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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 19, 1979)
Slouch By Jim Earle “Z thought you probably knew about it. I’ve heard that all other instructors were letting their classes out a day early to get ready for the game so A&M can be properly repre sented. ” Opinion Congress "freezes' on fuel allocation In the pantheon of Washington bungling, the proposal to give more federal emergency fuel aid to the warm southern states than to cold Vermont and Maine ranks near the top of the list. It is downright foolish and our congressional delegation should be raising a fuss about it. What do we get from our delegation? A roar of silence. Vermont and Maine, the two states which have the low est per capita income in New England, and the two states which need the emergency fuel aid the most, get shortchanged. Yet southern states fare well under the Car ter plan. Oh yes, so does New Hampshire, which just hap pens to have the first presidential primary in the nation. Well, some Vermonters are going to freeze to death this winter, and the last thing Vermont needs is pussyfooting from its Congressional delegation. Sunday Rutland (Vt.) Herald and Times-Argus Look to British budget A mere half a trillion dollars is what the federal government will be spending in fiscal 1980. And from there it is onword and upward. In fiscal 1982, according to projections, the budget will pass the $600 billion level. A full-fledged trillion-dollar budget sometime in the mid- ’80s seems a live possibility. In the meantime it would be well to look at the plans of Britain’s new Conservative government. The plans are not to increase spending at all: rather to hold the line insofar as possible. Defense, police protection and social security will receive increases; but elsewhere there will be cuts. The idea is to beef up the private sector — to afford rewards and incentives for creativity; to devour less of the vital capital that, in government hands, benefits only selected portions of the population but in private hands, creates jobs and spreads prosperity throughout the whole economy. The British are on the right track. So far, we re on the wrong one. Which is one thing the 1980 elections ought assuredly to be about. The Dallas Morning News the small society Wco-Gc?'^'. IT WA6 KIP6 \NWo PlPf'VT 7b£ VAUJE= A I32LLAf2- - by Brickman N£>W IT^ LV&f^T'^PY- 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 seriods 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. 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 Staff Writers Meril Edwards, Nancy Andersen, Louie Arthur, Richard Oliver, Mark Patterson, Carolyn Blosser, Kurt Allen, Debbie Nelson, Rhonda Watters Photo Editor Lee Roy Leschper Jr. Photographers Lynn Blanco, Sam Stroder, Ken Herrera Cartoonist Doug Graham 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 operated by students as a university and community newspaper. Editorial policy is determined by the editor. Viewpoint The Battalion Texas A&M University Monday November 19, 1979 Analysis Rise in expectations of young peom is pushing France to modernization By JACQUELINE GRAPIN International Writers Service PARIS — Foreign visitors are often sur prised and sometimes disappointed to dis cover that France no longer resembles that quaint old country portrayed in their childhood picture books. For it has been dramatically modernized within the past generation, and signs of its transformation are visible everywhere. France. More than 90 percent of French households how have a refrigerator and 86 percent a television set. Numbers of families have two cars and many are buy ing vacation cottages. This rush to acquire merchandise has been made possible in part by the ac ceptance of the credit system, which the French had traditionally rejected on the grounds that debt was the equivalent of women written in southern France in 1946: “The younger woman, once married, is rapidly deformed by pregnancies and farm work. Little by little, she dresses in black, and only devotes a minimum amount of time to her clothes. She goes to the hair dresser less, and stops making up her face. Skyscrapers now heighten the horizon of Paris and other cities, where ancient houses have either been torn down or ren ovated into classy apartments. The traffic jam, that symptom of contemporary civili zation, blights urban areas despite the high price of gasoline. Rolling wheat fields, dotted only a few years ago by horse-drawn ploughs, are currently worked by sophisticated agricul tural equipment. A common complaint of fishermen is that streams are being pol luted by the detergents coming from wash ing machines in peasant homes that, until recently, lacked indoor toilets. The change is apparent as well in the consumer revolution that has overtaken It is also due, despite inflation, to a spectacular hike in incomes. The lowest hourly wage has tripled over the past 30 years, and it has doubled in the last two decades. Many French, including those old enough to remember, have probably for gotten that France at the end of World War II might have been considered “un derdeveloped ’ in several respects. It was largely an agricultural nation, whose farmers lived in much the same way as they had centuries earlier. Professor Jean Fourastie, who has been unearthing documents on French rural life, recently published a description of two peasant “The woman of 50 has never gone to a hairdresser. She rarely washes her hair, teeling there is no need. She does her laundry bent over a tub that is too small, and which she must refill frequently. She boils the linen on the hearth, in a caul dron, just as she cooks the feed for the animals.” Not only have women of that sort disap peared, but so has a large proportion of the rural population. In 1946, they repre sented one-third of France. Today, only 10 percent of the French are farmers. One of the key changes that has taken place here in this process has been a soar ing rise in expectations, especially among young people. Years ago, it was considered normal for a newly-married couple to move in with their parents while they sei apartment. Young couples now own place immediately, andtl row heavily to buy one. Their ability to buy underlij change that has occurred here, more wives have jobs, so couples can blend two salaries respectable incomes. The price of all this, it is an intensified pace of woi creased tension among the Fn three-hour lunch, completewitli| brandy, has become obsol psychiatrist has ceased to be a The standard of living here reached that of the United Sta nearly there. And that may hoi ing consequences for the future.! For when the energy crisisl world more devastatingly, may, the French and the Ai decline into economic disrupfSL nostalgically bemoaning tlie* fluence that France, at least,™ Duane All enthusiast ginning to attain. Jacqueline Grapin writesom issues for lx; Monde, the Parisi |bass. The other Sterban d: Os on The Oal l another si What tl j Rollie Wli All year | they dese And the ' band was outside rc From c 1 singing th The me : called bac They d changing, — : Abilene. Unfort . showed. Fortun The cr good-lool ; female to The gr Sterba t On.” But Dick West Job discrimination of short peop le ads to ‘equal heights amendmt the grou Anothi deserves cartwhee deserves The lo was intre By DICK WEST United Press International WASHINGTON — The latest unem ployment statistics compiled by the Labor Department provide no data on the heights of the jobless. If such figures were available, they pre sumably would show that the majority of the people out of work are short, both of money and in stature. According to a survey published in the November Esquire, tall people have an easier time getting hired and also tend to be paid more than short people. Furthermore, that situation prevails in jobs where there is no apparent advantage to being tall, such as having to reach things on the top shelf. According to one study cited by the magazine, elevation in the job market is worth about $500 an inch per year. That heightism, along with sexism, ra cism and ageism, exists as a form of em ployment discrimination has long been suspected. Until now, however, the gov ernment has pretty much stayed out of it. It remains to be seen whether the Es quire article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, will spur demands for federal remedial action. Enactment of an Equal Heights Amendment does not appear to be in the cards at this time. Nor does a mandatory quota system requiring that a certain per centage of any given work force be com posed of the stubby, the stumpy, the dumpy and the squat. I would say the approach most likely to be adopted will consist of assistance pro grams intended to help short people bet ter their lot in life and compete more fa vorably with their taller co-workers. One program, for example, might provide low interest, government guaran teed loans to finance the purchase of elevator shoes. As Esquire points out, some of the short people who have overcome the stigma and made it big give an appearance taller than they are. Among the celebrities said to than you might picture them ai: Fonda, Paul Newman, Micl Ion Brando, Katherine Hepburn, Jackson, Mae West and JohnnyC* And perhaps Miss Fonda, whoii for taking up good causes, could If suaded to spearhead a national Short People crusade. In any event, discrimination persons built close to the ground* stopped. The short peoples movement is an idea whose best Deltt Collegia: Fouanm 779-84 c SALI Letters To foil thieves, stores should check I.D. of used book sellers — student Whet stanch 24 Editor: On Wednesday, Nov. 7, I read Mary Ann McStravick’s letter to the editor. Her books were stolen in Sbisa and she found them a few days later at University Bookstore. She bought them back for $39 — when she had paid $44 for them eight weeks earlier. Two years ago the same thing happened to me. While eating in Sbisa, I left my book on the table by the entrance. When I came back it was gone and I ended up buying it back the next morning at Univer sity Bookstore. I asked the manager why she didn’t take some identification from the seller like the other Northgate bookstores do, because that way if the book is stolen it can be traced. She said it gave her store a bad reputation to be so strict. When I read Mary Ann’s letter, it made me sad to see that this still goes on at A&M. What I can’t understand is why this store took advantage of this poor girl by selling her her own books back for a profit. They knew they were her books because her name was in one of them. In Mary Ann’s letter she said, “Please, let’s try and find some way of stopping this ring of book thieves.” I am writing this letter to do just that. If University Bookstore would change its policy it would make it harder on the thieves since they would have to find some other place farther away to sell their hot books. I also want to warn all those Aggies who leave their books lying around to be more careful. — Jim McCarthy, ’81 OCA to discuss bikes Editor: Once again concerning the bicycle is sue. Next week a crucial bill is to be voted on in Senate on the matter of restricting bicycles from parts of Campus. Who is this most likely to affect? The off-campus student. And how will our Off-campus Senators vote on this issue? Who knows? How can they represent us on this issue if they have no idea what our opinion is? If you’re mad as hell about bicycles — pro or con — I encourage you to show up at the next general meeting of Off-Campus Aggies, Monday night, (tonight) alt room 108 Harrington. We’re goingH special time for the discussion oftte Let’s settle this once and forall. Tte issue that we should have a vote o', time to show our Senators we choice and do give a damn about tb we re represented. — Kenzy Hallmaii Chairman University Relations Thotz By Doug Grab Agricul
