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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1993)
ember 1,1 irdinals Opinion Wednesday, December 1,1993 The Battalion Editorial Board CHRIS WHITLEY, editor in chief JULI PHILLIPS, managing editor MARK EVANS, city editor DAVE THOMAS, night news editor ANAS BEN-MUSA, Aggielife editor BELINDA BLANCARTE, night news editor MICHAEL PLUMER, sports editor MACK HARRISON, opinion editor WILLIAM HARRISON, sports editor The Battalion Page 9 onth, Dr. ichigan'sb ?tired pathol EDITORIAL A fine job Volleyball team deserves support r strike int o show upfnH Congratulations to the Texas vyer, MichaeH&M Lady Aggies as they irn himselfi qualify for the NCAA volley- pall tournament. District Judd The football team's three- peat Southwest Conference Championship season may lF ve overshadowed this other 1 ' untl 1 outstanding group of Aggie T . ,,, athletes. .Jf i Despite the lack of attention, >< p'st-year coach Laurie Corbelli .Jay at,,* the Lad Y Aggies to or was get 1 ari impres- f sive 26-7 n Fredericki regular sea- n Kevorkian son record, levorkianrer Everyone s h o u 1 d m't they im come but' to ' If Rollie iWhite Colise- iim tonight at 7 p.m. to yell for at-nifu the Lady A S§ ies as they host trrmij the George Mason Patriots in Ihe first round of the NCAA og to the r volleyball tournament. lion child*;.. T 5’" i 8p' s s ame is Texas iwed molte A&M 5 flrst , a PP ear ?" c , e in established P ost ' season P^ a Y smce l"o6. of cases. HHS| “There was no way they paternitiesf' c °uld leave us out," Corbelli iiid local chi» said. it agencies h; If the Lady Aggies advance 992, up 7. I Congression- he for whom p ! 1 red in Deceit m a high of ^ I to a lowofli ia. The ■rcent. will face the University of Texas Lady Longhorns in Austin this weekend. Another SWC team, the University of Houston Cougars, also snapped up a spot in the first round. Corbelli said she hopes to keep the players relaxed and focused on tonight's game. Any team that makes it to the NCAA tournament will be a tough opponent. The games will demand the maximum effort from both com petitors and fans. The Lady Aggies' suc cess tonight will show case the tal ent and dedication of players and coaches. The sup port of every available Aggie fan will make the job of win ning the match much easier. The NCAA tournament match offers Aggie fans an op portunity to see the volleyball team demonstrate that it can play with the best competition in the country. Pack G. Rollie tonight and send a much-deserved vote of confidence to the Lady Aggies. Today's media: Good news is no news Papers, television should relate positive stories as well R M ' ' I MELISSA MEGUOLA Columnist eading a news paper or watch- Jng the news can be depressing. Very depressing. I know that most parents still love their children, most teachers still want to motivate and encourage their students, and most politicians — I may be stretching this one — genuinely want to serve their con stituents. Headlines, however, sometimes make me forget. Thinking about how newspapers affect us daily, I took a copy of this Saturday's Dallas Morning News and labeled new stories with a big blue highlighter. If a story reported something positive in the news, I marked it with a big "G." I used a "B" for stories that revealed some new societal atrocity and "N" for stories that stated neutral facts. After tallying the marks — excluding the home, auto and classified sections — I found 18 good stories, 34 bad stories and 31 neutral stories. The numbers weren't as bad as I ex pected. Tor every positive story we read, we only have to read two negative stories. But not everyone reads every story, and the good news can be more difficult to find. In the front and presumably most widely read section, 11 stories reported bad news while only four discussed something positive. The more cheerful stories often considered to be fluff by journalists are often tucked away in the Lifestyle and Metropolitan sections. Why not run the stories on the front page? Wouldn't we all start the day with a more positive outlook if newspapers were only al lowed to print good news on the front page? We really wouldn't have to censor the me dia, just rearrange it a little. With some lay out redesign, the lead story on Saturday could have run as "Plano Teen Shines on Mickey Mouse Club." Below it a story about the Granbury coach who was featured in the fourth annual American Teacher Awards would have been appropriate. An uplifting story about a 14- year-old boy who escaped from gang life and recently won the Optimist International Ora torical competition would also have been front page material. Controversies and scandals undoubtedly sell papers. But If every paper was required to print only good news on the front page, then each paper would be equally affected. Re porters might even search out the unusually good things people around them are doing. Although the public is not supposed to be interested in news that makes you feel good, I only remember two of the many magazine and newspaper articles I have read in the last few weeks. The first is an excerpt from a Robert Ful- ghum book. Someone in the publicity de partment of a failing symphony had read his dream of conducting Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and thought that Robert Ful- ghum, guest conductor, might be able to sell some tickets. Little attention was paid to the fact that Fulghum does not read music and that the Ninth is an extremely difficult piece. With much help from a disgusted conduc tor, Fulghum spent months preparing, yet re mained inadequate. He went through the motions for two performances. But on his third and final performance, he apologized to the audience and said that he could no longer mutilate such a beautiful piece of music. The conductor then led the symphony in a wonderful performance and Fulghum left the music hall knowing Beethoven was smiling. Not currently front page news, but a story I will remember for a long time. Bob Greene, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, wrote a story about a young trick-or- treater who returned to the same house sever al times. Although the family recognized him, each time they gave him a new bag of potato chips. Later that evening the boy came to the door for the fourth or fifth time. He carried with him four bags of potato chips that he returned meekly. His father waited at the end of the sidewalk. Cautious parents now check their children's candy to make certain it is safe to eat, but this father cared enough for his son to make him return the extra chips. Stories about maintaining the integrity of the arts and teaching your kids morals will never replace reports of the war in Bosnia, drive-by shootings and parents who starved their 5-year-old child until he weighed only 18 pounds. But maybe we could push for one day a week. Wednesday could officially become good news day. Maybe on Wednesdays people would start to greet each other on the street, cars would allow one another to merge into heavy lanes of traffic, students would try to help one another find parking spots .... Melissa Megliola is a senior industrial engineering major Editorials appearing in The Battalion reflect the views of the editorial board. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of otner Battalion staff members, the Texas A&M student body, regents, administration, faculty or staff. Columns, guest columns, cartoons and letters express the opinions of the authors. The Battalion encourages letters to the editor and will print as many as space allows. Letters must be 300 words or less and include the author's name, class, and phone number. We reserve the right to edit letters and guest columns for length, style, and accuracy. Contact the opinion editor for information on submitting guest columns. Address letters to: The Battalion - Mail Call 013 Reed McDonald Mail stop Till Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77043 Fax: 1409) 845-2647 visit to Normandy brings home the price of our freedom AYEUX, k France — I 'remember as establishing a child watching btaining cli iEy father leave for result in otM out of town trips ' the child, i 11 that his work re- irity, pensioj q u ired of him. : its, and oth' Though he was Jgone for only a few pays and took Ithese trips only a Tfew times each wear, I remember how my mother prayed each day for his safe return. And whenever an be ROBERT VASQUEZ Columnist it was our turn to pray, my brother, my ^sister or I would always end with "... and please bless our dad. Help him come Klome safe so that we can see him again." 1 He was in no apparent danger, but we iprayed for him anyway. I Touring the war-torn region of Nor mandy, France, I've learned so much Kbout the thousands of men who stormed Ifhe beaches on D-Day as a part of our Al lied effort to liberate France and crush the German army — an army that had over run France and begun the separation and then the extermination of the Jewish peo ple who lived there. In America, we read books that de scribe the heinous war scenes that took place somewhere "over there." Ameri cans know that we emerged victorious — right? It seems difficult to grasp an intimate understanding of a war that happened 50 years ago when there is so little visible evidence of it. The French countryside is littered with remnants of that war, a war that still looms painfully clear in the minds of peo ple who live here. The shorelines are pocked and scarred from the artillery launched from battleships designed for destruction. Standing at the sight of the Normandy invasion, one can still see the artificial harbor built hundreds of feet from the shore, where the freezing surf of the Eng lish Channel seems foreboding enough to stop any army. We walked through the concrete bunkers built atop towering cliffs which rise above the beaches where the Ameri cans landed. From that vantage point, looking hun dreds of feet down at the beaches, I tried to imagine what must have run through the minds of those American soldiers. The sea wall that had been fortified by the Germans appears impenetrable to this These beaches stand today as a reminder of the victori ous invasion. But resting on the cliffs where Germans once stood are thousands of white marble crosses. day. Boats had been tossed. Many troops had to swim ashore, their bodies weight ed by their own drenched uniforms and gear. And as they reached the shore, they were shot at by men who sat hundreds of feet above them behind concrete walls. And then what were these American soldiers to do? Only cross the beach, scale the cliffs and overtake the enemy, who was waiting for them at the top — that is, if they weren't picked off in the water before they made it to shore. What could possibly make the men think they could accomplish such a task? The cliffs were draped with mines set to explode when the soldiers scaled the walls. If they reached the top, they found' barbed wire, more mines, and Germans aiming to kill them at any cost. But the Allied Forces — Americans, English and Canadians — kept on com ing. Men were dropping on every side, but those who could pressed on. The odds were impossible. The Ger mans knew it. They had made sure that no force could penetrate the defensive wall they had formed. And yet, they lost. Little by little, the American invaders advanced on the German occupied terri tory, now known as the Omaha and Utah beaches — the code names used when planning the invasion. These beaches are where America proved her military might. They stand today as a reminder of the victorious in vasion, the grandest display of amphibi ous warfare in the history of the world. But the symbols that mark this glori ous moment in history are bitter re minders of the price that was paid for such a victory. Resting on the cliffs where the Germans once stood, there are now thousands of white marble crosses. The Normandy American Cemetery stretches row after row across 200 acres of French soil. Buried here are nearly 10,000 soldiers who lost their lives in the battle. The field' of crosses, which seems only to end where the sea begins, is a silent memorial to the soldiers. Visitors walk quietly past, knowing that each cross rep resents one human life. Less clear, but more moving, is the thought that each life here represented so many more lives. Each soldier probably had somewhere a mother or a father or a family hoping, praying that one day he would return safely. Just so they could see him again. Robert Vasquez is a senior journalism major rta*****^. EMAIL CALL int Parking al ersity Center Garage, hour r day Poor management killed Koriyama As a person who participated in the Koriyama pilot program as a teaching assistant and who has maintained inter est in the campus throughout its devel opments, I believe it is a mistaken and simplistic assessment of the unfortu nate outcome of A&M's venture in Ko riyama to say that lack of Japanese funding is closing the campus (Battal ion editorial Nov. 30). The Koriyama campus has been clos ing since the day it opened. A&M from the very beginning approached the pro ject with a naivete about Japan in gen eral and Koriyama in particular that led many in Koriyama to question both the commitment of A&M to the project and the large amounts of money coming from Koriyama citizens' taxes to pay for it. With few notable exceptions, the staff A&M sent to Koriyama to manage the project had little or no knowledge of Japanese culture, the Japanese way of do ing business, or the Japanese language. More Mail Call 10 Many never tried to overcome these deficiencies. This sort of one-way ap proach never did settle well with the con servative community of Koriyama, just as it would not in a conservative communi ty such as Bryan-College Station. In the views of many associated with the project, both Japanese and Ameri can, the poor management (with the ex ception of Dr. Norris), repeated gaffes, and the seeming lack of effort to bridge the cultural gap on A&M's part doomed the much-needed image pro motion the former mayor of Koriyama tried hard to accomplish, not to men tion risked the futures of the students involved. Given this, any sort of decision on the present mayor's part to withhold funding may be seen as a response to the mandate he is given as mayor of a community having a hard time justify ing the project. Granted that it was rumored in Ko riyama that there were questionable po litical and business dealing by the for mer mayor and local construction com panies, a lucid and cognizant approach by A&M might have saved the political implications of this for the Koriyama campus. A&M apparently remained largely ignorant throughout. Also granted that American univer sities have had a very hard time estab lishing branch campuses in a country with social views of education greatly foreign to our own, Texas A&M at Ko riyama may have never survived any way. But to lay blame for the closure sim ply on the recent withholding of funds by the Koriyama city hall is to reaffirm the simplistic approach of Texas A&M towards the Koriyama campus. Tom C. Hilde Graduate student