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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 18, 1992)
le behind ft; lyan T. tyooj ' Class of % Opinion (day, February 18, 1992 The Battalion Page 15 frats oore Hall ^ all formsoj evening iv ( hat I thought us. I would! on Fratemih i of behavioif sidents wail Evidently [ and words! a pledge fo; would be in I 130 of his 110 minutes The Battalion Editorial Board DOUGLAS PILS, Editor-in-Chief The attalion BRIDGET HARROW, Managing Editor BRIAN BONEY, Opinion Editor JASON MORRIS. Night News Editor MORGAN JUDAY, Night News Editor MACK HARRISON, City Editor KARL STOLLEIS, Photo Editor SCOTT WUDEL, Sports Editor ROB NEWBERRY, Lifestyles Editor Helping out Take time to volunteer ollege students have many |emendous opportunities available to gain mega: | iem g 0 th inside and outside the best count, | S sroom. Perhaps, the greatest is the • (O ncet he ^ance to have a positive impact on rrived, they | e community. ter.) Once hhe people of Texas, ones seen ded to help ver yday at the mall, long witli |ocery store and ors and the {staurant bear the large g their job, lUr den of the costs in harass the jjgher education. The 1st way to say thank o help Tan ) U to the people is to t drinking, olunteer in local pro fraternity. Its. These can range ity, 1 am iom community ser- allow greek Ices like road cleaning Since the 1 helping out at the ispital. At Texas A&M, many dents take part in Big all was an ovious that producing ty, moral lyent each spring. But i them the i\ group of ard Szecst/ signatures sition to do a lot of good. Programs such as Volunteers in hiblic Schools (VIPs) work with teach- is and administrators to encourage Students to succeed. The Thousand >r support et, 1 am a a combat dll be the at just for involved, rombat is hat your sit glued hat their ne dead, so be the cessary. ■at nation from the •e in the it an end also war gression ersonnel ;ers who make us is more one else peace, it lives on and say dichael right to me else, us who do not pay the equally pie who mding. e above ? words , think jis is only for one day a year. There is ot more to be done. At a time when there are record limbers of people in need of assis- ce, students in this area are in a Points of Light organization. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Big Brothers and Sisters are others to name just a few. But there are also programs such as Meals-On-Wheels and others which help elder members of our communi ty. A smile and helping hand from a young person can be a bright spot in a retired per son's life. And these are all programs which require very little time, usually no more than an hour a week. To sac rifice an hour at a social gathering or in front of the television is a small price to pay to make our community a better place to live. Volunteering in community projects gives students the chance to work with those people which society often for gets and work in a side of life many prefer to overlook. No college class can be as reward ing and no pasttime as productive as when volunteering in community pro jects. Guilty Samaritan Idiotic award benefits criminal " It's Last week, the San Francisco Jjperior Court ordered taxi driver ■odden Charles Hollom to pay i$4,595 to Ocie McClure, a mugger he :ased down and pinned with his car. cCIure sued Hollom for "excessive irce" when Hollom pinned him to a ilding near San Francisco's City Hall d broke his leg in the ■ocess. This case was a per- ct example of the [bsurdity of lawsuits day. People resort to ing each other for rea- ns that should not en be brought up. If is continues lichecked, society will tgin to fear stopping, jreventing or reporting jjimes if there is a possi- lity that the criminal sue them. McClure acknowl- ged his guilt for rob ing the victim. Hollom acted elfishly to capture the mugger.Yet, e jury ordered Hollom to pay cause they thought he could have ocked McClure instead of pinning with his car. McClure's attorney said, " I do not jhink it is fair to take a 4,000-pound band ram someone against a wall." There was no fairness when IcClure was robbing his victim. Perhaps the jury and McClure's attorney wanted Hollom to get out of his car and try to take McClure down by hand with a karate chop, without injuring him of course. The jury never considered the fact that McClure could have easily escaped if Hollom only blocked him with his car. McClure could have easi ly, jumped over or ran around Hollom's car. Also, McClure could have been armed with a knife or gun. Hollom might not have seen anything on McClure, but could Hollom take the chance and try to just block McClure with his car and give McClure a chance to shoot or cut him. No one would have ques tioned Hollom if McClure was armed, and if he was, the jury never considered that fact. The most ironic aspect of this case is the criminal gets paid for committing a crime while the hero of the story is considered a cold human being who inflicts unnecessary pain. Society needs to be aware about cases such as Hollom's and protect those citizen's against lawsuits by criminals. Hollom was guilty only of being a good law-abiding citizen. Feeling leftied out Southpaws suffer from discrimination that others fail to see L fe is so interesting, with its nuances and little injustices. "Interesting," by the way, covers both good events and bad. Just so you know. (Are you getting a feeling of foreshadowing?) The big events and those magnani mously (look it up) important injus tices take up all the front page space in newspapers, but the little things add up, too. Many things seem unim portant to you is seen as callous oppression and forced conformity to a member of a minority. Yes even I, a male Caucasian, am being discriminat ed against daily, although 90 per cent of you have no idea why. I am left-hand ed in a right- handed world, and we are being oppressed. We lefties have had it rough since day one, when some right-hander decided everyone was going to write from left to right, ensuring that for generations to come left-handers would be smudging pencil and ink all over the page. Way back in the Dark Ages the left hand was viewed as evil; we were called "sinister" for using weapons with the "wrong" hand. Today southpaws are no longer called sinister, but the abuse contin ues. As children, natural lefties are discouraged from using the left hand for writing and other activities, leav ing many kids scarred for life. Researchers have concluded that left ies don't live as long as right-handed folk. But at least when we die early, we won't have to put up with new studies. Most lefties are left alone now, but off-handed remarks still abound. A klutzy person has "two left thumbs" and one who can't dance has "two left feet." In science and engineering, there are l,342(give or take) right hand rules compared to none for left ies. In society we greet each other by extending the right (not the left, mind you) hand. A useful sidekick or cohort is called —you guessed it —a right- hand man. Will the oppression never end? The tortures today include those lecture room desks all over A&M. You know, those chairs with the appendages on the right side that have just enough room for a notepad and the right elbow. I am in a constant state of contortion trying to adjust to writing on these desks which were designed by Joseph "Righty" Mengele, who used them to torture southpaws to death by discomfort. Left-handed versions of these ergonomic (look it up) atrocities (look this one up, too) are almost non-exis tent on campus. I've counted a total of three such desks, all in the same class room in the basement of Reed McDonald. I can also claim two more left-handed compatible desks in a lec ture classroom in the Engineering Physics building, although these are technically designed for wheelchair users. Not that lefties are considered com pletely useless by normal people. My old friend Simon (you don't know him) was a great basketball player in high school and was left-handed. Southpaw baseball players are major commodities to a team's roster. We are considered superior in many thinking skills due to our right brain dominance. Way back in grade school, though, nobody bothered to tell me there were baseball gloves made to fit the right hand. But at least while I was throw ing a really mean curve ball (with my right hand as those oppressive, right ist PE teachers insisted), I managed to hit a few right-handers in the head. Speaking of schools and such, southpaw achievements are never mentioned in textbooks. This is a major omission by right-hand-centric forces in education today. Every per son mentioned in textbooks who may possibly have been left-handed should be labeled a lefty. The inclusion of such information would do much to help teach children and their parents that "it's OK to be left-handed" by showing them that many important and famous people are southpaws, such as President Bush and a lot of other people, includ ing my dad and a friend of mine, a 1996 Olympics hopeful (you don't know her). What I'd like to see is a Left- Handed Americans Act that would correct a lot of wrongs in this country, like allowing more right-hand drive cars in this country (so my left hand can reach all the controls now located on the right side of me) Add left- handed telephones (rotary and touch- tone phones) to all those zillions of right-hand phones in the country. Make A&M put some left-handed desks in classrooms. Provide more left-handed tools and guns (ever tried using a right-handed gun left-hand ed? T'ain't near as much fun). Kill all the lawyers (oops, sorry, good idea, wrong column). Provide federal scholarships based on the hand with which we write (Hey, my bad hand writing is caused by having to write backwards, and many people discrim inate against bad handwriting. When was the last time you saw a lefty with decent penmanship?) Most important ly, outlaw right-handed butter knives, can openers and punch ladles, all of which cause an inordinate amount of stress for us southpaws. They're almost as bad as those tiny desks. I expect this bill will be a difficult fight, but I hope that the politically correct forces join in our cause, a cause pitting an oppressed minority against an entrenched majority. In the mean time, all southpaws should unite in this fight against tyranny. Write your congressman. Join in marches for my new group ACT LEFT! Start pushing newspapers around. And until we get justice or a lot of monetary entitlements, write backwards! !aH !ti ekil srosserppo dednah-thgir esoht woh ees s'teL DeShazo is a junior electrical engineering major Beasley sof'94 Time teaches us best how to hate 7 O otta' little story for ya' Ags! It seems that a few years ago VJ three young boys about 5 or 6 became the best of friends. There was little Leroy Brown, John Smith and Mark Goldstein. As kids they played together, fought together and did everything together. They were inseparable. Their parents disap proved of course, but since the boys couldn't understand why, it didn't top them. As all boys will do, they grew up. Eventually someone pointed out they were different. They had always blown this, but everyone else was different, too. It never made any dif- erence to them. But then John began osee how much darker Leroy's skin Was, so John kidnapped people from Eeroy's parent's home country, called Eeroy inferior and turned him into a slave. After a while, John saw that Mark's religion was different. John tied to steal Mark's parent's home ountry, and tried to kill Mark's Guest..,Column Matthew McKnight is a freshman mechanical engineering major entire race. John even started a "war to end all wars" to accomplish his task. One person obviously did not start the African slave trade and did not kill more than six million Jews while fighting a world war. It is a historical impossibility. The idea is that, as kids, these totally fictional characters saw their physical and reli gious differences, but dismissed them. Despite what their families told them, they were still friends. Things like prejudice and racism didnT exist to them and didn't need to. Segregation had no meaning to them as far as they were concerned. What they saw, as kids, was only friendship. Now why can't we be like that? Why should things like race, reli gion, age, sex,whatever, have any impact on our lives at all? So what if some people look different? So do you. Why do we need to go through hell trying to decide what the politi cally correct word is, so that we don't offend anyone? Why should we need to replace "white" students with "ethnic" students to take a more real istic picture (Battalion Feb. 10 issue)? Why should anyone have to worry about racial balance? John, Leroy and Mark didn't care until someone pointed them out, so why do we? Some might say that the young friends were ignorant and didn't know any better. So what? Don't you think it's worth sacrificing "intelli gence" to stop fighting? Real intelli gence is the ability to see past these» differences to the people themselves. Some would also say that to achieve this "intelligence" they each other would have to ignore their own her itage. Can't people realize their her itage and still be friends? I am 50 percent Hispanic and very proud of it (by the way, I don't care if you call me Latino, Mexican or what ever. "Spic", I might have something to say about; though). I love Mexican food, people, art, language, every thing. I have great love and respect for my heritage. I also have great respect for the Germans and Russians for what they are going through in the name of peace and democracy. None of these things interfere with my respect for other cultures, and my pride in being American. Is there something inherently evil in looking past your heritage in order tolearn about someone else's? Once you learn about it, it's easier to respect it. When that happens, racism, prejudice,segregation and, most important of all, hate will all but disappear. Have an opinion? Express it! The Battalion is interested in hearing from its readers. All letters are welcome. Letters must be signed and must include classification, address and a daytime phone number for verification purpos es. They should be 250 words or less. Anonymous letters will not be published. The Battalion reserves the right to edit all letters for length, style and accuracy. There is no guarantee the let ters will appear. Letters may be brought to 013 Reed McDonald, sent to Campus Mail Stop 1111 or can be faxed to 845-5408.