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Daily Archives: Dec. 8, 2007
Sex ed should be comprehensive
Dec. 8, 20071:03 a.m.
After 15 years of progress in lowering the rate of teen pregnancy, we’ve taken a step backward, as the teen birth rate rose 3 percent in 2006. The study has abstinence-only and comprehensive sex ed advocates pointing fingers, each side saying the other isn’t cutting it.
The fact is if you don’t have sex, you don’t get pregnant. However, children have been raised in a sex-drenched society where sensation trumps healthy sexuality.
Abstinence-only education may have the best of intentions, but until it finds a louder, more compelling way to reach teens, we need to provide teens with all the information they need to deal with the consequences MTV forgot to mention. Comprehensive sex ed, however, should present abstinence as the best option — it is.
Posted by Kristin Mehler
An expensive lesson in closing the deal
Dec. 8, 20071:01 a.m.
It’s disappointing that Wichita lost the 2011 U.S. Bowling Congress Open Championships to Orlando, considering that Wichita at one time had the convention — worth an estimated $100 million in benefits — wrapped up.
The City Council seems to have addressed some of the bureaucratic bungling that doomed the deal by giving tourism officials clear lead authority to negotiate future convention contracts.
And in recent months, city officials, from Mayor Carl Brewer on down, made a commendable, classy effort to repair relations with the group.
Wichita still fell short.
All in all, it’s been an expensive lesson about customer service and closing the deal.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Orpheum entrance takes you back
Dec. 8, 20071:00 a.m.
Vestibules are made for walking through, but the one newly restored at the Orpheum Theatre is stopping people in their tracks. The gleaming, elegant entrance instantly transports you to the 85-year-old showplace’s glory days, while stirring anticipation of what the theater will look like whenever its loving, deliberative restoration is complete. How fortunate the community was to have had volunteers step in to save the Orpheum two decades ago, so that it could again be entertaining thousands of people each year with movies and performances. Now, the Orpheum deserves all the help it can get as it tackles the rest of the big job, including the full restoration of the Spanish garden-inspired auditorium.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
