Viewpoint
The Battalion Wednesday
Texas A&M University February 7, 1979
Reflections
Soggy promises
Kerchunk, thud.
Sound familiar? If you’ve been operating any kind of vehicle around
campus recently, you’d know the noise immediately.
It’s the noise that makes you wince when you realize that your “Midas
guarantees it” muffler has hit rock bottom again and the company might
have a real test for its slogan.
Just trying to manuever around the chug holes is a major task here. The
weather has been in cahoots with the chug holes, widening their claim to
the roadway.
More depressing is that the parking outlook doesn’t look much better
than the muddy holes.
New construction on campus has eaten more than 500 student, faculty
and staff places. It’s cars on top of cars. For staff or faculty, if they’ve got a
reserved space, they may find “illegals” daring them to have the car towed
away.
More than one car has been blocked in a space by an irate reserved space
holder behind the Battalion’s offices.
Three years ago, the construction was different but the parking
headaches were the same. Once a happy administrator detailed future
parking solutions — a monorail, multi-tiered parking, moveable sidewalks.
No express sidewalk sweeps students from Zachry Engineering Center
to G. Rollie White — yet.
However, campus administrators say that Bethleham Steel will be visit
ing the campus soon to survey for a possible two-story parking area, and the
campus-based Texas Transportation Institute may be consulted for a study.
With Legett Hall back in operation next fall as a women’s dorm, and a
new 500-bed women’s dorm in the same area, the parking problem can only
get worse.
Administrators, we need some solutions.
Help. Club.
Goodbye to yet
another patronage plume
By CHERYL ARVIDSON
United Press International
WASHINGTON — One of the Senate’s
prime patronage plums is turning sour in
the Judiciary Committee — the result of
Sen. Edward Kennedy’s decision to end
the power of a single senator to blackball a
federal judge nominee from his state.
The Massachussetts Democrat is the
new chairman of the Judiciary Committee,
and abolishing a senator’s absolute veto of
judicial nominees was one of his first acts.
For those who wondered what Kennedy,
a liberal, might do when he stepped into a
job vacated by conservative Sen. James
Eastland, D-Miss., the message was swift
and clear:
Senators had better have a good reason if
they decide to fight a judicial nominee in
their state, and that reason had better go
beyond politics.
The system Kennedy scuttled is known
as the “blue slip” — named after a blue slip
of paper bearing a judicial nominee’s name
that is distributed by the committee chair
man to home state senators for their com
ments.
Failure to return a blue slip has been
tantamount to killing a nomination. It’s
been a quiet death, with the nominee’s
name frequently never being mentioned
again. Often, nominations were with
drawn. Rarely was it stated on the record
that a nominee had been “blue slipped.”
That will change under the Kennedy
rule. He plans to wait a “reasonable period
of time” for return of the blue slip. But if it
doesn’t come back, he will let the Judiciary
Committee know. Members will then dis
cuss the senator’s objection to the nominee
and vote — in public — on whether to
honor the blue slip or proceed to confirma
tion hearings.
Sen. Strom Thumond, R-N.C., the
committee’s ranking GOP member, ac
cused Kennedy of “usurping the right of a
senator.” Sen. Paul Laxalt, R-Nev., said it
would “substitute committee judgment for
a senator’s judgment. ”
Some will argue that the decision will
have little impact — because the commit-
C ommentary
tee may support the senator trying to tor
pedo a nomination, and because the Justice
Department rarely sends up a nomination
without securing approval — and often the
name itself —— from the senators involved.
The “blue slip” has been used frequently
by senators as a bargaining chip to win
things other than acceptable judges.
Threats to hold up or kill judicial nomina
tions by use of the blue slip frequently have
been a “quid pro quo” leverage against a
president, particularly when a state’s
senators are of the opposing party.
That simply won’t work any more under
Kennedy’s plan. Meritless opposition to a
judge nominee will be seen for what it is:
pure politics.
Also, a senator who refuses to abandon
politics for merit in selecting judges, or is
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ffle “word from the top” — the Texas A&M
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insensitive to the need to increase women
and blacks on the federal bench, may find
himself out of luck.
Take the case of Sen. Harry Byrd, D-Va.,
who used a merit commission to secure
nominees for four federal judicial vacancies
in Virginia and has offered the names of 10
white males for the jobs.
Although Byrd used a commission, there
is a question of whether Byrd asked the
panel members to look women or blacks,
and whether the commission made any ef
fort to find qualified women and blacks.
Under the old system, if the president
decided to reject the Byrd nominees and
Letters to the Editor
On friends
Editor:
I would like to submit the following
quote by Winston Churchill to my Iranian
friends, whose countrymen are now loudly
yelling “Yankee go home.”
“There are no people in the world who
are so slow to develop hostile feelings
against a foreign country as the Americans
and there are no people who, once es
tranged, are more difficult to win back.”
—Charles E. Pehl
graduate research assistant
Forest Science lab
Rack of the bus
Editor:
I can remember when certain phrases,
like “have no place in” or “there are some
places where they absolutely do not be
long” was used in reference to black Ameri
cans. Those phrases were popular when I
was a small child and I had not heard them
in years (thank goodness).
Both of these phrases appeared in
Thursday’s (Feb. 1) Battalion in a letter by
Mr. Williams regarding the role ofwomen.
This was a problem in another era. A man
named Paul considered the dilemma and
penned the words “there is neither bond
nor free, there is neither male nor female:
for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” —Gala
tians 3:28.
Freedom, males, females and Christ are
still with us today. Alas, so is prejudice.
—Ellen King, ’79
‘Waggie’ phobias
Editor:
Mr. Williams’ letter of Feb. 1 veritably
trembled on the page with gynephobia: it
made me wonder if he suffers from recur
rent nightmares in which has has to tell a
Corps father and grandfather that he did
not make the Cavalry, Aggie Band, or Ross
Volunteers because a “Waggie” beat him
out of a position.
His extremely narrow perspective of
people betrays his need for the security of a
severely limited reality, wherein every
person, or any individuals which he can
define to himself as a set, is pigeonholed
into a very limited role.
The classic “no girls allowed” clubhouse
is a fairly common stage in the ontogeny of
most male children in our society, espe
cially during the age when the average
height of girls exceeds that of boys. Nor
mally, however, as girls grow into women,
boys grow into men, and they lose their
childhood fears as experience broadens
their reality.
It is only people who are uncertain of
their sexuality who need to strictly define
masculinity or femininity and then strive
consciously to fit the definition. Men and
women who are strong enough to be who
they want to be don’t need society (or Mr.
Williams) to hand them a script and a cos
tume.
submit the names of a woman and a black
for two of those vacancies, Byrd could have
killed those nominations with the blue slip.
Under the new system, Byrd would have
to state his reasons for opposing the female
and black nominees, and the committee
would vote on whether those reasons were
sufficient.
Reforming a system rich in politics and
little else is not an overnight job. Nor can
the results be absolutely guaranteed.
But one thing is clear: Merit selection of
judges can’t work when a senator can stop a
nomination cold. With the threat of a
blackball by a single senator removed,
merit selection now has a chance.
, Iranians
“Waggies,” like all other people, should
strive to grow into whoever they wish to be.
A university is supposed to provide an ideal
atmosphere for such growth for all of its
students.
—G.R. Dellmeier, graduate student
Third in the line
Editor:
The tragedy of disassociation has once
again permeated the minds and souls of the
rank and file of Texas A&M.
Let it not be said that any student has
ever decidedly put up with the tyranny of
one who has control and power far greater
than the average learner. Though we be in
the developing stage, there is not one pupil
— wise or not — who is greater, by any
means, than any other fellow classmate or
student.
When Emory Bellard resigned I grieved
with the insecurity of a child, knowing not
the fate of our noble warriors of the gridi
ron.
When Chancellor Williams resigned I
mourned sincere emotions of despair, feel
ing a great loss of wisdom in the parting of
this scholar.
For a long time the worries of imperfec
tion drilled me nightly. I slept not for the
longing of stability, yet no relief in sight.
The leaders we had chosen worked not with
us, they worked against us. Comforting us
but little in our sorrow, aiding them not
who they had been appointed to guide.
When Jeff Hancock quit I sighed a long
sigh of relief, and for the firt time in many
months I slept.
In the words of a relevant Russian
proverb:
“A man only lives until he dies.”
—George R. Gagnon, ’80
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Top of the News
CAMPUS
Shanklin OK’d as head leader
Ben Shanklin has been named the new head yell leader for Texas
A&M University. Dr. John Koldus, vice president for student serv
ices, approved him Tuesday to replace Jeff Hancock, who resignedlast
week. Shanklin, a senior in engineering technology, was recom
mended by the Yell Leader Committee late Monday. He saidhewill
accept the job, noting there isn’t much to do since new yell leaders will
be elected in early April. Hancock gave no reasons for his resignation;
he terminated his Air Force ROTC contract and dropped out of the
Corps of Cadets, he said, for his own and Texas A&M’s best interests.
He plans to graduate in management in August 1979.
Student recovering from mishap
Robert Hancock, 18, a freshman finance major from Jasper, rested
Tuesday in St. Joseph’s Hospital after an operation Monday for a
fractured right ankle. Hancock and another Texas A&M Universit)
student, Mark McAllister, 20, of Houston were struck by a car Sunday
morning while crossing University Drive. McAllister was released
from St. Joseph’s Sunday.
STATE
Davis trial witness cousin guilty
Truck driver John W. McCrory was convicted Monday in Wichita
Falls of the rape and murder of 17-year-old Jeana Melissa Walkerfrom
Lewiston. The jury returned a verdict at 9:15 a.m., and found
McCrory guilty of strangling and raping the high school student after
her car stalled on a Denton County rural road. The state is seekingthe
death penalty, but the jury adjourned without sentencing after three
hours of deliberations. McCrory is a cousin of the star prosecution
witness in the T. Cullen Davis trial, David McCrory.
Noi
Workers honor non-local pickeU
Almost all of the workers at Texaco Inc. ’s largest refinery at Port
Arthur continued to refuse to cross a wildcat picket line despite union
orders to do so. Most of the 4,200 workers said they were unhappy wilt
the work stoppage, but still honored pickets from a Westville, N.J.,
Texaco refinery. The New Jersey local of the Oil, Chemical, and
Atomic Workers Union sent the pickets because they charge Texaco
with trying to break their union. Tension was reported high at the
refinery gates between the Texans and the 30 or so pickets from
OCAW local 8-638. No serious incidents were reported, however
Port Arthur local 423 officals said that although the picket line is legal,
it is not legal for its workers to refuse to cross the line to work.
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Would-be assassin s escape flops
\ office
Attempted assassin Sara Jane Moore, went over the wall to limited
freedom with another inmate, and headed for Washington, D.C. But
the two women were picked up in a town near Alderson, W. Va.,afew
hours later. Moore, 48, tried to assassinate Gerald Ford Sept. 22,
1975, in San Francisco. She was sentenced to life, but she and Marlene
Martino, 36, jumped the Alderson Federal Reformatory fence in
near-zero temperatures. They hitchhiked to White Sulpher Springs
near the state border where they were captured without resistance
Neither woman would say why she was headed for Washington.
NATION
Carter, Portillo to talk in Mexico
President Carter and his Mexican counterpart Jose Lopez Portillo
will hold three rounds of talks during Carter’s three-day visit to Mexico
next week. Carter and Lopez Portillo are expected to touch on many
subjects during the seven hours of talks.
Vice President to visit Sweden
Vice President Walter Mondale will visit Sweden in a two-day
official trip in April, the Swedish government announced Tuesday
from Stockholm. Prime Minister Ola Ullsten met with Mondale in
Washington in January.
WORLD
Floods devastate central Brazil
Floods have killed 200 persons in central Brazil, left another 200,00(1
homeless and virtually cut off ground transportation between northern
and southern Brazil, government officials said Tuesday. Officials esti
mated more than a month of rain has caused damage in four central
states that will easily surpass $500 million. Federal officials Monday
declared a state of emergency in three states whose combined areais
that of Florida and Maryland. That will clear the way for millions of
dollars in aid grants. Metereologists in the capital, Brazilia, said a cole
front should pass over the stricken areas by Wednesday, halting the
rain. Government experts said Monday the floods were facilitated by
the destruction of large forests by timber companies that havealloweil
rain-loosened soil to fill up river beds. Rivers throughout central Brazil
are spilling over their banks, sweeping away bridges, roads, telephone
lines, houses and farms.
WEATHER
Cloudy to partly cloudy clearing this afternoon with no rain
sighted in the forecast. High today 60, low tonight in the low
30s. Winds will be north westerly at 10-15 mph.
The Battalion
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