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Opinion
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The Battalion
Page 9
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The Battalion Editorial Board
DOUGLAS PILS, Editor in Chief
The
Battalion
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
The following opinions are a consensus of The Battalion opinion staff and senior editors.
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Page 7
Price of PC
Politically correct dogma binds expression
Political correctness is an ideology
—which has touched college campuses
H across the United States, particularly
large universities such as Texas A&M.
The ideas behind PC have sparked a
major controversy between several
competing groups. One of the sources
of controversy lies in the definition of
what PC actually is.
The original idea behind the PC
movement was to put an end to
[harassment and discrimination,
[especially in the press, in speech and in
the classroom. Although this idea
I fundamentally has good intentions, its
to need a pi k effects are more often negative,
step in and; Unfortunately, PC is often carried to
ising (Dem |such an extreme that its supporters
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Hall said,
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discriminate against those who have
political views different from their
own, thus defeating their own
purpose.
Students must not be forced to use
politically correct words as part of
their vocabulary. Doing this allows
people to be coerced into incorporating
PC into their lives against their own
wishes.
Freedom of speech should be given
a higher priority than the desires of
certain individuals in society. No
political movement should be allowed
to infringe on the rights of citizens.
Students must take a stand to ensure
that the PC movement does not gain
enough support to do this.
In its most recent session, the
Student Senate passed a "Free Speech"
bill as a resolution against the political
correctness movement. The resolution
included a new clause in the
University Rules and Regulations
handbook aimed to prevent
harassment and intimidation in the
classroom based on political views.
This action is an important step in
the right direction of protecting and
promoting freedom or speech for all
students.
With the introduction of the bill,
A&M has taken the first step in
declaring that the student body should
not and will not stand for harassment
or discriminatory behavior from any
university employee, student
organization or individual. But this is
not enough. The students must take
more action to ensure that PC does not
obstruct our basic freedoms of speech
and the press.
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Crimes of ignorance
Unreasoning hatred is truth behind false and misleading labels
playe:
Murder outrage
Only shocking crimes stir numb society
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J Until recently, people have been
*P<m I able to settle into comfortable
t Texass®l detachment in the face of the constant
ig because reality of violent crime. However,
>upport every once in a while an incident
sfiS&fofc-l can Still shake everyone
^P' o
fin iiiBHTitfi ^ ast wee k/ the story of a bloodied
, s on teboaj bruised 1-year-old girl caught the
talotmol atten ti° n °f our nation. The child was
e wewerejJ found clinging to the body of her
s I mother whose throat had been slashed
n'towinniffil °P en with a broken bottle and dumped
B outside a vacant building.
"I feel real sorry for her," said Dr.
Erin Endom, a doctor in the emergency
room of Texas Children's Hospital.
, "She's going to have a hard road to go.
> i jv* s P ent a whole night in the cold
e traditioM w j t y 1 mo ther's dead body."
" V j n , 10 f;i The child suffered from exposure,
md basebi| bruises and mental trauma,
his deal wft Unfortunately, it took such an event
baseballm to e ii c it actual outrage among the
all fanscil ma j° r ity of our citizenry,
cticallyarl Even those who regularly work in
to avoif situations dealing with the abused and
injured were moved by the girl's
vas tne plight.
-ie Astros* "I felt a lot of anger," said Houston
networkf Fire Department Capt. Roger Lieder
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"Who could've left a little baby out
there in the middle of the night like
that?"
Our society has become so
inundated by the now commonplace
news stories of mass murders, bizarre
crimes of passion and senseless death
that it takes an infant child abandoned
alongside her slain mother to anger us
profoundly.
Movies, television shows and even
children's cartoons are now so
saturated with violence that our
society as a whole has become
desensitized to the loss of human life.
We seem to have lost touch with the
reality that a murder victim is more
than just another statistic. The report of
a murder always means that someone
has lost a mother, father, sister, brother
or friend.
Homicide is a crime that extends
beyond the one lost life and into the
lives of everyone who cared about the
victim.
Perhaps, this tragedy will serve as
an alarm for our elected officials,
calling them to take real action against
crime.
Only then can something good
come of something so thoroughly bad.
A gay banker is beaten and
stabbed to death as he leaves a
Montrose-area nightclub. A
Vietnamese boy dies after a beating
by skinheads. A black Houston
Marine just back from the Persian
Gulf War is slain after his alleged
attackers were heard saying they
wanted to
'(expletive) with
some niggers'.
That passage,
taken from a
Houston
newspaper, was
featured in an
article about hate
crimes, crimes
that have become
more frequent
and widespread
in both Houston
and the nation
everyday.
The increase of hate crimes in the
last year has been blamed on
everything from the nation's
economic problems to a lack of
moral leadership or the break-up of
the family to racial tensions. But
unfortunately, people have failed to
realize that these hate crimes are just
that, "hate" crimes, caused by
nothing more than hate.
The Houston Police Department
and other law enforcement agencies
have now found it necessary to
define hate crimes as a criminal
offense committed against a person
or property in which the crime is
motivated by the offender's bias. The
bias can be against a certain race,
religion, ethnic or national origin, or
even a person's sexual preference.
But in argument against their
seemingly simple definition, I
propose another definition for them
to look up: hate.
Webster's Dictionary simply
defines hate as "to dislike greatly; to
have a great or extreme aversion to;
to detest"; a very simple and to the
point definition that also defines all
of the crimes listed earlier.
Granted, yes, race and ethnicity
might have roles in some of the hate
crimes committed^ it is important to
realize that hate is hate, and the fact
that law enforcement agencies want
to place names and definitions on
crimes is not going to change
anything. To mock a slogan whose
product name escapes me at this
time, "Hate by any other name is all
the same."
I think it is important to point out
here that I am in no way showing any
bias to any racial group or
encouraging any sexual orientation.
Instead, I am pointing out that by
wasting time trying to label hate and
base it on a specific reason, our
society as a whole is only allowing
more hate to grow and raise its ugly
head even more frequently.
To focus more on excuses given by
police and others labeling these
"hate" crimes again I say race and
ethnicity play roles in such senseless
crimes, for many in this country have
yet to get past the same ignorant
values and views held in the '60s by
groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. I
can say ignorant because alleged
needless attacks on certain races by
people that claim to be Christians can •
be nothing but hate driven by
ignorance.
If I'm not mistaken, I John 4:20
does say "If a man says, I love God,
and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for
he that loveth not his brother, whom
he hath seen, how can he love God
whom he hath not seen?"
It's hard for me to accept any
"hate" crime. Those facilitated by
race prejudice are believable, but not
understood nor accepted. But those
"hate" crimes said to be based on the
economy are all but sensible to me.
Those that hide under such excuses
provided by labels placed by our
society and enforcement agencies can
be fueled by nothing but fear and
cowardice.
I feel that there is no way someone
can base their economic problems on
any certain race or person, but rather
the attitude of resentment should be
aimed toward our government or the
individual; himself or herself. I think
it is an attempt to forge problems of
an individual onto someone else
which is not acceptable.
The culprits of these crimes would
probably like to do nothing more
than attack the government in a
violent manner, but because that will
automatically result in a major prison
sentence, they would rather attack
someone whose death can be easily
looked over by law enforcement as it
most often is.
It is time for society to stop
allowing people to hide behind such
labels and excuses and start teaching
and educating these ignorant
criminals about the sensitivities and
preferences of all people.
Hopefully, by this enlightenment,
such labels and excuses for these
"hate" crimes can be demolished.
Williams is a sophomore
journalism major
Pain of rape
lingers a lifetime
siald
Brian Boney's tribute to Cindy truly touches
and saddens the heart. As anyone who has a close
relationship with a rape victim, Brian felt a
smattering of the indescribable pain Cindy will
have to deal with the rest of her life. As a victim
of rape myself, I cringed as I read and recognized
the all-too-fami liar scenario of date rape and the
all-too-familiar emotional disaster that follows.
I am the one woman in the three who will at
one time be a victim of a sexual assault. I am the
one woman in 10 who reported the crime and
pressed charges. That was in October of 1990. The
case has yet to go to trial.
When the court date finally arrives and my
assailant stands as the jury reads the verdict,
chances are, we'll hear a resounding not guilty.
Even if by some miracle, he is confronted with a
charge of guilty, the stiffest sentence he faces for
this second-degree felony is a 10-year probation
term. He won't go to jail and he won't have to
suffer the consequences for an action — a crime
- he chose to commit.
Cindy knows who suffers the consequences, I
know who suffers the consequences . . . every
rape victim knows. We see his face every day,
etched in our minds. We hear our tortured "no's"
and his pathetic "you wanted it." We smell the
sweat and the fear. We taste the bile in the back of
our throats. We feel the penetration, the
helplessness, the horrible press of his body. These
are things we re-experience every day. I could go
on and on.
Do we ever really feel clean again? Is there a
night we don't wake up screaming? Is there a
man anywhere who is not now a suspect?!
remember so well. He looked so nice, so
charming; the clean-cut preppie young man
you'd bring home to mom.
So many times the emotional baggage we carry
becomes too much to bear. It makes us old and
tired and not quite whole. There's a part of me
that was murdered on that night; part of me that
lays there, broken on the lawn and will never get
up. The rest of me is many times too tired to fight
the system and the people who treat the crime
with the ignorance and apathy it doesn't deserve.
I want to make people really see and
understand the sad realities of rape. I'm sure
Brian Boney had some notion.
It can happen to you, your girlfriend, your
sister or your best friend. She is not just a statistic.
Learn the facts and listen to your heart.
Stephanie Steiner
Class of'92
Batt endorsement
deserves praise
I would like to applaud The Battalion's stance
on candidate endorsement. From their stance in
the letter printed the same day, Cody Don Burke
and Dahna Hall of the Academic Affairs
Committee obviously don't understand the
purpose of candidate endorsements by the media.
Endorsements are a holdover from earlier days
of the media when many readers were largely
illiterate and, in practice, unable to research their
own educated opinions. But, their neighbors
would be more than happy to gossip about who
the local paper felt they should vote for. By and
large, they did.
Now, the practice is continued as an addition
to the mass of information available on
candidates. The more we know about someone,
the more we want to know about them. Editorial
boards present a group opinion of the assessment
of a candidate whom they have interviewed at
length. They generally interview any candidate
who asks for them to hear his position.
How efficient would it be for every person in
America to interview at length each and every
candidate for each and every election they are
eligible to participate in?
I personally, to my own chagrin, don't have
enough time to vote in all the elections I can
participate in, let alone form educated opinions
on all the candidates.
Of course, no one is going to run straight to the
polls and vote for some random candidate just
because some journalist says the guy would do a
bang-up job. I would, however, add the paper's
endorsement to my own bank of knowledge
about that candidate.
J.A. Folker
Class of '91
Have an opinion?
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The Battalion reserves the
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There is no guarantee the
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to 845-2647.