The Battalion
Page 9
Wednesday • December 4, 1996
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I The Battalion
Established in 1893
litorials appearing in The Battalion reflect the
[K of the editorials board members. They do
it recessarily reflect the opinions of other Bat-
lion staff members, the Texas A&M student
regents, administration, faculty or staff,
jlumns, guest columns, cartoons and letters
;pross the opinions of the authors,
jhtact the opinion editor for information on
ibmitting guest columns.
Editorials Board
Michael Landauer
Editor in Chief
Amy Collier
Executive Editor
Gretchen Perrenot
Executive Editor
Heather Pace
Opinion Editor
Hearing Aid
he Student Senate should listen
to what students have said.
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Government, of, by and for
le people. A cherished tenet of
emocracy? Not at Texas A&M.
■specially if the Student Sen
te chooses to ignore the 63
eroent of students that voted
Savor of yell leader runoffs
ist March.
She bill would require a run-
ff election for the top five senior
ell leader candidates and the top
)ur junior yell leader candidates.
And if recent comments are
ny indication, the sena-
ors that the student
iody voted into of-
ice last spring
list don’t have too
nuch faith in its
•pinions.
S)ne senator
rent so far as to de-
*Mbe student vot-
ts as “uninformed”
nd “uneducated.”
ronic, isn’t it, con-
idering the voters
rere the same stu-
iiSts who elected the senators in
he; first place.
Yell Leader
run-off
elections
If senators are going to cast
doubt upon last semester’s vot
ing, perhaps they are better off
simply not asking for the student
body’s opinion in the first place.
Why waste their time if the
student body is only composed of
voices who aren’t educated and
intelligent enough to make deci
sions for themselves?
Even more disgusting is the fact
that it has taken the Rules and Reg
-ulations Com
mittee seven
months to simply
discuss the issue
of the proposed
bill. The bill
failed to make it
to the Senate floor
after being voted
down 11 to seven
by the committee
after being hotly
debated for near
ly two hours.
If the Student Sen
ate truly wants to repre
sent the students, maybe it
should start listening to them.
C/ty of College Station
should pick up pace
few weeks ago I
had to go to
orthgate to do
lie shopping. For the
jt time, I attempted
irive my car and find
Columnist
m
t09) 845-2647
in thp Snrine:
er):
I is it?:
rren? _
.itparking spot in the
Mi_rlJr i f thgate area -
would have been
■ % I i-ANfer 0 ff trying to turn
Id into gold.
■Vorthgate is one of
Jmost poorly de
sections of Col-
Station, if not Texas as a
ole. Some measures have been
en to correct the problems,
not nearly enough is being
Ate to remedy the situation.
■Parking is only one of many
ay Dec 8by7p.®| ) ^ ems encountere d at North-
Re. Streets are nearly impass-
■ -tl'lfe because of the cars parked
III Mw e bh er side of the street, and
1 V/jtEvigating the narrow roads
linages to stress out even the
st serene Aggies.
jChurch Street is a good exam-
I. The road is full of potholes
Jd bumps, and one must con-
"Imtly avoid not only pedestri-
but cars parked on either
'ij c j e 0 f t f, e r oad.
—JtThe streets behind the Dixie
Ifyouareinmm kken are even worse.
being your top ckm Gi 8 antic Pepsi trucks pick the
wst convenient time — noon
■to park their hulking masses
mind Freebirds, therefore
'locking off 75 percent of the
leet and backing up traffic.
■Wait, it gets better.
I Once a person has managed
(maneuver his vehicle between
huge Ford F-350 dually pick-
trucks that seem to be per-
tually parked behind the Dixie
icken, he is faced with the
lestion: Where the hell am I
ing to park my car?
The makeshift dirt and gravel
rking lot behind the Chicken?
iw about the parking lots of the
rious restaurants at Northgate,
eluding Fitzwilly’s and Free
ds? Good luck. Besides, if
u’re not a paying customer of
e restaurant you are parked at,
owing service will be happy to
id a space for your car at their
ility — but it will cost you 50
icks to get your car back.
Perhaps you don’t mind walk-
iabit, so you decide to park
one of the various churches
Jon Apgar
Sophomore
journalism major
Desk
«b designer
3
dio reporter
e Staff
fice Clerk (see a/
m 013 Reed McDofl^
Desk
py Editor
your answers.
accomplish?
on?
at you like anddisl'» f
The Battalion?
publications or clas s
at inhabit the Northgate area.
There should be plenty of
irking there, thinks the aver
se citizen. Not too many peo
ple attend services in
the early afternoon
on a weekday. More
over, churches are
known for catering to
the needy (in this
case, needing a park
ing spot).
Don’t count on it.
Unless you’re a Pres
byterian and have
something to do at the
church, you can’t park
in the Presbyterian
church spaces. And if
you’re not a practicing
Methodist, the church’s parking
spaces are off- limits. Again,
park there and risk the wrath of
the tow truck. Never mind the
fact that these spaces are usually
unfilled during the day.
So the parking situation is
horrendous at Northgate. Why
not just walk there?
Most would agree that side
walks come in handy when
walking along a main road such
as University Drive.
From McDonald’s to Shadow
Canyon, however, there is a side
walk that seems to disappear, then
reappear, then disappear again.
And this sidewalk, when pre
sent, is a whopping 3 inches from
the right lane of University Drive.
Sometimes you can actually feel
the car whiz by your arm as you’re
ambling towards Northgate.
Most Aggies, however, have
enough common sense to walk
far enough from the road. I’m
assuming these Aggies are sober,
though. Northgate does have
more bars than craft shops, so
on an average Friday or Saturday
night, many an inebriated Aggie
will be forced to stumble along
the thin strip of concrete that is
3 inches from speeding vehicles.
Northgate is due for a facelift
and renovation in the near fu
ture. Let’s hope they make it
more accessible to the average
citizen, instead of making it look
like buildings were haphazardly
lopped next to each other.
So far, construction has taken
place in front of Northgate Cafe
and Freebirds to repair the side
walk and parking along Univer
sity Drive, but these aren’t the
areas that need the most work.
The city of College Station
needs to make Northgate a
safer, more accessible area for
its residents.
Otherwise, the situation will
only get worse.
Only elephants in danger belong to Class of ’97
L ast week, I proudly braved
my fear of large predators
and took a picture with an
adorable elephant during the E-
Walk festivities.
The E-Walk committee did a
tremendous job bringing t)ie
cuties to our university. Unfortu
nately, future classes may not get
the opportunity to strike poses
with our trunked friend. If the
United States does not take the
lead in supporting a renewed
ivory trade in Africa, elephants
may disappear.
Wildlife preservation efforts for the ele
phant began in 1989 when legal export sales
of elephant tusks were outlawed by Western
nations. Lax poaching laws had led to the de
struction of half the elephant population, and
radical animal-protection groups rallied the
ban, showing pictures of dead elephants to
beef up membership rolls. Western govern
ments pledged to give millions of dollars to re
place the money countries would lose from
their legal ivory trades.
The push to save the elephants has been
successful — too much so. There are now
600,000 elephants roving around Sub-Saharan
Africa harming both themselves the Africans.
Herds in Kenya’s national parks have de
stroyed about 90 percent of the woods, and
have caused 12 other species (including gi
raffe) to disappear.
The elephants are also destroying crops all
over the continent in their forage for food and
water, wrecking infrastructure and terrorizing
villages. In addition, many ele
phants are dying of hunger.
There are 80,000 starving ele
phants in Botswana, a nation about
the size of Texas. The elephants that
do find food are dying from malaria
and other diseases because of their
overconcentration.
Why won’t powerful Western na
tions let the Africans control the
herds, helping their weak
economies in the process?
Powerful nations with financial
muscle seem to be more concerned
with protecting an image of Africa as
some kind of natural picturebook rather than
allowing the people to use this natural resource
of the ivoiy trade to help feed their people.
That’s no tall order, considering that the World
Bank classifies half of Sub-Saharan Africa as liv
ing in “absolute poverty.”
There is also something
called eco-imperialism at work
here. The United States will
pump about $138 million this
year alone to the countries in
which it has pressured the
leaders to ban elephant hunt
ing. Our country has no busi
ness committing taxpayer
money and sticking its nose in
affairs like this.
But killing off elephants *
seems like a sure way to bring
them to extinction, right?
Wrong. Hunting of a targeted
species has achieved extreme success.
The reason is that when the wildlife is of
value to the people, they will make sure that
the animal continues to exist. Consider
Zimbabwe, one of the few nations that has
resumed ivory trade with tight anti-poach
ing controls. The elephants trample their
crops and are a public nuisance, but resi
dents just try to scare them away instead of
shooting them. This is because they own the
elephants and profit from them — they are
allowed to sell permits to big-game hunters
to hunt them.
Eleven southern African nations now want
to resume the ivory trade, with strict anti
poaching measures to prevent the black market
fraud that previously demolished the elephant
population. In the meantime, by reducing the
herds, everyone benefits. The elephants will be
come healthier and reproduce, the African na
tions will be able to support their impoverished
people with the wealth of the
ivory trade (there are 500 to 600
million tons of ivory already
stockpiled), and the United
States will be able to put the
millions of dollars it is using to
finance the present fiasco to
good use elsewhere.
How long will this nation
bully poor countries and flash
its badge as the Official World
Cop? The United States and
other Western nations need to
stop, playing Mother Nature
and lift the ivory ban, allowing
Africans to legally reduce the
herds in the way of their ancestors.
Columnist
Aja Henderson
Senior political
science major
If the United
States does not
take the lead in
supporting a
renewed ivory
trade in Africa,
elephants may
disappear.
Coaches deserve
the blame for loss
I would like to thank R.C.
Slocum for the job that he has
done. He saved the program when
it seemed that k was destined to
fall into the world of mediocrity. I
am also grateful for the good re
cruiting and the Southwest Con
ference championships. I would
also like to thank him for the clean
program he has run. In this day
and age of crooked underhanded
dealings in college programs, he
has not fallen victim to the many
pitfalls of big time college athletics.
He has not tarnished the reputa
tion of this great University, and for
that I am truly thankful. The things
that he has done in the past are ad
mirable, but he has run his course
here at Texas A&M.
Several reasons have come to
my attention as to why he should
offer his resignation tentative end
of the season (now).
1. The team has not performed
well in big games during his en
tire tenure as head coach. Losses
to Florida State, Notre Dame (2),
Oklahoma, Colorado (2), Kansas
State, BYU and of course Texas (2)
have all overshadowed victories
over the TCU’s and Baylor’s of the
world. The victories are nice, but
to be the national power that
Slocum says we should be re
quires victories in the big games.
2. The team has not been al
lowed to obtain its full potential.
Year in and year out Texas A&M re
cruits some of the top athletes from
Texas and of late from across the
country. Still, Texas A&M continues
to have major problems on the of
fensive side of the ball. Why is this?
Some recruits do not meet their po
tential, (grade problems, discipline
problems, injuries, etc..) I realize
this because every program has to
endure these same problems. For
some reason the elite programs that
have these same problems are in
contention for the national champi
onship every year. From an outside
position looking in, it appears that
these problems must be attributed
to a lack of leadership among the
coaching staff.
3. The team has not met expec
tations over the past two years.
Starting with the 1995 season
there was all kinds of talk about
Texas A&M winning a national
championship. Since the tough
loss at Colorado the team has
gone 13-9. This can be attributed
to the large number of young
players that are forced to fill start
ing positions, but in this day and
age of reduced scholarships
young players in every program
are forced to see extensive playing
time early in their college careers.
Once again where can these prob
lems be traced to besides the
coaching staff?
It seems that the team has
been playing “not to lose” instead
of playing to win. Blame for this
must be put on the coaching staff,
and who is responsible for the
coaching staff, Slocum.
Travis Dabney
Class of’96
Evangelist’s visit
causes confusion
Regarding Lisa Foox’s Nov. 21
Mail Call concerning the evangelist
Tom Short’s recent campus visit:
I was saddened to hear such a
gross misrepresentation of my
message. Not only did I not say
that “Hitler didn’t go far enough”
in his treatment of the Jews, but I
cannot fathom how anything I
did say could have possibly been
misconstrued in this way.
For the record, let me state what
I believe about Jews (as I would
have stated when speaking on
campus recently). God loves Jews.
His Son, Jesus Christ, was a Jew as
were nearly all biblical writers. But
no one is going to heaven simply
for being born Jewish, Catholic,
Baptist, etc. Jesus Christ came to
earth to save us from our sins. He
died for Jews and Gentiles alike. If
we desire to have our sins forgiven,
we must put our faith in the Messi
ah God sent to be our Savior—Je
sus. Failure to do so leaves us un
forgiven by God.
This is the clear teaching of the
Bible. I stand by it without apolo
gy. Saying that God will judge
Jews in the same manner as He
does the rest of the world is not
anti-Semitic. Although much of
what I believe and teach may be
controversial, it is not anti-Semit
ic or "lambasting homosexuals”
to point out someone’s error and
tell them of God’s desire to forgive
and change them.
Concerning Hitler, perhaps it
will put Foox’s mind to rest to know
that I believe him to be a demented,
demon-possessed, evil man. His life
demonstrates moral relativism at its
worst. His contention that anyone
is in any way less than human
ought to revolt any decent person—
yes, even those who make the same
argument in favor of aborting ba
bies in America. In examining
Hitler, there is much we can learn
not to do—including falsely accus
ing those with whom we disagree.
Tom Short
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