Page 2/The Battalion/Friday, April 22, 1983
opinion
Student committee
a praiseworthy step
A door was opened for student repre
sentation in the Texas A&M System’s
administration Thursday when the for
mation of a Chancellor’s System Student
Advisory Committee was announced.
The committee, which will be made up
of students from each of the institutions
Editorial
in the System, will meet regularly to dis
cuss issues of general importance to all
students in the System.
Student representation in the System
administration is an old idea, but one that
never came to life until now. Chancellor
Arthur Hansen and the Legislative Study
Group deserve credit for this long-
awaited move.
Now it’s up to the committee members
to make the group a workable, useful
forum. It will be quite a task for them to
represent the ideas and feelings of the
thousands of students in the Texas A&M
System, but it can be done, as other uni
versities have proven.
Many universities in the Northeast and
Midwest have voting student members
on their boards of regents. In Texas, to
get a voting student regent would require
an act of the state Legislature. But in the
mean time, the chancellor’s committee is
a first step in the right direction.
Fuzzy discussion
of Central America
by Donald A. Davis
United Press International
WASHINGTON — There is a whiff
of Saigon about the White House press
room these days.
In Vietnam, the daily press briefings
were called the “Four O’Clock Follies”
because of the incredible information the
governments and the military tried to
spoon feed reporters. The jargon, at
times, was amazing.
There was the pilot of a fighter shot
down by a Hanoi missile who nursed his
plane back to the coast and died when it
crashed in open sea. He was listed as a
“non-combat death” because his plane
did not go down in North Vietnam.
“Protective reaction strikes” allowed
U.S. jets to raid across the border. People
of several nations died in an “incursion”
into Cambodia. “Search and destroy”
missions were a license for destruction.
“Free fire zones” meant you could shoot
anyone who moved.
The war was full of such terms, which
provided South Vietnamese and Amer
ican briefers convenient camouflage be
hind which to hide. By careful use of the
language, a briefer could stand in that
hot corner room with its dirty yellow
walls and lie like a thief.
The White House press room is a half
a world away from that corner of Tu Do
Street and Le Loi, a property which now
belongs to the other side.
But while reporters sit in air condi
tioned comfort on cushion chairs, feet on
a royal blue carpet, the words being used
by the briefers sounding ominously
familiar when they talk about another
war — a growing battle on the border
between Honduras and Nicaragua.
It is not that they are telling false
hoods. But the statements are transpa
rent.
Anyone who has read accounts by
newspaper reporters who have visited
the scene or watched television footage
showing the fighting knows that rebels
fighting the Sandinista regime in Nicar
agua are getting help from the United
States. The fact is not even disputed.
What is in question is the policy in
volved, and on that point, the administra
tion does its best to fog the issue.
Rep. Edward Boland, D-Mass., head
of a House intelligence subcommittee,
fathered a congressional resolution that
deals specifically with two items: It for
bids U.S. military aid from being used 10
overthrow the Managua government or
to provoke a conflict between Honduras
and Nicaragua.
The White House blithely says — day
after day — that the law is being obeyed
in letter and spirit. The wording of the
law is specific — the United States must
not support an overthrow; it is not to
provoke a conflict.
Reagan himself did nothing to clarify
the matter last Friday when he stepped
into the press room and also declared the
law was being obeyed. He followed that
with a comment that “whatever we are
doing” in the area is for the purpose of
interdicting arms to El Salvadoran guer
rillas. The fuzzy remark did not clarify
anything, but rather confirmed that
something is being done in secret.
The Boland amendment does not say
anything about helping the insurgent
Nicaraguans, helping Honduras — a
“friendly government” — defend itself,
or trying interdict the flow of weapons to
communist rebels in El Salvador.
The spokesmen refuse to go beyond
the statement, claiming they are not per
mitted to comment on “covert” actions.
The United States wraps its operations in
the flag and secrecy as it tiptoes around a
Latin American quagmire that has the
familiar scent of rice paddies.
The sad part — obviously a lesson un
learned — is that it remains simply im
possible to get the Reagan adminstration
to say, outline or justify exactly what the
United States is doing in the Central
America.
Slouch By Jim Earle
“After we figure out how to get you down, I’d suggest that
you lay off that light beer for a while.”
Yesterday
by Dick West
United Press International
WASHINGTON — An international
monetary conference scheduled for next
month is being sponsored by two supply-
side economists who advocate putting the
United States on the gold standard.
Meanwhile, other forwardlooking
Americans were organizing a “Save the
Yo-Yo” campaign. This venerable play
thing, which has outlasted chariots, the
pony express, bouffant hairdos, vaude
ville, petticoats and the golden age of
radio, is now reported near extinction.
I don’t know enough about interna
tional finances to say whether backing
U.S. dollars with a fixed amount of gold
would help stabilize the value of other
major currencies, as is claimed.
I do, however, recognize advanced
thinking when I encounter it. So I went
down to The Future Is Yesterday Found
ation, a local research center and think
plans tomorrow
tank, to see what other radical irons
might be in the fire.
“You’re just in time to check the prog
ress on some of our more far-out pro
jects,” said Sam Harkenback, the re
search director. “Come on into the labor
atory.
In one corner of the lab were 1 1 braw
ny young men dressed in moleskins.
“They’re experimenting with a new foot
ball formation,” Harkenback explained.
“It’s called the single wing. It’s specifical
ly designed for teams in underdeveloped
countries that don’t have the resources
for two-platoon football.”
immerc
new game we’re trying to perfect! mored
hope to introduce it in Third"! mitive
countries, especially the Orient,ill eCollej
many people can’t afford to plat
Man.”
Harkenback pointed toward the! ^
ter of the lab where a musical
by R
Ben F.
ief exec
He directed my attention to a table
where four lab assistants wearing white
smocks were seated. They were taking
turns sliding domino-like tiles to the cen
ter of the table.
itration
Love, ;
livers io
hool, is
... . aware
posed of seven guitars and a rnJ n -Aggi
machine was belting out a tunei*-
strange rhythm.
“We call that a waltz beat,”mvj
advised. “The reason the temr^
funny to your ears is because it’s inti
quarter time. W’e plan to try itoutoij
Mall during the Fourth ofjulycel
tion.’
They are playing something called
mah-jongg,” Harkenback told me. “It’s a
So tranquil did I become listenii
the sound I forgot to ask HarU
about the prospects for the goldstattl
catching on. But if the yo-yo malt
comeback, you’ll know the clii
right.
Letters: Tuition stance defended
£
Editor:
If the old cliche “ignorance is bliss”
bears any substance, there is one happy
Aggie at this fine University.
In response to Thursday’s letter by
Mr. Schwartz concerning tuition policy, I
have a few comments to make on behalf
of the Legislative Study Group.
Had Mr. Schwartz taken the time to
inquire about the position othe student
senate had voted to take concerning
HB894, he would have found the LSG to
have represented the students well in
their opposition to the tuition increase.
The comments he and his teasip col
leagues misconstrued actually stated that
if the Legislature finds a tuition increase
inevitable, the LSG proposed it be inde
xed at a fixed percentage of a pre
defined set of costs. This would insure
that an increase would be a percentage of
a percentage, which would in turn mini
mize the impact an increase, if any, would
have on students enrolled in state institu
tions.
A little research would have indicated
that HB894 didn’t even include tuition,
which was pointed out at the public hear
ing by Madelan Yanta during her testi
mony before the House Appropriations
Committee. It may come as a surprise,
but Mr. Schwartz’ beloved friends from
the Texas Student Lobby offered heated
testimony against a tuition increase on a
bill that technically didn’t include tuition.
Ms. Yanta’s work has opened the minds
of the Legislature to an acceptable com
promise as opposed to the traditional 100
percent to 200 percent flat rate increases
proposed in previous years.
In conclusion, I encourage Mr.
Schwartz to do his research on student
issues and student views from the ground
up, starting with how Texas A&M stu
dents actually are being represented to
the state Legislature. Aggies be proud
somebody is doing their homework!
Fred Billings ’84
Nicole Williams ’84
TAMU Legislative Study Group
Police tickets
Editor:
Laredo, Texas has been hit by the
recession in the U.S. and the Mexican
peso devaluation. The city has no shop
pers any more. The city is poor. Howevr
this city has found a new natural re
source: A little hill 18 to 20 miles north of
Laredo on 1-35 where, when you are
driving your car towards San Antonio,
FOUR police cars can be hiding and wait
ing for you. The hill plus an unmarked
car and a policeman with a radar gun
inside it constitutes a new source of re
venue. At least I contributed.
So if you drive north on 1-35 from
Laredo, watch out because although they
have already got my money and the
money from another NINE cars in the 5
minutes I was there, I presume that they
would want more once they have disco
vered how easy it is.
By the way, the same day, thank God I
was driving slowly. I saw three Bryan
police cars right before the JCT of 21 and
2818. Maybe it was “ticket day” and the
other nine guys and I were the only ones
that didn’t know it.
Jose L. Diaz
Agricultural economics
Dangerous situation
Editor:
Well it happened again. As I was rid
ing my bicycle to class on East Main
Drive, I was nearly runover by one of
The Battalion
USPS 045 360
Member ot
Texas Press Association .
Southwest Journalism Conference
those fine outstanding Ags who dm
car. As most of us can imagine,al
pound car is no match fora
rider and probably more easily iraaj
is the consequence of the two in an
dent. The cyc list would obviouslyln
With that in mind I thinkifs
that the people in charge of plan®
TAMU, and I use the term loosely
case, should consider the removalol
“parking lot” on East Main Drivel
this is done it would be to thebenefin
concerned to re-stripe the bike te
make this entrance to campussafeaj
In the meantime, it would bea
for those Ags who drive to
realize that East Main Drive is
two-lane thoroughfare and todrivt
accordingly.
As long as the “parking lot”exist
this street there exists a higher that 1 '
age chance that another named
added to the flag pole for Silver If
to the roll call at Aggie Muster
CHy
Andy Joflts
Editor's note: This letter is
again because of a typographicalt
Thursday's Battalion.
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