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. Wednesday, September 18, 1985 Page 4 Daily Nebraskan Panic over AIDS can be avoided 11 o o ' H tmcoTiM - ir I ni t,-; ..h, qiyi xissgiw mm ifer5fti by teaching public lthough AIDS is perceived as an immediate threat by most Nebraskans, school officials of this state need to start forming their policies dealing with the possi bility of AIDS cases appearing in the classroom. Seven cases of AIDS have been reported in Nebraska since 1981. Three of those cases were reported just this year, said Dr. Paul A. Stoesz, director of the disease control division of the state health department. Stoesz said he could not give the ages or locations of the AIDS victims because of the health department's confidentiality policy. Although scientists are learning more about AIDS, there are still many unknowns in stopping the disease making for a nervous and fearful public. Therefore, the majority of the country's population, especially in Nebraska where the number of AIDS cases is small, is ignorant about AIDS and uncertain about the dangers it poses. Because of this ignorance, Newsweek magazine reports, an eight-year-old with AIDS was not permitted to start the third grade this year in Carmel, Calif. And in New York, parents of about 18,000 children kept their kids out of school when officials allowed a seven-year-old girl with AIDS to begin the second grade. To avoid the confusion and controversy, other states have gone through, Nebraska education officials need to make plans before similar problems arise here. Educating the public about the misconceptions surround ing AIDS would be the simplest method of alleviating any difficulties officials would encounter by admitting an AIDS patient to class. The chances for the disease to spread in a classroom situa tion is "all but impossible," Stoesz said, because AIDS is transmitted primarily by exposure to body fluids. No cases of AIDS have ever been reported being transmitted by-someone touching a doorknob, sitting in a desk or handling any object previously touched by a person with AIDS, Stoesz said. Most people contract AIDS through sexual contact and blood trans fusions, he said. So far, not much has been done to educate the state about AIDS, Stoesz said. But a "consensus conference" is planned, he said, which will bring together experts on AIDS to hammer out recommendations for the health department to follow in the event that an AIDS case does appear in the classroom. At the rate AIDS is spreading, Nebraska education officials need to ensure that parents, teachers and students know the facts about the disease to avoid incorrect discrimination. '0m W0M hi nil r-i The Daily Nebraskan 34 Nebraska Union 1400 R St.. Lincoln. 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Jonathan Taylor Michiela Thuman Lauri Hopple Chris Welsch Boh Asmussen Bill Allen David Creamer Mark Davis Gene Gentrup Richard Wright Michelle Kubik Kurt Eberhardt Phil Tsai Daniel Shattil Katherine Poiicky Barb Branda Sandi Stuewe Mary Hupf Brian Hoglund Joe Thomsen Don Walton, 473-7301 The Daily Nebraskan (USPS 144-080) is published by the UNL Publica tions Board Monday through Friday in the fall and spring semesters and Tuesdays and Fridays in the summer sessions, except during vacations. Readers are encouraged to submit story ideas and comments to the Daily Nebraskan by phoning 472-1763 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The public also has access to the Publications Board. For information, contact Joe Thomsen. Postmaster: Send address changes to the Daily Nebraskan, 34 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St., Lincoln, Neb. 68588-0448. Second-class postage paid at Lincoln, NE 68510. ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 1S85 DAILY NEBRASKAN WW, Whites anticipate, react to inevitable change WYNDAL, South Africa This town does not exist. It was created for a book called "Waiting: The Whites of South Africa," but it is actually Franschhoek, a place in the mountainous wine country. It is as good a dateline as any because this column takes place in the heads of South Africans. That, really, is where they wait. My host here in the majestic wine country just north of Cape Town is wait ing. His vines climb the mountains into the mist. He has a wonderful house, swimming pool, tennis court and lots of servants blacks who graft the vines, turn the soil and, of course, bring tea in the afternoon. This life, or much of it, someday will come to an end, says my host. But he neither knows how the situation will be resolved nor whea "I'm waiting, too," he says. In the affluent Hyde Park suburb of Johannesburg, Helen Suzman, the implacable foe of apartheid and long time member of the Parliament, also waits. She wonders not if apartheid will last, but what will replace it and what a black-majority government would be like if one comes to power. Will it, for instance, be as intolerant as the white one it displaces or will it be a Western style democracy free press, the rule of law and, maybe most important, a guarantee of minority rights? "I'm not at all sure that is the aim of the black movement," Suzman says. Jannie Momberg, the mentor of. Zola Budd, says he is waiting, too. He is an Afrikaner who travels the world with his famous runner and with other South African athletes. The present system is shot, he says. Something, something short of one-person, one vote, must replace it. Like many, if not most white South Africans, he casts his argument against one-person, one-vote in cultural rather than racial terms: Many of the blacks are third-world peoples; the whites are first world. The former can not be allowed to out-vote the latter. Before I came here, a colleague in Washington asked me to find out from white South Africans what they thought was going to happen here. So I asked. Nearly always the answer was that the present system could not endure and that something would have to take its place. Just don't ask what. A white Johannesburg cabdriver, for instance, pulled over and cut his engine to answer my question. At first, he was belligerent, mocking both U.S. liberal ism and our willingness to offer solu tions to someone else's problems. But when he got that out of his system, he V Richard Cohen confessed that the oppression of blacks oppressed him too. He could not envi sion one-person, one-vote, but he knew things could not continue the way they are. In the meantime, he's waiting. So is Pieter Roux. He's 23, a pole vaulter from Cape Town University and an Afrikaner. At first he, too, set me straight about America the busybody, America the naive moralist a coun try where most people do not know that many South African blacks cannot speak English. But Roux has come back from track and field events in Europe where he was not allowed to compete. He clears the bar at 18 feet, but that hardly matters. As a South African he can only observe. Like more than a few Afrikaners, Roux blames some of South Africa's troubles on an unlikely conspiracy of communist and well-known capitalists the Rockefellers of America, the Oppenheimers of South Africa. Still, even he says the country must change. He will wait for it. Some are not waiting. A classified ad in a newspaper says a lawyer will arrive here this week from Atlanta to help with immigration problems. Young men with no desire to enforce apartheid in the black townships are leaving the country to avoid army service. Others are going because the future is so uncertain. Revolution, continued vio lence, a black Marxist government: There is no scenario too unlikely to be disbelieved. "The very best are drifting away," Suzman says. "They think the future is insecure, or they don't want to serve in the army." High in the wine country, a farmer waits. So does the cabdriver and the athlete and everyone I talked to. Some of them will go because they can. Some will stay because they must But some will remain because they think they can do some good. A few, like the hus band of an anti-apartheid activist, even came back. "I don't want to go, really," Suzman said. "There have been times when I wanted to go. But if someone gets into trouble, detained or something, I can still see a (cabinet) minister." Vincent Crapanzano, the author of "Waiting," lived in a town here and made up its name to protect the ano nymity of the people he studied. It should have worked because, in an important sense, they are like people anywhere in South Africa. Here, every one is waiting. 1985, Washington Post Writers Group Cohen writes an editorial cciunm (or the Washington Post. Liberal state dehumanizing The Injury and the Crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a Crown, or some petty villain. The Title of the Offender, and the Number of his Followers make no difference in the Offense, unless it be to aggravate it. The only dif ference is, Great Robbers punish little ones, to keep them in their Obedience, but the great ones are rewarded with Laurels and Tri umphs, because they are too big for the weak hands of Justice in this World, and have the power in their own possession, which should punish offenders. John Locke, Treatise on Civil Government The great chasm separating all lib erals from reasonable conserva tism is their view of what lies at the foundation of civil government. The conservative wipes away the romantic aura with which the left views political action and views civil power in its stark reality: The lesson that the left need learn (as well as many people on the right) is what the root of civil activity the means of enforcing the judg ments of the state is violence. Jim Rogers u Yale law professor Robert Cover wrote, "Keeping the peace is no simple or neutral task." Earlier in his work he explained why: "The most basic of the texts of jurisdiction are the apologies for the state itself and for its violence the ideology of social contract orthe rationalizations of the welfare state." Violence is never neutral; it always calls forth normative evaluation. Simply because violence is employed by some institution or individual does not make the instrument of use neces sarily illegitimate. For example, if some aggressor is about to murder a small child with an ax, the use of violence in opposition to his attempt is not only permissible, but probably morally obli gatory. Thus, the relevant question is why the violence was used. If we simply are responding to violence, then our proportionate response enhances order and is therefore just. Please see ROGERS on 5