Viewpoint
The Battalion Tuesday
Texas A&M University November 22, 1977
Newspapers under
Freedom of the Press is under attack in the United States. But this time
the attacker, in the guise of the Federal Communications Commission, is
coming through the back door.
Since the First Amendment guaranteeing Freedom of Speech was written
into the Constitution, American newspapers have been more or less free
from government influence over their business operations. Real Freedom of
the Press is a fairly modem innovation, but it was “hands off” as far as
business was concerned.
The broadcast media were quite another matter. Because almost from the
first murmurs of broadcasting in this country, federal officials realized the
public airways were a limited public resource. So the FCC was established
in 1934 to regulate public broadcasters.
Thus the broadcast media know the weight of Uncle Sam’s hand well. But
now that hand is reaching through the FCC’s role in licensing new broadcast
stations to grab many newspapers by the throat.
The Supreme Court is now reviewing a U.S. Court of Appeals order which
could break up 150 newspaper-radio-television combinations in 44 states.
The order would require some newspapers to sell the broadcast stations they
own in the same city where they publish and would bar future joint
newspaper-broadcast station ownership.
“Nothing can be more important than insuring that there is a free flow of
information from as many divergent sources as possible,” the appeals court
said in issuing the order. But the free flow of information and common media
ownership are not mutually exclusive.
Often a newspaper or a television station can not survive in a limited
market without a companion medium to share capital expenses and bring in
extra revenue. If that newspaper or station goes out of business, it surely
won’t be contributing anything to that “free flow of information.”
But the really dangerous precedent is that the order, if it stands, allows
the FCC as a governmental licensing agency say who can or can not own a
newspaper. The newspaper business has always been, first and foremost, a
‘back door’ attack
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business and nothing influences it faster than something that makes business
impossible.
The high court’s justices will do well to remember that information is one
commodity which does not fit textbook definitions of supply and demand and
monopoly. L.R.L.
Rusty Cawley
College Station surrenders to bonfire
The College Station City Council has
given up. Raised the white flag. Thrown in
the towel.
And the Texas A&M University bonfire
seems destined to remain where it is, no
matter how much it threatens the safety of
homes along the south gate.
Just how much
danger the annual
bonfire presents to
the neighborhood
along Jersey Street
hasn’t been deter
mined. But in the past, the council pro
ceeded each bonfire with a tradition of its
own, asking university officials to move the
bonfire site.
This year that tradition has died.
It costs the city somewhere between
$500 and $2500 every time the bonfire is
lit. The estimate varies from official to offi
cial. Most of the costs go for additional
manpower: firemen to fight the fires and
policemen to fight the traffic.
All stay on duty until the centerpole
falls. That’s been as late as 2 a.m.
The weather doesn’t help. Fall is usually
dry and this year is no exception. And each
year Mother Nature seems to deliver what
fire officials dread most, a strong north
wind.
The wind carries glowing embers from
the bonfire, across Jersey Street, into the
southgate neighborhood. The potential for
fire is there. And if one occurs, the prob
lems for the fire department just begin.
The streets in the neighborhood are
narrow. And on bonfire night, when these
streets are lined with parked cars, naviga
tion for a vehicle as large as a fire truck is
impossible.
The fire department will limit parking
on these streets to residents. If they are
successful, firemen should be able to take
care of any fire.
But is the bonfire a threat? History
seems to justify concern. Take the 1964
bonfire, in which several small fires and a
major house fire were started by the em
bers. Or the 1975 bonfire whose embers
set fire to the roof of Duncan Hall.
Little damage, true. But how much
damage does it take to prove there is a
danger? Some alternatives to moving the
site have been suggested. None of them
are popular. One councilman suggested
last year that the fire be extinguished at
midnight.
That idea got the horselaugh.
This year, there has been one sugges
tion, that to move the bonfire to Texas
World Speedway. And that didn’t come
from the city council, but from the speed
way’s owner. The council has been
strangely mute on the subject. The at
titude seems to be one of acceptance and
inevitability.
Perhaps, after years of trying, the coun
cil is too tired to fight over the bonfire any
more.
City Editor Rusty Cawley writes a weekly
commentary on local affairs, government
and politics.
Education: Why not back to teaching?
Top of the News
Campus
Aggielands distributed today
Distribution of the 1977 Aggielands begins today in Building C,
behind the Reed McDonald building on the Texas A&M University
campus. Annuals will be issued from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. A Texas A&M
identification is required, and students will be allowed topickuponly
their own Aggieland.
Admissions office to move
Admissions and Records will open for business in new offices in
Heaton Hall Monday, Dec. 5. The offices will close Dec. land2to
move from the Coke Building. Senior grades will be accepted in the
lobby of the Coke Building on Friday but all other services will be
suspended during the move. The ring clerk and transcript officewl
be on the first floor along with freshman, transfer, international and
graduate admissions. Scheduling and administrative offices will be on
the second floor. The building was formerly Registration Headquar
ters and housed the old Exchange Store prior to that. It is located on
Ross Street near Milner Hall.
Double check address cards
A new address card will be included in the spring preregistration
packets. A current local address and home address will be included
on the card. Students should check both addresses and make any
needed corrections. Final grade reports, statement of expenses and
spring schedules will be mailed to the address as listed on the card.
State
Hustler publisher converted
Publisher Larry Flynt says readers of his sexually explicit
magazine. Hustler, will find healthy, rather than raunchy, articles
about religion and sex, part of a new format prompted by his religious
conversion. Flynt said content changes, planned because he said God
“convicted” him of sin and converted him from unbelief, willnotbe
made for a few months because of publication deadlines. During
weekend appearances in San Antonio and Houston, he said his con
version “all sort of happened within the last few days” and is due in
part to evangelist and faith healer Ruth Carter Stapleton.
Nation
Police break up Yale sit-in
Squads of police Monday dragged and carried about 50 striking
Yale University blue collar workers and student sympathizers from a
driveway where a sit-in was being staged to stop a convoy of police
cars and fuel trucks from delivering heating oil to the school in New
Haven, Conn. Ronald Sanbrook, president of the Federation of Uni
versity Employees Local 35, said when the police started dragging
the union strikers away, the students “started coming out of the
woodwork when they saw what was going on and they joined right
in.” The union had threatened for more than a week to stop oil
deliveries in an effort to force the university to loosen up in its latest
contract offer.
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Meteosat 1 launch cancelled
Air Force and space agency investigators at Cape Canaveral, Fla.,
began an inquiry into mysterious radio signals Monday, that caused
cancellation of the scheduled launch of a European weather satellite.
The launch of Meteosat 1 was scrubbed Sunday night because of
unidentified signals received on the command-destruct system ofthe
Delta rocket as it was being readied for the launch. Officials said the
signals were discovered during a test of the rockets’ electrical system
last Wednesday. The source of the signals must be determined before
a new launch date can be set, they said, because they could have an
effect on the destruct system. Officials said the signals have not been
picked up again since Wednesday.
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By WILLIAM RASPBERRY
WASHINGTON—Some months ago, I
got a letter (subsequently misplaced) from
a reader in a small Texas town. She wanted
to tell me her local school district’s plan for
coping with declining test scores.
They had built a brand new building,
she said, complete with open space, un
graded primaries, team teaching, Joplin
plans and the latest in electronic learning
aids.
She was dismayed. It was a terrible
waste of money, she told me, and she felt
certain that very little good would come of
it.
I had planned, before I lost the letter, to
wait about a year and then try to wrangle a
visit to the town. It’s probably just as well.
I’m sure the thing is a disaster by now, but
there is no news in that. Any newspaper
reader could have predicted that much.
“Innovation,” the educational buzz
word of the ‘60s, is the swear word of the
‘70s.
Time magazine spent a good deal of last
week’s issue attacking a variety of
Letters to the editor
innovations—the soft-sell approach to
education, the dizzying array of elective
courses (and the diminishing list of re
quired ones), the everybody-do-his-own-
thing - and - we’ll - give - it - a - passing - grade
non-sense and, above all, the prolifer
ation of “relevant” courses, ranging from
“Interior Decorating” to “The Great
Sleuths.”
The Time assault echoes a feeling that is
sweeping the country: The swing to “inno
vation” was a big mistake. It seems to fol
low that if innovation is the disease, then a
“return to basics” must be the cure.
And that may be the second big mis
take.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong
with either innovative or basic education.
The mistake is in supposing that we can
cure what ails education by changing the
adjectives we put in front of it.
A return to basics, if it is projected as a
cure, is bound to prove as disappointing as
open-space architecture and whole-child
jargon. For one thing, it’s easier to return
to an old curriculum than to the old situa
tion in which the curriculum was taught.
One thing that used to help test scores
(and discipline) considerably was the fact
that many of the slower, more disruptive
children simply left school. With the vari
ety of programs aimed at preventing
drop-outs, it’s virtually impossible for any
one to leave school now.
They don’t necessarily learn more; they
merely stay longer. And there’s another
reason why “return to basics’ is a decep
tive battle-cry: If they stay long enough,
they’ll get a diploma. Not to have at least a
high school diploma is such a handicap to
gainful employment that we have virtually
decreed every child’s right to a high school
diploma, whether he bothers to earn one
or not.
Having to teach a large number of stu
dents who, on the whole, would rather be
in Philadelphia, not only pulls down grade
averages; it also frustrates and demoralizes
teachers.
Teachers no longer expect to be as suc
cessful as teachers once were, and we
don’t expect them to be. Some of the best
ones give up teaching altogether, fre
quently leaving their places to incompe
tent successors.
Which, emphatically, is not to say that
all (or even most) teachers are incompe
tent. But an awful lot of them are, and to
the degree that they are, there is no cure
either in innovation or back-to-basics.
There would be one big chance to make' '
a change if we hadn’t given it away. I refer
to the declining school populations which,
across the country, are forcing school clos
ings and teacher lay-offs.
For all the distruption this trend entails,
it would provide an excellent opportunity
for school boards to get rid of the weakest
teachers and keep only the very best. In
some few jurisdictions it may actually work
that way.
But what has happened more fre
quently, especially in the big cities, is that
teacher’s unions, preferring seniority to
excellence, have won work rules that make
it impossible to keep the best teachers—
only the oldest.
And isn’t that a lovely innovation!
(c) 1977, The Washington Post Com
pany
World
D
Sadat offers Israel security
Egypts President Anwar Sadat offered Monday to give Israel
whatever guarantees it needs to ensure its security in exchange for
permanent peace in the Middle East. Sadat delivered an hour-long
address in Jerusalem to Israel’s parliament Sunday reiterating long
standing Arab demands for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied Aral)
lands and an establishment of a Palestinian state. He later com
mented that security for Israel was the main issue in the Arab-Israeli
dispute. This was the first time any Arab leader has attached such
importance to the matter.
Cyclone, tidal wave hit India
More than 6,000 persons were killed in a tropical cyclone and tidal
wave that struck a south Indian state this week, India’s news agency
Samchar reported Monday. The agency said the figure was official but
did not give any further information. Members of Parliament had said
earlier the death toll was well over 3,000 in the cyclone—the regional
equivalent of a hurricane. Officials said the tidal wave alone might
have led to the drowning of thousands of villagers and swept the
inhabitants into the Bay of Bengal. The cyclone roared in from the
Bay of Bengal with winds of 50 to 90 miles an hour on Saturday and
Sunday and the tidal wave struck early Sunday morning.
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4
To
Councilman answers helmet law confusion
Weather
Editor:
I have been reading so many strange let
ters to the editor and hearing so many
strange comments regarding the
motorcyle helmet law that “the College
Station City Council is going to pass” that I
thought I should, at least try, and clear up
some of the misconceptions. Actually I feel
like addressing this letter to Emily
Lotello.
What has happened was the following: A
citizen of College Station and a student at
TAMU asked the council to consider and
pass an ordinance requiring helmets to be
worn within the city limits. It is the right
of every citizen to request that an item be
placed on the agenda of an regular council
meeting. You can even appear without
notice twice a month under “hear
visitors.” We even have been known to
consider requests from foreign students,
residents of other states and cities.
This is one of the unique features of
American local government. Citizens are
suppose to be able to ask for actions from
local councils. For all those out there who
think the council should have refused to
even consider the request of this well in
formed and concerned citizen, ask yourself
what kind of council would you rather
have, one that will not consider requests
from students at TAMU or one that will?
For the record, the council heard the
request, asked the city attorney to deter-j
mine if a law such as this would be legal
and report back. On Nov. 17, the city at
torney stated that such an ordinance
would be in conflict with state law and not
practical to enforce. Therefore, all cycle
jocks can relax and let your hair blow in
the breeze. The mean ol’ council ain’t
gonna make you wear no helmet.
—Gary Halter
City Councilman, Place 1.
College Station
Ticket come home
Editor:
Help Ags! Yesterday I went to get two
date tickets and one student ticket for the
A&M-t.u. game Saturday. I found some
one getting one student ticket so I gave
him all my books to get them all at once.
He got the tickets and left me two student
tickets and one date ticket accidentally.
Check those tickets! I need seat number 4
in section 150 row 17 south end bleachers.
If you find this ticket, call 822-1606 or
822-2516.
—Peter Kruse
Slouch
by Jim Earle
“YOUR JOB, FISH JETHRO, MAY BE THE MOSTi
•IMPORTANT OF ALL! YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF BEING;
ON LOOKOUT FOR POLICEMEN!”
Mostly partly cloudy and mild today and tomorrow with
northerly winds 5-10 mph. High today upper 60s. Low tomor
row mid-50s. High tomorrow mid-70s. 20 percent chance of
rain.
The Battalion
v.
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editor or of the writer of the article and are not necessarily
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munity newspaper. Editorial policy is determined by the
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Southwest Journalism Congress
Editor
.... Jamie AP
Managing Editor
Mary Alice WooV
Editorial Director....
Lee Roy Leschptf
Sports Editor
Paul*!*
News Editors
. . . Marie Homeyer, Carol ^
City Editor
Rusty W
Campus Editor .....
... Kin l 1 ’
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. BethC*
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Student Publications Board: Bob G. Rogers, Chai^
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