Opinion
Warp
Students invade
College Station
The seasonal invasion of Aggies is underway again.
In less than a week, this sleepy summer school of less than
14,000 students has been transformed into an overflowing
mass of traffic jams and lines.
The bookstores, supermarkets, banks, restaurants, and
clubs are greeting the 36,000-plus students, anxiously awaiting
dollars not yet spent.
ft’s the time when students earnestly make beginning-of-
the-semester resolutions to settle into steady study habits and
to make a 4.0. For freshman it’s time to learn what the free
dom of going to college away from home and to pull out their
maps to find their way.
While it’s a beginning for many things on campus, the cam
pus was not void of action during the summer months.
•First, a few days after the Spring semester ended, the se
nior finals issue was settled. Acting on the Faculty Senate’s rec
ommendation, President Frank E. Vandiver abolished the pol
icy allowing graduating seniors to be exempt from their final
exams. Present sophomores, juniors and seniors need not
worry though, this year’s freshmen class is the first that will
start this new tradition.
•After a long court battle — that may well continue — the
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas A&M Univer
sity will have to recognize the Gay Student Services as an offi
cial University Organization.
•If you need cash, dig your PULSE or IMPACT cards out
of your pockets or prepare to wait in an endless line at the Me
morial Student Center to cash a check. The cashiers at the
Coke Building will no longer cash personal or payroll checks.
The Battalion Editorial Board
The English
Language
Set ups:
assumption
of
(FOR you
*rV cast) )
PLAYS THE.
the kind y
a man OF SI
PASSIONS,
calm and
SOUL. AN
observer.,
P/RPD Rffc
j£S£M£L£j
STRIPS' AR
HO
JOLLY — From
the cardboard and
plastic speaker on
the dashboard 1
heard the news
crackle in. After
five months and
29 hours, auto
magnate John
D e 1 o r e a n h a d
been found inno
cent on all eight
counts involved
with his arrest on-
cocaine trafficking charges.
It seems justice has been served!
victim of unfair entrapment had I
prompt
Istrophy
Bryan a
nated
Firelighter
"Almost
50), fire
laitgest su
MDA Prof
found innocent of wrongdoing.
Were the government agents wbl
had orchestrated the operationguiltyd
trying to drag a well-known jet-settei
into the gutter for the sake ofsponiOi S lw fiT
did the Federal Bureau of Investigate ‘j (
think Delorean was involved in sonit I. C0ll n C
thing illegal, but couldn’t quite jp | t forth l
enough evidence to convict him? jib and t
Delorean, with bis car manufactunnj ihv Associ
company situated in troubled Norther totting thi
Ireland, could have been involved wkl Steve
many different things. He could J* ra
been gun-running to Northern Irelai
or maybe he refused an American in
have been
'■J* 11 Itl y l-/V^ Iv. 111^1.11 ctll (V IllCi Iv <111 IlllCr q 0 ||
ligence sponsored plan to do as much. 1. ^dpt
Why not? They got Al Capone forn« IrMDA."
paying his taxes.
massacre:
abused
Prayer bill opens
new can of worms
1 recently re
ceived a letter
from my father.
“Dearest Sa
rah,” he wrote. “I
have basked in the
refulgence of the
coruscation of that
rarest of gems, a
letter from you,
since the missive
arrived, much ap
preciated and
much enjoyed.
a stickler for absolute correctness in
both the written and spoken word. It
seems to me that someone who winces
when he hears a mispronounced word,
Just
by ART BUCHWALD
Columnist for the
Los Angeles Times Syndicate
before going off to Texas
the
Sarah Oates
For those of you who don’t speak the
language of sesquipedalian, that trans
lates, “I got your letter and really en
joyed it.”
But my father would never say it that
way.
He is a doctor, not a writer, but his
all-consuming passion is extravagant
language. To him, language contains an
infinitude of textures, shades, har
monies and nuances. He never tires of
looking up new words.
To me, this love is paradoxical. Dad is
pales at misspellings and is hard put not president signed one of his favorite bits
to cry aloud at misuses of language of legislation, the one permitting stu-
would be equally obsessive about tight- dents to use public schools after hours
ness and clarity. Not my Dad. to hold prayer meetings and other reli-
My philosophy is, if a word contains gious activities,
more than 10 syllables and no one has The president was so excited to have
ever heard it, don’t use it. such a law that he failed to read the
My father would argue that if it con- small print in the bill. Any student orga-
tains less than 10 syllables and can be nization can use the classrooms, when
found in just any old dictionary you school is not in session, for extracurricu-
have at hand, it should be avoided at all lar activities, religious or otherwise,
costs. After all, since when is he commu- without interference from the school
nicating to the dullards who rarely use a board.
dictionary and probably don’t even own What started out as a victory for con-
one that is current and complete? servative prayer-in-school organizations
would like headquarters for my cell.”
“What cell?”
“The First of May Teenagers for a
Marxist Revolution, Cadre 189.”
“I can’t give a classroom to a Commu
nist front organization.”
I he jury of six rr^en and six women
who aquitted Delorean were mostlikeli
not quite his peers. They w-ere mosl
likely representative of a muchlowerin
come bracket.
Yes, this case once again showsthata
rich white man with the best lawyersati
heat the rap. But what if Delorean had
been Rufus, a black man whodrovea
Cadillac with white fur on the dash?
“We’re not a Communist front orga
nization. We’re Communists. We’d like
a big classroom,,as we expect to recruit
from the downtrodden and persecuted
students who have been corrupted by
your American school system.”
Rufus, and people in similiar situa
tions, should be able to receive the same
protection in the courtroom astheauto
magnate did. All persons charged wilha
crime should receive the benefit of be
ing innocent until proven guilty ina
court of law.
Set-ups and sting operations deny
this presumption of innocence.
A place)
3600 S<
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I think he chooses his words accord
ing to the “three D’s”: difficult to find,
difficult to spell and difficult to pro
nounce.
He’s very creative at working these
$10 words into a conversation. For ex
ample:
“Gee, Dad, I’ve never been there be
fore.”
“Well, darling, it stands to reason that
if you’ve never been there, why, you cer
tainly haven’t been there before, don’t
you agree? Of course, dear, these little
pleonasms just love to jump into conver
sation.”
But I fooled him that time by
smoothly replying, “Yeh, redundant,
but not quite tautological.”
I may gently poke fun at him, but my
father’s penchant for grandiloquence
has made me increasingly aware that, as
James Kilpatrick and William Safire
(whose books are permanently en
shrined in my father’s bedside stand)
have lamented, written language has
been treated carelessly.
It’s insidious.
A few weeks ago I horrified my fa
ther into a few more white hairs by mis
using the word “hopefully.” I said some
thing along the lines of “Hopefully, I’ll
graduate by 1985.” The old boy-did-I-
catch-you-on-that-one twinkle came into
Dad’s eyes. I immediately, but still too
late, realized my error.
“I just know that you meant to say ‘I
hope,”’ he said, wagging a finger at me.
“God forbid, darling, it might creep into
your writing.”
Oh no, it won’t. Since that episode
I’ve become very aware of just how of
ten that word is misused.
But when it comes right down to it,
who really cares? Well, if you had lived
with my father for all of those years,
you’d care. Boy would you care.
Fancy words are fun to use when di
rected at the proper audience. Other
wise, their beauty is wasted. But my fa
ther gleefully tosses out his fancy words
at everyone.
Lhere is, I think a fine line separating
pretentious language usage and out
right language abusage. I mean, what’s
the point of writing something if it’s so
complicated that your audience can’t
understand you? And what’s the point
of writing something if you don’t care
whether it’s written correctly?
has now become a can of worms for
school officials.
Students have already lined up at the
Gary Slaughter High School to book
their rooms for the fall term.
The first one to apply for space after
school was Timothy Higgins, president
of the Friends of Jerry Falwell Bible
Study Class.
The principal, now backed by the
federal law, said, “You can have Room
167 from 3 to 6 every Thursday, Timo
thy.
“God bless you, sir.”
“And God bless you, Timothy.”
The next one to apply was Elvis Gre
gory, who said he represented the Dis
ciples of Reverend Moon.
The principal became flustered. “Are
you going to use our classroom for
prayers?”
“I don’t have to tell you what we’ere
using the classroom for.”
“All right, you can have Room 234,
but no collecting money in the hall.”
“The Reverend Moon blesses you.”
“Get out of here.”
The third student to apply was Mar
ian Beechnut.
“My group would like a classroom af
ter school.”
The principal smiled. Marian was an
outstanding student. “Of course. What
group are you representing?”
At the end of the day the principal
called the school board president. “This
place is a madhouse. I’ve had to give
classrooms to atheists, Communists,
Hell’s Angels, Sons of the Ku Klux Klan
and the Americans for Cheaper Mari
juana Club. Do I have to go along with
all this?”
The kind of carrot-on-a-stick game
used by the law enforcementagenciesto
traj) Delorean is not an appropriate
strategy for crime control. Enough
crime is committed as it is, the kind of
crime that allows no debate.
That kind of crime is the real thing
And that’s what the law was intendedto
guard against — not staged pseudo
crimes.
“We have no choice. It’s the only way
Reagan could get prayer back in
schools.”
Donn Friedman is a senior journalism
major and staff columnist for The Battal
Slouch
By Jim Earle
G
(T
$
“The Daughters of American Athe
ists,” Marian replied. “There is no God
and the sooner the students learn it the
better off they will be.”
“You’re not going to use my class
room to preach atheism!” the principal
shouted. “What kind of public school do
you think this is?”
“Before you say no, I should warn
you our lawyer is prepared to take you
to court to see we get our room.”
“You can have Lecture Hall B in the
basement next to the boiler.”
“It’s pretty hot down there.”
“So is hell, and you people might as
well get used to it.”
Sarah Oates is a senior journalism major
and reporter for The Battalion.
The principal knew he was in trouble
when a student known as “Fidel the
Fearless,” dressed in Army fatigues,
came in. “Buenos dias,” Fidel said. “I