Viewpoint
The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Friday
Novemrer 21, 1980
Slouch
By Jim Earle
^ ^ .» nil / f y
‘I’ve got a dozen potatoes buried under it that ought to be done next week.
Worker shortage could hurt
bonfire, does hurt Corps
The bonfire doesn’t build itself.
Sometimes my talent for profound state
ments amazes even me.
But this isn’t meant to be especially pro
found; it’s a reminder.
It’s a reminder that although we re all going
to enjoy the bonfire, usually it’s only a few who
share the brunt of building the stack. This year
is no exception: Members of the Corps of
Cadets are again taking a disproportionate
share of the work.
The “push” is when most of the stack is built
— to no one’s surprise, it also requires the most
effort. And, as if to confirm Murphey’s Law, it
also comes at the time when end-of-semester,
praying-for-Christmas, turn-in-project, take-
test blues hit everyone.
Everyone is too busy studying or preparing
for Thanksgiving; it’s the time of year when few
people worry about the bonfire. Few people —
except the redpots and cadets.
Ken Cross, Corps commander, worries about
the grades of his organization’s members. Part
of his job is providing an atmosphere conducive
to satisfactory scholastic progress.
From the other side. Cross is continually
under pressure from the redpots — bonfire
organizers — who ask the Corps to work more
and more shifts on the stack.
Cross and the Corps face a dilemma: Without
their help, the bonfire might not get built. But
Sidebars
By Dillard Stone
if they help too much, they make a mockery of
their claims of a “scholastic environment.’’
“The redpots, justifiably, are saying they
have a job to do, ” Cross said. “They need help,
and they’re not getting it from the civilians. I
know that I can’t break on scholastic provisions
we made for bonfire. If I did ease up on the
policies, chaos would result. Someone’s got to
do it, but I don’t want to see a bonfire built if it
means the Corps flunking out. ”
Nor can the redpots can’t do all the work
themselves. For one thing, there are too few of
them — after all, they’re supposed to be the
chiefs, not the Indians. And they’ve got to
study, too. More than once a redpot has flunked
out because of over-dedication to the project.
One is still remembered for posting a grade
point ratio of 0.0000 after one fall semester.
Corps Commandant Col. James R. Woodall
asked Residence Hall Asssociation and Off-
Campus Aggie representatives what the)'
do to provide more civilian labor on the
Those organizations are stymied —thei
figure out how to make people want to
and work.
They’ve tried flyers, meetings andm
with kegs of beer going to the dorm
most people working. People in some
even have run around early on weekend
ings, waking up people to go cut.
But the enthusiasm isn’t there,
susiasm is vital; without it, not enough^!
show up. And only in the Corps canithe
datory for someone to work on the bonf
The University administration isn’tlil
the problem. A faculty advisory com
under Dr. John Koldus, vice president^
dent services, is in the initial stages ofn
mending the bonfire height be reduced
the near-80 feet to which it now rises,
That will surely cause a howl. But
measure could also go far in helpingtoal
the bonfire-vs.-grades problem theCa
Cadets finds itself in every fall semestei
Unless more civilians contribute totk
the bonfire might go from being a mostly
project to a mostly nothing project-
should be a project for all Aggies.
As Cross said: “The bonfire’s importa
it’s not a Corps bonfire. It’s not anon-rt;
fire. It’s an Aggie bonfire.”
The Figl
pendicul
day’s ha
V
Small college reaps
benefits of drilling for gas
By PATRICIA McCORMACK
United Press International
“It’s manna from heaven,” said Patti McGill
Peterson, 37, new president of Wells College
on the shores of Lake Cayuga in Aurora, N.Y.
She was referring to a campus gas well that
started coming in Monday — providing Wells a
unique kind of relief from one of higher educa
tion’s biggest pains: budget-rocking fuel bills.
The school’s heating bill is $250,000 a year.
“A gas well doesn’t really ‘come in’, not in the
sense an oil well does,” Peterson said.
“It is fracted — that is, the ground around it
is fractured and sand and water are forced down
and then the pressure of the gas pushes all that
out and gas comes with that stuff. But first, you
must have proof gas is there.”
“Having its own on-campus isn’t the only
thing different about the women’s liberal arts
school founded in 1868 by Henry Wells, who
made his fortune through his Wells Fargo
stagecoach lines and American Express Com
pany. The Wells Fargo mark lives on in some of
the school’s traditions.
“I rode to my inauguration in a Wells Fargo
coach,” Peterson said. “Our seniors ride to
commencement in a Wells Fargo coach, too.”
Peterson, who was born and raised in John
stown and Bedford, Pa., is ecstatic over the
well.
“I’ve been putting on my hard hat, heavy
sweater, boots and jeans and going out to that
drilling site for days now,” she said.
“I’ve peered where the bit goes down and
watched when it came out, spattering red clay
and sand over me. Last Sunday I was told ‘it
doesn’t have the vapor shimmer yet’ and I
thought maybe we missed it.
“Then at 10:30 p.m. the crew put a lighted
paper over the hole flames went up 10 feet.
That was proof. ”
Some $100,000 of the school’s money was
riding on a gamble Peterson took a month after
inauguration.
She ordered drilling. A feasibility study re
commending it had been done by her predeces
sor— Frances “Sissy” Farenthold, of Houston,
who was president of Wells for three years and
twice an unsuccessful candidate for governor of
Texas.
With the “fracting, ” Wells becomes the third
education institution in the Pennsylvania-New
York-Ohio lake regions to benefit recently from
its geological treasure.
Lake Erie College in Painsville, Ohio, has a
producing natural gas well.
At Wells, the story goes, Farenthold made
energy bills a top priority.
And her mind started thinking “drilling” — a
la Texas style — when she saw Lake Erie’s well
while there to accept an honorary degree.
Peterson said:
“Sissy took one look at that well and said, ‘I’m
going to do that, too . ”
In Erie, Pa., nuns at Mount Saint Benedict
got the gas bug in 1979. They ordered drilling
that commenced April 1. After the bit had
chawed down to the 2,700 feet level in a
month’s time, the well came in.
“The expectation is that we’ll get 75 to 85
percent of our heating needs from the well,”
said Sister Mary Grace, secretary for the reli
gious community of 140, most teachers.
A feasibility study of the order’s 120-acre
base shows three more wells could be drilled,
with likelihood of success.
What the sisters would do: use any additional
gas for cogeneration — that is, use it to generate
electricity, providing surcease from electric
bills.
Peterson has the same idea.
“Our study shows it would be smart to drill
for a second well,” she said. “If we do and it
comes in we will use that to co-generate elec
tricity, saving more on utility bills.”
Peterson talked of other survival tactics
needed by small, private liberal arts colleges —
be they for women, men or a mixed student
group.
Numerous studies say innovation — and the
gas well is one idea — is necessary if small
schools are to remain viable through the 1980s,
a period of decline in pool of college-age per-
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Conserva tives gloa ting
Peterson, a graduate of Penn State Universi
ty and University of Wisconsin, Madison, said:
“How we deal with inflation is very much a
part of our survival plan.
“If we in the private sector can’t deal with
inflation, we run the danger of pricing ourselves
out of business. ”
A year at Wells costs $7,800 — more than at a
state university but less than at the highest-
priced colleges, upwards of $10,000 a year.
Why are women’s colleges needed, anyway?
“If you saw the purposefulness of these
young women, you would know,” Peterson
said.
She said graduates of women’s colleges are
more than twice as likely to be listed in “Who’s
Who’’ than are female graduates of coed
schools.
By ARNOLD SAWISLAK
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Liberals, and to some
that erroneously includes everyone whose
words regularly appear in print, have been get
ting an earful of derision from conservatives
since Tuesday twice past.
However, sauce for the goose, etc., and after
the razzing folks of the right have had to take in
previous Novembers, it seems only fair that
they get to do some strutting after their big and
unexpected 1980 victory.
Actually, the liberals may find this loss and
the minority status they will have to assume in
Washington come January good if bitter medi-
is no stranger than the fact that the moderate
Democrat Carter adopted the same restrictive
monetary formula for fighting inflation as mod
erate Republican Gerald Ford. (Nor that he got
the same result: inflation AND unemploy
ment.)
By NA1
Balti
The newly :
igineering si
igton Educa
Univen
we a new n:
y, Nov. 22.
The buildin
IP' Thompsc
Parren Electi
I We are pre
Elephant Walk Mod ^
It’s your turn
Editor:
“Before the Thanksgiving Day :
each year, the seniors gather in
ity.
Mr. Thomj
Omental in
flagpole on Military Walk and wanderai! htribution pr
Someone said recently American political li
berals haven’t had a new idea since the Peace
Corps. That seemed to be the case with Sen.
Edward Kennedy’s ill-fated challenge of Presi
dent Carter, which left behind a lot more clever
bumper stickers than original suggestions for
dealing with national or international prob
lems.
The conservatives haven’t done much in the
way of innovation, either, but after all, that isn’t
supposed to be their role.
The fact that they have latched on to an old
liberal Democratic idea for restoring the eco
nomy — John Kennedy’s stimulative tax cut —
In any case, the liberals certainly did not
offer the nation anything it wanted during the
1980 campaign. After all, if Kennedy couldn’t
sell Democrats on wage and price controls, how
could he expect to win over the country at
large? And if Carter savaged Ford in 1976 for
producing high prices and scarce jobs, how
could he expect to be re-elected on an even
worse record in the same areas in 1980?
Now both moderate and liberal Democrats
are going to have the time and should have the
motivation to look for some better ways.
about the campus like old elephants ak
die. This symbolizes the fact that the»
will graduate the following spring and
no further use to the Twelfth Man.”
Monday, November 24, at 12 a
Elephant Walk will begin for the Classd
We’d like to encourage all you Seniors(1
come on out and meet in front of the Ac*
Building here we will begin our aimless
dering around campus. Watch outsergel
Jess Mason Class of ’81, Pres
Mark Outlaw Head Yell Leadt
Kyle Gish Senior Red Ft
Patti Heaton Class of ’81, Treat
Nancy Kelly Class of ’81, Sees
supports t
mversity boi
iall y- even
Rice s
Thompson 1
exa s A&M in
Warped
By Scott McCullar
The Battalion
istribution at
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l ! S P S 045 360
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Southwest Journalism Congres
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