The Case About Amy

13. Is It Really Money?

Is It Really Money? In an effort to understand better the thinking of key media writers about Rowley at critical times in the history ofthe case, I decided to begin by looking up Roger Starr. His article, 'Wheels ofMisfortune," in Harper's magazine in January 1982, had taken the position, just two months before the Supreme Court hearing, that individuals with disabilities had no special "rights" as a result oftheir condition and would have to compete for "heavy" costs ofrehabilitation with other social concerns that might be more pressing . Because Starr was on the editorial board of the New York Times during this period, I assumed he had also written the editorials the newspaper had carried on the case. A friendly, florid, outgoing man, Starr invited me to his office and we shared a lunch in the Times cafeteria. He talked about his days as administrator for New York City (upon which experience he had drawn for his book, The RiseandFallofNew York City),where his views on disabilitywere rooted.* "I got into it," he told me, "because the organizations advocating rights for the disabled were insisting that the subways be made wheelchair accessible. And we're struggling to keep the subway system going and the cost-benefit analysis that one could do on the back ofone's shirt cuffwould indicate that trying to make the subways wheelchair accessible might end the subway system entirely . It was a really unreasonable demand and I got into it at that point." • New York: Basic Books, 1985. CopyrightencMateria/ Is It Really Money? Starr's other point of entry into the discussion of disability rights was philosophical. As a student of philosophy at Yale, he became interested in the issue of"natural" as opposed to "political" rights. "Unless one is willing to say as the Founding Fathers did that the Creator endowed us with rights, it's very hard to understand what the meaning of'rights' is other than a political decision on the part of government which has public support. Absent that, there are no effective rights, then, only 'natural rights' and there surely are no natural rights in regard to the disabled. "The government makes a statement that rests almost purely on economics , such as you have the right to an individual tutor sitting behind you in a mainstreamed class so that you are not feeling yourself to be different . .. and people cannot object to this strange person in the class, [then] the government ought to say here is the money to pay. The government, in effect , welched on its contract. There is a moral obligation to provide the money, because there is no reason to believe that the local school board has the money or can force taxpayers to assess themselves to pay for this. .. . Personally, I'm compassionate but there is a big difference between being willing to work for something you feel strongly about and imposing the burden on the taxpayers when the Congress is unable or unwilling to put out the money." Starr said he didn't think his article in Harper's or the editorials in the Times had any effect on the Supreme Court's decision in Rowley, but, he said, he hadn't written the newspaper editorials, having taken the position that it is bad policy to write about a case when it is in the court system for settlement. He told me he could find out who had written them, left the room, and returned some minutes later with a name, Hugh Price, then an executive for WNET, Channell3, in New York City. Price proved willing to discuss the matter with me, although he was not willing to say which of the Times editorials I had sent him he had written or to discuss any of them in detail. He took the position that the editorials were the product ofdiscussion with other members ofthe editorial staffand the editor ofthe editorial page, Max Frankel, and as such were not ascribable to individual authorship. Price recalled being troubled by the language of"free and appropriate" education in the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. On principle, this concern went to the meaning ofthe word "appropriate." He said he could look about at the school system ofNewYork City and see many children who did not receive an "appropriate" education. "No other children I could disCopyrightfMlMateria / Chapter 13 cover had a comparable right. No other comparable group...