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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 25, 1987)
iPage 2/The Battalion/Wednesday, February 25,1987 The Battalion (USPS 045 360) \ Member of Texas Press Association Soutli west Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Loren Steffy, Editor Mary be th 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 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 77843-4111. 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. Not so fast Brazil’s announcement Friday that it will suspend interest pay ments on its debt to foreign commercial banks may lead to hard times for private financial institutions in this country, but much of the panic over a possible breakdown of the international economy is unwarranted. For years, commercial banks in the United States saw Latin American countries as prime lending ground. Now that Brazil has said it cannot make interest payments, and with Argentina following suit on Saturday, American banks are feeling the less profitable side of free enterprise. Despite inherent risks in investing, the larger U.S. banks never hesitated to accept the high returns they used to receive from Latin America. Now it is time to pay the price for those earlier good times. Although U.S. banks have developed a thicker skin in dealing with Third World countries over the last four years, since the cur rent global debt crisis began, suspension of interest payments still riles Wall Street. But as discouraging as the Brazilian and Argentinian actions may seem, it’s not time to start stockpiling canned goods just yet. They do not pose a threat to the entire international banking industry. The economic crises in Brazil and Argentina should not be over looked, but the government shouldn’t be quick to defend the inter ests of commerical banks, either. Most experts agree that while gov ernment regulatory agencies need to carefully monitor Third World investments, the latest “crises” will not have enough of a national or international impact to warrant government intervention. Before the government bails the commercial banks’ assests out of Brazil, it needs to look at the facts: • Brazil is not actually defaulting on its debts; it’s withholding payments until it can renegotiate the terms of its loan. • Brazil is suspending payment only to foreign commercial banks, not to foreign creditor nations. • Argentina has yet to announce concrete plans to suspend pay ments. While these are signs for concern, they are not reasons for the panic Wall Street has been expressing. Right now, the panic exceeds both the profits and the problems. Farmers Write! - All for the love of sleep I bumped into my old Amit friend Ait Murkerjee Erego the Other Guest Columnist day. He was going to drop a course. “Why?” I asked. “Is the instructor bad?” The course met too early for him, he replied a bit wistfully, and he couldn’t wake up early enough. Pressed further, he admitted that it started at 12:30 p.m. You would expect me to have been indignant at this revelation. Righ teous chastisement should have been bursting forth from my lips like mol ten steel from a smelter. After all, 12:30 p.m. is not the time of day you expect to see dewdrops on the rose bush and stretchful yawns on sleepy faces. You would think that honest, God fearing, working people should be up and fearing God by 9 a.m., let alone 12:30 p.m. At 12:30 p.m., they should be heading for their fourth cup of cof fee to ensure they don’t doze off in calculus class. Not so for Alt. Here he was, openly and unashamedly admit ting to sleeping beyond noon while the rest of the world was busy wiping the sweat from its brows. But I remained calm. I dared not show that I was even surprised. Those who know Alt are advised to pass on to the weather after a confes sion like this. There is good reason for not tan gling with Alt on these issues. It would have been extremely danger ous for my robotics class at 3 p.m. if I had raised a topic like this with Alt at 2 p.m. In fact, even my dinner and night’s sleep was in severe jeopardy if I so much as hinted at a whisker of im propriety in such behavior. Alt has been known to hold forth on this topic for weeks, and if you let him get up on his soapbox, he will confu any preconceptions you may nourk about sleeping and waking up. And he does sound convincing. How would you like to have five hours of uninterrupted peace every day to do whatever you pleased? (For him, those Five hours are from mid night until 5 a.m.). What scientific ev idence exists linking man’s natural daily cycle to this arbitrary timing of earth’s rotation? (Alt has tested this on himself for a period of two years and his own cycle, he asserts, can adapt nicely to anything between 22 and 48 hours.) Who needs more than five hours of productive professional interac tion (noon to 5 p.m.)? Have you ever felt the sense of euphoria that comes with dawn? (He means that he just debugged his homework for Pro gramming 301). Can you afford to party every evening from 6 p.m. until midnight? (He can, and does. This is his big artillery, and makes most of us want to look at his grades.) And, finally, great thoughts are easy to ridicule but hard to refute. This inevitably comes up when you say anything sensible, like, “Why can’t you be like the rest of us honest God-fearing people?” I have never tried arguing the reverse beyond this point because continuing this dis cussion further might mean missing breakfast the next morning. So if ever you see Alt in the morn ing, just remind him that it’s time he went to bed. Amit Mukerjee is an assistant pro fessor of computer science. Columns submitted for Farmers Write should be be tween 700 and 850 words. The editorial staff re serves the right to edit for grammar, style and length, but will make every effort to maintain the author’s in tent. Each column must be signed and must include the major, classification, address and telephone num ber of the writer. Only the author’s name, major and classification will be printed. Opinion College kids evicted for acting like college kids — only at A&M robabi llief tl jnild a lith wh In ac he atti I’m glad to see Texas A&M is taking such an ac tive interest in the educations of the students who live on campus. North Area Coordinator Jay Lerhons and the rest of the stu dent affairs staff are so interested in the academic demic success of campus residents, it has started reorganizing at the wrong end of campus. the effect such a move might have had on the midterm grades of those stu- Mike Sullivan mission of A&M, in fact, that they have evicted 32 students from Walton Hall’s E ramp. Student affairs says the deci sion was made in the best interest of those students’ academic goals. In a Feb. 17 letter. Lemons told the residents of E ramp, “Our contractual commitment is to provide a living envi ronment that is supportive to the aca demic mission of this University. It is our belief that relocation at this time best enables the University to support your academic goals.” Lemons stressed in the letter that the action was “NOT disciplinary,” but for the love of good grades. Of the 32 residents who lived in E ramp until Saturday, 10 have better than a 3.0 grade-point ratio. The eight students who lived on the fourth floor of E ramp have an average GPR of bet ter than a 3.1. There are approximately 2,000 ca dets living in an environment far more threatening to academics than that of E ramp. I’m sure most students living in M her, Krueger, Leonard, Gainer, Briggs, Spence, Aston, Dunn, and, on the other side of town, Davis-Gary, wouldn’t care to be compared to the aca demic standards of E ramp, either. By their very nature, most dorm environ ments aren’t conducive to the success of the strictly academically minded. Obviously, the reason stated in Lem ons’ eviction notice is simply a facade — a sham to cover his real reason for relo cating the students of E ramp. Further perusal of Lemons’ eviction letter exposes an apparent contradiction — perhaps the product of careless writ ing. The letter states, “. . . in the interest of eliminating the vandalism to the ramp and the harassment of individuals we feel that this is our only alternative.” Lemons’ concern was later echoed by Ron Sasse, director of student affairs, when he said, “We have a responsibility for those buildings. We’re talking about stuff that we could go disciplinary about.” dents. Sasse said the students could, and did, however, appeal the decision at dif ferent levels of the chain of command- a sort of if-mom-says-no-ask-dad ap- AU! nf Rep to bac 7,500 nent < [ible Now wait just a minute. If those stu dents were relocated because of aca demic distress, this University has a little more rearranging to do. If student affairs was concerned with stopping vandalism of the building, why didn’t they take disciplinary action in stead of hiding behind an idiotic excuse for kicking the students out of their homes? In all fairness, student affairs should conduct a study of the campus dorms and their effect on the academic success of their residents. Logically, any dorm whose residents’ average GPR falls be low that of E ramp’s should be subject to relocation. The reason they didn’t “go disciplina ry” is because if they had, the students would have been able to appeal the evic tion decision to the Judicial Board of the Student Senate — which is made up of about nine students. Without the aid of a study, however, a good guess would rank the academic performance of E ramp’s former stu dents as better than average. If student affairs truly is concerned with the aca- Being that the vandalism this semes ter included such atrocities as water-bal loon throwing, shaving-cream fights and drenching of the resident adviser with water, it’s likely the board would have decided not to kick the students out of their homes during the middle of the semester — especially considering peals process It’s clear from Lemons’ and Sasses statements, and the fact that the former residents of E ramp are academically healthy, that vandalism of the ramp- not poor grades — was the real motive for evicting the students. Despite what Lemons conveniently calls it, the action was disciplinary, which brings us to another contradiction. At least 12 students kicked out of the dorm because of vandalism are not listed with student affairs as trouble makers. That’s what student affairs told the manager of Parkway Circle Apart merits when she called to find out if renting to the students would comeback to haunt her. The manager was told b) student affairs that a lot of innocent stu dents got a raw deal because of the deci sion. If student affairs could determine who wasn’t causing trouble, why couldn’t they figure out who was? I have a feeling that weeding out the few havoc wreakers of Walton Hall would have re quired Lemons to work for his pay, rather than simply scratching out an eviction notice. Instead, Lemons chose a simple- minded solution to solve his troubles without regard for the feelings or, hypo critically, the academic success of the in nocent students. The worst part of it all is that the stu dents of A&M — including those for merly of E ramp — are paying Lemons salary and assuming that he is making decisions in the students’best interests. If this feeble decision is a result of “much consideration and discussion,’ as Lemons claims, I’d hate to see what would happen if student affairs got careless. Bouses going Hac Mike Sullivan is a senior journalism major and the Opinion Page editor for The Battalion. Mail Call Bad boys EDITOR: Your Feb. 23 editorial shows a rather one-sided view of the E-ramp Walton situation. You accuse the cure as unfair, without fully discussing the cause. As head resident of Schuhmacher Hall, I’ve had to deal with Walton residents occasionally. Any time trouble happened with Walton, or in talking with Walton staff, E ramp continually came up as a source of problems. I was the Davis-Gary Head Resident when action was taken to group-bill and relocate residents from an area which recorded one-half of all the dorm’s incidents and destruction. What do you do? There is obviously a problem. When a residence hall staff member is assaulted, things have definitely gone too far. As an undergraduate, I lived in an all-male dorm for four years and never saw as much damage or as many incidents. Is this unique to Texas, or just to Texas A&M? A&M has a lower ratio of dorm staff (resident advisers) to residents than most other universities. Maybe student affairs assumes Aggies are more “mature?” The only solution offered was using UPD to control E ramp. What officer would want to watch one ramp, becoming a target of abuse, verbal and otherwise? Had the editors checked on the logistics of using an officer? UPD is shorthanded as it is without tying up one officer full-time to babysit one ramp. Perhaps the editors should spend some time as a hall staff members before criticizing the solution. How do you handle an area definitely identified as problematic, yet where “I don’t know” and “I didn’t see anything” are the only answers you get? As for the innocent punished with the guilty, if they were innocent, why didn’t they point out the guilty parties? People tend to know what’s going on in their ramp. What about the people in Schuhmacher Hall who complained about problems caused by E ramp, such as windows broken by water balloons or BB guns and constant noise? You say the dorm environment isn’t conducive to academic success. Then why are my residents complaining? Schuhmacher and Mclnnis Hall have a “study dorm” reputation and are both fairly trouble-free. You say there is a “lack of concern for dorm residents. If there was a lack of concern, the problem would have been ignored until something far more drastic happened. I invite the editors to spend a weekend with the on-duty staff member in my quiet dorm sometime. Peter Warneck, Graduate Student Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editorial staff rl selves the right to edit letters for style and length, but will make every effort to main tain the author’s intent. Each letter must be signed and must include the classify lion, address and telephone number of the writer. ilities The ep. 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