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Aggielife
Tuesday •April 16,19%
Drinking: Students turn to alcohol
Continued from Page 3
on drunk driving. He said
many residents are afraid to
drive at night due to the risks.
“You watch people leaving a
party or a club, and within
four drivers, one has consumed
an alcoholic beverage,” he said.
And even if people who dri
ve drunk escape injury or
death due to an accident, the
issue of dependency remains.
Many students do develop
drinking problems, which can
lead to trouble now or later in
life, Reardon said.
“More Aggies will die an
early death because of alcohol
than will achieve graduate de
grees,” he said. “The abuse of
alcohol is what we’re con
cerned about. What we look at
with students is how it affects
their goals, their grades, their
relationships.”
Reardon said indications of
alcoholism include falling
grades, legal trouble, rocky
friendships and memory loss.
“It gets to where their life re
volves around alcohol,” he said.
Gallagher said she has friends
that drink too much, and she has
lost relatives to alcoholism.
She said knowing this, she can
consciously control her drinking.
“When you get drunk every
day, I seriously think you have
a problem,” she said. “I don’t
let drinking control me; I con
trol my drinking.”
Reardon said students
should keep control in mind
when evaluating how alcohol
fits into their lives.
“Examine how alcohol en
hances your life,” he said. “I don’t
know of any long-term gains, but
there are long-term losses.”
He said with as many great
memories as A&M offers stu-
out these memories.
“If we need a drug, what's
wrong with what wc are?” he said,
Evan Zimmerman, The Batmios
Steve Barton, a junior range science major, downs a brew at The
Chicken.
dents, alcohol need not wipe
Believe it or not, PTTS is here to help
Alex
Walters
ColumnistJII
M ost good
ol’ Ags
will agree
that there is a
plethora of rea
sons to be proud
of this University.
Well, fair
enough, but how
many of those
good Ags would agree that the
department of Parking, Transit
and Traffic Services (PTTS) is
one of the jewels in that hypo
thetical crown?
I’d guess three, maybe four.
As for myself, I’ve had days
when I’ve hunted parking offi
cers with flame-throwers be
cause, like most everyone else, I
don’t like to pay tickets.
That’s why I wanted to write
this column.
During the last weekly Battal
ion staff meeting, the parking offi
cer alarm went off in the news
room, and the staff quickly evacu
ated to move their cars. It didn’t
matter in the long run, because we
all got tickets for parking in the
University Business lot around the
comer of Reed McDonald.
That was the last straw. I
imagined myself writing a
scathing column exposing the
PIT'S for what it was — an army
of Keystone cops bent on ruining
other people’s lives. I saw myself
marching into the office of the di
rector and having him on his
knees begging me not to print
“the real truth.”
But, as is often the case in my
life, what I imagined and reality
were quite different.
Tom Williams, the director of
the PTTS, sat down with me and
answered my questions and
proved to me that the parking or
ganization on this campus is one
of the best in the nation.
Williams said PTTS was
formed in the fall of 1988 “to
bring some order and manage
parking improvement pro
grams the University was im
plementing.”
OK, that’s nice, but where
does the money for this organi
zation come from? My impres
sion was, besides supporting
the financial needs of the
PIT'S from what must be a
collective $3 trillion ticket bill,
the student body is also pay
ing for the organization with
those massive tuition and
general use fees.
Reality is, the PTTS is
a self-supported organiza
tion. The cash for build
ing those parking
garages, new parking
lots, etc., etc.
comes from permit
sales, garage use
and, of course,
tickets.
Then I thought,
there isn’t nearly
enough parking,
right?
Wrong again.
For the 14,000 commuter tags
sold, there are 9,000 available
spaces. That sounds like a prob
lem, unless one takes into consid
eration that those parking lots
turn over at least two, sometimes
three times a day; and the PIT'S
got this information from an out
side survey, so it’s not just the or
ganization playing fast and loose,
hoping that bet would turn one
space into two.
So the organization is well run,
but what about the renegade offi
cers who act like retired Green
Berets? Those people do exist.
From my own experience, I know
that anytime a person puts on a
uniform of authority, it seems to
short-circuit their brain. But, those
people are the exception rather
than the rule.
To get the facts
about park-
ing en-
force-
ment, I spoke to Bert Opara,
Parking Service Officer (PSO)
and night shift leader. Opara
told me how students turn into
animals — hitting, kicking,
spitting, swearing and even
running over Parking Officers
— when they’re given a ticket.
My advice to these people is
grow the hell up.
No one enjoys shelling out SlO,
$25 or even $50 for a parking tick
et, but is that worth hurting some
one? To my knowledge, no one k
ever had to pay a ticket for park
ing legally, so each time a studenl
has a confrontation with a PSO,
the student is in the wrong, in at
least the most basic sense.
PTTS does have problems, but
they are working hard to provide
parking for those who need it. For
a University this size, they do an
excellent job. Opara told me
PIT’S can never satisfy everyone
“unless (they) assign (students)a
mobile parking space that goes
where (they) go.”
Opara also beseeched me to
be a reasonable voice to repre
sent the PSOs to the students.
“Please tell them we love
them, we care about them, and
we don’t want to give them ci
tations — and we are just try
ing to earn a living and pro
vide a service,” he said. “We
are human beings too.”
Alex Walters is a junk
journalism and the
ater arts major.
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