The Battalion
OPINION
Wednesday, March 29,1989
Buchman is our
man for president
After interviewing both candidates for student
body president, The Battalion is endorsing Kevin
Buchman.
We were impressed greatly by both candidates’
knowledge of student government and their plans for
next year. However, after much discussion, the edito
rial board decided that Buchman had a better sense of
the issues affecting students and a more practical set of
goals.
We agree with Buchman’s priorities — mainly his
plans to work on teacher evaluations, books for the li
brary, a truly “dead” dead week and a lobby against a
tax on student financial aid.
Though these are some of the main topics of the
campaign and were brought up by both candidates, we
thought Buchman, the speaker of the Student Senate,
had more substantial and realistic plans to deal with
these issues.
The Battalion Editorial Board
No long lines, no jury duty: Why not vote?
Timm
Doolen
Columnist
Each year a minority of students
chooses the next year’s student body
president, yell leaders, class councils,
senators, etc. What happens during
these elections blows under the noses of
too many A&M students.
This year we are provided with a
unique election experience: Michael
Kelley, a cadet, is running against Kevin
Buchman, a non-reg who is also a fra
ternity member. But neither person is
running as a representative of the orga
nization in which he is involved. In fact,
Michael Kelley says he is running as
“Michael Kelley,” not “Cadet Michael
Kelley.”
That’s a good attitude at a time when
we try to define people by labels. Still,
rumors abound that the fraternities are
going to block vote, and the Corps has a
long history of voting for cadets.
Block voting is not necessarily wrong,
but the reasoning that constitutes a
block vote is suspect. I think people
should vote for the person they believe
will do the best job, or for someone with
whom they share some common bond.
For many fraternity members or cadets,
they share a bond, albeit distant, with
Kevin Buchman or Michael Kelley.
Being loosely connected in the same
group with a candidate seems a fair
enough reason to vote for that person.
In national and state politics, the major
ity of us vote for a candidate because of
his or her party affiliation, which could
be considered a looser affiliation than
the candidate being a fraternity brother
or a Corps buddy.
Block voting, if it is incidental, is not
inherently wrong and neither is voting
for someone because they share a cer
tain kinship with the voter. In other
words, if a block vote is a result of a mass
of related people (for instance, the
Corps) voting for the candidate with
whom they share a bond, then that’s
fine.
Unfortunately this is not how block
votes occur — they usually are artifi
cially created. In most cases a block vote
is instigated by suggestions of superiors
and helped along by peer pressure.
A former cadet told me that a few
days before the election, the squad is as
sembled and the squad commander goes
through the list of candidates, mention
ing those who are cadets.
I think that’s ethically questionable.
When an authority figure suggests
which candidates a subordinate should
vote for, it inhibits the freedom of
choice of the voter. Even though the su
periors don’t directly tell the subordi
nate to vote for “candidate X,” merely
suggesting a candidate is a suppression
of the freedom of the voter, because the
suggestion comes from a person of di
rect authority.
It’s as if your employer, or somebody
you looked up to, told you who he
thought a good candidate in an upcom
ing election is. In the Corps this sugges
tion goes much further, because an em
ployer doesn’t have the direct physical
control over us that squad commanders
have over their squadron.
Corps leaders also urge cadets to vote
on election day, and the Corps always
has a high voter turnout. We can safely
assume that an unusually high percent
age of cadets vote for candidates who
are also cadets. So with an assumed low
turnout of non-Corps voters, Cadets are
almost guaranteed spots in student gov
ernment. Fair? Probably not. Should
they be prohibited from block voting?
No.
The solution is that more non-Corps
students should vote so that our student
government would more accurately rep
resent the student body. In last year’s
election, less than 5,000 students voted,
roughly 15% of the student body. That
turnout is worse than state and national
elections.
Last semester I defended people who
didn’t vote in the state and national elec
tions. In tomorrow’s school elections I’m
urging students to vote.
Why? Voting in school elections in
volves short lines, no voter registration
and no chance of jury duty.
Why not vote? With several hundred
candidates seeking office, there’s a high
probability you know some people who
are running. You can help them try to
win, and every time you see the candi
dates you can say you voted for them.
Also, your vote means much more in
these campus elections than in state or
national elections. Some of the student
senate constituencies number in the
hundreds, and with only a small per
centage of these people voting, your
vote could be a deciding one. Last year,
the presidency of the class of ’90 was de
cided by three votes (118-115). One vote
(or a few) has a good possibility of deter
mining the outcome of a student elec
tion.
Many people don’t cast ballots be
cause tliey believe the people they vote
for hold useless jobs. The truth is that
people in the position of student body
president, RHA president, and OCA
president perform an immensely valu
able function as a sounding board to ad
ministrators. These three elected posi
tions, especially student body president,
have a lot of ability to directly affect the
students.
There are many qualified individuals
running for office this year, some in the
Corps, some not. So vote for the people
of your choice, whether it’s because you
know them, a friend knows them, or
you’ve heard good things about them.
But please vote.
Timm Doolen is a sophomore com
puter science major and a columnist
for The Battalion.
Panic caused by misinformation
To say that our food supply is safe
isn’t newsworthy. But to say there is risk
involved in eating hormone-treated
meat or pesticide-treated apples . . . now
there’s a news story. Add to that a ter
rorist act with two cyanide-tainted
grapes from Chile, and now the public is
panicked about what they eat.
Fruits, vegetables and natural grains
are treated with insecticides, fungicides
and herbicides. Poultry, pork and beef
are treated with antibiotics and growth-
promoting hormones. Unfortunately,
there have been persuasive news reports
full of damaging innuendos that would
lead us to believe that the American
farmer and rancher is unnecessarily
feeding us unhealthy goods. The fact is,
all food is made up of chemicals. Treat
ing it or touching it with other chemicals
will not necessarily hurt anyone.
Some people have stopped eating red
meat because of reports from an agri
culturally naive media about the Euro
pean ban on hormone-treated meat.
What was ultimately a trade issue nee
dlessly became a health isue. Hormone-
free beef is a misnomer. Cattle them
selves are producing their own hor
mones. Every day, human females pro
duce more estrogen hormones in their
bodies than what is ever implanted in a
cow to help it produce leaner beef.
Mothers have poured apple juice and
apple sauce down the drain for fear of
cancer risks. These actions were
spurred by a sensationalized report
from the National Resource Defense
Council, in which cancer risks were asso
ciated with pesticide residues. The tests
they ran used extremely high levels of
pesticides and growth regulators on
apples.
What that report failed to tell anyone
was that using that much pesticide on
any one ci'op is financially unlikely. The
fact is that the growth regulator in ques
tion, Daminozide, or trade name Alar, is
used on maybe 5-10 percent of the
apple crops in the United States.
Randy Lemmon
Guest Columnist
It is amazing how two tainted grapes,
a sensationalized and biased research
report and a beef trade issue have terri
fied the American public about the
safety of their food supply.
We have the safest and most abun
dant food supply anywhere in the
world. And we obviously don’t appre
ciate it.
We live with risk every day. So, why is
it that we can be scared out of eating
pesticide-treated fruit, but we freely go
out and saturate our livers with alcohol,
drive a two-ton vehicle at high speeds
and think nothing of it? Most students
at. Texas A&M walk aimlessly across
roads in heavy traffic — and that is a lot
more risky.
Food is a very personal thing to most
of us, and we think we understand it.
Yet we obviously don’t. We can’t live our
lives in a perfect environment, free
from all problems. We have a pretty
nice cushion here in the United States.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture
and the Food and Drug Administration
have done an admirable job in making
our food supply safe. It is an ongoing
battle for these folks, and it’s obviously a
thanklessjob.
In less affluent societies, people face
risks far worse than anything most
Americans deal with on a daily basis,
and not just with the food they eat. We
are spoiled by the USDA and FDA and
yet we lambast them for the recent
scares concerning our food supply. We
have this “better safe than sorry” men
tality when it comes to food scares. We
just expect everything we eat to be 100
percent safe. Well, that wish bears no re
lation to reality.
Here are some more facts. The Euro
pean ban on hormone-treated meat ex
ported from the United States was a
trade issue. Growth hormones improve
an animal’s ability to use nutrients to
grow more muscle and less fat. In other
words, this is how we get lean beef. The
same or similar hormones occur natu
rally in the human body at levels thou
sands of times higher than the residues
in meat from treated cattle. The Euro
pean Economic Community is a surplus
producer of beef. That is why they don’t
want our meat. They simply wanted
excuse.
Dr. Russell Cross is an internationally
respected animal scientist at Texas
A&M. He told me that only 10 percent
of estrogen consumed by mouth is actu
ally absorbed by the body. This means,
we would have to eat over 400 pounds
of treated meat each day to exceed what
might be considered a health risk. And
if you don’t die from the over abun
dance of hormones, you will certainly
die from obesity.
To contract cancer from pesticide-
treated apples you would have to eat
over 50 pounds of apples and drink
over 100 gallons of juice a day, from or
chards that have been “over-treated
with such pesticides.
As fo the cyanide-tainted grapes,
that was a terrorist act, which none of us
could control. What we can do is pre
vent ourselves from over-reacting.
Before we eat, we can be “better safe
than sorry.” Examine your food. Wash
it. Make sure it looks and smells good.
You are the best judge of w hat you are
eating. Producers are not purposely try
ing to poison the American public. Do
you think they would actually grow
something unhealthy for their families,
friends and neighbors?
T he USDA and the FDA will try and
protect you, and maybe they should get
some kind of thanks for it . . . but they
probably won’t.
Randy Lemmon is a 1984 graduate
of Texas A&M, a communications spe
cialist with the Texas Agricultural Ex
tension Service and a guest columnist
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
Jay Janner, Art Director
Mary-Lynne Rice, Entertainment Edi
tor
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Bryan-College Station.
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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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