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Volume 94
Issue 4
Next Publication:
Thursday February 7, 2013
Monday, February 4, 2013
PINE LOG The
The Independent Voice of Stephen F. Austin State University
46
WEDNESDAY
H
Page 6
Ravens pull
By Jessica Gilligan
Managing Editor
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend will engage in a public interview with for-mer
Nacogdoches Mayor Judy McDonald at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Grand
Ballroom. This will be the largest of several events held throughout a
week-long visit by Townsend.
Townsend is the oldest daughter of Ethel and the late Robert F. Kennedy.
Documentaries about both of her parents were shown for free in the
Student Center movie theatre at several times last week.
Throughout the week Townsend will speak to several classes meeting
with students, some of whom will get the opportunity to have dinner with
her.
The public interview held by McDonald will likely include conversa-tions
about volunteerism and public service, poverty and religion’s role in
politics. Townsend’s professional and personal experiences give her more
than enough credibility to address these topics.
“As a 12-year-old, she lived through the death of her uncle, President
John F. Kennedy, and as a 17-year-old she faced the death of her father,
Robert Kennedy,” McDonald said. “Immediately following the death of
her uncle, her father sent her a note challenging her as the oldest grand-child
to ‘work for your country.’ She accepted that challenge and has
worked for social justice, peace and, above all, service to others.”
Townsend is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. The program brings
nonacademic professionals to campuses in the United States to share
relevant conversations with students and faculty. The program strives
to improve connections between the academic and nonacademic per-spectives.
This visit is sponsored by the Council of Independent Colleges, a
national service organization that advances independent liberal arts
colleges and universities by forming collaborations to strengthen pro-grams
and foster institutional effectiveness.
Townsend’s interview is open to the public and student body. There
is no admission cost, but space is limited.
For more information about the event, call (936) 468-2605.
jgilligan@thepinelog.com
By Daniel M. Kowalski
Special to The Washington Post
A 14-year-old with large brown eyes and tightly cropped hair
told me a few weeks ago that voices were telling him to kill
people. A day before the Sandy Hook school massacre, he threat-ened
to light his house on fire and stab everyone in the family,
according to his mother. This boy — whom I'll call Trevor — is
a severe case, presenting the early, violent symptoms of schizo-phrenia
at an age when the illness often begins to emerge.
Untreated, his condition poses a serious danger to himself and
those around him.
I am an outpatient therapist, working primarily with children
and adolescents from disadvantaged backgrounds. Trevor is on
Medicaid, yet cuts to Medicaid funding in recent years, here in
North Carolina and throughout the country, mean that children
like him slip through the cracks. In the best scenarios, cuts to
reimbursement rates result in shortened therapy sessions and
restrictions on the number of visits clients are allotted; in the
worst, practices that serve the poor are going under.
Trevor's coverage provides for mental health care, but most
psychiatrists in his area do not accept it because of the low
reimbursement rates. Those offices that do have two- to three-month
waiting lists. Trevor needs psychiatric care and cannot
wait months to get it. Last October, when my concern about
Trevor first began to escalate, I made a dozen calls and finally
managed to get him in to see a psychiatrist near his home. The
doctor, according to Trevor's mother, spent 15 minutes with the
boy. He diagnosed Trevor with obsessive compulsive disorder,
prescribed no medication and suggested that Trevor continue
to see me weekly. From what I know of Trevor, 15 minutes is
insufficient to gather the information necessary for a diagnosis.
Trevor's statements to me in December — referred to as
homicidal ideation — demanded, both legally and ethically,
that I send him to an emergency room. In North Carolina, as in
many states, there aren't enough hospital beds to accommodate
mentally ill individuals in crisis. Physical maladies and injuries
take precedence, and those with mental-health issues often
do not get out of a waiting room. Trevor spent five hours at the
emergency room, then was sent home with instructions to call
the hospital's adolescent mental health team the following day;
his mother was unable to reach a member of that team when she
U.S. shouldn’t skimp on mental health funding
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend to speak at SFA
By John Cleveland
Staff Writer
The NAACP sponsored “Star Search”
was held at 7 p.m. Thursday in the
Student Center Grand Ballroom. The
talent show, like many campus events
in the upcoming weeks, was centered
around the celebration of Black History
Month.
The lively ballroom crowd was treat-ed
to a hodgepodge of styles throughout
the show. The acts included vocalists,
rappers, beat-boxers, and poetry and
prose readings.
The list of performers included
Bianca Rodriguez, Nina Gordon, Kierra
Dixon, Courtney Lister, Nick J. White,
Cedric Ansley, Victoria Walker, Bernard
Ambe, Alexis Finley, Jordan Polk and
Whitney Wright.
A three-judge panel recognized Lister
as top performer, followed by Dixon in
second place and Rodriguez in third. All
three were solo vocal acts.
Lister walked onto the stage to a roar
from her huge fan-base in the crowd.
Her soulful vocals induced a synchro-nized
clap-to-the-beat from the audi-ence.
Lister, a freshman nursing major
at SFA, was humble after the results
were announced. She said she hasn’t
really thought about her future as a
performer.
“I just did it on a whim,” Lister said. “I
don’t usually sing for competition. I like
to sing at church.”
In between performances the hosts
entertained the crowd with witty
comments and reminders of upcom-ing
events for Black History Month.
Audience members were periodically
dragged onto the stage to answer triv-ia
questions such as, “Who was the
first black woman elected to Congress?
(Shirley Chisholm)” and, “When was
the NAACP founded? (1909)”
There was even a social media ele-ment
to the show, as audience members
were encouraged to engage in live tweets
with the hashtag #SFAStarSearch. The
hosts read aloud some of their favorite
tweets as the night went on.
Jessica @WhatTataThinks:
“I had a great time working behind
the scenes at #SFAStarSearch; there was
a lot of good talent.”
The Star Search was also a pro-motional
venue for the NAACP John
Morrison GALA Dinner taking place in
the Student Center at 7 p.m. Thursday,.
Fliers were handed out at the door,
and there was a raffle drawing for free
tickets to the event during the intermis-sions
of the talent show.
The GALA Dinner is designed to bring
businesses and organizations together
to breathe life into the visions of SFA’s
chapter of the NAACP.
For more information about Black
History Month events on campus, con-tact
the SFA Office of Multicultural
Affairs, located on the third floor of the
Student Center, Room 3.101. Their num-ber
is 936-468-1073.
jcleveland@thepinelog.com
Mental health, page 5
‘Star Search’ highlights talent as part
of Black History Month celebration
By Robert McCartney
The Washington Post
At age 14, while backpacking up a New
Mexico mountain at the Philmont national
Boy Scout ranch, I remember having a lively
argument with our adult leader over whether
the Scouts should admit atheists.
Opinionated and presumptuous even then,
I said it was un-American to exclude people
on the basis of faith. What about the First
Amendment?
The grown-up, a grandfatherly volunteer,
said that a private organization like the Scouts
had the right to require some religious belief
as a condition for membership. So far, the
Supreme Court agrees with him.
Early lesson: The promise of equality in U.S.
society has limits.
Now a similar dispute is reaching a turning
point over the Boy Scouts' prohibition on ad-mitting
gays as members or adult leaders. The
Scouts' national executive board is expected
to vote Wednesday on relaxing the ban.
The outcome isn't certain, but it seems like-ly
that the Scouts will empower sponsoring or-ganizations
like churches to allow individual
Boy Scout troops and Cub Scout dens to admit
gays if they choose.
The change would mark a major advance
— albeit tardy and incomplete — for tolerance
and inclusiveness. It would also be a welcome
setback for a 30-year trend in which the Boy
Scouts have fallen under excessive influence
of conservative supporters and donors, es-pecially
in the Mormon and Roman Catholic
churches.
Unlike the Girl Scouts, which have explic-itly
banned discrimination against gays since
1992, the Boy Scouts have been one of the
country's most prominent organizations to
officially shun them.
Of course, plenty of gays have been Boy
Scouts all along. They just couldn't say so. That
put them at odds with the first tenet of the 12-
point Scout Law: "A Scout is trustworthy."
A switch to openness also would remind us of
the effectiveness of the very American tradition of
grass-roots activism on behalf of a worthy cause.
Scouts for Equality, founded by Eagle Scout
Zach Wahls, 21, of Iowa City, Iowa, has deliv-ered
more than 1.4 million signatures on peti-tions
urging acceptance of gays. That group
and others successfully pressured such major
corporate funders as Intel and UPS to drop
their support unless Scouts changed its policy.
"Our sense was that a lot of local leaders
saw what was happening and said, 'This is
out of step with my values,'" Wahls said. "As
President Obama made clear in his Second
Inaugural, [gay] rights are civil rights."
The Boy Scouts began shifting toward the
religious right in the 1980s partly because of
the role of Mormons and Catholics. Those
two churches rank first and third, respective-ly,
among chartering organizations in num-bers
of Scout units and boys sponsored. (The
Washington Post writer: Boy Scouts admitting
gay members would mark major advance
Boy Scouts, page 5
Opinion
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out Super
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