Page 2/The Battalion/Tuesday, February 24, 1987
Opinion
W-4 form makes
good kitty Utter
i
attempted to
fill out the IRS’
new Form W-4 the
other day.
At first I
thought it
wouldn’t be so
bad. I read and
understood the
first line: Why
Must I Complete a
New Form W-4?
That was as far as
through 10 steps, multiplying, subtract
ing and working with numbers that
seem to come from nowhere.
Loren
Steffy
I got. I recognized, and was even famil
iar with, most of the words on the form.
I’d just never seen them put together in
such a mind-boggling way before.
I am known for my procrastination
skills, but when it comes to doing my
taxes, I usually get the form completed
early. Perhaps it’s the idea of a refund
or just not wanting to have the thing
hanging over my head. More than
likely, it’s because I’m used to working
on day-to-day deadlines, and the idea of
having several months to Finish the
forms makes me uncomfortable.
For whatever reason, I decided to be
a good little taxpayer and fill out the
forms before the last minute. But before
I even got to my taxes, I had to confront
the W-4.
I gave it a good try. I filled out my
name, address. So
cial Security num
ber and marital sta-
t u s without too
m u c h trouble.
When I got to the
blank for allow
ances, the trouble
started. My marital
status changed in
May, which meant I
had to compute all
sorts of bizarre
things.
I must admit that all in all the new im
proved Form W-4 wasn’t as bad as I ex
pected. The writing style is the same in
comprehensible Taxspeak we’re used to
on other IRS forms, and it’s condensed
to only four pages, meaning confusion
occurs much faster. Still, it’s not like the
good old days of tax exemption, either.
I remember when the most complicated
blank on the W-4 was figuring out how
many exemptions to claim.
After nearly two hours of computing,
calculating and cussing, I managed to
fill out the form — three times, each
time a different way that generated a
different answer. I had the haunting
feeling that all the possible answers I
had come up with were wrong.
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I finally gave up on the form, threw it
down on the desk in disgust and went to
bed. I should mention at this point that
we had run out of cat food the day be
fore. That night, my cat, furious with
me for trying to substitute Cheerios for
his regular Kitty Krumpies, entered my
office looking for something to destroy
in revenge. While I slept, the vicious
jungle beast tore the IRS Form W-4 into
What does the SAT really measurel
1 wound my way
through the alge
braic labyrinth, be
coming hopelessly
entangled in a web
of allowances,
e x e m p t i o n s a n d
worksheets. I
watched my Battalion colleagues com
plete their forms in a matter of minutes,
and I had expected to do the same. But
I couldn’t get around the parenthetical
instructions — things like “See Step 4 on
page 2” and “See page 4 for line R in
structions and tables to figure the
amount to enter on this line.”
Greetings
from Brown Uni
versity. We are a
group of con
cerned students
who would like to
Michael
Spalter
(itifst Columnist
share with Texas
bite-sized slivers of paper, and, deciding
they tasted even worse than Cheerios,
spit them out one by one.
In the morning, I found the af
termath of this hideous act of destruc
tion, and I couldn’t help but smile. It
was the most intelligent and merciful
thing that cat had ever done.
A&M undergraduates a referendum
that we are sponsoring at Brown.
Our purpose in having the Brown
student body vote on the resolution:
“The College Admission office should
no longer require prospective Brown
students to submit SAT scores” is to de
termine whether this was a pressing is
sue within the Brown community. We
believe from the initial response of our
undergraduates that this is indeed a
timely issue.
A&M, as you know, is considered a
selective college. The SAT, according to
many, is an important factor only at se
lective colleges. We don’t believe the test
is an important factor anywhere.
Many questions can be raised about
the SAT. We believe the time has come
when high school seniors across this
country should stop having to pay to
take a test which indicates the socio
economic position of the students’ par
ents rather than the students’ ability to
work.
Since I fall under the category of
Married Filingjoint Returns, the
dreaded Table A on page 4 was the ma
jor hurdle I had to cross. Before you can
even begin to use the table, you must go
If my cat worked for the IRS, all our
lives would be a lot simpler.
Loren Steffy is a journalism graduate
and editor for The Battalion.
Why do minorities do worse on the
test than their educational disadvan
tages can account for? How substantive
can the test be if some coaching compa
nies regularly improve scores more
than 150 points? How genuine are the
scores if so many people are known to
cheat on such poorly proctored exams?
How can Educational Testing Services
(ETS), which makes the SAT, Ik* trusted
to monitor its own performance when
this, their most profitable test, accounts
for much of their revenue?
The SAT is not objective; it is not a
valid or reliable standard. Great as it
might be to have such a touchstone, this
test is not one. As David Owen writes in
his devastating book, None of the
Above, “There is nothing genuinely ob
jective about a test like the SAT; it is
written, compiled, keyed, and inter
preted by highly subjective human 1k*-
ings.
The principle difference between it
(the SAT) and a test that can’t Ik* graded
by a machine is that it (the SAT) leaves
no room for more than one correct ans
wer.”
ETS does not have a monopoly on
knowledge, though we are measured by
its researchers’ judgments. Needless to
say, many who think creatively or who
split hairs do not do well on such a lest,
though they do well in school.
'1'he Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching, which
helped the College Board create ETS,
has brought to public attention in a re
port soon to lie published that most col
leges need not require their students
take the SAT, because most colleges no
longer admit selectively. II thty an
going to let everyone in anyway,
should they require their applicantst
spend time and money on a test tb
don't need?
This means that Brown, as well
lew other colleges who do havecompfl
itive admissions, are the only ones*li
lienefil f rom the program at all. Ifwtjp
little use out of the SAT, why should
worry nlxnit jeapordi/ing its placeinlbt
testing market? When the inlluenl#
Carnegie Foundation’s report convim
many colleges that don’t needlheSATl
actually drop it, the cost of the testrt
(limb, and we will more urgentlyai
“Why not us, too?”
Stud
Th,
ate wi
the Bi
their
area o
meed i
204 H
Th.
dent t
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of'sigi
len
said /
lion o
As students at Brown, we are m
cerned alvout the SAT l>eing used on
campus. Questions of bias, inaccurac
and practicality lead us to push fora
evaluation of the SA T on our campu
The time has arrived for us, the undti
graduates of selective colleges toquesim
the entire testing industry in thiscou
try. Perhaps, this is an issue students
A&M would like to raise and question.
year,
the U
ing, b
$3(K),i
years
Th
Frank
of Re
Michael Spalter is a senior at Brow
University and founder of Student
Against Testing.
They must be flying high
The day the
Challenger ex
ploded, just over a
year ago, I was in-
volved in what
now is known as a
near-miss
aboard a commer
cial airliner.
Somebody told me it was called
rationalization.”
‘positive
We were on final approach into the
Melbourne airport. We were at perhaps
600 feet. I glanced to my left out the
window and to my horror, I saw a small
aircraft coming directly at me.
I was flying to
Melbourne, Fla.,
on my way to Cape p
Canaveral to cover
the Challenger story.
Lewis
Grizzard
Later, the person sitting next to me
told me I had said, “Oh my God!”
As my flight, a Delta DC-9, with news
personnel from all over the country,
fiew directly over the launch pad from
which the Challenger had lifted off,
barely four hours earlier, I said to a col
league next to me:
The Delta pilot swerved violently to
the right to avoid a collision with the sin
gle-engine plane. A subsequent FAA in
vestigation indicated the student pilot of
the small plane had been in error and
that the two planes had missed each
other by only 100 feet.
Oh, my God.
But that doesn’t make me any less
nervous when I’m landing in a jet and I
know there are student pilots and pri
vate pilots who may or may not be very
good at flying an airplane, and who
knows what else might be out there with
which my plane could collide.
Add that to the fact the air traffic
controllers are said to be short on num
bers and, in some cases, experience, and
the Greyhound starts looking better and
better.
“As nervous as flying makes me, I
guess the chance of a commercial air
crash is fairly unlikely this close to the
Cape and this soon after the Challeng
er.
I often say things like that when I fly.
Airplanes are showing an alarming
tendency to run into one another or
nearly miss running into one a-
nother lately.
Still, there are all the figures and all
the arguments regarding how safe fly
ing is despite the recent increases in col
lisions and near-misses.
I will never forget the photo I saw
some years ago in a private pilot’s office.
It showed a single-engine plane that had
crashed into a tree. Said the immortal
words across the photograph: “Aviation
in itself is inherently safe, but in many
ways, it can be less forgiving of human
error than the sea.”
Statistics. You can have them, espe
cially after I read the following, a Na
tional Transportation Safety Board re
port in Aviation News concerning a
1986 crash of a private plane in Nevada
which killed a man and a woman:
The Battalion
(USPS 045 360)
Member of
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Conference
The Battalion Editorial Board
Loren Steffy, Editor
Marybeth Rohsner, Managing Editor
Mike Sullivan, Opinion Page Editor
Jens Koepke, City Editor
Jeanne Isenberg, Sue Krenek, News Editors
Homer Jacobs, Sports Editor
Tom Ownbey, Photo Editor
Editorial Policy
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“. . . Investigators said lab tests
showed the pilot’s blood alcohol level
was 0.18 .. . and the level of the female
passenger was 0.14. In most states, driv
ers are considered intoxicated at a level
of 0.10
“ . . . Local authorities removed the
bodies from the wreckage. Investigators
said local police reported that, as evi
denced by the positions of the bodies
and certain injuries to the pilot, the pas
senger was performing an act of oral sex
at the moment of impact.”
Oh, my, God.
Copyright 1986, Cowles Syndicate
Mail Call
Censored
EDITOR:
I just finished reading an article in the February issue of OMNI entitled
“Science and Censorship.” But upon reading the article, I discovered the title
and the topic are complete opposites. The title is “Scientists against
Censorship,” and the article is about how certain people want to keep certain
facts away from school children. If that is not censorship, I want to know
what is.
More specifically, the article is yet another in a long string of repetitive
mumbo jumbo in which the bigoted, atheistic authors are suppressing the
scientific evidence of the creationist and labeling the evidence as “religious"
to justify their censorship.
The creationists are making some giant strides in science and they are
discovering some evidence that is hound to change science as we know it. It
has the evolutionists so worried that they are willing to take the light into the
Supreme Court to keep their findings from being well known.
If you require a ton of bricks to hit you on the head before you realize
something, then the flood of anti-creationism articles should tell you
something. There is some evidence that the evolut ionists don’t want to get
out. If the creationists are so dangerous, don’t you think it would be wise to
know what they are saying that is so dangerous? And if you want to know
what they are really saying, get it straight from the horse’s mouth, not
crooked from the jack-ass’ mouth.
Kenneth Brobst ’90
Sex at A&M
EDI FOR.
This letter is in response to Rob Huff’s comments alxmt the At Ease
article on “Smart Sex.” There is one thing you ought to consider, Huff—not
everyone has the same beliefs and values as you. The fact that Texas A&M is
a sexually active campus tends to point out that not all students believe their
future marriages will be destroyed due to guilt from premarital sex. Also,itI s
wrong to accuse The Battalion of encouraging sexual activity by publishing
sexual health awareness articles. If college-age students’ beliefs are not strong
enough not to be influenced by news articles, they have more serious
problems to worry about than their relationships with Cod.
Alex Maloy ’90
Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editorial staff reserves the right to edit Id 11
for style and length, but will make every effort to maintain the author’s intent. Each letter must be signet
must include the classification, address and telephone number of the Writer.