The Battalion • Page 5
Monday • August 7, 1995
Graduates, just begin life
n
AY
OBBINS
Editor In Chief
raduation looms.
Three times a year, a
group of students starts
seeing Aggieland differently.
Old problems with school or
people become unbearable for
some of these changed Ags; oth
ers start thinking that nothing
seems to matter much at all.
As a result, this group — the
Graduating Seniors — might suddenly seem to have
suffered a radical personality change.
Well, guess what — they have.
They’re becoming former students, and “college
kids” soon will not describe them. After 17 or more
years of checking the box marked “Student” on gov
ernment forms and credit card applications, most
Graduating Seniors now must choose an Occupation.
And Occupations come with Salaries, Benefits,
Insurance and other intimidating words that previ
ously only Mom and Dad and other people called
“sir” and “ma’am” had to worry about.
Suddenly, graduate and professional schools look
like the best places on earth, and Graduating Se
niors who’ve been complaining about burnout start
considering another three to 10 years of school.
But most of these almost-grads will come to their
senses and calm down, resigning themselves to 50
years of Occupation, Salary, Benefits, Insurance,
Marriage, Mortgage, Kids ... Divorce ... and so on ...
And ironically, most Graduating Se
niors who undergo this great change must
face their new world while remembering
only the good times they’ve had at A&M.
Bad memories fade drastically. The al
most-grads gain proper perspective on
the parking tickets, the underhanded fee
increases, the established good ol’ boy
li&M-Ji system and the embarrassing cult wor
ship of “red-ass Old Army days” that
were never like the Aggie myths portray.
Texas A&M, after all, is only a small, humid, out-
of-the-way comer of the world.
For most of the Graduating Seniors, A&M has
been an oasis of positive experiences. Niiie-tenths of
Aggie undergraduates walked into their first classes
as 18-year-old kids still wearing high school letter
jackets and going home every weekend.
On Friday and Saturday, thousands of one-time
fish will walk across the stage in G. Rollie. Many
hardly would recognize themselves from those first
months at A&M. The knowledge and experience of a
college education has made them different people;
usually, the change is for the better.
... Step, step, take the diploma, shake President
Bowen’s hand, “Oh my God, I’m finally a college
graduate,” step, step ... sit back down for another
hour ... walk out of G. Rollie and begin Life.
As Life begins, all these big first-time decisions
are being made under the screeching internal re-
and work to do something
frain, “DON’T SCREW THIS UP!”
The only option is to just “do something.” Any
thing. Find a place to perch, work hard, be frugal
with the birdseed and make a new nest of friends.
And in the long term, create something that lasts.
The only legacy anyone needs to leave is a lasting
contribution to the world.
Of this newest batch of Graduating Seniors, one
might be the Congressional leader who finally re
forms welfare and taxation. Another might be the
general who will make United Nations military in
tervention truly effective for preventing war.
Texas A&M, after all, is only a
small, humid, out-of-the-way
corner of the world.
Someone else might take over General Motors
and return American cars to the top of the world
market, creating thousands of jobs.
One of the almost-grads reading this column
might raise a child who is confident, well-adjusted
and happy.
Another might counsel at-risk high school kids
and give them the encouragement they need to avoid
drugs and survive abusive families.
Someone else might step in front of a bullet to
save a stranger tonight and barely make page 40 of
a big city newspaper.
What they will do doesn’t matter. But they will do
something.
And their actions will leave something positive
behind.
No life is wasted if the person living it can look
back and recall the great and small things they
leave behind that have made the world better for
other people.
The Graduating Seniors should take comfort from
that truth while graduation looms and they make
their impossibly important decisions.
From Kids to Car Payments, life will happen
for Aggieland’s newest former students. In 200
years, nobody will give a damn which of these
graduates drove a Pinto or a Porsche, or even
know any of their names.
The President might remember her Aggie grand
father, a sheriff who didn’t tolerate racism in rural
Texas. And a billionaire philanthropist might not
know about the money his self-made grandmother
borrowed from some Aggie banker who took a risk
on her business ideas.
Somebody just did something, a small kindness or
lifelong endeavor.
History will not record it. But the future will nev
er forget its benefits.
Jay Robbins is a graduating senior
English and political science major
A&M s reputation requires increasing fees
A fter the recent clamor over
proposed fee increases,
X jL.perhaps it is time for an
argument in support of such in
creases to be offered.
The immediate reaction is
almost always negative when
ever the subject of raising tu
ition costs, fees and other ser
vices is considered.
While no one enjoys paying more than is
necessary for an education, the reality is that
increases cannot be avoided if Texas A&M is
to continue touting itself as “world class.”
The University simply cannot operate at
optimum capability without money. The
fees that students pay contribute to operat
ing costs.
If the fees are not increased, then finan
cial aid possibilities diminish. Without a
strong financial aid program, a great many
of us would have had to enter job market
upon high school graduation.
Secondly, the support staff of the Uni
versity, the people who maintain the
grounds, clean the classrooms, type tests
for professors, process new books for the li
brary and clean up the
messes students leave
around campus during fi
nals, have not received an
across-the-board raise since
1992.
I have no argument with a
fee increatse which would go ^
toward pay raises for support
staff. The only problem with
that idea is that each department is required
to contribute a percentage of its own funds to
supplement pay increases.
In many departments, that amounts to
eliminating a position or a program. Pay
raises can end up causing a budget cut.
The University support staff can only
cross its fingers and hope that a merit-pay
increase will be forthcoming in any given
fiscal year.
Texas A&M President Dr. Ray Bowen
now has offered a mea culpa and has pro
posed raising the general use fee by only
$10 per semester credit hour in fiscal year
1995-96, and then another $10 in fiscal
year 1996-97.
This seems like a fair and equitable propos
al, although it will not send the majority of the
students dancing ‘round the maypole.
The money that Texas A&M needs to op
erate with cannot come from the state and
federal governtnents alone.
To add further complications, when the
state legislature issues an edict from on
high to increase the salaries of employees,
it does not always send a check to cover
such obligations.
The bottom line is that fee increases are
necessary and inevitable. Increases will
take some time to adjust to and may seem
inordinately high in initial stages.
Students who want the University to
maintain the current facilities and pro
grams that already exist must accept the
fact that fee increases are necessary.
If fees remain the same, then facilities
will decline, support staff morale will suf
fer and future faculty may look elsewhere
for more rewarding careers.
If Texas A&M is to maintain its reputa
tion as a leading university, then students
will have to pay for that privilege.
Justin Barnett is senior English major
Race should not dictate voting behavior
T hem Okies are sure
dumb. By now, you
would think everyone
would have read the instruc
tions for voting.
After all, we have had this
country for a couple of hun
dred years. People should
know who to vote for.
Heck, North Carolina
knows what to do. So does Louisiana and
Georgia, just to name a few.
Let’s get up to speed on this. Back in 1965,
Congress passed the Voting Rights Act.
The act was not just a good idea, but a
necessity.
Many states — not just in the “Deep
South” — used many disingenuous tech
niques to keep “undesirables” from voting.
The techniques worked.
Prior to the passage of the act, in Selma,
Alabama, out of a population which was 53
percent black, only 3 percent of the voters
were black.
For those who are morally impaired,
I’ll go ahead and tell you ... this was a
bad thing.
Within 5 years of the act’s passage, the
number of registered black voters in the
South doubled.
Here’s where the good news ends.
In the ’70s, many of us were busy being
dressed in plaid, corduroy bell-bottoms.
The civil rights attorneys were a tad
busier. Many in the “civil rights” communi
ty decided that no minority could truly ex
ercise their right to vote unless they were
voting for other minorities.
The rationale being, only a
black could represent
blacks, only whites could
represent whites, only long
haired hippie dudes could
represent Austin.
You get the idea.
So with the gentle,
guiding hand of our benev
olent Department of Justice — i.e. “Do it
or we arrest your entire state” — many
states made some very creative congres
sional districts in order to create minori
ty majorities.
Some of these districts are very enter
taining. North Carolina had a district that
followed a 160 mile length of 1-85 and
stretched about, oh, 100 yards to either
side of the highway. Many others resemble
Rorschach ink-blot tests ... after going to
the Dixie Chicken on Friday.
Great family fun though this may be,
there is one small problem.
It’s only the 14th Amendment.
At least that’s what those kooky folks at
the Supreme Court declared.
In a ruling handed down in early July,
the Court held that acid-trip districts,
such as the North Carolina example, vio
late the Amendment by denying equal
protection under the law by making race
the “predominant” factor in drawing the
district boundaries.
This makes perfect sense.
It is ridiculous to assume that people
of the same color are going to have the
same political beliefs merely because of
skin tone.
Test this. Read some of the other opin
ion columns and decide for yourself if we
are likely to vote for the same person,
black or white.
In fact, isn’t this the definition of prej
udice? Assuming all people are the same
because they are the same color is what
we are trying to get away from, not move
toward.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor called this
idea “political apartheid.”
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the
majority opinion that he found the idea
that all people of the same race will have
the same political ideology “demeaning and
offensive.”
,.So do I. And so do those wacko Okies.
J.C. Watts is a first-term Congressman
from Oklahoma’s seventh district.
It seems that over 90 percent of the sev
enth district is white.
But J.C. Watts is black.
Apparently, the residents of the seventh
district find political beliefs more impor
tant than race. In the process, they elected
themselves a very capable representative.
If those drawing the districts would
spend a little less time worrying about the
skin color of the residents and a little more
time on the real needs of the people, maybe
a few more J.C. Watts would show up.
That’s true democracy.
David Taylor is a senior
management major
The Battalion
Editorials Board
Established in 1893
Editorials appearing in The Battalion reflect the views
of the editorials 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.
Contact the opinion editor for information on
submitting guest columns.
Jay Robbins
Editor in Chief
Rob Clark
Managing Editor
Sterling Hayman
Opinion Editor
Kyle Littlefield
Assistant Opinion Editor
Fee Increase
The Board of Regents' procrastination
may greatly burden students.
If procrastination was a
virtue, the Texas A&M System
Board of Regents would receive
many compliments for its behav
ior this summer.
~ Faced with a $6.7 million
funding shortfall for the 1995-96
school year, the A&M adminis
tration and the Board of Regents
for months have considered rais
ing the general use fee to com
pensate for the Texas Legisla
ture’s insufficient appropriations.
Texas law allows universities to
increase the general use fee
equal to the amount of the tu
ition rate.
The administration
first proposed a gener
al use fee increase of
$14 per semester
hour, to take effect in
Fall ’95.
That proposal faced
opposition from the
majority of student
groups around cam
pus who claimed that
the increase was “too
much, too fast.” The regents
postponed their decision until
they could learn more informa
tion on the proposed increase
and its effects.
After weeks of inaction by the
regents, A&M President Ray
Bowen, in an informal meeting
with student leaders, offered an
alternate proposal.
Instead of sticking students
with an increase of $14 per se
mester hour in the fall semester,
the administration proposed im
plementing the increase over two
semesters. The new plan would
allow the University to increase
the general use fee $10 per se
mester hour in the fall semester
and an addition $10 increase in
Fall 1996.
The Texas A&M System Board
of Regents still has not made a
decision concerning the increase
and does not plan to meet again
until Aug. 31, after the fall semes
ter already has started.
However, the University al
ready has mailed fee statements
for the fall semester to students
and their families. Enclosed with
the statements is a sheet of pa
per which offers a brief and am
biguous explanation of the pro
posed increase. The enclosed in
formation sheet explains that if
the regents pass the administra
tion’s new proposal, new fee
statements billing for the fee in
crease will be mailed to all stu
dents and families.
Although students would be
allowed to pay the difference in
two installments for a $15
charge* the University says it
will not extend any payment
deadlines.
It seems ironic that the Uni
versity would not be able to ex
tend any deadlines, but the re
gents easily can extend theirs.
The Texas A&M System Board
of Regents should have already
decided the fate of the adminis
tration’s fee increase proposal.
Two other Texas universities
already have imple
mented fee increases.
The University of
Texas and Texas
Tech University
both raised general
use fees at the be
ginning of the sum
mer, allowing
enough time for stu
dents and their fam
ilies to adjust their
budgets accordingly.
By postponing this decision
until after the beginning of the
fall semester, the A&M Board
of Regents is greatly inconve
niencing thousands of students
and families.
The University should make
great efforts to ensure that the
students aren’t unnecessarily
burdened because of the short
sightedness of the Texas Legisla
ture and the procrastination of
the Board of Regents.
Students may address any
questions or concerns to:
Board Chairman Mary Nan West
210/378-5335
Vice Chairman T. Michael O'Connor
512/573-7672
Regent Alison Brisco
713/236-2462
Regent John H. Lindsey
713/652-4080
Regent Royce E. Wisenbaker
903/593-2588 .
Regent Frederick D. McClure
214/369-8566
Regent Don Powell
806/358-4582
Regent Robert H. Allen
713/659-2435
Regent M. Guadalupe L. Rangel
409/845-9600
A&M Chancellor Dr. Barry Thompson
409/845-4331
A&M President Dr. Ray Bowen
409/845-2217
Tin; Battalion
Jay ROBBINS, Editor in Chief
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