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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 1986)
1 Page 2/The Battalion/Friday, November 21, 1986 Opinion 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 Editorial Policy 7'he Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspaper oper ated as a community service to Texas A&M and Bryan-College Sta 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 lor 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. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Battalion, 216 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station TX 77843. Interest in education Education Secretary William J. Bennett’s recent proposal to in crease interest rates on student loans in exchange for a longer repay ment period appears to benefit graduates who have lower-income jobs. But Bennett is using student financial aid as a weapon in his perpetual squabble with colleges and universities over tuition in creases. Under the proposed aid policy, students would have to pay back loans at the rate of 91-day Treasury bills (currently 5.34 percent) plus 3 percent. The interest rates would be higher, but the repay ment time would be adjusted to income. Currently, the federal government spends about $2 billion an nually to subsidize interest on student loans. Under the new plan, students would be solely responsible for interest payments. Bennett’s goal is to reduce government expenditures and sky rocketing college tuition by eliminating government-subsidized in terest payments. Bennett may be correct in saying that colleges raise tuition because, under the current aid policy, the government is will ing to pick up part of the tab. But his proposal will make students pay in the long run for troubleshooting the system. While graduates with low-paying jobs could reduce the amount of the monthly payments, they will wind up paying more in smaller payments. Even those who pay back the loan rapidly will pay more under the increased interest rates than they currently do. Bennett claims the proposal will allow graduates to fit payments to their career rather than their career to their payments. But the proposed aid package charges students for taking more time to re pay. In attempting to reduce colleges’ misuse of the financial aid sys tem, the government would milk a few extra dollars out of graduates as well. Given the choice, most students would rather have the lower in terest rates and get their loans paid off than ultimately pay more money at a higher interest rate. If student well-being was the primary concern, the Education Department would find a way to discipline colleges without using students’ aid funds. Instead, financial aid has become a pawn in the ongoing Bennett-colleges war. When it comes to saving government money versus helping stu dents in need of financial support to get through college, we know where the government’s interests lie. Black entrepreneurial class, ghetto revitalization needed Cheung Hung Chan owns a gro cery store in the Anacostia section of Washington. Last summer he allegedly chased a black woman from his store by threat ening her with an unregistered gun, for which he has been duly an unfortunate incident into a tragedy. He has characterized Chan’s black sup porters as lacking “the guts to be the men and women God made them to be.” And then, as if to show that he is truly a minister, he allowed that he had for given Chan: “If we didn’t forgive him, we would have cut his head off and rolled it down the street.” Richard Cohen e e n a u charged. For some community leaders, though, that was not quite enough. Among other things, they charged him with not being black. Of that, he is un doubtedly guilty. Pickets were posted in front of Chan’s store and it eventually was closed maybe temporarily, maybe not. The boycott is being led by a local minister, the Rev. Willie Wilson, who has the talent to turn Wilson’s rhetoric was too much for Mayor Marion Barry, who offered him self as a mediator. The mayor based his post-election burst of activism on his economic concerns for the area. Al though not a word about demagoguery escaped his lips, he remains by compari son a towering moral figure. Washing ton’s congressional delegate, the Rev. Walter Fauntroy, when last heard from, said nothing. There are few votes in the Asian community. Koop favors sex education, opposes silence about AIDS When U.S. Sur geon General Dr. Everett C. Koop issues a report on sex education, tak ing the position normally asso ciated with the permissivists, one draws back from the conventional position and re flects. Is there William F. Buckley Jr. something to recommend “sex educa tion”? It pays to remember that Koop is not merely an M.D. He is very much the moralist. Long before he became the surgeon general, he teamed up with the Rev. Francis Schaeffer, the late theolo gian, and produced a six-hour docu mentary on abortion, which in Koop’s judgement is out-and-out murder. He is a practicing Christian and an evangeli cal, and now he comes out for sex edu cation of the kind generally opposed by moralists of Koop’s persuasion. What are his arguments? The 34-page report issued by the sur geon general’s office is the first that ad dresses directly the problem of AIDS. It begins by telling us something every newspaper reader knows, namely that the disease continues to spread, and that the figures are discouraging. Fifteen thousand people are dead of the disease already, and 12 times that number will be dead of it within five years. Now Koop did not need to tell any in formed American how to slow down the spread of the disease to protect the un contaminated. That’s easy: Don’t use a needle for drugs, and don’t have sex ex cept with uncontaminated people. But the trouble with advice that simple, Koop (and, of course, others) are saying now, is that we are not talking about counsels of angelism. We are talking, to use a phrase, about how the world works. On the matter of intravenous infec tion, protection is as simple as using a needle that isn’t infected, and that isn’t difficult to do provided the needle-user breaks out of the hypnotic allure of nee dle-sharing and insists on using a hy gienic vehicle for his poison. In the mat ter of sex, “the best protection against infection right now, barring abstinen ce,” writes Koop, “is use of a condom.” So therefore? Teach children to use condoms. We got that right? No, no, no: Teach children NOT to have sex, Koop the moralist would say, but then teach them that should they fall into the temptation of doing so, they should use a condom. What Koop opposes is “silence” on the subject. “This silence must end,” he writes. “We can no longer afford to sidestep frank, open discussion about sexual practices — homosexual and heterosex ual. Education about AIDS should start at an early age so that children can grow up knowing the behaviors to avoid to protect themselves from exposure to the AIDS virus.” One greets such advice, so apparently reasoned and compelling, with residual reservations. To begin with, we know that there seems to be a negative corre lation between sex education and preg nancies. The great Scandinavian experi- ment, which is now more than a generation old, has brought to that part of the world not only sex education, but an increase in pregnancies among chil dren. It might be argued that there would be still more pregnancies but for the sex education, but Koop does not appear to be saying the equivalent thing in respect of AIDS. He says that if the sex education he favors were under taken, one might save 14,000 lives by 1991. Surely there is something to be said for the stimulation of a national habit. I can think of one that is gradually taking hold, namely the use of the seatbelt. In some states it is now compulsory, though my own experience is that some people use a seatbelt and others do not, and there is little correspondence be tween the use of it where it is required and where it is not required. If children were taught that, all other considerations to one side, the condom always should be associated with sex even as the safety belt always should be associated with driving, some progress of the kind Koop seeks could be ex pected. There is abundant evidence that the mature homosexual community is, so to speak, seatbelt-oriented nowadays in a sense that it was not even a year or so back. But to teach the condom, and to go the logical step further of supplying the condom (for the sake of the young in flamed who have not thought to bring along their own), is arguably to induce an atmosphere in which the Scandina vian analogy becomes directly relevant. If the utilitarian emphasis is stressed, it may well be at the expense of the moral emphasis — which returns us to the question of which of the twoshould take precedence among teachers and par ents. There is more than a little bit of rac ism at the heart of the Chan affair. At first he was said to be a Korean since they, more than the Chinese, have been buying Washington’s mom-and-pop grocery stores. Even when his true eth nicity was discovered (he happens to be a naturalized Chinese-American), it hardly changed matters. His real of fense is that he is not black and does not live in the neighborhood where he makes his money. Therefore, in the fac ile economic reasoning of both Wilson and Fauntroy, he takes money out of the community. Never mind that his store provides a service, not to mention jobs to several clerks. nesses of, among others, Italian! Jewish immigrants. The small were stepping stones out of thr [ class — and, for Asians, they continJ be just that. All it takes for success of industry and mmimul niiiqr-r' 1 ( i i.il sk 111 i n 11 ic in >1 m.il ((uiisc nit i> 011 1 i , , * on pi these stores should now be ovvnt:|| ee bl.i< ks 1 h.il tlir\ l.ugelv are noils J Tin i i (111 ,i I <■ \ i c I r n c r i h .i l the mu menm wounds of s|.i\ri\ .uul racial dis<.n::f enilK tion still cripple. the HI What is happening in Washingii:! Sev happening elsewehere in the cour| ehts In some areas, the new class of chants is Arab, in others Hispanicil in some places, Vietnamese. Litthf ' tier that some blacks are both fun and frustrated and, to make thenm embittered, they see little goodi their way from the government many blacks, Reaganism has a di®| cold shoulder. But blaming Ronald Reagan is the answer, Chan is not the profcl and the old confrontational technijf are fruitless exercises in nostalgia too long some black leaders havetj willing to lead posses chasing goats. Once it was the Jewish rnercfd who “exploited” the ghetto; nowitis Asian. The ethnicity of the allegedfI prit keeps changing, but not the® tions and not, unfortunately, theiij toric of some leaders. The era of riots is over, but the thinkingthatoS excused them lingers. Chan is torched. It is something of a paradox that the Chan controversy is taking place in Washington, the nation’s capital. News paper accounts undoubtedly will be no ticed by members of Congress and high Reagan administration officials, who will then turn their attention to some thing “momentous.” It will occur to only some of them that what is happening within the proverbial shadow of the Ca pitol is a reflection of a larger national tragedy, for which the government has been doing precious little. A whole gen eration of black America is missing. Copyright 1986, Universal Press Syndicate The mom-and-pop stores that are now run by Asians were once the busi- The good news is that some I leaders oppose Wilson. They know 1 chasing out Chan solves nothing- 1 it is racism masquerading as econn self-determination, a hollow phr# any case. No matter what happei Chan, the real challenge remainstli velopment of a black entrepren® class and the revitalization ofthegl lf! | The sacrifice of a scapegoat, not ter how comforting it makes some? pie feel, will not accomplish that.If 1 ’ son, for one, really wants todosj good for his community, heoughi 11 two things: shut his mouth ando^ store. Copyright 1986, Washington Post Writers^ [ Mail Call Constructive criticism EDITOR: It would appear from The Battalion’s report of the Memorial Student Center Council’s discussion of the “A Panorama of Republican Perspectives on Issues Facing the State of Texas Program” that the Council has little intention of utilizing the criticism generated by the program in a positive fashion. I sincerely hope that this is not to be the case. investigations and criticisms should be expected. While these are only a few of the problems which surfaced inll program, I have yet to hear of any of these concerns heir addresed or even an acknowledgement of the flawed nature of the program. Instead of being concerned about publicly repsonding to this criticism, those involved with the program should use these inquiries and statement to learn from an obviously flawed program. Any program in which the principle speaker renounces the format and abandons the topic (do Strategic Defense Initiative and Libya directly concern the Texas governor’s race?) and the VIP list partially is drawn from lists provided by the respective campaign has problems. Any time a current member of the Board of Regents (William McKenzie) appears on the stage of a partisan function representing the University and student service fees help pay for such an event, I don’t know if MSC Political Forum is answerableto the Faculty Senate or not. This is not the point. The administrators and students involved have a responsibili 1 !® to analyze the criticism and suggestions from the Faculty Senate, the Eagle or any other concerned party so as to improve future programming. Af ter all, the actions of these people reflect upon the entire University through the programs produced. Unfortunately, at this point,! have seen no evidence by anyone involved in the MSC toward this end. Derek Blakeley Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. Theedi! or staff reserves the right to edit letters for style and length, but will 1 ”' every effort to maintain the author’s intent. Each letter must be dr and must include the classification, address and telephone numbered I writer. 1