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5UNCHAS
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ident prayers of good food, just
emporary stop to quell growing
isatisfaction with the current
ection of food.
The real problem is that nearly
iryentre comes smothered in
esort of artery-clogging gravy,
lam sauce or fatty bacon,
althy alternatives are either too
nd or too strange to attract the
rage diners.
But these doubts aside, many
iplewere amazed that the din-
halls actually listened to some
nplaints made over the years,
cries of “Stone Willy” res
ated throughout Sbisa like “Re-
mber the Alamo” at the Battle
Ian Jacinto. It was a source of
"ration, hope and wonder.
tie wondered who this Willy
son was. Some valiant Aggie
^ ATTA f IIll ’perfected the art of pizza
J/Vl lAI-ilvU Ifinawhilp fiarh finer thn nno
ossified
vertising
• Easy
Affordable
Effective
formation, call
5-0569
33
Club, Inc
l
s $15
to Riverside Anne'
ule Annex
:N AT 11:00'
Kansas State'
p sirloin.
opped with
' BBQ
’th your choice oi
) steak fries.
Sbisa in
troduced its
highly tout
ed new line
of pizza on
Monday,
the culmi
nation of
three weeks
of specula
tion, fanta
sizing, and
constant in-
vocation of
the name,
ione Willy.”
The hype surrounding this new
duct at Sbisa will not prevent
impending disappointments
ioth the dining hall and the
ers.This is not the answer to
Patrick Smiley
Sophomore
zoology major
king while fighting the enemy
ome godforsaken land? A world
Ms Italian chef that we were
retofore ignorant of? Or was he,
iome of my skeptical friends
pantly suggested, Willie Nel-
i?Well, that would explain the
ne Stone Willy, given Mr. Nel
l’s penchant for illegal herbs.
The reality is far less satisfying,
me Willy turns out to be a fran-
se operation, selling the con-
t of its pizza to cafeterias
lund the country. Nevertheless,
looming of Stone Willy bright
ed the smiles of all those fortu-
te enough to eat in Sbisa, the
ly dining hall as yet blessed with
me Willy’s Legendary Pizza.
Monday at 10:15 a.m., several
dents, including me, hungrily
laited the beginning of lunch and
"first bite of delicious pizza.
Judgment day had arrived.
We entered Sbisa as we had
ne hundreds of times before,
ttything looked the same. There
re no velvet drapes, marble-tiled
ors or mahogany dining tables,
emilk dispensers still dispensed
lie and not some glorious golden
ad. The dessert case still held
same old Jell-O — no Baked
ska to speak of.
Suddenly, pure white light
nded me, and a voice ordered
to the light. At the other end of
(light lay Stone Willy, savior of
(ebuds. So peaceful, so beauti-
draped so appropriately in
lite, stood Stone Willy, purveyor
legendary pizza.
Entranced by the splendor of
me Willy, we took the pizza, mon-
ously huge though it was, and sat
tvn. Everyone looked on in awe at
cheesy goodness of the morsel
Which Willy the Merciful so gra-
•usly allowed us to partake.
One bite and the trance was
He. The pizza’s true form was re
lied, and it turned out to be the
He damned pizza from three
£ks ago. The Stone Willy shrine at
other end of the dining hall was
heap facade, required by the
me Willy company (a subsidiary
Little Charlie’s pizza, found in the
Zen food section at Sam’s Whole-
el in the contract made with Food
Aices. There is no paradise in
Isa, only boring old cafeteria food.
The pizza, although actually
latable, did not fix what was real-
wrong: bland food with few
althy, edible alternatives. Our
appointment was profound. In
the excitement surrounding
me Willy, we had been duped
to believing that old dining hall
ge: “Dining on campus is fun.”
What fools we were, what fools..
Technology can’t substitute for the human touch
N ew waves of
shiny plastic
smart machines
with LCD displays, ra
dio transceivers and
full-e-mail capability
have come to stroke our
short attention spans.
These new communica
tion tools aren’t making
us into a friendlier, bet
ter-adjusted society.
Instead, they’re turn
ing us into a society of
people with a million
different ways to say “there’s noth
ing on my mind.”
The information age is making
it easier for us to communicate
with each other. But technology is
making our conversations less
personal, even if they are slightly
more convenient.
Pagers, cellular phones, e-mail
and even voice-mail: these are the
pipelines from which business in
formation flows. And ultimately
they’ll be the most common ways
to chat with the folks at home.
But there’s a conflict and a se
ductive trade-off present in today’s
communication philosophy. Dis
cussion is supposed to bring peo
ple together, but we love the way
new technology allows us to talk
with people without actually see
ing them whenever we want,
wherever they are.
We’re suckering ourselves into
believing that reaching more
people faster is as good as find
ing more depth in the discus
sions we already have.
At the risk of sounding like my
grandparents, there is much to be
said for the human touch. That is
something that’s sorely lacking in
the newest form of mail.
The personality content in a
handwritten letter is
much greater than that
present in a few bytes
of e-mail. The attempts
to make e-mail more
personable are well-
meaning, but are really
an insult to the texture
of human emotions.
For instance, it’s pretty
sad :-(to think what
passes for a smile :-)
nowadays.
It isn’t surprising that
phones and computers
can’t do anything magical to am
plify the importance of the mes
sages we entrust them with. They
are, after all, just machines. And
there is a certain amount of merit
to just gabbing for no good reason.
But it is sad to walk into a cam
pus computer lab at 3 a.m. and
find a bunch of students typing
away, talking to virtual friends.
Some people spend so much time
at a terminal, they might as well
drive up to say howdy to their
compubuddies.
Humans are social animals.
We’ve always thought that our
ability to communicate is what
makes us social.
However, the essence of society
isn’t mere communication — it’s
inspiration. Something has to in
spire a society to be more than just
a collection of individuals; meth
ods of communication serve only
to disseminate that inspiration.
If all that can be said about
our new means of communica
tion is that they’re convenient,
that’s really not enough to war
rant the excitement we’ve been
displaying. What’s so thrilling
about an E-Z Mart?
If only we spent as much energy
adding meaning to our conversa
tions as we do finding new ways to
conduct them.
So as we rush to get wired and
connected, we need to ask what it
is that inspires us to communi
cate. Politicians and current
events generally don’t, more and
more of our families are dysfunc
tional, and we aren’t answering
any phone calls from God lately.
So what does move us?
It seems as if every few years
our collective consciousness asks
for the source of our motivations.
In the last decade, the common
answer seemed to be: “Me!”
But after realizing that material
ism and self-interest could take us
only so far, we now search for
some response that’s a little more
sophisticated and open-minded.
Today we answer the same ques
tion by shrugging our collective
shoulders, looking around at each
other, and asking, “Us?”
It is this confusion that makes
individuals eager to get to know
“us” by the fastest means available.
So we page and e-mail each other
into an endless sea of chatter. The
messages are rather cool and fluffy,
but there’s a ton of them.
Sort of like E-Z Marts.
Jeremy Valdez
Senior chemical
engineering major
Racing hormones keep Howdy alive
I wish I’d been born a girl. I could wear
pink shirts without being considered
effeminate. I could actually open the
mail I get from the American Association
of University Women addressed to Ms.
Shannon Halbrook. I’ve always been curi
ous about what’s stuffed into those plain
white envelopes “for women only.”
But best of all, I could walk around on
this campus without feeling like its tradi
tions had passed me by.
A couple weeks ago, I was ambling
along outside the library, my backpack
slung over one shoulder. In front of me
was —in this order — a girl, then a guy, and then
another girl. In an absolutely objective sense, both
the girls were fairly attractive.
Then a big, butch-looking member of the Corps
of Cadets walked by in the opposite direction. And
this is what happened.
He said a vigorous “Howdy,” to the first girl,
skipped strangely over the guy in between, and then
said “Howdy” again to the second girl. When he got
to me he was looking away; I said “Howdy” and he
walked past wordlessly.
I’ve noticed it from numerous cadets. Not all of
them, of course — I’ve heard that
generalization is a bad thing to do
in opinion columns and somehow
detracts from their credibility. But
I have directly observed it several
times, and more often than not
cadets are the perpetrators.
It’s a phenomenon I’ve dubbed
“hormones.” And basically it in
volves the fact that people are more
likely to say howdy to an attractive
member of the opposite sex.
Not that this phenomenon is a
bad thing, necessarily. It’s a great
method to start up a conversation. It gives people a
nice, two-word template for talking to anyone on
campus or elsewhere in Bryan-College Station.
Boy: “Howdy.”
Girl: “Howdy.”
And when an attractive member of the
opposite sex walks by, starting up a con
versation is, well, not the first thing on
everybody’s mind. But it’s the most tradi
tional way to go about the process that
concludes with one of the first few things
on a lot of people's minds.
This got me to thinking about how
safe Aggieland’s traditions really are —
they’re ingrained in the chemicals of the
human body.
We always hear the howdy tradition is
dying, rapidly going the way of abstractions such as
morality and family values and chivalry. Good Ags
incessantly moan in Mail Calls how they walked
across campus yesterday afternoon and not a single
person flashed them the toothy Aggie greeting.
But as long as there are women here, this is one tra
dition that’ll never die out.
I’ve even been guilty of doing it for prurient inter
ests. And I hardly have the massive, masculine stubble
of Ol’ Sarge.
It is hard to see how the howdy tradition sur
vived for so long back in OT Army days when no
women attended A&M.
But the feminine presence on
campus is pretty much here to
stay, and it ensures the existence
of the tradition.
Hormones safeguard other tra
ditions, too. For instance, one calls
for football spectators in Kyle Field
to kiss every time the team makes a
touchdown. For Aggies who do this,
there’s a personal benefit in pre
serving the tradition.
Maybe we’re all selfish in that
way. But as long as guys on campus
hope that saying “Howdy” to an attrac
tive woman might give them a chance to get a sec
ond glance, they’ll keep saying it.
Columnist
Shannon Halbrook
Junior English major
This got me to
thinking about how
safe Aggieland’s
traditions really are
— they’re ingrained
in the chemicals of
the human body.
Rights infringed by
'don’t ask, don’t tell’
Regarding David Boldt’s Oct. 16
column, “Homosexual cadets
should stay in closet”:
Sadly enough, I wasn’t surprised
one bit by Boldt’s column. Obvi
ously, the view that homosexuals
should adhere to the “don’t ask,
don’t tell” policy is a conservative
view, and most likely well support
ed by many students of this fine
University.
However, the argument that a
homosexual should stay in the
closet while in the Corps, or in the
military for that matter, because it
will “disrupt the harmony and ca
maraderie of the Corps” is ab
solutely ridiculous.
That argument was the very
same one used during the Civil War
when President Lincoln allowed
African-Americans into the mili
tary. It was the same excuse used
when the military decided to inte
grate those black squadrons with
white squadrons, and it was the
very same objection men had
when the military decided to allow
women in the armed services.
When will it end? When will
people realize that every person
who wishes to serve his country
in the armed services should be
allowed to do so, and whatever
differences they have with their
fellow men in arms should be ex
pressed with pride and dignity.
This would be more like the
America we’ve all come to know
and love, the one that accepts
everyone for all their differences
and is not afraid to display those
differences to the world.
That would prove a far superi
or gesture than one that says, “If
you’re different, don’t tell me
and I won’t ask.”
Imagine if you were not allowed
to display your love of God in any
form because it might upset other
students. Even elementary school
children are allowed to wear crosses
to represent their faith.
Likewise, all people, no mat
ter where they work or what they
do, should be allowed to display
their own personalities, their dif
ferences, and the things that
make them who they are.
Justin Vincent
Class of’98
War on Drugs costs
devastate citizens
Regarding Chris Cox’s October
16 Mail Call, “Drug legalization
endangers morality”:
Supporting the legalization of
drugs — i.e. mood altering
chemicals— is often erroneously
characterized by opponents as
an immoral and unethical
stance. But people with specific
character flaws are prone to
abuse drugs and no law has the
ability to curb a person’s desire
to abuse drugs. In most cases,
current laws reinforce the desire
even though they may temporar
ily inhibit the ability.
The cost of the War on Drugs to
law-abiding citizens in lost wages,
property, liberty and lives has been
far more devastating to our society
than that incurred by drug abusers.
Because drugs are illegal, prices are
exorbitant. Consequently, the incen
tives to addict innocent adolescents
and children far outweigh the pain
of punishment. This is the price so
ciety pays for attempting to thwart
the wills of a few weak adults.
Oddly, in the minds of many,
repealing drug laws has moral
and ethical implications. But their
support of the systematic de
struction of society, by ineffective
and counterproductive legisla
tion, is immune from moral and
ethical judgment. I question the
morality and ethics of any person
who intentionally ignores the so
cietal devastation wrought by the
War on Drugs.
Jeffery Peterson
Class of ’93, ’96
The Battalion encourages letters to the
editor. Letters must be 300 words or fewer
and include the author's name, class, and
phone number.
The opinion editor reserves the right to
edit letters for length, style, and accuracy.
Letters may be submitted in person at 013
Reed McDonald with a valid student ID. Let
ters may also be mailed to:
The Battalion - Mail Call
013 Reed McDonald
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX
77843-1111
Campus Mail: 1111
Fax: (409) 845-2647
E-mail: Batt@tamvml.tamu.edu
For more details on letter policy, please call
845-3313 and direct your question to the
opinion editor.
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