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Monday, March 5. 1990 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Safe Break '90
Program for vacation safety is a good idea, but Condom Sense deserves more attention
K U students will learn about spring break hazards before they leave town for vacation in a weeklong event in front of Wescoe Hall
Safe Break '90, a promotion sponsored by Watkins Memorial Health Center and various campus organizations, is a University-wide effort to inform college students about safer breaks.
Many spring breakers have a tendency to stretch beyond their normal behaviors during the break. But taking a vacation from classes doesn't mean taking a vacation from being responsible. That's why programs about safe sex, drug awareness, date rape and responsible drinking all have been lumped together.
Student Senate's AIDS Task Force and Drug Awareness Task Force and BACCHUS are two of the groups that will help inform students.
Promoting safer sex, drug awareness and
responsible drinking behavior seems like a logical, timely event before college students head for vacation spots.
Nevertheless, handing out a free condom to passers-by in front of Wescroe Hall shouldn't be a replacement for Condom Sense Week, which was observed nationally Feb. 11-17.
The AIDS Task Force can't expect students to take the deadly virus seriously when they are handed a condom a few days before spring break. In fact, it often encourages students to joke about casual sex.
Safe Break '90 could be a successful way to inform students about hazards they may encounter. Take a break, and drop by Wescoe Beach this week.
But remember that the activities on Wescoe Beach target spring breakers. The risk still will be there after the long ride home.
Jennifer Metz for the editorial board
Clean up or pay up
Exxon should pay in full for deadly disaster
Exxon Corp. has a reason to cry over spilled oil. In a move that Attorney General Dick Thornburgh said "throws the environmental book" at the company, a federal grand jury last week indicted Exxon on criminal charges that could add up to more than $700 million in fines.
The indictment, handed down by a federal grand jury last week, stems from the March 24, 1989, Exxon-Valdez oil spill, which sent nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound. The jury's action, which levies five criminal charges against Exxon and its shipping subsidiary, is by far the most severe penalty ever issued for an environmental accident.
It's about time.
Environmental criminals long have gone unpunished or received little more than a cursory reprimand for their actions. That, apparently, is about to change.
The Exxon-Valdez disaster, which Exxon officials prefer to call an "accident," killed more than 36,000 migratory birds, smeared oil along an estimated 1,000 miles of pristine shoreline and threw into chaos one of the world's richest salmon fisheries.
Exxon Corp. Chairman Lawrence Rawl said he was sorry for the mess. He did not, however, seem to be sorry enough to pay the
$550 million that Justice Department officials originally said Exxon could pay. That agreement, which appealed neither to Exxon nor to environmentalists, would have let Exxon come out of this with no criminal charges filed.
Now, if the oil company is convicted on all five counts, it could face criminal fines of as much as $1.6 million. An additional $700 million in penalties could be added under a federal statute that allows recovery of twice the amount of proven losses caused by the spill.
These proven losses are just the beginning. Assistant Attorney General Richard Stewart said, "It will be many years before we have a full understanding of the extent of the damage." The long-range environmental impacts, the Alaskans ultimately affected by the spill — these are factors which have nothing to do with the price of cleanup.
Exxon officials have vowed to fight the charges in court. They are outraged by the indictment. But Exxon can afford the fines, with ease.
Chris Evans for the editorial board
Excuse me, what time is it?
W When I was in the wonder years of junior high school, I witnessed the cruelest thing I've ever seen. But it wasn't the typical cutting remark, and it wasn't anything publicly humiliating.
Instead, it was a form of punishment given to a classmate. He was caught horsing around during a science class film about time. So the teacher, in addition to the obligatory film review, made him write a onepage essay defining the concept of time.
Ouch! When the student asked me for help, I took one look at the extra assignment and said, "No thanks." Ethics or the fear of getting caught had nothing to do with it — I just know an impossible task when I see one. He would have been better off getting paddled at a school assembly.
I don't know why that little incident has stuck with me. I guess the idea of defining something you can't see, touch, hear or smell, yet deal on with a lifetime basis (in fact, it helps define lifetime) boggles my mind. In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, "It's beyond my apprehension."
A consultation of the American Heritage Dictionary reveals that the poor person responsible for "T" words fared little better than did my classmate. The definitionist managed 16 meanings for time as a noun, five as an adjective and a siew of synonyms for phrases that used the word. But when the first definition of time reads, "A nonspecific continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past
Steve Buckner
Staff columnist
through the present to the future," it's obvious that the writer hadn't a clue.
So how does one define time? As with most things, there is not one correct method. One attempt, however, might be to think of all the ways we come into contact with time, although this method will lead more to an amalgamation than a definition.
Clocks and calendars are inescapable parts of life. I have two clocks on my desk at home which remind me I'm behind the schedule written on my calendar desk pad. Calendars have proliferated in the past few years. I find it interesting December and you see hundreds of ways to track time in the new year, illustrated with everything from puppies to playboy bunnies.
For starters, some of us make time into a fashion statement with the watches we wear. It was even a fad a few years ago to wear several watches simultaneously. I suppose that effort was an extension of having too much time on one's hands, so to speak.
A clock radio can start the day with a number of songs about time. Cyndi Lauper reached number one with
"Time After Time." One of the Rolling Stones' first efforts was "Time Is on My Side." Ironically, Jim Cruz's ballad, "Time in a Bottle," was released posthumously. The chorus to one of the best songs about time, Chicago's "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" answers the title with "Does anybody really care?"
Literature has spawned a series of proverbs and idioms about time that could be applied by the different schools on campus. The philosophy major extols "Time waits for no man." Interns at the University of Kansas Medical Center console with "time heals all wounds." What self-respecting MBA student won't remind us that "Time is money?"
Coaches call time-out as their team's season rides on what will transpire in a matter of seconds. The event is even more magazine for the hopelessly lit.
And the things we do with time. We try to make it when we're not killing it, or we try to save it so we can waste it later. All the while, the time of our lives flies by when it's not standing still.
Are we any closer to defining time than a few minutes ago when you started reading this column? That's debatable. We did a fair job of analysis, but we didn't pin it down. Still, by default, we got closer than the author of "A nonspatial continuum."
If only we'd had more time
> Steve Dickman in a Lawrence graduate
>
Other Voices
The Educational Testing Service and Rutgers University are conducting a study of the Scholastic Aptitude Test to determine whether it accurately predicts academic competence considering updating the SAT by adding a writing sample and more math and algebra.
All this activity stems from the ETS's desire to produce a valid means to determine how well high school students will do in college and growing concerns of cultural and sexual bias in the SAT.
The ETS makes painstaking efforts to ensure the SAT is not biased. Panels from around the nation help develop the test, and the test questions are reviewed five times to guard against bias. However, it is naive to think that other standards to all the economic, cultural, social and educational backgrounds of U.S. high school students.
Given the questions that continue to surround the SAT, the University and other institutions should place less weight on the SAT and more on
the value of several other indicators.
From The Red and Black, the University of Georgia.
Whether our good friends in Latin America would welcome the prospect of millions of caterpillars drop by the skies is a different matter...
The Bush administration is working on a plan to develop caterpillars who love to chew on coca leaves. If all this works out, the insects could be scattered through the coca fields of Latin America, chewing up the raw materials for cocaine.
Since the drug bug can't solve our problems with narcotics production, the United States might want to consider a different approach. We could ship down a couple of thousand of those signs you see posted outside
schools, the ones that say "Drug Free Zone."
That might not have any effect on production, of course. But what effect it has it had on consumption? Why would you sense as a drug-rating caterpillar.
From the Hudson Dispatch, Union City, N.J., Feb. 21.
News staff
Richard Breck ... Editor
Daniel Nieml ... Managing editor
Christopher R. Relaton ... News editor
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Carrie Stanika...Marketing director
James Glaasnke...Creative director
Janet Rohrholm...Classified manager
Wendy Stiles...Team manager
Jeanne Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
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LETTERS to the EDITOR
Aura of charity
I recently asked a person involved in Rock Chalk Revue what the purpose behind the revue was. He simply stated that it was for charity. This is the aura surrounding the revue that bothers me.
I wonder how many of the Rock Chalk performers, planners and helpers actually have thought about the disadvantaged people they are raising money for. I wonder how many parents and friends think about the disadvantaged as they reach for their checkbooks to buy tickets to the show. It is hard to believe that many of these people actually have not been in the audience. People I certainly believe that programs for the disadvantaged should be well-financed, but we as a society must draw the line between trying to finance programs that help solve a problem and merely throwing money at the problem in hope that it will go away.
Imagine the benefits if the hundreds of people from Rock Chalk would use the great amount of time they spend on the show to lobby or write their congressmen. They could try to get their congressmen to support measures that would make the political, social and economic climates of the United States more hospitable to disadvantaged people. Imagine the benefits if the people from Rock Chalk would use their time to actually work at facilities in Lawrence for disadvantaged people. Maybe they might see that these people need moral support as much as monetary support.
Something is causing poverty, and it is not a lack of charitable funds. Poverty is caused by serious wounds in our social fabric. These wounds cannot be patched with clothing or bandages mended by loving hands. Let's work together and be those loving hands.
Bob Stewart Paola sophomore
Inaccurate editorial
We feel it necessary to submit a response to the editorial that appeared in the Kansan on Feb. 28 entitled "Group should offer clear plan of action for KU."
As members of Students Concerned About Discrimination, we
would like to point out that the editorial misquoted our policy statement. The Kansas received a copy of our letter, and an accurate representation of our policy statement appeared in the Feb. 23 issue. For these reasons, it is difficult to understand why our policy statement was misconstructed.
For the sake of clarity, allow us to point out that our fifth priority for improving the campus climate for minority students is to establish a training program for all faculty as well as graduate teaching assistants through the Office of Minority Affairs and the Office of Affirmative Action, in cooperation with the Student Senate Minority Affairs committee and associated organizations.
The editorial further assessed that our concerns were addressing "the lack of minority recruitment and retention services and racial discrimination on campus." This poorly represents the extent of the Students Concerned About Discrimination's priorities. Our goal is to raise consciousness about, as well as combat, all types of discrimination that students face on campus. It is the belief of our organization that discrimination is not specific to race.
The point of the editorial was to suggest that our policy statement
was unclear. A policy statement must be taken for what it is: a broad or general statement of requests. The first step is to inform the administration of what we want, and that must be completed before we can progress to the next step.
The 26 pages of the Minority Issues Task Force Report show that the administration can formulate a specific plan to address minority concerns. What remains to be seen is the implementation of their specific plan. If a clearer proposal is needed from Students Concerned About Discrimination, we are willing to provide it.
However, it is important to recognize that there are other organizations on campus that may have specific plans which will differ from any proposal we may formulate. We do not feel qualified to represent all the groups on campus because of our opinions about discrimination. Our organization hopes to open the lines of communication so that we can get all groups involved in finding a workable solution.
CAMP UHNEELY
Michael Diggs
Wichita senior
Andrea Katzman
Lawrence junior
Guy Krause
Lawrence law student
THIS FRIDAY IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO FORT LAUDERDALE
SPENDSPRINGBREAKIN
PACKARD AS YOUR CAPTAIN
KIP AS THE TRIP'S DOCTOR
R.J. AS
YOUR SPIRITUAL
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BY SCOTT PATTY
EDDIE AS JACK KEROUAC
AND ISAAC AS YOUR BARTENDER
SORRY- WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTAL DEATHS,
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DRUGS OVERDSEE, FOOD POISONING, LOST CHILDREN, BROKEN
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DAYTONA OR PADRE. DONT MOPE AROUND IN LAWRENCE
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MAKE RESERVATIONS NOW
CALL US at 555-CAMP
POLICE ESCORT TO K.C.-
WAGON TRAIN WILL FORM
IN FRONT OF THE UNION.
DEPARTMENT AT 6 PM FRIDAY
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- WHY GO TO THE BEACH WHEN YOU CAN GET TRASSED IN K.C. * VISIT KANSAS CITY'S FAMOUS STANDBY BEDS!
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