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April 15, 1996
Opinion
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Should I stay or should I go?’
Students face tough decisions in housing choices
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Aja
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H ave you seen the
bright signs an
nouncing today’s
deadline for canceling on-
campus housing con
tracts? To some people,
ese are just mere flyers.
To others like myself,
however... they mean
doomsday. For I am faced
with a question of monstrous propor
tions: to move, or not to move? Moving
off campus is a decision involving lots of
and tears. It is more than just a
matter of where you are living, it is a
huge dilemma that decides one’s fate for
next semester (or, if you are locked
to a lease, for the next 12 months).
How did I even get to this confused
state in the first place? Well, the itching
to move off campus has two main causes:
people increases my stress level about
the thing and my increasing impatience
with the little idiosyncrasies of dorm life.
Folks are good at applying pressure of
the worst kind when it comes to the
t;, stress
the
on/off campus issue. I feel
like I am shaking a rattle
and sucking a pacifier
when I tell people that I
live in a dorm. “You still
live on campus?” they al
ways ask with at least one
eyebrow raised. You can
see the laughter in their
eyes at the image of a fully
grown, robust woman like myself living
in a dormitory. A recent survey of off-
campus students here showed that over
1/3 are dissatisfied with their living con
ditions. Never mind that though ... if you
are not off campus, there is clearly so’ ■-
thing wrong with you.
The inclination to move off also has
increased for little dormsey reasons that
may seem trivial when taken separately,
but whoa buddy do they add up. Those
cutesy signs adorning the doors, an
nouncing that you do, in fact, occupy the
room. Rolling out of the twin bed contin
uously. The little notes they tape onto
the doorknob to announce dorm-bonding
activities. Sharing a rectangle with
another person — true, I live in a fair
ly large room with its own bath area,
but it is still a rectangle! The pasty,
pale guys who walk around and end
up in the laundry room at the same
exact time I do. Ecch!
Yes, dorm life has its quirks. But,
what about the convenience? The tight
garage spot that I waited and waited
to acquire. The fact that I can get up
10 minutes before a class and fly like
the wind, Jansport straps just flap
ping away. The all-bills-paid scenario
4 ' it allows me to take 10 or more
si owers a day if I so choose. The
vending machine down the hall ...
sweettarts on demand, dude. No leas
ing worries, no fix-it yourself scenarios.
Something’s broken ... you turn in the
work order and it is repaired. See, there
is an upside to dorm life after all!
Yeah! I’m definitely staying on. Well,
then again, I do feel cramped. Sigh. If
you are one of the unfortunate people in
my same predicament, more power to
you. And don’t distress — after
all, we do have until 5 p.m.
Aja Henderson is a junior political
science major
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Texas’ high court
should not honor
the Confederacy
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courts, the
Supreme Court
and the Court of
Criminal Appeals,
reopened their
building in 1993
after having been
closed for months for major re
modeling, Texans were in for
tw major surprises.
First, the court’s building
was not accessible to visitors
and employees with disabili
ties and was out of compli
ance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act.
Fortunately, some federal
litigation and Governor
George W. Bush’s appoint
ment of Justice Greg Abbott,
who uses a wheelchair,
helped remedy that situation.
The second remarkable
feature of the refurbished
building, though, still re
mains intact, and that is its
conspicuous display of two
old plaques in the main lobby
honoring the Confederacy.
The plaques, which face the
main entrance, had been in
the old building.
One plaque proclaims that
the building is “Dedicated to
Texans who Served the Con
federacy.” The other displays
a Confederate flag, along
with words from Robert E.
Lee about how valuable
Texas soldiers were to his
side of the Civil War.
Not only are these bronze
plaques strangely out of sync
with history, but they affront
the memory of a good number
of Texans. After all, many
Texans gave their lives to
preserve the Union, and
rr ) many more served and fought
for the Union cause. Why
"should they not also be hon
ored, if any honoring at all is
to be done for the Civil War?
Secession did not enjoy
universal support in Texas.
Indeed, Sam Houston was lit
erally carried from the Gover
nor’s Mansion because he re
fused to accede to the South’s
insurgency. Some Texas
counties even rebelled
against secession; those in
surrections were quelled by
military force.
Further, the very notion of
slavery was particularly nox
ious to the state’s large Mexi-
can-American population, let
alone the idea of fighting to
preserve it. Slavery offended
their religious and cultural
sensibilities. In fact, Texans
had to carefully weave their
Way around this issue when
drafting the constitutions of
the Republic — the constitu
tion banned “slave running”
piracy. An underground
railroad for escaping slaves
eventually developed through
South Texas and into Mexico.
More salient, however, are
the tragic, bloody scars that
James C.
Harrington
Guest
Columnist
slavery and
the legacy of
the Civil War
left on the face
of Texas. What
do these
bronze plaques
say to the
thousands of
African-Ameri
can and Mexican-American
Texans lynched since the Civ
il War until recent times?
What do they say to the de
scendants of those murdered,
terrorized and raped out of
racial hatred?
Between 1865 and 1868
alone, 468 former slaves were
killed in Texas. The state’s
Freedman’s Bureau docu
mented incidents of violence
and harassment in a register
that filled three volumes.
Lynch mobs burned, tortured,
mutilated and hanged hun
dreds of African Americans
between 1880 and 1930. The
Ku Klux Klan committed
many of these atrocities.
Even after the 1897 anti
lynching law took effect, over
a hundred lynchings occurred
between 1900 and 1910. The
history of vigilante lynchings
and random brutality against
Mexican Americans in South
Texas, often perpetrated by
the Texas Rangers, is a sor
did epoch.
And what message do
these plaques deliver to the
millions of Texas African
Americans and Mexican
Americans who toiled under
the yoke of segregated labor,
lived in social and economic
apartheid, were stripped of
their voting rights, and suf
fered cruel discrimination? To
this day, as a historical re
sult, they endure substan
dard educational institutions,
segregated housing, inferior
job classifications and denial
of promotional opportunities.
Typically, court buildings
tend to display lofty assur
ances of impartial and equal
justice under the law, but not
the Texas high courts. They
could have better spent our
tax money by engraving on
the refinished marbled walls
the sentiments of the Texas
Equal Rights Amendment,
which Texans adopted in
1972 by a 4-1 margin, that
equality under the law shall
be assured to all alike, re
gardless of sex, race, color,
creed or national origin.
The time has come for the
Texas Supreme Court and the
Court of Criminal Appeals to
consign the unhappy relics of
the Confederacy to the
archives and rededicate their
building to Texas’s more con
temporary and more honor
able efforts to protect and de
fend equal rights.
James C. Harrington is the
legal director of the Texas
Civil Rights Project
Media criticism built on house of race cards
Michael
Landauer
Opinion Editor
I t’s all racial.
When my French
teacher used to give me
zeros for not turning in my
homework, I told her I
thought it was because of
my German heritage (the
Germans had a couple of
wars with the French).
I was kidding, but some
times I wonder what kind of mindset some
people have when it comes to examining ap
parent issues of race. People especially like to
say that the media create issues of race or en
gage in racist coverage.
For example, I bumped into a friend as I
was picking up my Dallas Morning News. He
looked at the top headline and shook his head.
“Man, they’re going to do it to him just like
they did it to O.J. and just like they did it to
Moon,” he said.
The top story was about the indictment of
Dallas Cowboy Michael Irvin on drug charges.
Irvin was found in a hotel room with hard-core
drugs and women suspected of being prosti
tutes. If found guilty, he could go to jail, and
his career could be over.
Cowboy’s owner Jerry Jones has said that
Irvin will go through the NFL’s drug program,
and sports gurus around the country are ques
tioning how the high and mighty can fall so
low so fast.
The Morning News has run a steady
stream of stories about how the Cowboy’s bad-
boy image will affect the team
and its public support. When
celebrities mess up, society ques
tions its values and wonders if we
place too much trust in our tal
ented heroes.
But no one in any of the arti
cles I read ever said anything
about race being a factor in the
grand jury’s indictment. That
question has never been raised. So I guess my
friend was talking about the media.
Yes, we in the media go out and create sto
ries like this just to be able to justify our deep-
rooted prejudices. Yeah, that’s it. Reporters
planted O.J. Simpson’s blood at the scene of
his ex-wife’s murder. Some lunatic editor was
responsible for the glove.
And Warren Moon. Forget the fact that the
media created a god out of the former Oiler
quarterback. Schools were closed and people
mourned the day he left town for the Vikings.
But some crazy reporter thought it might be
newsworthy that the police were called to his
house to find his wife frantically accusing her
husband of trying to kill her. Some sono-
fabitch reporter thought the people who
adored Moon had a right to know this.
OK. Back to reality for just one sec.
The media do not “do” anything to the peo
ple on which it reports. The media don’t have
to “do” anything. There are great stories out
there happening all the time. My history
teacher used to preface some of the more iron
ic or interesting things she would teach us
with a great line:“This stuff is too good to
make up.”
Fallen heroes being charged in courts of
law with beating or killing their wives can
have a profound effect on society. Do people
really want these stories ignored? Or do we
just want them ignored when it might be con
strued as a race issue?
Moon apologized to the community for his
actions. Simpson wrote what sounded like a
suicide note as he tried to flee the country.
They cared what the world thought of their ac
tions, but even they never mentioned race as a
factor for their downfall in the public eye.
Courts have to sift through evidence and
decide what is truth. The media report on the
whole process. The story is a bit more interest
ing when the courts are processing our heroes.
Our heroes make good money off the media.
If they don’t want media attention for the
screw-ups, maybe they’ll start their protest by
turning down million-dollar endorsement deals
made entirely possible by the mass media.
But that will^iever happen.
And so Michael Irvin was on the front
page of the Morning News. Sure, he’s an
African-American, but he’s also a drug sus
pect. In Dallas, that’s what the media like to
refer to as news.
Maybe ... just maybe, it’s not all racial.
Michael Landauer is a junior
journalism major
Parking police not
proactive in problem
I failed to see any solution to
the football and Bonfire park
ing problems by placing “No
Parking” signs in the South-
gate and Eastgate areas. It ap
pears that College Station is
not concerned with fixing the
problem, only with pleasing
these residents. However,
these signs do not actually pre
vent anyone from parking in
these areas. They just allow
the police to write tickets and
Mail
Call
the tow trucks to make money
hand-over-fist.
About 50,000 automobiles
invade College Station to at
tend these events, and surely
this number will increase as
Texas A&M enters the Big 12.
This creates massive parking
and traffic problems. The rea
son the traffic is congested is
because these people are trying
to find a place to park. Re
stricting the parking only in
creases the traffic problems as
motorists search everywhere
for a parking spot. Remember
that these people came to Col
lege Station to spend money,
and they can’t spend it if they
are stuck in their car.
Restricted parking in some
areas merely shifts the prob
lem to new areas. Plus, the
Southgate and Eastgate areas
will be just as congested with
desperate motorists and eager
tow trucks. Certainly, this
could result in an overall cost
to College Station in police
overtime and equipment. All of
those cars have to go some
where, don’t they?
Instead of telling the event
visitors where not to park, tell
them where to park. Find an
area or several areas for park
ing and route the traffic to
them. Visitors will gladly pay
for parking and a shuttle to the
event just to avoid the normal
parking hassles. Mail these
routes out with the football
tickets so the visitors will know
what to expect.
A true solution to this prob
lem would please everyone, not
just the Southgate and East-
gate residents.
Dan Malone
Graduate student
Choice is not always
the issue for gays
In response to the gay
lifestyle argument that being
gay is not a choice. I’d like to
make an analogy to a serial
killer. A serial killer can be
born a serial killer or can
choose to be a serial killer. A
serial killer can lead a happy
life being a serial killer. Am I
saying that being gay is as
detrimental to society as being
a serial killer? No, I’m saying
that you should not use the is
sue of choice when deciding the
morality of homosexuality.
Forrest Dye
Class of’98