4A
Friday, December 6, 1996
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Society fails to hold rapists accountable for their actions
After the heinous crime of rape has been committed, another injustice often occurs — the woman is blamed for the crime.
How many times have we heard people say about intoxicated women, "She deserved it"? Society should stop using this reasoning to exonerate men who commit sexual abuse.
In addition, the system that teaches women how to protect themselves from rape rarely teaches men what constitutes rape or how to control their sexual desires. This must be changed to prevent rapes.
Women should take responsibility for their actions especially when drinking. A woman must use common sense when drinking alcohol to help avoid potentially harmful situations.
Last month at a Halloween party, a Southwestern Michigan College student was in such a situation. After a night of drinking, she passed out and allegedly was raped by six college students, five of them freshmen on the school's basketball team, prosecutor Scott Teter said. The men reportedly videotaped the assault and circulated the tape through the campus.
Did this woman consent to having sex with these men? The accused men's defense attorney thinks so.
The attorney, George Howard, told The Kalamazoo Gazette of his clients' innocence: "We are definitely claiming it was consensual."
The woman suffered complications from injuries incurred during the incident. And how can an unconscious woman consent to sex?
Howard responded, "Injuries happen sometimes during sex."
Howard is using a double standard. This faulty reasoning implies that during a sexual encounter, women must be in complete control of their actions while men are left unaccountable for theirs. Showing respect toward others is a responsibility all people owe each other. Not fulfilling this responsibility, no matter what the circumstances, cannot be excused.
NICK ZALLER FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Additional hazing penalties should help reduce problem
University administrators should be commended for recent actions to tighten rules against hazing.
By rewording the code of student rights and responsibilities to include individuals who know that hazing is occurring and do not report it to KU officials, the University has shown that hazing will not be tolerated.
Though rules against hazing at the University have existed for 10 years, hazing still occurs. According to a Dec.4 article in the Kansan,a state statute also makes hazing a criminal offense.
Hazing incidents at the University this fall and in past years prove that it remains a problem. Delta Tau Delta fraternity was placed on disciplinary probation for two years for hazing incidents that occurred at the beginning of the semester.
The University ordered the fraternity to complete a 12point rehabilitation program to restore its good standing.
Last year, Delta Chi received a one-year probation from the University and a two-year probation from its national organization for hazing. The University also gave Alpha Epsilon Pi a two-year probation for hazing incidents.
In the Kansan article, Vice Chancellor David Ambler said individuals would not be held responsible for hazing incidents of which they were unaware.
In the past, greek members who did not participate in hazing incidents but did not report these violations were not punished. Perhaps this tougher policy will keep individuals from protecting students who haze.
NICOLE KENNEDY FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
AMANDA TRAUGHBER
Editor
CRAIG LANG
Managing editor
MATT HOOD
Associate managing editor for design
KIMBERLY CRABTREE
CHARITY JEFFRIES
News editors
DARCI L. McLAIN
SARA ROSE
Public relations directors
KAREN GERSCH
Business manager
HEALY SMART
Retail sales manager
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
JAY STEINER
Sales and marketing adviser
JUSTIN KNUPP
Technology coordinator
Campus ... Susanna Löbf
... Jason Strait
... Amy McVey
Editorial ... John Collier
... Nicole Kennedy
Features ... Justin Wills
Sports ... Bill Petellia
Associate sports ... Carlyn Foster
Online editor ... David L. Teaska
Photo ... Rich Devkind
Graphics ... Noah Musser
Andrew Rothrock
Special sections ... Amy McVey
Wire ... Debbie Staine
Business Staff
Campus mgr .. Mark Ozikm
Regional mgr .. Dennie Haupt
Asistant Retail mgr .. Dena Centeno
National mgr .. Krista Hye
Senior Retail mgr .. Helen Niece
Production mgr ..丹Keoppe
Lisa Quebbaman
Marketing director .. Eric Johnson
Creative director .. Desmond Lavelle
Sales manager .. Shane Lam
Mass impact mgr .. Dena Ploclette
Internet mgr .. Steve Sanger
Jeff MacNelly/ CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Media coverage of Africa needs historical context
Via new pictures of famine, Africa has found its way back into our newspapers and onto our television screens.
Images of refuge camps in eastern Zaire reveal another humanitarian crisis, the latest link in a long chain of disastrous conflicts in Africa that highlight another example of the social and political ills common to many of its states.
Although these tragedies show dramatic patterns and similarities, the news coverage of African politics remains hindered by nearsightedness. Despite obvious links of the current situation in east-central Africa to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the paradigm employed by most mainstream media has failed to help readers grasp the overall truth of the situation. While reports of factual observations continue to flow out of the area, they only tell half the story. In effect, the story is covered but not explained.
News coverage of a seemingly senseless ethnic conflict continues to dominate the reporting of African politics. It largely focuses on instinctive interpretations of current events. Media consumers are baffled by the coverage of unconnected tragedies that appear to explode in this region. Lacking explanations for the turbulent climate, many news agencies opt for a
STAFF COLUMNIST
religious interpretation, which portrays African societies as dominated by primordial sentiments and embodied by a static tradition. The ethnic conflict is a matter of groups who have hated each other for hundreds of years.
assessment of the situation fits into a simple logic. Apparent spats that explode from time to time in Africa are labeled as ethnic conflicts and are given no further explanation. Consequently, just as the news coverage of Africa is curtailed after the genocide, it is inching its way back to newspapers after 500,000 Hutus reportedly made their way back to Rwanda.
This convenient
Often news coverage of conflicts in African politics lacks sufficient explanations. For the average reader, hearing about the Hutus or Tutsis is meaningless. To give our knowledge of this continent depth, history needs to be explained in the coverage. Many of Africa's problems lie in the colonial period.
In a time when ethnic and cultural tensions have replaced ideological
competition as the primary source of world conflict, our understanding of social constructions is important. The news media can bring understanding of these tensions by providing readers and viewers with the correct historical insight.
To do otherwise perpetuates apprehension, confusion and ignorance. The media must adapt to the post-Cold War world. Because ethnic conflicts probably will continue to consume much of the foreign news coverage, understanding the origins of ethnic divisions is crucial.
Significant pressures for democratization that produced a wide array of results swept through Africa in the early 1990s. Sub-Saharan Africa is at a critical juncture during which democracy will be handed an important verdict. It's the job of the news media to educate the world about this important time.
Sub-Saharan Africa needs more sophisticated news coverage. More than documentaries of the Bushman or short reports on coups and countercoups, news coverage involving the complex conflicts rooted in Africa's colonial period is needed.
Andrew Longstreet is a Liberty, Mo.
senior in French and political science.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Article misrepresented KU production of Hair
I am writing about Bradley Brooks' commentary on Hair: Revised in the Nov. 25 Kansas. Brooks wrote, "Enough of the hippie crap, already." Well, what exactly were you expecting? Theater is fun. Watch musicals to have fun, not just to learn.
Also, Brooks clearly has a warped understanding of the musical. He seems to think that these hippies were nothing but shallow drug users who bashed the young men sent to war and that a leading woman was nothing but an airhead who identified herself by the object of her affections.
The love and compassion the hippies had was not at all negatively slanted toward the men sent to war. The whole point was that, to them, the war was wrong and
Brooks asked, "Who chooses what University Theatre produces?" I'll tell you who. Brilliant professors, actors and directors in the theater program. People who have made theater their lives and who hold a valuable amount of knowledge that every single theater student cherishes. And one shouldn't write off the history of America by saying that we should "move on with our generation's own thoughts and ideas."
True, but we also need to learn from our past, and ignoring a very significant part of our history is absolutely ludicrous.
Dora Naughton Columbia, Mo., sophomore
the lives of young Americans and innocent Vietnamese citizens shouldn't be lost.
Are you opinionated? Become a contributor to the editorial page
Has the weather got you down?
Are you suffering from flashbacks caused by the 1966 elections? Are you worried about paranormal activity? Don't worry: The Kansar has the answer.
If you want to let the University community know how you feel about almost any issue at all, here is your opportunity.
Applications for columnists, editorial board members and cartoonists/illustrators for Spring 1997 are available in the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. Applications are due by noon Dec. 9. New staff members will be announced by 4 p.m. Dec. 11. All majors are encouraged to apply. No experience is necessary. Questions may be directed to Kimberly Crabtree, 864-4810 or krcrabtree@kansan.com/
Infant murders reveal need for societal action to find solution
It does not happen every day, but unfortunately it also is not uncommon: An abandoned baby is found dead in a dumpster somewhere, and the parents are nowhere to be found. Sad, but it happens. And it happened again last week.
What caught the public's attention in this case was that the baby was not a minority, and the parents were not poor. They are upper class; they are white; they are educated. But
STAFF COLUMNIST
nonetheless,
after Amy Grossberg gave birth to a healthy baby boy,
her boyfriend, Brian Peterson Jr., put the newborn in a plastic sack and threw him in a trash container in Franklin Lakes, N.J.
What is more,
when police
found the body, it
had been shaken
to death and its brain was crushed. This crime makes even me, a woman staunchly against the death penalty, wonder whether eye-for-an-eye justice is not such a bad idea, although I think that the death penalty would not involve enough pain for what these two teens did.
A great amount of media attention has surrounded this story because of the nature of the crime and the socioeconomic status of the accused. But as I said, it is not an uncommon act. According to the Dec. 2 issue of *Newsweek*, the FBI reported that 207 children younger than a week old were killed in 1994.
The reason most of these did not attract the same media attention as the Grossberg/Peterson case was that most of the killings occurred in lower-class, minority neighborhoods. These murders were glossed over. I guess it takes an upper-class, white couple killing a baby for the action to be considered a problem.
And it is a problem. These two affluent teens did not feel as if they had anyone to talk to or anywhere to go. Grossberg allegedly did everything possible to hide the pregnancy from her mother because she was unable to face her. So the teens did the only thing they thought they could do because they felt they had nowhere else to turn. And if two rich kids have no place to go, that does not bode well for the rest of the population.
There are many places to point fingers; it is a widespread problem with many underlying causes. The teens are at fault for committing the crime. The parents are at fault because they did not have a relationship with their children that enabled the teens to feel supported. The school system is at fault for not providing adequate counseling programs. Society is at fault because teen-agers should not be having sex, as our society promotes. It is everybody's fault. It is nobody's fault. We live in a society in which this kind of thing happens. No one questions why anymore.
At this point, it is almost too late to question. It has happened before, even here in Lawrence, and it will happen again. But perhaps knowing where to go for help would be the first step in stopping such a brutal murder.
If you have a problem, talk to someone. Find a friend you trust. Go see a counselor at Watkins Memorial Health Center. But do not just sit and be scared. Get help. Maybe if these teens had, one less murder might have been recorded in the record book.
Stacy Nagy is a Topica Junior in Russian and women's studies.
OUT FROM THE CRACKS
By Jeremy Patnoi
THEN, I CAN START STUDYING FOR MY FINALS!