5A
Fridav. January 31, 1997
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Letter
Western Civilization class excludes women's view
It's the fall of 1996. I enter the Wescoe auditorium, the first day of Western Civilization I, thinking this is just one more of the many required courses at KU sucking away what little money I have. Zeroing in on the syllabus and reading/lecture material, I discover that female thought during the studied time period is lacking slightly. Actually, there is not a single work that is written by a woman.
Absence of female experiences leaves the history of early western civilization more than incomplete; it is inadequate.
In fact, the history that is presented becomes a male-oriented, or
patriarchal account of events. Females of earlier times represent more than nonthinking bodies, although most of the objectifying, sexist authors who are studied try to convince readers otherwise.
This issue spans beyond the tiny bubble known as the University of Kansas into the larger social problem of female roles and thought in history. Their role is simply a subdivision of the male historical thought.
Denying female historical figures a voice, or even visibility, reinforces the notion that in male, or patriarchal history, female thought is illegitimate, if even existing. That is, through the mentally-abusing negligence of women in this Western Civilization course, the affirmation is
made that the female point of view does not matter, even in the setting of a college campus, where the thinking is expected to be slightly progressive, or trying to encompass all points of view.
Patriarchal sexism molds the content of this syllabus. Denying women diverse voices in history denies students a complete education.
Negligence is abuse. And I'd also like to extend my warmest thanks to Chancellor Hemenway and the Director of the Western Civilization Department for not responding to the letters I sent them.
Machelle Collier Lawrence senior
Today's kids burdened with too many duties
Once there was a girl named Katie. She was only six, but she didn't have time to be young. The world Katie lived in had no room for children. She was a piece of society, a scrap of humanity and such things cannot dwell in a world of bicycles and Barbie dolls.
Each day was a lesson in civic responsibility. "You are the future," the growups said, and they handed her the future, bound up in burp sacks, so heavy that she struggled to hold it all. "I am the future," she recited, and the future was death and famine and catastrophe; the future was racism and guns and hatred; and oh, it was heavy.
"It's up to you," they told her, and they walked away.
Time was a luxury in Katie's world. Her school life was full of political essentials: evolution and Ebonics, relationships and relativism, death and taxes. If she had a spare moment she might ponder 2+2, but it didn't really matter because every answer was right.
She learned to read by looking at the posters in the hallways that pronounced inscrutable jeremiads, —
the end of the environment, the loss of self-esteem, the imperialism of Western civilization.
The grownups — folks like you
and me — made a sport of telling the most shocking stories, satisfied only when their prophecies dominated Katie's nightmares.
They lied to her.
They told her that the sacrifice of her individuality was for the good
of society, that she had to join the causes and marches.
To the adults in her life, Katie was anything but innocent, everything but a child, nothing but a statistic. She was an instrument of social engineering, a two-legged guinea pig.
They tried everything out on her, applying untested theories and unjustified political doctrine to every aspect of her life. They convinced her that she had no soul,
only a random wad of emotion.
They told her that nothing was wrong as long as it brought her pleasure. They insisted that if she were not completely happy, there was someone to blame.
It seemed that person was almost always one — or both — of her parents, and the gulf between Katie and her family erupted and widened even as she reached out for them — the only grownups she could trust.
But the grownups told her it was up to her, that she was the future. No time for Uncle Wiggy or Chutes and Ladders. It was time to learn sexual harassment and economic equality.
"It's not fair," she sometimes whispered to herself.
Once there was a girl named Katie, and she lived in a world whose emptiness consumed her childhood.
What a waste. Why can't we let the children be?
Andy Rohrback is an Andover junior in journalism.
E-mail: arohrback@kansan.com
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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
It isn't pleasant, but issue of 'right to die' is fact of life
How many times have I heard a friend or loved one say that, or something like it?
Spreading Love Across The Campus.
"Don't let me ever get into that situation. Kill me quick. I hope you will call Dr. Keyorkian or somebody."
Why has physician-assisted suicide become such a big issue in recent years? Perhaps it is because so many of us self-absorbed baby boomers are seeing you parents facing death — and coming to grips in mid-life with our own morality, too. We have gone from Dr. Spock to Dr. Kevorkian.
Jack Kevorkian, the crading Michigan suicide doctor, was not a figure in the oral arguments about the right to die by physician-assisted suicide that the Supreme Court heard recently. But his presence loomed large.
Most "right to die" supporters would restrict that right to the terminally ill and only as a last resort. Yet Kevorkian has stretched those standards beyond recognition. As his critics point out, only 20 percent of his "subjects" have been terminally ill. Most were disabled. The three most controversial showed no physical illness on autopsy.
He admits to having assisted in four deaths. Yet no jury has convicted him. Forced by the zealous Kevorkian to face the pain and heartache of his subjects, as he has called them, juries crumble.
Also troubling is the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision now before the Supreme Court. It allowed that a "duly appointed surrogate decision maker is, for all legal purposes, the decision of the patient himself." Is that the beginning of a slippery slope?
Such boundaries are not easily defined, but they must be drawn to avoid the chaos of complete prohibition, which invites Kevorkian, or complete freedom, which invites other abuses.
That reflects — and partly encourages a growth in public approval for assisted suicide, after may years of hiding the issue. An April Gallup poll indicated that three in four Americans believe doctors should be allowed to end the lives of terminally ill patients by painless means. Only 53 percent agreed with that statement in 1973.
Who's right? The "right to die" issue is really about timing. Who should be allowed to decide the time when they die?
School of Medicine and author of The Ends of Human Life, points out that most patients who seek euthanasia are motivated by desperation and other psychological factors, not by unbearable physical pain. Better pain killers and other therapies can alleviate that.
Yet the severely disabled people in wheelchairs who rallied outside the Supreme Court had a point, too. Leaders of "Not Dead Yet," an activist group for the disabled, argued that legalized physician-assisted suicide will put us on a slippery slope to coaxed and even forced euthanasia for those viewed as too painful, hopeless or expensive to care for in an age of soaring medical costs.
Still, Emanuel says physician-assisted suicide might be allowable in some extreme cases. Like many others, I reluctantly agree. But I also believe the standards for what is allowable should be set by legislators who are accountable to voters, not by judges who are not.
Both sides have too much sympathy and moral weight on their side for the Supreme Court to settle this issue. So, in my opinion, the court shouldn't. For many reasons, it should leave the decision to the states.
By allowing assisted suicide in some extreme cases but not all, the states can provide something neither doctors nor juries have now: brightly lit boundaries between that which is acceptable and that which is not.
The worst thing the court could do would be to try to settle the issue, as it did when it overruled the abortion debate in all 50 states with its Roe vs. Wade decision. Although I supported that decision, I also acknowledge that it cut an important state-by-state debate short and launched a conservative political backlash.
As with the beginnings of life, we, as a society, need to debate its end as thoroughly as possible, especially at a time of rapidly advancing medical science and a continuing debate about HMOs and other health-care reform alternatives.
Ezekiel Emanuel, of the Harvard
The "right to die" may or not be constitutional, but it is a fact of life. Allow it and you have a chance to regulate it. You can require second opinions, waiting periods, special counseling and other safeguards. We can have standards that make sense, even to an emotionally torn jury.
Otherwise, if the high court flatly disallows the right to die, we risk more Kevorkians and less-flamboy-ant suicides without safeguards. Kevorkian pushed this debate. He should not be left to set its standards.
Clarence Page is a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Hubie
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