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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 14, 1986)
Page 2AThe Battalion/Friday, February 14, 1986 Opinion Shorter elections the right choice The Student Senate made a wise decision Wednesday night when it unanimously voted to end the tradition of two-day stu dent elections. The new one-day election plan will prevent members of the election commission from having to miss two days of classes. The student election may be important, but it should be carried out with as little academic suffering as possible to those involved. I he new scheduling for the polls will enable students to vote between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. at the Memorial Student Center, the Pavilion and either the Blocker Building or the Zachry Engi neering Center. A central voting site will be open from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Sterling C. Evans Library for students who aren’t able to vote during daytime poll hours. • One day should be ample time for students to elect their leaders. After all, it only takes one day for the entire nation to elect a president. The Battalion Editorial Board ■ys Kin ■ware in I “Biad I'ation t ion-blac :iety b Undei |lack Ai ie next ition of Black was exp; people a 1 One i luntry known 1 tW'ashim "In hi B the b MARWlfc ©l<?&WWWWl Rob " United s the An ; hool,” Who were the psychologists really advising ■i his m Most bme, J ■ seen ■oii-hla Both ■lined I NBC hustled a child psychologist on to the air. He said talk to the kids. USA Today followed with a story headlined, “Explaining disas ter to kids.” It in cluded a survey that showed that 69 percent of us plosion; it was funeral music for the eyes. In an era of media hype, this was the real thing — a national tragedy. The event itself was breathtaking in its fi nality, almost Biblical. There, in the heavens, seven persons — one of them a schoolteacher — existed one moment and were gone the next. Richard Cohen had talked with our kids. The New York l imes’ poll reported that 75 per cent of us had talked to our kids and three-fifths of the kids had been talked to by their schools. No wonder the Japa nese are beating the pants off of us. Our kids can’t get any work done. Almost immediately after the space- shuttle Challenger blew up, national concern focused on children. What to do? They had seen it all. And if they had not seen it live, they had seen it on one of the incessant tape repeats of the ex- The experts paraded on. Psycholo- -gists, psychiatrists, they offered their advice. They were solemn and serious and hinted that if things were not done just right, your child could — indeed would — be picked up some years hence for burning down his school. In a Freudian age, we post sentries to keep a keen eye out for the traumatic experi ence. The experts shouted the alarm. Trauma was spotted advancing over the hill. any family to come acmss ancestors who had a dozen children, of whom only maybe three reached adulthood. Women routinely died in childbirth. Famine struck. Storms hit. Men were killed in war or at dangerous jobs and influenza, when it came, emptied cities. Death was then very much a part of life. Still, there was poetry and music and young men brought flowers to young women. than anxiety. It is to know guilt. The tra gedies of yesteryear — the deaths of children by diseases and women in childbirth — were mostly attributed to God. In any event, aside from war, they were unavoidable. But a space shuttle is a creation of man; so, too, is television. Events that once could he shielded from a child now no longer can. A visitor from an earlier generation would wonder why all the anxiety. Death was once commonplace and the kids who survived, survived. You only have to go back a generation or two in Why then the anxiety now? Why the sudden concern that today’s children will be scarred by the death of people they don’t even know? Certainly, some of the anxiety was purely personal and had nothing to do with children. Adults are the ones who are closer to death — who live with it and who wondered what it felt like in that shuttle: Did it hurt? Did they know? Was the entire, doomed shuttle voyage just life in fast-forward — from something to nothing in a flash? We all thought of these things. In some sense, the Challenger tra gedy stood for all the ways in which tele vision and the rest of the mass media have diminished the authority of the parents, circumscribed our role, forced us to deal with unwanted issues and, in the end, made us wonder about what was being done to our children. of child abuse has exploded into;^ tional anxiety. Once again, theanswa guilt. Children get abused wheni parents are not watching. They art watching when they choose to wl when they choose, in other words,® parent. That happens to be thed many of us have made and haie make. There are rewards — nionev fillment. T here is also guilt. Amot with a child at care knows the feeta i)ry anc "It is erson ay-to< "Mar prtin It the fi ay feel I Blacl lon-bla s,Jan But to be a parent is to know more In a way, the anxiety over Challenger was similar to the one about child abuse. There has always been child abuse. Ev ery neighborhood had its creep and much of the time the kids knew him — or her — and so, in some vague way, did parents. But in recent years, the reality Some will argue that the nationak iety about children that followedi Challenger explosion is proof obi most of us will not admit — tblf know the victims of contempoa American culture are our childrerl fact, we worry plenty, agonizealoi know no such thing. The kids ares stantly testifying otherwise. After! tragedy, we did what the experts! gested and talked to ourchildren.il good advice. They calmed us down. Richard Cohen is a columnist M Washington Post Writers Group, ;Fq B) Th Itinue Incuk Imeeti 1601 K Th [at th< but b ment a des contn Beet. Striving for equality will never go out of style Ur [been j 1984 will t Stion quire Ispeec I’ve been hear ing and reading a lot of spouting off lately by “con cerned Ameri cans” who say the moral fiber of this country finally is becoming strong again now that militant feminism is dying out, now But the ERA is not dead and it will not die. Equality is not a fad that even tually will go out of style. It is an issue which will continue to hover over us, until the problem is solved. The prob lem is a small, but radical bunch of well- organized, well-financed antiegalitari- Michelle Rowe that women are beginning to think and act like ladies again. Anti-feminists cite declining divorce rates and increasing numbers of female virgins as proof that the feminist movement is on its last legs. Now, they say, we can get back to pro-family, Christian, all-American values. Now, women can go back to being women and not imitation men. No more “lesbians in combat boots.” These supporters of inequality use fear as their weapon. They tell their fol lowers that feminists are lesbians and man-haters who are using the equality issue as a guise for what they really want — unisex bathrooms and power. Total control of the world. Women will have to wear men’s cloth ing, smoke cigars and swear a lot. We’ll learn how to swagger and spit. We’ll leer at men and make lewd gestures and re marks. We’ll play poker and shop in hardware stores. I can just see Phyllis Schlafly and Jerry Falwell and all the members of Concerned Women for America, cack ling and chortling, arms linked, dancing around a copy of the Equal Rights Amendment, singing “Ding dong the witch is dead!” That’s what being a man is all about, right? What are these anti-feminists really afraid of? Are the women afraid they’ll start to like wearing men’s clothing? Are the men afraid the women will look bet ter in men’s clothing than they do? People are just that — people first, and either men or women second. Both are equally important — to reproduc tion, to each other, to survival. As perhaps the best known feminist, Gloria Steinem, has said: “Women are human beings first, with minor differ ences from men that apply largely to the single act of reproduction. We share the dreams, capabilities and weaknesses of all human beings, but our occasional pregnancies and other visible differ ences have been used to create an ‘infe rior’ group and an elaborate division of labor.” Feminists — like so many other peo ple — want equality, nothing more and nothing less. When given equal rights as men, women will not have to stop being femi nine. They won’t have to be construc tion workers or brain surgeons if don’t want to be. No one’s goin make homemakers trade in theirapr® for briefcases. But they will have the opportunii'j they want it. Which is all feminists#! (it’s all anybody wants) — the chancel be whatever they want to be, thechai to make the most of their lives. Wouldn’t our society be a muclib ter, a much happier, jolace if even'! were encouraged to be the bestM she could possibly be? And when we stop insisting thatp pie abide by certain stereotypes,#^ we stop demanding different hehaT from males and females, peop free to reach for more, rather I tling for what is considered acceptai The moral backbone of this sc# will not break if all people are free to 11 ] to fulfill their dreams. It can’t beslrt until we overcome the hypocrisy#^ living now and extend the free# guaranteed by our Constitution toj people. Then, and only then, will we 4 truly democratic society. I Michelle Powe is a senior journi major and editor for The Battalion, Mail Call Make plans to find out on non-commercial radio. Make plans to find out what it’s all about —KAMU-FM 90.9. EDITOR: Due to circumstances beyond our control, KAMU-FM personnel were unable to meet University faculty, staff, and students in the Memorial Student Center last week. We would like to encourage everyone to stop by our table on MONDAY, on the first floor of the MSC. KAMU-FM staff members will be on hand to give out program sched ules and bumperstickers, and to answer your questions about Public Radio and the diverse programming offered Larry Jackson Program Director KAMU-FM Letters to the Editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The edito rial staff reserves the right to edit letters for style and length but will make every effort to maintain the author’s intent. Each letter must be signed and must include the address and telephone number of the writer. The Battalion USPS 045 360 Member of Texas Press Association Southwestjournalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Editor Managing Editor Opinion Page Editor. City Editor News Editor Sports Editor.... Michelle Po*'( | Kay Malle# | Loren Sietfj Jerry OsliJ .Cathie AntiersoJ TravisTinjj'J Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspaper operated as a comm unity service to Texas A&M and Brvan-Cofc I Station. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the Editorial Board or the author and do not necessarily represent I opinions of Texas A&M administrators, faculty or the Board of Regents. The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper for students in reporting, editing and photography dasses within tit I Department of Communications. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during Texas A&M regular semesters, except for holiday and examu I tion periods. Mail subscriptions are $16.75 per semester, $33.25 per school year and $35 per full year. Ac/veri/singramfej nished on request. Our address: The Battalion, 216 Reed McDonald Building, Texas A&M University, College Station, IX 77843- Second class postage paid at College Station, TX 77843.