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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 26, 1988)
Page 2/The Battalion/Tuesday, January 26, 1988 The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Sue Krenek, Editor Daniel A. LaBry, Managing Editor Mark Nair, Opinion Page Editor Amy Couvillon, City Editor Robbyn L. Lister and Becky Weisenfels, News Editors Loyd Brumfield, Sports Editor Sam B. Myers, Photo Editor Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspa per operated as a community service to Texas A&M and Bryan-College Station. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the editorial board or the author, and do not necessarily rep resent the opinions of Texas A&M administrators, fac ulty or the Board of Regents. The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper for students in reporting, editing and photography classes within the Department 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 request. Our address: The Battalion, 230 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-1 111. Second class postage paid at College Station, TX 77843. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Battal ion, 216 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, Col lege Station TX 77843-411 1. Academic farce The Board of Regents on Sunday granted Jackie Sherrill the ti tle of Professor of Athletics with tenure. How idiotic. Professorships, especially those with tenure, are not tokens that the Board of Regents can hand out in appreciation of a football team, no matter how many Cotton Bowls or Southwest 1 Conference Championships the team may have won. Sherrill’s accomplishments are deserving of recognition — but not in a way that makes a farce of academia. Faculty members are, as they should be, outraged. But they may soon be able to console themselves: At the rate it’s going, the Board of Regents should be giving the faculty Cotton Bowl rings any day now. Honor alien to the An open search Texas A&M’s Board of Regents is to be commended for giv ing faculty and students a voice in choosing the University’s new president, but those appointed could find their role little more than symbolic. The regents named student body president Mason Hogan, agricultural engineering Department Head Edward A. Hiler, management Professor Don Hellriegel, Speaker of the Faculty Senate C. Richard Shumway and College of Liberal Arts Dean Daniel Fallon to the search advisory committee. That group will work with the search committee to recommend suitable candi dates to system Chancellor Perry Adkisson. Adkisson then will narrow down the list, submitting a re vised version to the Board for its consideration. Faculty and stu dent representation in this process is welcome, but it will be all too easy for their voices to get lost in the shuffle. During the regents’ last search, their reluctance to release the names of candidates and finalists led to a lawsuit. This time around, the Board says it will be open about releasing the names. Let’s hope the openness extends to serious consideration of all views — not just the administration’s — in picking a presi dent. — The Battalion Editorial Board My Russian prose class just fin ished a short story titled “The Sta- tionmaster” by the great Russian poet Alexander Push kin. In the story, a young cavalry offi- cer traveling across Russia to St. Petersburg stops at a way station ■ by a peasant Brian Frederick and his beautiful daughter. As one might expect, the hus sar falls in love with the daughter. about our reputations, having been taught to do what pleases us without be ing constrained by the opinions of oth ers. Holding all things to be relative, we have no standards of what is right, just and true. Virtue is a dead concept to us, and few care what the Romans thought. Yet we Aggies have something called the Aggie Code of Honor. Composed in the days before honor’s demise, the Code is largely ignored today. Only when someone’s backpack or senior ring disappears is the Code invoked (with a proffered reward, of course) to little ef fect. be cl more con: Seeing that the father is possessive of his daughter, the hussar realizes that the father will never willingly give up the girl. So he carries her off to St. Peters burg and installs her in her own quar ters until he can marry her. The story ends happily for the couple, contrary to every expectation of the reader. Still, the Code’s words remain to prick our consciences. “Aggies do not lie, cheat or steal, and will not tolerate those who do.” The Code establishes a standard for Aggies to live by and de fines the virtues that Aggies particularly value. During class discussion of the story, one classmate could not conceive that the hussar had not violated the girl, see ing he had ample opportunity to do so. Yet this was no ordinary hussar. That his noble treatment of the girl he loved should mystify my classmate is not sur prising, for he was governed by a con cept largely alien to the 20th century mind — the notion of honor. The latest calculations about the year 2000 Honor is one’s reputation. It is a sense of what is right, just and true. Honor serves as a powerful force to govern a man’s actions. In Shake speare’s “Richard II,” the Duke of Nor folk calls honor “The purest treasure mortal times afford.” He goes on to say, “Mine honor is my life . . . take honor from me, and my life is done.” Such a man would rather die than lose his honor by compromising his principles. If we credit Pushkin’s young hussar with a measure of this honor, his actions may become a little less incomprehensible to our minds. ■ fori| Ever since the 1980’s began. I’ve been counting down to the new century. Accordi ng to my latest calcula tions, the year 2000 should be here in slightly less than 12 more years. I don’t know i Lewis Grizzard about anybody else, but I am glad I’ve got a shot at living to see a turn of the century. According to further calculations, there have only been 19 of those so far. Not everybody gets a chance to witness such a momentous occasion. If I make it to 2000, I’ll be 53. That’s not nearly as old as I once thought it was. I might still have enough left in me by then to throw a giant Turn-of-the- Century party at my condo on the moon, where some developer no doubt will have built a golf course. I’ve also been considering what prob lems we might encounter when the new century arrives. I can’t think of how we’re going to say “2000” in regard, say, to the World Se ries. This year we will say, “Welcome to the 1988 World Series.” Somehow, however, I can’t come to grips with “Welcome to the 2000 World Series.” It seems awkward and cumbersome to say that, and the only other time there was such a problem was in the year 1000, when there was no baseball. And think about checks. All our lives, we would have written checks with the little “19” up where you fill in the year inn which you are writing the check. Twelve years from now, you’ll pull out a check and there will be a little “20” up ther in the corner. Then, again, there probably won’t be any checks by the year 2000. You’ll have your own computer that is hooked into the bank and you’ll sim ply punch in the amount of your with drawal and the bank will put your money in a tube that leads directly to your house. The only real problem will be learn ing to count in yen. Think of the state of things by the year 2000. • Somebody will have figured out by then how to make a commercial airliner go 5,000 miles per hour. Of course, it will still take 45 minutes to get the plane from its gate to its takeoff position. • It will have been determined that heavy exercise, like jogging and aero bics, causes flat feet, hepatitis, and acne. • The Wall Street Journal will have run a photo on page one; and USA To day will have printed an article with more than 11 sentences — three com- Honor is any particular virtue or virtues that we value highly. The possessor of honor scrupulously observes these vir tues, and this distinguishes him from his fellows. In Latin, honor also means a public office (oh, that it were so today!). Very conscious of a man’s virtue, the Romans of the early Republic sought only the men of the highest character to hold public office. These definitions may be too esoteric for our enlightened 20th century minds. We generally do not much ca e Even so, honor remains an archaic word to most of us. I suppose our pro fessed egalitarianism compels us to sur render honor’s distinctions so we may all live equally base lives. For are we not mere animals evolved from the same slime? And have we not declared any God dead who might have called us to rise above animal instinct? Man’s broth erhood has no place for some to claim moral distinction from the rest, no room for honor. But we have not always been strang ers to honor. There was a time when a man’s spoken word and a hai sealed a contract. Honor stood the parties to see the contract If a man said “I will . . .,” he did, less of any unforeseen cost. Today, we employ expensivelai to release us from written com bearing our signatures. Few of us sider the words “I will . . .” to value. How many times have we friend, “I’ll meet you at 5:00,"oi arrive at 5:30 or not show at all our friends are worth ation than that. Not only do we lack the honor site to keep simple commitmenl alone major promises (marriager we are so base as to depreciate oui demic achievements by cheating, count myself fortunate to know honorable individuals who are sal only with real accomplishment, some reason they fail to study they still go and take their lumps, geously refusing to resort to sheets or their neighbor’s paper such is honor. I have another acquaintance maintains that there is not a man who, given an appropriate opporti would decline to have his way m beautiful woman. My acquaint would consign Pushkin’s honorable! sar to the realm of the imaginary, voreed from modern reality. Grai such men may be rare, but they are! yet extinct. In this enlightened age whensti governments sponsor cheating ness weeks and our politicians i platitudes to the character they honor seems hopelessly anachroi But perhaps, buried somewhere inside us, there remains a shrd honor yearning to find express When it does, noble men such as kin’s hussar will no longer mystifyus| Brian Frederick is a senior history^ Russian major and a columnist for Battalion. eing lung a |ig bre. Beanuf Rod i irned lotel a Sunday oss wa “He houldr feese, \ pance i iree m “He inore,” jielping Ihouldr Marti Jiance fired bi cleanup lowed u I a»f Mail Call Where’s our Aggie honor? EDITOR: someone had picked it up by mistake and would soonrtl turn it. However, another girl’s bag was also missing. Tj cases of mistaken identity in less than twenty minutes? What has happened to the great Aggie Code of Honor, ‘Aggies don’t lie, cheat or steal?” One of my best friends left her backpack in the Commons along with all the other briefcases, books, and backpacks. Hers was stolen! Who ever took this bag not only took everything inside but also some respect for fellow Ags. Why did they choose hers from all the rest? Was it because it looked “fully loaded”? Now my friend has to buy her books again and replace ev erything else that was stolen. Whoever took those two bags listen up. You have beet too great an expense, both in money and respect. If f remain an Aggie, shape up. You are causing us all to I our great reputation. Sharia Richards ’91 Up until today, my friend trusted her fellow Ags. Even when she discovered her bag was missing, she believed Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editorial sic serves the right to edit letters for style and length, but will make every effi maintain the author’s intent. Each letter must be signed and must include iht^ I sification, address and telephone number of the writer. pound. • Dentists will have figured out how to fill your teeth using a laser beam rather a drill. It will cost 27 times more to have a tooth filled, nullifying any loss of pain. • McDonald’s will be selling goat sandwiches. • Everybody will have seen every ep isode of“M*A*S*H” 600 times. • The federal deficit will be so large by then we will have to sell off North Dakota, Montana, and that silly-looking top part of Idaho to the Canadians. • Dogs will be able to talk. They will say, “I’ve always enjoyed AIpo but it gives me gas.” • Elvis will be dead. • So will the Atlanta Falcons. BLOOM COUNTY by Berke Breatl M Copyright 1987, Cowles Syndicate FROM POftnCAL reRsrecrive, 003 POte 5IMFC.Y CAN'THwe MS CAKE ANP EAT IT, TOO. \-Zts TtfEKF-? A IFFY POLITICAL INOIOHT ANP 1 PIPN'T MUX MY MFTFFFOP/ P/P IT MEET YO(/P FPPPOVFL TX \ NOT REALLY. THE PHRASE (5 MEANINGLESS. IF YOU HAVE YOUR CAKE, YOU CAN 5T/LL EAT /T IT'S A PEAP CLICHE. / ANP THAT'S HECK, THL IN HOLE AIN'T NO KTT ANP 5KIN 0TT CAEOOUE. MY Pi ! STIFF NO UPPER LIP