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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 3, 1996)
The Battalion i?oal attempts, ^an 23 pointy pace to become^ SA-ABA history,, )mts in each of! - m Abdul Jabtj ■ d, Wilt Chamle and Oscar Rol^. ; helt split his er and hadtodct i Quick change du e second quarter. SrT WEDNESDAY April 3, 1 996 Opinion Page 11 Seeking the true meaning Does Resurrectioii Week portray the Christian spirit? A s I’ve shambled wearily around campus this past week, I’ve noticed something a bit out of the ordinary. There is a heightened level of good feelings all around campus, and it can probably be traced to one of two main sources. Big Event occurred last weekend, and Resurrection Week is going on as I write these very words. I believe some important prophet once said, “When that Aggie volunteer spirit sweeps across campus and mingles with that Aggie religious good feeling, it’s nothing but good times ahead.” Last Saturday, 20 billion altruistic Aggies painted, pruned and plowed their way into the hearts of hundreds of appreciative com munity residents. And as I speak, all 40,000 of us are slowly winding our way through another Resurrection Week. This is the chance for bubbly 1 unch of Or would most Christians be more inclusive? the Bible-oriented to bebop all around B-CS, hymning, hullaballooing and having a generally holy time. The Big R week has it all. We’re having barbecues, speakers, con certs, Bible studies and even a Crucifixion scene at the end of the week. For all those Christians who were Christian when Christian wasn’t cool, now is their time to shine. As far as all concerned parties are concerned, every thing is just great. The Christians are being Chris- tiany, while the Big Event participants had a good time being... Big, I guess. Sadly, though, I must admit I’ve become a bit con fused. I’m having some trouble remembering just which event is supposed to be the Christian one, and which one is the happy and giving, but secular, one. On Big Event Saturday, hordes of merry 7 Aggies make Chris Stidvent Columnist s n sort o, apt to get out there and do something positive in the communi 1 y i ney’re down there in the trenches, letting their neighbors know that v\ > Aggies don’t only think about Bevo, beer and Bonfire. Sure, Big Event has its share of problems, but these are mainly along the organizational line. Sometimes 12 groups of students show up at one work site to do five minutes of labor while oth er big projects don’t get anybody at all. Other times a rich jerk who supports the University gets a Big Event group to come out and dust his man sion or polish his Porsche, or something similarly ridicu lous. But all in all. Big Event kids sound like they’re participating in those good old Christian values known as charity, and doing unto others and all that good stuff. But when it comes to that Christian thing, it’s Resur rection Week that I’m not so sure about. Now I’m not go ing to start slamming the Christians for being Christian; they have the same right as every body else to jump around and holler and pub licly proclaim how excited they are to believe in something. I just wish they’d be consistent in their actions and their words. Three years ago the Latter-Day Saint Stu dent Association, or Mormons, as I like to call them, was invited by the Resurrection Week people not to take part in the festivities. In other words, one group of Christians was told by another group of Christians not to come out and help them do Christian things dur ing the big Christian week. Not very Christ ian, is it? I’ll admit it, I didn’t know that much about the LDS religion so 1 checked its de scription in the Student Organizations Guide. It said that I could go to one of their meetings to meet “people with strong Chris tian values and high morals.” Huh, they sound like good guys and gals to me. Thinking that perhaps I’d made a mis take when it came to understanding what Resurrection Week was all about, I looked up the Resurrection Week organization’s description in that very same guide. Oddly enough, I discovered that they were a group whose purpose was “to bring Chris tians of many different denominations to gether to celebrate ... and to share the Christian faith.” The lesson here must be that “many denominations” does not mean “all.” Well, at least it’s just one religious group that is being excluded and shown disrespect. Oh wait, I forgot about the famous Cru cifixion scene that winds up the week. In the tradition of all good Passion Plays, this one has Jesus being led to the cross while bands of angry Jews yell such cheerful things as “Crucify him!” and “Look at the King of the Jews now!” Now I’m no Biblical scholar, but I al ways assumed that crucifixion was the Roman, not the Jewish, means of execut ing slaves and political prison ers in Judea at that time. I had also learned that the Romans were in control of the area back then, so any decision to kill somebody would have been theirs, and/I not the Jews’. Perhaps the Resurrection Week p pie have forgotten that one of the biggest causes of anti-Semitism ovep the past two thousand years has be|fn the mistaken belief that the Jews 6 mitted deicide, which translates as “murder of God.” Luckily, this idea hasn’t con tributed to anything very bad oyer the years. Oh wait, I forgot about Holocaust. Maybe parts of this Chris tian celebration have been used to justify some rather un-Christian be havior in the past. As the week draws to a close, || admit that I’m still confused. 'Ifie Christian event has some non-C ||an attributes, while the non-Chri pan event seems pretty Christian !§ Perhaps in the future we could Big Event the Resurrection Event, ;while Resurrection Week could go Big Week. But 1 would hate for anybody else to become as confused as I am at the moment. Chris Stidvent is a senior English and philosophy major To Democrats, even moderates are extreme K entucky obliterated Syracuse. What? You watched the game and it did n’t seem that bad? Well, that doesn’t matter. Kentucky won so Syracuse was technically “obliterated” from the tournament so my English still holds ... sort of. English professors might ar gue, although correct in deno tation, “obliterate” would not be correct in connotation. In other words, the word doesn’t fit the picture. Really, though, none of this matters. If I repeat obliterate of ten enough, eventually it will come to mean “pulled the game out with about two minutes left.” English, you see, is like Texas weather (or university grading standards): wait a while and it will change. Take the word “extreme.” We keep hearing the adjec tive “extreme” applied by De mocrats to every program or idea endorsed by Republicans. For example, that contract thing, you remember ... it pro posed such wacky ideas as mak ing Congress responsible for fol lowing its own laws and promis ing a balanced budget by 2002. Well, according to Democrat ic leaders, the Contract with America is “too extreme.” Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Democratic Na tional Committee claims, ac cording to recent polls, most Americans agree. Of course questions like, “Don’t you agree with everyone else and their pets that Republican efforts to kill all old people, pregnant women and children are too ex treme?” may have been a bit misleading, but we won’t go there, yet. Meanwhile, the senator, along with fellow Democrats, characterize their own pro grams as “mainstream.” They cite the president’s proposed budget as the most recent ex ample. Of course, this budget actually increases the deficit for the next few years and doesn’t cut a cent until long after he leaves office, but hey, that does n’t matter because it’s a main stream budget. To quote Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word ... I do not think it means what you think it means.” It also reminds me a bit of Lenin — excuse me while I bla tantly use my own emotional term. Lenin called all of his op ponents Mensheviks. He and his followers referred to them selves as Bolsheviks. My Russian-speaking friends tell me Bolshevik means “ma jority,” whereas Menshevik means “minority.” Of course, Lenin’s followers never even re motely represented the majori ty, but that was a simple incon venience of the language. Sounds famil iar, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, these linguistic pretenders have a long-term prob lem on their hands. Eventual ly, words come to mean the way they are used. For example, look at the dif ferences between Shakespeare’s English of only 400 years ago and modem English. OK, I know you’re busy so I’ve taken the liberty of finding an exam ple for you: “Let.” It’s a simple word. We use it to mean “allow.” However, 400 years ago “let” meant “restrain.” Hamlet, for example: “Un hand me, gentlemen. By Heav en, I’ll make a ghost of him who lets me.” Even in the short term, words change. “Bad,” for exam ple. Of course, by the time Michael Jackson figured that out we all kinda’ longed for the original meaning of the word. MJ wasn’t the only ’80s star to be a bit “creative” with lan guage. Loverboy? How about Survivor? That was a bit opti mistic. But I digress ... Which brings us back to Dodd and his “English means what I say it means” crowd. We already know “entitle ment” has nothing to do with anything to which we are en titled and “protecting the (old, young, poor, working people, small animals, tree bark, etc.)” means spending more of our future earnings — remember, they aren’t paying the bills right now, we will. We also re alize that a “tax on the rich” means everyone earning more than $25,000 pays more. Hmm, something is rotten in the state of Denmark ... The word which no one in Washington seems to under stand is “accountability.” As in “so you’re out of money again, Dave. Gosh, that’s too bad.” You know the next line of this lecture — sing along, if you want "... you need to be more accountable. So I’m going to let you figure out how to pay your bills.” Next time you take a few minutes and hear CNN or read a paper, check out the word “choice.” I get the feeling that, by Dodd’s definition, very few of us are mainstream — whether we like Newt Gingrich or not. You know, in hindsight, Syracuse did pretty well. The experts, after all, predicted a blow-out. They said Syracuse didn’t stand a chance. Jim Boeheim, the Syracuse coach, apparently wasn’t briefed on the meaning of “blow-out.” So his team went and played a great game. But then, that’s just the opinion of an extremist. David Taylor is a senior management major Mail Cadets and women take back the night On Thurs., Mar. 27, at 9 p.m., about 60 women gathered around Rudder Fountain for an annual event called Take Back the Night, sponsored by the TAMU chapter of The National Organization of Women. There were readings of poetry, statis tics, a personal account of one woman’s rape and a symbolic march across campus to show that women should not be afraid to walk around campus by themselves at night. In a perfect world, women would be able to walk anywhere by themselves, day or night. Un fortunately, rape and sexual as sault do occur, even in the seem ingly safe Aggieland. Marching with us were three members of the Corps of Cadets who work in the Guard Room. We invited them to come to our march to acknowledge those who work in the guard room and for the services they provide for Texas A&M. The Corps of Cadets Escort Service is always available, and the people who work there are proud to provide this resource on our campus. I urge all women at A&M to use this service, and I would like to thank the three gentlemen from the guard room for march ing through the rain with us and for their support. Take Back the Night isn’t just about the safety of women on this campus, it is about the safety of your mothers, sisters, girlfriends and wives in communities every where. Take Back the Night is about not becoming another vic tim of rape and sexual assault, and it is about utilizing re sources like self-defense, pepper spray and, the Escort Service to protect yourself until the day it is safe for every woman to Take Back the Night for herself and walk at night without any fear. Susan Schulz Class of ’99