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Page 2 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