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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 20, 1986)
Thursday, November 20, 1933 Paga4 Daily Nebraskan Mi Nebraskan University of Nabraika-Llncoln More 'gifts of News stories, books and TV shows talking about human organ transplants often sum up the experience with phrases like 44The Gift of Life" or "A Second Chance at Life." The phrases may be trite by now, but they're still accurate and approp riate. Those receiving new organs quite literally get a new chance at life. However, it takes two people a donor as well as a recipient to make organ transplants possible. And Nebraska, like other parts of the country, doesn't have enough people in the first category. Bob Duckworth, direc tor of organ procurement for the Nebraska Organ Retrieval Sys tem, says Lincoln and Omaha surgeons could do many more transplant operations if only enough donor organs were avail able. Some who need transplants make it in time, as did a North Dakota woman who received a new heart last weekend after 16-year-old Adrian Jordeth of Ne hawka died in a car-pedestrian accident. Many more 7,000 to 10,000 nationwide, Duckworth says have no race against time until a suitable donor organ is found. You can help lessen the need to wait by signing an organ donor card to be used in case you should die suddenly. For a newly dead person to be a successful organ donor, Duck worth " says, the organs to be donated. must be undamaged and the- person declared . "brain dea(d.';:That means the person's Team needs support, The Nebraska and! Oklahoma football teams are again vying for a Big Eight Champion-, ship and a berth to the Orange Bowl. And every year fans from both schools use the field for target practice with oranges or anything else handy that serves a a projectile. Not Nebraska fans, you say. Yes, even Nebraska people, the same ones that have been touted by the media as the best fans in the entire world. These same people have caused property dam age and personal injury. Several years ago a man work ing stadium security was struck by a frozen orange and left ser iously injured. In 1982 after Ne braska beat Oklahoma, the fans tore down the goal posts and paraded through the city, mak ing driving and even walking hazardous. This unacceptable behavior doesn't only happen here. Last week at the Oklahoma- Editorial Policy ESzjgeCttte The Daily Nebraskan's pub- According to policy set by the Ushers are the regents, who regents, responsibility for the established the UNL Publications editorial content of the news Board to supervise the daily pro- paper lies solely in the hands of duction of the paper. its student editors. JcfTKorbcIlk, Editor, 472,1766 James Rogers, Editorial Page Editor Gene Gcntrup, Managing Editor Tammy Kaup, Associate News Editor Todd von K am pen, Editorial Page Assistant life' needed brain functions have ceased irre vocably, although it's still possi ble to maintain other life func tions with drugs and life-support systems. And that's where some people have reservations about organ donation because some wonder if brain-dead people might somehow be revived. Persons declared brain-dead can't come back to life even in theory, Duckworth says. Such declarations are made only after electrical activity of the brain has ceased and bodily responses that indicate brain activity aren't possible. The late Karen Ann Quinlan, the subject of a famous "right-to-die" case whose example is often cited by opponents of organ dona tion, never woke up but wasn't brain-dead, Duckworth says. She breathed on her own after she was taken off the respirator, which wouldn't be possible if she was brain-dead, he says. In other words, once they're gone, they're gone. But donors can live on in some sense through the organs they can give. A fami ly's grief of a donor's death will still be there, Duckworth says, but families sometimes can lake solace in the gift ef life their lived one made possible in death. Organ donation is a very per sonal decision, but those who do it can help others live. A signed organ donor card gives your per mission to transplant usable organs once you're declared brain dead, The Daily Nebraskan en courages any who feel so inclined to give this gift of life. : .-;. .. ' 4 noi bombardment ; Colorado football game, Buffalo fans with Orange-Bow! hopes pel ted the field with oranges and, other debris. A Colorado cheer leader was injured after she was struck by a bottle. In Manhattan, Kan., National On Campus Reports noted that fans caused $30,000 in damages to area businesses after Kansas State defeated rival Kansas. About 6,000 fans from both universities swarmed the business district, and threw full bottles and cans of beer through windows and looted stores. For this Saturday's game, be loud in showing the Huskers your support, but please: Leave the oranges at home. Leave the alcohol at home. O Act responsibly. The actions of a few can really deter what really could be a very exciting game. Let's show a na tional TV audience as well as ourselves that Nebraska fans are a class act. intervention into market place J-.l-.t- U . 1 With the apparent hostile take over attempt of Goodyear, cor porate mergers suddenly have become a salient issue in Lincoln. The rhetoric surrounding the event almost immediately entered the realm of blith ering condemnation (e.g., portions of a teleconference meeting between may ors with Goodyear plants in their cities at times bordered on emotional and incoherent denunciation. Corporate takeovers have become a rapidly in creasing American economic pheno menon, especially since 1980. The question is what, if anything, government (local or otherwise) should do about the phenomenon. Preceding this question is the issue of whether government can legitimately intervene in the area of economic decision making. I think that the answer is a fairly clear yes and that such an answer neither entails the demise of American capitalism nor a reduced commitment to non-statist property rights. The location of units of economic decision-making in decentralized, "private" decision-makers or govern mental "centralized" decision-makers has economic and moral (political) aspects. Most of the best economic evidence points out that conglomerate mergers are unhelpful at best. In a compre hensive literature review in 1977 Mary land University economics professor Dennis Mueller impressively concluded that the empirical literature "draws a surprisingly consistent picture. What ever the stated or unstated goals of managers are, the mergers they have consummated haver on average not generated extra profits for the acquiring " firmsand have not resulted in increased economic efficiency." Homosexuals deserve consideration by UPC, says GLSA member I must take issue with some of the points voiced in Tim Teebken's guest opinion (DN, Nov. 18). The formation and financing of a LesbianGay Programming Committee within the University Program Counsel is well within the scope and purpose of UPC. UPC describes itself as purposely reflecting the diversity of the student population it serves in its program ming. One aspect of the student popu lation at UNL is that 10 percent )! its students are gay or lesbiarf, iif the nationwide figures that qualified experts e. 3rywhere agree on apply to our uni versity, and there is no reason to believe that they do not. Is the creation of this committee a political question? In the view of one political science professor at UNL, politics is the art, science and study of who gets what and when. Since the members of the GayLesbian Students Association, on behalf of the gay and lesbian student population at UNL as well as others interested in this type of programming, have asked for both a committee to handle such program ming and the money to fund it; in this sense it is indeed a political question. It becomes obvious that the formation of any programming committee is a question of politics, as it involves a given population getting a committee to represent its needs. Beyond this satisfaction of a cursoiy definition of political question, I think I understand why. Teebken and many others view this as a "political group pushing ideological propaganda." Any thing involving gays and lesbians is labeled "political" because it is con troversial; because we are living in a world, and enrolled at a university, that is homophobic, discriminates against people based on whom they can fall in love with, and presumes to think that people care whether or not others approve of or "condone" their sexual orientation. I don't think heterosexu als tend to care what others think about the fact that they are attracted to people with genitalia different from Muller's 1985 uDdate study indicates probable economic losses to merged corporations. As interesting as the economic data is, the more important question is whether there is a warrant for political "intervention" into the wilds of the marketplace. Drawing carefully on the moral basis for American political and Jim Rogers SO economic constitutions, I think the answer is a fairly compelling yes. A helpful perspective on the question revolves about how just property claims can arise in a modern economy. This question is not obviously answered by a traditional appeal to laisserz-faire economic decision-making. You see, in the central case of the free-market paradigm, there is assumed a large number of buyers and sellers each individually unable to affect market supply and demand. This central-case instance is so palpably different from the case of "modern" monopoly capital ism that additional moral and political questions are raised in the latter case that are not applicable to the former. In John Locke's "Second Treatise of Civil Government," property rights arise "naturally" out of the necessities of human existence and its organization. For example, the apple becomes a person's property when it is picked off the ground (being previously unowned) their own; and I also don't think gays and lesbians care much how others feel about them being attracted to people with their own kind of genitalia. This is an environment in which the ability for two people to walk hand-in-hand in public comfortably is based on the sex of those people. Two men or two women who would attempt such a Guest Opinion warm display of affection would be seen by many as "flaunting" their orientation while heterosexual couples walk by unaccused. Verbal abuse, gay bashings and firing from jobs are just a few symptoms of a disease known as prejudice. I'm not surprised; we've seen it before. Gays and lesbians have no more con trol over their belonging to a minority group than do Blacks, Hispanics, or physically challenged students (a.k.a. "the handicapped"). To illustrate this, it is patently and manifestly ridiculous to think that a heterosexual can simply, by force of will, stop being attracted to members of the other sex and start being attracted to people of his or her own sex. The converse is equally ludi crous, although Teebken writes of "for mer gays." Perhaps he knows of pre viously sexually active gays and lesians who are now celibate, but nonetheless gay or lesbian. Or perhaps he knows people who thought they were lesbian or gay, but upon introspection realized they were heterosexual. This is a pos sibility; the opposite has certainly hap pened. Nobody knows what causes a person to be homosexual, and nobody knows what causes a person to be heterosex ual. Sexual orientation simply exists in each of us. Teebken's statement that homosexuality is a learned behavior should be accompanied with the state ment that to the extent with which this is true, with regard to homosexual acts, it is also true with heterosexual precisely because it makes no sense to draw ine une eisewnere. Similarly, in modern society, I think we can speak of certain property rights as justly arising from certain expectations of a com munity given the involvement and bene fit of an industrial institution in that community. Writing in the conservative journal "The Public Interest," business pro fessor Peter Druker gives at least an amorphous vent to this idea: The term 'free enterprise' was coined 40 or 50 years ago to assert that the shareholder interest, while important, is only one interest and that the enterprise has functions well beyond that of producing returns for the shareholder functions as an employer, as a citizen of the community, as a customer and as a supplier." In sum, the modern corporate struc ture is enmeshed in a whole host of "power" questions that are completely uninvolved in the central-case instance of "free" market activity. And all ques tions of power are political questions. The very moral foundation of Ameri can political and economic society requires that analysis proceed down this avenue. It is the only avenue that avoids the foolish and injurious con sequences of socialism and libertarian ism. The Anglo-American property tradition does have the requisite analytical framework with which to grapple with this problem. This tra dition is a realistic and fact-based perspective which has too long been ignored by policy makers and public alike. Rogers is an economics graduate, a law student and Daily Nebraskan editorial, page editor. acts. Remember the birds-and-the-bees talk, everyone? That's called learn- ing. Sexual orientation itself, how j ever, is not learned. We are not taught to be gay or straight; it just happens as ; a result of who we are, our environment and perhaps genetic predispositions. By the way, "biblical facts" have nol place in UPC's decision, as we do still I have a thing called separation between church and state, even in the "semb-' lance of justice and democracy on the l campus" as exists. j The bottom line is that gay and les-1 bian students pay student fees like; everyone else and deserve program-' ming that serves their educational and ; entertainment needs and desires in ; return. UPC has agreed and approved the funded formation of the Lesbian Gay Programming Committee and de serves applause and support for their well thought-out, understanding and logical stand. Hopefully the union Board . will follow suit, as well as anyone else who needs to approve it. To do other wise would be a step backwards with regard to treating people as people, with dignity. Marc D. Seger coordinator of internal affairs UNL GayLesbian Student Association The Daily Nebraskan welcomes brief letters to the editor from all readers and interested others. Letters will be selected for pub lication on the basis of clarity, orig inality, timeliness and space avail able. The Daily Nebraskan retains the right to edit all material submitted. Letters and guest opinions sent to the newspaper become property of the Daily Nebraskan and cannot be returned. Submit material to the Daily Nebraskan, 34 Nebraska Union Letter Policy