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Thursday, August 17, 2006
Free speech, nuclear Iran, Ramsey case
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• Developers who default on a $6.3 million loan are going to build a $675 million amusement park, hotel, condo and retail project in south DeKalb County? Sure. Show me the money, not the drawings.
• I don’t much care when minor celebrities split, and I’d just as soon they not feel obligated to blurt out their sexual preferences, either. Some information should be parceled out on a need-to-know basis.
• Since our taxes pay for law enforcement, regardless of level, it’s hard to be too upset that Georgia Bureau of Investigation and State Patrol officers are leaving “in droves” to take jobs with the feds or local governments.
• When next we convene in the territory commonly called “suburbia,” we must wring our hands in exaggerated worry about the lack of diversity inside the beltway. Atlanta’s foreign-born population is 9 percent, half that of DeKalb and Cobb counties and a third that of Gwinnett. Y’all can’t keep living in those sterile cocoons and expect to know how to act when exposed to diversity outside the Perimeter.
• No, real conservatives don’t write laws telling high schools when it’s too hot to practice football. That’s busybodiness.
• Headline: “Perdue deal has rich potential.” Or: “Perdue deal a potential bust.” Either’s true. And is anybody surprised that Democrats who laid out the information would then demand a state and federal investigation? Put the U.N. oil-for-food investigative team on it, too.
• True, too: Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ assertion in Atlanta that future fighting in Lebanon is inevitable despite the current cease-fire. We all hope, as he declares, that the damage to Hezbollah is probably worse than reported. Otherwise, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran win, and it’s hard to see the Ehud Olmert government surviving. Seventy percent of Israelis oppose the cease-fire.
• Wow! McNair Middle School in DeKalb County has more than 700 serious disciplinary incidents per 100 students — those being vandalism, thefts, fights, drugs, knives and guns. Avondale High School has more than three per student, as do Columbia Middle and Bethune Middle, all in DeKalb. State prisons are bound to have fewer. But I’m torn: praise them for honesty or tell parents of the young’uns to run. Lots of lying goes on when schools are asked to report same.
• Headline: “Insults allowed at Georgia Tech.” Yes. Or free speech. Nobody designated universities to be speech police, in dorms or elsewhere. Nor have they invited a self-anointed group of lawyers and others to police speech in judicial races, as they do. Go away.
• Condos over retail is the urban rage. What’s needed, though, is condos over sanctuaries in downtown churches. Marietta City Council last week rejected a proposal for a 50,000-square-foot megachurch on eight acres near downtown. That is an awful lot of valuable space to go unused for so much of the week.
• Nope, says Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran won’t give up uranium enrichment. “We are fully mastering the nuclear fuel cycle for our peaceful atomic activities,” said he. “No one can take it away from us.”
Sooner or later, four years at the most, Iran will have to demonstrate convincingly that it’s no threat to Israel or its neighbors — or the threat will have to be dealt with. How long do we have to finish the job in Iraq? Until the day before Iran has nuclear weapons capability.
• “Sustainable” applies to development, not transportation. Or so we might surmise from the news that MARTA officials, with a once-in-a-decade surplus of $19 million, wish to spend it expanding service. Which, of course, will be cut when the inevitable hard times return. Save the surplus.
• Sandy Springs gets its parks from the county for $16,000. A fair price. A fair resolution. But as always the case with the Fulton County Commission, it couldn’t come without a dose of political hate, spite and envy.
• Is life fair? It’s indiscriminately not. Patsy Ramsey is proof. She lost a child and then endured years of entirely unwarranted suspicion. And sadly, she’s no longer here for the acknowledgment she’s due.
• Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column runs Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays.
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Flavored condoms recommended
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Safer sex, condoms, dental dams and masturbation — welcome to college!” Such is the cheerful greeting parents and students arriving for fall classes at the University of Georgia from Sexual Health Coordinator Michelle Cohen. She’s available for consultation, but has some advice for the general audience: “Condoms can be used for protection during oral, vaginal and anal sex (I recommend flavored condoms for oral sex)…. Dental dams (rectacular, thin pieces of latex) can be used when performing oral-vaginal or oral-anal sex (these can be found in the Health Promotion Department)” where she works. Free condoms, too. “Remember,” she concludes, “safer sex is better sex!”.
When asked later about the reaction of parents and whether it’s appropriate for a university official to recommend flavored condoms for oral sex, Ms. Cohen said she’d received no negative reaction from parents or anybody else. “To the contrary, I have received positive feedback regarding the information I shared” in the Red & Black campus newspaper. She continued:
“According to 2005 National College Health Assessment data, 68.9 % of UGA students reported engaging in oral sex, yet only 2.8 % report using a condom the last time they did…. Promoting use of flavored condoms encourages use of condoms for oral sex.”
Actually some parents did react negatively. “I was heartsick when I saw that,” said one. “That article —written by someone who I assume is paid by taxpayer money — was so unbelievable that I wanted to just pack my child up and take her home.”
OK, I’m conservative. But I’m with the parent. Here we have at Georgia Tech a university-imposed speech code that, until it was thrown out by a federal judge this week at the behest of two conservative students, prohibited dorm conversation school officials thought “intolerant.” So at one of the state’s flagship universities, officials are highly judgmental about what students say, but at the other are entirely non-judgmental to the point of being promotional about conduct that will be far more consequential to their lives.
Most college students do engage in sex at some point and Ms. Cohen may be right about the percentage who engage in oral sex. They are, after all, of the generation that heard from the top that it’s not really sex. And yes, clinics should respond. But I really don’t want the university’s agent pushing flavored condoms for oral sex as a “welcome to college!” experience.
These are Thinking Right’s back-to-school questions: Should universities govern student speech? And how should state institutions approach issues of what students do, and the values they hold, in their personal lives?
