Page 2/The Battalion/Friday, April 1, 1983
opinion
Drugs, payoffs and high schools
by Maxwell Glen
and Cody Shearer
In May 1950, a group of businessmen
and civic leaders in Mosinee, Wis., (1980
population 2,900) staged a mock “totali
tarian” takeover for a day to teach a les
son about communism.
With cameras rolling, Mosinee’s
mayor, newspaper editor and town
preacher were “imprisoned” behind
barbed wire for being “disloyal” to the
state. To complete the totalitarian imag
ery, some residents were shown passing
the names of similarly dissident neigh
bors to local authorities.
Thirty-three years later, well-meaning
civic leaders in another American town
have asked local citizens to turn in their
peers. This time, however, the Amer-
ican-style snitching is for real, and de
cidedly capitalistic town elders in Lewis
ville, Texas, (population 24,000) are
offering a $100 reward to students who
provide information about drug users or
sellers at the local high school.
Though various American high
schools have encouraged students to
make anonymous tips on local drug
pushers, only Lewisville’s has been de
sperate enough to post “wanted” signs
and offer bounty.
Last September, Lewisville High
School’s principal, C. Douglas Killough,
solicited community leaders for commit
ments to pay for the drug-reward prog
ram. The money, Killough explained to
them, would be filtered through the Pa
rent Teacher Student Association
(PTSA).
According to Killough’s proposal, any
student who turned in a name to school
authorities would receive $50. As they
used to say on “Gunsmoke,” “half now,
half later.”
Lewisville’s business community re
sponded enthusiastically to the proposed
program. So many commitments were
received, in fact, that the local PTSA
ceased its solicitations. “It only took us a
few days ...” recalled John Zepka, an ex
ecutive committee member of the Lewis
ville group.
To date, the program’s practical suc
cess has turned out to be less certain. An
assistant principal at Lewisville High,
Malcolm Dennis, told the Dallas Morning
News last week that “you’d be astonished
at how well the students are cooperating.
Some have even turned in their best
friends.”
But of the 30 students turned in to
school authorities, principal Killough
himself told us, only half have actually
been found in possession. In a school of
2,200 students, that’s less than 1 percent.
Comparisons with national averages
would indicate that either students aren’t
snitching of Lewisville has really no drug
“problem” to speak of.
It would be callous to rely simply on
the latter possibility. Lewisville has neith
er the size nor the complexities of Dallas,
its neighbor to the south, but its fear of
teenage drug use is probably many times
greater. Around the U.S., small- and
medium-sized towns have probably been
the most persistent in seeking remedies
to the “problem” before it gets too big. “If
there was only one kid on marijuana,”
said Lewisville High trustee Jerry Dor
man, “the program would be worth it.”
Simple solutions, however, beg scru
tiny, especially when the problem is so
complicated, emotional and longstand
ing. And when the solution encourages
problems that are as serious of worse, the
ends don’t justify the means.
In their own paranoia, Lewisville’s
leaders have cynically sought to play on
that of a far more vulnerable group. Fear
of authority has a way of turning friend
against friend, brother against sister, as
the Chinese, Soviet and other dictatorial
regimes have found to their advantage.
To grease totalitarian tactics with brib
ery (rewards are nothing more in this
case) is to encourage people’s worst in
stincts.
But it also ignores that most younger
Americans are more likely to consider
drug use an abuse of oneself than a crime
against the state. That fact alone makes
the problem social in nature and explains
why most Lewisville students, according
to student body president Jeff Nowak,
“have pretty much ignored the program
... It’s not the way most of us handle
things between each other.”
■
#
k
OHSWEa, m 60 TO CALIFORNIA AMP IT RAINS...WE60 TO
FLORIDA AND ITSNOWS,.. AND NOW WE COME HERE TO EUROPE..,
Arms control: Reagan vs Andropov
by Donald A. Davis
United Press International
WASHINGTON — President Reagan
is applying steady and mounting press
ure on the Soviet Union in an unwaver
ing belief that unless Moscow feels
menaced by U.S. military might, the
Soviet Union will not seriously negotiate
disarmament.
It is a very dangerous gambit to play
against an opponent that lost millions of
its citizens in the last world war and open
ly vows never again to be placed in
jeopardy.
“If you’re going to negotiate, you have
to have some strength on your side,” the
president said this week. “You have to
have some reason for them to look at and
weigh the value of reducing their own
weaponry.”
Therefore, Reagan sees success for the
odd process of launching a massive and
expensive improvement of the U.S.
armed forces while at the same time bar
gaining for reductions of forces and
weaponry.
The Soviet Union sees it differently
and views the U.S. expansion of its milit
ary muscle as an open threat by
Washington.
f The latest move — Reagan’s proposal
to build a space-age supersystem to des
troy missiles zooming toward U.S. targets
1
— clearly demonstrates the far extremes
at which the White House and the Krem
lin are operating. Reagan says it is only a
defensive measure and Soviet leader
Yuri Andropov treated it an “insane”
offensive strategy.
When he announced the program last
week, Reagan said the bottom line was
that since the dawn of the atomic age, the
“strategy of deterrence has not
changed.”
“We maintain the peace through our
strength; weakness only invites aggres
sion,” he said. The president likened the
superpowers pointing arsenals of mis
siles to card players sitting at the same
table pointing loaded pistols at each
other, and that it didn’t matter who pul
led the trigger first because everyone
would suffer.
So he outlined the high tech answer —
a shield made up of advanced lasers and
such things to wipe out any incoming
missile. As when he named the MX mis
sile the “Peacekeeper,” Reagan said the
new system would be solely for defensive
purposes and help push nuclear missiles
into the sunset.
The Soviet leadership immediately
viewed the proposal with gloom. In a re
turn to cold war rhetoric Andropov de
nounced Reagan’s futuristic proposals
and charged they could “open the flood
gates to a runaway race for all types of
strategic arms, both defensive and offen
sive.”
Reagan then shifted the focus again
with his newest proposal for reducing
medium range missiles in Europe. And
he said Tuesday that there is “no change”
in U.S. determination to put Pershing II
and cruise missiles into Europe if Mos
cow doesn’t come to terms in those talks
in Geneva.
Early next month, he is expected to
announce a decision on basing the nuc
lear-tipped MX missile.
The main question at this point is
whether either side is listening to any
possible peace overtures from the other
or is the arms race overheating once
again.
According to Reagan, he doesn’t think
“there’s anything particularly new in the
rhetoric that was used by Andropov.”
And the Kremlin clearly does not view
Reagan’s intentions as peaceful. “Let
there be no mistake about it in Washing
ton,” Andropov said last week. “It is time
they stopped devising one option after
another in the search of the best ways of
unleashing nuclear war in the hope of
winning it.”
Perhaps the rising tensions and pole
mical rhetoric between the two super
powers will only be reduced if the two
leaders find a way to sit down at a summit
meeting sometime this year.
The L
more c
month,
cars a
than t
towed,
cars un
tickets.
Horatio Alger
learning new jobs
ai
fret
by Art Buchwald
“Hi, Mr. Peters, remember me? Hora
tio Alger the Fourth. You laid me off
from the company six months ago be
cause I was unskilled labor. Well, I just
completed a welding course, and I’m
ready to go back to work.”
“Sorry, Horatio, but since you’ve been
gone, the company has decided to invest
in robot welders. I don’t believe your
welding skills are necessary any longer.
Now, if you knew something about robo
tics.”
“I don’t, sir, but I’ll retrain myself and
become a robot serviceman. I’ll see you in
six months.”
“That’s a good idea, son. Come back
when you know something about robots,
Horatio, and there will be a job waiting
for you.”
“Hi, Mr. Peters. Well, sir, here’s my
certificate from the Consolidated Robot
School. It says I can repair any kind of
robot now on the market.”
“This is very impressive. Let’s see,
according to your file, you were in this
personnel office last July. Since you were
here the company has invested in a state
of the art computer that can repair the
robots that make our zits. We’re no lon
ger hiring service people to take care of
the robots.”
“But surely, sir, you must need some
one to program the computers.”
“As a matter of fact we do. Have you
any experience in this field?”
“I don’t at the moment, but I know I
can be retrained to become a computer
expert. If I do well in school may I have a
job with your company?”
“Of course you can. You show the spir
it this corporation is always looking for.”
“Hello, Mr. Peters. Long time no see.”
“As I live and breathe, it’s Horatio Al
ger the Fourth. What have you been up
to for the past two years?”
“I’ve been going to advanced compu
ter programming school, sir, I am now
fluent in BASIC, PASCAL and FOR
TRAN, and cna work with any software
on the market. I assume the company is
still looking for programmers?”
“We were for a while, Horatio,
then we subcontracted all our prop
mine work to a software compam
specializes in improving robot pn
tion for zits. We no longer haveacora ol ] j u
by
If you pi
this mo
rised if it’
ter division of our own, except foras|
section that devotes itself to collating!
on the zit market and then mak
nomic predictions on how thecomf
should expand.
“Do not worry, Mr. Peters, hi
l
rtment f
is montl
lore than
onth the
Univer
irector f
train myself to become an econoraisn p majori
an emphasis on long-range zit planm
“You’ll need a doctorate beforel
hire you
|on’t have
(ave mon
ti kets.
Althou
‘Do not fear, sir. I will drive a 10ret ) un
ckets car
during the daytime and go toscto
night. If becoming an economistii iid, the ]
only way I can get a job, sobeit-l icatethes
become one.”
“You show gumption, boy.
that sheepskin and you
payroll.”
(Three years later.)
“Do my eyes deceive me? Is this
ight or ni
Vehide
be oi# e y are
little Horatio Alger the Fourth whoi ec j p erm
races rest
:served s]
ig zones (
irs fount
faddox s;
When a
to drop in here to see me aboutaj
“The very same, and I havesomei
to show you. Here, sir, from the Han Served s
Business School, is my doctorate ini |Mce can
Tech Economics. And hereismydodldiceand
al thesis on the future of the zit mark | e ^^tec
the 21 st century, as broken downWI' wants ^
tinents and countries throughout I
non-Communist world. Now that 1^
retrained, may I have a positionwitli • “Thev '
company?” paces) p a
“Horatio, please sit down. Since* othey ha'
went off to get your economics def arremov
we’ve moved the entire company’sopfl When ;
tions to South Korea. We don’t do)! deowner
thing here except distribute zits tod t; >nda$
dealers.” Aninve
“I understand, sir, and I certi ' la ^ en ^
don’t blame you for going whereyotit
make a better product for muclii
cost.” > ^ 1
“What are you going to do ni r
Horatio?” ; J
“The same thing any ambitiousAnf ! |
ican boy would do. I’m going to renl J
myself to be a South Korean.” its,
JKfr
USPS 045 360
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