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Thursday, April 4, 1991 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Final Four chaos
Administration's underestimating the situation student drunkenness contribute to the problem
Saturday night after KU's victory against North Carolina, a man was thrown six feet into the air and dropped head first on the pavement in front of Wescoe Hall.
These were just a few of the incidents that kept police and hospitals busy when thousands of people stormed Jayhawk Boulevard.
And Monday night, after KU's loss to Duke a woman's head was cut open by a flying beer bottle.
It only took a few drunken individuals to ignite a dangerous and destructive mob mentality.
They danced on cars until the roofs caved in. They climbed trees, swinging on the branches until they broke. They set off fireworks in the middle of crowds. They three cans of beer and urinated on the grass in front of Strong Hall.
In all, the two-night party left more than 100 people injured and caused several thousand dollars of damage to University property.
It is great to support the basketball team
and have a good time celebrating with friends. But the scenes that took place on campus were out of hand. Luckily, no one was killed.
In addition to the drunken, reckless and immature behavior of students, the University also is to blame. The administration did not provide adequate facilities to accommodate the crowds or adequate numbers of police to keep the situation under control.
When the Jayhawks won in 1988, the atmosphere was jubilant but also less dangerous. The center of the celebration was in the parking lot in front of the Burge Union, providing adequate space and ensuring that there were fewer problems.
The trip to the Final Four is an event many of us never will forget. But let's hope students and University officials will learn from this year's situation.
Next time, maybe students can find a more positive and non-destructive way to channel their enthusiasm and school pride.
Stacy Smith for the editorial board
Media concocts story
U. S. citizens were treated last week to a fine case study of how controversies are sometimes concocted ex nihilo by the media.
This one involved Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, the charismatic commander of allied forces in the Persian Gulf, and President George Bush. To hear the media tell it, .Schwarzkopf, in his PBS documentary, publicly took exception to the timing of the president's decision to stop the route of Iraqi troops and suspend offensive operations.
Other Voices
The problem with that news account, as anyone who carefully watched the Frost interview will know, is that the general did no such thing. The next thing you heard was the president and Defense Secretary Richard Chappell, who has supported obsession with . . . Schwarzkopf took place when our forces stopped in the Iran desert.
At the end of the week, by this time no doubt having seen the full text of the general's remarks, President Bush clearly recognized that what should have been a non-story was blown out of proportion by an excited media fishing for
more exciting new leads, aided by unwitting government representatives who did not cover themselves in glory.
Is anybody interested in what Schwarzkopf actually told David Frost? Here, then. "Frankly, my recommendation had been, you know, continue the march. I mean, we had them in a rout and we could have continued to sweak great destruction on them. We could have completely closed the door and made it a battle of annihilation. And the president made the decision that we should stop at a given time, at a given place that did leave some escape routes open for them to get back out, and I think it was a very humane decision and a very courageous decision."
Does that sound like Patton, MacArthur, Singlau, waging a titanic quarrel with the president? Was any sort of cardinal rule broken? Far from it. Schwarzkopf's comments were a perfectly appropriate answer, framed in that combination of frankness and for which he is now famous, to a. . . journalist's historical inquiry.
- From the Orange County (Calif.)
Register.
A chief concern of the working poor is health care.
Healthy Start helps
Those with jobs that offer little in the way of wages and benefits, and who do not qualify for Medicaid, do not get the kind of preventive care necessary to keep themselves and their children healthy.
Fortunately, help is available. A federal program called Healthy Start extends Medicaid benefits to the working poor. It provides pre-pregnancy care for birth and health care following birth and health care for children up to age 6.
Healthy Start can help make sure that babies are born healthy and that they stay healthy. By providing the care that can prevent future illnesses and health problems, parents also can save money down the road.
Some families may not know about the program; others may not want to apply because of the "well-organized" trauma associated with such programs.
But ignorance and pride won't help an underweight baby or cure a 4-year-old's measles. Only proper health care will.
From the Milwaukee Sentinel.
FLAXMAN University Daily Kansan
Being a 'Black Woman Poet' is not a problem for Brooks
Gwendolyn Brooks is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who has served as Poet-in-Residence at the Library of Congress and is Poet Laureate for Illinois.
What she is really excited about now, however, is her new Chicago co-op that she recently has finished signing papers on. With a list of achievements as long as hers, I expected some lofty literary figure who spoke with a fluttering Old English accent and used sweeping arm movements to emphasize her points.
The person I met, however, was a wide-eyed, 73-year-old woman who spoke with energy and clarity.
Brooks stated that both her skin color and sex had not caused any problems at all except in the minds of others.
"There is this group I call the Capital "" critics," Brooks said. "They believe that if you are Black
We sat in her hotel lobby discussing everything from African-American history in our schools to the various flavors of Celestial teas on the market. When asked what she thought about the complexities of being both a Black person and a woman poet she said, "I’m often asked ‘What’s more important to you: being a Black poet or just a poet?’ and answer it, “Is I was back when I was a poet and before I became aware of my womanhood. I don’t sit down at the table with a pen and paper and say to myself ‘I am a Black Woman Poet. Now, let’s begin to write!’”
Matt
Walsh
Staff columnist
you shouldn't make any note of it at all. I think that is ridiculous, that's what you ought to write about!"
Her racial pride and allegiance to truth were two predominant themes in our discussion. Brooks once called her "a preoccupation and a commitment."
She has said, "I see no point in picking up pen and paper unless you are going to tell the truth."
"Remember," she said, "poetry is life distilled."
Brooks supports her words with her actions.
She conducts workshops across the country, teaching and molding young writers. Some young writers have gained more than Brooks' wisdom. She has donated money to numerous schools for prizes in an effort to encourage young writers. All money comes from Brooks' own pocketbook.
Brooks has received only $2,500 as her highest cash award — for the Guggenheim fellowships.
"Now, they give $10,000!" Brooks screamed in feigned agony. Despite her fairly low income, she continues to be generous.
"I feel it's my responsibility to do what I can to help young people," Brooks said.
Brooks' livelihood now comes from her appearances across the country
She said, "It's not really a job, though. I put my whole heart into doing it. I love it. I feel as though I want to have conversation with the audience."
Sometimes her conversations are not nearly so one-sided.
"At times, the speech I'm giving is met with approval and they do this 'Rah, rah, rah' thing," she said.
That "Hah, rah, rah thing" is Arsenio Hall's trademark cheer. Seeing Gwendolyn Brooks mimic the name of her favorite worth next month's co-op payment.
The subjects of Brooks' poetry are as varied as the actions in the world around her.
"I don't think in terms of writing about what's big in the news. I care about what happens in South Africa and the Persian Gulf, but I also care about what's going on in the Senate this week," she said in the back of my house." she said.
In a poem about apartheid, Brooks omitted punctuation at the end. She said she left it out because there was no ending at the end of the final situation.
Today, Brooks is scheduled to meet with members of a delegation from the Legislature in her hometown, Topeka. At 7:30 p.m. she will read from her works at Hoch Auditorium. She will not but the experience will be priceless.
Matt Walsh is an Emporia freshman majoring in journalism.
Environmental consciousness declines as apathy reappears
W as anyone aware that this past week was Recycling Awareness Week?
Apathy has settled in, and the United States is losing a battle that it seemed on its way to win when Earth Day turned 20 years old last April. It seemed to be the height of Revolution in the United States.
Environmental consciousness seemed to be at its zenith, and people had recycling and saving the rain forests on their minds.
The emergence of the United States as an environmental hegemony seemed to be near, and other countries were apt to follow our lead in bringing the world back from the end of it all.
Fernando Collier de mello, president of Brazil, even seemed about ready to let "his" rain forest stand and allow the world to breathe clearly. He now is being straightfoward about his environmental policies.
Jeff
Meesey
Guest columnist
Elsewhere, with so much pressure o save the environment at every inn, grocery stores were collecting food waste and it was quite an audacious step.
These seem to be only token gestures now. Because of the U.S. malaise against the very idea of automation, there is much more to be done.
Every day, recycling centers are closing. This occurs because of a lack of resources, in the financial sense and in the sense that they have no recyclable products coming in for conversion.
Until the government realizes that recycling centers are invaluable weapons against over-loaded land-fills, regardless of their profitability, recyclable garbage will continue to be recycled with the non-recyclable garbage.
Subsidizing an unprofitable agency is nothing new for the government so why should it not dabble in this area as well?
But all the money in the world will not make recycling happen, and that is where laws should come in. If the laws are implemented, it should be required to do so.
Certainly dissenters will argue that it is their God-given right to throw away newspapers and aluminum instead of recycling. It is an invasion of their privacy, they say. At the same time, they want their trash taken away twice a week so they never have to see it again. But what happens when the trash does not have anywhere to go?
'Even the most simple tasks seem too much for some people. They cannot bring themselves to recycle.'
Landfills are filling up Just like the garbage barge that sailed the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, these people will have smelly garbage trucks circling their neighborhoods because the driver will have nowhere to dump the unwanted cargo.
Incidentally, at the rate garbage is being dumped, the existing landfills will be full in five to 10 years. No one will want one in their backyards, so what will we do with all this garbage?
New landfills could be built, and we could just ignore the fact that they are so consummately putrid; however, nothing could be further from the obvious — certainly unavoidable — solution of recycling.
solution in recycling.
Even now there are recycling programs in cities that require only that participants place all their recyclables into the same bag. Nothing could be simpler. No longer does each recyclable need be separated from the other recyclables, but only separated from the "bad" trash.
Even the most simple tasks seem too much for some people. They cannot bring themselves to recycle. There is reluctance to recycle, partly because of a stigma, which encumbers people's actions; but chiefly because of utter laziness, which paralyzes people's action.
The more philosophical dissenters have a different argument. Because matter neither can be created nor destroyed, they say, garbage in any form, be it paper or glass and adobe in another form, the existing matter. What has changed is its basic form, not its constituent parts. For this reason, their misguided argument concludes, it is not bad for the environment to reclaim these types of products in a landfill.
These claimants ignore the fact that even the most sophisticated landfills do not degrade garbage as they theoretically are supposed to do. Oxygen, the main decomposing agent, is absent below the surface, so they have been found intact at the bottom of landfills, put there 40 years ago. Obviously this is not what the designers of the landfills intended.
It is not enough to be zealously enthralled by a fad such as environmental awareness. Malaisie in the United States occurs when the newness years off or when it seems that money will be needed for solutions. U.S. attention span, like that of a 2-year-old, is short. There are crises at hand that merit "rediscovery" and prolonged concern
Jeffrey Meesey is a St. Louis junior majoring in journalism.
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