University Daily Kansan / Friday, December 8, 1989
9A
Alcohol problems harm KU
Drinking to relieve anxiety or stress can lead to alcoholism, which is a growing problem on campus.
By Stacy Smith
Kansan staff writer
As the sun sets on another school week, students stand outside in the cool fall air waiting for their turn to walk down Wagon Wheel Cafe, 507 W. 14th, St.
Inside, students are packed together in the smoke-filled room, beers in hand, singing to the music from the overhead speakers.
The scene is a typical Friday afternoon at one of Lawrence's 45 bars. What the scene doesn't show, however, is the problem alcohol becomes for many KU students; however, the missed classes, the blues, the fights and the injuries that are caused by problem drinking.
Tony Rock, Liberal senior, said he had missed class because of hangovers after drinking during the week and had gotten into fights in bars when he was drunk. In one brawl, he broke his hand.
The real trouble came last year when he received a citation for driving under the influence. A $500 fine, numerous hours of community service, an alcohol safety program and the loss of his license, however, have not altered his drinking habits.
Rock said he usually went out drinking six nights a week and typically got drunk two or three times each week.
"I don't miss class often because of hangovers," he said. "And I've been drinking and driving. I probably drink vink as much after I graduate."
Chris Mulvenon, Lawrence police spokesman, said 95 percent of the disturbance calls the police department received during the weekend involved alcohol. In a typical weekend, between 16 and 25 arrests are alcohol-related.
"It may be a fight, a disturbance or an injury," Mulvenon said. "Or it may be no more than a shoving match. There's probably about a third to a half who are repeat offenders."
Donald Goodwin, head of the psychiatry department at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan, said drinking served as a release from tension for many people.
Len Johnson, Kansas City, Kan., junior, said he got to the Wheel by 2 p.m. every Friday.
"When Friday rolls around, students want to escape reality. Alcoa helps people forget temporarily. It breaks down shyness," he said.
"The Wheel on Fridays — there's nothing better," he said. "It gets crazy."
Johnson said he usually would go to eat after spending more than four hours of drinking at the Wheel Inn, which is a tavern for the rest of the evening.
Johnson said that, on the average, he would go drinking with friends four times a week but that he would never get drunk.
"I usually have 10 or 11 beers but
it's no problem," he said. "I don't get drunk."
Goodwin, who has written numerous books and articles on alcoholism, said drinking became part of his life when he interfered with a person's life.
His study on genetics and alcoholism has proved that the disease runs in families, even when children are not exposed to non-alcoholic environments.
"The tendency toward alcoholism is inherent in some people," he said. "It runs in families even when we aren't raised by alcoholic parents."
Charles Yockey, chief of staff at Watkins Memorial Health Center, said alcohol was the number one medical problem at the University.
"It's overwhelming. A lot of students have the impression that you can't have a good time unless you're snuckered," he said. "People feel better about themselves when they're drunk."
able "
"They feel more powerful, more intelligent. All of those feelings that alcohol gives you are pleasur-
Peer pressure is a leading cause of the problem, Yoyckey said, because college is the first time most students have lived away from home, and the desire to fit in with the group is overwhelming.
"It's a means of acceptance," he said. "You want to do what the group is doing."
Some students also use alcohol as a coping mechanism for problems, Yocvey said.
"They perceive it as a release or an escape from their stress or boredom," he said. "They say I can get through today because I know I can get trashed on Friday night."
Alcohol does not create a problem until it begins to interfere with a person's ability to function physically or mentally. Yokev said.
"Any time you pass out, fall down or hurt yourself, that's a problem drinker," he said.
Alcohol abuse is associated with unwanted pregnancies, accidents, rapes and sexually transmitted diseases.
The medical problems that accompany excessive drinking also are a problem. Thousands of brain cells are destroyed every time a person gets drunk, Yockey said.
"The majority of the cases we
Alcohol is a toxin to the stomach lining, nervous system and esophagus. As a result of long-term drinking, people can develop cancer in these areas as well as the liver, mouth, pharynx and larynx.
"You can't repeatedly poison your cells and have them stay normal," Yockey said. "The key word is moderation."
Excessive drinking, however, is not only a problem for college students.
see in the emergency room after 10 m. are alcohol-related," he said. "People get in fights in bars or fall down. There isn't a week that goes by that we don't sew up four or five or even six students."
"Alcohol is a problem in every big company. It is not a problem that stops when you leave college," he said. "In some cases, it gets worse when they leave because the stress increases."
Younger crowd seeks help from campus AA
By Stacy Smith Kansan staff writer
The names of recovering alcoholics used in this story have been changed to protect their anonymity.
One young man, anxious to begin the meeting, read the opening words, "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot understand, and change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
He then introduced himself. "Hi, my name is Chris, and I'm an alcoholic."
"Hi Chris," the group responded in unison.
"I still want to drink, but I know I can't," he said.
Chris, a KU student, is a recovering alcoholic. With the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, he has been able to keep from drinking — one day at a time. Alcoholics Anonymous is just one of several organizations in Lawrence where people like Chris can find help for their alcohol problems.
At a recent AA meeting on campus, the group was diverse. Some participants were KU students, others were KU staff members and a few were members of the Lawrence community. Despite their range of backgrounds and interests, they met for a common purpose - sobriety.
They spoke of their desires, their fears and their ongoing battle with alcoholism.
"I don't want a drink, " I like to have, 1,000 of them," Bill said. "This last week, I had two dreams where 't got drunk. I woke up ashamed. I'm glad to be here. I like to go to these meetings."
Anonymity is the most important element and Alcoholics Anonymous groups work to maintain it in all circumstances. Members give their full names or they can choose to use their first names only.
The meetings revolve around a 12-step program, which begins with members admitting they are powerless over alcohol and that their lives have become unmanageable. According to AA literature, they also come to believe in a power greater than themselves, whether it is God or another spiritual being.
Alcoholics Anonymous offers more than 50 meetings a week in Lawrence, several of which are on campus. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for membership.
"There is no shortage of help for people with an alcohol problem," said William Buck, president of the Douglas County Citizens Committee on Alcoholism. "In AA and DCCCA, you're seeing more young people recovering. It used to be primarily people in their 40s."
The Douglas County Citizens Committee on Alcoholism is a local organization that helps people with alcohol and drug problems. The cost for treatment is based on a sliding scale, which is determined by an individual's ability to nav.
Buck, a physician at Watkins
Memorial Health Center, said counselors evaluated patients to determine whether they were alcoholics or had minor alcohol problems.
"Each individual has different ways that it affects them," he said. "They don't have to drink every day. They might only get drunk every weekend and that makes their life unmanageable."
Bruce Beale, executive director of DCCCA, said about 100 of the 425 people the center treated last year were students.
"Most of them come here because we are the specific drug and alcohol center in town," he said. "A lot of the students that and up here are brought here through the courts. They were arrested for drunken driving or other alcohol-related crimes."
After patients are evaluated to test the severity of their alcohol problems, counselors outline the best course of treatment, Beale said. People with mild problems meet individually with counselors once or twice a week and go to a therapy group once a week.
Those with more serious problems often require detoxification at a hospital or inpatient treatment center. The length of stay varies from five days to a month. After leaving the center, Beale said, they must receive outpatient counseling once a week and join another program such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
"It takes a lot of people until they're arrested, have an accident or lose their job, before they try to get help," Beale said. "But we're seeing a lot more people at younger ages now."
The health education department at Watkins is working to reduce problem drinking at KU with alcohol awareness programs. Mary Altenhoff, health educator at Watkins, said she performed between 30 and 40 programs a year at residence halls, scholarship halls, sororites and fraternities upon request.
"We don't go with the idea of 'don't drink at all.' That's not realistic," she said. "It doesn't go over well. We use the philosophy of responsible drinking."
Some people never admit to having a problem, she said, because the college scene revolves around drinking.
"If they can't ever just say, 'This is all. I'm just going to have two beers, more than likely they have a problem,' Altenhoen said."
Many students do not realize that it takes an hour to an hour and a half to metabolize 12 ounces of beer or 5 ounces of wine or hard liquor, she said. In a study conducted last year, 50 percent of students on campus said they had driven while drunk and 66 percent said they had ridden with someone who had been drinking.
"There's definitely a good number of problem drinkers on this campus, but hopefully, it's short-lived," she said. "Finally and eventually, alcohol catches up with you. It can happen to anybody. Alcoholics aren't the typical skid row bums — they're also college students."
Prof recalls wartime experience in Europe
By Lara Weber
Kansan staff writer
In 1937, the safest place for a young Jewish man was not Austria.
But that's where Harry Shaffer, then 18 years old, was growing up when Adolph Hitter's Nazis began to spread anti-Semitism across Europe.
"When the Nazis came, Austria is a small country." Shaffer said. "There wasn't enough room for Hitler and me. He didn't want to leave, so I left. Being that I'm Jewish, it's lucky that I got out."
Shaffer said his mother had been very insistant on getting out of Europe, even though other Jews thought the problems would not escalate.
"She said it was much too dangerous, and we didn't know what would happen," he said. *
Even though Shaffer, who is now a professor of economics and East European studies at the University of Kansas, was one of the first in Europe to apply for a visa from the U.S. Embassy before World War II, his journey to the United States was not easy.
"When I asked how long it would take, they said, 'at least 20 years,'" he said. "That's how many people had applied to leave."
When he applied for the visa, he was told it would take six months to process. After six months, Shafter was in Paris. He went to the U.S. Embassy to pick up his visa, but he found Vienna for his records, there were no files in his name. They told him he would have to reapply.
Shaffer said it wasn't until years
later that he learned what had happened to his file.
"Two American vice counsels had taken out files and put others in for money," he said. "That dashed my hope to come to America for a while."
Shaffer spent a year in Italy and prince before he was able to obtain a villa, where several of his relatives lived. He stayed in Caba for two years.
"In four years, under the GF Bill. I got my bachelor's degree, my master's degree and one course from my Ph.D.," he said.
Finally, in 1940, he got a visa to the United States and moved to New York with his mother.
After serving in the U.S. Army to two years in military intelligence, Shaffer was eligible for money for school under the GI Bill.
He earned a doctorate 10 years later, in 1958, at the University of Kansas.
Now, at 70, Shaffer is wrapping up his career at KU after more than 30 years of inspiring students to appreciate the arts and planning to retire after the spring season.
"It's not that I want them to get the technical points," Shaffer said. "like to make it interesting, with examples and lakes."
"You are supposed to retire when you are 70," he said. "My birthday was Aug. 28, the first day of classes, so I got an extra year to teach."
With a heavy German accent, Shafer uses a sense of humor to impress upon his students the difference
His favorite class to teach is Economies 104, a class for non-economics majors.
between the national debt and the national deficit.
"To cut the deficit is easier said than done," he said. "If you like Reagan or not, and I can't say I was crazy about him, he did want to cut the deficit. But the debt, it doubled in eight years. The debt increased as much in eight years as it did between 1776 and 1980."
Shaffer said he had been using examples from current world events to demonstrate economics in action. Watching Europe
Shaffer said he tried to show that extremes were not necessarily the best for a society. He uses the Soviet Union and the United States to prove his point: neither a totally planned economy nor a totally free market can be successful.
"Before the 1930s, America had no social programs, and we had the worst depression of our history," he said.
The recent reforms throughout Eastern Europe spark a special interest in Shaffer, not only because of his Soviet studies, but because he has many friends throughout Europe, some in East Berlin.
"Six months ago, there was not a soul in the world that would've predicted these changes so quickly," he said.
But now, he said, most people believe in what Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is trying to accomplish
"In my opinion, what Gorbachev wants is to get the best of all possible worlds," he said. "He wants to combine the apparent greater efficiency and productivity of a market economy with some undeniable benefits of socialism: free education, medical
care, guaranteed employment."
Germany, he says, is a different case than the rest of Eastern Europe. With the recent travel freedoms granted to East Germans, however, Shaffer said that many probably would stay in East Germany.
"Many visit West Germany but return primarily because the government said they were free to come and go," he said.
Shaffer first returned to Europe in 1964, when he traveled to Munich, West Germany.
"The Germans want to rectify the situation," he said.
Being Jewish made his experience there different, he said. He was not about continued anti-Semitism but about his views changed after he arrived.
A monument outside a resort called Baden-Baden, about 100 miles south of Frankfurt on the Rhine River in West Germany, helped change Shaffer's view of the Germans.
"They had erected a monument to 'our Jewish fellow citizens.' he said.
"It was a very moving experience to find that kind of monument in Germany." Shaffer said.
An inscription on the monument stated: "And not one of us raised his hand in protest. To remember is to ask for forgiveness."
The same attitude was not found in Austria, however. Shaffer said that while he was in Europe he saw a survey the Austrian government had taken showing that 40 percent of respondents were very strongly anti-Semitic. He did not return to his homeland.
Activism brought him to KU
"I believe in equality of all human beings," he said. "An individual should be judged on his or her actions and not race, sex or country of origin."
Shaffer says he knows there are still leFTer anti-Semitics from the Nazi era but that there are racists in this country as well.
His belief in human equality has prompted activism in many organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Americans for Democratic Action and the Lawrence League for the Practice of Democracy.
Shaffer came to the University in 1966, after teaching at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, for six years. He left Alabama because of a controversy over admission of a Black female student to a college in Alabama. The Board of Regents in Alabama denied her admission, so Shaffer and several others decided to leave Alabama in protest.
"I felt, under these circumstances,
I could no longer be associated with
them."
In 1884, Shaffer met his present wife, Betty.
Shaffer applied to the University and was hired by the department of economics, sight unseen.
With a smile, he tells about meeting her in a train station and persuading her to leave her Newport Beach home to come to Lawrence. They were married in 1887.
Shaffer has lived in Lawrence since, with the exception of a summer spent as a visiting professor at North State College in Oregon in 1983 and a professor at the University of California—made from 1972 to 1974.
Betty Shaffer said they were in a train station in New York when they met.
"We were both going to Boston, and we sat together on the train," she said. "After four-and-a-half hours we knew we were meant for each other."
She refers to her husband as her 'soul-mate' and says their marriage has worked out beautifully.
Shaffer says his greatest love is traveling. Though most of his experience has been in Europe, he also has been to Costa Rica and all over the United States.
He and his wife belong to an international organization called Selvas, which matches approved travelers with volunteer hosts throughout the world. Shaffer said the program was devoted to the establishment of friendships and relations.
The Selvas program always pro
provides interesting experiences, Shafi
feel said. Once, with a family in
France, he and his wife stayed up
and danced until 3 a.m. And in West
East Berlin, he arrived at a home to
find they were included in a dinner
party of 11 people they had never met
After Shaffer leaves the University, he says he hopes to be remembered for awakening students to world economic problems.
Then he pauses and says, "I'd like to be remembered for, in my own little way, as having tried to do something to make this world a better place to live in."