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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 5, 1984)
Opinion Page 2/The Battalion/Monday, March 5, 1984 Freedoms include right not to pray Considering the Dallas Cowboys’ somewhat sudden fall from National Football League supremecy, it’s under standable that coach Tom Landry would do anything he could to get on God’s good side. But wouldn’t just a few solitary rap sessions with the Lord do the trick? Landry doesn’t seem to think so. He joined Joe Gibbs, coach of the Wash ington Redskins, in calling for a consti tutional amendment that would permit prayer in public schools. “When we removed God from our public schools, I think what we did was accelerate the moral decay of our country,” Landry said. Has God left the halls of our schools? Who forced the Almighty to leave? Surely the Supreme Court doesn’t have the power to ban God from our schools. What the Supreme Court ruling did was allow individuals the right not to take the time to pray in a Judeo-Chris- tian style — a type of worship an indi- So if Tom’s children wish to pray, let them do it privately — at home, during their recesses or silently — rather than force those children who prefer not to worship during school hours to do so. — The Battalion Editorial Board Orange paranoia a petty complaint Just when it seems Texas A&M is al most over its paranoia about the Uni versity of Texas, something else hap pens to shatter the illusion. This time it wasn’t who has more National Merit Scholars, more Nobel prize-winning professors, more money or more degrees. No. Nothing so im portant. This time it was the color used on the front page of Friday’s Battalion: orange. And at least one old Ag found orange objectionable. When editors of The Battalion de cided to use orange on the front page, we were afraid that some people might think like that. But as I told the some what irate phone caller: “I like to think we’re above that.” Apparently we’re not. It’s so incredibly petty to consider everything orange in poor taste be cause it’s the school color for the UT Longhorns. Texas A&M has plenty of arenas for competition with UT, and plenty of opportunities to be paranoid. Color isn’t one of them. — The Editor Slouch by Jim Earle ‘What’s wrong with it? Isn’t that the way it’s spelled? Letters vidual is still free to practice without a required prayer time. The Battalion Editorial Board is not opposed to prayer in public schools. The First Amendment guarantees reli gious freedom — no one can stop you from praying if you want to. But at the same time, no one should be able to force you to pray if you don’t want to. Organized prayer sessions, sanctioned by the school, could use the power of authority figures and peer pressure to do just that. The Battalion Editorial Board op poses the potential element of force in volved in organized school prayer. The right to pray — and the right not to pray. The First Amendment protects both. By CAM I Kept “ U U U L rkrrrrrra HHHHH!!!! !! Growls expl< Wining silence ated woods. It was overca emembered tli« use light was : edarkness tlia jramp. |he Fifth PI a ■— physical t en area next t eft tided last ni “Now we are $ unger exercise "led. HTHE LUNCi ■amed back, jbere were rotn some cade mething funrv :ie exercise was ■was O K. t jWgh. All tlia ■ on Sunday jninute ride 1 the helicoptei ^^^fhe defend it econnaissance) ew mrSFom., monpale prqmisep me ihe ambassm TOTHECOURTOF By EDA] Staff W ■wo Texas bird of Regen let Friday, on< Ians for a new j niter and the 01 le future of th SWAMP served a purpose ■ns throughoi The cretins from the SWAMP seem to have shriveled into their shells and slithered underground. Those long hair pinko-radical baggies — born-again Aggies — seem to have disappeared from the Texas A&M campus. The group is still a recognized stu dent organization, but SWAMP surely has lost the zing that caused a University administrator to call its members, “them SWAMP people.” SWAMP (a.k.a. Students Working Against Many Problems) was founded by long-time residents of the Bryan area as a forum to express fresh ideas, with the hope of bringing attention to signifi cant issues through humor and debate. What does that mean? SWAMP was formed to stir up a little bit of contro versy about subjects that should interest people in the area, but don’t. And why was a group whose purpose was to stir people up recognized on this ultra-apathetic campus? Maybe it was because the system law yers knew better than to grapple over First Amendment rights. Or maybe, it was because SWAMP’s main activity wasn’t to counsel or aid people in areas dealing with sexual preference. SWAMP members took part in many interesting activities during their hey day. They had a ‘Bum Bright Apprecia tion Day’ to help remind students of some of the dubious accomplishments of The Head Regent, such as hiring one football coach before firing another. And they attended Regents meetings from time to time — usually the only students in attendance other than Bat talion reporters. They had rallies against nuclear weapons. They fought and beat the MSG Council over the right to display items in the square display cases in the front of the MSC that the council didn’t approve of. And they collected food and clothing to take to the mission in down town Bryan. But the organization’s picture in the 1983 Aggieland shows what SWAMP stood for. In this picture, the members of the group are floating above one of the signs ordering people not to walk on the MSC grass. donn friedman ty .System, ■egents ai iw $4.8 million ] enter, but sti |aehed a decisic ■. The presen A member of student govei net Center must had it right when he wrote a k® iake wa y f° r SWAMP which said in part:“I tow res ^ ir< r* 1 P 3 . 11 guys do good, in your own way. ■ science SWAMP members didn’tagretm^rro^ lo ery issue-— that would have de! 3 uth of Easter wo the worth of the organization ie west side of F they did discuss. And they quet^ on F&B Roac even their own values. "de Center. Even though discussion may 1 011105 ways lead to settlement of anissiK* p exa £ a&m ^ the individual and society hene&H t h e Board open debate. Ined a Corps < As John Milton wrote in Areodpement Gomir during the 1600’s: Although RO' “And though all the winds of dowwing across were let loose to play upon theea!|i nman dant of T RUTH be in the field, we dol 1 ^ h: Bu rt They weren’t against time-honored traditions, per se, but they were against forcing people to take part in them. Once a person’s right to not take part is taken away, the tradition is not a tradi tion — instead it is an order. It’s easy to be labeled a left-wing radi cal on a neo-conservative campus, but the members of SWAMP were far from radical. It was, in best terms, a pseudo intellectual group of college thinkers. And what they tried to accomplish was to make students, faculty and ad ministration recognize that conflicts ex ist around us and around the world. These conflicts merit each and every person’s attention. riously by licensing and prohibit s , in n misconduct her strength. Let ne|e Ilear f u [ ure falsehood grapple; who ever ■I’m recruiting TRUT H put to the worse, inafreipny 0 f whose open encounter?” l|ing during tl when the militai SWAMP has the same purposefepular,” Burto: editorial board — to encounter arf an y °f their pa bate issues. T he opinions expressed® 1 ^ ^ ter mem not always be accepted by the mZ^Kepl.'.ys' 1 ' and a solution may not always bet studem’s decisio but thought will be encouragecfcorps, Burton sai promoted. By the way, a few memt> SWAMP were behind “The Butu the parody of T he Battalion, I have graduated and moved on. And so, it seems, T exas A&MisJ again safe and secure from thedisi ing currents of new ideas, occupyii place that an institute of free thoj should hold. fo Donn Friedman is a seniorjoun major and sports editor for The l tudent i ;e Pi iffairs Editorials air gripes Editor: The article Feb. 29, entitled “No Excuse for Risks Like Falling Metal” was the Battalion Editorial Board’s piece de re sistance. Of course, there is no excuse — that is what makes an accident! One of the components of every one of their articles is to provide a “solution” to their life-or-death “problems”; their solution to this one was to tie down all equipment on top of buildings in case of high winds. We can imagine the situation now — two men working on top of Blocker are about to go on lunch break and one says to the other, “Hey, Joe, do you think there is going to be a gust of wind that will blow that heavy piece of equipment down today? Maybe we better tie it down!” And what will the editorial be about the next day when a student trips over a curb and breaks his ankle? “Oh, sure, handicapped prsons can use ramps all the time, but regular pe destrians have to step down curbs and risk posible injury everytime! We feel that all curbs should be spray-painted red with the word “Curb” on it in white to prevent any further accident such as this one!” If the Board wrote only one or two editorials a week that stated well- founded and better written opinions and didn’t use their space to air gripes, they might have more credibility. This also would prompt more thought-pro voking letters to the editor. Presently, the only letters we have read written in response to the Board have been in sim ilar genre of this letter. We hope this let ter will make an impact in their future editorial style. Carol Caldwell Dee Little Class of’87 possible to reproduce the ef fects of car cinogenic substances with nonspecific ir ritants. In addition, the high-dose protocol for determination of carcinogenicity has been repeatedly reevaluated, most re cently by a panel of the National Aca demy of Sciences in connection with the saccarin issue. the overall cancer rate. extent that safer substitutes While I agree that there is no cause for panic every time a food additive is found to cause cancer in rats, prudence demands that such substances should be eliminated from the food supply to the shown to exist. The substitutionofi| diation for EDB fumigation is: certainly a good idea. Terrell T. Gibbs, 1 Li EDB tests are valid Editor: With reference to Prof. Zingaro’s re marks in The Battalion Feb. 28, I agree that the seriousness of the EDB health issue has been oversold in the media. I also agree that unseemly haste in the elimination of EDB could well lead to increased hazards. However, the carcinogenic effects of EDB in animal tests are not, as Zingaro suggested, a result of the high doses of EDB used. In general, it has not been The panel concluded that such tests are valid in distinguishing carcinogens from noncarcinogens, but that it is diffi cult to extrapolate such results to deter mine the potency of a substance in pro ducing cancer in humans. Indeed, at the present time, the only reliable method of determining the carcinogenic po tency of a substance in humans is by epi demiology examination of human pop ulations exposed to the substance. Unfortunately, except when the can cer produced is very rare, such epide- meology studies warn us of a hazard only after thousands of cases of cancer have occurred. I am less reassured than Zingaro by the apparent stability of the cancer rate. A substance could produce many thou sands of human deaths without making a statistically significant contribution to The Battalion / USPS 045 360 Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference Editor Rebeca Zimmermann Letters Policy Managing Editor John Wagner City Editor Patrice Koranek Letters to the Editor should not cxceflil Assistant City Editors Kathleen Hart, words in length. I he editorial staff reservtil Stephanie Ross right to edit letters for style and length bull News Editor Tracey Taylor make every effort to maintain the authohi Assistant News Editors Susan Talbot, tent. Each letter must be signed and Brigid Brockman, Michelle Powe, Kelley Smith elude the address and telephone numberd] Editorial Page Editor Kathy Wiesepape writer. Sports Editor Donn Friedman Reader's Forum columns and guest editol Assistant Sports Editor Bill Robinson also are welcome. Address all inquiries tofM Entertainment Editor Shelley Hoekstra itorial Page Editor. Assistant Entertainment Editor Angel Stokes Photo Editor . John Makely Editorial Policy Our address: The Battalion. 216 Reed ^ The Battalion is a non-profit, self-support- Donald Building, Texas A&M University, f ing newspaper operated as a community service lege Station, I X 77843. to Texas A&M and Bryan-College Station. United Press International is entitled e$ Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those sively to the use for reproduction ol all ne^ 9 of the Editorial Board or the author, and do not patches credited to it. 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