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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 5, 1989)
The Battalion OPINION Thursday, October 5,1989 WHICH JOB WILL BE CREATED BY CUTTING THE CAPITAL GAINS TAX? A) Factory Job B) Desk Job C) Snow Job School’ s out for summer yH Th The Faculty Senate has proposed that, as of 1991, all summer classes be taught over 10 full weeks only. Cur rently, some summer classes are of fered over 10 weeks, some as five weeks, and a select few are offered in both five and 10-week sessions. Both the Faculty Senate’s proposal and the Student Senate’s later counter proposal address concerns about the quality of teaching and the amount of time in the classroom during summer school. Many of the faculty feel they can not teach properly considering the time restrictions imposed by the short terms. Also, many professors do not like having to give finals to seniors a few days early so they can graduate with a diploma. smaller class sizes and intense studying of the topics during a short period of time help improve the quality of (lit learning. Quantitatively, there art more classroom minutes in a five-wed summer term than in any other semes ter term or 10-week session. A le George Bush Drive — big mistake George Herbert Walker Bush: 41st President of the United States, Vice- President under Ronald Reagan, for mer member of the House of Rep resentatives, husband of Barbara, grandfather of many, resident of Texas, horseshoe champion, master of Millie the First Dog, and as of last Thursday, namesake of the street we used to call Jersey. By a 5-1 vote last week, the College Station City Council made a big mis take. They changed the name of Jersey Street to George Bush Drive. And sup posedly, this will bring the Bush Presi dential Library to Aggieland. To use the words of Ronald Reagan, there they go again. There they go again attempting to lure Bush into selecting College Station as his library site. And the renaming of Jersey is just one hook in the tackle box of A&M officials. Many people have voiced the opin ion that changing the name of Jersey could be considered a purely political action that would reflect badly on the community. They’re right. I’m sure that everyone realizes the motives of the city council. It is not like the council just thought, “Hey, it would be really nice to honor George Bush by naming a street after him, so let’s do it.” They want the library for College Station, and it shows. But renaming a street is definitely the wrong way to go about getting it. Jersey Street has a place in the his tory and heritage of College Station. Aggies and College Station residents, both young and old, have fond mem ories associated with it. How many of us can remember walking up and down Damon Arhos Columnist JERSEY on the way to and from bon fire? Many members of the Corps park on JERSEY. The Association of For mer Students Building is right off of JERSEY. Many people have had ad dresses on JERSEY for years. But it is all about to change. And speaking of addresses, think of the potential confusion with the post office. If you live on Jersey, get ready to call every one of your friends and relatives and tell them you don’t live there anymore. The potential for con fusion and for mail loss is very real. Ev ery magazine you have subscribed to, every company that sends you a bill, ev ery person that has your address listed as Jersey — YOU get to inform of the name change. And the city council has been generous and has given you 6 whole months to do so. And besides. Bush isn’t even dead yet. Aren’t streets, trees, etc., usually named after people who are deceased? I would like to see President Bush’s library to come to College Station, just like most other residents of the city. It would be a tremendous asset to our community. If the library were to be put here in College Station, it would spur the local economy through an in crease in tourism. However, I just do not understand why everyone is so ob sessed with doing insignificant things that probably won’t have any influence on Bush whatsoever. Can you imagine Bush thinking, “Well, College Station named a street after me....I guess I’ll put it there.” I hope Bush would choose College Station because of the quality of our university and its students. Texas A&M is one of the finest research and educa tional facilities in the nation, and is highly deserving of the library. Placing the library here would provide a tre mendous educational opportunity not only to students of A&M, but also to people from all over the state, which Bush calls home. To me, this is reason enough for Bush to entrust his presi dential papers with A&M. Why do we have to scramble around changing street names to influence his decision? Aggies are special people, and Ag gieland is a special place. Aggies set College Station apart from all other proposed locations for the library. And if we really want the library, we need to stop concentrating our efforts toward small and insignificant actions that get us nowhere, and start promoting our school as the Fine research and educa tional facility that it is. As for Jersey Street, it is unfortunate that the taxpayers will have to pay for the new street signs that will go up early next year. I hope the City of Col lege Station saves the old Jersey street signs just in case we don’t get the li brary. To address these and other con cerns, the Faculty Senate drafted a pro posal urging all academic colleges to shift to teaching primarily 10-week courses in the summer. After receiving the proposal, President Mobley de cided to have a committee composed of faculty, students and administration research the topic more thoroughly and submit a new proposal. Mobley ap parently stressed the importance of finding out what the students want, and in response to that, the Student Senate submitted a proposal as a coun ter to the Faculty Senate’s proposal. Overall, the Student Senate’s propo- soal is better for both students and fat ulty than the Faculty Senate’s proposal It allows flexibility that students neri during the summer if they have other plans and want to attend school. It af fects many of us, including students who study abroad, students who work, students who must take sequential classes and students who want to attend various summer camps. Limiting sum mer school to only one 10-week session severely limits students abilities to do other things during their summer, such as vacation, if they wish to attend A&M as well. ByT< \rfh The Student Senate, acting in what they perceive as the best interest of the students, proposed a plan that tries to retain many of the good points of the current summer policy, while making a few improvements. The Student Senate proposal keeps the five-week sessions, but adds a few days to allow more study time before Fi nals. It would also allow graduating se niors to take finals along with other students and graduate with a real di ploma. Having two five-week sessions andal 10-week session also allows professors] to do research for half a summer; teach the other summer. Five-week] terms allow for employment of more] graduate teaching assistants, albeit for] a shorter amount of time. Damon Arhos is a senior journa lism major and a columnist for The Battalion. In past summers, finals began dur ing the last day of class for that sum mer session. Under the Student Sen ate’s proposed plan, there would be a separate Finals day, or in other words, a break between the last day of class and finals. The Student Senate’s proposal will also allow faculty to give one final for all students. Graduating students would take finals the same time as ev erybody else, consistent with the fall and spring finals policy. Of all the major universities Texas, Rice is the only one thatoffersa] single term in the summer. Over] 17,000 students attended summer] school in 1989. With this many peoplt attending, a school of A&M’s size has] an obligation to offer its students a rea-[ sonable choice during summer school. The University should offer mort 10-week classes, but it should also re f tain the flexibility that 5-week courseij offer. The best interests of the studenii] of Texas A&M were well represented by the Student Senate’s proposal. We] should support them in their quest! keep our summers flexible. As far as the quality of classroom in struction in five-week classes, the Timm Doolen is a junior compute j science major and assistant opinion page editor for The Battalion. Wearing blinders doesn’t hide the poor When I was in graduate school I learned how to say “narcotizing dysfunction and cognitive dissonance,” mostly so if anyone ever asked me to say something in graduate, I could spout “narcotizing dysfunction and cognitive dissonance.” The existence of that splendid string of syllables con firmed by expectation that graduate school would be more b.s., Ph.D., (piled higher and drier — old academic joke). Now I look around and find to my amazement that narcotizing dysfunction and cognitive dissonance are running the country. Both are theories about how we ac quire, and how we resist, new informa tion. All of us walk around with a set of mental baggage, a world view, stored in our minds. By the time we become adults, we develop a resistance to infor mation that does not conform to our world view — we deny it, we ignore it we find reasons to doubt it — because if we have to accept this new, noncon forming information, it means we will have to shift around all that luggage we’ve got stored away, which is a pain ful and tiresome process. That’s cogni- The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Scot Walker, Editor Wade See, Managing Editor Juliette Rizzo, Opinion Page Editor Fiona Soltes, City Editor Ellen Hobbs, Chuck Squatriglia, News Editors Tom Kehoe, Sports Editor Jay Janner, Art Director Dean Sueltenfuss, Lifestyles Editor 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. The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper for students in reporting, editing and photography classes within the Department of Journalism. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during Texas A&M regular semesters, except for holiday and examination periods. Mail subscriptions are SI7.44 per semester, $34.62 per school vear and $36.44 per full year. Advertising rates furnished on request. Our address: The Battalion, 230 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-1111. Second class postage paid at College Station, TX 77843. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Battal ion, 216 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, Col lege Station TX 77843-4 111. five dissonance: narcotizing dysfunc tion is another form of resistance whereby people ignore unpleasant rea lities by anesthetizing themselves with anything from crack to soap operas to football. The current debate in Washington City over “what’s wrong with the Dem ocrats” is a textbook example of cogni tive dissonance. The latest conventio nal wisdom is that Democrats must Finally come to see the wisdom of being like the Republicans, that they must give up their useless, old-fashioned at tachment to inveighing against tax breaks for the rich. “The thing I think our party has missed is that the Ameri can people do not buy in, in any funda mental way, to a class-warfare political argument,” said Rep. Les AuCoin, Democrat of Oregon. So many people are saying the same thing, we can be certain some pollister has done a focus group on this very point. Rep. Mickey edwards, Republican of Oklahoma, said posing th issue as one of the limou sine set against the first-time home- buyer was the kind of populist appeal that makes people think Democrats are “campaigning to an America that existed 40 years ago.” Kind of hard to Figure out what country these people are living in. Forty years ago most Americans were middle-class. One of the oddest aspects of American life, by European stan dards, has been its relative classles sness. True, there have always been more and deeper class divisions than we have cared to acknowledge, but it used to be that every family with an in come between $15,000 and $50,000 concidered itself middle-class. There has been no visible class warfare here — we always cheerfully assumed that almost all of us were in the great mid dle. The dramatic redistribution of wealth in this country over the past 10 years is raising urgent class issues for the first time since World War II. The gap between the rich and the poor has become a chasm. Part of the social cohesion of Japan comes from the fact that difference be tween the salary of an assembly line worker and the salary of the CEO of any given company is roughly four times. If the worker makes $15,000, the CEO makes $60,000. Try compar ing what an average CM assembly-line worker makes in Detroit with the salary of Roger Smith, the top guy at CM. You throw in the stock options, the bo nuses, the perks, you’re talking several million dollars for Roger, at least. And these disparities are growing like The Blub. The same day The New York Times carried a piece of political analy sis concluding that “Class warfare cliches are seen as losing their luster,” the same newspaper had on its front page a story saying one-forth of all pre school children in America are living in poverty. The report was written by the same Congress that just voted to crease capital gains taxes so the riches!I people in America can get richer “More children than ever are livingij the streets or in families shatterdbydi vorce, drugs or poverty. While cutsir federal spending have worsened the plight of many poor people anc mounting economic pressures havj squeezed the middle class, childhood has become far more precarious anc less safe for millions of American chilj dren. One fifth of all children are liv ing in poverty, 50 percent of all blad children and 25 percent of the prej schoolers. But the problems extendbt yond the poorest families. Even amonJ children who seem destined for high achievement, hopes appear to be tein pered by an acceptance that drugs pregnancy, bad grades and bad job are overwhelming many of then peers.” Terrible and worsening class diw| sions areas not some old-hat cliche they’re on the front pages. Not to ree l ognize that is an extraordinary feaU cognitive dissonance. Front page, hen try walking the streets of any city U America and actually seeing what ] there, letting it register. The streets o] the capitol where this Congress meet'] where its members live, are litterfj with homeless people. If the membej of congress have to move some mentj luggage to make room for this realit'f let me suggest that they start shiftiJ Mode