The Battalion
Opinion
Tuesday • January 20, 1998
STUDENT LIFE
Construction, elections
will play big roles in 1998
John
Lemons
columnist
[ tis the beginning of a new
semester and a new year at
Texas A&M University.
/ith this new year comes the
otential for nearly anything
) occur. A&M is, after all, a
sry unpredictable place.
Who could have predicted
397*s big events? Four Presi-
ents of the United States vis
ed campus for the Bush Li-
rary opening, the Reveille
ravesites moved and the Fish
ond inexplicably turned
urple for over a month.
For 1998 to be as big of a news year as ’97, some
xciting events will have to occur. Fortunately for all
f you faithful Battalion readers, I am going to re-
eal to you ’98’s biggest events. So get ready to learn
'hat the next year holds. While some of the predic-
ons may be a bit silly, they all are possible if not
robable.
i • Here’s a pretty safe prediction — 1998 will see
udent fees increase. Rarely a year goes by without a
•;e increase. Besides, the only two certainties at A&M
re death and fee increases. While there is no telling if
te increase will be in the General Use Fee or the Stu
dent Service Fee or the Student Center Complex Fee
r the Health Center Fee or one of the other numer-
tiSifees students pay each semester, it will occur.
• Reed Arena will open this semester. Despite par-
ally collapsing and being nearly a year late, the Spe-
ial Events Center will impress students and finally
rovide A&M with an arena appropriate for a univer-
ty of this size.
Muster will be the first event held at the arena, and
t last, anyone who wants to attend the service will
ave the opportunity.
The arena’s second event will be a tractor pull,
:atui ing all of the car-crushing action Aggieland
an handle.
• Construction on the Zone, the monstrous addi-
STATE OF THE UNION
tion to Kyle Field will begin. However, believing that
the Zone is not quite big enough, the Athletic Depart
ment will make it even larger. In addition to already
displacing the Reveilles and E. King Gill’s statue, the
MSC, Rudder Tower and G. Rollie White Coliseum will
have to be moved.
Students sitting in the upper rows of the Zone will
be forced to wear oxygen masks in order to stay con
scious throughout an entire game. People will wearT-
shirts sporting the phrase “A&M spent a million dol
lars and all I got was a lousy nosebleed.”
Meanwhile, opposing teams will mock A&M for
naming a part of their stadium something as ridicu
lous as the Zone.
• Student Senate will break new ground this se
mester and do something that benefits campus.
Campus will rejoice as representational government
actually works.
• The Student Body President elections will regress
once again into a matter of choosing which candi
date’s signs looks most like a commercial advertise
ment. The advertisements of the winners this year
will emulate those of Slim Jim Beef Jerky.
The candidate’s sign’s will feature Randy “the Ma
cho Man” Savage saying “Snap into (insert candidate
name here).”
• The Corps of Cadets, the Board of Regents and
Bonfire will make it through the year without a con
troversy. Poultry science majors, however, will not.
Tired of being labeled as hicks and red necks, poul
try science majors will unite and hold a rally to
protest prejudice against them. Aggies, however, will
still think the poultry science majors hickish. The
protest will result in weeks of ugly mail call filled
with phrases like, “Highway 6 runs both ways” and
“world-class university.”
Obviously, ’98 is going to be an exciting year.
Whether or not these events occur is still up for de
bate. And although hindsight may be 20/20, foresight
sure is fun.
John Lemons is an electrical engineering
graduate student.
Bung jury exhibits necessary
hecks of American justice system
Caleb
McDaniel
columnist
VT °han
-V JLtwo
5ars after the
orst act of
miestic ter-
>rism in
merican his-
iry, there is
ill contro-
irsy over
ho is re-
oonsible for
ic Okla-
Dma City bombing. One thing,
lough, is certain — the Terry
ichols jury is not guilty of the
ime. But ever since jurors noti-
jd U .S. District Judge Richard P
atsch that they could not agree
i a punishment for Nichols, the
>unt ly has treated members of
e jury as if they were the villains.
“The juiy failed us,” said Darlene
elch, whose niece was killed in the
tack on the Alfred P Murrah Feder-
Building in 1995. “I’m angry at
at jury,” said Brenda Lay, whose
other died in the blast. “I am really
sappointed,” said Susan Urbach,
to was injured in the explosion.
Such disappointment is cer-
nly understandable from those
irt by the horrible tragedy. No
te can begin to imagine the suf-
ring that the families of the
mbing victims have had to en-
ire over the past two and a half
ars. But even in this moral out-
ge over the murder of 168 inno-
nt people, Americans must be
refill not to direct their anger at
the 12 innocent members of the
Nichols jury. People should have
nothing but sympathy for any
panel that is forced to decide
whether a man lives or dies, and
they should reserve their criticism
until they have faced the same aw
ful choice. It is not an easy deci
sion to make.
In fact, thanks to the American
justice system, it is an incredibly
difficult decision to make. The ju
ries who decide capital punish
ment cases should have nothing
but due respect for human life.
They should not execute anyone if
the conscience of even one juror is
troubled by a “reasonable doubt.”
The last thing juries should do is
hastily condemn a person to death
because the crime was emotional
or especially tragic. Yet that seems
to be what Linda McCurley prefers.
“If that jury had lived here and
lived through this,” she told a re
porter in Oklahoma City, “I bet
they would’ve felt differently.”
Such criticism is misguided. If
people are angered at the outcome
of the Terry Nichols trial, they
should blame those who deserve to
be blamed. For starters, try the
prosecution team. According to the
jury forewoman, Niki Deutchman,
“The government wasn’t able to
prove beyond a reasonable doubt a
whole lot of the evidence.” Holly
Hanlin, another juror in the case,
echoed that the government attor
neys “could have done a better job.
There were some things that
wouldn’t fit.” It seems that the holes
in the government’s case were too
much for jurors to overcome. So if
Terry Nichols really does deserve
death, the prosecution has failed
the victims, not the jury.
Or how about the E B.I.? Ameri
cans should be angry that the FBI
failed to record over 30,000 inter
views conducted during the course
of the investigation. Hard copies of
these depositions, said Deutchman,
would have made her decision
much easier.
Ultimately, people should be
glad that the jurors did not simply
ignore their doubts for the sake of
emotional closure in Oklahoma
City. “Reasonable doubt” is the
most sacred check on the American
judicial system, and something is
wrong with the country when peo
ple believe a jury has “failed” be
cause it listened to its doubts. A
hung jury is not a failure. It is a liv
ing tribute to the American justice
system, a system that makes it hard
to execute the guilty so that it will
not be easy to punish the innocent.
The heart of every honest
American grieves with you, Okla
homa City. Nothing anyone can
say or do will ever replace the loss
you have suffered. But Americans
must not abandon objectivity and
justice in their emotional zeal.
And they must not vent their frus
trations on juries who are hesitant
to kill. Such juries should be com
mended, not condemned.
Caleb McDaniel is a freshman
history major.
of
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BRAD GRAEBER/The Battalion
CAMPUS CONNECTION
Diversity's future depends on
non-discriminatory admissions
Adam
Collett
columnist
C urrent and would-be
detractors of race
conscious admis
sions and services have
capitalized on higher edu
cation’s failure to justify its
multicultural objectives.
Mounting numerous legal
assaults, the groups have
targeted practices such as
these, including Hopwood
in Texas and Proposition
209 in California have
been targeted. These
groups ultimately will prove legally solid in their
argument that the government cannot maintain a
policy which favors one group over another based
solely or in large part on race or gender.
Affirmative action and other programs were in
stituted by government by virtue of a compelling
interest to correct the past wrongs of discrimina
tion. In the short term, supporters of such correc
tive policies will likely stem the tide represented
by Hopwood and Proposition 209, by arguing that
the work is not yet done.
However, society will eventually have to com
ply with its own prescription that none shall be
judged by the color of his or her skin.
In Generations: The History of America's Fu
ture 1584-2069, William Strauss and Neil Howe
explain that this is especially true considering
that the young adults of Generation X are much
more likely than previous generations to support
programs which get away from equality of results
and move toward equality of opportunity. For
now, this group opinion only affects polls and
studies, but could carry the force of law starting
around 2015, when X-ers are expected to reach a
plurality in Congress.
Well in advance of that day, universities and
colleges will have to do two things.
• First, they will have to do a better job of sell
ing the general public on the merits of diversity.
• Second, institutions of higher education will
have to explore and implement alternatives to
race-based programs.
Philosophically, universities will increasingly
have to rely on the intrinsic value associated with
diversity. According to some educators, that value
has not been communicated well to those outside
the academy. Kevin Carreathers, Director of Mul
ticultural Services for Texas A&M, says, “There
needs to be more articulation of what the re
search says about the impact of diversity on stu
dents. There’s a positive correlation between di
versity initiatives and student success and
student satisfaction for all.”
Another factor restricting the flow of informa
tion to the public is that colleges commonly keep
quiet their specific admissions decision criteria to
avoid controversy. It has long been the practice of
institutions of higher education to admit a wide
range of students, such as athletes, musicians and
minority groups.
In a quest to address specific needs on a cam
pus, some students with higher grades or test
scores are passed over so that a particular com
munity niche can be filled However, admissions
offices are adamant, however, in the practice of
not admitting students who are not capable of
doing the work. Colleges will have to make clear
this reasonable admissions rationale in order to
keep public support.
Philosophical defenses thus shored up, col
leges can focus their efforts on designing recruit
ment, admissions and financial aid distribution
systems that enhance diversity while avoiding
race or ethnicity as factors.
Among the more radical solutions are academ
ically open admissions (in which students are en
rolled with practically zero regard to previous
achievement) and financially open higher educa
tion (in which the government compensates for
the demonstrated need of every student wishing
to attend college).
While these alternatives remove some of the
barriers that bottleneck minority enrollment,
they are not likely to receive support from the
general public.
The open admissions method devalues the de
grees granted by an institution and complete fi
nancial assistance is prohibitively expensive and
thus not likely to happen for a very long time.
Given the unlikelihood of these options, uni
versities must consider other compensatory en
rollment and retention strategies.
Several of these strategies involve measures of
class or socioeconomic status (SES), such as tax
base and parental income.
Carreathers says that economic consideration
is the best alternative to race-conscious programs,
because “that drives a lot of other factors [in the
student’s home community], such as quality of liv
ing, quality of schools, and quality of services.”
Another indicator of SES is first-generation
college enrollment. Universities that currently use
this factor give weight to students whose parents
did not complete college.
Andrs Prez, an admissions counselor, reports
that the A&M takes into account geography, so that
students from inner-city or other traditionally low-
income areas are given special consideration.
“Most of our students come from the Houston, Dal
las and San Antonio areas, but we also try to recruit
out of places where students don’t apply from, such
as the panhandle and the Rio Grande valley.”
A final alternative, one not being discussed ex
tensively in the literature on the subject, is the use
of multicultural or diversity-rich experiences as
an admissions factor, along with the field stan
dards of academic, extracurricular, work, and
community service experiences.
A requirement thus based could avoid the en
tanglements that current policies encounter be
cause they would not be favoring a particular
race, gender or culture group.
Multicultural or minority culture experiences
could be gained by virtue of being of a certain
race or group; but the saving grace of this alterna
tive is that it is not restricted only to that criteri
on. Minority or multicultural experiences could
also be gained from academic study, community
service or job experience.
Affirmative action and race and gender-con
scious admissions and services by universities
have made significant inroads against discrimina
tion, but the work is not yet done.
However, when the public and the judiciary fi
nally tire and remove what’s left of the recently re
duced legal support for such activities, colleges and
universities need to be ready with a clearly-com
municated rationale for multiculturalism and vi
able alternatives to maintain diversity on campus.
Adam Collett is an educational
administration graduate student.