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Friday, February 23, 2001
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Opinion
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about Philip
itinDOvawMj nrr j s Philip Morris is a huge
'wt 11 ftmoanv that owns Miller Brewing
rilnoRwuS 1 ^ Kraft Foods and is best known
ApiimtW the maker of Marlboro — the
InSublimeV Wl)rld s best-selling cigarettes. But
ostavaraiB an y die commercials on televi
sion only present the Phillip Morris
Ivelead is .# ime ' n advertisements describing
:w vears a; ■£ good deeds the company does
>ace.2we)vfi Jr America,
th .self-pror 1 The people of Philip Morris
ng like era? mily do good deeds to cover up for
ling and sab® rgeting young children in tobacco
I^ivertising campaigns. These
>tion incMi di ds are not as great as the corn-
flyers anddKmy would like viewers to believe.
I No one is saying that Philip
oraplaceto*i orr is does not do good things for
-Iveleadsir.;: c l )nin umities around the nation, but
allege Static:- d t h e expenditures are examined
More closely, it seems that the com-
>n for SatM, in y j s more interested in helping
^°' VS11 ' 1 'itself than anyone else.
its aregoneiH p ast y ea p Philip Morris gave
$115 million to people in need and
t|en turned around and spent $ 150
million on ads telling the public
about its good deeds. Its soft mon-
Kissinger • 4 donations are nothing more than
more attract 311 attempt to cover its own hide
pid stay on the good side of the
show will® government. Because the tobacco
CantinainB: industry is under intense scrutiny,
ation, log tpbacco companies donate money
n. to the government in order to influ
ence their decisions.
| Philip Morris was the highest
, Jo nor of soft-money-contribu- , p :
TT T tioms to the Republican Party in
ct fromni 2Q00 — with more than $800,000
desthisweet ip contributions. From 1995-’96,
reakingim' the company donated $1.9 mil-
in right M
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in MardiGa
son to 1
lion to Republican Party commit
tees and $349,000 to Democratic
committees, at a time when to
bacco companies began facing
heavy investigations.
Democratic N.J., Sen. Bill
Bradley described the way money
invades politics as being “like ants
in the kitchen — without closing all
the holes, there is always a way in.”
Donald J. Simon, executive vice
president of Common Cause said,
“Soft money is the way to buy ac
cess and influence.” Philip Morris
has used donations to buy its way
in because it realizes that it will
need all the help it can get to con
tinue its corrupt actions.
So, aside from the fact that they
exaggerate their good deeds and
buy off the government, the people
of Philip Morris are still good peo
ple, right? Wrong.
Philip Morris says it discourages
underage smoking through pro
grams educating children in
schools across the country but re
cently have shamelessly brought its
ads into those very same schools.
This school year, the companies
of Phillip Morris donated book
covers to middle schools and high
schools across the nation, an action
which seems like another good
deed on the surface. However, the
people in Mesa, Ariz., were much
smarter than the people of Philip
Morris thought.
Opponents of the book covers
say the company “has found an
other way to market deadly tobacco
products to the youth of America.”
There are several book cover de
signs, but parents and students in
some of the schools found alleged
subliminal messages in all of them.
One cover shows background im
ages of athletes with cigarettes in
their hands and another has roller
blades with buckles that closely re
semble cigarettes.
In 1998, Joe Camel and other
cartoon characters were banned
from cigarette advertising, with the
assumption that cartoons appeal to
young children. However, on one of
the new covers, there is a character
with an image beneath his face —
Mesa sixth-graders have identified
the image to be Joe Camel.
These schools are not being un
grateful by sending the book cov
ers back. They are realizing that
children seeing cigarettes on their
book covers every day could play a
decisive role in whether they
choose to smoke.
Philip Morris should be repri
manded for thinly veiled advertise
ments, but it is unlikely. It has al
ready bought off the government.
At this time, Phillip Morris has
not been reprimanded for its ac
tions. However, anyone can make
the decision to not fall for the lies
that the company is trying to dish
out to the American public.
Recently, Philip Morris, the
world’s largest tobacco company,
admitted for the first time that
“smoking is addictive and causes
diseases in smokers.” Its honesty in
this matter should be commended,
but it is time for that honesty to be
come an element in all of its adver
tising and sales tactics.
Until then, do not be fooled into
thinking that the people of Philip
Morris are anything more than a
company promoting unsafe prod
ucts with questionable advertising ”
strategies.
Melissa Bedsole is a junior
psychology major.
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Test-flagging discriminates against disabled students
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S tudents with disabilities have a
new victory to celebrate. In a
recent settlement of a lawsuit
with the Educational Testing Ser
vices (ETS), which gives standard
ized tests such as the Graduate
Record Examination (GRE) and the
Graduate Management Admission
Test (GMAT), the testing service
agreed not to flag disabled students’
test scores.
A man without hands who was given extra time and
access to a computer with a trackball to take the
GMAT filed the lawsuit.
Mark Breimhorst was not accepted to any of the
business schools he applied to and filed suit, charging
that the testing service’s flagging policy violated feder
al and state anti-discrimination laws. The testing ser
vice flagged disabled students’ scores with the note
“Scores Obtained Under Special Conditions.” This
policy reeked of discrimination and caused students
with disabilities to be unfairly stigmatized.
The testing service may have started out with good
intentions, but flagging disabled students’ scores was
unnecessary. The notice to graduate schools that these
students have a disability that allows for special equip
ment or extra time to take the test clearly separated
them from students who took the test under regular
conditions. That is discrimination.
The ability to compare the test scores of a disabled
person and a person without a disability should not
be allowed. The students need to be judged by their
scores alone. According to Judge William Orrick of
Federal District, in a ruling reprinted by The New
York Times, “the service’s exams should ‘equally
measure the skills of disabled and non-disabled test-
takers’ — and that, if they did so, there would be no
reason to flag the scores of test-takers who received
accommodations.”
ETS, by settling the suit and agreeing to change
its policy, is setting an example for other testing
services.
The College Board, which administers the Scholas
tic Aptitude Test (SAT), was not named in the suit, but
it is are planning to look into its notification policies.
Robert Schaeffer, the public education director of
FairTest, a group that is critical of standardized testing,
said, “This is a huge, major step forward for equal op
portunity in testing.”
This settlement does not cover law school or med
ical school entrance examinations. These other tests
need to end their flagging practices because they also
discriminate against groups of students. All students
deserve to have the guarantee that they will not be seg
regated because of a disability.
Even though many admission officers say the flag
ging policy helps them become aware of how much
disabled students are able to accomplish, the premise
under which the policy began is not enough to allow it
to continue.
David Wilson, president of the Graduate Manage
ment Admission Council, said, “The unfortunate thing
is, most of [business school admissions officers]
thought it was beneficial for applicants to have that
flag because when admissions officers looked at the
applicant’s experience, and saw that a person had
achieved all that despite a disability, it usually had a
positive effect.”
Yet, even with that line of reasoning, the policy was
discriminating. In that case, it discriminated against
non-disabled test-takers.
No matter how one views flagging policies, they
are discriminatory and should not be continued. Other
testing services need to learn from the ETS settlement
and take a long look at their own policies. Discrimina
tion, whether for or against those wfth disabilities, is -
not ethical or legally right.
Brieanne Porter is a junior ‘
political science major.
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Russian opposition — same song, second verse
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W elcome back,
Soviets. It can
not be said that
you were missed.
To be honest, the
group in charge of the
Russian Federation So
viets cannot accurately
be considered soviets. It
has renounced commu
nism and replaced it with some other form
of totalitarian structure while claiming it is
working toward democracy. Even if its
claims are true, the actions of the current
Russian government are eerily similar to
those taken by the Soviet Union during the
Cold War. It is time the United States dealt
with it accordingly.
President Bush said he was “deeply
concerned” by Tuesday’s arrest of FBI
agent Robert Hanssen on charges of spy
ing for the former Soviet Union and Rus
sia. Bush should have been concerned ‘
with the actions of the Russians far before
this latest incident; they have returned to
playing the role they abandoned in 1989:
Being the adversary of the United States at
every turn, while thinking nothing of lying
to the rest of the world.
To anyone who knows Russian history,
the Bear’s renewed stalking of the Eagle is
not a shock. For a thousand years, the Rus
sians have required a foe to help take the
minds of the Russian people off their own
suffering. The Russians have decided to
face off with a very powerful country; first it
was the Ottoman Empire in a dispute over
the Turkish straits, then it was Napoleon’s
French, then the British Empire, the Japan
ese, the Nazis and finally the United States.
The long-suffering Russian people could at
least take pride that their homeland was a
global power to be reckoned with..
Russian President Vladmir Putin is
struggling with an economy in a shambles -
and a nation with a confused political land
scape. It is not surprising Putin, a former
KGB agent, has decided to take the time-
tested approach of leaning toward totalitari
anism while finding a foe to blame every
thing on. Once again, the United States is a
perfect fit for the enemy.
The first warning signs came when the
Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank
last year after one of its torpedos explod
ed inside the boat. Instead of coming for
ward and admitting responsibility, the
Russians blamed an invisible American
submarine for the disaster, saying the
Kursk had been rammed.
Last week, the Russians stepped up
the rhetoric, using the Russian newspa
per Pravcla — long known in the West as
being the mouthpiece of former Soviet
policy — to accuse American National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice of
making anti-Russian statements to an
Italian newspaper just days before.
According to Pravda, Rice called Russia
“a threat to the West” in an interview with
El Figaro, an Italian magazine. “(Rice’s)
comments smack of ignorance and sensa
tionalism and ... offensive arrogance, impe
rialist fantasies and proof of total inepti
tude,” Pravda railed.
Two small problems: Rice never gave
an interview to El Figaro,which took her
comments from an interview with the
French magazine Politique Internationale,
in which she said she “did not see Russia as
a threat to the West.”
The Kremlin has also taken to insulting
Bush, calling him a “cowboy” with “impe
rialist delusions.” The Russians have not
stopped at words. In recent weeks, they
moved tactical nuclear weapons to the port
city of Kaliningrad on the Polish and
Lithuanian borders. They also conducted
massive military exercises in which Russ
ian aircraft violated Norwegian and Japan
ese airspace — something not done since
the 1980s — with long-range bombers, and
they test-fired four different types of inter
continental ballistic missiles.
The Russians are stepping up diplomatic
opposition to the United States. Along with
the French and the Chinese, the Russians
have strongly condemned the “barbaric”
American and British air attacks against
Iraqi radar installations. While the Russians
are claiming they only have “humanitarian
interests” in mind, it should be remembered
that the Russians have billions of dollars ;;
worth of defense and construction contracts
waiting to be grabbed when U.N. sanctions
against Iraq are lifted. Putin seems to have a
decided that, whenever the United States ik'
involved in a diplomatic dispute, Russia .
must take the other side. This would in
crease the chances of Russia benefiting **
economically and in prestige.
Perhaps the Bush administration is -♦*
catching on. CIA director George Tenet tes
tified before the Senate Intelligence Com-.v.
mittee that the Russians have played a ma-«>
jor role in “advancing these... weapons of _
mass destruction programs of rogue na- ''
tions.” The United States should not stop a,t
voicing concerns. It should cut foreign aid
to the Russians, and increase its military
budget. Russia’s actions cannot be consid
ered those of a nation looking to improve '
relations with the United States, much less
that of an ally. The Clinton administration
went easy bn Boris Yeltsin, knowing he
was trying to get his nation through major
struggles to taie democracy. Putin has re
versed course, and Bush should do the
same thing. The Russians are once more a
threat to American national security and
should be treated as such, even if the chilly
weather between the two nations freezes
into another Cold War.
Mark Passwaters is a senior
electrical engineering major.