Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Sept. 9, 1985, edition 1 / Page 6
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6The Daily Tar HeelMonday, September 9, 1985 g Star iiffl rsis 9Jr j'ear of editorial freedom llie Stewart 1 dy ARNE RlCKERT AND Editor STUART TONKINSON Msiugmg Editor BEN PERKOWSKI Associate Editor Dick Anderson Assoc Editor Janet Olson University Editor Amy Stvers n ew ANDYTRINaA Sute end NeiionJ Editor Beating the AIDS In Miami, three little girls have an entire school to themselves play ground, hallways, food service, televi sion. The children are not gifted, but sick. In New York City, public school teachers and parents fret over Saturday's announcement of the admission of an unknown second-grader, who is infected but not ill. In Sweden, an afflicted man avoided a speeding ticket by threatening to bite any police officer who came near. Fourteenth-century Europe lost a third of its population when rats bearing the bubonic plague arrived in Venice aboard a ship from the Middle East. Spain and Latin America were ham mered two centuries later when the conquistadors swapped smallpox and the common cold for syphilis. Each of those epidemics were accompanied by widespread fear at the sudden appear ance of an inexplicable, horrible new way to die. , Today, AIDS is sweeping the United States, and fear is adding to the suffering. The sickness is not easy to catch, so the death toll might not reach historical levels. But one million Amer icans already are said to carry the virus, and 12,000 have fallen sick. The disease has a long incubation period and is slow to kill; the numbers of the sick and the dead can only swiftly mount. With any cure still years away, precautions must be taken against plague and fear alike. The bug itself is medically difficult to tackle. Once in the body, it apparently hides everywhere, including the brain, where doctors' heaviest pharmaceutical artillery cannot be deployed safely. Existing drugs, such as Seramin, merely delay death. For now, federal and state governments can only lavish researchers with money. In the meantime, efforts must focus on checking the ailment's spread. AIDS is not a special venereal disease for homosexual men. It seems to be blood borne and has been contracted by hemophiliacs, intravenous drug users and the children of infected mothers. The disease appears to be spread not by To the dfh degree Be not fearful of taboos I want to review a certain controversy that arose late last week concerning Friedrich Nietzsche's all-too-famous state ment "God is dead and the fact that we chose to print the statement as our front page "bottom quote." Wednesday was still young and bright when Dave and I began to discover the extent of the controversy that was resulting from our having run that bottom quote. Shortly after 1 in the afternoon, I returned to the office, having made the rounds of my morning classes. At that time, the people from advertising informed me that a group of as many as 10 students had been in the office not more than a half hour beforehand, demanding to speak to one of the editors. They had departed unsatisfied, I was told, but had not mentioned what their grievance was. None of us suspected immediately that the bottom quote was the root of their grievance. But by late afternoon, when Dave and I returned from the memorial service that was held for Sharon Lynn Stewart, the , phone messages awaiting us made clear the cause of the controversy. Late in the afternoon, Dave spoke on the phone with a young man who had called while we were out,and had been told that we were at the memorial service. He wondered whether there wasnt a contradiction in our running the Nietzsche quotation and our attending the service, which was conducted by a Lutheran minister. I leave it to you to judge whether or not the inherent reasoning of his question was fallacious, or even unfair. Of all the responses that Dave and I fielded during that day and the next, it seems that our critics engaged in two processes, which more often than not became almost irremediably intertwined: First, there came an analysis, from a personal standpoint, of Nietzsche's state ment as it stands; and second, there came what should have been an unrelated analysis of our motivations in running the quotation from Nietzsche. I found it extremely disturbing that people who had spoken not a word about previous bottom quotes suddenly found that they had the time or the inspiration to object to the Nietzsche quotation. I think 1 it fair to say that under our editorship, DAVID SCHMIDT Editor Leigh Wiluams Mark Powell Lee Roberts Frank Bruni Sharon Sheridan City Editor Business Editor Sports Editor Arts Editor Features Editor Larry Childress Pboto Editor casual contact but by contaminated blood transfusions, anal sex and reused syringes. All three channels can be attacked. The safeguarding of blood supplies is already under way. Last week, men who have had sex with another man in the last eight years were asked not to give blood. Although the move raises fears of discrimination if copied by the private sector, the Defence Department has announced that to maintain the option of battlefield transfusions, it soon will begin testing recruits for infection. Blood banks are being tested by a newly developed, highly accurate technique. One response proposed to curb the spread of AIDS by hypodermic needles is to make such instruments freely and legally available to all. This would, however, encourage drug use while probably not significantly curbing the disease. Similar programs to curb Hepatitis B, another malady carried by unclean syringes, have had Utile impact. The best policy would be an information campaign aimed at the drug users. Federal and state governments also should launch and fund a media cam paign encouraging adults in general and homosexuals in particular to refrain from anal intercourse with all save partners trusted absolutely. Built into every measure should be public relations work to allay public fears. Free, confidential tests should be offered at all public hospitals. If a courageous public figure can be found, a series of nationally televised ads should be aired illustrating the safety of pecking on the cheek and shaking hands with homosexuals in general and AIDS victims in particular. Community groups should provide financial and emotional assistance to the already sick, who often are abandoned by their families. No UNC student has yet contracted AIDS. North Carolina as a whole has a low incidence of the disease. To keep the campus safe and to prepare for any panic or prejudices that may surface, work must begin now. the bottom quote has become a forum of ideas which, for the most part, are derived from world literature. We have tried to select quotations whose purpose was to inspire thoughtful, reasonable conversa tion. Yet suddenly, with our publication of the quotation from Nietzsche (whose philosophical works must certainly be considered as part of world literature), many people felt strongly that we, as the editors of their student newspaper, were unduly editorializing on the front page of the paper. They who had accepted expressly opinionated quotations from such figures as Oscar Wilde, O. Henry, John Selden, Mark Twain, Samuel Beckett and Honore de Balzac were not willing to allow the academic spirit to pertain to religion. Rather than confronting the ideas implicit in Nietzsche's quotation, those who objected to the quotation, objected absolutely. Each of the people with whom I spoke declared that they thought the issue was much too personal a thing to run in the paper; that is, their reactions were of a substantially personal level that they felt the Nietzsche quotation should not be represented as "food for thought" in our newspaper. It did not come as much of a surprise to me that these same people were more than willing to discuss their religious views with us, despite whatevei grounds for objection they had brought up previously. Indeed, they often sustained the conver sation for longer than I would have liked. So on the one hand, they agreed that the bottom quote was a legitimate forum, and that it existed in order to present "pro vocative" ideas to our audience; then, on the other hand, they objected to the very conversations in which they had shown themselves to be more than willing to engage. One need not expend much energy in defending our legal right to run such a bottom quote that was never the issue. However, when the critics tie their shoes with one hand and untie it with the other, they are left barefoot in a field of reverse logic. - ARNE RICKEItt Getting together to prevent By EILENE BISGROVE The tragic losses of Sharon Stewart and Jean Fewel were not only grievous but perhaps preventable. In Fewel's case, George Richard Fisher was an insufficiently monitored parolee working in Chapel Hill. In Stewart's case, Maxwell Avery Wright, the man charged with her kidnapping and murder, was out on bond for assaulting a woman with a knife. I am a female graduate student at UNC. I recently searched Chapel Hill hardware stores until I found mace and a sound alarm. But I intend to do more. I want to interest others in joining a coalition to study past violence, particularly toward women and children, and to take action toward the prevention of future violence. We need to know more about crimes against women and children, repeat offenders, court dispositions, parole and self-defense. Women's Right to Know (WORK) is in the We can't sacrifice autonomy out of fear By PEGGIE PORTER Just about everything has been said about Sharon Stewart's death. It was unnecessary. It was a waste. It was a tragedy. She was too young to die, and the person accused of killing her is also too young to die. Now that the incident is over for most of us (except Sharon's family and friends), we must try to learn a lesson or two from it. Already the wrong lessons are being propagated. "Be careful,'' people say. "My mother told me to take five guys with me everywhere I go," I overheard one girl tell her friends. One young man wrote a letter to the editor offering his phone number to any female who needed an escort home. Ignoring the obvious question (why trust someone who gives his number to the newspaper?), there is a bothersome attitude brought to light by this letter. Sharon Stewart was being careful. She wasn't alone. She wasn't drunk. She was parked in a well-lighted lot not far from the beaten path. He got her anyway. Why, then, is the resounding cry still "Be careful. Don't walk alone"? We are all worried about the people we love, READER FORUM 'DTH' is dead! D TH' is dead! 'DTH' is dead! To the editors: I believe that Sept. 4's bottom quote, Nietzsche's proclamation that "God is dead," is a very inappropriate use of one man's opinion. I believe that God is very much alive and thus disagree with Nietzsche and the DTH editors. If the quote is an expression of editorial opinion, I challenge the editors to investigate the opposite belief that God is alive. If the quote . is considered to be a report, report fairly that many people, living and Carson's letter nothing but Nietzsche-picking To the editors: It is too routine now to see people like Scott Carson (" DTH' scrapes the bottom of the quote barrel" Sept. 5) advocating censorship of "un-Christian" ideas to bother arguing in so small a space. Limited space also prevents any real attempt to clarify the popular misconception of Nietzsche's philosophy, propa gated in the main by those who hve never read Nietzsche. Even more futile is debating more academic points; som? hold Nietzsche, for example, to be one of the most moral philosophers of the modem age, and his use of the maxim is formative stage and will require nurturing and volunteers. Goals of the coalition include: Monitoring court cases of violence against women and children through court attendance and media surveillance. This process would begin for Orange County and expand outward. Development of social and political action strategies based on findings from monitoring. This might entail lobbying for mandatory detention until trial for positively identified (hard evidence) offenders arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, or hastening trial procedures for offenders out on bail. Conduct extensive research on character istics of crimes, victims and perpetrators. This would lead to development of improved prevention strategies for women. Research past outcomes of self-defense attempts during assaults, and the probabilities for success or failure of various strategies under specified conditions. especially the women we love, who are almost always the victims of these randomly violent crimes. In the immediate wake of something like the Sharon Stewart case, our worrying increases. That's human nature, just as after a hurricane we worry about our friends who live at the beach. Hurricanes, like lightning, like a lot of killers, strike at random. But we don't tell our girlfriends and boyfriends, "Don't go out in the rain; you might get struck by lightning." We trust them to stay away from trees, to pull over to the side of the road if the rain gets too bad. In the end we all have to trust those around us to make the right decisions about where they will go and what measures they will take to protect themselves. The author of the letter with the phone number sounded incredulous: Why are you girls taking your lives in your own hands? he seemed to ask. As though it were our own fault if something happened to us. As though the responsibility to prevent random violence was on the potential victim. There are a lot of reasons why people get assaulted and murdered. One of them is not that women walk alone at night. Sharon Stewart's death should have taught us that we are not immune, even when we are not alone. A policeman quoted in a recent article dead, proclaim God to be living! Nietzsche's quote is offered with out explanation; the paper does not explain whether the editors endorse a dead God, if the paper's staff endorses a dead God, or if the student body endorses a dead God. This student does not. The editors choose to print provocative material without explanation, a choice that should be considered carefully. Similarly provocative quotes can be found concerning racial groups, said by famous politicians and people. Are the editors intending on printing such quotes without expla nation, at the expense of offending members of these groups, just because the view expressed by such a quote is held by few people and not often heard? The use of Nietzsche's quote is especially inappropriate with respect to the memorial service held the same day for the slain UNC student, a service conducted by a Lutheran pastor a representative of the, yes, living God. If anything, - mmmmmmm , generally considered both brilliant and innovative. Easily refuted, however, is Carson's belief that Nietzsche is impugned by Hitler's fondness for him. After all, Hitler quoted Christ far more often than Nietzsche. Anyone familiar with Nietzsche's work knows that he despised German nationalism, abhorred anti-Semitism ("that Ger man disease," as he called it) and predicted with much accuracy the disastrous results that these twin evils would one day cause. I sup pose, according to Carson's think ing, that since Himmler doted on Rilke we should not reprint him, or since Somoza liked Shakespeare he should not be read. I suppose we all know that Vlad the Impaler knew most of Wordsworth by heart. All of which means nothing. After all, Ronald Reagan is said to enjoy Mark Twain, but this would not compel me to burn Huckleberry Finn. Stephen Ciesielski Chapel Hill , P.S. It is vain to suggest that Carson acquire his philosophical education elsewhere than toilets, I'm sure. future crimes WORK will require your support. We need concerned male and female students, legal counselors, sociologists, criminologists, jour nalists, statisticians, psychologists, grant writers, court monitors, word processors and more. There will be a start-up meeting this Wednesday, Sept. 11, at 8 p.m. in Room 212 of the Student Union. Please come and share your ideas. In preparation, please write a brief biographical background including your area of expertise interest, approximate volunteer hours available each week, address and phone number. If you cannot attend the meeting, please send your information sheet to: Elaine Bisgrove Nutrition Department 315 Pittsboro Street 325-H via Campus Mail or Chapel Hill, NC 27514. suggested that students be aware if anyone follows them, even at a distance. That is the best advice I have heard. We should all be aware of danger, in a constant, alert but not paranoid way. With a second's warning, a scream or a dash back to Franklin Street might be possible. We cannot give up our autonomy for fear. There are times when we all have to walk to our cars alone, or to the corner, or out to our yards. I know of an attempted rape that took place in the victim's back yard, of a rape that took place in the victim's bedroom while her roommates slept. Because these things happen does not mean we should not go out, or even stay in, alone. That would be a concession to the killers and rapists among us. My friend who was raped in her bedroom says that what she resents most about the incident is that all choice was denied her. For that reason, when women choose how to protect themselves, choose not to act as victims, we must not cluck disapprovingly at the risk they may seem to take. Some of us are comfortable taking exaggerated precau tions; some of us are not. Either choice must be respected. Peggie Porter is a senior English major from Charlotte. students, family and friends are to be reminded of God's presence, of some hope in the midst of strife. The DTH editors show great lack of sensitivity. Sources of fact and opinion counter to Nietzsche's can be found in the Bible and in writings by Lewis, Scott, Bonhoffer and others. I challenge the editors to present the opinion of one of these sources. J. Daniel Bourland Chapel Hill 'DTH' does good, but . . . To the editors: Your editorial, "A Koppel of big mistakes" (Sept. 5), was one of the clearest and most insightful DTH editorials I have read over the past 20 years. Human nature being what it is, that must mean that I agree with your view. My impulse to pick up pen to write a congratulatory letter was stymied by other pressing tasks so that now at second reflec tion, while still wanting to congrat ulate you, I have some further thoughts. Is not this whole circus another of the "Catch-22" situations taken to the nth power that seem to be occuring with increasing regularity? While you fault Ted Koppel and the media for elaborating and aggran dizing the situation, wasn't it the same media, including newspapers, which first disseminated Falweli's views? Like it or not, he is a public figure of sorts, he is "newsworthy," and media typically make the decision that the public's need right to know supercedes all else, at times including common decency. One of the unfortunate aspects of the ensuing vicious cycles in these situations is to provide greater exposure and seeming legitimiza tion of these individuals. Somehow they never seem to lack for a forum to promote their views and preju dices. Do you not agree that some one must speak up to counter the Jerry Falwells, Phyllis Schlafleys and Bob Gucciones of this world? It is the responsibility of each citizen to examine and to publicly exclaim on the Emperor's New Clothes. Myron B. Liptzin, M.D. Chapel Hill Letters? Contributions should be typed on a 60-space line and double-spaced. They are sub ject to editing.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Sept. 9, 1985, edition 1
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