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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 10, 1989)
i The Battalion OPINION Friday, March 10,1989 Proud of pageant Mail Call — Get involved EDITOR: EDITOR: This is in response to Mr. Wilson’s column concerning the Miss Texas A&M University Scholarship Pageant. I was a contestant in the pageant and was awarded first runner-up. I am very proud of my accomplishment. I also am very proud of Amy Hopkins, Miss TAMU 1989, and the other wonderful runners-up and contestants. Mr. Wilson, did you attend the Miss TAMU pageant? Did you fully research its background before you wrote your very insulting article? I don’t think so. If you had attended the Miss TAMU Scholarship Pageant, you would have been entertained by 18 talented, intelligent, and yes, beautiful hidies. You would have discovered that of each contestant’s total score, the swimsuit competition, which you so heavily criticized, is worth only 16.66 percent. You also wpuld have discovered that Miss TAMU is not just a hand-waver at the Cotton Bowl Parade. She has the honor of representing our University at the Miss Texas Scholarship Pageant and possibly a chance to represent out state in the Miss America Pageant. So check your facts and open your narrow mind to new possibilities. I find your naivety and dogmatism much more insulting and abhorring than wearing a swimsuit. Rhonda Horn ’91 I saw a commercial recently that gave me hope. It was Whoopi Goldberg talking about how to beat apathy. She asked the people of America to give five hours a week to a cause that we care for — righteous words! Her plan instilled in me strength to finish making the final flyer for Medicine Tribe’s war aginst apathy. Here are some of the words I typed: Apathy is a lack of caring. But not just that — it’s a lack of doing. If you care about something but never act as you do, your care means nothing. If you believe in something but do not act on your beliefs, you believe in nothing. Let’s end apathy. What followed that was a listing of local, national and international organizations committed to helping people and our environment. Addresses and phone numbers were given. I hope students copy down the information about the organizations that work towards their beliefs. I hope we Aggies can vanquish our apa thy. Irwin Tang ’92 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 every effort to maintain the author’s intent. Each letter must be signed and must include the classification, address and telephone number of the writer. Mom, Dad, I’m moving back in The way it looks right now, my par ents will have a little while to get to know me again after graduation — since it doesn’t look like I will have a job. I finally get the pigskin and I can’t even bring home the bacon. Sad. I did apply for some internships, and I have gotten some replies. Can you guess what they said, boys and girls? Can you say “rejection”? It got worse yesterday when I re ceived a letter from a newspaper in At lanta telling me they could not give me a job. That’s fine, but I didn’t even apply for a job with them. I am getting re jected for jobs I never even applied for. Now that’s bad. I did find out, however, that a friend of mine, Leslie, got rejected from this Atlanta paper, too — and she didn’t ap ply for a job, either. I think this is really a case of a com pany with tons of rejection letters and no one to send them to. There is proba bly a mailing list circulating with the names of “People to Reject” on it, and my name is on it. So now when compa nies print out too many rejection slips, they can just send one to me. I don’t mind, though — it’s good practice. The real rejection letters (I received two so far) are about the same: “We are sorry that we cannot offer you a job at this time. There were many qualified applicants ...” Need I say more? But then, do I really want to work for a company that can’t come up with a more original weed-out letter? I think not. Of course, I’m sure it would be a different matter if they had offered me a job instead. I don’t mind not getting thejobs now, but I know that if I get turned down enough it could start to bother me. However, I see it as my duty to keep a cheerful personality for my parents when I return to the nest as a jobless bum. The strange thing is that I always promised myself that I would never go back home after I graduated — 1 would make it on my own and that was that. Funny thing about those days was Becky Weisenfels Editor they had nothing to do with realin Reality is realizing someone hastopai the rent. Reality is realizing you havt gotten accustomed to simple things lilt food and shelter. I always took for granted that 1 would have a job when I graduated. Itwasjua part of the plan that I have always heard from my parents from day one. Yougo to school, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, win a Nobel Prize have a town named after you, retire and visit small European countries wit): weird names. (Of course, not everyont goes in that order.) It took me a few months to accepts fact that 1 may have no choice but to go back home and figure out what I wan; to do. I rationalized that as longasi isn’t permanent, it’s OK. What is really going to be hardii moving back home for those few week and not reverting back to my grade school self. It always happens. I keepmi room clean at college — at home mi room is destroyed five minutes after! walk in the door. I wash my own clothe here — at home I get a mental blod when I try to figure out where thelaun dry room is. I just can’t stay at home too longorl will forget everything I have learnedat college. I’m sure my parents will beg and plead for me to stay and make their lives just a little more fun and exdting but I will have to say no and instei, make my merry way-pn the roadtosut- cess. I guess everyone goes through tk out-o’-work blues (if you didn’t, I don! want to hear it). So I’ll sit and wait,wail and sit, until a job comes along. Or until my parents pay me to get out of then house, whichever comes first. Becky Weisenfels is a seniorjouma lism major and editor of The Battalion, People’s concepts of rights often are mistaken “Sneaky inconsistency keeps me up at night,” Binkley said in a Bloom County cartoon of a few years ago. And al though I do not agree with the majority of the views of Berke Breathed or his fictitious leftist Meadow Party, I find myself in complete harmony on this point. And in no situation is inconsistency more glaring than in a discussion about “rights.” No concept is more hallowed in our nation, and I think none is more misunderstood. Perhaps it is because rights are by nature close to the heart of each of us, and we have difficulty objec tively seeing things that are in close proximity. The inconsistent arguments that re sult are invalid and a waste of time and effort. Yet they are constantly voiced by people on both sides of every issue un der the sun. As best as I can figure, there are a few underlying problems with most difficul ties over the concept of rights. I am con vinced that sincere people who want the truth can come to it. But it involves an open-minded reassessment of all pre conceived notions, which most people cannot seem to manage. I like to think that I can. So if one of Hal Hammons you out there disagrees with a point or an application, I would appreciate the opportunity of discussing it with you, with the understanding that both of us want, not to prove a point, but to under stand the world better. The simplest of the problems is a mis understanding of the right itself. The best example of this that I can think of is the issue of gun control —just about the only stance of any leftist slant that I find myself taking. The standard argument defending the home ownership of handguns fo cuses on the Second Amendment to the Constitution — a single sentence that does not even mention guns, much less handguns. It says the population needs a strong militia ready to defend the country in the case of a surprise inva sion. Today that function is served by the National Guard. The idea of a house-to- house muster of soldiers to ward off the Communist hordes landing on our beaches is somewhat ludicrous. People want handguns as a defense against do mestic enemies — muggers, robbers, etc. Practically everyone admits that. Therefore the Second Amendment ar gument doesn’t apply. People have grown to think the Con stitution guarantees the right to own guns, when it really speaks against reli ance on the national army to defend the population in an emergency. Of course, the gun-ownership.forces added a new twist this week, as a Victo ria state representative introduced a bill that would allow licenses to be issued for the carrying of concealed handguns. Even in Texas, the sacred homeland of the National Rifle Association, I never would have expected such an idea to be sincerely brought up. Now we are to believe that our lives will be safer with people roaming the streets of downtown Dallas with Satur day Night Specials hidden in their pants. Right. Of course, the bill would not allow “habitual drunks or drug users” to be li censed. I think the logistics of enforcing that stipulation speak for themselves. Another difficulty that comes up when people try to defend their argu ments is a failure to extend the argu ment to its logical conclusion. People are perfectly willing to use an argument in a shallow sense to defend their point, but they don’t consider the long-range ram ifications that are involved. A friend of mine reminded me of this during a discussion on abortion. He said I was the first anti-abortionist with whom he had discussed the issue who was not inconsistent in his arguments. Everyone else, he said, is willing to make an exception for a woman who has been impregnated as a result of incest or rape. I am not. Call it insensitive if you like; it’s a stand that I believe to be right. The argument against abortion, after all, basically is that a fetus is a living hu man being, and that killing it is murder just as certainly as if the mother had been the victim instead. After all, men have been successfully tried for murder after shooting a pregnant woman in the stomach and killing her unborn child. Hie details about how the child was conceived are not important. The child is alive. It has brain functions, nerve im pulses, motor skills and functional or gans — all a few weeks after conception 1 don’t know how you would define lift if such a being doesn’t qualify. But my friend failed to realize the in consistencies in his own arguments.Itii the argument of the “pro-choice" movement that people have the rightto determine for themselves what to do with their own bodies. I agree wholeheartedly. Everyont should be able to make for themselves the decision of what to do and whereto go with their lives. “Everyone,” however, includes tk unborn. And what decision is more per sonal or more important than thedeci sion of whether or not to live? Both of these problems can beseenin many more situations than I have de scribed here, but these will suffice. Mj intention is not to isolate arguments on abortion and gun control with whichl disagree. My intention is to get people on any side ot any issue to reassess their stance and see if they are indeed build ing their houses on foundations of sand Any stance worth taking is worth thees- tra effort to make sure it is worth stand ing for. Hal Hammons is an assistant ne»'i editor for The Battalion. The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Becky Weisenfels, Editor Leslie Guy, Managing Editor Dean Sueltenfuss, Opinion Page Editor Anthony Wilson, City Editor Scot Walker, Wire Editor Drew Leder, News Editor Doug Walker, Sports Editor JayJanner, Art Director Mary-Lynne Rice, Entertainment Edi- tor Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspa per operated as a community service to Texas A&M and Bryah-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. 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