The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, March 09, 1994, Image 5

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The Battalion Editorial Board
JULI PHILLIPS, Editor in chief
MICHAEL PLUMER, Managing editor KYLE BURNETT, Aggielife editor
BELINDA BLANCARTE, Night news editor DENA DIZDAR, Aggielife editor
HEATHER WINCH, Night News editor SEAN FRERKINC, Sports editor
TONI GARRARD CLAY, Opinion editor WILLIAM HARRISON, Photo editor
JENNIFER SMITH, City editor
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EDITORIAL
Singing praises
Lady Aggies have super season
Over the years, the Lady
Aggies basketball team rarely
heard a single note of praise.
|But now they should hear a
whole chorus.
Despite the team's loss to
Texas Tech Saturday night in
the final game of the regular
season, the team can take
j pride in its best season ever.
There were two notable
;and historic achieve-
iments during the
season. The Lady
Aggies won 20
games for the first
time in the team's
| history and even
[ broke into the Top
25 at one point thi& u
season. After guiding
her team to its best fin-
I ish in the Southwest Con
ference, Coach Lynn Hickey
! proved her coaching abilities
are among the best anywhere.
Although all too often over
shadowed by other sports, the
Lady Aggies deserve congrat
ulations and support as they
head into the SWC tourna
ment and possibly the NCAA
playoffs. Basketball attendance
was low all season, and it's
time for all Aggies to acknowl
edge that the Lady Aggies
were successful and deserve
more support. After all, the
Twelfth Man tradition does
not come and go with football
season.
Hickey and her team
should be credited for con
stantly playing to the best of
their abilities. The team
serves as a prime ex
ample of what it
means to never
throw in the tow-
The Lady Ag-
■HHiilHllliT gies are a very
young team, and
they will be back
next season with
most of the talent that
has led them to such suc
cess. The Twelfth Man will
have an opportunity to make
it up to the team next season
with better support.
For Hickey, this season is
proof that good things happen
to those who wait. After 10
years of coaching the Lady
Aggies, she certainly has rea
son to be proud of her team.
We all do.
Opinion
The Battalion
Page 5
Finding privacy in world of togetherness
Fast-paced society forces many to seek solitude at home
JENNY
MAGEE
Columnist
P rivacy is still the
ultimate Ameri
can dream.
The American
West is no longer a
vast prairie of wide,
open space that city-
dwellers of the early
1900s drooled over
like children looking
at a Christmas wish
book. Everybody
wanted to own a little
patch of land —
something quiet and
secluded where the
only pesky neighbor
to deal with was an
occasional fox unexpectedly visiting the
chicken coop.
Times changed, and slowly McDonald's,
Exxon and all the other commercial chains
edged their way into this western utopia of
nothingness, turning the west into cities be
fore anyone had time to question it.
So here we are today deep in the heart of
city life. There is a lot less grass to mow, but
somehow the American love for wide open
space didn't die with the onset of the 1,000
square foot apartment.
We no longer have land drives, but clas
sified ads. And only rarely can one find a
10-mile farm road with five houses scat
tered along it. We have residential streets
with 20 to 30 houses lined up like chocolate
pieces in a box and apartment complexes
with eight to ten apartments in a single
building.
Yet despite everything that has
changed, the need for privacy remains
strong. We still want our homes to provide
us with space, occasional seclusion and a
place to escape from the world outside. And
sometimes this makes us feel like the world
is full of nothing but selfish, unfriendly peo
ple who don't care anything about their fel
low man, let alone the person who lives
next door.
While I am certain that there are some
truly unfriendly people out there, the heart
of the problem is much more complex.
In apartment complexes where space is
minimal and a backyard is non-existent, the
tendency to remain anonymous is especially
intense. Living five feet away from someone
else is not just living your life five feet from
other people. It is living five feet away from
their problems, their obnoxious French poo
dle and their even more obnoxious
boyfriends or girlfriends. And sometimes
that is just too much to deal with.
In the fast-paced world in which many
Americans live, where they do 20 hours
worth of work and interact with 50 different
people in an eight-hour workday, neighbors
become obsolete. Or at least, sometimes we
wish they would become obsolete. When
that five o'clock buzzer sounds or classes
are over for the day, people want to disap
pear into an invisible bubble and forget
about the world outside.
We are often shocked by stories in the
newspapers about people who die in big
city apartment complexes and their bodies
aren't discovered until the smell of decom
posing flesh finally forces the resident of a
neighboring apartment to respond.
Then we have to think about how much
we really know about the people next to
whom we live. Sure, there are many cases
where neighbors become good friends and
interact with each other on an everyday ba
sis. However, the cases where residents on
a street or in an apartment building share a
daily camaraderie are extremely rare.
Even here at A&M — home of "Howdy"
— down-home friendliness is a selective
process. When we say howdy, if we say
howdy, it is not to everybody. Granted, it
would be a little difficult to walk down
Ross Street between classes and successfully
say howdy to everyone we pass. It would
take at least more effort than most us are
willing to put forth.
So, given that we only have a certain
amount of time, energy and attention to de
vote to saying howdy, how do we pick to
whom we say it? More often than not, we
choose to say howdy to people we already
know, people we would like to know or
people who say howdy to us first.
The point is that we want to associate
with people on our own terms, when we are
ready — the days when we've had enough
sleep and our problems are at a minimum.
The only problem with this philosophy is
that so many people slip through the cracks.
Sometimes it seems hard to imagine that
there are so many people in this world who
are alone and don't want to be. That is one
of life's great paradoxes — sometimes we
want to be by ourselves for the sole reason
that we feel so alone.
Jenny Magee is a sophomore journalism and
English major
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Editorials appearing in The
Battalion reflect the views of the
editorial board. They do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of
other 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 1111
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843
Fax: (409) 845-2647
Imminence of graduation leads to wide variety of emotions
A s graduation
inches closer
with each
Ipassing day, 1 have
I never been filled
with so much fear.
■ It seems completely
logical for me to be
! experiencing this
emotion consider
ing the gravity of
the events which I,
las well as more
Ithan 4,000 other
Aggies, will face af-
Iter we walk across
Jthe stage in May.
! Obviously, grad-
•iuation is an ev ent I have looked forward to
Isince I arrived at Texas A&M four years
Bago. The reality of it barely entered my
aind when I was a freshman or sopho-
aore. By the time I was a junior, I started
|to create some plan for the future. During
JENNIFER
SMITH
City editor
the first semester of my senior year, all I
could think about was getting out of this
town. But now, graduation is real. It is
about to happen, and I don't know if I'm
ready for it.
How drastically is life about to change!
Coining from high school to A&M was
nothing compared to the newness of life as
a "real adult." College puts us into a set
pattern of classes, studying and partying
(not necessarily in that order), and in two
months that familiar pattern will be gone.
Most of us are going into an occupation
in which we will have to struggle for a
while to keep our heads above water. I am.
going into the competitive world of news
papers. Whichever newspaper I work for
will require more hard work than I have
ever given if 1 am to have a realistic chance
to reach my career aspirations — a job at
the Houston Chronicle.
I'm not sure how the demands of this
new lifestyle will affect me, so the prospect
of heading face forward into it has me wor
ried about experiencing a massive case of
culture shock.
I can do without class and studying, but
I am very concerned about a social life.
Working 40 hours a week at The Battalion
How drastically is life
about to change! College
puts us into a set pattern,
and in two months that fa
miliar pattern will be
gone.
and taking 12 hours of class, my social life
is the only thing that keeps me sane right
now. But I will soon be in a city where I
know no one. I'm sure I will meet people,
but all those prospects still frighten me.
When I actually sit down and picture
myself in some strange city, working 50 or
60 hours a week and coming home to an
empty house, I get really scared.
I hope I am not the only graduating se
nior experiencing these same feelings. I
also hope there is at least one person that
can empathize with me when I say I find
myself clinging to my youth lately. I know
22 isn't that old, but I feel ancient. Adult
hood is sucking me in, and I'm trying des
perately to resist it.
So lately I've been going out way too
much and having more wild times than I
ever have before. I keep thinking that I
might be forgetting something. Maybe
there's something I am leaving out or
something I missed out on because I was
set in a certain lifestyle. So I'm trying to do
in two months all the things I might have
missed out on in the past four years.
But my moods change as quickly as the
days pass, and some days I am filled with
nothing but excitement about graduation.
On those days I think about how I am
starting the rest of my life when I graduate.
This will be the moment I have dreamed
of forever. I will finally be independent
and on my own. I'll never again have to
ask for money from my parents — at least I
hope not. I'll be earning my own way and
consequently will have my own responsi
bilities. Decisions will now be mine, and I
will basically be living for myself in any
way I see fit.
I never really understood the phrase
"The future's so bright. I've got to wear
shades," until now. This may sound over
ly optimistic, but it really is not. In fact I
think the future for me and all of my fellow
graduating seniors really is brighter than
anything we could possibly imagine.
The potential for the future is great, and
just thinking about the possibilities gets me
excited to be graduating. Tine great un
known is looking us straight in the face.
All we have to do is take a chance, grasp
the opportunity and go for it.
Jennifer Smith is a senior journalism major
*
MAXI. CALL
ninal
Under circumstances
UPD procedure best
This is in response to "UPD Policy
'Standard Procedure' Unfair." I commend
the University Police Department officers
for their actions on the morning of Feb. 13.
Why don't you grow up and quit crying
about being detained for questioning.
What if one of your female friends had
been raped earlier that night and the
rapist was just taking a stroll on the west
side of campus, wouldn't you want a po
lice officer to stop him and see just what
he was doing at five in the morning with
no identification?
In the future if you are up for an early
morning stroll, why don't you take some
identification with you; that way all of the
rest of us don't have to listen about a cou
ple of officers just doing their job!
Scott Tlwmpson
Class of'92
Corps lives in fish
bowl of scrutiny
In response to a letter printed March 2,
I would first like to apologize to Muy
Seng on behalf of the Corps of Cadets.
During the two years that I have been out
of the Corps, I have seen it go through
some disturbing changes. I am glad to see
that it is still around; however, instances
like the one described leave me angry and
embarrassed.
I did not see or hear about the softball
game that was played on Feb. 27, but I can
assure you that in the Corps of Cadets that
I was a part of, the things spoken of would
not have happened. However, if they
would have happened, severe repercus
sions would have ensued, leaving the per
petrators wishing that they had never
done that and would think twice about
EVER doing it again. I dearly hope that
the commanding officer of the outfit in
question will take the matter of discipline
into consideration for this unfortunate
event. So, if you don't get an official apol
ogy, let this serve as one.
Secondly, I would like to address the
Corps of Cadets as a whole. WAKE UP
PEOPLE! Is anyone paying attention to
what is being said about the Corps? Keep
in mind that the Corps is in a proverbial
fish bowl. This school loves you when you
shine, but you are remembered most by
the things that you do wrong.
With only two thousand cadets to the
overall A&M population of 43,000, guess
who gets scrutinized the most? We are all
Aggies, but if you are a part of the Corps
of Cadets, then you'd better practice what
you preach.
Jason C. Loveless
Class of '92
Getting worked up
In response to J.D. Slaughter's March 3
letter that said, by leaving the SWC we are
abandoning tradition, honesty, loyalty,
and friendship, and a move to the Big
Eight leaves the remaining poor helpless
SWC schools out to dry, and this entire sit
uation just "turns my stomach" — Lighten
up.
Jay McHenry
Class of '96
College Republicans
seek to inform others
The letter by Jerome Lynn Hall has
raised the question of ignorance regarding
the College Republicans. Senator Kay Bai
ley Hutchison was acquitted when a jury
of her peers rendered a not guilty verdict
in response to Travis County District At
torney Ronnie Earle's inability to provide
substantive evidence. A recent poll by the
Houston Chronicle shows that nearly 68
percent of the Texas voters now believe
that these accusations were politically mo
tivated.
It is the intent of the College Republi
cans to practice our right of free speech
and to inform our fellow students that
Sen. Hutchison was found innocent of all
charges. We do not seek to misinform the
public; we only seek to repair the unjust
damage that has been done.
Jody L. Withers
Class of '95