Viewpoint
The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Wednesday
April 26, 1978
Sexual equality and the cover charge
By GARY WELCH
Battalion City Editor
Last weekend I visited a Dallas night
club to hear some progressive country
music and paid $3 just to get in the door.
Now, I know what you are saying: if I want
to hear good music I have to pay for it.
Fine. I agree to that. But what really
surprised me was that the females in our
company paid only $2. Before I am ac
cused of being some sort of chauvinist, let
me say that I certainly believe in being
chivalrous on occassion, and if I had been
paying for one of the young ladies, which I
wasn’t, I would have been glad for the
price reduction.
But as it was I, a male, was paying more
than she, a female, to see the same show.
If we examine the principles involved,
then if we possess any sense of equality we
see that the situation is unfair to a degree.
Since I am a college student and she is a
college student, probably neither of us has
any money to spare.
Commentary
Some fine day when I have a lucrative
job (hopefully), I seriously doubt if I will
even flinch if I happen to pay more than
my share. But since I am now engrossed in
trying to learn enough to qualify for that
lucrative job, I feel I have the right to
complain.
Plain and simple, the policy is unethical
and unfair. Any sincere advocate of non
sexist equality must object to the practice,
or risk being hypocritical. That is not to
say that females are causing the problem,
because for the most part they are not.
The person responsible for the price policy
is probably male, because his is a good job
and because, as any equal rights supporter
can tell you, males still have most of the
good jobs (whether they are the most qual
ified or not).
If it is female superiority we want, then
we should actively pursue it in our
thoughts and actions, although in my mind
a certain superiority already exists. But
that is only my opinion.
It is also my opinion that female
superiority should not exist in our policies
simply because that would also deviate
from the principle of equality. I would like
to see a true equality, both in everyone’s
words and in their actions. Nothing more,
nothing less.
I do not want to leave the impression
that this particular club has done any sing
ularly terrible deed. The music was excel
lent, though refreshments were a bit on
the expensive side; but over all the eve
ning was well worth it.
All I ask is that we get things fair and
keep them fair. Of course, if any of you
price-setters out there have any compas
sion for a couple of college kids, then in
stead of raising hers to $3, just lower mine
to $2.
Martina’s ^private relief citizenship
By WILLIAM E. CLAYTON
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The case of a fa
mous tennis player who defected from
Czechoslovakia dramatizes the emotions
that mark Congress’ work nearest the
grassroots: the private relief bill.
It is normally among the least visible
things Congressmen can do. Federal debts
can be forgiven. A person can be made
eligible for a benefit. He can be paid some
claim. A freedom fighter can be sped to
ward citizenship, waiving a waiting period
or some prerequisite.
Washington Window
The Martina Navratilova case falls into
the big basket of citizenship cases. There
are tens of thousands of people awaiting
citizenship. Many of them persuade a con
gressman to sponsor private relief bills for
them.
In Miss Navratilova’s case, it was Rep.
James Collins, R-Texas, whose district is
in her newly adopted hometown, Dallas.
She asked that the waiting period, be
tween being a permanent resident and
being eligible for citizenship, be
shortened from 1980 to this year, so she
can compete on the U. S. team in certain
tennis matches.
“While Americans are aware of Miss
Navratilova’s tennis exploits, few are
aware of the fact that when she was only 18
she made the momentous personal deci
sion of defecting from her native Czechos
lovakia to seek a new home in the United
States,” Collins said.
He spoke of the strength she would add
to the American team in the Federation
Cup team tennis competition. But there
are issues other than just tennis.
Rep. John Rousselot, D-Calif., who
helped get the House to postpone the
Navratilova bill for further consideration,
said the tennis star’s lawyer felt the bill
was needed to speed the day when she
could visit her parents.
And, he said, there are allegations that
her sister, also a tennis player but still in
Czechoslovakia, has had some hardships
that would not occur if Martina were able
to become an American citizen.
The emotional issues make some private
bills hard to handle objectively, Rousselot
said.
“It is very difficult, in the name of
equity, fairness and justice,” he said.
Letting the tennis star’s bill pass “would
make it hard to explain to those many
other people who are waiting” for citizen
ship, Rep. Robert Bauman, R-Md., said.
Cutting the waiting time by two years
“is highly unusual,” Rousselot said.
“There have been very few of those that
have gone through; maybe in the last sev
eral years.”
“They all have a very legitimate emo
tional side to them.”
One bill, considered and postponed the
same day the Navratilova bill was, dealt
with a Lebanese man whose appeals have
a very legitimate emotional side to them.
Rep. Joshua Eilberg said, in the report
on the Navratilova matter, “The threshold
question to be answered is whether U.S.
citizenship should become an award for
athletic excellence.” The question of
making it possible for her to compete in
team tournaments more quickly does not
meet a criterion of national interest,
he said.
“I do not believe that we should waive
the requirements for citizenship so
lightly,” Eilberg said.
Jimmy gets tough
The ‘no-politics’ president
By DAVID S. BRODER
PITTSBURGH — Now that President
Carter has been “tough” with his staff and
Cabinet in the meetings at Camp David,
the question among politicians is whether
he will be equally “tough” with himself.
According to participants, Carter was
unusually blunt in placing responsibility
for the administration foul-ups and failures
of coordination within his administration,
during the talks last weekend. He ended
with what those present called a rather
stirring plea that the embattled adminis
tration start pulling together.
But in the political community, and par
ticularly among fellow Democrats, the
question is when or if Carter will begin to
not just to pull his administration to
gether, but to divide the country in a polit
ically purposeful way.
THE QUESTION has been put in vari
ous forms to this reporter in recent weeks
by people as diverse as a major Republican
pollster and the campaign manager for one
of Mr. Carter’s defeated rivals for the
Democratic nomination.
But it came most clearly into focus here
in the comments of freshman Democratic
congressman Doug Walgren.
Representing a district as diverse as any
in the country, ranging from the weal
thiest of Pittsburgh’s suburbs to blue-
collar ethnic steel-making communities,
Walgren said: “President Carter gets criti
cism from every corner. He’s rolled the
ball right down the middle and he’s lost on
both sides.
“To me,” said Walgren, “it looks like
he’s not making any political judgments at
all. He just proceeds on the policy and
administrative level without considering
the feelings of people who are affected by
his decisions. He doesn’t even bother to
encourage the people who agree with him.
I just don’t find any strong supporters —
people who speak up for him when he’s
criticized. **
WHITE HOUSE LOYALISTS may
dismiss those words as the worried
rationalization of a freshman congressman
feeing a tough reelection battle in a district
Carter lost last time by 15,000 votes.
But the Gallup Poll published earlier
this month shows the President’s support
sinking toward a uniformly precarious
level among all groups in the population.
He runs no better among the poor than
the rich, the less educated and the well-
educated, the Jews and the Protestants or
Catholics. He is disillusioning many, but
enlisting the loyalty of few.
The view that Carter is insufficiently
“political” is held inside the top ranks of
his own official family. By that, they do not
mean that he is indifferent to his political
fate in 1980. They mean that he governs in
a way that appears oblivious of the need of
attracting allies — and provoking political
enemies.
Outsiders, like the Republican pollster
and the Democratic rival’s campaign man
ager, tend to attribute that to an undiscip
lined ego that prompts him to believe, as
this Democrat says, “I can get them all.”
Others closer to the President say it is
his disinclination to play up to the interest
groups, his low-keyed rhetorical style and
his non-ideological approach to issues
which kept him from building a strong
personal constituency.
But both these theories miss the central
point. What defines a President — what
draws or repels political support — is not
his style but his substance. It is the goals
he espouses that give the hard edge of
meaning to his administration and that
politicize the country into meaningful
blocs.
CARTER HAS BLUNTED that pro-
cess by espousing a bewildering variety of
contradictory causes in both foreign and
domestic policy. He has allowed himself to
be tugged this way and that. He has
buried himself in adminstrative detail and
failed in a President’s first duty — to
communicate his vision to the nation he
leads.
After the enormous expenditure of time
and energy on the essentially secondary
issue of the Panama treaties, Carter must
recognize the limits of his presidential
power. Now he must determine what is
important to him to accomplish with it.
Knowing he cannot do everything, he
has to decide what it really is he wants to
be remembered for as President. He has
to commit himself to those concerns and
resist being pulled into other fights that
are not his own.
In doing that, Carter will divide — and
politicize — the country, which is not an
evil but a necessity, on lines that reflect
his priorities, not someone else’s.
Oddly, even his critics are inclined to
believe that if Carter would display confi
dence in the personal political instincts
which guided him from Plains to the pres
idency, he would regain the confidence of
the people.
In that sense, at least, Carter has no al
ternative but to be “tough” with himself, if
he is going to succeed.
(c) 1978, The Washington P f
<S^EET'N(5^, BRETHREN!
Letters to the editor
Muster was ‘abbreviated’
Editor:
The 75th Muster at College Station was
a miscarriage of tradition.
Muster at the central campus is the
largest gathering of Aggies in the world
and should be a dedication to all deceased
Aggies and not just to students and Brazos
County residents. In proceeding years.
Muster’s roll call has included the “mis
placed heartbeat” of those all over the
world. Why was this year’s Muster hand
led differently?
Muster is a sacred Aggie tradition, so
don’t try and change it by abbreviating it.
Let us hope that next year’s Muster, and
those to follow, are handled differently
from the Muster of 1978.
Sincerely, Lynn p urne ll, ’77
Don Hagan, ’76
Terri Millender, ’79
' Bill Adams, ’78
older population.
Secondly, the present cost of each meal
is $1.91, not $2.74 as quoted in the article.
Thirdly, the meal planning is done by a
nutritionist, not by a “nutritional council”.
People desiring additional information
about participating in Years for Profit,
Meals on Wheels, or Energy Assistance
can contact our office at 822-1302 for fiirthr
information or assistance.
—Dale J. Marsico,
Executive Director
Brazos Valley Community Action Agency
Let's make a deal
Editor’s note: According to the Muster
committee it has not been a tradition for
all names to be read — at least during the
past seven years. Each local Muster is
suppose to name the^Aggies who have
died in that area. A spokesman for the
Former Students said if anyone wants to
change the Muster format they should
contact the Former Students.
Clarification
Readers’ Forum
Guest viewpoints, in addi
tion tii Letters to the Editor,
are welcome. All pieces sub
mitted to Readers’ forum
• Typed triple space
• Limited to 60 characters per
should be
line
• Limited to 100 lines
Editor:
There appears to have been some mis
understanding concerning our elderly
projects discussed in your article “Pov
erty” appearing in the April 7, 1978 issue
of The Battalion.
First of all, the Years for Profit Nutrition
Program provides 695 meals a day in 12
centers through the Brazos Valley area.
These meals are provided once a day to
residents 60 years of age; who are in need
of a balanced meal, who cannot properly
prepare meals on their own, or who suffer
from isolation prevalent among today’s
Editor:
This letter is addressed to the fellow
Aggie who “borrowed” my bike outside of
Zachry Monday morning. I WANT IT
BACK!
I can’t understand why you would want
to keep it. After all, it is over eight years
old, the paint is chipped, the spokes are
loose, the foot pedal hits the kickstand, the
front tire rim is bent so that the front brake
works improperly; and to top it all off, only
the top five gears work.
So why keep it? Sounds like junk to me,
and chances are, with a bike in that condi
tion your’re gonna have a hard time selling
it.
So I’ll tell you what, why don’t you sell
it back to me? I’m probably the only per
son on campus that would want it. Call and
make me an offer. 693-8536.
—Karen Ann Rourke
Correction \
The Reader’s Forum “Where is home of
free & brave?” in Tuesday’s Battalion was
written by Robert Oler. His name was not
included with the Reader’s Forum com-i
mentary.
The Battalion regrets the error.
Top of the News
Campus
Flu drug study continues
Committee applications taken
Century Singers to perform
Nation
Oil firms buy land off Gulf coast
Petroleum companies and drilling firms bid more than $1.5 billion
Tuesday for the rights to 711,000 acres of possible oil and gas deposits
near the Gulf of Mexico. An Interior Department spokesman said the
highest bids on each of 146 tracts of land off the Texas, Louisiana,
Mississippi and Alabama coasts totaled $767.4 million. The U.S.
Geological Survey estimated the lands could contain as much as 250
million barrels of crude oil and 3.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Toledo teachers refuse to work
Striking Toledo, Ohio, school employees Tuesday violated a court
order by refusing to return to work and setting up picket lines at
schools. The 2,800 members of the Toledo Federation of Teachers
and about 600jiQn-academic employees, who went on strike April 10
in a contract disptite, were ordered Monday night to return to the
classroom. Lucas County Common Pleas Court Judge Peter Hand
work issued the temporary restraining order calling for an end to the
work stoppage. Handwork said he would fine the unions $10,000 a
day and individual employees $100 a day for each day the strike
continues. Handwork also banned all picketing. The TFT said it con
sidered Handwork’s order unconstitutional and said it would leave it
up to each employee to decide whether or not to return work. “No
body’s going to work today, said TFT spokeswoman Ann Lepsi. “We
are picketing in frill force. The American Federation of Teachers will
pay the fines out of its militancy fund. We’ve been through this
before.”
Farmers told to organize
Leaders of the American Agriculture movement are urging dis
gruntled farmers to align with minorities and labor and strengthen
lobby efforts in Washington to improve farm produce prices. As esti
mated 2,000 farmers from 34 states gathered Monday at the state
fairgrounds in Oklahoma City and were told they need to organize to
increase their political influence. “We will explore and use all av
enues available to us to improve the economic well-being of the
farmers of the nation and the economy of the world,” said Tommy
Fulford, of Alamo, Ga., chairman of a day long rally.
World
Prisoner exchange planned
American officials are awaiting the arrival of an East German
lawyer to see if a complex, three-nation prisoner exchange can be
expanded to bring about the release of additional prisoners in other
countries. The discussions are expected to resume with the arrival
this week in Washington, D.C. of East German lawyer Wolfgang
Vogel, who was instrumental in negotiating the 1962 swap of U-2
pilot Francis Gary Powers for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.
Brezhnev denounces bomb
Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev Tuesday in Moscow denounced
the neutron bomb as a “new and especially inhuman weapon of mass
annihilation and said Russia would not produce it if the United
States would agree to a curb. In a nationally televised address,
Brezhnev said he believed the Soviet Union and the United States
could reach an agreement on a new strategic arms limitiation treaty
by “sensible and realistic compromise.” The Soviet president said
“some progress was made in working out an agreement on strategic
arms limitation” during negotiations with Secretary of State Cyrus
Vance in Moscow last week.
Fire aboard U.S.S. Concord
A roaring fire burned for five hours Tuesday aboard the 6th Fleet
supply ship U.S.S. Concord at Palma, Majorca, a fleet spokesman
reported. The spokesman said there were no injuries from the fire
and the ship was not seriously damaged. The fire broke out Tuesday
morning in a storage area of the ship.
Weather
Partly cloudy skies today, tonight and Thursday with warm
afternoons and cool nights. High today near 80, low tonight
mid-50s. High tomorrow low 80s. Winds from the northeast
at 10-15 mph this afternoon shifting to the east at 5 mph
tonight.
Participants in the influenza drug study are reminded that the final
blood specimen will be taken on Thursday from 7:30-9:30 p.m., in
Corps dormitory lounges A and B. All participants who gave an initial
blood sample are requested to give a final sample even if the drug was
terminated during the course of the study. Please bring all outstand
ing weekly reports or illness reports to receive payment.
Applications now are being accepted for student representatives on
University committees. A list of these committees and application
forms are available in the Student Government Office, Room 216 C,
MSC. The deadline for application is 5 p.m., Monday.
Texas A&M University’s Century Singers will be in concert at8
p.m. Friday in Rudder Theater. Music ranging from the “FaureRe
quiem to a sentimental journey of ’40s tunes will be on hand for
music lovers of all ages and tastes. Mrs. Margaret B. McArthurwill
direct the 78-voice choral group through the 90-minute show. Tickets
are on sale in Rudder Box Office or from any Century Singers
member.
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The Battalion
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Editorial policy is determined by the editor.
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Editor
Managing Editor Karei^
Sports Editor
News Editors Carolyn Blosser, Debbie^
City Editor G*Jj
Campus Editor h 2 ..
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Photo Editor J. Wagn^
Staff Writers Mark Patterson, Paig^’
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Dour'
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Student Publications Board: Bob G. Rogers, - ,
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