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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 11, 1983)
Daily Nebra&kan Friday, March 11,1983 on semis rr3 F! n on I ILUJ L iLOlJ LI cO Li As one of this administration's more disturbing gestures to the New Right (which has felt, for no apparent reason, that Reagan mctamoiphosed into a squish)' liberal as soon as he took office), federally supported clinics may have to tell the parents of minors when their children are using bitth control. 1 he new Reagan rule was supposed to take effect I eb. 25, but a New Voik federal diMiict c art judge. Henry F. Weiker, threw the "squeal rule' out because it violated Congressional intent. J uttbei couit action will decide whether the Worker decision Micks. 'I he squeal mle was bom about a year ago. when social consei vaties in Congress couldn't get a law through winch would have banned federal funds for clinics pro viding family planning serice. Their retrenchment was this: "To the extent practical, entities whkh receive grants or contracts under this (law) shall encourage family participation in piojects assisted under this (law )." Ibis passage, part of the Public Health Service Act. was vague and unobjectionable; who could disagree with it? But Richard Schweiker, the former Secretary of Health and Human Services notable mainly for how quickly and intensely he became conseivative after Reagan pulled him from nowhere in 1976, used this bl.md woiding to miplement the squeal rule. Under the proposed n:!e, paients of gnls under 18 would be notified within 10 days after any form of bnth con trol was issued to them. Since the regulation was pioposcd for comment about 11 months ago. 120 000 people wiote in to Health and Human Services about it; all 38 state agencies which took u position on the Mile objected to it. The reason is simple enough: without the secrecy guaranteed by the famih plan.! ting agencies, there would be moie abortions and moie unwanted chiiJien bo:n. In a Planned Parenthood survey three years ago. 25 pescent of the teenageis questioned said they would stop asking for contiacepties if their parents were told - but only 2 percent said they would stop haing sex. George Will, who favors the squeal rule because his 2 v ear-old daughter Victoria may not alvvavs say "No!" with such, vigor, implies that teenagers should not have sex anyway. ". . . Adolescents have a third choice between contraception and pregnancy," he writes. "It is continence." But this is surely missing the point. Whether or not minors should have sex with one another, they, of course, do and will, Each year mote than 600,000 females under 18 go to the federally supported clinics like Planned Parenthood, and the squeal rule is not going to change the pi act ice of ai! these people, but nly the preention. "We have bum a Beilin wall between the kids and the parents." said Schweiker in putting the rule in force. But would the new rule make families any more com muiiicaiive? By putting one more piece of power m the hands of parents, and taking one more resource aw ay fiom teenage children, a situation develops in which sons and daughters will separate themselves further from paients. It will be interesting to see what the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, former Massachusetts Rep. Margaret Heckler, will do with the squeal rule. She was one of 32 members of Congress who wiote a letter against the squeal rule. So far she has said nothing about it. Time will tell which comes first : common sense or politics. I'm not too optimistic - unemployed members of Congress tend to be very grateful. Eric Peterson Ei Salvador quaesfibois 4J wM? Wto cares?' My son has just left the "it's not fair" phase of his life for one that has not yet announced itself. Before things were constantly not fair, though, they were crushingly unimportant. This was his "so what'? who cares9" phase and he said that so often that in my house it was w in niiip mm in. , I :1 V 'i Richard Cohen " I .. called by its initials - "SWWC." This is just one way you save time in a house hold with two careers and lots of plants to water. The old SWWC came back to me the otiier day when it was announced in various places that, unless we granted El Salvador another S60 million in mil itary aid, it would fall to the "rebels," a word the State Department uses to mean commies. When that happens, Honduras will be next and then, to the south, Panama, and to the north, Mexico. That not only moves the Red Menace closer to home, but imperils some pretty terrific ' reaches. !y now of course, you recognize that ..his .c. '-Mario under another name is the uid Domino Theory. It was revived recently by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Enders and his deputy, Nestor D. Sanchez," and seconded by Sen. Henry Jackson (D-Wash.), who also thought the Red Tide, like Killer Bees, had to be stopped in EI Salvador, lest it lap upon the shores of Mexico. Someday someone is going to explain why dominoes arc supposed to topple only one way, to the left, and why it is that we can not get them to topple our way, to the right. And then, when that is explained, that same person will also have to explain why the dominoes did not fall as they were supposed to in South east Asia. If the Vietnam War proved anything, it was that countries really are not dominoes. Vietnam toppled and with it Laos and Cambodia, but they were already engulfed in what amounted to the same war, while Thailand, Burma and the rest of Southeast Asia remain standing tall. But none of that has to do with SWWC, which assumes that El Salvador does "fall" and then some other Central Amer ican countries do, too. It is at this point, if you are asking questions, that you have to ask if not both "So what?" and "Who cares?'', then at least "So what?" I ask that not out of callousness and not without realizing that the agrarian reformers now in the hills may turn out to be as brutal as the h ombres now in their various presidential palaces, but because there is an assumption that all these states would be little Central American dupl icates of the Soviet Union. But would they? Would El Salvador be Marxist like the Soviet Union, which iQQKZTQYG'JWlTUtl j - , fjjftln I, "w I- - , i . - - . -i - ii" . . YiYi'i 1 1 1 ii i n - , . l, A is our enemy? Or would it be Marxist like China, which while not quite a friend, certainly is not an enemy although it was (look it up) the reason we fought in Viet nam. Maybe these Central American states would be Marxist like Yugoslavia, which is neutral, or maybe they would be Marxist like Albania, which for a while aligned itself with the Soviet Union and then later with China and has now decided to disappear down a European black hole. And even if ail the Central American countries should go communist, does that mean that we have to kiss the Panama Canal good-bye? Cuba is not only Marxist, but hostile as well, and yet we maintain a naval base at Guantanamo Bay. As hostile as the Cubans are, they dare not attempt to take the base, although this is one lease that will not be renewed. The administration cautions us thjt El Salvador is not Vietnam, and thev are surely right in this. It is a different country in a different region and neither Congress nor the American people will allow it, in terms of either troops or funds, to become another Vietnam. But El Salvador is like Vietnam because it is an attempt to control from Washing ton events taking place in remote hamlets, to see a regional struggle only in teims of east-west rivalries and, last, to once again prolong a war in which we have no vital self-interest. Those were the lessons of Vietnam and it is no improvement to do the same thing over again, only this time without American troops. People will still die, some of them through no fault of our own, but some of them because we once again knee-jerked to the word Marxist and failed to ask, among other questions, "So what? Who cares?" (c) 1933, The Washington Post Company ft? il mt job imteraew conqmieirs fihe fidgety stojidefflt Job interviews : the time of reckoning when college is just about over and the rest of your life is at stake. They are kind of like waiting in the lines at St. Peter's gates, where everything is behind you, yet you are totally r v t J A ... Brian Stonecipher helpless for anything that is about to happen. It is a real moment of truth when you are, for that moment in time, not in control of your own destiny. I've been through this experience once during my first interview, and it's an experience I don't want to go through again. Here's why. "Hi, I'm Mitch Williams. Have a seat," the smiling interviewer said to me. I went in and sat down in the small, stuffy room. Straight across from me sat a strange man who had complete control over my future; a man who could give me a job, security and big bucks to pay back my student loans. Saying that this man was important to me would be an understatement. He started out asking the standard opening line, "Well Brian, tell me about yourself." I became fidgety. Even though he didn't say it directly, I could see in his eyes that he really wanted to grill me about my grades. I was determined to deny him the privil ege of talking about grades for as long as possible. So I started in on my original game plan - the interview stall. "Uh, well ... I was, uh, gosh," I started. What a vocabulary. I go to college for four years and when I need my education the most, the first words that come to mind are the same ones that I used when I was three. What a waste of 17 years of school. "Urn, ... I brought along this portfolio thing which has some supporting material which is referred to in my resume," I said. "I think it shows that I'm not the typical 'number-crunching weirdo engineer,' if yoirknow what I mean. Ha, ha." I waited for his response to my forced humor. He just kept staring at me with an expressionless face. He didn't like my bad jokes. I went ahead and emptied the scrapbook material on the desk. Photos, letters, news clippings and cub scout patches spilled into this important man's lap. I had an impressive list of materials to show him : my grandma's "What a fine young man you are" birthday letter and eight consecutive days of police reports, with the actions I was totally responsible for highlighted in yellow. But he didn't seem too interested. "That's very interesting," he said as he shoved the material back toward me. "But let's talk about something else, like your coursework and grades." I was in real trouble now. He had not only taken control of the interview, but he was also headed for my grades. I wanted to shout "NO - LEAVE ME ALONE. I DON'T WANT TO GO THROUGH WITH IT ANY MORE" and storm out of the room, but I didn't. I was in a suicidal "oh who cares" mood and decided to go through with the rest of the interview. Continued on Page 5