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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 10, 1988)
Page 2/The Battalion/Wednesday, August 10, 1988 Opinion The secret of education rests in the individua We’re all fairly smart. The mean I.Q. at A&M is 20 points above aver age. The admis sion requirements are higher here than at a lot of other places. None of us has to be ashamed to say we graduated from A&M. When we Jill Webb leave, most of us will be bright young people who know theories and equa tions and facts. But because of the anti intellectual atmosphere, most of us will not be given a fair opportunity to be well educated. There are three important purposes of education that A&M does not ad equately provide for: 1) to challenge the beliefs, the values, stereotypes and the minds of the students, 2) to find out what is wrong with our society and come up with ways to fix it, 3) to turn out car ing, worthwhile, productive members of our society. Exploration is a key in edu cation. Not only exploration of the bot tom of the ocean, or of atoms and mole cules, but also the exploration of the human condition. We have many fine professors who have much to share about why we treat each other the way we do, about unfairness, justice, forms of courage, integrity, truth, other cul tures, other times, other religions and philosophies. But the atmosphere here does not encourage students to explore these areas. Our emphasis on tradition and stereotypes and the automatic re jection of anything but traditional va lues does not foster an atmosphere of discussion, but suppression. In college, “be cause my mamma said so,” or “be cause I was raised that way,” or “be cause my church believes it” are not good enough reasons for our beliefs or our be havior. Unless we challenge our be liefs and make ra tional decisions about them, they are not reasons at all, they are ex cuses not to think. If, after looking at all the opinions and evidence, we return to our original values, then that is fine. treatment o f women, hazing, the GSS and even the condition of our li brary are all exam ples of the Aggie desire to sink our heads deeper into the sand so all of the challenges will go away. How can we recognize the problems in our own society, when we ignore them at our own university? Finally, does A&M encourage people to be caring, pro ductive, worthwhile people in our so ciety? Male Aggies are encouraged to be “real” men. How ironic it is that not feel, who act instead of react, havior is frowned upon, but such ior is honest, healthy, and itencoui growth. It also encourages caring, productive members ofsocit Female Aggies do not have su p 0 n^ definite role. Having women studyi* lorn such a conservative, traditional sity causes some interal conflict, li! the atmospheric attitude istli 5 he’‘ woman can work as long as they I dinner on the table when the comes home. When women arefe and limited to such a role, theyals not encouraged to grow in anydiret they wish. When they are stifled way they waste their potential a come less productive or happy men of society. But to avoid looking and to discourage analysis is to say that our values will not hold up under scrutiny. It is to say that our values are worthless, but we hold on to them out of fear. Educated people can give reasons for the way they behave and believe. They have looked at the op tions, given it thought, and decided for themselves. Educated people can say, “I have decided that this is right because it is logical, compasionate, effective or re sponsible.” Uneducated people say “this is what I believe because I have not thought about it any other way.” glorify it, think that we are superior be cause of our uneducatedness. Ags don’t think, they believe. Those who do think are dismissed as minority “two percent ers.” Liberal Arts majors are laughed at even today. Studying other people’s ex periences, fears, strengths, hopes, and wisdom is seen as unnecessary. Such things confuse the uneducated, the nar row-minded. The attitude here discour ages even listening and discussing. Here at A&M we like the uneducated. We not only encourage it, we revel in it, We also have a strange way of prepar ing students to solve tbe problems our society faces. The atmosphere at A&M implies,“have a problem? Ignore it!” Scandles with the football team, the showing emotion is called “real.” A real man is a piece of ice cold granite, never bending under pressure, sharp, always ready with an answer, anticipating not listening, drunk with the boys, a gen tleman with the ladies, and a stud with the “chicks.” It seems to me it would be easier and more fun to just be yourself, but I’ve been here for almost four years, two years on campus, and from what I have seen, most men are discouraged from expressing anything that would make them unique. It certainly makes me appreciate those men who do not as pire to be John Wayne, who do care and We can clear the atmosphere.Vt become truly educated in even t; we only allowed discussion andenc aged growth and ideas. We art leaders in research and we haves wealth of materials and potential,: shame to forget the rest of thepurf of education. If we challenged ok lues and became thinking people believing people. If we could atk the flaws in ourselves and ours« and discover ways to remedy we produced individuals, notprocc “real” Aggies, we would be not world class, we would be the best. Jill Webb is a senior secondarytt tion major and columnist for The talion. These are a few of Loyd’s fav-o-right thangs Ya know, it’s that time again. Time to con- tem plate the last four years spent here, time to say goodbye to my friends (both of them), time to take that big step up to the Big Cesspool, and most of all, time to write that the Ovaltine in the real world. Yeah, I’ve had enough of it, too, so that’s why I’m going to do something a little bit dif ferent. ketchup. We tried to blow up a racquet- ball once, but we chickened out. We were just fish, you know. Loyd Brumfield obligatory garbage-filled goodbye col umn everyone here writes with just the perfect touch of hypocritical insincerity. Don’t think I’m tooting my own horn because what I write may very well be just as lame as the previous columns, but at least it will be original. I’ll be walking across that stage in a week and a half now, Lord willin,’ so I thought I’d take this opportunity to say a hearty “Good riddance!!!” to my fa vorite pet peeves here at A&M. I warn you, it won’t be pretty. But I digress. boys and Battalion staffers. I prefer my activities to be a little bit more cerebral, like constructing a hideous mask out of paper mache and scaring pizza guys with it. Gripe#5 — Red tape: You km ought to be a simple thing to havet take on your degree audit changed My years here have been fairly neato- keen, I guess, but I’m not leaving here in proper “Smiley-face Good Ag” fash ion, though. I’ve got a few gripes. Let’s start with . . . oh, yeah — Country Mu sic. Well, heh-heh-heh, I’m not gonna do You know what I’m talking about. It happens every semester at about this time. Teary-eyed staffers lament about saying goodbye to everything that moves in the B-CS Metroplex. Trust me, they don’t mean it! It’s just 20 inches or so of ramblimg trash from people too scared to wake up and smell Before you sigh disgustedly and mut ter “Scrooge!” under your breath, let me say there are a few things I’ll miss here — football games and my fresh man year, to name a few. Ah, yes, my freshman year — a time spent largely harassing obnoxious neighbors with a dog that didn’t exist named Mount Fuji and sitting around with the roommate blowing sundry objects up in the micro- wave. The list includes freezer pops, eggs, cockroaches and little packets of I didn’t even know who George Strait was until I arrived here on campus. I take that back, I did know who he was — I thought he was the Vice-President of the United States. Interesting anecdote that I probably won’t tell my grandkids but I’m telling you anyway #1:A couple of weeks into the fall semester of my freshman year, I was sleepily sitting in my seat getting re ady for my 8 a.m. history class when my friend Melanie (I forgot her last name, but she’ll appreciate the publicity) from Victoria came in and asked me how I spent my weekend. Mail Call Let the parking tradition live EDITOR: It has recently come to my attention that our “world class” university has found another way to show us just how much “class” it lacks. I am referring to the proposed change in parking policy. It seems that the Parking Transit Au thority, in another display of infinite wisdom, has decided to abolish the green lots and dole out red stickers to all on campus students, thereby en abling freshmen and sophomores access to the prized parking spots close to the dorms. This is an outrage. It is one of the rights of passage for a student, when becoming an upperclassman, to be awarded a coveted red sticker. It is tradi tion for underclassmen to make long treks out to the fish lot to get to their cars. I’ve paid for my red sticker with two years of hard work, and now I will have to fight with clueless freshmen for a spot that is rightfully mine! Dr. Mobley’s first action as the new president should be to right this terrible injus tice. This is one tradition that we cannot let die. Steve Dickerson ’90 Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editorial staff reserves the right to edit letters for style and length, but will make eveiy effort to maintain the author's intent. Each letter must be signed and must include the classification, address and telephone number of the writer. “Oh, I sat around and critiqued God zilla vs. The Sea Monster with the room mate. What’d you do?” I asked cu riously. “I saw George,” she replied. “George who?” “George Strait.” “Oh, no kidding? Who’s he?’ “What do you mean, ‘Who’s He? He’s God, that’s who!!!’ ” And, lo, I was severely castigated for being oblivious to someone who sings about chairs and how much he loves Amarillo. Or is that Abilene? Maybe it was Alice. Oh, well, personally I like my music to have a little more kick to it. Gripe #2 — Northgate: Count me out of the fan club for this one, gang. Me no likee spending hot, humid eve nings in ramshackle, smoke-filled toolsheds with a bunch of drunken cow- Gripe #3 — the drive up here:I hap pen to be from Beaumont, a sparkling city of roughly 118,000 located darn near exactly 150 miles southeast of here. The drive Lakes about two hours of fifty minutes on mostly two-way roads nearly all the way here. Trouble is, usually there’s a line of cars and trucks ahead of me going a col lective total of 45 miles an hour. You’ve seen’em on the road — pick-up trucks with bumper stickers that say either “KIKK’er,” or “If you ain’t Cowboy, you ain’t ****’’ (expletive deleted for the benefit of the home readers). To all those slowpokes out there I give a help ful driving tip: The Shoulder is Your Friend. Always remember that. Gripe #4 — roadworkds there some law in the city books that states every little bit of road construction must occur at the same time? It started simply enough with the expansion of the east side of University Drive. But then it grew to include the campus, and soon the Reed McDonald building was vir tually cut-off from the rest of the Uni versity. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not exactly Mr. Naive here. I realize it’s all a plot formulated by those hideous Regents to keep us pinkos from polluting your minds. But the construction didn’t stop there. It moved on to include the west side of University drive, slowing sum mer traffic down to a lethargic slither. And then Texas Avenue was repaved. By gosh, they’re even working on High way Six now! Is there no end to this madness? I tell you, things just haven’t been the same since they invented the Yu go. Gripe #4 — Math classes:! . . . no, I can’t do it. It’s just too traumatic for me. Any second now I could suffer a re lapse. All I wanted was to switch B.S.to because I’m an artsy kind of guy. pie, right? Well listen to this: I had! through the Spanish Inquisitionofi ern day paperwork to get it done stop — my adviser. Second stop- extremely helpful people in theW of Liberal Arts who go outoftheii to impress upon you just how mucin the stupid student, are inconveniec them, the watchdogs of academic tice. Next stop — Heaton Hall and pi the Good Lord that the fine folks type in the new information com because that’s how everythin! messed up in the first place. D with jp t< N ville Dep nior men L banl the in 1 the ge A Lew reas keu late for intc F : cial Adi tra, Fro goc ( ciei pos I fes: A& swe wa' Well, that should just about dot course, this is by no means an era live list of gripes but heck, War Peace is only a million pages contains just over 300 major characii i 1 left out a bunch — liketheO the library, the Reed McDonaldt ing (You think Heldenfels smellsk' keep expecting someone tosay,“Ro your sleeve, this won’t hurt a bit,’’* I enter this place), utility billsands but I don’t want you to get the# impression and think I do nothinc complain. So it’s time to move on. Time tot to my new job exactly one hour. ’ from home and make somethingc life. So the next time you readani hypocritical “I’m gonna miss] column, think of me. I’ll be roup miles away probably blowing th in the microwave and popping Tk} Temptation of Christ into the old' It’s like my good buddy Markal says: “Yep.” Loyd Brumfield is a God willin'X creek don’t rise August gradual less something goes wrong. L' wrong. Really. The Battalion (USPS 045 360) 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 Dir ector Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspa per operated as a community service to Texas A&M and Brvan-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 photographv classes within the Department of Journalism. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during Texas A&M regular semesters, except f'oi holiday and examination periods. Mail subscriptions tire SI7.44 per semester, $34.62 per "school vear and $36.44 per full vear. Advertising rates f urnished 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. BOS I'M ASTFR: Send address changes to The Battal ion. 216 Reed McDonald. Texas A&M University, Col- dege Station TX 77843-4111. BLOOM COUNTY by Berke Breatt W7T