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Th‘ s ■rs to ft f! j defei^ ,ack^ locked ,vvn ^ iders n ma r ckB®* 11 The Battalion Tuesday February 27, 1 996 Opinion Brushy Creek reeks of questionable treatment Negative campaigning must stop T exas A&M — world class university with world class problems. Texas A&M University has be gun construction on the Animal Sci ence, Teaching, Research and Extension Com plex. Despite the fact that legal action and mediation are pend ing, administration officials have proceeded with their plans to violate the most basic of land- use principles — when possible, it is best to avoid using the same area of land for two competing functions. When land is being used to sustain the lives of American cit izens no corporation, govern ment, person or university should be allowed to contami nate it, particularly when there are other options available. Specifically, 300 sheep, 300 goats and up to 75 pregnant sows and piglets will be housed on a rotating basis on the small piece of property west of College Station on Highway 60. Three hundred cattle are already on the site and will remain there after the center is built. That the University is placing a large number of animals on a relatively small piece of property in an overwhelmingly African- American community warrants an explanation. Environmental racism was defined in 1991 by Reverend Benjamin J. Chavis, a leader in the movement for environmental justice: “Environmental racism is racial discrimination in envi ronmental policy-making and the unequal enforcement of envi ronmental laws and regula tions.” It is the “official sanction ing of a life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in peo ple’s of color communities.” These communities, both ur ban and nonurban, dispropor tionately suffer from environ mental degradation. A&M’s choosing to locate the center in the Brushy Creek area is nothing unique. Rather, A&M is added to a national list of sus pect organizations that may have chosen locations based on the characteristics of their resi dents — in this case, low-income and African-American. A 1987 study by the Com mission on Racial Justice found that 60 percent of African Americans and Hispanics live in communities with uncon trolled toxic waste sites, com pared with 50 percent of the general population. Statistics also show that com munities with a higher percent age of minorities are significant ly more likely to have facilities for treating or incinerating haz ardous waste. Historically, there has been a disparity in en forcement of envi ronmental regula tions as well. Ac cording to the En- vironmental Pro tection Agency, be tween 1985 and 1991 violators of the federal hazardous waste law received fines that were 500 per cent higher if they polluted white communities than if they polluted minority communities. This is no surprise given the different levels of political clout that the communities contain. Although it may be no surprise, it is also not just. Higher-income and predomi nately white communities are more likely to successfully prevent corporations and governments from locating potential environ mental hazards in their areas. Understandably, the adminis tration chose to locate the center in Brushy Creek for financial rea sons. It has a right, of course, to locate the center on the cheapest land it can find. This does not, however, negate its responsibility if it pollutes the ground water of the surrounding community. According the the University, it is safe to locate the center in Brushy Creek. A&M officials should release their scientific studies proving this to the resi dents of Brushy Creek. There is already a Beef Indus try Complex located at the site. Perhaps this is why the land is “safe” for the new animals — be cause the ground water is al ready contaminated. If s >, the residents of Brushy Creek de serve to know this is the case, and the University should have to prove that further contamina tion does not pose an increase in health risks to the community. Last week, a U.S. district judge ordered Texas A&M and Brushy Creek residents to share their information with each other. Previously, the judge denied a restraining order that would have temporarily stopped construction of the $5.5 million center. Mediation be tween University officials and Brushy Creek residents is scheduled for this weekend. Construction continues at the site and is scheduled to be com pleted in the summer of 1997. If mediation is unsuccessful, Brushy Creek residents will again seek court intervention. The University has been planning the center for over 10 years, but years of planning do not render the University im mune to the legitimate concerns of Brushy Creek residents. Elaine Mejia is a senior political science major Black History Month teaches the real past Despite the opinions of Bren dan O’Reilly, Black History Month is not an attempt to fur ther divide ou‘r races or to throw the past in one another’s faces. One of the purposes of Black History Month is to try to en lighten people who mistakenly believe that, thanks to History 106, they know everything they need to know about American history. O’Reilly wrote, “Most people know about the cruelties of slavery, and they do not get uncomfortable when they are re minded of what has happened.” If you believe that, try sitting in on a HIST 301 lecture (History of Blacks in the U.S. since 1877). Try learning about post slavery lynchings when it was common for people to come from miles around to watch a man be burned alive and have his flesh, teeth, fingers and toes be torn from his body for souvenirs, sometimes before he was dead. Try listening to that without sinking in your chair, without being “uncomfortable,” without thanking God that you and your friends were born generations later. We cannot take the re- Mail sponsibility for the atrocities of the past. We could never right all of the wrongs, and our shoul ders would surely not withstand the weight of the burden. It’s a past that still haunts us because we are not anywhere close to learning from it what we should. The shame I feel is for the locked minds today — the ones who continue to hurl the word “nigger” at fellow Aggies, who think that equality was granted to blacks by Abraham Lincoln, who have the audacity to dis play their own ignorance so bla tantly. I feel the shame of shar ing my school with those deter mined to stunt its progress — those who are voluntarily limit ing their own education. I feel the anger from injustices that occur on this campus that no longer shock my black peers. Black History Month is a cele bration of those leaders who we skim over in most history class es; it is a plea to learn from the mistakes of those who came be fore us, and it is an opportunity for all of us to respect the perse verance of people who refused to be treated like second class citi zens. Christine Eason Class of’97 N obody likes a tattle tale. But it sure seems like the bicker ing candidates for the Re publican presidential nomi nation never learned this valuable lesson. Gov. Lamar Alexander, Pat Buchanan, Sen. Bob Dole and Steve Forbes have been firing shots at each other like a na tional championship game of “smear the front-runner.” Dole calls Buchanan an ex tremist. Buchanan calls Alexander a liberal. Alexander says Buchanan has “the wrong ideas” and Dole has “no ideas.” And everyone jabs at Forbes for just being a big, fat, rich guy who can’t seem to answer any question — even about the weather — without talking about his flat tax proposal. The negative campaigning has reached epidemic proportions for Dole. Once the front-runner, his run at the presidency has taken a turn for the worse, much of it stem ming from his negative ads targeting Buchanan as a monster (which is actually pretty accurate). But as the race continues, these ads are only getting worse. Dole seems to be grasp ing at anything to grab the top slot back from Buchanan. And Alexander wins the audacity contest, suggesting that Dole should drop out of the race, although Alexander hasn’t defeated Dole in any pri mary yet. The candidates are behaving with less maturity than third-graders at recess. “My dad can beat up your dad” is sure to be the newest campaign slogan for one of them. It’s a disease that is spreading ... even to The Battalion. A recent ad read something like this: “Hi, I’m Rob Clark and I’d like to have your vote as Battalion columnist supreme. I believe I possess the vision, the knowledge and the wisdom to lead The Batt’s readers away from the Mail Call section and away from the evils expressed in the other colum nists’ wrong stances on the issues. Just look at my fellow candidates on to day’s page. You can’t read Elaine Mejia’s column on environmental racism. Mejia was once president of the National Organi zation for Women! Do you really want to read the opinion of a former NOW president? Should such an extremist be allowed to have her voice in such a prominent position? And then there’s Chris Miller. When Miller isn’t stinking up the Opinion page, he can be found in the Student Senate, where he and the other senators spend ridiculous amounts of time achieving al most nothing. Do you want a student government insider to inflict his opinion on you? Do you want to have to wade through the bureaucratic muck when you read The Batt? Or do you want to get back to the issues at hand? Rob Clark will talk about the issues. Rob Clark’s columns will get columns moving in the right direction. This is a battle for the heart and soul of the Opinion page and I won’t stop writing until The Battalion Opinion page takes America to new heights! """Paid for by the Rob Clark for Columnist Supreme campaign* * Of course this is ridiculous, but the Republican candidates have a real inse curity problem that’s just as bad. It’s silly for the candidates to believe their own status will be improved with political “dissing” (although I can’t imagine Dole sitting around saying, “Why is Lamar Alexander ‘dissing’ me so much?”). The right candidate will be the one with the right ideas and the right mes sages. But the Republican candidates’ constant negativity only shows their lack of maturity. They need to grow up. You’d think Dole would’ve had time to do that by now. Roh Clark is a senior journalism major who is running neck-and-neck with Mejia and Miller in the latest polls By definition, we are all guilty of hazing I t’s easy to ac cuse the Corps of hazing. Every day its members organize on various grass fields around the campus to yell, scream and make each other do push-ups. Having no idea what military training entails, the typical student can easily associate these behaviors with hazing. It’s also easy to accuse frater nities of hazing. Every week they organize in various houses and perform secret rituals to en hance bonding between brothers. Having no idea what these se cret things entail and why one would need them to enhance friendship, the typical student can easily associate these behav iors with hazing as well. The recent incident with the Fish Aides and their alleged haz ing of Student Body President Toby Boenig also raised some eyebrows. The question floating around campus be came, “Can they really accuse someone of hazing for doing that?” The answer re turned was yes. The reason they can is because the Fish Aides did haze Toby Boenig, according to University regulations. Section 4.51 of the Texas A&M University Regula tions handbook spells out a num ber of actions that constitute hazing, among them “sleep de privation”-and “any activity ... that adversely affects the mental health or dignity of the student.” The Fish Aides did wake Toby up very early in the morning, de priving him of sleep, and pro ceeded to grode him and display him on the side of the street in a very undignified manner. But wait, before you support the disbanding of Fish Aides and punishment of all parties involved, take a look at the def inition again. Upon closer ex amination, I realized that I, too, am guilty of hazing. I was a Fish Camp counselor last year and personally applied shaving cream to the heads of all of my “fish.” They were humiliated, and I laughed at them. I also made sure all the “fish” in my cabin woke up before 8 o’clock in the morning, and by doing so, I was depriving them of sleep. In my camp my freshman year, my counselors made freshmen participate in a game called “The Wheel of Misfor tune.” The game forced fresh men who lost their name tags to “heinie-write” their home town or act like a dying cock roach, among various other “humiliating” acts. It was at this point that I real ized I needed to be punished se verely. In fact, every one of the over 600 counselors last year did the same thing. They all should be punished. And, if I remember correctly, our co-chairs participat ed. I say punish them, too. Christi Moore, last year’s Fish Camp di rector, should also be punished. It seems ironic that she happens to be one of the individuals pursuing the investigation of the Fish Aides incident when she was the big cheese of an organization that, by University definition, oozes hazing from every pore. When looked at from the standpoint of the University’s definition of hazing. I’d venture to say that almost everyone on this campus has hazed someone at some point in time. It’s not just the Corps and fraternities anymore. We’re all hazers. And we should all be punished. Wait a minute ... perhaps the University could allow some leeway in its interpretation of its hazing definition — that might solve the problem. Naw. That’s too easy. And it would leave The Battalion very little to write about. Chris Miller is a sophomore English major