25 years ago: KU administrator responds to AIDS education task force

From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Jan. 21, 1988:

A Kansas University administrator today said that she agreed with some, but not all, of the recommendations of a 23-member campus task force on AIDS education and prevention. Executive Vice Chancellor Judith Ramaley concurred with the group’s conclusion that education was the “best means of understanding and combating the problems presented by AIDS,” but she rejected some of the panel’s other recommendations, including one calling for installation of condom-vending machines in men’s and women’s rest rooms in campus buildings. Ray Davis, the task force’s chair, said that he was encouraged by Ramaley’s response; however, Michael Foubert, chair of the Student Senate Task Force on AIDS, called it “a very cautious, parent-popular approach” to the problem. In rejecting the vending machine suggestion, Ramaley said that their installation might “suggest implicitly that the university supports a certain value pattern or is not cognizant of or sensitive to” the variety of attitudes, values and practices in the KU community regarding sensitive behavior. The “proper environment for dispensing information about and devices for prevention” was a facility such as Watkins Memorial Hospital, she said.