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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 8, 1986)
Page 2/The Battalion/Monday, December 8, 1986 s 1 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 The 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 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, Department of Journalism, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4 111. Second class postage paid at College Station, TX 77843. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Battalion, De partment of Journalism, Texas A&M University, College Station TX 77843-4111. Justice for all? When the Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran it set a perverse precedent — selling guns to our enemies is OK. But, if we follow the government’s example, that precedent now should be con sidered the law of the land and applied to everyone equally. Prior to the recent deal made by the administration, an embargo made it illegal to sell arms to Iran. Through its own actions, the White House has changed its policy, and the mood among federal prosecutors is beginning to reflect that reconsideration. Though federal prosecutors and investigators say the govern ment has not shown any intention of dropping cases already in court, the defendants in these cases have little to worry about. Officially, and hypocritically, the government says cases involv ing private arms sales with Iran ought to be pursued, but federal prosecutors don’t want to bother with the cases anymore because they know they won’t get convictions. A federal official told the New York Times, “We’re being told that these cases aren’t winners anymore. These attorneys don’t want these losses on their records.” So those who are involved in smuggling cases now under investi gation can look forward to a happy holiday at home. As an assistant U.S. attorney told the Times, “. . . these cases are falling into the category of longshots.” But getting a conviction in cases involving arms deals with Iran shouldn’t even be in the longshot category. They should be in the no shot category. Of course, there is one serious problem with such a policy. Uncle Sam would have to lower his prices to beat the competition. Children acting adult Little girts don't grow up gradually anymore The realization hit me for the first Paula time last summer. Vogrin I was at Wet N’ Guest Columnist Wild, a water amusement park in Dallas where, for $10.95, you can catch some rays, swim in a giant wave pool, ride every kind of water slide imaginable and get the equivalent of a fire-hose enema from a 10-story nightmare called The Kami kaze. Why anyone would go down that slide a second time is beyond me. I was trying to recover from my en counter with The Kamikaze when I no ticed most of the girls there were under the age of 18. Besides the normal shrieks and giggles, only the colossal amount of makeup worn by 99 percent of them clued me in. No mature, self-re specting female wears that much makeup to go swimming. As a matter of fact, we usually don’t wear any at all. I noticed something else. No mature, self-respecting female would put on something that resembles a polka dot G- string with a matching piece of material designed to reveal maximum cleavage. I’ll bet their fathers don’t know those girls own suits like that. No one I knew at 16 had the kind of bodies those girls have, either. Well maybe they did, but nobody noticed because they weren’t advertising the fact. I figured once I got into my 20s I’d want to wear that kind of thing, but I was wrong. Any mature, self-respecting female knows you don’t let everybody see exactly what you have. You have to leave something to the imagination. The more I looked at those girls, the more I realized how different they are than anyone I ever knew at that age. They’re growing up a lot faster than we did. At 22, what can I possibly have to say about growing up anyway? After all, I’m not that much older and wiser — I just left puberty a few years ago. But the changes in growing up that have taken place in the last five or six years are ob vious to me. Life is much more compli cated for these adolescent beauty queens than it was for me and my friends. Sure, we worried about clothes, guys, zits and dates, but not the way young girls do to day. For one thing, they’re worrying about all this stuff a whole lot sooner than we did. Clothes are the best example. For us, the great clothes competition didn’t really begin until the First year of high school. Even then the only things we needed to make our fashion statement were topsiders and a tight pair of jeans. Today, girls start worrying about clothes in grade school. The fifth grader who lives across the street from me wears $50 designer jeans and carries a designer bag. The thing that gets me is she’s becom ing the rule, not the exception. When I was her age my mother still was outfit ting me from the Winnie the Pooh col lection in the Sears catalog. If you don’t have a closet full of clothes by the time you’ve reached junior high, you might as well hang it up. And if you’re interested in fashion, the best place to see the latest additions to the big designer collections is at your local high school. And dating! Now there’s something that bothers me. We never dated until we were at least 15. These days I see more high school guys going out with girls in junior high than ever. It was the ultimate stigma for an older guy to go out with a freshman when I was in high school. Junior high girls weren’t even in the running. In junior high we did something we called “going with.” A guy asked you to “go with” him and the two of you be came an item. But holding hands was as far as “going with” ever went. All ma ture, self-respecting females “went with” someone in junior high, and our parents always got a big kick out of asking us “just where are you going with him?” We hated that. Today, girls who should be “going with” are going out with guys who are two or three years older than they are. And it almost looks respectable. Most of these girls have high school bodies and wear enough makeup to look 18. We used to go to the movies, the mall and pizza places to meet guys. Today girls go to “teen clubs.” Teen clubs are modeled after night clubs except no li quor is served. Instead, patrons can buy virgin daquiris and margaritas for three bucks a pop. And we thought dancing parties were a big deal. Somehow the thought of these teenage “meat-mar kets” is a little depressing. High school hair fads these days are something else, too. For us, it was radi cal to wear our hair in a pony tail on one side. Mousse and styling gel were un heard of. Today girls get a $40 haircut that resembles a run-in with a blender. Really, no mature, self-respecting fe male would intentionally do something to her hair to make it look that ridicu lous. But then again, what female with a shred of self-respect would ride a verti cal waterslide called The Kamikaze? Paula Vogrin is a senior journalism major. Opinion Lnitidiuiurty.i a " DON'T LET US EVER CATCH YOU USING THE WRONG LANE AGAIN,,," uni i -gift Sanitation situation merits a some careful consideratlor Last Friday night my girlf riend and I dined at our favorite College Station Mike Sullivan Guest Columnist restaurant. The restaurant serves succu lent fajitas, perfect nacho chips and pre tty good iced tea. There was a short waiting line to get in, and having more than a passing in terest in the restaurant’s sanitation, I used the time to scan the restaurant for some of the health violations that I had reported that week in Restaurnat Re port. Though I’m no sanitarian, I had de cided the place looked pretty good, es pecially for a busy Friday night, until I noticed something that didn’t look just right. I recalled reading a note in this restaurant’s report about employees not wearing plastic gloves or using utensils when handling tortillas or dough at the tortilla machine. A manager-type was standing at the tortilla machine loading white dough balls onto it with his bare hands and lift ing the cooked tortillas off the machine as they came out with those same bare hands. I was appalled at the restaurant’s bla tant disregard for the note in the report, and I was just about to send for the au thorities when the hostess told us our ta ble was ready. I decided to eat,first and then go for the authorities. My girlfriend could see that I was troubled, and she tried to make small talk to take my mind off the case, but it was no use. I couldn’t take my eyes off that guy as he stood there touching that dough with his bare hands, knowing all along he was violating the basic right of sanitation supposed to be enjoyed by every person in the room. I followed his every move as he switched from dough-man to friendly manager-man. He walked around the restaurant, stopping often and talking to strangers about strange things, but he didn’t get to my table. He then made his way up to the wait ing line at the front door and shook the hand of a man standing in line. “He better wash his hands before he makes it back to that tortilla machine,” I mumbled. But he wasn’t done mingling yet. He walked over to a duties as dough guy withoutsomusnu a quick detour to a bathroom to^ ar ^ hands. , Short 1\ afterward, our fajiuo.: [,y . tillascame. I hose fajitas aresop» voli eat them with just about anything Im probably did The moral of the story is thattlitS zos County Health Departmental everywhere at one time. The department is there tomalts our health is maintained, butbeaiist is our health, we should beatvart tential healthh grill, held on to a metal bar that 14,676 other peo ple probably have held on to and be gan talking to a cook. Then the manager guy ran his hands through his hair and picked at his face. Shn biso the that otdi ards, in restaur/ or anyplace, an port things don’t seem ngl Last Wednfi I happily actf? I t h e positiot | Opinion t or and, w lump in myi handed over duties as restau My girlfriend thought, as she usually does, that I was overreact- ^ ing to the situation until we both wit nessed the ultimate sin. I saw it all happen in slow motion. The manager guy took a quick look around the restaurant, raised his index finger to his left nostril, inserted it about a quarter of an inch, moved it around, pulled it out, briefly inspected his find ing and brushed his hand on his pants. Business had been steady up to then, and it was about time to make some more tortillas. The rest of this account is pretty gruesome, so those of you with weak stomachs might want to leave. As you probably guessed, the man ager guy returned to his bare-handed reporter to: staff writer. 1 ve enjoyed 1 ing Restaurant port this semester not only becas* like to keep abreast of the restau sanitation situation in BryanCd Station, but because I hope leaded do. All of the grease build-ups on equipment, food left uncovered in* | in coolers and meat left thawtij standing water don’t mean at one reads, takes notice andti enough to do something about it. Mike Sullivan is a senior joufltf I major and (until Wednesday)! writer For The Battalion. Mail Phone lines or waiting lines? EDITOR: In reference to the new registration by phone, I would like to know why students were not informed of the different priorities given to different phone lines depending on their location. Most students soon discovered that it was, for all practical purposes, impossible to register from off campus. Meanwhile, the phone lines located in the library seemed to be the most likely to succeed in getting through to the system. A possible solution would be to designate 32 phones, one for each line, as being phones expressly used for the purpose of registration, with the same priority given equally to all of them. Paul M. Strickler Just soy no EDITOR: In reference to the article, “Drinking age appeal goes to high court,” in Fuesday’s Battalion — WHOOP! to South Dakota! Finally a state has stood up to the peer- pressure tactics of the federal government. I find it typical of our nation’s legislators (all well over 21) to opt for the “quick fix” solution to the problem of drunken driving by simply denying those under age 21 the right to drink. A far more logical and beneficial solution would be the nationwide institution of open-container laws. Instead, they attack those who always have been politically vulnerable and unrepresented — our nation’s youth. Call Hypothetically, what if it was discovered thatair j cause of death among senators was alcohol? Would they pass legislation denying themselves alcoholic beverages: Of course not. Why deny themselves anything, since the only individuals who really are involved in the situation don’t have the political clout to make a difference? Steve Rikli Buckeyes and black eyes EDITOR: I want to congratulate the Aggie football teamona great season and say how excited I am they’ll be meeting the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Cotton Bowl. For most Aggies, playing the Buckeyes is just like playing another team, but for me, it has special significance. I have spent the last 17 years of my life right in the heart of Buckeye country — Columbus, Ohio. All I ever heard about was how great the Buckeyes were in football and how much spirit the Buckeye fans have. I don’t think the Buckeyes know what spirit really is, but they definitely will gettos* I “real” spirit when they witness the Aggie crowd at the Cotton Bowl. I might be outnumbered when I gobacki 9 Ohio during winter break, but I’m sure going to let those Buckeyes know there is an Aggie in their midst. They might brag about how great their team is, but 1 am going to let the Aggie football team do all my talking out onth ( turf on New Year’s Day. Jennifer Jones Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. Theeh |11 staff reserves the right to edit letters for style and length, but will/' every effort to maintain the author’s intent. Each letter must be - and must include the classification, address and telephone numbef* writer. If Pi ca
