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4 • The Red and Black • Tuesday, February 27, 1990
OPINIONS
The Red & Black
Ettablithed 1893—Incorporated 1980
An independent itudent neutpaper not affiliated with the Uniuerwity of Georgia
Charlene Smith/Editor-in-Chief
Amy Bellew/Managing Editor
Robert Todd/Opinions Editor
■ EDITORIALS
Move forward
The University isn’t the only one in the recycling
game. Mountain Park has instituted a mandatory
recycling program, and the City of Athens has a very
successful program of its own. The only problem is it’s
not big enough.
In addition to its year-old newspaper, glass, plastic
and aluminun bin program, Athens has launched a
pilot program for voluntary recycling in a few area
neighborhoods. About 500 homes participate in the test
program launched in Homewood Hills, Forrest Heights
and Five Points. Participants have been provided with
containers for their recylables and every Wednesday
the city sanitation department picks up the sorted
items.
Great job so far, but now’s the time to move
forward. The pilot program reaches only about 10
percent of the city.
Because the people of Athens are so conscious of the
need to recycle, mandatory recycling probably isn’t
needed. What is needed is expansion of the voluntary
program.
As one city official said, “As fast as we can move,
the people of Athens will be ready.”
The city can either absorb the start-up costs of this
expansion, or it can pass it on to the taxpayers.
Mountain Park went that route but promised to
reimburse citizens with the recycling proceeds once
they started rolling in. In Athens, the city channels the
proceeds from program back into it so either method of
funding is feasible.
Recycling works. In its first year, the paper-bin
program recycled more than 1 million pounds of paper,
and the program is so popular now that the city must
empty some of the dumpsters twice a week. All that’s
left is the expansion of the voluntary program.
The people of Athens are ready, the environment is
certainly ready, now the city needs to move forward.
Expand the voluntary program to include the whole
city.
Feedback
It seems like a simple solution to a simple problem.
Students are having to wait hours to use the
University’s few Macintosh computers, so just add a
few more, right?
It’s not that simple, as University President
Charles Knapp found out Friday morning when he
visited the Mac lab at the main library.
It’s going to take more than just buying more
equipment — although that is a top priority — to solve
this problem. The demand for Macintoshes is bound to
grow with a supply increase. Solving this problem is
going to take cooperation among schools that have
their own computers, the administration and
University Computing and Networking Services, which
operates the public-access Mac labs.
UCNS personnel turned out Friday to give Knapp a
thorough report of the frustrating Mac lab situation.
Their efforts are as important as Knapp’s to working
out a solution to the problem.
It does no good for Knapp to make these efforts, if
the rest of the University doesn’t respond.
The president’s visit to the Mac lab is an effort to
get extra credit on his Red and Black report card. He is
on the right track. If Knapp wants to be a world class
president, it is important for him to get out of Lustrat
House every once in a while and take a firsthand look
at problems on campus.
“Fm going to get an A on this problem,” Knapp said.
He has passed the first test by showing concern for an
everyday student hassle. He’s on his way to higher
marks, but we won’t change his grade until we see
some results.
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■ QUOTABLE
"The Governor's budget represents a significant retreat from
the aggressive budget proposal endorsed by the Board of Re
gents last fall.” —
University President Charles Knapp
Going beyond segregation’s barriers
“By any means necessary.”
It was the civil rights leader Malcolm X who
coined this famous slogan. In the years since
his murder it has come to symbolize the idea
that African-Americans should use aggressive
tactics to gain equality. To some whites, and
some blacks, these words are incendiary. For
them, “by any means,” conjures up frightning
images of vengeful, blood-minded blacks, more
interested in venting 400 years of accumulated
rage than gaining equality, using violence as
the means to their end. I hardly think that is
what Malcolm intended. He was a firestarter,
but only in the metaphorical sense, and his pur
pose mainly was to stir the smoldering embers
of African-American pride and assertiveness.
Be that as it may, “by any means necessary,”
holds a special poignancy for me because it
makes me think of my family, and how they
dealt with the South’s racial injustice in their
own (some might call it morally questionable)
way.
Many years ago, in that now-vanished South
that lives only in memory and the movie
“Driving Miss Daisy,” my family owned a
barber shop in Macon. It was generally re
garded as one of the best in town, and many a
man had his head cut there — many a white
man, that is. Sheftall’s barber shop, like so
many establishments during that era, was seg
regated. But unlike most businesses owned by
blacks, it only catered to whites.
About a hundred years ago, a Sheflall patri
arch decided that success for the family lay in
cutting the straight locks of white customers,
not the kinky curls of blacks. As it turns out, I
Mark
Sheftall
guess he was right — at least about being suc
cessful.
Sheflall’s barber shop still endures, trim
ming the scalps of all races now, and the family
name still has a warm resonance for many of
Macon’s whites, who remember getting their
first haircut there. And, just as that patriarch
would have liked, the family is firmly
ensconced in the ranks of the bourgeoisie, and
chocked-full of doctors, lawyers, teachers and
other respectable citizens.
But for those of us who’ve come after, diffi
cult questions about the family’s role in the
black experience remain. Were we the quintes
sential Uncle Toms, feeding off the tragic injus
tice of segregation for the personal gain of the
family, or were we just exercising the maxim of
Malcolm X decades before he concieved it,
achieving a semblance of economic empow
erment and dignity “by any means necessary?”
In life, the Sheftall’s did not ignore the black
community that they ignored in business. For
50 years my grandfather ran a community
center for black youths in Macon. My uncle is a
department head at Morehouse College. These
are just two of many examples that I could givej
which seem to show a sincere committment to
the African-American community.
Although I still have not come completely to
terms with the family’s history, I like to think
they were, in their own way, a part of the black
struggle to achieve. Maybe this is just a per
sonal rationalization that allows me to look my
ancestors in the eye, but I really think they did
what they thought best.
Cutting the hair of white men was their gim
mick, their means of achieving the kind of suc
cess which would allow them to contradict the
racist attitudes then prevalent among whites,
and also be a role model to other blacks. The ob
jective of the family was always to turn out edu
cated, upstanding citizens who would represent
the Sheftall name, and the black race, well. I
can’t fault them for that aim.
All the same, my emotions remain mixed
about the family barber shop. Were the means
really necessary? I don’t know. But I realize
that few blacks chose the long and hard road of
activism as their way of battling segregation. In
fact, most quietly accepted their place in that
warped society, not even trying to rise above it,
much less destroy it. I understand and sympa
thize with that. I also understand and admire
what my family achieved in the face of the over
whelming odds that routinely smothered blacks
in those days. We may have bent, but we did
not break. And of that I am proud.
Mark Sheftall is a columnist for The Red and
Black.
Forum: Voicing one’s beliefs
■ FORUM
□ The Red and Black welcomes letters to the editor and prints them in the Forum
column as space permits. All letters are subject to editing for length, style and li
belous material. Letters should be typed, doublespaced and must include the name,
address and daytime telephone number of the writer. Please include student classifi
cation and major other appropriate identification. Names can be omitted with a valid
reason upon request. Letters can be sent by U.S. mail or brought in person to The Red
and Black's offices at 123 N. Jackon St., Athens, Ga.
God isn’t “Dear Abby.” One
doesn’t learn the answers to his or
her questions through prayer.
That’s what libraries and people
like Dr. Henry Schaefer are for. In
his lecture, Schaefer didn’t say,
“Gandhi is/isn’t in Heaven.” He
merely tried to show that Gandhi
was, like everyone else on this
planet, only human — not the flaw
less, Christ-like figure many think
him to have been.
Joshua Mayfield
freshman, child and family devel
opment
Parading his beliefs
Henry Schaefer’s letter (Feb. 16)
on the purported evils of Hinduism
displays a certain amount of self-
contradiction: having asserted that
Hinduism is “a) wrong and b) evil,”
he goes on to deny in the strongest
terms that he is intolerant of it.
Surely a person as learned in re
ligion as Schaefer claims to be is
aware of the many tragic instances
throughout history of intolerance,
not infrequently bloody ones,
wrought in the name of Jesus by
sincere but misguided believers
convinced they were obeying the
will of God. It does no g<x>d to
blame other religions for misdeeds
Christians themselves have com
mitted repeatedly.
Schaefer has a right to exercise
his First Amendment rights, but
his insistence on wearing his reli
gious beliefs on his sleeve and par
ading them at the drop of a hat
makes a lot of people uneasy, col
leagues and students alike. A uni
versity is a forum for the
reasonable exchange of ideas.
When someone publicly insists,
however, that all religions save his
own are false and that their practi
tioners are at best misguided and
at worst evil, how can there be a
reasonable dialogue?
Francis Assaf
associate professor,
romance languages
Commandments inapt
As a Christian, I do believe that
one should inform others of their
religion, but I would never impose
my thoughts and philosophies on a
Hindu, Muslim, Jew or anyone
else, for that matter.
Everyone cm Earth has his or
her own idea of heaven or Karma
and how to get there. As a Chris
tian, Schaefer should be more un
derstanding and less judgemental.
What does a Hindu care if he vio
lates the first, second or whatever
commandment? The Ten Com
mandments have no bearing in his
religion nor should Schaefer use it
as a basis to condemn his beliefs.
John Chambliss
senior, spanish/international busi
ness
Moral responsibility
In his letter (Feb. 16), Dr.
Schaefer has yet again displayed a
remarkable lack of sensitivity, al
beit packaged in more semantics
that lead nowhere. As he promises
to tackle a different religion next
quarter, he tries in vain to convince
people that he is tolerant. He
doesn’t have to agree with every
exercise of freedom that is pro
tected under the law, he says. Does
this brand of tolemace exist then,
only because it’s enforced by the
law? This is particularly disturbing
in the light of events in countries
where such protective laws don’t
exist.
No aspect of the world as know it
today is perfect. Yet we see people
struggling and dying all over to im
prove things. We need more tea
chers who can teach new
generations to move forward with a
positive attitude while getting rid
of the sophisticated intellectual
bigotry that exists today.
Educators mustn’t teach young
minds them how to exericise the
wonderful freedoms guaranteed us
in this country without setting an
example of the moral responsibility
that is implicit in those freedoms.
They should preach their his be
liefs as a vehicle of moral strength
and character, rather than as a
means of condemning things they
don’t understand or agree with.
Hypocrisy is bad. Tolerance is
good. We need to be able to distin
guish between the two.
Yeshwant D. Sanzgiri
graduate student, pharmacy
Pot called kettle black
Re:“...the pcick of slovenly, man
nerless heathens in New York who
communicate solely through the
use of obscene arm gestures.” (Feb.
21)
Molly Mednikow should know
better than to cast disparaging re
marks about other people (or per
haps the rules of proper societal
relations that she implied are for
all but herself.) As someone who
was raised in the tri-state area and
also has lived in the South for 10
lus years, I must take offense at
er remarks. It only shows how
rude and self-righteous people can
be. I go back to New 4 York City at
least three times a year, and you
can be assured that people are no
more rude there than in the South.
From my experience, I have found
that people in the North are gruff
because they are in a hurry, while
in the South rude behavior usually
stems from a lack of regard for the
other person.
Maybe if we all took a second to
think of how any action or remark
will affect someone else, the world
would be a less rude place. I hope
that the next time Mednikow sees
someone in distress on the side of
the road, she’s the first person to go
rushing to their aid.
Bradley Austin
senior, political science
Abstinence safest sex
Hasn’t it been nice celebrating
National Condom Week! How fit
ting that Valentine’s Day fell on
this auspicious week! Condoms
save us from AIDS, other sexually
transmitted diseases and the re
sponsibility of pregnancy out of
wedlock. Certainly condoms have a
lace, but there is a better way, a
est way, a right way. Oops! Sorry,
I forget that the word “right” is one
of those words like “wrong” that we
just don’t use anymore.
Consider for a moment the possi
bility of abstinence before mar
riage and fidelity after marriage...I
know, I know, what a narrow
minded, uninformed, idealistic,
self-righteous idea!! But consider
the consequences and side-effects
of this proposed idea versus its op
posite, sex before marriage and in
fidelity after marriage. There are
no divorces caused by fidelity after
marriage and abstinence before
marriage; there are no pregnancies
out of wedlock, no sex void of emo
tional commitment, no AIDS trans
mitted sexually! That’s what I call
safe sex, not only physically but
emotionally and spiritually, also.
So as we praise the use of con
doms, let’s not forget the better
way, the best way...the right wav.
Condoms don’t save us from the ills
of society near as well as absti
nence before marriage and fidelity
after marriage.
Scott Gardner
M.S. candidate, child and family de
velopment