4 Wednesday, April 20, 1983 Daily Nebraskan n no rt 0 n 0 n i (T r c i (O) n i ok mo mm J Li This is not an objective column. It is a challenge to the able-bodied not to reject people with disabilities. It is also an explanation of why everyone must look beyond the wheelchair, beyond the white cane, beyond the sign language, beyond the seizures, beyond the retardation to see the valid person - who is invalid only because society says so. Through the years, people with impairments have been regarded as being saints, possessed by the devil, children, untouchables, clowns or tragedies. Rarely as humans. To see the real me, one must overlook many things. I have cerebral palsy - one of the most misunderstood dis orders on the face of the earth. Cerebral palsy is a brain disorder, which is caused by a variety of factors, such as lack of oxygen to the brain, the Rh-factor, an illness during infancy or a head injury. Cerebral palsy affects people in countless ways. It can leave a person with only a slight limp, physically able but mentally retarded or mentally competent but physically disabled. It is not inherited, terminal or contagious. Cerebral palsy has left me without hand use, without vocalization and without walking skills. It has, however, left me with the capacity to think, to remember, to hear, to see and to feel skin sensations as well as emotions. In other words, I can (or have the potential to) understand anything in my social world. But the social world does not understand me, and what people can't understand they often don't accept. Having others understand me and others like me was what motivated my suggesting an editorial and series to explore the issues, concerns, problems and aspirations of students with disabilities. For five years of my college life, 1 had to live on a freshman floor where I wasn't regarded as an equal. But I was an equal, just as those who wear eyeglasses are equal to those with 2020 vision. The only difference between nearsighted or farsighted people and individuals with more severe disabilities is that society has integrated them. In January 1980, my junior year at UNL, I had the fortune to be featured in Life magazine. The response to the article was overwhelming and fell into two types: the able-bodied people told me how wonderful they thought I was simply because I had sought to live a reasonably "normal" life, and the people with disabilities thanked me for articulating what they had felt but couldn't say. I do not pretend to be the spokesperson for the population with disabilities. I don't feel that all people with disabilities should be judged by what I say or do. But I also think that all people in wheelchairs have cursed steps or ridiculously steep gradients of ramps, that all people without speech have dreaded hearing the phone ring, and that people without use of their hands have missed touching a special friend or a loving parent. And, I know all these individuals are tired of being treated like invalid people in a world that associates validity with physical beauty and prowess. Nor did I seek to be Mr. Wonderful. The Life article had a picture of me in a T-shirt which proclaimed "I am not Superman." That T-shirt was right. 1 am neither super human - nor subhuman. I am merely human - with all the failures and gorlies of our species. This editorial is, then, a challenge to all of you readers, especially those of you who have been blessed with per fect bodies and unimpaired minds. Can you look at those of us who have physical or mental limitations and still dis cover the valid human being? Can you stop treating us as invalids? I challenge you to pick up the gauntlet which was first thrown out years ago by my parents when they formulat ed their unspoken creed for dealing with disabilities: This is a baby. He needs what all babies need. This is a child. He needs what all children need. This is an adolescent. He needs what all adolescents need. This is an adult. He needs what all adults need. Oh, by the way, he has a disability. Bill Rush It would make an interesting scene: Pollster Louis Harris, flanked by brawny U.S. Secret Service men and women, walking quickly up the stairs to the White House with a black briefcase chained securely to his wrist. Jostling reporters would be calling out, "What're the nun bers?!", but Harris would ignore them, knowing that within his briefcase rested the information Ron Reagan dreaded but would soon know - whether he could keep his job. Fortunately, this scene will not lake Dave Milo Mumgaard place. But wouldn't it be nice (in its own clean, efficient way) if the president had to resign as soon as a substantial majority of Americans turned thumbs-down on the president's performance? Or if a majority of Americans agreed, "Ron, please, please don't run again." This week the Harris Poll reconfirmed that a majority of Americans (54 percent) do not think Reagan should run again in 1984. I don't think people are being liberal, conservative or even radical in saying he probably should not give it another go; they're just being realistic. After all, one naturally feels a bit uneasy when political decisions are being made based almost entirely upon ideology. Right-wingers are as guilty of this as are left-wing," dogmatic-socialists. Both are guilty of sacrificing people for the sake of principle. The fact is, Reagan is sacrific ing more than people: he apparently has no qualms about sacrificing the environ ment, public health, civil liberties and economic sanity. Reagan is not a bad man. On the con trary, he chats amicabily with children, has genuine concern for individuals with problems and is able to practice self deprecating wit. He also reportedly believes in tithing (the practice of giving 10 percent of his income to charity), even though he gave only $15,563 of his 1983 income of $741 .253 to charity, a mere 2 percent. Reagan also is a strong fundamental Christian, which makes me wonder if he has read the story in the Bible about the widow who was more blessed because she gave all she had - a mere penny -than the rich who gave thousands upon thousands, but very little of their total personal wealth. I am very uneasy when I remember what Reagan has done since taking office. He has consistently insisted he has a "mandate" from the people to do what he wants, but then also insists, as he did recently about his unpopular monumental defense increases: "When are we going to have the guts to do not what's popular but what's right?" He obviously sees it as working both ways, which can be dangerous, especially since what he considers as being right is irresponsible to the extreme. His record is a sad litany of attacks upon the equalitarian and libertarian ideas this country was built upon, upon reasonable attitudes toward how this country should defend itself, and upon the idea that there is more to life than just expanding business, business, business, and damn the aftereffects. For instance, he and his fellow ideologues have limited free speech through restrictions on the information a government employee can talk about, expanded the FBI's ability to monitor non-law breaking organizations and prevented foreign opposition speakers from coming into this country to talk. He also has stood by an Environmental Protection Agency which thought it was all right to consider if, by cleaning up a poisoning toxic waste dump, it would help get some Democrat elected. He also tolerates Interior Secretary James Watt, who sees totalitarians behind every tree, and who 'forgets why wildernesses are protected: because they exist, and if we go in there after uranium they never will again. He also would rather destroy inflation at the expense of 11 million unemployed breadearners, because, after all, he and his friends made at least $741,000 last year, and they'd like to continue to keep it at that level. He also believes that the way to earn respect from the Soviets is to have thousands more nuclear bombs than they do, and to have a chief arms control negotiator, Ken Adelman, who said when asked if he thought limited nuclear war is possible: "I have no strong opinions on that." Of course, it is difficult to forget Reagan's stand on gun control (against), prayer in public schools (for), and abortion (against), since the vast majority of Americans time and again disagree with him on each one. Louis Harris is undoubtedly relishing his next poll, especially if he asks the question: "Do you think President Reagan is in touch with the real world around him?" Marking the "no" box for every respondent will make his job an easy one. juniors J1L It 0 ill Urn mm rj vi-' 1 Ail V1 WWW Kajagoogoo, Idol, 'I Eat Cannibals Fat Larry in weird Aussie Top 40 NEW SOUTH WALES, Australia -1 got ahold of an "official Top 40" listing for either Sydney or Australia, I'm not sure which. It's compiled by an AM radio station, but most of the songs are played on the FM station I listen to on my trusty AM-FM transistor that I brought over 1 - l I 1(1 III Bob Glissmann from the states. Only 12 or so of the hit singles listed are from American soloists or groups, but of the top 10, six are from the states. Most of the groups on the list are English - only six are Australian. But there are some good Aussie bands -Icehouse, which has British and Australian members; Australian Crawl; Goanna, whose "Solid Rock" and "Razor's Edge" sound like they belong on the U.S. pop charts; Moving Pictures, the band I saw a couple weeks ago; Mental As Anything; the Di vinyls, who are now touring the state; 1NXS, which has "To Look at You" at No. 39; Madness, which has a stupid single out now called "Our House," but whose other music is OK; Midnight Oil; and, of course, Olivia Newton-John, the Little River Band and the pride of all Aust alia, Men At Work. When I first arrived, about two months ago now, a lot of kids asked me about Men At Work. "Are they big back in the states? They're tops, I reckon," was a common questionanswer I didn't need to say a thing. When the group won the Grammy Award for Best New Group, you could see how some people took that success as their own, and it wasn't surprising when the concerts slated for next week in Sydney sold out soon after the concerts were announced. A lot of the songs on the list had been around for a while back home - Laura Branigan's "Gloria"; "Africa" by Toto; "You Can't Hurry Love" by Phil Collins and "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye, both of which began to bug me long before the 1,000th time they were played; Christopher Cross' "All Right"; Dionne Warwick's "Heartbreaker"; and the No. 1 song, and also the Oscar winner, "Up Where We Belong," by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. Continued on Page 5