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The Panther
December 13, 1978
There’s Grief Behind
Those Newsroom
Smiles
By Suleiman Abdul-Azeez
Co-Editor
It surprised me to hear the problems which Joan Lewis and
the Drama Department are having with one Clark ad
ministrative unit. I thought students were the only ones with
such problems of slowness and inefficiency on the part of
some members of the Clark administration.
One class president told me that he just struggles through
with class affairs because one administrative unit is often
unavailable with the help he needs. The yearbook editor
wouldn’t complain unduly but she’s been having problems
with administrative slowness and inefficiency also — in the
College Relations Office. In fact, since I am revising this
editorial, she wanted me to mention that despite her standing
request for a typewriter all semester, the yearbook office still
does not h ave one, even though her advisor, Sherrie Dobbs as
sures her she is “working on it.” Our own Panther has
suffered under slowness and ineptitude on the part of that
same office. It took us two months to get badly needed supplies
— simple, essential things like pencils, typing paper and
scotch tape. We lost a full month because the College
Relations Office lost our original requisition.
This is not to say that we have not had the use of supplies.
The College Relations Office did open its supply cabinet to the
use of the Panther. Although the Panther staff has also had
the use of College Relations’ typewriter, any newspaper office,
especially one which purports to be training professional
journalists, should have a working typewriter. Yet, we still
don’t have a working typewriter in the newspaper office, after
our requisition of Sept. 8.
I have always lamented the fact that the Panther was snat
ched so quickly from under the sole auspices of the Mass Com
munications Department and placed jointly with College
Relations. Denise Johnson, our only faculty advisor despite
the fact that two are listed below, is new as a College
Relations Officer. To have her advise the Panther, which is
also new to College Relations, was ill-advised and perhaps un
fair to her. To be fair, Ms. Johnson has worked with the Pan
ther in many areas doing things which the student staff could
and ought to have been doing. She has stayed and worked the
(EDITOR’S NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS A REBUT
TAL WRITTEN BY DR. ELIAS BLAKE, JR.,
PRESIDENT, CLARK COLLEGE, IN REFERENCE
TO THIS MONTH’S EDITORIAL WRITTEN BY
SULEIMAN ABDUL-AZEEZ, PANTHER CO
EDITOR.)
The editorial on the problems of the PANTHER and
the yearbook was held up by me and a rewrite was
directed before it could be printed. My first reading of
the editorial in its original form indicated it was a
highly personal and inaccurate attack on an individual
staff member. I also knew of major activities which
were omitted from the editorial. Further investigation
revealed a history of conflict between the co-editor and
the College Relations staff going beyond the editorial
issues. Fundamental issues of unfair bias were raised.
There was no censure.
An editor has a responsibility to find out all the facts
before writing and to use all the information at his dis
posal in forming his editorial opinion. As in any
Tlie PANTHER is published twice monthly by the
students at Clark College.
Editors Suleiman Abdul-Azeez
Ann L. Wead
News Editor Marcia Jones
Feature Editor Denise Green
Sports Editor Charles Anderson
Photography Editor Tyraun Patterson
Business Manager :Jack Jenkinft
Staff Artists Linda Dyson
Felton Fedrick
Faculty Advisors Denise Johnson
Osker Spicer
All articles, poetry, photographs and other con
tributions to the newspaper may be dropped off at our of
fices in Thayer Hall.
Address all correspondence to: PANTHER Newspaper,
Box 154 Clark College, Atlanta, Ga. 30314.
late hours which it has taken to get the newspaper ready for
publication. She has supplied material for articles and helped
in the reorganization of the staff. She has even used her own
car in transporting newspaper staff members to the printer’s.
However, as faculty advisor the staff has needed Ms.
Johnson to deal with Clark administrative units more aggres
sively in order to speed up the process of acquiring the
newspaper’s needs. She has fallen short of that function. In
fact, expecting her to take on two new functions at once has
been detrimental especially to staff morale. Her slowness and
sometimes unresponsiveness in attending to our mostbasic of
needs has caused much grief behind the newsroom smiles.
Sending a requisition to the Business Office and just waiting
until something is done is not my view of the advocate role a
faculty advisor should play.
Transferring the Panther to the active control of the
College Relations Office should have been delayed at least a
year so that Ms. Johnson and her superior, Ms. Dobbs, who is
also new to College Relations, could have had time to learn the
ropes. I don’t believe that if the Mass Communications
Department had an active voice in the Panther advisorship,
it would have allowed the Panther office to go without a
working typewriter, a basic journalistic tool, this long. That
department knows the importance of deadlines and
timeliness and would not have been as slow in responding to
our requests. It understands the needs of a campus
newspaper. However, since our faculty advisor in Mass Com
munications, Oscar Spicer, is basically inactive, real control
of the advisory responsibility of the Panther rests in the
College Relations Office.
I have been told that Ms. Johnson was recommended for the
position of faculty advisor partly on the strength of her
performance as a Panther editor when she attended Clark.
However, faculty advising requires a lot more management
skills than does campus newspaper editing. In a vote taken
among 22 of 25 active newspaper staff members, 21 voted to
endorse my previous editorial which was much more critical
of Ms. Johnson’s performance as Panther faculty advisor.
Only one member voted not to endorse the editorial. Such a
vote is a clear expression of the discontent among the
newspaper staff with Ms. Johnson’s performance.
The Mass Communications Department needs to take a
much bigger role in advising the Panther. Working jointly
with College Relations the Mass Communications
Department can be most helpful in meeting the Panther’s
journalistic concerns. The responsibilities of each department
toward the Panther need to be specifically stated and carried
out. If such is not the case, then we may continue to produce
newspapers,but there’ll still be grief behind those newsroom
smiles.
newspaper, freedom carries responsibility for ac
curacy and fairness. The original editorial did not meet
those standards. There was never a question of sup
pressing the editorial view; the critical nature of the
original editorial still stands.
Certain other factors which I shared with Mr. Azeez
were not included so I will include them here:
1) The newspaper is now being published more
regularly in its current structure than in the last year
or two.
2) For the first time the advisor is part of a salaried job
description versus a volunteer faculty member’s res
ponsibility. The irregularity and the structure were
related.
3) Major equipment purchases(typewriters) were not
a part of the original budgets for either the newspaper
or yearbook (wherever the newspaper was housed
would not have speeded up the process of budget
reallocations which requires shifting of funds). Ms.
Johnson has worked on this since October, and a
solution was forthcoming prior to the editorial.
4) The issues were simply ones of slowness in getting
supplies, neither of which is within total control of
College Relations. If the delays were as indicated, Mr.
Azeez could have joined in the pressuring process for
supplies.
5) I disagree strongly with the charges of ineptness
and inefficiency. In long discussions, it was clear the
work load of Ms. Johnson in producing the paper was
so heavy she had to pull back to shift more res
ponsibilities for production to students. Mr. Azeez did
not deny Ms. Johnson’s heavy involvement. We now
have a regularly published paper; before it was
irregular. The record speaks for itself.
I want to make it clear again that Mr. Azeez’s copy
was a case of a piece of writing based on inadequate
investigation and omission of major sets of facts. If
such a case arises again, it will be delayed again and, as
on any newspaper, a rewrite will be requested.
Students are not allowed to stand outside of normal
responsibilities for the quality of their work.
Letter to the Editor
Dear Editor:
I read the article in the last
issue of the Panther entitled
“Marijuana Effects Can Be
Damaging.” I found the article
to be quite alarming simply
because of the way the in
formation was presented.
I would like to ask the
author: what chromosomes are
damaged and to what extent;
also I would like to know the
mechanism which causes the
damage. I think in checking
this information thoroughly
her statements will be
repudiated. The truth of the
matter is the effects seen on
chromosomes due to the active
ingredient in mari
juana—Delta-l-trans- tetrahy
dracannibinol—are about
the same as those
demonstrated by water. The
suppression of the immunity
system has yet to be clinically
demonstrated. As for the
statement of memory im
pairment, marijuana effects
only short term memory and
not long term memory.
Furthermore, marijuana does
not interfere with the neuro
physiological processes res
ponsible for memory, e.g., the
destruction of
cyclocabalimine, B-12. Even
more, the active ingredient
delta-1-trans-tetrahydracan-
nibinol is unstable and tends
to deteriorate quickly and can
not be found in the body after
three to five days.
As for the use of marijuana
leading to harder drugs, this is
only partially true since
research has shown that these
individuals would have done
so in the majority of cases
without marijuana. Most
people who use marijuana
have little problems sleeping
since one of its side effects is
drowsiness.
If the use of marijuana is res
ponsible for a reduction of tes
tosterone levels and causes
chromosomal damage, we
should be seeing an alarming
increase in birth defects and a
drastic decrease in the birth
rate, since one in every six
people in the country has used
marijuana. As for the
statement that marijuana and
alcohol are not equivalent, this
is true. Alcohol is a much more
devastating drug.
—Mykol Williams