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Tuesday, March 20, 1990 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Care about crime
Higher number of murders breeds complacency
M
urder in Douglas County is number one
with a bullet on a hit list released recently by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
Like a list of the top ten hit songs or bestselling books, the annual KBI report has become increasingly predictable and of less and less apparent consequence. The list showed that murder increased more than any other crime in the county, from one murder in 1988 to six in 1989. The list also cited a 9 percent increase in all violent crimes in the county last year.
Violent crimes included in the list are murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
Unfortunately, with society becoming more and more violent, too many of us tend to take such statistics for granted. In this age of information, such numbers no longer surprise us. They get lost in the avalanche of information that each of us daily wades through. They tend to pale next to the grisly television news pictures of shootouts and crack-house raids in major metropolitan areas. But such information should both surprise and shock us.
Granted, the 0.6 percent overall increase in violent crimes in the county was well below the 5.5 percent increase in statewide violent crime, but does that mean we don't have to worry about the increase in violence? Should we take refuge in Douglas County from the increasing crime statewide? What will we do when the crime rates in the rest of the state and country are realized here?
Moving to rural areas is not the answer because the statistics show that the wave of violence will follow.
Kansas has long had a reputation of being a state that fought for what was good and right. It also has had a reputation of being a safe place to live. Are we willing to give up those reputations?
None of us can afford to be complacent in the face of such deadly increases in crime. Statistics such as these must incite us to action rather than lull us to sleep as we nest in comfortable homes guarded with high-tech security systems and barred windows.
Richard Brack for the editorial board
AIDS priority
Volunteers deserve credit for taking a vital step
A IDS has been placed on the back burner of the national agenda long enough. U.S. financing for research lags behind other illnesses and AIDS research by other nations. However, a controversial vaccine may be a step toward finding a cure.
The vaccine, developed by Jonas Salk, pioneer of the polio vaccine in the 1950s, would be injected into humans in an effort to produce antibodies that would prevent humans from contracting the disease.
Roger Mahony, the Archbishop of Los Angeles, issued a call last week for 10 clergy to volunteer for the experimental drug. An associate of Salk said researchers were looking for "individuals who would find a role as such a volunteer a meaningful part of their life." Volunteers would need to be over the age of 65. Cardinal John O'Connor of New York, 70, said he would consider trying the vaccine if needed.
Salk, in scientific tradition, would be the first to take the vaccine. The controversy surrounding the vaccine is that there is no guarantee that all live AIDS cells would be killed — killed
in a sense that they could not reproduce inside the human body. The vaccine makes use of the whole AIDS virus, thus increasing the chance for infection.
The medical world is leery of the vaccine, which would use humans as guinea pigs by an unproven method of immunization. Though the vaccine has been tried on animals on a limited basis, the results have been inconclusive.
However, the only way that a vaccine and subsequent cure can be found for the AIDS virus is through testing on humans. If proven safe, the vaccine could prevent the death of thousands of humans, much like the polio vaccine.
The efforts of these individuals and Salk are courageous and should be commended. It is admirable that they have stepped forward to try to put an end to AIDS. Such research is bold and necessitated by the apparent lack of concern by the U.S. government to push for a cure.
John P. Milburn for the editorial board
Japanese Minimalism:
MMELEY Chicago Tribune
Kids need admirable heroes
When I was eleven years old, my biggest concern was what to offer in trade for a John Mayberry. I had the market cornered on John Mayberry, you see, and if given the chance, I would have gladly traded a Pete Rose rookie card or even a Cookie Rojas for another John Mayberry. John Mayberry was my hero. I spent hours after school lying in the park, staring at the sky and pondering his fielding percentage and batting average. The true market value of the cards I traded for yet another John Mayberry meant nothing to me. I would have traded my mother for another Mayberry because John Mayberry was my hero. As an eleven-year-old, it was hard to get in trouble with a laughing, happy first baseman as a hero.
When I was eleven years old, athletes weren't going to drug rehabilitation clinics in droves. Professional athletes weren't perfect; I laughed when George Brett took his bat to the locker room and beat a toilet into submission after a bad game. But we could adopt a professional athlete as a role model and be relatively sure he wouldn't let us down off the playing field.
Kids today don't have that luxury
Kids today don't have that luxury. Twelve-year-old David Aupont found out the hard way what has happened to a society where youths' role models are all too often the victims of their own success. Aupont was walking to school with three friends in New York last week when they were attacked. His friends got away, but Aupont's attacker dragged
Stan
Diel
Staff columnist
him into a garage, tied his hands behind his back and beat him with a baseball bat. The attacker then doused him with gasoline and set him on fire. All because Aupont refused to smoke crack cocaine.
Aupont spent his 12th birthday last week in the hospital with second- and third-degree burns covering 55 percent of his body. He was badly burned on his chest, legs, chin and mouth, and, if he lives, will undergo months of painful skin grafts and rehabilitation. Police have a suspect in his name. Aupont's suspected attacker was not a ghetto drug lord or a hardened criminal. He was a thirteen-year-old boy.
It would be naive to blame all of society's problems on athletes and other role models who use drugs. But today's children are failed by their heroes at an alarming rate. When you model yourself and your life after an individual, it is easy to be let down, and the consequences are real.
What is as amazing as the rate at which some athletes and role models fail their public is the manner in which society has come to accept that failure. Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry is a hero and role model to thousands of Black
youths. But when he was indicted for smoking cocaine and checked himself into a Florida drug clinic, he lost little support from his Washington constituents. If the election were held under this plan, he would be giving his campaign speeches from a drug clinic while facing numerous criminal charges.
How can today's youth be expected to maintain higher standards than society demands of their heroes and role models?
Walking by tennis courts during children's lessons, it is easy to tell which children have placed John McEnroe on a pedestal as their hero. They are the ones throwing their rackets and hitting judges. And they will be the ones who no one will want to play tennis with for the rest of their lives.
It is children who buy baseball cards and talk their fathers into going to games. And it is children who wait for hours outside stadiums on the chance they might get an autograph. Children are a major part of their sports heroes incomes today and will be an even bigger part of it when they grow up. And, like it or not, athletes and other role models have a great deal of influence on and responsibility to these children.
Maybe if David Aupont's attacker had a laugh, happy first baseman for a hero, he would have been playing baseball instead of pushing crack.
Stan Diel is a Hutchinson senior majoring in journalism and economics.
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Revue support
In the March 5 Kansan, there was a letter by Bob Stewart concerning the efforts of the people involved in Rock Chalk Revue. A serious point was brought up — throwing money at a problem hoping that it will just go away. After speaking with the author, I found that first of all he did not even see the performance, and second, that his information was from a single source. Let me just say that throwing stones at a problem won't make it go away either. The money raised from the revue benefits 25 area charities under the United Way in Lawrence and enables them to support and maintain these agencies that do so.
much for the Lawrence area. I wonder how many of these agencies have been blessed with Bob Stewart's volunteering presence!
There is a problem in this country with poverty, and any way we can help is a justified and necessary action. Rock Chalk Revue works because it combines entertainment with a sincere desire to help. It is one of the longest traditions at KU and the largest student contributor to the United Way. The next time you target an organization to make a point, why don't you actually talk to the people who are directly involved and directly affected. Making a point is one thing, but making it at the expense of a completely viable organization is uncalled for and inappropriate. I leave you with a quote: "Don't try to describe the ocean if you've never seen it."
Ned Nixon
Executive director, Rock Chalk
Revue 1990
News staff
Richard Brack. Editor
Daniel Niemi. Managing editor
Christopher R. Ralaton. News editor
Lisa Moos. Planning editor
John Milburn. Editorial editor
Candy Niemann. Campus editor
Mike Consalde. Sports editor
E. Joseph Zurga. Photo editor
Rhett Kline. Graphics editor
Kris Berglund. Arts/Features editor
Tom Ebenen. General manager, news adviser
Margaret Townsend...Business manager
Tami Rank...Retail sales manager
Misay Miller...Campus sales manager
Kathy Rollins...Regional sales manager
Mike Lehman...National sales manager
Mindy Morris...Co-op sales manager
Nate Stamos...Production manager
Mindy Landor...Australian production manager
Carrie Stinkne...Marketing director
James Glanapp...Creative director
Janet Rohholm...Classified manager
Wendy Starzer...Treasurer
Jeanne Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
Business staff
The Kansan reserves the right to reject or edit letters, guest stories and cartoons. They can be mailed or brought to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Staffer-Film Halt. Letters, columns and cartoons are the opinion of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University Daily Kansan. Editorials are the opinion of the Kansan editorial board.
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Cigarette tax could keep education smoking
Higher education, the Oliver Twist of Gov. Mike Hayden's proposals to rectify the state's budget crunch, has been adopted by the state Senate.
Many education supporters praise Winter, vice chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, for countering the anti-education sentiments of chairman Gus Bogina, R-Shawnee. The two often politely disagree, but Winter meanwhile has gathered fiscal scraps into a respectable package for higher education.
Twice this session senators have approved measures designed to restore education funds. Last month, the upper chamber passed a nickel-a-pack increase in the cigarette tax that would provide $12 million for higher education. Last week, the chamber passed a $909 million Board of Regents budget, less than the Regents wanted but more than the governor recommended.
In this less-than-classic political drama, Republican senators Dick Bond of Overland Park and Wint Winter Jr. of Lawrence share the role of Mr. Brownlow, who gave orphaned Oliver a home and an education. Bond carried the cigarette tax through the Senate and now is pushing for its passage in the House.
That hasn't been simple. The climate is dank for more education
Derek Schmidt
Staff columnist
spending in the face of the property tax crisis. Even people in the hometowns of the state's largest universities are often caught in a lack of education bucks.
In the 2nd Congressional District, which includes the University of Kansas and Kansas State University, only 11 percent of the public listed education when asked what issues the Legislature should address, according to a poll released this week by the Topeka Capital-Journal. Though it clearly has the larger stake in higher education, the district did only one point better than the giant, agricultural 1st District in western Kansas in public support for more education spending.
Surprisingly, a whopping 17 percent of the people in the 5th District of southeast Kansas, which has only two comparatively small Regents schools, Emporia State University and Pittsburg State University, called for more support of education.
That news could relieve pro-education pressure in the House, which is
considering the cigarette tax and soon will take up the Regents budget. If either becomes law, higher education will have fared well.
Earlier this month, a wave of anticigarette tax mail inundated House members. On close analysis, however, the handwritten letters turned out to be surprisingly similar in theme, structure and phrasing. Philip Morris Inc., one of the nation's largest tobacco companies, denied orchestrating the campaign. But the company goofed by inadvertently mailing to a House member a packet designed to spur protest.
The tobacco lobby is gearing up. In testimony yesterday, smoking lobbyists have demonised the proposed cigarette tax. The American Tobacco Institute, the Smokers' Rights group, and the Tobacco-Candy Distributors and Vendors descended on the House Taxation Committee.
Lawmakers yawned while the hackneyed rhetoric reached a crescendo.
"It is appalling to us that this Legislature, in a time so troubled by taxation questions, would even consider taxing one small group to benefit the needs of all," one lobbyist said.
Onlookers who listened intently could almost hear a response from
the ghostly echo of past debates:
"But by increasing public health care costs, smoking taxes all to benefit the needs of one small group."
Bond, testifying in favor of the tax,
left the tired, moralistic anti-tobacco
hoopla behind and cut to the bottom
line.
Their House counterparts should be so determined.
"I subscribe to the Willie Sutton theory of government," he said, referring to a bank robber from the middle of the century. "When they asked Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, he replied, 'That's where the money is.'"
The money is in tobacco, and the tobacco lobby is at odds with higher education. Every penny the lobby salvages translates into larger classes, fewer teachers and more leaky campus buildings.
The House committee may vote tomorrow. Bond and Winter deserve credit for doggedly pushing the long-term educational interests of the state even when that wasn't politically crucial.
Derek Schmidt is an Independence senior majoring in journalism.
CAMP UHNEELY
BY SCOTT PATTY