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chairperson of the Health committee and is chairperson of its subcommittee on Insurance for the uninsured. Others on which he sits include: Aging; Criminal Justice and Safety; Elections; and Energy. "There are a lot of hot issues in the health field these days. Hospital costs rise quickly and so do rates." He predicts a change in financing of hospital care in the near future because so many people can't afford the costs or the coverage provided by many insurance agencies. "And the organ transplant operations, for example, cost a tremendous amount, and the ethical questions involved in who should get an organ and the criteria for choosing these people are very tough and costly things to decide when human life is at stake." His interest in this area was so keen that he even attended a seminar on organ transplants this past year. Juvenile crime funding issues are also a concern of Barrett's. Currently he is working on a project which would increase the state's contribution to Milwaukee County for the incarceration of juvenile offenders. "The state's funding is based on tenyear-old statistics which are in dire need of updating. There has been a 26 percent increase in violent crimes by juveniles in the past year alone, but the state has not increased their help to compensate for the difference."
The toughest part of his job as a public servant, Barrett feels, is one's own conscience. "It's tough on an issue to do what you personally think is right compared with what your constituents want:' He cites as an example the drinking age bill. His constituents favored the change which would increase the state's legal drinking age from 19 to 21 years of age. "I was a Vietnam era teenager and I was 18 when the age was lowered in the early 1970's. I can easily relate to how younger people feel." It was the inevitable loss of federal highway funds that convinced him to vote for the increase. On his future, political or otherwise, Barrett wants to take a wait and see attitude. "I'm content where I am now, but there are a lot of different avenues for me to travel. Whether that means doing more than I am here, I just don't know." As a student, Barrett said he loved Madison just because of the great variety of people and viewpoints. But when he comes to town from his district in Milwaukee, he says he sometimes feels like "a faded rose from days gone by." "Allmy friends from school here are gone, and though I enjoyed law school more than I thought I would, like most lawyers I'm glad that I'll never have to be a "I-I, again."
Representative Rebecca Young ('83) 76th Assembly District, Madison, Wisconsin As a recent UW law graduate, fifty-two year old Democratic Representative Rebecca Young feels her legal education was geared toward a legal career. "I had looked at practicing law more as a post mid-life correction," she muses, "something that was practical yet challenging." Young came into the Assembly well seasoned earning her seat in 1984. She was elected to the Dane County Board from 1970-76 and was a Madison School Board member from 1979-85. "It's very helpful to know Wisconsin law within the framework of statutes and the courts. Law school was the ideal place for that type of learning. My past political experience helped a great deal, but law school pointed me to law, not politics. It would have been very difficult
for me to go out and practice law with a firm because the average age of a junior associate is younger than my age." She points to her other political experiences as being just as helpful for legislative preparation. She served as Deputy Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Administration and was a member of the State Highway Commission. "The point of practicing law isn't to prepare for the legislature. But law school had a very positive effect on me and was a good disciplinary and intellectual experience." Young feels that law school did give her some advantages. "It gives you an overall framework for applying similar legal solutions to similar problems in the real world; very helpful when analyzing new problems."
'All my friends from school here are gone, and though I enjoyed law school more than I thought I would, like most lawyers I'm glad that I'll never have to be a 1-U again: J