31,199]
la P at the
Jntil Fitti.
; la 8s and
/ 9, 9 sec-
finishers
' l ' smarted
the front
s r led un-
o^le and
lampion
oversial
f the 200-
d the rest
f runner-
tarter.
ters were
'■ing the
1 race i n
fered a
it knee in
rio s son,
Sunday
's team-
'85 Indy
both es-
na
nal saw the
the number
[eels.
be a battle
The Aggies
n the first,
'urth, three
n the ninth
tart of the
irough go-
;s, striking
■o Tar Heel
Opinion
Monday, May 31,1993
The Battalion
Page 5
iw Fedora
n as many
ng a triple
d triple as
er five Tar
nnvincing
A College
ghout the
rson said,
ggressive
III
e home
tse with
rte only
region-
hampi-
rmer of
me be-
and the
al State
vhen it
a Tim
> Hein-
Trojan
s, sur-
[ - on
Us and
i in the
run in
out of
CztMli/AL
Cop£.
V idiots! i
To VeTo /wb7“ To
G '«oy M p M
[OtoJAtA I
1—JurJe '?3 -J
The Battalion Editorial Board
Jason Loughman, editor in chief
Mark Evans, managing editor
Stephanie Patillo, city editor Kyle Burnett, sports editor
Dave Thomas, night news editor Anas Ben-Musa, Aggie//Ve editor
Mack Harrison, morning news editor Billy Moran, photo editor
The Battalion
/
100 years at
Texas A&M
Editorial
Criminal code revision
Bill needed to keep crooks off streets
The Texas Legislature passed a
ill Saturday that would double the
rison time for violent criminals,
ow, it only needs Gov. Ann
Richards' signature.
The bill requires all violent crimi
nals, such as rapists and murderers,
to serve at least half of their term,
or 30 years, prior to parole. Cur
rently, such criminals must serve
only one-fourth of their term before
becoming eligible for parole.
"The people of Texas
are tired of being raped
and robbed and mur
dered," said Rep.
Allen Place, D-
Gatesville. "This is
the toughest penal
code that has been
written and the
punish
ment standard (that
has) ever been writ
ten by the state of
However, Richards should not
eliminate the whole bill because of
one law. It would be like killing a
F atient in order to remove a wart.
urthermore, the sodomy law is
very rarely enforced and is current
ly being disputed in the Texas
Supreme Court.
Texas.
The House
>assed the
pa
113-11, and the Senate had ap-
)roved the bill previously.
Yet gav rights activists are calling
ret gay
Richan
on Richards to veto the bill because
it does not eliminate state law ban
ning sodomy between homosexual
couples.
"If Richards does not veto the
anti-gay legislation presented to
ier, sne will be supporting hatred
and bigotry," said Sonny Hood,
spokesman for the Austin Lesbian-
ay Political Caucus.
Richards should leave the debate
about the sodomy law to the judi
ciary and concentrate on solving
the problems of crime plagu
ing the towns and cities of
Texas.
"The penal code is
almost a heroic piece
of work by the
House and Senate
and it needs to go
through," said Bill
Cryer, Richards'
press secretary.
The bill includes
provisions to: add
child molestation to
the list of most violent
crimes, raise the minimum
sentence for capital murder from
35 to 40 years, treat the intentional
transmission of AIDS as attempted
murder and change the classifica
tion of solicitation of a child from a
misdemeanor to a felony.
This bill would be a great stride
toward ending the perception
among would-be criminals ot a le
nient justice system, providing
greater justice for victims and mak
ing a safer Texas for us all.
The Batt: hotbed of liberal Nazis
A&M's student paper aims to please ... no, really!
JASON
LOUGHMAN
Editor in chief
H ere begins a new semester of
The Battalion, the newspaper
that has been described by
various readers as either liberal or
conservative, communist or fascist.
We are, in the minds of some, slav
ishly devoted to pinko, left-wing ide
ology, and in the minds of others. Re
publican zealots.
This is exactly as it should be.
But whatever perceptions our
readers form, we hope they stem
from reading the editorials that ap
pear here on the opinion page. The
text labeled "Editorial" is the only
portion of our publication intended
to convey the stance of our editorial
board on any issue.
We write editorials to contribute to that time-honored
tradition of the free and open exchange of ideas, a tradition
at the heart of any world-class university. Our constant ef
forts to seek out the news provide us the necessary infor
mation to offer what we hope is an informed and construc
tive opinion on a given issue.
We understand that everyone will not always agree.
Some have even argued that Battalion editorials should re
flect the opinions of the student body.
However, publishing only popular opinions would
mean publishing that which we do not necessarily believe
to be true. The day when truth ceases to be a priority at
The Battalion is the day its readers should stop picking it
up. After all, if we don't believe what we write, why on
Earth should anyone else?
Just as our editorial board writes editorials, our colum
nists write their columns. Their positions, like ours, do not
always coincide with the stances of all our readers. Nei
ther does the editorial board necessarily agree with the
content of any column; hence the boxed disclaimer on each
day's opinion page.
Last, but in our minds far from least, is the part of the
opinion page reserved for our readers — Mail Call. This is
your chance to figuratively get up on a soapbox and
scream for thousands to hear. Your letters to the editor
have made this possibly the most popular section of The
Battalion.
But we have to get mail to run Mail Call. We never
seem to receive enough mail over the summer, so if you
ever wanted to see your letter in print there's no time like
this semester to write one and send it in.
While we hope your ideas as to this newspaper's politi
cal identity, whether liberal or conservative, come from the
opinion page, we strive constantly to make the news por
tion of The Battalion as objective as possible. If at any time
you do not believe our news coverage to be unbiased, tell
us. I am very concerned about maintaining our credibility
and I or my managing editor will be more than happy to
listen to any complaints or suggestions you might have.
Five English 104 students recently sent us a copy of a re
search paper they wrote which they said documented the
very bias in our news that we seek to avoid. Though I
don't know if, as their paper's title suggests, Benito Mus
solini would be proud of The Battalion, and though they
drew conclusions about personal motives which did not
follow from their data, I am glad they sent it in.
If nothing else, such complaints cause us to reexamine
our work and to try even harder to keep bias out of our
news stories.
The authors of the paper also pointed out one or two
technical errors and reminded us that inadvertent mistakes
can appear to be examples of conscious bias.
Hopefully the thought that The Battalion is subjected to
such scrutiny will keep us on our toes.
In fact, reader feedback is so important that we want to
establish a reader's panel to meet with us on a regular ba
sis and tell us what they like or dislike in The Battalion.
If you would be interested in a position on this panel,
stop by and fill out a short form. The reader's panel will
be open to students, faculty and staff from as many differ
ent backgrounds as possible, to give us the most complete
picture possible as to reader concerns.
We are proud of what we do here at The Battalion. The
collection of C.T.'s, "dead" C.T.'s, non-regs, Greeks, dorm
residents, undergraduates, graduate students, liberals and
conservatives, males and females and people of all colors
that have worked here in the past have pursued the ideals
of good journalism, even if those ideals haven't always
been attained.
We will do no less.
Loughman is a senior journalism major
ierun of
■he sixth
Jl-Tour-
the top
ded at 1 '
riple to
Id pitch
pitch-
the All-
Harris,
tanding
Granger
-ing R e '
; will
d re-
ham-
iving
:ley's
there
it is
ably
; our
t me
in
ie of
rles,
College Station poverty: lies, damned lies and statistics
A ccording to the Census Bureau,
38 percent of the citizens of Col
lege Station are below the
poverty threshold, giving College Sta
tion the second
highest poverty
rate in the nation
for cities with
more than 50,000
in population.
This ranking rais
es interesting
questions about
official poverty
: statistics.
[ The study
: prompted an edi-
i torial in the April-
May edition of
j “The Touch-
j stone," another
| one of its many
i efforts to put the "so?" back into social
ism.
I was nonplussed by the editorial's
! conclusion that poverty rates are affect
ed not by College Station's high per-
! centage of typically low income stu-
: dents, but by A&M's low-level staff,
i probably have higher average in
comes than students.
The Touchstone editorial did not dis
cuss: 1) average student income vis-a-
vis average low-level staff income, 2)
why student concentrations do not af
fect poverty rates while low-level uni
versity staff concentrations do, or 3)
why low-level staff salaries affect the
poverty rate of College Station in par
ticular but not those of other university
cities. In brief, the editorial fails the
standard guffaw test.
T. J. Eller, the Census Bureau official
who compiled the study, said in a tele
phone interview that "poverty rates are
higher for student populations because
student income level is transitory."
That is, students defer higher in
come into the future, and the deferred
income of college students averages
$640,000 of lifetime gain. Ellis candidly
acknowledges that the Census Bureau
uses a broad yardstick to measure offi
cial poverty rates; this results in some
anomalous cases like College Station.
A matter rarely discussed when the
Census Bureau releases official poverty
statistics is what precisely these Aatis-
tics measure. Studies that compare
both income and consumption expen
ditures show that the lowest fifth of in
come earners have consumption expen
ditures three times their income. This
calls into question the ability of official
poverty statistics to measure actual so
cial welfare.
In 1990, the lowest fifth of income
earners, after adjusting for inflation,
had greater per capita expenditure than
the per capita income of the the median
household in 1960.
Furthermore, official poverty statis
tics do not measure much of the money
spent on welfare for low-income peo
ple. In 1990, welfare funds spent but
not measured by the Census Bureau
amounted to $10,499 per poor house
hold, about 2.8 percent of the gross na
tional product.
The lot of the poor has so substan
tially improved that their average liv
ing standards compare well with those
in other industrialized nations. The av
erage poor American has twice as
much living space as the average
Japanese and four times as much as the
average Russian.
The poor American now lives and
eats better than even most Americans
have in this century. Using the stan
dard poverty measure, nearly 33 per
cent of Americans in 1947 would be
deemed poor. In 1970, the average
American home had 0.62 persons per
room. This figure for poor households
in 1987 was 0.56. In 1989, 40 percent of
poor households owned their homes,
typically a three-bed room house with
a garage and a porch or patio.
There were overall gains during the
1980's, such as personal income and
personal disposable income per capita
increasing 16.7 and 17.5 percent respec
tively in inflation adjusted dollars from
1980-90.
The top one, ten, and 50 percent of
income earners paid 25.6, 55.8, and 94.4
percent of all taxes in 1990, up from 19,
49.3 and 92.9 percent in 1980.
Unfortunately, most of this is lost on
those who swear by high poverty sta
tistics. Their contention seems to be
that objections to them amount to
blindly believing Rush Limbaugh and
engaging in right wing bullying.
The proposed solution replaces
"trickle down economics" with the
left's "trickle on economics," in which
income is redistributed. I suppose the
attraction is the simplicity — or better.
the simplifying assumption — of the
"solution."
But because society can consume
only what it produces in the long run,
ultimately any solution for the poor
(and the rest of us) that does not en
courage employment and increased -
productivity will probably be fruitless.
Dickerson is a sophomore
economics major
Editortolj appearing to The Battalion reflect the views
of the ecfitoaol board. Tbey do not necessarily reflect
the opinions of other Battalion staff members, the Texas
A&M student body, regents, administration, faculty or
Columns, guest columns, and Mail Cali items express
the cmiraons of the authors.
The Battalion encourages letters to the editor and will
print as many as space allows in the Mail Call section.
Letters must be 300 words or less and include the
author's name, class, and phone number.
Contact the editor or managing editor for information
on submitting guest columns.
We reserve the right to edit letters and guest columns
tar length, style, and accuracy.
Letters should be addressed to;
The Battalion - Mat! Call
013 Reed McDonald /Mail stop 1111
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843
MATTHEW
DICKERSON
Columnist