Opinion
Proposed amendment
vital to Texas schools
Page 2/The BattalionAThursday, July 26,1984
The November elections are impor
tant to Texans for more than the
highly publicized presidential reasons.
Texans will vote on a proposed consti
tutional amendment on funding of
state-supported universities and col
leges.
The amendment would benefit
schools that share in the Permanent
University Fund — the Texas A&M
and the University of Texas systems —
as well as the 26 state universities that
aren’t part of those two systems.
The vote is especially crucial for fu
ture plans at Prairie View A&M Uni
versity, the predominately black uni
versity in the Texas A&M System. If
the amendment passes, Prairie View
A&M will receive $6 million a year for
10 years from the University of Tex
as’s two-thirds share of the profits
from the constitutionally endowed
PUF, in addition to greater access to
the Texas A&M System’s share of the
PUF.
The amendment doesn’t neglect the
26 state universities that aren’t part of
the two major university systems. It
would create a $100 million annual
fund for use by those schools.
Tuesday the Texas A&M System
Board of Regents formally endorsed
the proposed amendment. Adminis
trators in the System support the mea
sure whole-heartedly. The Chan
cellor’s Student Advisory Board —
made up of students from System
schools — and other student groups
also support the amendment. A num
ber of groups are planning or have be
gun educational campaigns on the is
sue.
Administrators at the Texas A&M
and UT systems and at the other state
schools worked long and hard to come
up with a more equitable plan for shar
ing state funds. The proposed amend
ment is their answer to the problem.
It’s the best answer. But don’t leave
all the work for university administra
tors. Tell your friends and family
about the amendment — before the
election. Higher education in Texas
depends on it.
THERESA SIMPLE.ANSWER [
WHY THE PEFENSE PEPI!
SPENDS $400-FORA
FEW SCREWS..
By REP
— The Battalion Editorial Board
Determining the value of an American life
By JIM ANDERSON
Columnist for
United Press International
WASHINGTON — H.L. Mencken
once wrote an essay translating into
numbers the romance and folklore of
popular American literature and jour
nalism.
It was based on the question, “How
many people could an American
whip?” He deduced from the litera
ture and newspapers of the times, in
cluding the sports pages, that one
American (white, naturally, and male)
could whip three Englishmen. But,
according to the literature, it was as
sumed that one Englishman could
whip three Frenchmen.
One Frenchman, or other (white)
European, according to Mencken’s
analysis, could whip 16 Chinamen,
and one Chinaman could probably
handle X Abysinnians, any one of
whom could whip Y Zulu tribesman.
And so it went, almost indefinitely.
By geometric progression, Mencken
was able to deduce that one American
— according to the popular literature
of the time — could easily whip 14,000
primitive tribesmen.
Don Shanor, a former United Press
International staffer and now a pro
fessor of journalism at Columbia Uni
versity, once took the same idea and
translated it into current journalistic
terms: “One American is worth...”
Struck by the number of times he
had seen tiny stories with the headline,
“59 Perish in Mexico Bus Crash”
squeezed in at the end of long, dra
matic stories about the death of one
American, he came to the conclusion
that the Mencken formula can be ap
plied to current American journalism.
The death of one American, in
terms of column inches in American
newspapers, he disovered, is equal to
the demise of several thousand Tanza
nians. Of course the timeliness of the
report has a bearing, as does the
drama surrounding it.
New evidence has come to hand
that the formula still works. There is
even a corollary: In terms of editorial
interest, the death of one of “our”
Chinese, when reported in a timely
fashion, is worth the death of approxi
mately 280,000 of “their” Chinese.
One day a few weeks ago, not a ter
rifically busy news day, two stories on
the UPI wires illustrate the point:
One story dealt with a mine explo
sion in Taiwan, where about 124 min
ers were trapped underground. An
other reported new and meticulously
accurate census figures from the Peo
ples Republic of China that revealed
for the first time that at least 16 mil
lion people — and perhaps as many as
27 million — died in the catastrophic
upheavals that resulted from Mao
Tse-tung’s ambitious but ill-conceived
plan to drag his country into 20th cen
tury, the “Great Leap Forward.”
According to the daily sampling of
newspapers by UPI bureaus around
the country, about 65 per cent of the
country’s newspapers carried the Tai
wan story, but only about 20 per cent
carried any mention of the “Great
Leap” catastrophe, as reported by ei
ther of the major wire services.
The Taiwan story had drama, im
mediacy and was the sort of tragedy
that could easily be visualized by a
newspaper reader — or editor. The
census story was about an event that
occurred some 25 years ago and the
drama had to be inferred from the
enormous death toll figures.
But, even taking into account those
journalistic values, it is interesting to
note that 80 per cent of the nation’s
newspapers are not interested enough
in a major human disaster to devote
even 2 inches of space to tell their
I Even the si
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death toll would be roughly qw | May and pi
lent, after all, to the state populaDJ icame out ii
of New York or Californiabeingdi like latest f
nated in mass starvation. The da 1 * ntTC
toll in the “Great Leap” aftermath I • ^
three to five times as great, mimt | homemade
cally, as the Holocaust in whichdi Icream. An
lion Jews perished at the handsofa not used in
Nazis.
The only recent example ofsud
human catastrophe being ignored'
in the forced starvation of the Ukri
by Stalin in the mid-1930s, in ul
the Soviet Union’s wheat belt
turned into a starvation chamber! |
political reasons
That, too, was mainly ignored
the American press, even when
came to light later, suggesting thai |
the Mencken formula one Ukraii
is about equal to one Mainl
Chinese.
Reagan still running against Washington, big government
though the
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On this <
By NORMAN D. SADLER
Columnist for
United Press International
WASHINGTON — After almost
four years in the White House, Ronald
Reagan — the self-proclaimed out
sider, leader of a conservative revolt
against the trend of government over
the last 40 years — is still running
against Washington.
Listening to his campaign speeches,
a Rip Van Winkle awakening from
four years of peaceful slumber might
never realize Reagan had become part
of the same “big government” estab
lishment he ran against as an outsider
in 1976 and 1980.
This is not 1980. But the passage of
four years has done little to alter the
Reagan campaign battle cry. He re
mains a self-described voice of ratio
nality, pitted against the vested inter
ests and veteran politicians of
Washington.
His targets are still “the liberals” in
Congress and Jimmy Carter, the latter
presented in the form of Walter Mon
dale. It’s an “us vs. them” theme that
strikes at the Democrats, but hits Re
publicans as well.
Reagan lashes out at “those in
Washington” who oppose his proposal
for tuition tax credit, as if to gaze at
the political debate from afar and to
see only Democrats on the opposite
side. He belittles “those born-again
budget balancers” in Congress, but ne
glects to mention Republican anxiety
over the huge deficits that have accu
mulated during his first term.
Reagan, whose “Teflon-coated”
image is a frustration to Democrats, is
able to mock the political environment
he has called home for the last 3 V2
years.
During a campaign trip to Iowa in
February, he told a crowd of cheering
supporters that coming to Des Moines
from Washington was “a little like
landing in the real world after an ex
tended visit to the Twilight Zone.”
In Texas, he attacked “the smart
sayers and seers” and “grasping poli
ticians and indifferent bureaucrats” in
Washington. Borrowing a phrase
from George Wallace, he blamed years
of “liberal leniency and pseudo-intel
lectual apologies” for a “crisis of crime
in America.
For Reagan, this anti-Washington
theme is one that plays well in the
heartland.
At a Fourth of July celebration in
Alabama, where he stirred passions by
waxing patriotic about men and
women in uniform and the struggle
between totalitarianism and democ
racy, Reagan said he has felt that “if
we just slipped out — we in govern
ment — and closed the doors, turned
the key and disappeared for a while, it
would take you a long time to miss us.”
No word on what would happen to
the millions of people, in Alabama and
elsewhere, whose livelihoods depend
on government outlays for guns and
butter.
The refrain is not a new one for
Reagan, who for years has regarded
government — especially the federal
government — as the antithesis of a
society devoted to individual liberty.
“Either we believe in our traditio;
system of individual liberty, or
abandon the American revolution
confress that an intellectual elite ii
far distant capital can plan our lit head of su
for us better than we can plantlit: one decade
ourselves.”
In 1847,
republic —
ereij^n blac
tion in Afri
In 1941,
thur was n;
forces in th
In 1967,
in Detroit e
In 1982
Gandhi an
President
His view of official Washington and
residents of its political fraternity is a
throwback to the “time for choosing”
speech he delivered in support of
Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republi
can National Convention, which com
pleted his transition from show busi
ness to conservative politics.
And as he looks ahead to the
bility of four more years in thatsa:
“far distant capital,” Reagan may
reminded of what he told a group
concrete industry representativesk
in 1971, while still governor of Cal
nia.
A thou^
Huxley sai
Tor talent.”
“I just returned from a tripi
Washington, D.C.,” he said, “andli!
to say it’s a great place to visit, b|
wouldn’t want to live there.”
“Two contrary philosophies divide
us in this land of ours,” Reagan said.
Even someone with such die-h#
principles as Reagan is entitled!
change his mind.
The Battalion
USPS 045 360
Member of
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Conference
The Battalion Editorial Board
Rebeca Zimmermann, Editor
Bill Robinson, Editorial Page Editor
Shelley Hoekstra, City Editor
Brigid Brockman, News Editor
Kathleen Hart, News Editor
Travis Tingle, Sports Editor
Editorial Policy
The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspaper
operated as a community service to Texas A&M and Bryan-
Colk ~ ‘
The Battalion Staff
Assistant City Editor Robin Black
Assistant News Editors Dena Brown,
Bonnie Langford
Staff Writers Ed Alanis,
Kari FluegefBob McGlohon,
Sarah Oates
Copy Writers Karen Bloch,
Cyndy Davis
Copy Editor Tracie Holub
Photographers Peter Rocha,
Eric Evan Lee
college Stadon.
Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the
Editorial Board or the author, and do not necessarily rep
resent the opinions of Texas A&M administrators, faculty
or the Board of Regents.
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Crocking down on drunk canoeists
By DICK WEST
Columnist for
United Press International
WASHINGTON — President Rea
gan has signed legislation intended to
raise the nation’s legal drinking age to
21.
I don’t doubt predictions that the
new law, which restricts highway con
struction money to non-complying
states, will help cut down on the
amount of drunken driving by teen
agers.
Let us hope it also reduces the
amount of drunken boating.
The Coast Guard estimates that
about half of the fatal boating acci
dents last year were alcohol-related.
As yet, however, there has been no
move to raise the legal sailing age.
One approach might be to restrict
rivers and harbors appropriations for
states that fail to beef up — or maybe
bourbon up — breath tests.
To date, only five states require
skippers suspected of being intoxi
cated to take breath tests.
Possibly Congress will lend them a
hand by making the new buoy net
work more sophisticated.
You don’t have to spend any time
on boats to be aware of the old buoy
network. Anyone who goes down to
the sea in any type of conveyance has
seen buoys bobbing about in the har
bor, usually indicating the course of a
channel or some underwater obstruc
tion, such as a submerged sailor.
Now, from the Coast Guard, comes
word that these marine markers are
being modernized.
Some will have solar-powered direc
tional systems. Some will be equipped
with new radar signalling devices.
Some will house improved weather in
struments.
In addition to outfitting buoys with
up-to-date navigational aids, perhaps
the goverment also could install a few
solar-powered breath analyzers. I can
see it all now.
A patrol boat, sirens ablare, steers
alongside a craft that has been weav
ing in the waves.
“Pull over to that buoy,” commands
an authoritarian voice over a bullhorn.
For that matter, the helms® 1
wouldn’t have to be listing to port 1
otherwise handling the tiller inasii|
cious manner.
Skippers might be cruising im
perfectly sober when all of a sudd
they find them caught up in a boat®
ffic check. Each passing craft would 1
stopped and its pilot invited to bio*'
a portable buoy.
I’m not just talking about skipf
of yachts, barges, scows, ferries, ii*
ing boats and other motorized vess
I’m also talking about canoei
punters, kayakers and others whop 1
pel and guide with oars.
Nothing can mar the pleasure®!
cooling summer’s dip in an old
stream quite as quickly and astl
oughly as a couple of drunken
noeists.
Sure breath-analyzing buoys
of some inconvenience to speeds
operators and other boatmen
hurry. But I say that is a small price
pay for getting drunken canoeists
the waterways.
©DR. P!
PEPPER
Dr. Pepf
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