Banner Graphic, Volume 16, Number 122, Greencastle, Putnam County, 7 January 1986 — Page 11

Retiring? No way, says Jabbar, who plans to set new records as a producer

By ROYS. JOHNSON c. 1986 N.Y. Times News Service INGLEWOOD, Calif. The rhythm to which Kareem AbdulJabbar has played, and lived, for most of his 38 years has always been a different one. From the clumsy beginnings of his signature skyhook in a crowded playground in junior high to his days as a mainstream member of the 1960 s counter-culture and onward through this, his 17th season in the National Basketball Association, he has remained emblematic of a generation whose ideal was to bow to no one’s will sing no one’s song but its own. His trek has not been easy. And he has been tested more times than should have been his share. During various stages of his basketball career, Abdul-Jabbar has refused to play for his country’s Olympic team in 1968 as a protest against racism in the United States; his religious beliefs were scorned by some members of the news media and some basketball fans when he announced his conversion to Islam and changed his name from Lew Alcindor in 1971; his first marriage was torn apart; his skills were denigrated by observers who felt his prime had passed long ago, and his home and most coveted possessions were destroyed in a fire nearly three years ago. Last summer, he endured another disheartening, but not wholly unexpected, loss when a California judge awarded custody of his fourth child, Amir, to the child’s mother, with whom his relationship had recently ended. In spite of all of these personal struggles, Abdul-Jabbar has made his music last. He is the league’s oldest player, yet he is still the most forceful spirit of the talent-rich Los Angeles Lakers. Already the most prolific scorer ever, he was leading the Lakers with a 21.5-point scoring average going into last night’s game against Detroit. And only Earvin (Magic) Johnson was playing more than his nightly average of 31.4 minutes. Even surrounded by such young, gifted athletes as Johnson, James

Alcoholics need more than willpower to beat batde of the botde

By NADINE BROZAN c. 1986 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK The 21-year-old college student was failing her courses and feeling depressed. She dropped out of school and consulted a psychiatrist. “He said, ‘No cause to worry’ I was just suffering from adolescent problems and from the fact that I had been small as a child,” the woman said the other day. “I told him that I was drinking and taking drugs marijuana, LSD but he didn’t want to discuss that at all.” A year later, the woman, who asked that her name not be used, consulted another psychiatrist. “This one told me I was going through an identity crisis and simply needed time to work things out for myself,” she recalled. Again, although she candidly described her dependence on alcohol and drugs, the doctor dismissed it. So did other physicians she consulted over the next several years for various ailments. Six more years elapsed, and finally a psychiatrist whose name she had found in the Yellow Pages said, “Do you have a problem with alcohol?” and referred her to Alcoholics Anonymous. “I

Small colleges get pull from big alumni to keep enrollments high

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON c. 1986 N. Y. Times News Service Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., does not have the academic reputation of a Harvard University, the big-time football team of an Ohio State University or the beautiful setting of a Dartmouth College. What it does have is an airport across the street, and in an age when small colleges are attempting to capitalize on any advantage they might have, that was enough to spawn an entire marketing program. This fall, Saint Vincent bought a mailing list of 25,000 people who own their own planes, and sent them a brochure calling attention to the fact that they could fly their offspring almost right to their dormitory rooms if the youths were enrolled at the college. The college also placed the brochures in small airports, and it advertised in flying magazines. “We’ve had about 200 inquiries,” said Donald Orlando, the school’s director of public relations. “Since our enrollment is about 1,000,1 think that’s pretty good.” While other colleges are using more down-to-earth tactics, Saint Vincent’s innovative program is indicative of the growing reliance on marketing among small colleges. Small private colleges face a host of woes that are more more life threatening than they are to universities, which can rely either or public financing or generally larger private endowments: the decline in the student-age population; cutbacks in federal funding and the rapid increase in instructional and other costs. Many institutions have responded with the same strategy that any company would use

Banner Graphic Greencastle, Putnam County, Tuesday, January 7,1986V01. 16No. 123

have been sober ever since,” the woman said. The stone wall that this patient encountered is not unusual, For the most part, authorities on alcoholism say, physicians have failed to detect excessive drinking by patients, or when they have uncovered the problem, they have not known what to do about it. Even among doctors who recognized the symptoms, there was a tendency to ignore them, or to believe that alcoholics need only use a little willpower. Many physicians have viewed alcoholism as a moral failing and not a medical, biological, psychological and social condition. In the last decade, however, change has slowly come to the field of addiction treatment. Now the vast number of conditions provoked or exacerbated by alcoholism are being acknowledged and diagnosed, and there is a growing realization that alcoholism is eminently treatable. As Dr. Robert G. Niven, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Md., said, “Though we still fall far short of the ideal integration of education about alcohol

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RONALD REAGAN Eureka College grad when it must fight for a piece of a shrinking pie increasing the pace and sophistication of its marketing efforts. “The level of interest in marketing is up everywhere, although the level of sophistication varies,” said Dr. Robert Johnson, vice president for marketing and advancement at Mercy College of Detroit. “Small colleges are making themselves more visible and stepping up their contacts with prospective students.” “There has been a general increase in orientation toward marketing and the use of marketing,” said Carol Halstead, head of College Connections, a New York-based

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JABBAR: Signs with MCA Records Worthy, Bryon Scott and the surprising rookie A.C. Green, Ab-dul-Jabbar is one of the primary reasons that the defending world champions had exploded to a 19-3 record, the best start in the 38 years of the franchise’s existence. “We can win games without almost any one player on this team,” says Johnson, “except Cap’.” That Abdul-Jabbar’s unique rhythm has endured is a surprise to many people, and an absolute shock to some. “I simply don’t

and drug consumption into all medical and health professional schools the situation is improving.” The statistics are not encouraging, however, as Dr. David C. Lewis, president of the Association of Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse, a 400member professional organization, found when he surveyed the medical literature. “Some 20 to 40 percent of general-hospital admissions involve individuals with serious drinking or drug problems, most of them alcohol, as do 10 to 15 percent of ambulatory cases and 40 to 60 percent of emergency-room visits,” Lewis said. “But the actual diagnosis of the disorder is made in less than 5 percent of cases.” “The implication is clear,” said Lewis, professor of medicine and community health at Brown University, “that physicians are mainly treating the complications of drinking without necessarily focusing on the treatment for those behaviors.” Amersa, as the organization Lewis leads is known, met recently in California for a conference, co-sponsored by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute on

PAUL NEWMAN Backs Kenyon College consulting concern. “Four or five years ago, when I would ask college administrators at workshops how many of them had marketing plans, only three or four would raise their hands. Now only three or four don’t.” Marketing, she said, has become one of the “two or three top priorities” for small colleges. To some extent, that means using the same tactics that larger institutions use, including buying lists of prospective students from the College Board, which gathers such lists as part of administering the Scholastic Achievement Tests, that match the general profile for which the

know how he does it,” says Jerry West, the Laker general manager, who retired 11 years ago at the age of 36. “His legs should be gone, but he’s still durable. His timing and quickness should be gone, but he can still make the great pass or get his shot when he needs to.” Most nights, West sits in the stands at The Forum here in this suburb of Los Angeles and watches with wonder as AbdulJabbar dominates younger, stronger and faster foes. “Sometimes,” West says, “I just sit there and think, ‘He looks like he could go on forever.’ ” Although pro basketball has evolved toward faster and more physical play since Abdul-Jabbar then Lew Alcindor left UCLA in 1969, his style hasn’t changed much through the years. Grace is still the word that first comes to mind when watching him play, and anyone sitting close to the court Tuesday night when the Lakers face the Knicks at Madison Square Garden will notice that he still cares, too. A missed skyhook or inexcusable turnover will elicit an audible self-deprecating word or two, and if he is charged with a foul he feels he didn’t commit, he’ll wave his long arms, yank off his goggles, and do a frantic rag-doll twist that makes him look like a very tall child whose favorite toy has been taken away. What is perhaps most phenomenal is that Abdul-Jabbar is achieving this success at a time whdn he wasn’t even supposed to be playing. Before last season, he announced that 1984-85 would be his final year. But on Dec. 5,1984 he held a news conference in New Jersey before a game against the Nets and announced that he had agreed to play another season at a cost of $2.1 million to the Lakers’ very relieved owner, Jerry Buss. Last summer, Abdul-Jabbar said he had no plans to play after 198586. Then suddenly during the exhibition season, he signed a contract to play yet another season, his 18th no one else has ever played more than 16 in 1986-87. At the end of the playoffs that year, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will be 40 years old.

Drug Abuse and the Betty Ford Center, to discuss what primary-care physicians ought to know and how to implement curriculum improvements. Lewis and his colleagues are optimistic. As Dr. Charles Rorhis, director of sub-stance-abuse treatment at the New York Veterans Administration Medical Center, said: “None of us dealing with this problem day in and out will ever feel that the approach of the medical profession is as good as we want it to be, but over the last 10 years, things have changed quite a bit. Doctors are more sensitive to problems associated with alcohol.” “There are more treatment resources available,” he said, “more hospital beds for detoxification, more in-patient rehabilitation programs, more outpatient services, more community-based programs, psychotherapy clinics, therapeutic communities, halfway houses and freestanding specialty hospitals that deal only with alcohol. Third-party reimbursement has become available, and there is the whole self-help movement. Active research is continuously providing new information.”

GERALDINE FERRARO Marymount Manhattan alum college is looking. But for small colleges especially, it also means taking a hard look at what they do well, and developing programs that meet a demand in their communities. That can mean simply developing more evening and continuing-education classes to appeal to older students as the traditional student age pool shrinks. Or it can be more specific. That is exactly the kind of approach marketing experts advocate. Most successful small colleges “are highly missionoriented,” Miss Halstead said, addting that “the colleges that have taken the time

After that? Well, it appears the rhythm will go on. Last week he signed a five-year contract with MCA Records in Los Angeles that will allow him to produce at least two albums of new jazz talent each year. He will also oversee the re-release of the vintage catalogues of jazz and blues albums produced under various labels decades ago and now in MCA’s possession. Abdul-Jabbar’s hobbies have always been reading historical novels, collecting rugs and listening to jazz. So this agreement provides him with the ideal vehicle for making the sometimes traumatic transition into basketball’s afterlife. Or, as he put it: “The prospect of being paid to travel around the world and listen to music is just as exciting as it has been being paid to play basketball.” Since making the decision to keep playing, the one question he has been asked more than any other is, Why? There is no single answer, he says. It is rather a compilation of the effects of several of the forces that have a strong influence on his life. For many years now, he has said that he did not want to be an athlete who played despite diminished skills. So one of the reasons he has been so wishy-washy about his retirement plans is, simply stated, the man can still play. “I could leave without any regrets,” he says. “I’ve had a remarkable career by any standards. But I felt I was still able to do most of the things I always could. It just wasn’t the right time.” Tom Collins, Abdul-Jabbar’s long-time agent and one of the few people in whom the player regularly confides, says his client struggles continuously to discover when that time will be. “The No. 1 pressure on him is keeping up his level of play,” Collins says. “When he retires, he wants you to write, ‘He probably could have played one more. ’ ” His team’s tremendous success is another cause for AbdulJabbar to stave off retirement. Dating to last January, the Col. 1, back page, this section

In the past, medical students generally spent a few hours on alcoholism during the course of their four years of study. But that has changed, in part due to the Career Teacher Program, which was financed by the federal government from 1971 to 1982. Under that program, faculty members from about 60 schools received grants to develop new courses or expand existing ones. Several schools became pioneers, including Dartmouth Medical School. In 1978, it began a four-year program called Project Cork, financed by the Joan B. Kroc Foundation. As Jean Kinney, the executive director, explained, “It was designed to integrate alcohol education through every course in the medical school.” The project was subsequently duplicated elsewhere and became a model for such schools as the University of Washington and Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. Others leaders in the field are Brown and the New York University School of Medicine. Currently, at Johns Hopkins University the dean of the medical school, Dr. Richard S. Ross, and the president of the

to look at that mission and use it to put in place a strategic plan cannot help but do better.” At Mercy College, for example, one of the major marketing strategies is to promote the institution’s degree programs in business to adult students. To reach its prospects most effectively, Mercy regularly surveys its existing students about what radio stations they listen to and what parts of which newspapers they look at, according to Johnson. Basing its media selection on those surveys, Mercy then runs advertising that includes a means of direct response a phone number on the radio ads, a coupon in print. The advertising does not emphasize the name of the institution or the specific program, but rather the theme “Promote yourself,” said Johnson, since the primary goal of most adult business students is to advance their careers. In this academic year Mercy is spending about $65,000 on advertising, up from $16,000 last year, and enrollments are up significantly, said Johnson. At the other end of the spectrum from the highly targeted programs used by Saint Vincent and Mercy is a national advertising campaign sponsored by the Council of Independent Colleges. Using such well-known names as Ronald Reagan (graduate of Eureka College, in Illinois) and Geraldine Ferraro (Marymount Manhattan), the campaign promotes small institutions with the theme “Small colleges can help you make it big.” The campaign works on the premise that parents, guidance counselors and prospective students may not have heard of these institutions, but they certainly know some

hospital, Dr. Robert M. Heyssel, are leading an innovative program. The goal is to familiarize everyone affiliated with the hospital and medical school, from firstyear students to senior faculty members, with the symptoms of alcoholism and appropriate treatment. According to Dr. Emma J. Stokes, special assistant to the dean, the threeyear project that began in the summer of 1984 has shown that “we were addressing how the various organs such as the liver, heart and brain are affected by abuse, but we haven’t addressed the clinical entity called alcoholism.” In patient care, she said, “we don’t routinely take effective alcohol histories, so students are not taught what is healthy versus unhealthy drinking, and they are unable to evaluate the answers.” As the program progresses, they are learning to do that; students are also learning to assess their own attitudes, “to teach them that they may be avoiding diagnosing somebody who looks just like their Aunt Mary,” Stokes said. But not all of the impetus can come from Col. 1, back page, this section

of their graduates and what they have gone on to accomplish. And it enables those colleges who otherwise might have little in the way of marketing support to benefit from a national campaign promoting their cause, as well as permitting them to adapt the campaign for the own, local uses. Now about to kick off the third year of the three-year campaign, the advertising “was developed in response to a need mentioned to us by small-college presidents across the country,” said Steven Pelletier, director of public affairs for the council, which represents about 650 institutions that have enrollments of fewer than 2,500 students. “There’s an American philosophy that bigger is better, and we’re trying to fight that.” The advertising campaign was funded by a number of large corporations and foundations; Saatchi &Saatchi Compton, a large New York advertising agency, donated its services to develop the creative aspects of the ads. Through the Advertising Council, an industry group that sponsors public-service advertising, the campaign has received free space in newspapers and magazines, and free time on the radio. Pelletier said that the campaign had received about $500,000 worth of free print-media space alone. The campaign, which also uses such well-known names as Paul Newman (a graduate of Kenyon College, Ohio), John Glenn (Muskingum College, Ohio) and Gary Hart (Bethany Nazarene College, Oklahoma), works on two levels. First, it runs as a national “umbrella” campaign Col. 5, back page, this section