Page 2/The Battalion/Thursday, July 7, 1988 Opinion It’s time for our Regents to abide by the law H Texas A&M is an institution of higher learning, but A&M’s Board of Regents has yet to learn some sim ple facts about working for the public. The Board is searching for a new president to take the place of The Board also has refused to follow the law and request an opinion from the Texas Attorney General in regard to any of The Battalion's requests — de spite the fact that the law clearly states the Board must request such an opinion within ten days. question must be answered by James B. Bond, A&M’s deputy chancellor for le gal and external affairs. Bond has not returned any of The Battalion's calls to his office. Richard Williams Dr. Frank Vandiver who is retiring in September. The Board has a list of se rious candidates for the position, and The Battalion is hunting for this list. The Board seems to be searching for ways to make sure the public that it’s working for does not get this informa tion. The Battalion has filed several re quests for the names of individuals the Board has interviewed. The Board has denied The Battalion’s requests. The Board knows The Battalion can’t take A&M to court over this issue. The Board also knows that by the time The Battalion’s request that the Attorney General look into the situation is ful filled the Board will have already de cided, in secret, the next president of A&M. One of the reasons the law was en acted was to keep public bodies from dealing under the table with issues like this one. I’m not going to charge the Board with dealing under the table, but I am going to question the Board as to why they feel the public does not have a right to know who the Board is seriously considering for the position of presi dent. Why the need to keep the public in the dark? Bill Presnal, the executive sec retary of the Board of Regents, simply says the Board feels the request does not fall under the provision of the Open Re cords Act. Why won’t the University follow the law and request an opinion from the At torney General? Presnal simply says the Every faculty memeber and student at A&M will be affected by the person picked to fill the position. But the Board has decided that the faculty and stu dents at A&M do not need to know what type of person the Board is seriously considering. The faculty and staff of A&M need to know before the decision is made whom is being seriously considered. The fac ulty and staff has a right to know if the Board is considering an individual whom is known to suppress the aca demic freedom of faculty and students. It is important to be able to voice such concerns before the decision is final. The Board has released a list of those who are “candidates” for the position. However, the list of 54 names that has been released includes the names of 18 people (over 25 percent) who have said they are not candidates for the position. The list also contains the names of two individuals who have said they did not know they were on the list until The Battalion informed them. I’m sure these people are really se rious candidates. The Board has said it will not compile a list of finalists for the position. Why? Because the Attorney General has al ready said such a list is subject to open records. Yet the Board has decided to inter view only certain candidates for the sition. Clearly the Board isnotcon? ering those it is not interviewing.I should mean that the list of candidj; should include only those that are candidates — not those who werenn seriously considered. The Board has clearly shown itij not intend to follow the law in re§ to open records. By this action Board has only added to the beliefil A&M will continue to fight longde; and decided, issues. A&M has continued to fightl dead battles in the courts moretl once. The University has spent t| sands of taxpayers’ dollars on lost, faulty, causes. It is time the Board t ides to grow up and follow thet A&M is not the big bully on thefc that doesn’t have to give a damn the law says. Richard Williams is a senior agricul ral journalism major and editor oil Battalion. Who needs a prix fixe around here anyway? While browsing through a restau rant directory, I suggested to the blonde that we might try a place that was newly listed. She asked if it was expensive and I said that it had a “prix fixe” dinner. “A what?” she said. Why, if you went into some restau rants in Arkansas or Tennessee and asked if they had a prix fixe dinner — pronouncing it the way it is spelled — it’s likely that the waiter would bellow, “ya’ low-down preevert,” and hit you with a catfish. Mike Royko The Chicago newspaper where I work is no exception, I’m sorry to say. We have prix fixes scattered all throught our restaurant listings. I asked a few copy editors, who are experts in such matters, why we don’t just say “fixed price.” They weren’t sure. I repeated, “prix fixe.” “How is it spelled?’’ I spelled it alou<4 and again said: “prix fixe.” “You’re not pronouncing it correct ly,” she said. Why not? I’m pronouncing it exactly the way it’s spelled. One of them said that he thought we did it when reviewing French restau rants. If so, we’re being inconsistent. We may even be discriminating. For example, when we list a German restaurant, we don’t say “fester preis,” which is German for fixed price. “No, no. If you say it that way it sounds, well, it sounds obscene.’ I said it again: prix fixe, the way it is spelled. And she may be right. It did sound like it might be a phrase describ ing some sort of male surgical proce dure. Fester preis. It has a pleasant, homey ring. It sounds like the name of some body who lives deep in the Ozarks. “Howdy, I’m Fester Preis and this here is my brother Lester Preis and my uncle Chester Preis.” “The proper pronunciation,” the blonde said, flouting her refined up bringing, “is pree feeks.” Then why isn’t it spelled pree feeks? “Because it is French. And in French, pree feeks is spelled prix fixe.” In our listings for Chinese restau rants, we don’t write “Gu din jia ge,” which I was told by a Chinese acquaint ance means fixed price. Of course, he might have been pulling my leg. For all I know, it means: “The person who wrote this column is a geek.” But I’ll take his word for it. How stupid of me. I had forgot that the first rule of the French language is that almost nothing is pronounced the way it’s spelled. When the French in vented their language, they rigged it that way just to make the rest of us feel inferior. They also thought that if they had a language that was almost impossi ble to learn, the Germans might not in vade them. I was going to include the Greek ver sion of “fixed price,” but Sam Sianis, who owns Billy Goat’s tavern, said: “Feex price? You crazy? In Greek joints, we no got feex price. We charge what we can get.” Another copy editor told me that “prix fixe” is used so widely that it has become the accepted, common meaning for “fixed price.” “Pree feeks,” the blonde said. “It sim ple means fixed price.” I already knew that much, the ques tion is, why do newspaper and magazine restaurant listings in the United States, where most of us speak one form of En glish or another, insist on using “prix fixe,” which is pronounced “pree feeks,” and means “fixed price” instead of ‘fixed price,” which means “fixed pri- ’ and is pronounced “fixed price.” Amrujess is that the vast majority of nounce {do not know how to pro- don’t even , fixe. And a great many ' what it means. That didn’t make sense to me, either. I’ve never picked up the financial pages and read a story that said: “Three steel companies have been ac cused by the antitrust division of the Justice Department of prix fixeing. The companies engaged in the fixe, sources say, drive up the prix of steel.” Years ago, when Chicago was strictly a meat-and-potatoes town, we didn’t have such linguistic problems. I suppose that as we became more so phisticated, this was the prix we paid. Copyright 1988, Tribune Media Services, Inc. The Battai. (USPS 045 360) n Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Richard Williams, Editor Sue Krenek, Managing Editor Mark Nair, Opinion Page Editor Curtis Culberson, City Editor Becky Weisenfels, Cindy Milton. News Editors Anthony Wilson, Sports Editor Jay Janner, Art Director t UWE.WE. UDOKSOFTWS.liaK TV Colie the v for tl P ZOS Si p.m. Mooi “It notif nentl M< was r the ci “T lords A co it, be coulc Ga Savin Cent closir “V “We B The trouble with Hanoi Jane A woman and a man were arguing about Jane Fonda. She said, “Jane Fonda was just doing what she be- lieved was the right thing to do. The war was wrong and if it hadn’t been for all the protestors it might have gone 1 wealthy star of movies. This aerobics queen. And now, she says she wants to apol ogize for what she did during the Viet nam war. She said she was sorry. She said she used bad judgment. She said she wall have to live with her mistakes. He was beaten and otherwise i lured, lie was a prisoner for four yd before his family learned he w dead. He remained a prisonerofi for over seven years. He was releasedl the North Vietnamese in Marctif 1973. Lewis Grizzard on even longer and cost even more liv es.” He said, “The protestors in the streets were one thing; Jane Fonda was an other. “She was hosted by our enemy. She was photographed with an enemy air craft gun. She broadcast on our enemy’s radio to American servicemen. She called them ‘warcriminals.’ “Who knows how much her appear ance in Hanoi strengthened the will of our enemy, and how much her appear ance broke the will of our men? “She should have been tried for trea son.” Did the fact she can’t film a new movie in several New England towns, because of the protests against her, have anything to do with this sudden apol ogy? I thought about a friend of mine, Or son C. Swindle, when 1 read of Hanoi Jane’s turnaround. Orson Swindle is assistant secretary for economic development in the De partment of Commerce in Washington. After he graduated from Georgia Tech, Orson went into the Marine Corps and became a pilot. He was shipped out to Vietnam in 1965. He finished his tour of duty and was ready to go home, but he volun teered for one last flight. Seven years. Think of it. I called Orson in Washington wha read Hanoi Jane’s comments. I was surprised at anything he said. “I have a lot of resentment tows her,” he began. “She is despicaSt When I was in prison I heard heraq ities and I heard her tapes. “Her brainwashed comments 4 absurd and she continues to be rep sive to me. 1 think she apologized! cause she’s trying to go into thosecd munities that have protested her, and they should protest.^ should be an unwelcome person i! where she goes.’ i|| If Hanoi Jane wants to apologia somebody, she ought to go to that* Washington and get down on! 1 ■ “Hanoi Jane,” they called her, this That was November 1966. He was shot down and taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese. knees and beg forgiveness from tin names engraved upon it. Only then might she have a sped credibility. 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