The Battalion
OPINION 2
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Mail Call
Biff, we’re low on rum
EDITOR:
For what it is worth, I would like to add a few comments
about J.Frank Hernandez’s column concerning the Corps.
Hey, J.Frank, if you have not figured it out yet, the Corps
is a military organization. This explains why they dress alike,
walk in straight lines (i.e. march), and do their outfit yells. I
fail to see how this constitutes segregation and discrimination.
You might as well accuse non-regs of being discriminatory.
After all, the Corps can’t even eat in Sbisa except for
weekends. It would seem that if the Corps wanted to be
discriminatory and segregate non-regs, it would ban us non-
regs from eating in Duncan at all.
Also, the 6:10 p.m. deadline was not established solely by
the Corps. It included food services people and (lo and
behold!) non-regs. Go figure.
If you can’t eat at Duncan because it’s past 6:10 p.m., what
is wrong with walking to Sbisa? You walk to your classes, don’t
you?
I don’t ever recall hearing the Corps whine about having
to walk to Sbisa last year.
I would-also like to address your comments about hazing.
Unless you were or are in the Corps (and I don’t get that
impression), I seriously doubt you are qualified to say what
goes on “inside” that organization. Since the hazing law was
passed, compare the track record of the Corps to that of
fraternities. I’ve seen more incidents of hazing within the
fraternities than in the Corps.
From what you wrote, I gather that your definition of
hazing in the Corps is exercise, dressing alike and humping it.
I would much rather be hazed in that manner than by having
Biff over here pour a liter of rum down my throat because “it’s
cool.”
You indicated you are considering filing a lawsuit for
violation of your civil rights.
If you remember, there are thousands of cadets who
entered military service and gave their lives in the name of this
country to ensure that someone like you will have civil rights,
the right to publish a “newspaper” and the right to file idiotic
lawsuits.
Stephen P. O’Neill ’88
Playing ostrich
EDITOR:
Carol Landry, Class of’87, wrote a short note in Monday’s
Battalion saying J.Frank Hernandez and anyone else who
didn’t adhere to Texas A&M’s traditions and the Corps should
go to another school.
It may come as a surprise to her — and anyone else who
foolishly clings to the past — that Texas A&M University’s
main priority is education, not what used to be. No doubt the
military background of the school is accentuated far beyond
the number of students who currently are in uniform on
campus.
What to me is the highest of ironies is that if Ms. Landry
followed her own advice, she would never have attended
A&M in the first place. Why not? Of course, she and others
like her would know that for almost 100 years Texas A&M was
all male.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m glad she is an Aggie —or what
the military used to call women here, a Maggie. Sadly, she
doesn’t appreciate the changes at A&M since 1963 or she
wouldn’t think as she does.
I’m nearly 40 years old and will get ajournalism degree
this year. All I ever wanted was a speech degree from Texas
A&M, but narrow-minded people such as Ms. Landry kept the
degree from the curriculum because it was “uninecessary.” I
cannot tell you the number of times I was told to go to UT to
get such a degree, that a real Aggie wouldn’t want one.
Happily, I can say A&M does offer a speech degree now,
and you cannot imagine how happy it makes an old man feel
to know the next student body president here is. a speech
major.
You see, Ms. Landry, when we keep our heads in the sand,
the rest of the world passes us by while we continue to cling to
old, outdated concepts. Keep up the writing, though, for
Texas A&M does allow dissent to be stated publicly.
Tim Stanfield
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..
Fair-weather chess
fans make defeat
difficult to accept
I remember the first A&M chess meets 1
went to. They were small affairs, being held
in Rudder Theater with only about 15 or 20
people attending. A small chess table was set
up on the stage, and the fans would quietly
watch, supporting our team, win, stalemate,
or lose.
A few years ago, A&M got a few good
draft picks and a new coach with a multi-mil
lion dollar contract. He went to some high
schools and recruited some unkowns with a
lot of potential. He got the team into shape
and soon A&M was winning chess matches.
The chess seasons came and went, and the
team grew better and better, each year inch
ing up in the national polls.
Last year, the season took off like a bullet,
A&M losing only one game to Oklahoma
State University in their first month of play.
More students started coming to the games,
and Rudder Theater became noisier as the
season progressed.
In March, the Associated Press ranked
A&M number one on a national chess poll.
Students at A&M and even old Ags started
attending the meets in droves. Some people
that never knew A&M had a chess team
started going" to chess matches. When the
Theater began selling out, the chess team
moved to Rudder Auditorium, and finally to
G. Rollie White Coliseum.
In mid-season there was a serious injury
to the top player. He injured his hand by hit
ting a time clock too fast and was out for a
week with a blister. Luckily the team had
enough momentum to hang on to the top
spot in the nation, despite the absence of
their top man.
At the height of the season, the coach
formed the Chess Chicks, a dozen of the
best-looking Aggie females, who retrieved
discarded pieces from the playing board. I
wondered whether they really understood
the game, or just did it to wear the cute uni
forms and appear on calendars.
In April, A&M faced our arch rival, the
University of Texas, at the conference chess
tournament. ESPN carried two of the
matches, which were held at G. Rollie White.
The Corps of Cadets marched in for the first
time ever at am A&M chess tournament, and
all the yell leaders showed up.
A spotlight shone down around the two
players in the center of the court and the
scoreboard kept a running tally of the pieces
taken. Every time one of our men took an
other player’s piece, the crowd would whoop
and holler. The yell leaders led some yells,
but somehow “Farmer’s Fight” just didn’t
seem approriate in that setting.
The top man for A&M went up against
the top player for Texas. The Texas man
won the first game outright. Our man was
behind in the second half of the second
game and many of the fans left before the
Aggie came back to win.
Timm
Doolen
Columnist
The third game was stalled at stalemate
until at the last second the Aggie pulled
through and checkmated the Longhorn.
With victory over Texas at that match
came the Southwest Conference title, and
later, a national championship. Our team
was at its height of popularity with A&M
making headlines everywhere as having the
best amateur chess team in the world.
During the offseason, several membersof
the team went on a speaking tour of Texas
high schools. They told of their rigorous
training schedule: up at 5 p.m. for wind
sprints and hand and arm exercises; and af
ter classes they’s be timed on how fast they
could checkmate a Queen’s gambit setup.
Only one senior of the team graduated, so
A&M was ranked number one before the
next season started, and attendance was high
at the first f ew games. The team started out
strong, then started losing, and finally went
into a slump. The pressure on the team was
intense, and the stress took its toll on the
players. At one game, a fight broke out that
cleared the benches for both teams.
A month into the season, the chess coach
was charged by the NCAA on 22 recruiting
violations. The most serious was of import
ing a 63-year-old Polish chess player, whom
the coach claimed was a freshman for the
previous five years.
The coach resigned amidst the contro
versy, and the team started going downhill.
They started losing match after match, and
were lucky if they could beat a high school
team.
The fans’ support started waning. As the
season w'em on, the bleachers emptied and
the crowd thinned. They were moved bad
to Rudder Theater, but by the fifth week of
the losing streak, the team couldn't fill the
first row.
I still attend the chess meets. There are
not too many people around at the matches
anymore, but 1 still have fun when they win,
and feel bad when they lose. It’s a lot quieter
in the stands now, but I know that the few
dozen fans that still support the chess team
will be with them to the end, and I like it that
way.
Timm Doolen is a sophomore computer
science major and a columnist for The Bat
talion.
Drug war must be fought with actions, not words
Earlier this year, a woman was
walking on a main thoroughfare in a
suburb north of Chicago. She was
going to meet her husband for din
ner.
She and her husband have been
friends of mine for 30 years. They
are two of the most civilized people
I’ve ever known. I never heard ei
ther of them say a cruel word about
anyone.
The woman didn’t reach the res
taurant. She was found near an alley,
bleeding from severe head wounds.
Someone had apparently struck her
with a blunt instrument.
She died a few weeks later. Be
cause she never regained conscious
ness, we can’t be certain what hap
pened. But it isn’t hard to figure.
Someone probably grabbed for
her purse. Out of shock or instinct,
she may have resisted. The thief or
thieves hit her. It happens often in
and around the big cities.
Mike
Royko
Columnist
Something else isn’t hard to fig
ure. She was walking a short distance
from a neighborhood where gangs
and drugs are a reality.
So the odds are the blows came
from a dopehead needing money for
a fix. Few professional criminals ply
their trade so stupidly.
It’s happening in Chicago, Wash
ington, New York, Cleveland, De
troit, and just about every other mid
dle- to big-size city. It has slopped
over from the inner cities to the qui
eter neighborhoods and out into
some suburbs.
And what’s being done? Well, in
Washington, the center of America’s
journalistic-governmental hot air in
dustry, they are fighting with words,
President Bush’s new drug czar is
harping at the mayor of Washington
for not being cooperative about
some vague plan for the feds and the
locals to get together in a new drug
war. The mayor just as vaguely says
that isn’t true, he’d be happy to co
operate.
More talk. And in the time it takes
for them to exchange empty words,
another few tons of cocaine move as
easily into this country as clouds drift
across the sky.
Much of it will be converted into
crack. And some crack users, unable
to work for a living, will go out with a
lead pipe or a bat and hit defenseless
women, or blow a hole in a conve
nience store clerk.
That’s all we’ve been getting from
Washington during the years the
dope industry has grown — blabber
and more blabber.
Queen Nancy urged the nation to
“just say no.” She could afford so
simple-minded a solution. With Se
cret Service agents front and rear,
nobody was going to slap her on the
head.
And while Nancy was saying “say
no,” her husband’s administration
was playing footsie with the coun
tries that pump the dope into this
counfry. We were giving them finan
cial aid. It’s even believed that some
of the contra leaders described by
Ron as the moral equivalent of our
founding fathers — were in the drug
business. Maybe I missed something
in history class, but when did George
Washington sell cocaine?
Basically, the war on drugs has
been, and will continue to be, a
fraud. There aren’t enough cops in
the cities to deal with all the local
peddlers and users. There aren’t
enough jails to house them.
Part of that problem is the federal
government doesn’t want to waste
money on cities. It can put our bil
lions to better use at the Pentagon.
We can blow up the Soviet Union 10
times, but D.C. can’t spare a few
bucks so a woman can safely meet
her husband for dinner.
Part of the problem is the people
in Washington who make foreign
policy and look at the big picture
don’t want to offend our friends, the
drug-dealing nations.
I don’t wish harm to anyone, but
their attitudes might change if a few
White House and State Department
wives didn’t make it to dinner alive.
And part of the problem is the
odd notion that we can’t use our mil
itary against drug merchants.
I’m not suggesting that we have
tanks rolling down Dopeville Street,
or Marines storming crack houses.
But, is it unthinkable to have
Army troops along the Mexican bor
der? Would it be rude to use the Air
Force to chase air drug shipments?
Would it be an inconvenience to ad
mirals if the Navy searched out drug
boats?
As for the crisis in prison space,
I’ve never understood why prisons
have to be more expensive to build
than luxury housing.
And there are wars, no-frill prison
camps are built, simple and cheap.
Barracks surrounded by high bar
bed-wire fences, maybe electrified,
with armed guard towers, search
lights and mean dogs.
We have vast stretches of useless,
remote land in this country, per
fectly suitable for prison campus.
True, inmates might not learn a use
ful trade or. earn a college degree,
and visitors might have a longjour-
ney. But life is full of tradeoffs. The
criminals might be unhappy, but
nice people will be safer.
So, if we are going to have a genu
ine war on drugs, we need a new
drug slogan. Why doesn’t everyone
out there drop a post card to the
White House with this slogan on it?
“Say No To Bull-—!”
Copyright 1989, Tribune Media Sen-
ices, Inc.
The Battalion
(USPS 045 360)
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Southwest Journalism Conference
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Mary-Lynne Rice, Entertainment Edi
tor
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