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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 9, 1979)
Corps < AAfs ST/ AN 7HEI SK CENT IAILB o F Ne by 9-6 9-1 Slouch by Jim Earle AGGIE BLOOD DIME ROOM M6C ocroffe/e 9-/1 OMBOA FHt ALPW/V ALPMA 0M«dr4 sr ^ltWMr ‘Maybe if you relaxed, we could get a flow started. Opinion At 103, A&M learns new (good) tricks After 103 years, it seems a university should be able to figure out all the angles to serve its students better. But Texas A&M — which turned 103 last Thursday — missed some of the finer points. Now, however, the administration is catching up. A couple of examples are the service units new this semes ter — Academic Services and the International Center. Both should have been created long ago. But when enrollment doubles in less than a decade, it’s understand able some refinements are left behind in the rush. The idea behind each unit makes sense: Establish one central location where students and faculty can go for related needs. In the past, for example, a student interested in competi tive scholarships — the Rhodes, Rockefeller or Danforth awards — had to go to three different places on his own. Now Academic Services can give that type of information to students or direct them to it. The same was true with international programs — find the opportunities, spread across the University, on your own. Those were wasteful, discouraging “non-systems.” The new consolidations should help students and faculty. Students can go to Academic Services, 100 Harrington, for questions about General Studies, careers, preprofes sional advice and academic testing. New and old faculty can get help there on how to advise students and teaching. And on the first and second floors of Bizzell Hall, both students and faculty can find out about international pro grams. After 103 years, it’s about time. the small society by Brickman THIZ YZAfZ.'^ s' AZ& ALfZ&APY AT N&XT Y£A(Z'£ r?-\c.&6> - /<? -9 The Battalion U S P S 045 360 LETTERS POLICY Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words and are subject to being cut to that length or less if longer. The editorial staff reserves the right to edit such letters and does not guarantee to publish any letter. Each letter must be signed, show the address of the writer and list a telephone number for verification. Address correspondence to Letters to the Editor, The Battalion, Room 216, Reed McDonald Building, College Station, Texas 77843. Represented nationally by National Educational Adver tising Services, Inc., New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday from September through May except during exam and holiday periods and the summer, when it is published on Tuesday hrough Thursday. Mail subscriptions are $16.75 per semester; $33.25 per school year; $35.00 per full year. Advertising rates furnished on request. Address: The Battalion, Room 216, Reed McDonald Building, College Station, Texas 77843. United Press International is entitled exclusively to the use for reproduction of all news dispatches credited to it. Rights of reproduction of all other matter herein reserved. Second-Class postage paid at College Station, TX 77843. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the editor or of the writer of the article and are not necessarily those of the University administration or the Board of MEMBER Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Congress Editor Liz Newlin Managing Editor Andy Williams Asst. Managing Editor Dillard Stone News Editors . .Karen Cornelison and Michelle Burrowes Sports Editor Sean Petty City Editor Roy Bragg Campus Editor Keith Taylor Focus Editors Beth Calhoun and Doug Graham Staff Writers Meril Edwards, Nancy Andersen, Louie Arthur, Richard Oliver, Mark Patterson, Carolyn Blosser, Kurt Allen Photo Editor . . .Lee Roy Leschper Jr. Photographers Lynn Blanco, Sam Stroder. Ken Herrerra Cartoonist Doug Graham Regents. The Battalion is a non-profit, self- supporting enterprise operated by students as a university and community newspaper. Editorial policy is determined by the editor. Viewpoint The Battalion Texas A&M University What about the architecture at Texas A&I Present growth is misguided “Can A from forei at bothe By MARK DENISON In my two years at A&M, I have watched with much consternation as campus planners have torn down, painted over, covered up and replaced many of the older and richer elements of the physical campus. Incoming students will soon never know the original wooden doors that once graced the older buildings. Inexpensive aluminum windows that do not open have replaced wooden double-hung windows with panes. Simple plaster trim covers up ornamental cor nices on some buildings like Leggett and Bolton halls. Paint covers the once red brick and white-trimmed Analytical Services Building with a monotonous beige. The list goes on. One can look anywhere on campus for more examples and more is planned. The Agriculture Building, the Animal Industries Building and Scoates Mall are eventually to be torn down. I think that A&M’s zeal to erect the new and cover-up the old is born out of a pride in itself and its present growth. I also think it is misguided. The construction of a stadium costing $113 million is alone an act few univerities can afford today. That is almost the entire annual operating budget of the northeastern university of 16,000 students I attended. And, their actions are a rebellion against, a rejection of those symbols of established academia: Harvard Yard with its stately and exquisitively preserved buildings; Cornell’s Arts Quad where students shun the single library building built this century; Jefferson’s recently restored Rotunda at the University of Virginia; till symbols of academic excellence. When Texas A&M was built, it was natural fora rural agricultural school to look to extablished schools as a model. Not long ago, the campus looked not unlike a northeastern university with Beaux-Arts, Victorian and Revival style buildings arranged in quadrangles with grass. It is delightful that this university once aspired to he as great. It now should be but it is not. A&M’s recent prosperity has created an administrative bureaucracy mo^e in terested in continued influence, self-preservation and growth than in the quality of the institution. In turn, they build and rebuild the campus in order to justify their jobs and more money to build and rebuild. They have dressed the campus in blue jeans and t-shirts, thrown away the silk ties it once wore and cannot see that it is ill-dressed among the dark pinstriped suits that this country’s universities wear. They suffer a critical myopia; they see the University’s virtues, and there are many, but cannot see its glaring faults. Its campus once would have impressed any visitor as a university that at least aspired to be a first-rate institution if not actually one. Today, it looks like middle-class high school USA, anything but a place of estab lished knowledge and scholarly research. It is an obvious truism that the campus reflects the quality of the institution and not vice versa. If A&M’s changing campus relects the trend from the rigors of traditional academics to an academic program geared mainly to self-preservation and growth, then perhaps little can be done to preserve the campus’s past. But it is tragic for a univeristy with A&M’s resources to neglect one of its most valuable assets. As a university that reveres in tradition, we have almost lost the most visible, material and perhaps sacred one. By DR. CHARLES McCANDLESS Mr. Denison’s chief concern seems to be that the Texas A&M campus doesm resemble the campuses and structures of the East and Northeast. The fact thattk Texas A&M campus does not resemble those of Harvard, Cornell and the Univet sity of Virginia is entirely natural — Texas is not Massachusetts, New York,# Virginia. It seems fundamental that the architecture of a building ora complex of building should reflect the character and indeed the spirit of its environment, physicalaml social. To attempt to transplant the Harvard-Yard atmosphere (which is entire!) appropriate for its environment) to College Station would be as inappropriateasto transplant the Alamo to Boston or to expect Faneuil Hall to be replaced by tie Astrodome. In short, functional architecture is, we l^elieve, that which grows from its surroundings, not that which is grafted onto those surroundings from another locale quite different in style, culture, and tradition. In addition, Mr. Denison seems to equate age with richness, a process which in some instances may be true but not in all. Anyone who walks across the Texas A&M campus need only pause Irefbre Sully’s statue and look to see that the park-lik quadrangel formed by Nagle and Bolton, the “Y” and the Academic Buildingstaiiu continuation of the rich history of this university. Certainly new buildings have been built and old buildings have been recon ditioned, brought from a near-decrepit state into a usable, livable status. These buildings were built, and continue to be built, reconditioned or preserved not as the playthings ofbored administrators but to meet the needs, lx>th quantitative and qualitative, of the growing institution of which we are all a part. Some buildings have, necesarily, been demolished. Even the best of buildings have an age limit and, like all of us, become nonfunctional when that limit is exceeded. As a matter of fact, in the past nine years only two major buildings, Guion Hall and Mitchess, have been demolished; one (Guion) became totally inadequate for its function and the other gave way to the need for an expanded, modernized, centrally located health services building. As far as we know there are no plans in the foreseeable future to demolish the Agriculture Building, the Animal Industries Building, or Scoates Hall. Wedonot know where the $113 million figure quoted by Mr. Denison as the cost of the stadium came from. The actual cost of the expansion is far less than this amount and includes a major expansion of G. Rollie White Coliseum • Individuals who have been here for many years do not recall that this campus ever looked like a northeastern university. The aging pictures in the Texas A&M archives show a few buildings on a barren prairie that gradually developed into a institution which has its own unique character, style and presence. It is entire!) possible, may we suggest, that blue jeans and t-shirts more accurately reflect the character and tradition of Texas and the Southwest than do silk ties and pinstripe suits. Established knowledge and scholarly research do not reside only in a Brooks Brothers suit. Moreover, educational institutions are more accurately judged by the quality of their students, faculty, and programs than by their architecture. We are in basic agreement with Mr. Denison that we must strive to keep the hst of what we have, but we must also provide for growth and change while being diligent stewards of the taxpayers’ dollars. resident He starl attitudes udents 1 ents. Sahinog atistics 1 ut toget foreign st minister. I “We ha so I thou; thing in r< | The gif lu’s statist Assistar arvey S e job fc e Euroi interest t( The po tradiction |Aggies sa motions ; dents, 8f |hey thou ,&M hac Precoi mywher stupid,” foreigner Mark Denison graduated from Texas A&M in 1978 with a degree in architec ture, and is now working in Houston. Dr. McCandless is the director of the Office of Planning at Texas A&M Univer sity. Letters Library leaves lots to be desired in the area of student lounge decor Got a ( &M Ur irescripti o life. Add or vbelmin; lity; pur 'ears of ] nd, voil hat is no ing busin a cultural xplains 1 The p: utrageo erienci rban ri\ Editor: I love the new library. Two of my favorite features are the who- really-cares-what-time-it-is-anyway clocks and the quasimodo-closing-time chimes. But the big one in my book is the beautiful student lounge and refreshment center, no doubt sight of the recent Idi Amin summit for the librarian-boat-people refugees; the area has been sufficiently raped and pil laged. You haven’t heard about it? Well no wonder. You probably haven’t even heard of the student lounge. Lord knows how Idi found it. The directory says second floor west. Second floor west? I can’t even tell which way is up in the library. I suppose I should have followed the sun past the gov ernment files, through the brown doors and up the stairs into that giant vacant room. But for what? Exciting tan vinyl chairs? 1960s-decor broken tile floor? A symphony of vending machines maybe? Sure. Our refuge, the library student lounge where the walls look like a 10th grade geometry book fly leaf—just what I need when I take a break from studying: Pythagorus en loun- gium. OK, I realize much of the library is still under construction and I hope that’s the case with the lounge. But for now, some pictures would be nice. A little music would be wonderful; an AM transistor radio would be better than the prelude to Dr. Pepper’s last stand. So, to whoever is responsible for all this, I appeal, put some color in my lounge. Because I really do love the new library. — Robert Earl Keen, ’79 — Lyle Lovett, ’79 coming back. Well, I don’t know how that’s possible when the Aggies at Pasta’s are the ones that owned and operated the franchise since July 1977. The people at Pasta’s are responsible for building that name in the area. I would like to know how Mama’s Pizza, a Fort Worth TCU graduate-owned com pany, can advertise that they are coming back when they were never here in the first place. Support the Aggie-owned Pasta’s, not the TCU-owned Mama’s Pizza that is ad vertising that they were once in College station. — Barbara Jones, ’83 Cut spending, taxes Editor: The main cause of inflation in this coun try is the government’s bulging budget def icit. As the governmerfte,spends more than it takes in, it must finance these projects by printing up more money. As a result, each dollar you possess becomes worth less be cause of the flood of surplus money enter ing the American system. I propose that we cut the budget in this country by 40 percent and taxes by 25 per cent. What would this accomplish? Well, for one thing, instead of a budget deficit, there would be a budget surplus. The surplus money would be reimbursed to the banks whom the government owes $885 BILLION. Once the government returns to fiscal sanity by printing less paper money (no need to print much money when there’s a budget surplus), inflation would slow down rapidly. I also propose that we get rid of most of the federal regulations that strangle Ameri can business. Once red tape is lessened, businesses could afford to hire more people, thus reducing welfare. With fewer people out of work and more off welfare, we could eliminate the welfare, housing pro grams, federal grants to states and cities, Medicare, Medicaid, ad nauseum. To me, non-disabled welfare people are like leeches who drain the American financial system. Only by electing conservatives can we preserve the American work ethic and thriftiness that have made this country great. The present Congress only rewards laziness, since they continually give more money each year to welfare-s assocni Gunn, projects. tourism c Richard Leonardo^ a re ^ a ^ v< Can 01110 Dissatisfied ... Editor: After almost four-and-a-half years* A&M, the one thing I will notbesony* leave is the mess GTE calls its phonexf ice. During these years, the troublewitb ling off-campus numbers has noti creased. Why, with the addition of near 600 people on the north side of camps' does it still take six to eight calls before outside line is reached (especiallyafte 1 p.m.)? Why, when calling long distam does a busy signal start in the middleo(tj phone number or why do I just get cut Why did I have a “conversation withtlif to four people (one of them in Leg another in Walton) when I called operator for help tonight since GTEdit deliver enough phone books to dorms and I didn’t get one? , What a sorry service to put upwitU these years!! Goodbye GTE! Hello Ma Bell! — Lydia A. Muff. an quic. ial force most sue duence c prototyp Antonio Throu urban ri abused, are on tl cities ar< ning the ments, i Laredo, Inste river on city pla phasize pects, t worthwl Thotz Stick with Pasta's Editor: I have eaten in Pasta’s (formerly Mama’s) for the past two-and-a-half years and have always enjoyed a relaxed and friendly at mosphere. The pizza is the best anywhere. Recently, I heard that Mama’s Pizza is NOW, WHY ARE YOU Doiwe- so PooRty? IT HOMElwORIc?