The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Wednesday, President Gorbachev got new powers over the Soviet economy and republics and accident victim Nancy Cruzan died two weeks after a Missouri judge approved removal of life support systems. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: After the News Summary, we go first to the political upheaval in the Soviet Union. Leading reform advocate Yelena Bonner predicting a return to repression says Gorbachev should go. Then a documentary report on new hopes for Central American immigrants. Next, the problem of rape on campus, is enough being done? We end with a Paul Solman report on the age old link between art and money. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: Soviet President Gorbachev got more powerful today officially. The Soviet parliament made it easier for him to legally deal with economic and political unrest, but there was no agreement on what he could do about enforcement. We have a report from Moscow by Tim Uert of Independent Television News.

MR. UERT: In theory, Mikhail Gorbachev is now his country's most powerful leader since Czar Nikolas the II was overthrown in the 1917 revolution. Parliament today completed a series of 36 constitutional amendments which give the President the right to rule by decree without any legislative checks and balances. No one here expects Mr. Gorbachev to become another Stalin. Most agree he needs sweeping powers to push through economic reform and restore order. But even his most loyal supporters have reservations about what such powers could mean in the future.

ARKADY MASLENNIKOV, Soviet Parliament: But I would personally feel that there may be danger of excessive concentration of power in the hands of President if somebody else may come to power.

MR. UERT: More evidence today of increasing tension in the Baltics, the commander of the Soviet fleet there said extremists were creating conditions in which servicemen would have to use arms to defend their families.

MR. LEHRER: President Gorbachev also announced his nomination for the new post of vice president. He is 53 old Gennadi Yaniov, a member of the ruling Politburo. Yaniov is from the Russian republic, the Soviet Union's largest. He is described by some as a conservative, but Gorbachev called him an active supporter of the perestroika economic reforms. Gorbachev said his prime minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov, had a heart attack last night. Ryzhkov has been widely accused of delaying radical economic reforms. He was already expected to lose his job in the current maneuverings. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: U.S. Navy ships intercepted an Iraqi freighter in the Arabian Sea today. Crewmen on the freighter and a group of women peace activists who were also on board tried to stop U.S. sailors when they boarded the ship. During the 30 minute confrontation, the sailors fired smoke and noise maker grenades for what they described as crowd control. The vessel, which was headed for the Iraqi city of Basra, was diverted to an undisclosed port. It was carrying sugar and other cargo prohibited under the embargo. According to U.S. military officials, the blockade is costing Iraq $100 million a day. That assessment came during the briefing in Saudi Arabia. An intelligence officer also said it appeared Saddam Hussein had no plans to leave Kuwait.

LT. COL. TOM COURY, U.S. Air Force: We presently assess that Saddam Hussein intends to remain in Kuwait for the long haul. We think he probably miscalculated over the invasion and did not expect a strong U.S. response. For the immediate future we believe he will attempt to avoid conflict while working to erode both U.S. public support and allied cooperation. As a last resort, if he feels war is inevitable, he could initiate open conflict, which may include a provocation of Israel in an attempt to decouple the coalition of forces.

MR. MacNeil: The State Department denied a report that Sec. of State Baker would probably meet with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad on January 9th for talks on resolving the Gulf crisis. The report appeared this morning in an Israeli newspaper. Also today the State Department said it had asked all non-essential personnel and dependents of U.S. government workers to leave Jordan, Sudan, and Yemen, before January 15th. That's the deadline set by the United Nations for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. The announcement said pro-Iraqi sentiment in those countries could be directed at Americans.

MR. LEHRER: There was more violence in the Israeli-occupied territories today. A Palestinian man was shot to death by Israeli troops. He had stabbed three of them on patrol in a refugee camp. More than 700 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops during the three year uprising.

MR. MacNeil: The official 1990 population of the United States was 249,632,692. That figure was announced today by the Census Bureau. It is the final result of the nationwide census conducted earlier this year. It reflects an increase of 10.2 percent in the last decade. The greatest population gain was in California, which will get seven new congressional seats. The biggest loser was New York, where three seats will be lost.

MR. LEHRER: Nancy Cruzan died today in a Mt. Vernon, Missouri hospital. The 33 year old woman had been in a coma since a traffic accident in 1983. A judge ruled two weeks ago that her feeding tubes could be removed. She became the center of a landmark right to die battle that ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The woman's parents had requested she be allowed to die. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to a conversation with Yelena Bonner, a report on immigration from Central America, rape on college campuses, and the tie that binds business to art. CONVERSATION

MR. MacNeil: First tonight we look at the latest developments in the Soviet Union and fears of new dictatorship there through the eyes of one of its leading human rights activists, Yelena Bonner. The widow of the Nobel Prize winning physicist and dissident, Andrei Sakarhov, Ms. Bonner has criticized Mikhail Gorbachev for not pursuing purely radical reform. This afternoon I spoke with Ms. Bonner in Boston and through an interpreter.

MR. MacNeil: Yelena Bonner, thank you very much for joining us.

MS. BONNER: [Speaking through Interpreter] I thank you for your invitation.

MR. MacNeil: How do you feel about the power voted today to Mikhail Gorbachev to rule virtually by decree in the Soviet Union?

MS. BONNER: [Speaking through Interpreter] Unfortunately, I think that that's only a rather sad thing. I think that this is a past which began from the time when he was given the Presidency. After that, he asked again and again for additional power. And I think that this will not lead to democratic development of our country, in fact, quite the opposite from those first timid steps toward democracy back toward totalitarianism.

MR. MacNeil: So you agree with Eduard Shevardnadze, who when he resigned warned of an approaching dictatorship?

MS. BONNER: Yes, I fully agree, but I think that the speech of our minister of foreign affairs did not clearly enough spell out whom he suspects of such aspirations towards dictatorship. I think I'd be more blunt here. I think he was trying to give a warning, a warning to our people and to the entire world to the effect that our President is becoming a dictator.

MR. MacNeil: Gorbachev himself?

MS. BONNER: Yes.

MR. MacNeil: It is very confused --

MS. BONNER: And --

MR. MacNeil: Excuse me.

MS. BONNER: [Speaking through Interpreter] -- as distinguished -- excuse me -- from many observers in the West, for me that speech of Mr. Shevardnadze was not a surprise. I think that he had been warning about that already in his speech at the 28th Party Congress. If you remember, there Yakovlev and he spoke rather sharply against the policy of the party and of Gorbachev, himself, and what happened a few days ago, that is, his statement that he was resigning and his speech is a continuation of that statement.

MR. MacNeil: It's very confusing to us. Some reformers in the Soviet Union evidently see Mr. Gorbachev as the defense against - - having a strong Mr. Gorbachev as the defense against the hard liners, against the reactionaries, whereas others clearly see Mr. Gorbachev as opening the gate to the reactionaries, themselves. You clearly see it the second way.

MS. BONNER: I'm very close to that second point of view. Moreover, unfortunately, aside from words over all of these years from President Gorbachev and in the past, as President of the Supreme Soviet, I saw no real step toward reform, both political steps towards democratization and economic ones.

MR. MacNeil: Gorbachev said yesterday -- and he said repeatedly in the last few days -- don't worry about dictatorship, and then yesterday he said, I have strong democratic roots. What do you think of that statement?

MS. BONNER: [Speaking through Interpreter] Well, words are always words, and if words are not backed by deeds, then I'm not inclined to trust them, all the more so since we are dealing with a politician, a major political figure whose words on numerous occasions have diverged from deeds.

MR. MacNeil: Ms. Bonner, how literally do you fear a dictatorship? Do you think that Gorbachev is about to become another Stalin, another Brezhnev, who is going to seriously interfere with the recently won human rights and freedoms of the Soviet people? What do you fear literally?

MS. BONNER: [Speaking through Interpreter] Freedom has not yet been won. We were only on the way to winning it. That's No. 1. That's why I think your question perhaps is not precisely formulated. Further, a new Brezhnev, a new Stalin, or somebody else, a new someone else, that is an inappropriate comparison, because history never fully repeats itself. It takes place, history takes place in front of our very eyes in specific and different conditions, but I'm not afraid, rather, I see that Gorbachev is not going toward democratization, but rather is going backward toward a very cruel totalitarian regime. And like any totalitarian regime, we can expect from this future totalitarian regime as well, and its establishment now is taking place in front of our very eyes, and not without assistance from the West and from Western leaders, we can expect that it will bring uncountable problems to the people who are now inhabiting territories which used to be one single state and now that state no longer exists already and to specific people. And if before perestroika we constantly spoke and were concerned about the fates of a couple of hundred of prisoners of conscience, then I suspect that now ahead of us lie many thousands, because right now political life now is filled not with individuals, as with the case in the dissident movement, but what we have are hundreds of thousands of people involved in political life. It is not important whether they all share the same objective in that political movement. Some have more democratic aspirations. Others are more nationalist, but political activity by such huge numbers of people is something which no kinds of repressive organs will be able to stop. And there will be innumerable acts of repression.

MR. MacNeil: You're saying that Mr. Gorbachev will take away the very freedom of expression which he encouraged in the Soviet Union, the glasnost that he, himself, promoted?

MS. BONNER: [Speaking through Interpreter] Yes. He did not introduce freedom. He introduced glasnost with the limited objective of the problem of trying to dump the economic failures of the system on previous leaders. And the fact that glasnost got out of control, out of his control, or the group of people working with him, and became ever bigger, was something they had not provided for. They hadn't planned for that. It's a natural movement of a brook that turns into a river. That's why glasnost has become so widespread now it has led to political activity of such an enormous number of people, but that was by no means what he intended.

MR. MacNeil: You mentioned a moment ago international support for Mr. Gorbachev. President Bush and the United States are very heavily committed officially to backing his program. Should Washington now withdraw that support?

MS. BONNER: [Speaking through Interpreter] What does that mean, his program? You know, there is no program. There are words about democratization on the back drop of the fact of what Gorbachev has always said, and the last congress of people's deputies reaffirmed that, that we are going to build humane socialist society. What does that mean, humane socialism? Nobody knows that. Socialism is socialism. And nobody knows, in fact, what it is, but in its specific form, it has become clear that this social systemcannot give people a worthy kind of life. It cannot give them decent housing, a decent future, and confidence in the future for their children, can't even feed them. Just think about it, a country which takes up 1/6 of the globe, which has such fertile land, more than any other state in the world, today like a beggar at a railroad station is walking out with an outstretched hand, asking for food.

MR. MacNeil: Well --

MS. BONNER: It cannot even feed itself. And it's being given that food, but after all, that's being done at the expense of those states who do not have geographic conditions for that kind of harvest and to feed themselves. Our country in terms of its geographic situation should be helping the world, should be helping the world to feed mankind on the basis of that so-called new thinking which has been announced, if we're really to be one single human family, but, in fact, today all of Europe and America are withdrawing assistance from other countries in order to feed a country which is unable to feed itself.

MR. MacNeil: Well, do you think Mr. Bush -- do you think Mr. Bush, Ms. Bonner, should withdraw his political support from Gorbachev and apply it instead to the republics, which have been asserting their sovereignty, the constituent republics of the Soviet Union?

MS. BONNER: [Speaking through Interpreter] Yes, absolutely. They should be helping the republics. And if you want to talk specifically about food assistance and medicine, et cetera, those are absolutely necessary. Humanitarian assistance is needed, and you need to do that through public organizations, through organizations such as ARA, the ARA, which existed in the '20s when there was real hunger, real famine, lack of harvests, not do it through the system. What do we have today? Assistance from the West is supporting the anti-democratic domestic policy of President Gorbachev and Western assistance, which is being allocated through the KGB. This is an attempt to enhance respect for that organization which already has blackened itself and has dreamed no less than the fascist --

MR. MacNeil: So should --

MS. BONNER: [Speaking through Interpreter] And here I'd like to say, excuse me, another thing about an extremely serious mistake of the West. Lithuania, Lithuania proclaimed its independence last spring on the basis of Article 80 of the constitution of the USSR. Those are two lines of the constitution which read every union republic has the right to secede from the union and no conditions are laid down here for this. If President Bush and other Western leaders and their advisers would have taken a look in time at our constitution, they would have understood that this constitutional right of Lithuania is something they should have supported, they should have supported the law in a friendly country, and not its leader who in the literal sense of the word violated the constitution in any normal country in which, in fact, laws really exist, for a long time ago, this would have -- he would have been impeached or overthrown by a constitutional judgment. But Western leaders demonstrated not only myopia but a lack of respect for the constitution of the Soviet Union.

MR. MacNeil: Back to the fear that Mr. Gorbachev will establish a dictatorship with his new powers. Some argue that he will have no power, that he only has power on paper, because the various republics, Georgia, Armenia, and so on, will just ignore him, and as they are already doing, and that they are asserting their own power and that they will ignore these new decrees and new laws, that he'll only be a dictator on paper.

MS. BONNER: [Speaking through Interpreter] That would be wonderful, but I am afraid that the legitimate functions of the President and those additional powers which he received over these two years and received ever more and more power, they will give rise to a stepping up of repressive forces, namely the army and the KGB and the ministry of internal affairs, and that will lead to bloody clashes. The West has always been afraid that people might unleash such bloody conflict, but, in fact, Orsh, Fergana, Felici, and Nagorno-Karabakh and all of the other tragedies which took place which involved casualties, countless, sufferings, deaths for the people who inhabited territories, all of these were the result of a wrong policy of the center. It is the center which is to blame and not people. When people in our country deliberately engaged in resistance, then we saw an organized, non-violent movement along the lines of what took place in August or in September of last year, the miners' strike, for example, which incidentally really caused shock on the part of our leadership. And it was they who then gave a possibility to the satellite countries of Eastern Europe to acquire their freedom.

MR. MacNeil: Was it in Mr. Shevardnadze's mind when he resigned that there might be soon a crackdown, particularly say in Georgia?

MS. BONNER: You know, here it's hard for me to answer. I hadn't thought about that and I doubt that these repressive bodies would begin their activity in Georgia. I suspect that this activity on the part of these bodies will begin from the center.

MR. MacNeil: Let me ask you one final question, Ms. Bonner. Many people hearing you would say, well, if not Gorbachev, who, who should we put our trust in in the Soviet Union?

MS. BONNER: [Speaking through Interpreter] You know, that's a very lengthy question, but I will answer a very serious question. The point is that we're told we need to have a single united state. Europe right now is working toward unification. That is a trend of our time; that's true. It is a trend of our time. But after 45 years of being isolated, until our people and our republics become not formally but truly free, they will not be able to really feel that desire for unification. Neither Gorbachev nor anybody else, the three republics which themselves economically and in terms of military security will be able to create their own union, their own normal human co-existence. No one, Gorbachev, or the party apparatus, which has such major power, the congress of people's deputies, and that's why those decisions are being taken, and by no means an agreement with the will of the people within that system, there's going to be no place left for them. I believe that we need to put an end to the rule of Gorbachev. We need to put it in the Ginnis World Book of Records, because not in a single state in two years so often have there been changes in the constitution, so let people who like doing that count up how many times he's changed the constitution. And I would think that the best possible solution for us and for him would be if now he's perfectly well off, he's got the Nobel Prize, and that's an enormous prize which he got, prize in Italy, he's got a lot of royalties. He ought to go off somewhere to the West, let him buy himself a house and let him teach Sovietology in some university, and we'll get along without him. I think we'd have a much calmer time and he wouldn't have to be worried about the fate of Gorbachev.

MR. MacNeil: Ms. Bonner, thank you very much for joining us.

MS. BONNER: [Speaking through Interpreter] Thank you. All the best and Happy New Year.

MR. MacNeil: And the same to you.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, immigration hope for Central Americans, the crime of rape on campus, and making it in the art world. FOCUS - SAFE HAVEN?

MR. LEHRER: Now a report on the five year old fight by Central Americans to gain political asylum in the United States. Last week, the Immigration & Naturalization Service said it would stop deportation proceedings against people from El Salvador and Guatemala. The decision is part of the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the refugees. It is the third major change in federal immigration policy in the last few months. We have a report by Spencer Michels of public station KQED-San Francisco.

MR. MICHELS: Twenty-seven year old Cesar hopes his life is about to change. A refugee who fled the civil war in El Salvador, he's lived in San Francisco for nearly a decade fearing deportation. Trained as an engineer, he survives by working as an auto mechanic. Cesar applied for political asylum in the U.S. in 1982, claiming that as a student activist he was being hunted by the Salvadoran army.

CESAR, Refugee: [Speaking through Interpreter] Government troops came three times, shooting at people and taking them away. The third time in 1981 there were 500 of us, and they shot over half. They took many away who didn't escape. My mother bought me a plane ticket to leave.

MR. MICHELS: Cesar is convinced that should he return to El Salvador, he will be persecuted, nevertheless, U.S. Immigration officials denied his request for political asylum, saying he had no proof of his claim, newspaper articles or the like.

CESAR: [Speaking through Interpreter] I told them, you don't show up in the newspapers until you are dead or captured. It's almost impossible to show that kind of proof.

MR. MICHELS: The story has been a familiar one. For 10 years, thousands of refugees made their way North from El Salvador and Guatemala, where military dominated governments were being charged with human rights abuses and attacked by guerrilla movements. Entering the U.S. illegally, the refugees applied for political asylum and were questioned by examiners from the Immigration & Naturalization Service. [Interview of Refugee]

MR. MICHELS: Despite the refugees' assertions, the INS almost always denied these cases, maintaining that most of the refugees were looking for jobs, not fleeing persecution or death.

MARK VAN DER HOUT: I've had cases that were slam dunk winners if they were from any other country.

MR. MICHELS: Immigration attorney Mark Van Der Hout, who has handled hundreds of these cases, charges that U.S. foreign policy was dictating who got asylum and who didn't.

MARK VAN DER HOUT, Immigration Attorney: The Immigration Service was denying the vast majority of cases, the people from El Salvador and Guatemala, who applied for political asylum not because the cases weren't strong; they were. Anybody, any objective person would state that these are among the strongest cases in the country. But the INS was denying those cases for foreign policy reasons. They didn't want to make their friends, the government of El Salvador, the government of Guatemala, look bad, so they were denying the political asylum applications.

MR. MICHELS: The INS denies Van Der Hout's claim that refugees from countries the U.S. didn't favor, like these shop owners from Cuba or others from Nicaragua, have had little trouble getting political asylum. Five years ago, Van Der Hout filed a class action suit on behalf of Salvadorans and Guatemalans against the INS and the attorney general. Last year, a federal judge ruled that Van Der Hout had shown proof of discrimination. The INS agreed to negotiate a settlement.

MR. VAN DER HOUT: What this settlement does is it immediately stops all deportations of all Salvadorans and Guatemalans. It stops all deportation hearings of them. The INS now is going to have to readjudicate, redo, start from scratch, every single Guatemalan and Salvadoran asylum claim that's been denied since the refugee act was passed in 1980.

MR. MICHELS: The INS officially denies it discriminated against Salvadorans and Guatemalans. INS Director Gene McNarry.

GENE McNARRY, INS Commissioner: I don't think there was ever any bias.

MR. MICHELS: The settlement does signal a new philosophy by the INS toward asylum. During the year of negotiations, the government instituted two other major policy changes. Previously when a refugee applied for asylum, the INS asked the State Department for a recommendation, which usually came back negative, and the INS would go along. The INS set up a new process this fall. It is less dependent on the State Department and McNarry says it is fair.

MR. McNARRY: There will be an accurate determination and an individual who really has a well founded persecution, who's qualified for asylum will come to the United States and he'll know that he's going to be treated fairly and justly under our system.

PRES. BUSH: And now I am honored and pleased to sign into law the Immigration Act of 1990.

MR. MICHELS: In addition, the President recently signed an immigration bill that allows Salvadorans to remain in the U.S. and work for 18 months without fear of deportation. For Cesar, these three changes can make a vast difference in his life and allow him to come out of hiding. But he is confused about what will happen after the 18 months. The options have prompted him to seek legal counseling on how he will be affected. [CESAR TALKING TO ATTORNEY]

MR. MICHELS: The director of the center, Edwin Rodriguez, shares Cesar's concerns.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: According to the law right now every Salvadoran who applies at the end of the 18 months, they will be in the deportation proceedings.

MR. McNARRY: And after 18 months, it's possible that they could be continued in an overall temporary protected status, a different kind of program, so I don't know that they lose anything by coming in and accepting the 18 months and getting a work permit, coming out of the shadows and really being legitimate for a short period of time.

MR. MICHELS: Sister Kathleen Healy of St. Theresa's Church is a long time activist in the sanctuary movement which shielded refugees from the INS. She believes the sanctuary movement's work plus the brutal killing of six Jesuit priests in San Salvador a year ago allegedly by the military helped bring about the changes.

SISTER KATHLEEN HEALY: I think that created such outrage in the United States that our Congress finally had to listen to what we had been saying to them for so long.

MR. MICHELS: Activists continue to point out human rights abuse. In early December, San Francisco demonstrators protested the recent massacre in Guatemala of 14 villagers by the military. As abuses continue, so does the flow of refugees. Some groups are worried that the policy change will bring many more Central Americans North, too many for the U.S. to handle. Dan Stein is director of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

DAN STEIN, Federation for American Immigration Reform [FAIR]: The numbers are growing so fast, the claims are so non- distinguished, but because of the administrative burdens, they are starting to apply a refugee definition much broader than what the United States would be obligated to under its international obligations. The overall numbers are really the problem. If you give asylum to 500,000 people a year, sooner or later they're going to adjust to green card status, petition for their relatives. It becomes a very fast way around the immigration quotas.

MARK VAN DER HOUT, Immigration Attorney: The flood gates argument is a red herring. There is no, there are no people who are going to be allowed to come into the United States as a result of this settlement. All this is is that the United States cannot deport Salvadorans and Guatemalans, refugees, they cannot put them in deportation proceedings. They have to give them a new chance, a new bite of the apple, because they didn't treat them fairly in the first place. This is not letting in massive people who were not here previously.

MR. MICHELS: An estimated half million refugees should benefit from the legal settlement of the new policies. Now the INS faces the monumental task of readjudicating all the cases denied since 1980. If the process isn't fairer, attorneys say they will be back in court. FOCUS - RAPE ON CAMPUS

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight the question of rape on college campuses, a problem that statistically is growing, but so is the controversy over efforts to deal with it. Elizabeth Brackett looked at the situation and what's being done to combat it, and through the stories of two victims.

MS. BRACKETT: Anna Kerkorian was raped her freshman year at college by two strangers.

MS. KERKORIAN: I was in a totally helpless position. The rape, I think the act of rape, itself, makes the person completely powerless and not only physically but psychologically as well. You are left with nothing but your sense to survive.

MS. BRACKETT: Stephanie O'Neal was also raped her freshman year by someone she knew.

MS. O'NEAL: I remember thinking how cruel this whole thing was, how cruel he must be, because for me to even be crying and saying, please, don't do this, and he was still doing it.

MS. BRACKETT: Their stories are not unique. A recent national survey found that one out six women at college are raped or threatened with rape.

GAIL ABARBANAL, Director, Rape Treatment Center: When you look at the rape statistics, probably a majority of the women who are being raped in this country are being raped on college campuses.

MS. BRACKETT: Why is that?

MS. ABARBANAL: Because college students are in the age group that's most vulnerable to rape and because when you're living on a college campus, you're living in a small community and we know that this is where a huge number of rapes are happening.

MS. BRACKETT: Gail Abarbanal heads the rape crisis center in Santa Monica, California. The center has treated 13,000 rape victims since it opened in 1974. It was where Anna Kerkorian turned for help when she was raped three years ago. Kerkorian was attacked in her dorm room by two men. Her roommate had apparently left the door unlocked when she went down the hall to take a shower. Kerkorian has since changed schools, but she still vividly remembers that night.

ANNA KERKORIAN: I was awakened by the noise of the door opening and these two like figures coming into the room. And the light shone on my face. And then the door was shut and it was really pitch black and in an instant, they were at my bed and I was still pretty much asleep, I mean, well, things were foggy. I didn't know what was happening and one of them put his hand over my mouth very tight and said, shut up, shut up, I'll kill you, over and over, he repeated that, and the other one just went to the business of raping me, and you know, things were said during the rape and after the first person finished, then the second one raped me.

MS. BRACKETT: Kerkorian's parents had insisted that she live in a dorm, thinking she would be safer than in an apartment off campus. But as is often the case in dorms across the country, security was not taken seriously. Over the years, most universities have relaxed rules in dormitories, and as this film from Abarbanal's rape crisis center shows, students often find ways to bypass the security that does exist. Kerkorian says both students and parents are reluctant to see college as a dangerous place.

MS. KERKORIAN: This atmosphere in college that people like to keep, this sense of freedom that young people are in that we're invulnerable, and it's kind of like an ambiance that people kind of are denying the reality of, you know, it's going to happen, somebody's going to get hurt, and there were plenty of warnings in my dorm and in the area.

MS. BRACKETT: In an effort to make parents and students more aware of campus safety, recent national legislation requires colleges to publish crime statistics for their campuses. But experts say those statistics can be misleading in the case of rape since most rapes are not reported. And one reason they are not reported is because a majority of the rapes on campus are committed by acquaintances. A major nationwide study says that 84 percent of college women who are raped were raped by an acquaintance. Stephanie O'Neal is a senior at Central Missouri State University. Three years ago as a freshman at the University of Missouri in Columbia, she had never heard of acquaintance rape. She went out on a date with another student. At the end of the night, he walked her back to her dorm room. There they watched TV and he tried to kiss her.

STEPHANIE O'NEAL: And when he leaned down and kissed me again, I pushed him away and I was telling him no and that's when he just grabbed hold of my wrist, the whole thing happened even before I knew what was going on. Before I knew it, I'm laying back on, just back on the beds and my hands were pinned above my head and I had a bruise on my leg that the police took a picture of where his knee was dug into my leg so hard that it left a bruise there. I remember that once he started -- it wasn't really kissing -- but once he started that I remember thinking this guy is not going to stop, and I was just crying, and he was just -- I was just begging him not to do it. But it didn't stop him. He just kept right on and he was telling me, his whole reaction to it was well, I know this is what you want, don't tell me that, this is not it, you know, you really want this, you've been wanting this all night type of stuff, which just made me sick at my stomach, because then whenever I would replay that in my mind I would try to replay throughout the whole evening when I had asked for something like that to happen to me. I mean, I don't believe a woman actually sends off signals to a guy to do something like that to her. I don't believe that can happen.

MS. BRACKETT: Unlike most women who are raped by an acquaintance, O'Neal reported the crime. But she did it hesitantly and only because she had a friend whose mother was a rape counselor and recognized the incident as rape.

MS. O'NEAL: I didn't want to tell anybody, I didn't want to do anything, and I was having trouble admitting it to myself what had happened and I couldn't bring myself to say the word "rape".

MS. BRACKETT: Abarbanal says students are often too embarrassed to report the crime.

MS. ABARBANAL: Most of the women who are raped on college campuses are freshmen, they're seventeen or eighteen years old, and they're just out of high school, and this is their first experience with being independent, away from their families. So often they feel this deep sense of failure, you know, that somehow they've failed to protect themselves.

MS. O'NEAL: I felt like I'd kind of let myself down, you know. A lot of it played on the fact that people would say well, why didn't you scream, why didn't you do something? I didn't really have an answer for them. There isn't really a right answer to that I don't think.

CHRISTINE COVERDALE: When I walked into the room that night, I had a really odd feeling that something bad was going to happen.

MS. BRACKETT: Christine Coverdale struggled with why she did not do more to protect herself when she wound up in a dangerous situation. Coverdale, a senior at Rutgers University, now holds meetings to educate freshmen about date rape. She tells of being gang raped her freshman year by three acquaintances after she played a drinking game with them.

CHRISTINE COVERDALE: I thought I was like the only person in the world that this has ever happened to before. I mean, like I always thought that rape was something, you know, somebody jumped out at you and you like poked 'em in the eyes or something to get away from them. I didn't realize it was somebody that you knew, that somebody could do that to you.

YOUNG GIRL: Do you think that most of these rapes are planned, or do you think that it could be miscommunication?

CHRISTINE COVERDALE: In certain situations, yes, I will admit that there is a miscommunication and that guys do not realize that what they're doing is actually sexual assault.

MS. BRACKETT: Rape crisis experts say students sometimes are confused about sexual signals. We gathered a group of students at the University of Southern California to ask them the definition of date rape.

TIM WARNER: Basically it's when she says no or else she's too drunk or too high on drugs to say no. If she can't say no, but she still, it's obvious beforehand that she didn't want to, and he's still forcing himself upon her, that's when it becomes rape.

IAN McLAUGHLIN: I think it's a little bit more gray area than that. I can't say that I agree if a girl says no then and he continues to go that that's not right, but then again, girls say no all the time and the old saying was they're saying no but they actually want it. I mean, I don't know how true that is in all cases, but in some cases it's true, you know.

MS. BRACKETT: You think girls tease?

IAN McLAUGHLIN: Oh, all the -- yeah, definitely. Girls are the biggest flirts, way way more than guys, and --

MS. BRACKETT: So how do you know when no is no?

IAN McLAUGHLIN: When it becomes serious, when she starts struggling and saying this is it, then you can tell.

DAVID HARBUCK: You can tell in her voice. I mean, you can tell in the voice. No is obvious and no.

MS. BRACKETT: The Santa Monica rape crisis center did find that in all the instances of gang rape or group rape no guy ever said this is not a good idea, let's stop it. Why not?

DAVID HARBUCK: I haven't had any direct experiences with this but I can picture it very -- because I know quite a few fraternity members of all sorts of different houses, all different types of guys, and I can see where, you know, a group of guys get together chanting, singing one of their fraternity songs and stuff and then the guy is urged to go kiss her or something or, you know, go talk to her, you know, go hit on her, and when there's that group of people, it's so hard to say no because then, you know, then maybe next week in the chapter meeting, they'll get, you know, catch a rash and stuff, and they just don't, they can't take not being accepted as an equal, not being one of the guys instead, and they shut out what's right and what's wrong.

MS. BRACKETT: The incidence of acquaintance rape could be brought down, say health care professionals, if schools would institute mandatory educational programs about rape for students. In schools where such programs do exist, students are clearly told that date rape is a crime and will not be tolerated on the campus. The numbers could also be cut down, say experts, if schools immediately disciplined students after a rape.

MS. ABARBANAL: The problems that these students encountered with their colleges were that there were no clear cut guidelines for responding to cases when they were reported so the few victims that had the courage to come forward and report their assaults didn't get the support they needed. The colleges had no provisions for the victims to have any rights in the disciplinary process.

MS. BRACKETT: When Stephanie O'Neal made the decision to report, she found little support from the university. After she filed a criminal case, she found 12 other women who had been assaulted by the same man, though only 2 agreed to give depositions. At the preliminary hearing, her attacker's entire fraternity showed up. A year later, the case was plea bargained down to assault. The university did hold a disciplinary hearing but Stephanie was disappointed in the process.

MS. O'NEAL: They had never had a student charge against a student in a rape and the way the whole proceedings were set up, they were set up for more a student who was charged with cheating on a test. To me, it was just biased, completely biased on his behalf.

MS. BRACKETT: Two years after the attack, the student was expelled. The university says the punishment shows that the hearings were not biased. Most colleges do not have a written comprehensive rape policy. Three years ago, the University of California, Los Angeles, became one of the first schools in the country to set down a written policy on rape. Administrator Tina Oakland.

MS. OAKLAND: Ours is a very aggressive educational program where we try and we have workshops on a weekly basis throughout the entire calendar year, rape prevention workshops. We also try and catch students at any of the entry points of the university, so as part of new student orientation, as part of orientation to the residents halls, if they're going to live on campus.

MS. BRACKETT: Along with education, UCLA has strengthened its security in the dormitories, an area law enforcement officials say should be improved on most campuses across the country. [DEMONSTRATION]

MS. BRACKETT: Students across the country say universities have not been quick enough to respond to the problem of rape on campus. Women at the University of Colorado at Boulder staged a march on the darkest night of the month to try and focus attention on the problem of rape. Those who already have been victimized are trying to get on with their lives. O'Neal will graduate with honors this year. But like many victims of acquaintance rape, she still has trouble trusting people. Kerkorian has tried to recover by submerging herself in her musical studies. [Kerkorian Singing]

MS. BRACKETT: Still, as is common for rape victims, she continues to relive the rape. Even with three years of counseling, she is often afraid. She still cannot sleep alone or with the lights off.

MS. KERKORIAN: The hardest thing for a rape victim to shake I think is the paralyzing fear. It just doesn't go away when you, you know, when you try to will it away, and it stays in the back of your mind.

MS. BRACKETT: Rape counselors say the problem of rape on campus is both a tragedy and an opportunity, a tragedy because of the long lasting impact stranger rape and acquaintance rape has on young lives, an opportunity, because in a close knit community with money and resources, the campus could be one place where the number of rapes could be reduced. FOCUS - PAINT BY NUMBERS

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight a day after Christmas art story that is also a business story and vice versa. Our special business correspondent Paul Solman reports.

MR. SOLMAN: Christie's Auction House in New York. On sale a painting by Vincent Van Gogh, stereotype of the starving artist. [AUCTION]

MR. SOLMAN: Throughout the 1980s, the price of famous art scaled such heights that Van Gogh's became almost better known as investments than works of art. [AUCTION]

MR. SOLMAN: This season there's talk of prices finally fallen from their speculative peaks. It's making investors nervous. But to observers, it simply underscores the link between art and money that has become the hallmark of our age. Considering Kastaby World in Mid Town Manhattan, a factory where the products are paintings. The workers are paid $10 an hour and turn out roughly a work a week which is then sold for as much as $15,000. The designs are created by top management, sometimes by the owner, himself, the quasi-famous Mark Kastaby, who's not here at the moment, but no matter. He's more valuable to the firm marketing the name and Kastaby rarely touches the canvases anyway. Even his quasi- famous signature is usually applied by the almost totally obscure hired help. Now if you work at Kastaby World as James Godwin does, where do you draw the line between business and art?

JAMES GODWIN, Artist: There is no line because the art is the business and so it's just like making products that people want.

MR. SOLMAN: You take in this tabloid and stay within the world of fine art, you want to scream, what happened to the values of Eduard Munciera for example when art was supposedly pursued for its own sake, when beauty didn't bend to the bottom line? Well, one way to answer the question, we thought, might be to compare our age to the presumably golden past, exemplified by the French master who has received so much attention in America this year, Claude Monet. What could be further from the production line at Kastaby World after all, the avarice of the auction block, than the landscapes of Monet? These grain stacks suggest a quiet, sublime painter, moved by the lofty subtleties of nature, not the petty concerns of the bottom line. But why are the paintings so similar? Why does Monet paint the same scene over and over again? The traditional answer is that Claude Monet, the ultimate impressionist, was just experimenting with light, each picture exploring its effects at different times of the day, different seasons of the year. But according to the curator of Monet in the '90s, showing in Boston, Chicago, and London this year, first impressions can be deceiving, because there's more here than meets the eye. To Paul Tucker, Monet's series paintings show that this master had the mind of a businessman as well as the eye of an artist.

PAUL TUCKER, Curator: His business strategy was to be able to walk what I think is an extremely fine line between being truthful to himself and to his vision of what paintings should be. No one up until this point had consciously set out to paint pictures in series. He was the very first one and is a legacy really for everyone down to Warhol.

MR. SOLMAN: Apparently the man simply wanted to make a decent living, and so Monet created paintings and marketed them as well. Part of what I guess you'd have to call Monet's marketing plan for the '90s was to paint themes. That way for the price of only one original like this you could own a piece of the rock series and be part of an exclusive club. To the newly rich investors of 1890's France, this plan had "can't lose" appeal. To some of Monet's colleagues, however, there was an obvious loss of Claude Monet's soul.

PAUL TUCKER, Curator: Pisaro who had heard that Monet was painting these grain stacks writes to his son and says, isn't it terrible, Monet's really just sold out, all he's doing is painting grain stacks.

MR. SOLMAN: But the chronically poor Camille Pisaro loved the grain stacks when he finally saw them. Monet hadn't prostituted himself at all. In fact, he was as good an artist as Pisaro. He was just a much better businessman. For example, Monet put a lot of effort into pre-selling to prominent collectors. It gave the paintings in series a classy seal of approval and says curator Tucker.

MR. TUCKER: Also left only a certain number of them to be purchased by those people who'd be interested in them, and he worked very hard at doing that, which one might say is manipulative, one might say is just good marketeering.

MR. SOLMAN: The grain stack series was a huge success, both artistically and commercially. More series soon followed, the Cruz River, Poplar Trees, the Famous Cathedral at Ruan. Monet didn't skimp on the art but he deliberately chose subjects dear to the heart of his customers. Even his famous Poplar Trees, it turns out, weren't a purely artistic choice but a carefully chosen and very popular symbol of the French Revolution.

MR. TUCKER: Because in the French Revolution, the 1790's in particular, they were chosen as a tree of liberty and were celebrated through the 19th century in tree planting ceremonies as a symbol of liberal Republican values and of France. He could have chosen anything to paint and yet he consciously and consistently paints subjects that resonated with meaning for his countrymen.

MR. SOLMAN: Monet studied his target audience. He employed two clipping services to pass along every reaction to his work. He also played gallery dealers off against each other, getting them to bid up his prices. And by the end of 1890s when these works were painted, he'd become as successful as his bourgeois customers.

MR. TUCKER: He had maids and in order to live well he had to be able to paint well and to be able to sell it well.

MR. SOLMAN: Good artist, good businessman. According to Paul Tucker and a growing number of art historians, economic considerations have always been a major factor in the world of art. Take the 18th century's Gilbert Stuart, known for his portrait of nationalist hero George Washington. In fact, the reason this image is so well known is because Stuart painted at least 39 almost identical versions of it. After having emigrated from England to escape his creditors, in America he found a way to make a buck. Now Gilbert Stuart mass produced these portraits all by himself, but even the art factory isn't unique to the age of materialism, Kastaby World and Andy Warhol.

MR. TUCKER: Andy Warhol had a factory and so did Rubens, slightly different in terms of the personnel, but yes, the same kind of sense that everyone could, in fact, contribute to the work of art, it didn't have to be the unique product of the artist, himself.

MR. SOLMAN: Flemish Peter Paul Rubens, paragon of 18th century romanticism, the romantic Rubens ran a factory, and like any good plant manager, he increased his efficiency through a division of labor.

MR. TUCKER: Well, he had dozens of assistants, people who would paint landscapes, people who would paint still life aspects of the works, people who would do part of the clothing and so on.

MR. SOLMAN: The more proficient his workers became at a specialized task, the faster Rubens and company could churn out his masterpieces. But Rubens, it seems, went Mark Kastaby one better. Instead of painting for labor, he often charged his students fees, since their valuable experience would help launch them on well paying careers in art. [AUCTION]

MR. SOLMAN: So today amidst all the talk of art as investment and speculative cycles in the art market, it might be good to remember that the line between art and business has long been blurred, but down through history both art and artists have often gone to the highest bidder. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Once again, Wednesday's main stories, the Soviet parliament officially approved new powers for Mikhail Gorbachev, Nancy Cruzan died after being in a coma for nearly eight years. A judge allowed the removal of her feeding tubes two weeks ago at her parents' request. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night with a conversation with the Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.