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Letters
Why follow Falwell?
Editor:
In reference to Jerry Falwell’s “Morality
in Democracy” speech Tuesday:
I think Jerry Falwell is a very paranoid
man. Why is he one of the 25 most influen
tial people in America? Because America
trusts his predictable, hypocritical, empty
political and religious cliches and his bland
clone-like demeanor.
If Jerry Falwell really is a holy man on a
personal mission from God, then why is he
so afraid?
Joanna Sklan
Graduate Student
FRITZ MONtHE
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Bid many Texas A
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David Mucci is le
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jctor of the student
ate University.
‘Satire’ questionable
My impression is he’d do anything to
protect his nuclear family from the “nation
al sins” (abortion, homosexuality, pornog
raphy). I think Falwell shouts the name of
God and of Jesus Christ from every TV set
in America to keep his own sizeable chunk
of the American Dream safe from the com
munists because he says “they are not like
Why does he own a gun and why does he
support increased defense spending to pro
tect America?
Editor:
I realize that last night’s book burning
was intended to be a “satire” statement
against Jerry Falwell’s proposed “New
Morality,” but it is my understanding that
satire is intended to be constructive rather
than destructive.
Could not these modern revolutionaries
found a more suitable, less odious means of
demonstrating their beliefs? I don’t think
that in this case, one can fight fire with more
fire.
Janet Whyde ’85
MDUCANY
RKAEU
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Buying books: a costly,
frustrating task at best
Big federal dollars awarded
to schools with most hustle
Mucci’s responsib
ite director at 01
inter around opei
[rostudent union bi
1,000 students.
Mucci’s specific re
II include house
mce upkeep of the
ns, accounting, s
cilities and food set
ill work with some j
pects, but to a 1
an he has at Texas
A student’s life is full of expenses: food,
beverages (of varying types and content),
clothes and school supplies. But even with
running a tab up at the Dixie Chicken, tex
tbooks are probably the most expensive,
but least used, item in a student’s life.
One good aspect about textbooks is that
they can be used in ways other than for
classes. A book makes an excellent insect
exterminator and works just as well as a rain
shield. I also have an old English book that
makes a great door-stop.
Just buying books can be a hassle. If my
staying at A&M would have depended on
how smooth book buying went, I would be
enrolled at t.u. now.
After fighting my way through the
throngs of people to get into the bookstore,
I dug through stacks of books searching for
any used books in semi-decent condition. I
discovered that I was lucky and did have an
option. I could either buy a used book with
13 pages missing or a new book costing
twice its worth.
compared to working the story problems in
it.
Jane and John went to the store to buy rat
poison, string and milk for a school project.
Each has $1.50. John departed from their
house 15 minutes before Jane and traveled
on his bicycle at the rate of three miles per
hour. Jane took a longer route to the store
but stopped to talk to Bill for five minutes.
Bill was on his way to a meeting of Hitler’s
Youth four blocks away from the grocery
store. How old is Bill’s younger brother
Erwin. ?
There seems to be an irony in buying
books that can be found nowhere else. It
seems fitting that an economics book is one
of the most expensive books in the store.
After buying his books, it is not unusual
for a lucky student to find out that he only
needed to get one English book instead of
the three the bookstore clerk advised him
to buy.
Sadly, the purchase of books is quite
often the least frustrating experience stu
dents have with them, because after the
books are bought, a student is actually ex
pected to read them.
Of all the textbooks in the world, the
most frustrating to read are math books.
With “X“s and “Y“s jumping throughout it’s
often hard, if not impossible, to figure out
where “Z” came from.
However, reading a math book is easy
Science books are almost as confusing as
math books. My high school chemistry
book boasted that it was written for stu
dents at the eight grade level. What the
book didn’t say was that it also was written
to keep students at the eigth grade level.
by Maxwell Glen
and Cody Shearer
WASHINGTON — Last September,
Father William Byron looked around his
campus at Catholic University, a 7,000-
student institution here, for a project
worthy of federal government support.
Byron eventually set his sights on Catho
lic’s Vitreous State Laboratory. Scattered
among three buildings, the lab is home to
50 scientists whose work on fiber optics and
other “materials research’ has been widely
recognized.
Hoping to house the lab in a single new
building constructed at government ex
pense, Byron said, he began to package (the
lab’s) strengths and match them with na
tional policy.
A year — and many trips to Capitol Hill
— later, Byron’s dream has come true. Late
in July, Catholic received a congressional
promise for $5 million, payable on or after
Oct. 1, the beginning of a new fiscal year.
An additional $8.9 million will probably
follow next year. Already, Byron has begun
to select a site and talk with architects.
Yet many of Byron’s colleagues, impress
ed with his enterprise, take exception to his
methods. There is widespread agreement
in academia and in government that, by
hiring lobbyists and ignoring traditional
channels for research projects, Byron has
set an unprecedented — and questionable
— example for other schools to follow.
In time, many worry, lawmakers could
dish out cash to colleges just as they roll the
pork barrel for other interest groups.
Adding to such fears is New York’s Col
umbia University, which also received $5
million during the summer for a $20 million
chemistry center — again, with aid from
lobbyists and some unorthodox shortcuts.
According to Dr. Jim Kane, deputy dire
ctor of the Energy Department’s research
office, a university hoping to garner federal
support for a research project traditionally
makes a formal proposal to the appropriate
federal agency.
Federal officials, in turn, seek the advice
of experts in the field, asking questions ab
out each proposal’s efficacy, potential and
merit.
While “peer review” methods vary and
are rarely part of an agency’s official policy,
they routinely determine whether a
school’s proposal is included in budgets
sent to Congress.
Officials at Catholic and Columbia,
however, preferred a more direct
approach. With an assist from the Washing
ton lobbying form of Scholssberg and Cas-
sady, they convinced the full House to di
vert from other Energy Department pro
jects two $5 million parcels.
As a spokesman for the American Physic
al Society told our reporter, Michael Duffy:
“They sold their projects on the floor of the
House. Some big shots said, ‘Hey! Let’s just
As the MSC set
Iviser, Mucci’s w
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iggie Cinema and I
afore Series.
Mary Polinard,
lan, savs Mucci has
transfer some money.’ ”
Catholic President Byron defendal
Capitol Hill Hustle, contendingthatli adership to OPAS
tics feign innocence. Most colleges
employ outside consultants, he says,
many retain Washington lobbyists.
He justifies his own actions t
to a Reagan administration initial
spring that would have granted
lion outright to the University of Call
Berkeley without benefit of peerrn
(Congress eventually scrapped
Other schools, he adds, have exec
similar runarounds in the past.
At issue, of course, is not the merito
research at either Catholic or
(though peer review would have tic
those issues).
BOB BR
UNIVER
COMPLEX
AND WOR
Airline
Travel
The chief concern, instead, isthal
schools will try to solve their financial[
lems by appealing directly to Conj
Such a prospect is almost inevitable:
as state and federal appropriations tolii
education decline. Uncle Samisexpe
to continue to shoulder 80 percenti
university research costs.
Bob
Brown
410 S. Tex
It may only seem increasingly nit
that every institution deserves as
pie. In fact, many Energy Department
cials are already preparing for Byrot
maneuvers next year.
Not all textbooks were written to send
students screaming to a rubber room. In
fact, there have been a few books that I have
actually enjoyed . . . very few.
There seems to be a textbook for every
class any administrator could possibly think
of, and some for classes I did not think could
have textbooks.
Life teaches appreciation
M
C
I wonder what sex education classes use
for textbooks: Playboy, Playgirl, “The Joy of
Sex?”
Forget books, I wonder what sex educa
tion classes do in lab.
The Battalion
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t by Red Earl Scheart
“To hear one long note of his,” our philo
sophy prof told us, “is to hear the feeling
and experience of melancholy years. You
should go buy a record of his and play it
tonight!”
So like a good Ag I went and bought a
Pablo Casals album and listened to his cello
music. The notes were oddly disturbing;
there were no words, no rhythmic drum
beating, and certainly nothing resembling a
singing electric guitar.
It was melody, and it swirled around my
mind and tried to touch something. It was
interesting, but of no great interest. I could
not really grasp what the prof had meant,
and if you can’t understand it, why bother
with it.
Still, he must of known something, they
do not give away Ph.D’s for fun.
I puzzled over this very little until I read
| my newspaper the next day. It reported the
^ deaths of two Marines in Lebanon and I
I wondered why they were dead. Reagan
| sent them there to be part of an internation
al peacekeeping force.
Other men from other countries had
died or been wounded, but I wondered if
maybe this was not a method for Reagan to
arouse the wrath of the American people
and then find backing for a military confron
tation in Lebanon.
A terrible purpose, if true, but we have
already learned that the moral integrity of a
president is no absoulte. I am uncertain as
o what the truth could be, yet I am still
jDothered by it.
| It was in a class that same day, when I
talked with a lovely girl I had met in a class
over summer, that I remembered some
thing.
During the summer, her infant nephew
had died. She missed class for three days,
and when she returned, her eyes were still
red and swollen. Remembering her eyes, I
thought of Casals. Thinking on the all too
clear mystery of death, I knew I would play
Casals that night.
friends were boys.
I was always wary of that sort of girl, yet
she somehow managed to latch onto me. I
took her home one night from a party and
stopped in front of her house. She did not
heed my not too subtle hints to get out of
the car, but instead started to tell me about
her father.
He had died the year before. She told
me that he had gone jogging and when he
came back to the house, he collapsed onto
the kitchen floor suffering from a heart
attack.
She came into the living room and
watched TV for several minutes so that by
the time she went into the kitchen, her
father was dead. The doctor told the re
maining family that if they could have got
ten to him a few minutes sooner, he might
sadness, and finally learned howtopii
feelings into music.
Yet even so, life has beauty andw
experience happiness. Perhaps by lid
one another, we can grow strong!))
giving of strength to others.
Then we may come to know thatfe
and meaning are both in the eye
beholder, and that it is up to us I
them.
Slouch
By Jim Ear
Readers’ Forum
have lived.
When she finished telling me this, she
leaned over, grasping me in her arms and
crying into my shoulder, and told me she
felt so guilty that she had not gone into the
kitchen just a few minutes sooner and
perhaps saved her father.
What could I say, I knew nothing of such
guilt, knew little enough about her, so I just
let her cry. It was later that I came to under
stand why all her friends were men, she
needed the strength, the security that a
man supposedly offers a woman.
That night, I could provide neither. Lis
tening to Casals, I remembered all this and
more, at last coming to understand what the
professor had meant, what Casals must
have known all along.
To go through life is to see failure, to feel
sadness, to come to know tragedy all too
intimately. As we grow older, we will learn
the sorrowful stories of others and live some
ourselves.
This time, as I listened, the melody
touched me, a memory was pulled free, and
I began to understand.
In high school there had been a girl I
knew. She was short and overweight with
weak knees. She used to say that all her
It is the true reality of life that we are not
guaranteed happiness, that we have to
search and fight for it. There is no living
without sadness.
This is what Casals knew, he who had
gone through so much of life, seen so much
‘‘How about let’s holding up
that until Christmas is a 0
closer. ”
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