The Battalion
(USPS 045 360)
Member of
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Conference
The Battalion Editorial Board
Cathie Anderson, Editor
Kirsten Dietz, Managing Editor
Loren Steffy, Opinion Page Editor
Frank Smith, City Editor
Sue Krenek, News Editor
Ken Sury, Sports Editor
newspaper oper-
ryan-College Sta-
Editorial Policy
The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supportin;
ated as a community service to Texas A&M and
tion.
Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the editorial
board or the author, and do not necessarily represent the 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 classes within the Depart
ment of Journalism.
The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during
Texas A&M regular semesters, except for holiday and examination
periods.
Mail subscriptions are $17.44 per semester, $34.62 per school
year and $36.44 per full year. Advertising rates furnished on re
quest.
Our address: The Battalion, 216 Reed McDonald Building,
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843.
Second class postage paid at College Station, TX 77843.
POSTMASTTR: Send address changes to The Batudion, 216
Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station TX
77843.
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Members of the student-run video yearbook submitted their res
ignations Friday, citing ongoing conflicts with Educational Broad
casting Services. The yearbook, one of the first of its kind in the na
tion, was to be produced by students for students. But, unfortunately
for A&M, that’s not the way it worked out.
The staffs troubles began when approval was given by the presi
dent’s office for two video yearbooks — one produced by EBS, the
broadcasting arm of Texas A&M, and one produced by Student
Publications.
At that office’s direction a compromise was reached this summer
to resolve the dual yearbook problem. According to the agreement,
the student staff would produce the yearbook with equipment rented
from EBS.
But mini-camera rental costs $30 per hour. And on local shoots,
the wages of an EBS student technician also had to be paid. This
meant that the Video Aggieland project would not break even opera
tionally for four or five years instead of the two years that had origi
nally been projected — an expensive compromise.
To add insult to compromise, EBS Director Dr. Mel Chastain
said he was unsure whether the equipment or the students were to
blame for the taping problems, which resulted in the loss of tapes of
Fish Camp and All-University Night.
But a look at the experience of the video yearbook staff shows
the students are more than competent. Ricky Telg, the former pro
ducer, has worked at KBTX-TV, Channel 3, for almost three years,
and Andy Richardson, the former associate producer, has worked
there for two. Both have used mini-cameras extensively.
The video yearbook staff also had a training session at KAMU-
TV, Channel 15, prior to any taping for the yearbook. In addition,
several other staff members took classes at Channel 15 and used sim
ilar equipment before the news department was dropped in Summer
1985. This, makes it unlikely that the students were unfamiliar with
the equipment.
The video yearbook staff resigned because it felt it could not pro
duce a quality product for the students with the equipment provided
by EBS.
It doesn’t matter if the root of the Video Aggieland’s problems
was a planning error, poor equipment, lack of cooperation or a com
bination of all three. What does matter is that A&M students — for
mer and present — may be denied a chance to have a video yearbook
produced b/students for students.
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B-CS a cultural black
In case you
haven’t noticed,
this town is vir
tually a cultural
black hole.
We have the
Sterling C. Evans
Library which
doesn’t meet up to
“World-Class Uni
versity” standards
because the school
would much
Karl
Pallmeyer
rather spend money so that a group of
hyperthyroid Neanderthals in helmets
and shoulder pads can run up and
down a field of fake grass while throw
ing a pigskin filled with hot air, instead
of spending money so that normal stu
dents can read, research and learn
about the world, one day making a vi
able contribution to society, instead of
taking up valuable TV air time to sell
light beer.
We have a student program that
brings in good classical music that is
usually out of the financial reach of
most students. Of course, most students
wouldn’t be able to go anyway because
all the tickets usually are sold to local
merchants and rich, old Ags two months
before they are supposed to go on sale
to the general public.
We have a student organization that
brings such wonderfully diverse bands
as Alabama, Alabama and Alabama to
‘Harvest of Despair’ documents
potential for Soviets’ cruelty
perform concerts in the acoustically
pristine G. Rollie White Coliseum.
You might think that Bryan-College
Station, being a college community,
would have a lot of culture to offer the
public. But once you consider the col
lege, there is not much good you can say
about the community.
We have local theaters, which show
the newest movies starring Sty Stallone,
Arnold the Barbarian and Mayor
Eastwood, or feature high school kids
having sex, getting killed or doing both
at the same time.
We have local radio stations that
make sure that you can hear Madonna
every hour on the hour.
We have local record stores that make
sure that you can find a Madonna al
bum in case your radio breaks. They
don’t clutter up their shelves with other
records so that they will have plenty of
Madonna on hand.
We have local book stores that have
plenty of copies of “ Jane Fonda’s Work
out for Pregnant Women and No-
Nukes Demonstrators” and “Garfield
Gets Hairballs,” instead of stocking real
books that have words instead of pic
tures.
We have local video stores that have
dozens of copies of movies starring Sty
Stallone, Arnold the Barbarian and
Mayor Eastwood, or feature high school
kids having sex, getting killed or doing
both at the same time. You figure video
stores with thousands of videos could
have a selection of something besides
“Dirty Rambo, the Terminator from
Hell Part 8.1794 x lO 3 -* 2092 .”
I went into one store and asked if
they had any foreign films. The reply
went something like this:
Joe Bob: “Hey Billy Bob, do we have
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Hive gradu;
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am ferrin films? This guy wants!
Billv Bob: “I think we had one
was in French or somethin’.”
Joe Bob: “Naw, I ’member it.
in German. Phis dude rented
night an’ came back in bout301
an' said; ‘What the hell isdislla
derstand a word they’re savin an
words at the bottom of the pictun
can’t read!’”
These guys obviously came:
long line of cousins.
At another video store, onethi
ally 1 tad a copy of Ingmar Beti
“Cries and Whispers,” I askedwi
didn’t get more films by Bergti
other good directors. The woman
counter said she didn't know enH r ? [^ at (an
about those films to know whidtoiHf!? .‘ lU f Iesl
got . I came back a couple of gH ncer n t()
with a list of 7:) ol the greatestiilmi™
made — films by Bergman, Fr#
Truffaut, Jean Renoir, Luis Bum
derico Fellini, Roman Polanski
Werner Fassbinder, Akira Run
Jean-Luc Goddard, Michelangelo
nioni, Alain Resnais, Werner H
and others.
They took the list, thanked ra
probably laughed as they threti
in the trash once I had left
don’t have anything but oneBt
film and dozens of copies of
Rambo, the Terminator FromHdj
8.1794 x 1
T lie worst part of it all is thatwl
a community that believes thefme9
ments in art and culture cornel
the belching contest after thedii
beer drinking feast held in honor
day Willie Nelson washed his beanl
Karl Pallmeyer is a senior joi
major and a columnist for The
ion.
y
Twenty Ques
tions time ...
— It happened
in 1 932-33 and
there were about
10 million victims.
— Russia. Well,
sort of: the Uk
raine.
of World War I, up until then the heavi
est hitter of any war in history.
— Of starva
tion.
— No, not
drought: culti-
William F.
JBuckle^Jr.
Comes now the story of a small Ca
nadian company that resolved to com
memorate this spectacular act of geno
cide, on its 50th anniversary. That was
1983, when “Harvest of Despair” was
produced. Initiatives instantly were
taken to sell the one-hour documentary
to the networks, but neither CBS nor
NBC nor ABC was interested,
notwithstanding that the documentary
was winning prizes abroad.
vated starvation. You know, where
there is actually food, but the people
one intends to starve aren’t permitted to
move to where the food is, and the food
is not permitted to be moved to where
the people who are supposed to starve
are.
Well, the implied questions and the
explicit answers give it away, but giving
it away is precisely the problem. Not
many people know that between 1932
and 1933, Josef Stalin decided to crush
the people of the Ukraine. The neatest
way to accomplish this was to starve
them to death by going in and removing
the wheat — not an easy project. It’s
something like going into Iowa and re
moving all the wheat, and then moving
in a division or two whose responsibility
is to keep the borders, in this case the
borders of the Ukraine (which, by the
way, is the largest state in Europe, incor
porated by force into the Soviet Union),
locked tight to prevent people from
moving out or food from getting in.
And here we pause in our narrative,
having just viewed the documentary: It
is not pleasant viewing. A camera can
show the emaciated corpses of children
for only so long before causing the
viewer to feel a certain itch, not entirely
unlike the kind of itch one feels inspect
ing, oh, the torture room at the Chateau
at Chinon, or the collection in Lenin
grad at the Museum of the History of
Religion and Atheism — a collection of
torture instruments used during the In
quisition, and serving, one supposes, as
prototypes for use in the Lubyanka and
throughout Gulag.
A good year for old Joe. He managed
in that one episode to kill more people
than Hitler killed in his slaugh
terhouses. In fact, he killed more people
than were killed on all the battlefronts
But one views such things — for in
stance, long accounts of life in Hitler’s
elimination centers — not for pleasure
but for instruction. The producers of
“Harvest of Despair” had the naive as
sumption that there would be a lively in
terest in the West to see the evidence of
one of the most spectacular acts of hu
man cruelty in history. Moreover, not
something entirely irrelevant to a
continuing understanding of the Soviet
Union and its policies. Why is that? Be
cause official Soviet history simply den
ies that the famine ever took place —
denies it quite categorically.
ney of Canada made a pious reference
to the Ukrainian famine on its 50th an
niversary, he received a tongue-lashing
from the Soviet ambassador — an offi
cial protest, as though a reference to the
Ukrainian massacre was on the order of
a reference to the Protocols of the
Learned Elders of Zion — a forgery.
Mikhail Gorbachev, profiled a season
ago by Time magazine, is thus referred
to: “Gorbachev looks well tanned, just a
bit ruddy in the cheek. . . .. He laughs
easily. . . . (His eyes) are an intense, dark
brown. . . . The voice is extraordinary,
deep but also quite soft . . . low and me
lodious.” He voiced his concern to Time
over the “hundreds of millions of peo
ple going hungry. . . . We, all of us, just
have no right to ignore the situation.”
Well, planned starvation isn’t only a
historical memory. It has been going on
in Ethiopia on a pretty grand scale, and
Ethiopia is for all intents and purposes a
satellite state of the Soviet Union. Gor
bachev can’t begin to fight hunger by
encouraging starvation. And if he is
against ignoring hunger, then he should
be against ignoring the hunger and star
vation caused by the principal figure in
the development of the Soviet state,
Papa Stalin. A continuing failure by the
Soviet state to acknowledge the atrocity
of 1932-33 is, in effect, a continuing ra
tification of that atrocity.
The documentary will be shown by
PBS on Sept. 24, and there is no way to
avoid mentioning that it will be shown as
a part of a two-hour “Firing Line” pro
gram, of which I act as the host. I can’t
really recommend that you watch it, for
reasons listed above. But it is important
that you not forget that harvest of de
spair, that it live in the memory — like
the Nazi Holocaust — as evidence of
man’s long bestial reach in our time.
When Prime Minister Brian Mulro- Copyright 1986, Universal Press Syndicate
Mail Call
A
c
Columnist comb thyself
EDITOR:
In Tuesday’s column “Fine-toothed comb necessary to inform public!
dirty deeds,” Opinion-page Editor Loren Steffy pulled a few himself.
His first dirty deed was stating that Chief Justice-designate William
Rehnquist favors school segregation. The memos released only show that
Rehnquist favors ending forced segregation in the form of busing. But to
state this would have hurt his article, since a great majority of Americans
oppose busing but were against segregation.
Second, Steffy writes in a very matter-of-fact manner that Rehnquist^
sensitivity because of this position. It has always been a popular ploy local
advocates of another position names when you cannot defend your own.
However, if Steffy truly feels that way, perhaps he can start a course here
called “Sensitivity 101” where he can let everyone know what rogues they a 11
for ever disagreeing with him.
Third, Steffy attacks Rehnquist for opposing a Supreme Court decision
even after it had been made law. Take heed, all groups fighting Supreme
Court decisions on anything from abortion to anti-sodomy laws: It is timet! 1
get in line with the nine and silently acquiesce to the commandments sent
down from the Supreme Beings.
The article is topped off with the statement that somehow America ne
Justice William Brennen to stay on. Why? So that the will of 60 percentoftl 11
electorate can continue to be ignored by the court? So we can continue to
have a justice whose continued competence and sharpness is doubted bye'* 1
a few of his friends? If Steffy really wants to preserve “the basic tenets of
democracy” the nation’s most obnoxious octogenerian is not the man he
should be supporting.
Put simply, it is time for Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee,
led by Teddy Kennedy, who has never been known for having a spotless
record, and the press to recognize Rehnquist for what he is: an intelligent,
well-qualified leader who will serve this country well as chief justice no mat
what his political opinions may be.
As for Steffy, he would be well-advised to apply that “fine-toothedcoifli
to his articles before the public sees them.
Scot Kibbe
Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editorial staff reserves the
to edit letters for style and length, but will make every effort to maintain the author's
Each letter must be signed and must include the address and telephone number of the write!
c
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