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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 22, 1987)
Page 2/The Battalion/Wednesday, April 22, 1987 Opinion 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 7Vie BmtHlion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspaper oper ated as a community service to Texas A&M and Bryan-Gollege 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. 77ie Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper for students in reporting, editing and photography classes within the Depart ment of Journalism. 7/ie 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, $114.82 per school year and $36.44 per full year. Advertising rates furnished on re quest. Our address: The Battalion, 218 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4 111. Second class postage paid at College Station, TX 77843. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to 7/ie Battalion, 216 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station I X 77843-41 11. Speaking Russian? In a speech before the Texas House Committee on State Affairs Monday, Dagoherto Barrera said Americans who speak foreign lan guages divide the nation and leave it open to infiltration by commu nists. Barrera’s statements expose the “Official English” movement for what it is — discrimination based on speech. Individuals who speak languages other than English may experi ence a language barrier in Texas. The purpose of programs such as bilingual education is to overcome these barriers. But narrow minded thinking such as Barrera’s does far more to divide this coun try than alternative languages. Barrera told the committee that “erosion of English and the rise of other languages in public life has divided citizens.” But such bla tant discrimination has done far more to divide citizens in the past and should have a higher priority for eradication than foreign lan guages. If the representative’s assertions are true and a common lan guage is the only quality uniting our states against communism, if then our democratic principles are useless as a unifying factor, our worries are far greater than what tongues our people are speaking in. Barrera has a point that many non-English speaking citizens use bilingual services as a crutch to avoid learning English. He is also cor rect in assuming that the state could save a lot of money if it printed official documents such as voting ballots and court procedures only in English. But Texas’ lust to save must not override the democratic rights of those citizens who are not yet fluent in English. How can Barrera’s proposal be anything but discrimination? It would mean that a citizen must be able to speak English before being able to read instructions on how to exercise many democratic free doms, such as the right to vote, or rights, such as proper legal proce dures guaranteed by law. Nowhere is it written that language is a prerequisite for being an American, nor should it he. . Where will the craze for “official” status end? Will the next step be to designate jCliristianity the “official” religion? Perhaps we could narrow the scope to Protestantism, or even Methodism. Will we them move on to designating “official” food, cars, clothes . . . Funny, it’s starting to sound a little like that communist infiltra tion Barrera is so afraid of. For the right price, book stores might even buy your used cai It’s that time of year again. It’s the time of year when birds sing happily in trees and kids can’t wait for school to let out, true enough. But it’s also that time of year when college students all over this fine na tion take their textbooks down to the local bookstores and give — some say sell — their texts back. You’re lucky if you get half of your original purchase price, hut in most cases, your books somehow depreciate more than 100 percent in just under three mouths. Mike Sullivan But what are you going to do when you’re required to buy a $40 text know ing it will be worth no more than half that price — and virtually nothing if a new edition comes out — at the end of the semester? You’ll buy. After several years of such financial abuse, I made some calls to book stores and publishers and got some answers — responses may be more accurate in some cases — to questions about buying and selling books. The first thing I wanted to know is why some publishing companies seem to come out with new editions so often. But I things about 1 learn some interfiE selling books back to Whatever you do, don’t Ixioks back at any time other than fis week. The stores will only pay wholesale for the books, because ■don’t know which bexsks willbeusd t he next semester. In other words,? get about $1.53 for a $25 bod course, it the hook isn’t goingtobei t he follow ing semester, or if it'sapa bac k. $ 1.53 will look like a good pna \V the Obviously, college students are a cap tive market for textbook stores. And it’s equally obvious that bookstore owners and textbook publishers realize this fact. News of the day is yesterday's news One morning, unable to sleep as I wrestled with the cosmic issues of our time, I rose at d a w n a n d went downstairs to wait for the newspa pers. I read five of them daily, and that morning I waited for the day to begin, as usual, life, an intrusion that pushed everything else aside. Because of them, I knew ev erything and nothing — what happened but sometimes not why. Richard Cohen with the slap of a newspaper hitting the porch. I opened the door and peered out. The car was coming. It slowed and an arm reached out for the toss. “War and Peace” hit the porch. I went to the office where, usually, more newspapers awaited me, but there were none. I looked for messages. There was one saying that my lunch with the staff director for the Senate Se lect Committee on the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit was canceled. There was an other from the director of an art mu seum. Would I like to attend a noon concert — the Bach B-Minor Mass? Yes, I would. “Hey!” I yelled to the delivery man. “What’s this?” He cut his engine, got out of the car and came up to the porch. “You Cohen?” he asked, consulting a sheet. I said I was. “It says you get ‘War and Peace.’ Then come the complete works of Faulkner. I have you down for ‘The Federalist Papers,’ the works of DeTocqueville, ‘The Castle’ by Franz Kafka and all of Trollope.” “But where’s the paper?” I asked. “There is no paper,” he said. “There won’t be any newspaper for a year. There won’t be any news for a year. The world is taking a breather, trying to as similate recent developments — AIDS, computers, new-wave music, compact discs. Star Wars, glasnost and the mad ness of the Iran-Iraq war. We need to pause, think, consider and then recon sider.” And this is how it started. 1 went to museums, and the world of art — a world that means so much to some peo ple — opened up to me. I studied music and turned my attention to religion. I read the major works of Judaism during which I had imaginary conversations with my grandfather, the Talmudic scholar turned plumbing-supply clerk. I studied Christianity and then turned my attention to Islam. In a while, I could read the Koran in Arabic and under stood why that language is so special, why it pervades the soul and is unsur passed in its poetry. kin, I rose at dawn and went down to the porch. The car pulled up, and an arm tossed something my way. It was the newspaper. “Hey, what’s this?” I yelled. The old man cut the engine and came up to the porch. “The year is over,” he sad. “The world has resumed. This is the first ol five newspapers today, two on Sunday, plus the usual magazines, including (here he made a face) People.” Excited, I looked at the headlines: war in the Middle East, a church-state issue before the Supreme Court, an interview with a surrogate mother named Hagar. “This isn’t new,” I exclaimed with my new found wisdom. The old man shrugged. “There’s new news and old news,” he said. ‘Without the present, there is no past. The works of today are the masterpieces of tomor row.” Fie smiled, descended the stairs and then turned back. “It’s all relative,” he said with a laugh. Then he got into his car and drove off while, form some where, a Bach violin piece, long lost, sweetly pierced the air‘ and then van ished. Copyright 1986, Washington Post Writers Group A local bookstore representative told me there could be a couple of reasons foi‘ this. She said the hooks actually may need to he updated, or the publishing company may lie trying to squeeze out the used-book competition. The bigger the used market is for a certain text, the smaller the market is for that text’s pub lisher. The solution: make the used books obsolete by publishing another edition and force students to buy new. A simple, yet lucrative, tactic. Fake a look inside the front cover of one of your texts — Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis (required text for Accounting 329), for example. There has been a new edition published for that book ev ery five years since 19()2. It’s very con siderate of the accounting world to keep such a regular pace for Prentice Hall, the hook’s publisher. Think about it, though. It seems that five years is just about long enough for a market to be come fully saturated with used hooks, making new books difficult, if not im possible, to sell. But arguing with publishers gets you nowhere. They’re in the driver’s seat. So I asked some local bookstore owners how they decide how much to mark up a book and how they decide how much to pay when buying books back. Of course, the bookstore owners said they must consider their overhead when marking up their merchandise. One store representative told me that to meet costs, they must sell high-priced Aggie paraphernalia — stickers, sweat ers, mugs, dog collars and cologne. But considering all the suckers who buy that junk at those prices, bookstore owners would he stupid not to capitalize on the inane. In essence, I got nowhere with the question about markup. hen f inals week does roll aroii K>okstores will start off payin| percent, or close to that,of vouron| puu base price — if the bookisinmu late, of course. As with commode however, the books become less valua toward the' end ol the week w stores are flooded with them. Theili to do is borrow your roommate’s!)! to study for your final, and sellvu hack on Monday, or sell your mate s if his is in better condition. How much do the bookstores up die used texts they buy back ft you? Ask them next semester. Bo member, they have to cover costs. Aggie stickers and seat warmersi make the payments on the Merced OK, BMW. But, as always, there is a betterw Student Government, here’s your chance. 1 called some of our burnt-oB buddies in Austin, and they’ve got mi tercsting program going t around the bookstore ripoffs.TheO sinner Affairs Committee of the util sity’s Student Association puttogeik student hook exchange on campus The exchange is a computerized of student’s names and the booisi want to sell or trade. It’s posted!t beginning of each semester and it dated daily. According to a studetin resentative, die exchange is usedl large percentage of the studentli' 1 and has been successful in helping dents get around the bookstore ream: racy. Hell, we’ve already copied th tower, why not steal a good idea? Mike Sulli van is a senior jourd major and Opinion Page Ei The Battalion. Every week, books hit my porch. I re read Shakespeare, and the language stunned me. I knocked off Proust, Dos- teovsky and all the Russian masters — just like that. I marveled again at Henry Roth’s “Call It Sleep,” consumed all of Shaw and Dickens, read “Ulysses” from the front (yes, yes) and then turned to the poets. My porch welcomed Yeats. The delivery man was old and bald ing and spoke with a German accent. He wore slacks, a baggy sweater and shoes with no socks. His face was wise and softly gentle, and a shy smile peeked from under a bushy mustache. Some- how\ you could tell he played the violin. I picked up my Tolstoy and went back into the house. The truth was I had not read the books the old man had mentioned — always wanted to, but never got to them. Newspapers and magazines always intervened. They were an insistent, clamoring part of my The masters informed me. Much of what the newspapers told me was new, turned out not to be. New issues about justice and morality turned out to be old. Gibon told me about empire, De Tocqueville about America, Madison about government, Sandburg about presidents, Nadezhda Mandelstam about tyranny, George Orwell about journalism, Picasso about lust, Beetho ven about daring, Freud about imagina tion and the Greek tragedies about hu man frailty. One morning, expecting some Push- Mail Call Big hearts EDITOR: My prayer is t hat the Aggies who donated their rags to a worthy cause make it big in the financial world aildnever have to ask for a dirty shirt sleeve in order to haveanyttof at all to wear. The article written by Melanie Perkins April 17 stated that the clothing drive sponsored by Omega Phi Alpha service sorority was an overwhelming success, which it was — particularly for those wishing to find a place to deposit their dirty, moldy rags. Some people are a disgrace shame mankind. if not to A&M, My sources have reported that many articles donated were not clothing, but rags. For example, in what way would a dirty sleeve torn from a shirt be of any use to someone needing clothing? As for the sorority sisters who sponsored the drive,)® 1 have the gratitude of those who can use the decent clothing, so please don’t become discouraged becauseof the thoughtless actions of a few juveniles in the area who still obviously mess their pants daily. Carlo Decano ’53 It is a cruel joke, both on the people who work very hard to make donated clothing decent for the needy and on the needy themselves. Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The e serves the right to edit letters for style and length, but will wahi’ every effortItH' tain the author’s intent. Each letter must be signed and must indutle tktH 1 '' tion, address and telephone n umber of the writer. Dr. V opme sentei Ky Kyle bright j guaran On placing year-oh about $ associat nance, alone is Func provich ganizat the All sees fit.