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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 27, 1978)
Viewpoint The Battalion Thursday Texas A&M University April 27, 1978 The overreaction syndrome at A&M By LIZ NEWLIN Battalion Campus Editor Newspapering, like other joys pursured by commoners, generates situations where the wrong action is the easiest to take. Overreacting to a news event often comes naturally — to both reporters and sources. A recent example of overreaction on both sides of a story yielded a front page article in Wednesday’s Battalion. The re port, “Misplaced for two years: Confiden tial records burned,” described the dis covery and destruction of some 5-year-old student files containing grade slips. Ap parently the record were overlooked dur ing an office move and forgotten. Records are routinely destroyed when they be come outdated. A student called The Battalion Monday afternoon and asked for this reporter. He said that some student records were stored rather carelessly in a closet in the student lounge between Crocker and Moore resi dence halls. He added that he had told an assistant area coordinator (counselor) of the records, but nothing had been done. After supper I went to the lounge and nonchalantly pulled back a folding plastic door with a rusty, make-shift padlock and pulled out a cardboard box with the tag “Closed personnel files.” Inside the box were manila folders with biographical data on the outside and grade slips on the in side from 1972-73. After securing photographs of the mis placed records and returning them to the Commentary closet, I went to the Battalion office to begin an investigation. The story was hot and I didn’t mind calling University offi cials at home. The first few calls yielded background information and a refusal to talk from the man whose name was on the files. No significant overreactions — yet. By this time. Dr. Charles Powell, direc tor of student affairs, had been called (not Another set of tapes By JIM CRAWLEY This is the season of the political endorsement. The newspapers, unions, farmers, teachers, and almost every other group of three or more people are lending their support for candidates in state and county primaries. The reasons for this increased interest in the politics of Texas and the various coun ties are as varied as the groups making the endorsements. Politics SOME GROUPS make the endorsements in an effort to persuade their members to vote for “their” man. Others put their name behind a candidate because of similar philosophies. Some groups back a candidate because they don t want to support a loser and they deem it necessary to announce their sup port for some candidate. Finally, there are those political endorsers who believe they are fulfilling a public service. Usually these groups just provide information on the various candidates. Newspapers are probably the best known and most widely followed endorsers of political candidates. News papers have endorsed candidates since the early days of the printed word. The fact of the matter is, these early political endorsements often caused problems for the early press in England. Newspapers in early America were often papers which supported only one faction of people. Into the 1800s American papers were usually sponsored by one political party. The press of that era was extremely biased compared to today’s “ob jective press. NEWSPAPERS ARE NOT the only ones in Texas that make political endorsements. Teachers are a formidable group that dabbles in politics by endorsing candidates. This year is a perfect example of the teachers’ plight in making a political endorsement. The Texas Educators Politi cal Action Committee (TEPAC) is the political arm of the state teachers’ associa tion, TSTA. The group interviewed each of the candidates for the gubernatorial pos ition early this year. The interviews were taped so the committee making the deci sions could refer to them in later dis cussions. Those tapes have involved TEPAC in a battle of political intrigue. After consulting the tapes and their notes the TEPAC committee decided At torney General John Hill was their man. Dolph Briscoe wasn t amused. So Briscoe brought his full political power to bear on the teachers’ committee. After Briscoe publicly complained that Hill had made the teachers expensive promises,including increased pay and benefits, during Hill’s private session with the committee, the governor let loose his friends in the Texas legislature. Members of a House subcommittee on educational financial accountability have asked that subpoenas be issued for the tapes of the closed sessions with the teachers. DURING THE ENTIRE controversy Hill has urged the committee to release the tapes, indicating he has nothing to hide from the voters of Texas. But the committee has emphatically maintained that the tapes are confidential and the state has no light to listen to them. The “legislators for Briscoe” contend that since the teachers are paid by the state, they are “quasi-public". So the legislators want the teachers to hand over the tapes. Briscoe hopes that the contents of the tapes will be embarrassing to Hill. If Hill had promised his support for increased pay, which could increase taxes, then Briscoe could use the tapes against Hill in the increasingly close race between the two. The issue here is not one of the teachers being free to endorse a candidate of their choosing. The real issue is whether any group should be held liable for their politi cal endorsements. Is it oJ<ay for legislators backing a certain candidate to investigate any group with tenuous connections to the state because that group is supporting an opposing candidate. THIS SORT OF political blackmail cuts into the foundations of the political enterprise called the United States of America. Groups of people, except those employed by the government, have the right to support any political candidate or philosophy they chose. Even the excep tion pertaining to governmental em ployees is circumvented by the practice of their unions or associations endorsing a particular candidate or issue. This newspaper has made political endorsements in the past and will proba bly make them in the future. Since The Battalion is connected to a state institu tion, a future legislator might try to sub poena the files of this paper to find out if some candidate made some esoteric prom ise. Taking this one step further, they might even try to censor the paper in an effort to stop the paper’s endorsement of an opposing candidate. This may sound far-fetched, but tomor row is another day full of surprises. Letters to the editor Aggies Editor: This letter concerns the cheating that takes place at Texas A&M; specifically, in our classes. For pre-veterinary students, grades create a very competitive situation; some students are not able to compete fairly. When these “students” cheat on tests, they decrease the honest student’s chance of getting the grade he deserves. In one of our classes, the make-up exam is IDEN TICAL to the regularly scheduled exam. We have noticed that some students use “friends” that are taking the regularly scheudled exam by having them pocket a second copy of the exam. An easy “A” re sults for these cheaters. While the above case reflects the naiv ete of the professor, there are other cases of cheating in our classes where anti cheating measures are enforced. For example, one of our tests went overtime, and students for the next class started com ing in. There was confusion with so many people in the room at once. Amidst the noise and bustle, five or six students man aged to trade answers. We speak of cheating not only in our major, for we believe dishonesty exists in ALL courses of study at A&M. We wish there could be effective measures taken to stop cheaters and their parasitic tactics. They make a joke of the Texas A&M Code of Honor and discredit our university. One solution is to effect a STUDENT- ENFORCED HONOR SYSTEM. Such a system is used successfully at the Univer sity of Virginia. It involves a student-run judicial board. Any offender is reported by the accusing student to the board. A hear ing is held to determine if the accused stu dent is guilty. Cheating is a serious problem at Texas A&M, and we challenge the Student Gov- do cheat ernment and administration to do some thing about it. —Michael W. Riggs, ’80 Patrick D. Choyce, ’80 By any other name . . Editor: I wish to say, “Here! Here!” in reply to the excellent letter by Ruthanne Taylor in the April 4, issue of the Battalion concern ing the importance of women’s right to abortions. The soundness of her logic brings to mind an earlier era when similiar advances in the laws of freedom of choice were enjoyed by the citizens of a certain Far Eastern civilization: A man, having gone through the necessary rituals to obtain a wife and having found her presence and dependency inconvenient to his plans, an embarrassment to his position, or in gen eral a restriction to his freedom to pursue happiness, he was allowed by law to ter minate her life. The humanity of this law is immediately evident because the society was so struc tured that the life of an unattached woman could not have been sustained by herself and she would have been left to a slower death by starvation or abuse. Of course keeping an unwanted mate only led to abuse within the household and stresses which would have diminished the quality of life for all concerned. I believe the whole issue was sum marized best by a far-sighted physician who said that arguing whether abortion is an act of killing or not is unproductive. Rather we should spend our energies com ing to a more mature and realistic way to look at killing. — T. Barrett by the Battalion) and was waiting for me on the telephone. Powell sounded very upset on the phone. He threatened to file criminal charges against me if the Battalion pub lished the story in Tuesday’s edition. I’m not very good at taking notes when my hands are shaking, so I didn’t record the exact quote. It was something like — If you publish the story tonight, I’ll file breaking-and-entering charges against you. I didn’t write the story on the 5-year-old records that night. I did not sleep much, either. The article did need more work, and we probably would have waited another day anyway. The story was already two years old. The interviews on Tuesday were much less frightening and more informative and the complete account of the misplaced records was published in Wednesday’s pa per. Powell still says that, at the least, I have fractured University Regulations, but he says he won’t take any action against me. I’m glad. Overreaction was easy on the night of the “discovery.” I wasn’t sure what I had found, and neither were the adminis trators. So we became suspicious of each other. Suspecting my intentions, they became evasive and I thought they were hiding something. We fought fire with more fire, and we all almost got burned. I was looking for answers, not trouble. Reporters generally seek information, not scandals. News sources need to under stand that asking questions is a reporter’s job. Journalists don’t want sensational headlines when they’re not justified. But sometimes sources’ reactions to questions make a small story seem very important. Under stress, mole hills appear to be mountains. And reporters and sources are always ready to fight for mountains. This story was not a mountain. And it certainly didn’t merit the administrative panic it caused. 1 '/i/, i Ov A 1 \ ' v I World vSherftf ,> [ i ^ ] ' - - - C: ■ World fro A call for tolerance By JEFFREY L. NAUSS I would like, at this time, to shed a new light on some of the comments made by the departing Battalion editors. I would like to bring in the concept of values. Mr. Arnett, in his final editorial, made the statement that it is all right at TAMU to be an individual as long as it conforms. There is a certain amount of truth in that, but what about applying the concept on a larger scale? Is Texas A&M University al lowed to be unique (or individual) as long as it conforms with other universities in the area? Reader s Forum I can see where it might be good to allow women to be yell leaders or have a woman’s drill team for basketball games. There is value in allowiing the women to participate in such university activities. However, there is also value in not hav ing such commonplace representations of the school and in maintaining certain as pects of this university as they were 20 years ago. And, for many people on this campus, there is no contest as to which is the more valuable. Change is good, things cannot stagnate forever. One good example is that previ ous to 1963, there were no girls or non- regs on this campus at all; and the school was also dying. Now, Texas A&M is a university, not a college, 13th in the nation in National Merit Scholars, leading the state in total research, a world leader in agriculture and engineering and still producing large numbers of military officers. Opening the doors for A&M was a matter of survival, there was no.othqr satisfactory alternative. However, the changes proposed on sev eral occasions by many people, including the editors of the Battalion, are not dealing in the survival of the University. They are merely value judgements and I feel confi dent in saying that this campus holds the recent system to be more valuable than any other proposed system. Perhaps some day there will be half male-half female yell leaders and perhaps a second band repre senting A&M at various activities, and on that day this Former Student will be sad dened. But that day will come only when the student body is ready to change its systems of values, not before. In the meantime, A&M will be differ ent, unique, and conservative (if that is being without change) and people who wish to try to change the system will find that they will be swamped by protest. The protest will come not so much because the students are narrow-minded or even ig norant, but because they have a different set of values, one that they will jealously defend, probably as much as a tea-sip will defend Earl Campbell. I think all Aggies, both those leaving this school and those who will be back next year, need to keep this in mind and be more tolerant of both two percenters and short-haired C.T.’s who have different values. If someone wants to change the system or even leave it as it is, I am sure that person is doing so to improve this university in his eyes. I wish everyone good luck in their fight; but if they should lose their fight, the school has spoken and gotten what it wants, whatever that may be. Nauss is a biochemistry graduate student. “NOW I REMEMBER YOU. I’M NOT GOOD ON NAMES BUT I NEVER FORGET A DATA CARD!” Top of the News Campus Cadets to participate in review Final Review for seniors in the Texas A&M University Corpse! Cadets will be held on the Memorial Student Center drill field Mayj at 3:30 p.m. Approximately 1,900 cadets are expected to participate in the final tribute. Undergraduate commencement ceremonies wilI be May 5 and 6 in G. Rollie White Coliseum. Graduate student commencement is scheduled for 3 p.m. May 5 in Rudder Au ditorium. Student senate positions open Four positions are currently vacant in the student senate. These include both a senior and sophomore position in the College ofEdu cation, a graduate in the College of Engineering, and an at-large representative from the University Apartments. The deadline for ap plication is Tuesday, May 2, at 5 p.m. Applications may be obtained in Room 216 of the Student Government Office. Deadline for summer calendar The deadline for submitting dates and events for the Summer All-University Calendar is Friday. Forms are available in the Student Activities Office, Room 221 of the MSC. Dates for the fall calendar are also being accepted at the time. The deadline for entering events on the fall calendar is July 26. State Ship picketed as union debates ™ Labor and management leaders debated Wednesday what to do about four picketers whose protest of a “Soviet invasion” has pre vented the unloading of a Russian ship for the past three days. A spokesman lor the union officials said union leaders were trying to persuade dock gangs to cross the picket line. “It’s a strong effort being made, one spokesman said. We have the responsibility. But we just can’t get our people to go behind the picket lines. You can’t forces man. Meanwhile, shipping officials may be seeking court action to move the Soviet ship, Magnitogorsk, to New Orleans with cargo intact. The ship was to unload 20 West German buses at 7 p.m, Monday. The buses are part of a 300 bus-package purchased with 80 percent federal grants for use in 11 American cities. Last month the National Maritime Union (NMU) picketed a bus shipment aboard the Skulptor Golubkina protesting the use of Soviet ships for a federal project while American ships lay idle. However, NMU officials have since accepted a U.S. Department of Transportation commitment to study exclusive use of American shipping for such projects and said they had nothing to do with the new protest. nation Carter plans base cutbacks Congress has been notified of the administration’s intent todoseor “realign” 85 military bases, including a Texas Air Force base, thereby eliminating several thousand civilian jobs in order to save $336 mil lion annually for other defense programs. Although a formal an nouncement listing the affected bases was expected from the adminis tration Wednesday, defense officials tried to cushion anticipated op position by giving advance notice Tuesday to congressmen and senators whose areas will be involved. The list which was originally scheduled for action last fall, concentrates on training installations as an area that could best be cut back. Delayed until early this year, the list was ordered by President Carter held up again until the Panama Canal treaties cleared Congress. Defense Secretary Harold Brown will set up guidelines for the proposals in an effort to produce greater savings than were achieved in the base cutbacks proposed by the Ford administration. The new plan includes a primary list of candi dates for closure as well as alternative proposals for achieving some of the savings, which are to be channeled into “other priorities,” in the defense budget, officials said. World Vorster accepts Western plan Prime Minister John Vorster has announced his acceptance of a Western plan for independent black rule in Namibia in hopes of removing the threat of economic sanctions and end the year-long split with the United States and Britain. The acceptance, announced on Tuesday and apparently planned to coincide with the U.N. General Assembly debate on the Namibian question, meant Namibia could become independent by the end of the year if the plan is also ac cepted by the militant South West African Peoples Organization (SWAPO). Sam Nujoma, leader of SWAPO, told reporters, “it is his (Vorster’s) problem. We have made our position clear. African dele gates at the United Nations pointed out that there were still differ ences over some aspects of the Western plan as Vorster accepted it The delegates did indicate, however, these could probably be worked out in subsequent negotiations. The controversial issues include Vor ster’s insistence on retaining Walvis Bay, and the condition that the present police force will maintain law and order during the transition to independence. If accepted by Nujoma, the Western plan would spell the end of 58 years of South African rule in Namibia. Weather Partly cloudy and warm today and tonight. Mostly cloudy tomorrow with a chance of thundershowers. High today near 80, low tonight mid-60s. High tomorrow mid-80s. Winds from the southeast at 10-15 mph. Thirty percent chance of rain Friday afternoon. The Battalion 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 Regents. The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting enterprise oper ated by students as a university and community newspaper. Editorial policy is determined by the editor. 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 Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 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 ^ United Press International is entitled exclusi'^! use for reproduction of all news dispatches credit Rights of reproduction of all other matter herein ^ Second-Class postage paid at College Station, MEMBER Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Congress Editor Kitf Managing Editor Karen*' Sports Editor David® News Editors Carolyn Blosser, Debbie A City Editor Gan| Campus Editor Dz^ Assistant Campus Editor Andy^ Editorial Director Lee Roy j Photo Editor J. Wagntf * 1 ! Staff Writers Mark Patterson, Paige ^ Andrea Vails, Michelle Scudder, Setf Photographers Susan Webb. i Cartoonist Dotig^l Student Publications Board: Bob G. Rogers, foe Arredondo, Dr. Gary Halter, Dr. CharlesMcC 1 ^ Dr. Clinton A. Phillips, Rebel Rice. Director of Publications: Donald C. Johnson.