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
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Who were the psychologists really advising
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Both
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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
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erson
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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,
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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,
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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
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City Editor
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Michelle Po*'( |
Kay Malle# |
Loren Sietfj
Jerry OsliJ
.Cathie AntiersoJ
TravisTinjj'J
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