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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 3, 1988)
Page 2/The Battalion/Thursday, March 3, 1988 Opinion Oh, what to do about those nagging hormones I want out. I want out of this school, out of this town, even out of this country. I’ve been trapped by a meaningless rou tine of school and work, school and work mediocre weekend, school and work, school and work . . . Divorce rates show that restlessness and boredom run rampant in mar riages. And some new research has found biological contributors to “wan dering eyes.” Tracy Staton Because the human bond originally evolved to last only long enough to raise a child through infancy, marriages are most likely to unravel after three or four years, an anthropologist recently found. bring us spring fever. When the sun starts to linger above the horizon, testos terone levels in both men and women increase. This hormone controls sexual desire, .so guess what comes next? Ram pant crushes and spring flings. And you thought the reason you wanted to go out into the sunshine was to get a tan. Wrong. Your hormones took you to the beach, not your desire for relaxation. You know what I mean. It happens all the time. You’re bored. You’re rest less. You can't concentrate. You feel an intense need to hop on a plane to Paris and station yourself at a sidewalk cafe with a bottle of chablis. Or to sail to a de sert island and commune with the palm trees. Helen E. Fisher of the American Mu seum of Natural History says this phe nomenon could explain our nagging restlessness during long relationships. And she found that although divorce rates vary from culture to culture, there is always a “divorce peak” between the third and fourth year. But restlessness goes beyond relationships. It can invade every aspect of life. When you least expect it, bore dom numbs your motivation. Tomor row’s test becomes insignificant; going to class seems pointless. And that re search paper due next week? Write it the night before— there’s better things to do now. i he overwhelming desire for change hits everyone, often'at the most inconve nient times. It strikes without warning. It destroys all good intentions and re places them with irresponsible flights of fancy. And it can nullify the best-laid plans or strain the most stable relatonships. Studies of brain chemistry have at tributed this restlessness to nagging hor mones. These nasty culprits cause in tense emotional bonding that lasts for one to three years. But the brain be comes numb to this hormonal influence, and WHAMMO! Restlessness strikes again. Hormones also are the villains that Instead of being responsible and sticking to the routine you so faithfully adhered to a month ago, you stare out the window and daydream. Your capac ity to concentrate is practically nil. In the shower, you wash your hair twice be cause you didn’t remember you sham pooed it the first time. So what’s a formerly serious student to do? Escape to the lake and throw what’s left of ambition into the water? Or drown the dregs of motivation in a pitcher of beer? I’ve tried both of these — Neither of them work. My new plan is to escape College Station for the weekend. But I don’t think that will be effective either. What I really need is a vacation in an other country. I need to be somewhere — by myself— where no one speaks En glish. Then maybe I’d appreciate listen ing to my professors in class. At least I can understand what they’re saying. This yen to escape scares me. I grad uate in May, and I hope to have a full time job soon afterwards. What will I do when I have to work EVERY DAY? When I can’t leave town for the week end because 1 have a project due on Monday? Will I get bored with my job after six months? And if I do, what’s the alternative? I’ve read several articles lately that outline techniques for “job-hopping,” and I’ve studied these recommenda tions carefully. It seems that there’s an epidemic of job boredom. Women have changed from teachers to advertising wi ro' wt ug< executives, from bankers to rug-weav ers. And the restlessness virus isn’ specific. Thirty-year-olds, forty-year olds — supposedly mature adults —art giving up stable employment to follow whim. Help! It seems that all of us wi struck repeatedly by bouts of boredon Restlessness isn’t cured when we grad uate, or when we marry, or even wire we have children. It will always be ing in the shadows, ready to pounct There’s no way to prevent it, and now to stop it once it starts. We’ve got to learn to live with it. Ea joy it, even. Dissatisfaction with a du! routine can lead us to explore arei we’ve previously disregarded. Ortodir cover new things about ouroldjobsor C01 old relationships. So I’m going to medicate my restle sness with a dose of visiting old friendi and opening myself to new possibilitier A weekend journey to a new plat wouldn’t hurt, either. I plan to worl and go to school sometime. I promise. de Tracy Staton is a senior journalism m jor, a staff writer and a columnist k The Battalion. (501 The Gibbering Gipper is babbling once more Did you catch the Gipper’s act the other night? No? Too bad, the Great Commu nicator was in top form. Mr. Reagan looked hale and vigorous and com pletely in com- mand at his press conference Wednesday. He did talk gibberish and nonsense, of course, but you can’t have everything. Oh, you don’t believe he talked gibberish? Listen to him as he took one more shot at explaining why the arms- for-hostage swap with Iran wasn’t an arms-for-hostage swap: “. . . I think it’s time for me to point out what the opposition was based on of anyone who did oppose. Particularly, it’s been revealed that Secretary (Caspar) Weinberger and George Shultz both ob jected. They did not object the idea of, that we were trading arms for hostages. Their objection, they knew what we were trying to do . . . Their objection was, what we had done, we’d gotten this request and, in dealing with it, in this conversation with these private individ uals, we pointed out our feelings about terrorism and so forth. They agreed with us, and the thing was that they, the Hezbollah as we know, is philosophically attuned to Iran. The idea was that they could perhaps influence the Hezbollah to give up some of our hostages and, in deed, as the talks went on, they did . . . We weren’t dealing with the kidnappers at all, and this was what the whole situa tion was. But it turned out that George and Cap and those who had doubts were right in that, when it did become known by way of a henchman of the ayatollah, then everyone just automat ically said that, and to this day are say ing, it was arms for hostages.” Thank you Mr. President. That cer tainly clears up any doubts I might have had about the matter. More relevant than the gibberish, however (for who among us had not spoken gibberish), was the nonsense. Asked about Israel’s use of force to sup press the riots in occupied Gaza and the West Bank, Mr. Reagan said: “Well, we have had, it’s a little diffi cult for me because there are some things that I shouldn’t be saying, but we have had intimations that there have been certain people suspected of being terrorists, outsiders coming in, not only with weapons but stirring up and en couraging the trouble in those areas. Now that isn’t something you can go out and say we absolutely know, but cer tainly the violence is both ways.” Does the sound familiar? Isn’t that what George Wallace and his ilk said back in the ’60s when the blacks of the south began to fight for their constitu tional rights? It was the work of “outside agitators,” always. That’s what the Sovi ets are saying about Afghanistan. It’s al ways the work of outside agitators. It’s not. As a matter of fact, the day following the press conference the pres ident’s men said as much, trying to cover up for the old man. There may be outside agitators in the Middle East, as there were in the American south, but the real reason for the turmoil is inside agitation. The Palestinians feel they are an oppressed people denied their rights and their human dignity by an occupy ing force. They riot out of a sense of desperation, because they have so little left to lose, not because someone has given them a pamphlet. To anyone who cares for the future of Israel, it is a tragic situation. Shoot ings, beatings, kangaroo trials, the bury ing alive of human beings; Israel’s honor is being spared nothing. That a nation born of such suffering should now become the creature of its night mares is beyond irony. Israeli hard-liners argue that no such thing is happening, of course. The Is raeli Army sent its chief psychologist to find out what the suppression of the ri ots has done to its troops. Not much, according to the psychologist, Col. Sh- lomo Dover. “This activity is not affecting the mo rale of the units in general,” he said. “I think we must be concerned about it. But to this point, I do not see any bruta lization of soldiers I see exceptions, but it is not the norm.” He added that the solderes feel they’re being “fair” to the Palestinians. Right. And we won the war in Viet nam. When Israeli Defense Minister Yitz hak Rabin visited the troops in the occu pied zones recently, he was told by a sol dier, in a jocular way, “We use the clubs so much that they are breaking.” Rabin laughed and replied, “You should use more solid ones.” The occupation is not only brutaliz ing Israel’s soldiers, it’s brutalizing its politicians. The last thing Israel needs now is to have its self-delusions reinforced by the President of the United States. The next time they ask Mr. Reagan about the is sue, he should lapse into gibberish. He does less harm that way. Copyright 1987, Tribune Media Services, Inc. Donald Kaul Mail Call The S.A.P.S. speak out EDITOR: Miss Couvillon: I would like to congratulate you on your article “It is not easy to escape the Aggie Song From Hell,” that ap peared in the Feb. 25 issue of The Battalion. I also find the song “Texas Aggie Girls” to be repulsive and in bad taste. In fact, I believe that any song that may be considered offensive or prejudicial toward ANY group of people is morally objectionable. That is why I am proud to be the founder and president of Students Against Preju dicial Songs (S.A.P.S.). My fellow S.A.P.S. and I feel that the time has come to put an end to the injustices suffered by the many groups of people who are the subjects of insulting and degrading ly rics. You will be happy to know that we added “Texas Ag gie Girls” to our list of over 1 1,000 songs that we feel should be banned from radio broadcasting. The list, which grows constantly, is sent to hundreds of radio stations across the nation with the suggestion that these songs should not be played. Those radio stations that refuse our request are placed on a list of organizations en gaged in what we feel are “anti-American” activities. These lists are then mailed to all of the businesses currently ad vertising through these radio stations. The results are quite impressive. However, our organization still has a long way to go be fore final victory can be achieved. But with people like you on our side, there is no way that we can possibly fail. We only hope that you will continue to write more arti cles on this much overlooked problem in our society. Thank you very much. Patrick Allen Quevedo Green ’88 Rape is a reality at A&M EDITOR: At our dorm floor meeting, the RA stressed the use of the Guard Room and Aston Hall escort services. She j pointed out that although students tend to think A&Misa J safe campus, the reality is that A&M is ranked number one among Texas universities for its crime rate. A girl was just j recently raped outside her dorm, the RA said. I have no doubt that rapes occur on campus. But why do we never hear about them? We only occasionally hear of one happening on campus. In the three years I’ve been at A&M, I’ve only heard infrequent rumors of rapeshav ing occurred — never facts. If students knew for certain that rapes do occur on campus and saw the facts on when and where the assaults happened, then of course they’d be more cautious.When confronted with the actual facts and statistics, students could no longer claim that A&M is such a safe campus. It would seem that in being protected from these ugly crimes, we are encouraging more of the same crimes. Who is really being protected — the student or the potential rapist? Karen A. Owens ’89 Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editorial staff re serves the right to edit letters for style and length, but will make every effort to maintain the author’s intent. Each letter must be signed and must include the das- sification, address and telephone number of the writer. 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 77843-4 111. / BLOOM COUNTY CR/5/5, &/fi/KCey/ h IVAKB Uf, 00V.'' mve kvpj ovr of MX/enes ' voc/we eeconm too MKnjei? 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