Page 2/The Battalion/Friday, April 4, 1986
Opinion
Frivolous proposals
The Student Senate rejected Wednesday a proposal to in
clude an equal opportunity statement in its constitution, judicial
board bylaws, election regulations, public printed or written
statements and recruiting advertisements. It’s good to see the
senate voting down the kind of meaningless internal legislation
that has become its trademark.
The equality statement is unnecessary and redundant. The
University regulations state that: “Admission to Texas A&M
University and any of its sponsored programs is open to qual
ified individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, age, na
tional origin or educationally unrelated handicaps.”
Student Government is a University sponsored program,
and therefore falls under the equality statement in the regula
tions. A separate equality clause for Student Government — or
for any other University sponsored organization — is unneces
sary.
Pointless proposals like the equality statement frequently
clog'the legislative process of the senate. It’s the same kind of
legislation that all five of the recent student body presidential
candidates said needs to be eliminated.
If senators could learn to think before they propose, maybe
the Student Senate could stop wasting its time on such frivolities
and start working on better representation for their constitu
ents.
The Battalion Editorial Board
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Adult worries become childhood anxieties
S©!
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I give a lot of
thought to time
capsules. I think
of things to put in
them: items that if
found a thousand
years from now
would say some
thing about o u r
culture. I have one
of those items
now. It’s a newspa
per story about fourth-grade girls.
About 80 percent of them are dieting.
The story ran in the Wall Street Jour
nal a little while back and was based on a
study of San Francisco kids by'the Uni
versity of California. The Journal was
dismayed by the study’s Findings. So it
went far from the trendy West Coast to
the Chicago suburbs and asked nine-
year-old girls there if they were dieting
too. More than half said they were.
They were dieting even though they
were not overweight, even though they
were just kids and their bodies con
sumed calories like a seal does fish —
even though, to tell the truth, if they
were a bit fat it would be no big deal.
They don’t date. They don’t get asked
out. If there is a time in your life when
you ought to be able to be a bit over
weight, it’s the fourth grade.
No more. Now the concerns of adults
are the anxieties of young children and
the neuroses of older ones. (A different
story reports that 13 percent of high-
school sophomores diet by purging
themselves.) They worry about divorce
'because there is so much of it around.
They worry about nuclear war because
you don’t have to be old or fighting at
the front to be killed. And now, at the
age of nine, they worry about their
weight.
The dieting craze is just another ex
ample of kids being robbed of their
most valuable possession — childhood.
After all, that’s the one time you ought
to be able to drink lots of milk and eat all
the ice cream that can fit and not worry
about calories. If you’re a kid, you can
eat like that and still look okay — or, if
you don’t, what does it matter?
The dieting of children is a pathetic
example of form without function.
They want to look sexy but, for the mo
ment at least, it is physiologically beyond
them. In fact, they’re parodying adult
life. If you want to see what we look like
to our kids, look at what our kids are
doing. They’re counting calories. They
know the names of all the fad diets.
They can talk about bulk and fats, good
calories and bad calories and some of
them exercise, the Journal reports, to
Richard
Cohen
Contra aid could force stronger
Nicaraguan-Soviet agreement
President Rea- —————
ah’s plan to send Mary
100 million in aid to McWhorter
the Contras is based Guest Columnist
on two beliefs: the
belief that the Sandinista government is
communist, and the belief that every
country that receives aid from the Soviet
Union must automatically be an agent
and subversive ally of Russia.
In an interview printed in Time, Rea
gan said that the Sandinista guerrilla
leader and hero Aujusto Cesar Sandino
was a communist, thus Nicaragua is
communist. Sandino, who was assassi
nated in 1934 by Anastasio Somoza Gar
cia’s fellow revolutionaries, was not a
communist but a nationalist who op
posed both American and Soviet inter
vention.
Somoza and his two sons gained con
trol of Nicaragua in 1937, when they
were finally able to dominate other op
ponents with U.S. support. The Somo-
zas milked Nicaragua and amassed an
estimated $60 million. Somoza’s son, a
West Point graduate, was the latest in
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Kay Mallett, Managing Editor
Loren Steffy, Opinion Page Editor
Jerry Oslin, City Editor
Cathie Anderson, News Editors
Travis Tingle, Sports Editor
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the Somoza line. Revolutionaries ousted
him in 1979.
The present Nicaraguan leader, Pres
ident Daniel Ortega Saavedra, has set
up a government of reconstruction (an
estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people died
in the overthrow and Somoza left the
country with a huge debt) in which large
agricultural estates, banks and some fac
tories were nationalized but the private
business sector that had opposed So
moza was left alone.
The Sandinistas reject such labels as
Communism and Leninism, saying that
“Sandinismo” is a hybrid ideology
unique to Nicaragua. In fact, the Sandi
nistas receive their most stinging crit
icism from the Nicaraguan Communist
party, which charges that “the Sandinis
tas are ideologically promiscuous. They
have priests, nuns, evangelicals and
bourgeois in their government. It has
nothing to do wih Marxism-Leninism.
Reagan assumes that Nicaragua is a
communist regime and believes the aid
that country receives from Russia makes
it an agent of the Soviet Union. The
president said in a speech on Mar. 3 that
the failure of Congress to back the Con
tras with military aid “could well deliver
Nicaragua permanently to the commu
nist bloc.”
Quite to the contrary, it’s Reagan’s
plan that could well deliver Nicaragua
to the communist bloc.
Nothing is ever permanent in the
world of foreign affairs. The myth that
once a country takes aid from the Soviet
Union that it is forever in the Soviet or
bit «has been disproved by historical
facts.
China, the most populous country oh
earth, is still a self-styled communist
country even though they were once an
ally of the Soviet Union. But China is
now the Soviet Union’s most threaten
ing enemy and a military associate of the
United States.
Yugoslavia is another communist
country, but it is officially nonaligned in
the East-West issue and is protected by
the NATO alliance.
Ethiopia was once part of the U.S.
bloc and is now a client of Moscow. So
malia did the same in reverse, as did
Egypt. Neither were officially commu
nist.
At this point, Nicaragua is receiving
aid from the Soviet Union and Cuba.
But it also receives aid from several
members of the NATO alliance in West
ern Europe. The amount of aid from
the Soviet bloc was negligible before
1981.
However, with the CIA’s confessed
mining of Nicaraguan harbors and their
involvement with the Contras, plus the
U.S.-imposed trade embargo, Nicara
gua has no alternative but to view the
United States’ actions and statements as
an act of war and to seek military aid
(helicopter gunships to fight the Con
tras) and non-military aid (oil) from the
Soviet Union.
Finally, Reagan stresses the fear that
Nicaragua will give the Soviets military
bases on “our continent.”
But Nicaragua’s U.S. Ambassador,
Carlos Tunnermann, has said “we are
ready to negotiate all national-security
concerns the U.S. has with us. We will
allow no Soviet or American bases. We
have said this repeatedly. But we will
never negotiate the revolution.”
We already have decided the issue of
a Soviet base in North America with the
196 2 Cuban missile crisis. In the
agreement we made, we promised to
tolerate Fidel Castro’s brand of commu
nism in exchange for Moscow’s pledge
not to place offensive weapons in Cuba
or maintain bases there. Clearly, Mos
cow understands that the United States
will not tolerate their jnesence in Nica
ragua either.
Unfortunately, Congress does not
understand. It probably will approve
Reagan’s aid package in some form.
The House turned down the aid re
quest, but the Senate passed it and, most
likely, a compromise will be worked out.
It is ironic that the United State’s mis
perception of the situation in Nicaragua
might actually force that country to
form an alliance with the Soviet Union.
What Reagan is proposing with his
Contra aid package is the overthrow of
an independent and sovereign country.
Isn’t that what the Soviet Union often
is accused of doing?
Mary McWhorter is a senior journa
lism major.
the Jane Fonda workout video. I hese
kids are a mirror, showing us what we
look like to them. The girl who re|)orts
that her mother uses pliers to zip her
jeans is, naturally, on a diet herself.
In “A Distant Mirror,” Barbara Tuch-
man wrote about the 14th century, the
epoch of the Black Death, when one-
third of Europe’s population perished.
The century was marked by the extreme
youthfulness of the population, maybe
half under the age of 21. There was an
absence of adult leadership and mature
values. Society in-general was childish.
The dieting craze is an example of
childishness in our own era. Adults not
only want to look youthful, but they
look to youth for approval, lake the
commercial for a dieting aid in which
one little girl asks another how her
mother stays so jjretty. The girls are
French, suggesting sophistication and
worldliness. They both admire the
mother’s beauty. One envies her friend
for it while the other, the daughter, is
proud as could be. The commercial may
be pretty, but it’s message is not. It says
that if you want the admiration of your
children, you had better stay slim.
This completes the circle,
want to he like adults and adultswani
be like i hildren. 1 hat neither can bell
other ought to be obvious, butitism
The kids of America are dietingbeaa
the adults of America are dietingl
need be. w e w ill risk our health toll*
healthy. And for women especially
standards are becoming more more
ficult to meet. One researcher says ill
from 1958 to 1978, the Playboys
tet fold girls got thinner and thinneiis
til now the\ are some 16 jteixentskJ
met than the average women th&v
— staple not included.
A <
the cr
Faculi
p.m. I
Libya is important. Central Anieiin I
too. But if there is a story of our lime
the Wall Street Journal has chronidd
— a candidate for a time capsulethai
tm e generations should read.assunn
of course, they can read. As forme,
the sake of our children, I’m j
show some leadership.
I’m off to lunch.
Richard Cohen is a columnist lorb>
Washington Post Writers Group.
Mail Call
Learn it or leave
EDITOR:
Why do you attend Silver Taps? Is it to walk out during the 21-gun
salute? Is it to converse? Is it to laugh at the end? For me, it is one of the finest
traditions at Texas A&M.
“Silver Taps is that final tribute paid to an Aggie who at the time of his
death was enrolled in undergraduate or graduate classes at Texas A&M."
The notice is posted at the base of the flagpole in front of the Academic
Building. This is found in The Standard and memorized verbatum by Corps
members.
Also, they are required to know the names of the Aggies being mourned
Non-regs are not required to do this, but it sure would be nice if they had
respect for the tradition and what it stands for. To the Aggies who do not
know, learn it or leave.
Chris Rudesill
Class of ’87
o
Shabby performance by RVs
EDITOR:
I went to Tuesday night’s Silver Laps and what I saw brought tearstomy
eyes — not for the loss of a friend, but the loss of excellence that (nice
belonged to the Ross Volunteers.
I was in the Cotps of Cadets my freshman year but got out after that due
to some f amily problems. I’ve kej>t in touch with my old unit, D-1, and have
always regretted having to get out. That is, until Tuesday night.
The RVs are supposed to be the cream of the crojj of the Corps. What
th ey did Tuesday night could best be described as watching second-week
freshmen trying to march. The RVs were all off on their marching. Sofaron
in fact, that by the time the last rank had started their steji, the first rank was
already f inished. That’s pathetic. When they shoot the 21-gun salute, it
should sound like three loud shots, not three groups of shots, as it sounded
Tuesday night.
If the RVs represent the best of the Corps of Cadets, then there is
definitely something wrong with the Corps. I am actually glad Tm not still in,
If I were, I would be ashamed of the RVs.
What’s wrong with them? It seems to me that their unity is gone. Whethet
that’s caused by women being in the RVs or not, I don’t care. All I do knowis
that if the next Silver Taps has tts had a performance f rom the RVs as this
one, I won’t go to any more. My way of showing respect for the dead is not!))
attending a shabby, non-uniform performance.
Logan F. Woodard
Class of ’88
Tc
Letters to the Editor should not exceed HOI) words in length. The editorial st a IT reserves f/ierflk
to edit letters tor st) le and length but will make everv ef fort to maintain the author's intent. Ed
letter must he signed and must include the address and telephone number of the writer.
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