Page 2/The Battalion/Wednesday, April 22, 1987
Opinion
The Battalion
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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
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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.