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The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Tuesday
April 21, 1981
Ast
By TIM
Battalii
Easy A’s in a
ing course com
Slouch
By Jim Earle
“I had been giving thought to willing my brain to an organ
bank, but I can see now that's out of the question. ”
By JOHN H. McELROY
The college student of today is often
compared to the “involved,” “active”
generation of the ’60s and found wanting.
But things were simpler in the ’60s. There
was one big issue then: Vietnam. Now the
problem is too many big issues, each of
them urgent, most of them unglamorous,
all of them overlapping, and some of them
needing a technical knowledge to under
stand. The inventory of big issues today is
so extensive that sometimes the world
seems constituted of nothing but intransi
gent problems of drug addiction, human
rights, inflation, crime, shortages, discrimi
nation, poverty, environmental integrity,
the breakdown of international diplomacy,
and a swarm of other major crises.
The good chance exists that what appears
to be indifference among today’s generation
of students may be simply the overload on
their sympathies, at being asked to care
about too many things all at once. The pat
tern appears to be frustration, followed by
avoidance of the causes of the frustration,
followed in many instances by a degree of
guilt. Indifference is cultivated by many
persons to deal with their feeling of guilt, or
at least in appearance of indifference is cul
tivated.
Game playing and self-destructive be
havior of various kinds offer escape for
others who do not want to face up to their
sense of failing to address issues. A few
become cynics. Fewer still become right
eous activists completely devoted to one
cause. But the moral majority of college
students, who today feel the same call to
duty that idealistic young men and women
in other generations have felt, know that
the condition of their world is not likely to
be bettered by any one special interest
group, however zealously served or right it
may be.
Unless one wants to argue that today’s
college generation is morally and politically
insensitive in comparison to those that pre
ceded them, this generation’s refrain
“There’s nothing one person can do that
would help” probably should be read, “I
wish I knew what I could do to help. ”
But is there any validity to the proposi
tion that it is up to each generation to solve
the problems of the world that previous
generations left unsolved?
Probably older generations invented the
idea that their younger successors were
supposed to solve the problems which the
older generation left unsolved, as a way of
avoiding the fact that each generation while
solving some problems creates new ones,
and thus does not progress in any absolute
For the past 300 years western nations
have been incerasingly obsessed with the
idea that they were making progress in an
absolute sense. Yet one sees at a glance
today how erroneous that idea is and how
often advances inscience and technology
contribute to the history of human misery
and disorder. Nor can we, in today’s world
of volcanic social stresses that are being
added to steadily by burgeoning world
population, any longer consider the con
tinuation of death-control, through better
medical practices, in the best interst of
mankind, unless accompanied by radical
world-wide birth-control. Yet no one fore
sees how to institute such control of human
birth without abrogating historically deep
rooted human rights.
The responsibility of new generations to
solve old problems is a fallacy: the true
responsibility in each generation is to avoid
creating new disorders and maladies. A
great increase in cold, courageous, calculat
ing, unsentimental reasoning and self-
interest is needed today if human culture is
to survive. And just as essential as this in
crease of enlightened self-interest must be
an accompanying decrease in respect for
analysis that has no better purpose than
assignment of blame for today’s problems.
(History as an exercise in fault-finding is no
longer useful.)
But what is enlightened self-interest? It
is surely not selfishness or indifference.
Rather it is knowing that to do what is right
for the sake of the right is loving thy neigh
bor. It is also knowing that we can only have
peace by abandoning the mentality of war,
which conceives of other human beings as
enemies and exploiters. Finally, the en
lightened self-interest that is needed is a
certain largeness of spirit, the largeness of
knowing one’s place in a universal moral
order.
What is required of today’s college stu
dent is a harder program than the demon
strations for peace of the ’60s, which were
sometimes little more than mass exercises
in hate.
For a whole generation to avoid creating
new problems would be truly “radical” be
havior. It would be revolutionary if a whole
generation upheld right for the sake of
right, abandoned the mentality of “them”
versus “us,” and urged governments to
think of universally valid moral laws as the
primary motive for economic, social, and
political decisions.
John H. McElroy is a professor of English at
the University of Arizona. He has per
formed research and published in the Helds
of American literature and American cultu
ral history.
Warped
Pigs and politics and hit lists
: this part of the
■] Dr. John
Uteaches Physic
jomy), is coir
Frustration mistaken
for indifference
By ARNOLD SAWISLAK
United Press International
WASHINGTON —- It was George
Orwell who explained one of the home
truths of politics in the not-so-innocent
fable “Animal Farm.”
“All animals are equal,” one of the ruling
pigs tells the other barnyard residents
when they question some new porcine pri
vilege. “But some animals are more equal
than others.”
It took John T. “Terry” Dolan of the
National Conservative Political Action
Committee to provide the most recent ap
plication of that axiom to contemporary
politics.
Dolan announced that NCPAC was laun
ching a $1 million television, radio and
print attack on four Democratic members of
Congress because they were against Presi
dent Reagan’s economic proposals. He was
then asked why NCPAC did not also go
after three Republican senators who re
cently provided the votes to defeat the
president’s program in the Senate Budget
Committee.
Dolan shrugged off the votes of GOP
Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa, William
Armstrong of Colorado and Steve Symms of
Idaho against the committee’s budget re
solution — a virtual carbon copy of the
Reagan request.
The three senators, Dolan said, were
upset about the projected deficits in the
Reagan plan. They voted against the resolu
tion because they wanted more cuts, not to
restore the wasteful programs of the liberal
Democratic past.
Dolan, in fact, attacked the Reagan
budget himself during his news conference,
saying it left the country with huge deficits.
But, he said, it was “best hope” for restor
ing the U.S. economy and NCPAC’s main
goal was to support it.
At the same time, Dolan downgraded
the budget and tax cutting proposals of
Democratic Rep. James Jones of Oklaho
ma, chairman of the House Budget Com
mittee. The Jones plan would yield more
savings and smaller deficits than Reagan’s
plan, but Dolan said it was not to be taken
seriously.
“Real conservatives are laughing at
Jones,” he said. Dolan said Jones’ real pur
pose was to salvage Great Society social
programs that the conservatives in the
administration are out to cut back or eli-
of Texas, Ways and Means Corom
Chairman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois
Sen. Paul Sarbanes of Maryland. Tb
the people, Dolan told a news conf«f(
who typify the kind of profligate spi
who have gotten the country intoitsci
economic mess.
(In point of fact, it is hard to
ideological common denominator
four Democrats. Sarbanes got a lib
ing of 83 from Americans for Deraoc
he class inter
md even ent
lents who exp
minate.
Jones is one of NCPAC’s targets, along
with House Democratic Leader Jim Wright
Action, but Rostenkowski was only5
the 1980 liberal voting scale and Jones
Wright scored only 39.)
Some reporters thought there wasr nuist
to the new NCPAC campaign thanmeiP' 1
eye. Dolan was asked if the campaign
started against four of the strongest
crats in Congress as much to scare
cure rank and file members of the
and Senate as to defeat the stated targ^
Dolan would not concede that
prime consideration, but agreed it coni
a spin off benefit of the program. Her#
led that Sen. Everett Dirksen oflll
once said, “When I feel the heat, Iseel
light.” And Dolan very pointedlyM^,. , . ,
shoe undropped, saying NCPAC inteni
to expand the list as soon as it could,
“They d
stand the'
educated
purpose
things. Tl
to get the,
out. ”
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It s your turn
Drug paraphernalia bill is needed
Y0UD(
WH
EA
Editor:
This week the Texas Senate will put
under its consideration a bill which was
passed by the House last week. This parti
cular bill is part of H. Ross Perot’s anti
shop owner and paraphernalia merchant
would be violated.
crime package. Perot is a Dallas computer
magnate and chairman of the Texa(n)s War
on Drugs. The bill under consideration
would make it illegal to sell, possess or de
liver drug paraphernalia. As a result of the
anti-paraphernalia bill, there has been an
outcry of protest from a variety of groups
including head shop owners and the Amer
ican Civil Liberties Union. The objections
given to the proposal that would outlaw
drug paraphernalia have been based on the
claim that if drug paraphernalia were made
illegal, the objects could still be bought in
any supermarket or department store. In
addition, the opponents of the bill claim
that the constitutional rights of the head
However, there is no question as to what
constitutes drug paraphernalia. The bill is
quite long, but it spells out in detail the
various types of drug paraphernalia includ
ing water pipes, power hitters, bongs, blen
ders, scales, testing kits, hypodermic
syringes and cocaine spoons. A violation of
the law would occur when the buyer or
seller of drug paraphernalia uses or intends
to use the paraphernalia for illegal pur
poses.
If illegal and dangerous drugs are outonti
streets, then why should the tools and
jects designed to use illicit drugs be
sold and possessed?
nit
I pose a question to the bill’s opponents.
If the Texas Senate approves this
sure so crucial to the well being of the Sti
of Texas, we can be assured that the uni?
ful business of head shops across the
will be crushed and destroyed. The pass*
of this bill outlawing drug paraphernalia!
necessary step towards the final goal of 1
elimination of illegal drug trafficking
only in the state of Texas but
America as well.
Murray E. Moore
through 1
By Scott McCullar
OH, IT'JT 50 CHANSEP FROM
THE CAMPUS I KJVEW. IT'S
STILL MINE, BUT IT'S NOT.
IT'S STILL SO BEAUTIFUL
TO SEE, THE TREES, THE
GRASS AND SIDEWALKS...
THEY HAVE WOMEN HERE
NOW AND EVERYTH/NO'S SO
MODERN L00KIN6. THAT
BUILDING DIDN’T EVE/V USED
TO BE THERE. GOD,\Vs ALL
CHANGED, IT'S ALL CHANGED.
(MM, IT'S ALMOST TIME!)
“£T
The Battalion
MEMBER
I SPS 045 360
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Congress
Editor Dillard Stone
Managing Editor Angelique Copeland
Asst. Managing Editor Todd Woodard
City Editor Debbie Nelson
Asst. City Editor Marcy Boyce
Photo Editor Greg Gammon
Sports Editor Ritchie Priddy
Focus Editor Cathy Saathoff
Asst. Focus Editor Susan Hopkins
News Editors Venita McCellon,
Scot K. Meyer
StaffWriters Carolyn Barnes,
Jane G. Brust, Frank L. Christlieb,
Terry Duran, Bernie Fette, Cindy Gee,
Phyllis Henderson, Colette Hutchings,
Belinda McCoy, Kathy O’Connell, Denise Richter,
Rick Stolle
Cartoonist Scott McCullar
Photographers Chuck Chapman, Brian Tate
Regents.
The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspsp 1
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Questions or comments concerning any editorialm 11
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