have become cool. Then you will be able to lean your head to one side, close your eyes to bored slits, and say blithely, "I was cool before it was even cool to be cool."
And right about then, as that last sylable leaves your lips, everyone else will have moved on. You will be back down here with me, in uncoolness. You will come to me seeking comfort, and I will kick you in the shin for thinking you were better than me. Because you're not. At least I know I'm uncool. And that's pretty cool. Isn't it?
Minster is a Lawrence junior in economics.
COMMENTARY
Plan B should be prescription-only
A few days ago I heard of a friend who knowingly had unprotected sex. Afterward, she panicked about becoming pregnant and rushed out to get Plan B, or the morning.
BY CASISE GENTRY
KANSAN COLUMNIST
OPINION@KANSAN.COM
after pill. Thanks to a Federal Drug Administration decision made on August 24 of last year, my friend was able to walk into Watkins pharmacy and buy it over the counter. The act passed by the FDA makes it possible for women over the age of 17 to get Plan B without seeing a doctor first. On talking to this friend, I saw that she showed no remorse about the circumstances, nor did she have any objection to using Plan B as a permanent backup plan when no protection was available.
This was appalling because I don't believe my friend is an anomaly. I think there are other girls who will use Plan B as birth control — or
guys who will pressure them to—but that is not its intended use. When used as intended, Plan B is a pregnancy block for rape or sexual assault victims. It is also only 89 percent according to the FDA Web site—whereas condoms are about
"...is it really such a hardship to go through a little counseling? Women are making a serious decision when they decide to take Plan B, and it seems like the FDA is treating it too lightly."
98 percent effective—according to the Mayo Clinic Web site. It has relatively mild side effects, such as nausea, headaches or dizziness that last for one to two days, according to the DuraMed Web site. However, with its now easy access with near anonymity, more women will be resorting to it regularly.
I am not against Plan B being used once or twice to safeguard against a pregnancy with a sexual predator or the occasional drunken mistake. In those cases, the physical and emotional side effects from taking Plan B will likely be less significant than those of getting pregnant. Also, Plan B is not an "abortion pill" like Miteplex, which — according to the FDA — will keep a necessary hormone from the fertilized and attached fetus, preventing it from developing. If the fertilized egg has already attached to the womb, Plan
B will not be effective. Some pro-life advocates define the point of conception as when the egg first meets the sperm; others define it as when the fertilized egg is implanted in.
in the uterus. I agree with the second definition, and thus don't believe that Plan B pill causes an abortion. Therefore, I find nothing wrong with the existence of Plan B. What I am against is misusing it and its over-the-counter status.
Previously, you had to make an appointment with a doctor or nurse to be counseled before you were given a prescription. You would be asked about your sexual encounter and told how the pill works to prevent pregnancy. However, the FDA decided to no longer require the mandatory counseling when it gave the pill an over-the-counter status. This has led to some women, such as my friend, running out to obtain
a serious pill with no idea how it works.
Some women are mature enough to use Plan B as it was intended; as an emergency contraceptive only. But, to accommodate those who aren't as mature$^4$ is it really such a hardship to go
through a little counseling? Women are making a serious decision when they decide to take Plan B, and it seems like the FDA is treating it too lightly.
There are other options besides making the pill prescription only again. A shorter counseling section could be made mandatory for women getting Plan B for the first time. Also, the number of times that a woman bought Plan B could be monitored and a restriction could be set on many times a woman could obtain it.
These options aren't foolproof. But they would curb the too-casual use of the pill. The FDA has a responsibility to make this pill more difficult to get, so women don't abuse a serious drug.
Gentry is a Kansas City, Kan., sophomore in English.
>> COMMENTARY
No Child Left Behind needs more state and federal interaction
Teachers' unions hate the No Child Left Behind Act because it forces teachers to spend class time on test taking skills. Principals grumble about the disaggregation of test scores into subgroups based on ethnicity and income. Those who pushed the standards based reforms point out that states are in control of the standards and can easily lower the bar to allow their students to pass.
Many complain loudly that the law represents an unfunded intrusion of federal power into a matter rightly belonging in the hands of
the states.
When it passed in 2001 with bipartisan support and was signed into law in 2002, the act was hailed as a bipartisan solution to the problem in public education. But it is the latest in a series of compromises dating back to the first Bush administration.
It's clear that as it comes up for reauthorization — NCLB is only the name of the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, dating back to 1965
— that some changes need to be made.
The only way to make NCLB work in its current form is for the federal government to take control of making the standards or to convince the states that they have a stake in making sure the reforms work.
Unfortunately, the federal Title I funds constitute only about 7 percent of public education in the United States. Some state's legi- tures, most notably Ustah', have
BY BEN ALEXANDER
KANSAN COLUMNIST
OPINION@KANSAN.COM
Natalie Johnson. associate opinion editor
864-4924 or njohnson.us/kansan.com
spent years fighting about whether to take the money and the mandate or to refuse both. States haven't been involved since a governors' summit in 1989, and if Congress
》 TALK TO US
continues to operate without input from states and unions, it's extremely likely that federal involvement in schools, which eliminates segregation and ensures that poor school districts get the
To get the states to play along in both formulation of good policy and its implementation, Congress needs to stop pretending that Title I buys the power to mandate when and how students learn, as well as who can meet in schools and when, as with the Boy Scouts; who has access to students' personal information, as in recruiters; how sex education is conducted, as with abstinence as the standard; whether contraceptives can be distributed
and most of all, the hubris to make ideological statements about constitutionally protected prayer into law. These matters, not the standards themselves, should be left to the states.
The Democratic majority in Congress has a chance and a responsibility to clean up the mess that is federal education policy, and they should exhibit good government and do so.
Alexander is a Lenexa freshman in Spanish and Portuguese.
Gabriella Souza, editor
684-4543 or ggoukaikan.kan.com
Koley Kelley, managing editor
684-4541 or nketleykan.kan.com
Patrick Ross, managing editor
684-4585 or prossissian.kan.com
Courtney Hagen, opinion editor
684-0729 or chageen.kan.com
funding they need, will erode quickly as states refuse the Title I funds and go it alone.
Lindsey Shirack, business manager
864-4014 or lshirack@kansan.com
Malcolm Gibson, general manager, news adviser
864-7667 or mgbson@kansan.com
Jackie Schaffer, sales manager
864-4462 or jschaffer@kansan.com
Jennifer Weaver, sales and marketing adviser
864-7666 or jweaver@kansan.com
》 SUBMISSIONS
The Kansan welcomes letters to the editor and guest columns submitted by students, faculty and alumni. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length, or reject all submissions.
For any questions, call Courtney Hagen or Natalie Johnson at 864 4810 or e-mail opinion@kansan.com.
General questions should be directed to the editor at editor@kansan.com.
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Gabriella Souza, Nicole Kelley, Patrick Ross, Courtney Hagen
Natalie Johnson, Alison Kleer, Tasha Riggins and McKay
Stangler
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