Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
United States First Amendment
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2009
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.
Roesler: Why students can't escape Lawrence
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--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
Stop complaining about KU students cheering for the Chiefs because they are a Missouri team. Who else do you want them to root for, the Broncos?
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
Dear roommate: If you're going to complain about how every college student listens to a certain type of music, you should probably stop cranking your dub music first.
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
I miss the days crowded around the TV at 6 a.m. to see if school was canceled.
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
Being Facebook friends with famous people makes me feel famous
My roommate came home with a pineapple. I asked her what it was for and she said her vibrator broke. What if she was being serious?
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
Damn. My ex-boyfriend has really gotten trashy.
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
I feel like I owe my life to coffee and Melatonin.
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
Is it wrong if I crapped in my hand and then smeared it on my `ommate's keyboard?
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
I just want a space heater.
Hi! My name's Dougie. I bought my way through the basketball team.
Guess who has two thumbs and doesn't care about Taylor Swift — this guy.
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
I'm ready to fall in love again. Who's with me?
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
Hey, it's snowing outside. Why don't you hippies go protest global warming? it makes about as much sense as cap and trade, right?
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
Last night I had sex with my English professor, it was amazing. It was also in my dream.
Thank you very much.
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
Last night I had a dream that my cat peed on my face Yours was better!
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
I thought by the time you were college age, you would have learned how to do your hair by now. I guess i thought wrong
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
This is Kansas, you are not going to get frostbitten. Stop being so dumb.
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
Sadder that I play "World of Warcraft," or that I have an audience when I do?
--have tainted the foot ball program regardless of how soon a new coach can be found.
Gridiron Club reconsidered
EDITORIAL BOARD
In light of recent events, the new seating addition to Memorial Stadium, the Gridiron Club, no longer looks like a wise investment.
The central problem to building new, expensive seating for KU football fans is the recent controversy that led to the resignation of coach Mark Mangino.
If a new coach with a high profile and good record is found, there could be nothing to worry about. However, this past losing season also complicates this purchase.
The way the investigation and eventual resignation played out
Endowment, said the Athletics Department had not yet reported current numbers for Gridiron Club fundraising.
KANSAN'S
OPINION
The team is also losing many of its star players next year, and unless strong players are heavily recruited, this could lead to a loss of interest in the program.
The other problem is the way the funding is structured. In order to go forward with construction of the Gridiron Club, Kansas Athletics requires pledges totaling $34 million.
The Kansas reported on Dec. 3 that Rosita McCoy, a spokeswoman for the Kansas University
Regardless of the state of the football program, the current economy is not supportive of leisure spending.
The Gridiron Club originally pledged on Sept. 2 to contribute $40 million to University Academics.
The expansion is also supposed to contribute $25 million to build an "Olympic Village" for other sports at the University.
If it turns out that the Gridridr Club cannot raise as much as was originally hoped or if too many pledges are not fulfilled, will these donations be the first to go?
On top of that, the Gridiron
Club is not something the average fan and student will get to enjoy.
can and student will get to enjoy.
Instead of selling tickets to
each game, 5 or 30 year member-
ships will be sold for $25,000 and
$105,000 respectively.
On paper, the Gridiron Club sounds great: contributions to academics and non-revenue sports, a fancy new addition to our stadium and more revenue for the University, supposedly all ready by the kickoff of the 2010 season.
However, when reality sets in, and questions arise about funding, exclusivity and contributions, perhaps this stadium expansion should be reconsidered.
EDITORIAL CARTOON
— Clayton Ashley for The Kansan Editorial Board
Dear
ALL i
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i was
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NICHOLAS SAMBALUK
DRUGS
Marijuana's legal substitute
In a recent weekend afternoon, I came across a peculiar sight: a line of high school and college-age kids sneaking out the front door of Sacred Journey, an herb shop located in downtown Lawrence.
On a recent weekend afternoon, I came across a peculiar sight: a line
Three teenagers, probably no older than 15 or 16, stepped out of the store with a little plastic baggie containing a curious-looking green, leafy substance. They grinned broadly and held it up for the customers in line to see. Around the corner, a few more young customers were huddled in a doorway sampling their latest purchase.
These adolescents had procured a few grams of K2, a kind of synthetic marijuana that yields many of the same effects as pot but doesn't show up on drug tests and — for the time being — is perfectly legal.
Did I miss something? Had marijuana been legalized while I was sleeping off last night's hangover? Not quite.
The state government will out law K2. soon enough, but maybe we should take a step back to consider the advantages of this legal quasi-pot.
According to the handful of
people I questioned who have tried K2, most people who bought the new product were marijuana users, and K2 has been gaining popularity as a substitute for marijuana. It's cheaper and far less risky to acquire and use.
K2 helps the local economy, too. The new product is most likely supplied by some clever Lawrence entrepreneur rather than the shady underground drug market linked to the Mexican cartels. A lot of the money that many of our fellow students pay for pot ends up in the hands of unsavory organizations such as La Familia Michoacana.
Of course, I wasn't enthused about the conspicuous embrace of the new drug that I witnessed. For the majority of Americans to support the legalization of marijuana and drugs like it, consumers need to show that they will be able to use it responsibly. Stupid
behavior gives only ammunition to proponents of drug prohibition.
Decades of failed drug policy has proven that the government can't eliminate the demand for drugs by criminalizing their sale and use. In this way, demand for drugs can never be eliminated. Just as the government manages tobacco use and alcohol use, it should do the same with marijuana by keeping it out of the hands of minors, regulating its production and educating the public about its effects.
As legalization in some form appears increasingly likely, we need to consider what that would look like. K2 gives us a glimpse of the benefits and the drawbacks of homegrown weed.
More and more Americans seem to agree with this position. A Zogby poll released last May found that 52 percent of Americans favor treating marijuana as a legal, taxed and regulated substance. An October Gallup poll found that 44 percent of Americans are in favor of legalization.
Thompson is a Topeka senior in economics.
INTERNATIONAL
1
American health care put into perspective
As the health care debate wages on here in the United States, Americans easily forget how comparatively advantageous our health care and medical technology are to developing countries.
Women in Sierra Leone have insufficient health care and the risk of a woman's death during childbirth is one in eight, according to Amnesty International. Less than 20 percent of births occur in health facilities.
These gruesome statistics have been unheard of in the U.S. for more than a century. How many women take for granted the availability of hospitals for childbirth? I would think most probably do because it's become such a familiar accommodation.
President Jacob Zuma of South Africa announced on World AIDS Day that the government will extend access to HIV drug therapy. Zuma said pregnant women and babies would receive more treatment sooner. Zumas promise to expand treatment came as Amnesty International published a report blaming "gender discrimination, sexual violence, and poverty" for delaying progress in AIDS prevention and treatment.
Though it is good that these measures will be put into place, the reality is that they should have come much sooner.
AIDS treatment and prevention still have a ways to go in the U.S., but we do not suffer the same drastic rates of HIV/AIDS
as many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The same article also discussed the small amount of health care coverage in India. "At the moment, 75 percent of health spending comes out of people's own pockets," the article read. Because of the large urban-rural divide, there are still many impoverished regions with virtually no access to health care.
A recent BBC news article compared the current health care organization in the U.S. and China, concluding that many Chinese citizens cannot afford to pay for health care in the "hybrid system combining employer based insurance and social service supplements."
I am completely in favor of health care reform in our country, and I believe it should be done quickly and must contain a public option. However, we must not lose sight of the need to develop adequate health care systems in developing countries.
Cosby is an Overland Park sophomore in journalism and political science.
CONTRIBUTED COLUMN
This year's flu season is the worst in many years,and young adults have been
H1N1 survival guide
especially hard hit by the H1N1 flu. Who is in the age group most likely to get H1N1? People under 25. Who get so sick they need to be hospitalized? Half of them are under 25. And who is least likely to get a flu shot? People under 25.
I am writing today to urge you to take H1N1 flu seriously, not just as the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services who has read lots and lots of scientific studies saying this is a young person's pandemic, but also as a mother of two sons who not long ago were sitting exactly where you are today.
So what can you do to protect yourself and people around you from flu?
Get vaccinated. It's the most effective way to prevent the flu. The H1N1 flu vaccine is made the same way as the seasonal flu vaccine, which has a decades-long safety track record. And, it undergone more testing than other flu vaccines.
If you're someone with a health condition such as diabetes or asthma, the CDC says you should get vaccinated as soon as your community has vaccine available. Other groups at high risk for serious complications include young children and pregnant women. Also, people who care for babies under six months, health care workers and emergency medical personnel should go to the head of the vaccination line.
In addition, many people do
not realize that simply being younger than 25 also puts you in a priority group to receive the vaccine. So look into getting vaccinated at school or when you go home for the holidays.
Stay home when you're sick.
If you do get the flu, there are things you should do to protect yourself and those around you.
College campuses — dormitories,
classes, wherever a lot of people are indoors together — are places flu can spread. If you get sick,
don't go out, and don't invite visitors in.
If you live on campus but your home is not far away, consider going home until you're well to avoid spreading the flu. If you live too far to go home, check to see if your college has alternate housing for ill students.
Make it part of your daily routine to keep flu from spreading. The H1N1 vaccine may not have arrived in your area yet, so keep doing the simple things everyone does to keep germs in check. Wash your hands, cough and sneeze into your sleeve, not your hands and disinfect surfaces like computer keyboards and countertops.
No one knows whether this wave of H1N1 will get worse, taper off or be followed by another wave later in the season. But we do know that preventing flu depends on all of us, and everyone will be safer if each one of us is serious about preventing and reducing H1N1 flu.
— Kathleen Sebelius is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
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