Letters To The Editor

EDUCATION

West has it backwards

Sen. Jim West, as usual, is promoting efforts that benefit everyone except his own constituents - except this time, it actually is against their own best interests, with higher tuitions.

Perhaps West (R-Spokane) should look at the history of both Eastern Washington University and Washington State University. When WSU was in the planning stage, Pullman was chosen over Spokane for their facility. As it turned out, the majority of WSU’s student body - more than 60 percent - is from the Seattle area. Even today, only 7 percent of WSU’s students come from the Spokane area. If it’s necessary to merge the two schools, then West should reverse himself and allow EWU to take over WSU.

When I was a member of the EWU board of trustees (for seven years), (EWU President) George Frederickson brought EWU into the 20th century with programs that benefited the business community. He also brought the college into Spokane with establishment of the downtown facility.

EWU’s enrollment is still about 80 percent from the Spokane area. Why reward WSU’s shortsightedness with Frederickson’s farsightedness?

If West is so bent on helping education, why doesn’t he find the means to change the professors’ class load from only two classes a day for only 180 days per year to at least four classes per day and allow EWU to almost double its number of students at a reduction in tuition fees, making it possible for the enrollment to double while bringing in more tuition fees? Andy Kelly Spokane

More autonomy would be valuable

There are good reasons for merging Eastern Washington University and Washington State University. Spokane is the economic hub of a large region and needs a strong academic infrastructure to keep pace with technological and cultural developments.

However, bureaucratic centralization is not the best way to answer those needs.

When I became chairman of English at EWU (1978-84), departmental enrollments were plummeting. We decided to do what others were not (as yet) doing. We raised standards 50 percent and created master’s programs in creative writing, technical writing, composition and English as a second language. Our enrollments tripled because the Spokane region was being better served.

The best way for customers to be served is to have some competition. Oregon has a commission recommending ways that its institutions of higher education can be given more autonomy. Washington ought to do the same. More autonomy means more efforts to serve the specialized needs of the community. Our best solutions lie in promoting collaboration while maintaining autonomy and decreasing restrictions. Grant W. Smith Cheney

Merger would enhance EWU

As a recently admitted EWU student, I would like to say that Sen. Jim West’s proposal to merge Eastern Washington University with Washington State University is an idea worth looking at.

After talking with West’s office and reading arguments against the proposal, I believe the merger would have an extremely positive effect for the Spokane area and just may be the answer to EWU’s enrollment woes and continuing financial crisis.

EWU’s enrollment problem stems from its perception as a second-rate institution despite its professional staff and upgraded facilities. EWU can change this negative perception and gain WSU’s good reputation by accepting the merger offer. The WSU name will attract a great deal of students from the Spokane area who want a degree from an institution more prestigious than EWU but who are not able to move to Pullman. The merger also would provide another option for West Side students who still want the metropolitan services that Spokane, not Pullman, can provide.

As for increased tuition costs, West’s office says there don’t have to be any. The purpose of the merger is not to raise costs but to better utilize the existing facility, to end the bickering between EWU and WSU on who gets the bigger portion of the Spokane pie and to offer a major university as an educational option to Spokane students.

In the end, everybody wins. Stephen A. Taylor Spokane

Art critical to education

Re: the Dec. 15 story on the value of arts experience in a child’s life.

The information about child development is important for parents to know. Research indicates that children who study the arts grow up to be more successful than those who do not. There is evidence that children who have more than four years of art education score much higher on the SAT than those who do not.

The arts help to increase student attendance and graduation rates; improve multicultural understanding; develop higher-level thinking skills, creativity and problem-solving ability; give students a more positive attitude toward their school experience; increase enjoyment of life outside of the school environment; and teach teamwork.

Parents and citizens who want to support art in children’s lives can:

Encourage schools to include the arts as a basic for all children’s education.

Encourage partnership between schools and arts organizations - both for teacher training and for arts presentations in the schools.

Thank teachers and school administrators for their commitment to the arts.

Encourage local schools to have well-trained and qualified teachers of the arts as well as artists in the schools who have a command of the discipline and its history and traditions.

Encourage schools to assess proficiencies in dance, music, theater and the visual arts.

Support arts organizations which provide arts activities for youths through volunteerism and financial support.

Support your children’s creative endeavors and honor their efforts.

Thank you, Spokesman-Review, for making arts activities and the important role of the arts known to the community of Spokane. Karen R. Mobley arts director, city of Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Watch whom you’re messing with

Does Doug Clark know what he’s getting into (“Eco-project would waste our green,” Dec. 16) by knocking something labeled environmental just because the money would be better spent elsewhere?

He’s talking about the de facto state religion of this country and the livelihood of several hundred thousand highly paid lawyers, PR specialists, administrators and lobbyists, among others. These are backed by groups whose combined membership is declining but still is in seven figures, some of them zealots, by private foundations with assets in the billions of dollars and by the current administrations in the executive branch of both state and federal government.

What next? Whining because the $1 million annual revenue from the popular conservation futures tax goes to buy land for parks, called natural areas, that always just happen to be adjacent to affluent neighborhoods, when the Food Bank and the Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery need money? Knocking the state Department of Natural Resources for giving $26 million to such groups as the Little Spokane Natural Area Citizens Advisory Board (remember “Spokane County tries to find Easy money”?) which received all such grants in Eastern Washington?

Complaining about the state Department of Ecology giving the Inland Empire Public Lands Council $38,500 to make an anti-mining video which contained a plea for donations and political material? Griping because of the millions of dollars spent on school textbooks containing misinformation about everything from acid rain to world population?

Before you know it, Clark will want to teach kids critical thinking instead of indoctrinating them. Is nothing sacred? Edwin G. Davis Spokane

Confusion abounds about Medicare

To say that there is some confusion regarding the Medicare law which goes into effect Jan. 1 is really putting it mildly.

It is my understanding, after contacting the state insurance commissioner’s office, that top insurance regulators are among those trying to make sense out of the new behemoth which runs to several hundred pages. This is mostly because the regulations governing this law still are being formulated and decisions have yet to be handed down.

This much we are fairly sure of: The acute medical needs of senior citizens will be met as before.

What seems to be a barbed statement in the new law regarding the penalizing of doctors for treating Medicare patients for items not covered by the law is not the cutting back of treatment, but rather, as I understand it, a control of doctors who refuse to accept the 115 percent of Medicare’s “allowable cost,” which is the ceiling for charges to senior citizens. Those who make a contract with senior citizens to treat them on a fee-for-service basis can be penalized by a two-year suspension of their services to Medicare patients except on this fee-for-service basis - meaning that the senior citizen will have to pay the doctor out-of-pocket for this contracted service. If you are in doubt, call Medicare’s hotline, 800-638-6833.

It will be a while yet before the interpretations are made public. Until such time, Medicare recipients are asked not to go off the deep end with half-analyzed statements of the new Medicare law. Dorothy M. Butler Cheney

Study on teen work is flawed

“Part-time jobs work for teens” needed balance. It states that more than 20 hours of work a week is “harmful.” Unfortunately, all the studies cited have a common flaw. They separate teen work hours into only two groups: up to 20 hours and more than 20 hours.

One recent study by the Urban Institute breaks work hours into smaller groups. The Urban Institute study found negative results begin when teens work more than 30 hours per week.

Adults who worked while in high school, however, earn significantly higher wages. Even 10 years after graduation, teens who worked 20 hours or more earn $5,000 more per year than students who worked fewer than six hours per week.

Work is positive for every teen. It’s critical to impoverished teens.

I’m from a single-parent home. I worked to help out and to save for college. Many alternative-school students spend fewer than five hours per week in school; if kids aren’t in school and can’t work, what will they do with their time?

The state can’t know our individual circumstances. Decisions should be made by people who know and care about a teen, rather than by a state agency.

Last year, I sponsored teen work legislation. My bill allowed teens to work longer hours with parent and teacher approval. But Gov. Gary Locke would have vetoed the bill because of AFL-CIO opposition; not surprisingly, teen workers are least likely to be union members.

Ironically, your article appeared the same day the state Department of Labor & Industries told me it was considering more flexible rules for teen work. Rep. Brad Benson R-6th Legislative District, Spokane

Government doesn’t solve problems

Hooray for the “Your Turn” column by Elden Sorenson (Dec. 17). It’s shameful that an entrepreneur, laying it on the line to provide a vital service, should become a stooge.

In a few concise words, he illustrates the futility of government attempts to improve child care and leads us to speculate how many child care problems are created by government intervention. Have all the licenses and regulations ensured quality? Have the health bureaucrats made child care safe? Do poverty programs create more problems than they solve?

Sorenson doesn’t answer these questions, but I imagine that without regulations, he might even provide better service to the regulators that matter - the parents. Without government ridiculousness, parents would have more child care options.

Unfortunately, potential competitors who might have provided free market choice have fled to less harassed professions.

There are complex economic and social reasons why government manipulation fails. However, simple observation confirms these failures. Public schools delivering illiteracy; ineffective drug prohibition making criminals rich and glaucoma patients criminal; poverty programs gutting family and social values; government, business and greed mixed making doctor visits fearful. There are books about government failures.

Despite apparent understanding of such miscarriages, government remains everyone’s tool for solving perceived social evils or market failings. The seemingly easy solution of passing a law never works; it’s a tale of fixes for government-created foibles, and in a crazy pig pile, both liberals and conservatives have their big plans to “fix” the world. However, in real life, their wisdom leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Greg D. Holmes Spangle

Elderly robbed of the dream

Re: “Off the waterfront,” Dec. 8, 1997:

When I read this article, it just reflected the sadness of hard-working elderly men and women who at one time could afford the American dream that we all possess in one way or another.

Yes, taxes need to be paid, but should elderly citizens in our community who have owned something as long as most of us are old be taxed for it? Our government system of taxes is in desperate need of reform - for that matter, the whole system is.

Will you or I be able to live in our homes 10 or 15 years from now? The tax system needs to be for the citizens of the state, not for the government. If there is not change at some point, we will be forced to dump its tea. Michael C. Koczer Spokane

HEALTH AND SAFETY

Can’t tell good from bad

You figure it. President Clinton’s blue-ribbon committee on AIDS is recommending that those who have the problem be put on Medicare. We all know AIDS is prevalent in sexual deviates and drug shooters.

Here in Spokane, we furnish clean needles to the shooters. They can’t work, so they go on Social Security disability. Now they want to give them the medicine?

The poor drug dealer trying to make a few dollars (so he can buy a Mercedes) gets caught and thrown in the crowbar hotel. Doesn’t seem fair to me!

When you think about it, just who really is breaking the law? The do-gooders with the free needles, the users or the dealers? I think they all are equally to blame for the problem. Charles E. McCollim Spokane

Don’t listen to drug dealers

Doctors go to school for four to eight years to learn all about drugs and what they do to the body. Why do children and even adults listen to drug addicts, who are selling drugs on the streets and in schools? They know nothing about these drugs. What they do to people is terrible. How dumb can you be?

Please, kids, think twice or 100 times before you take any drugs from anyone other than your doctor and what he prescribes for you. Dorothy J. Cameron Spokane

Antibiotics misused

Re: John Webster’s editorial, “Consumer concern badly misfocused”:

I applaud your effort to try to inform consumers about the overuse of antibiotics by modern meat producers.

Webster states, “To keep animals healthy under the conditions of modern mass production, meat producers feed them antibiotics.”

Actually, according to Laurie Garrett in “The Coming Plague,” antibiotics are used in the meat not for mass production but for longer shelf life.

It’s no wonder more people are becoming vegetarians! James O. Hagen, D.C. Spokane