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
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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.
Copyright 1988, Cowles Syndicate
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,
j The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper
cla&tndents in reporting, editing and photography
T7,jyithin the Department of Journalism.
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