idnesday • April 22, 1998
Opinion
iMPUS CONNECTION
plying for The
\attalion offers
mething for all
Mandy
Cater
opinion editor
tis that time of year again. People are
|aduating, registering for classes and
tting over upcoming finals. As stu-
l look ahead to summer and fall semes-
rspnany issues arise concerning where to
relvhat classes to take and, for many Ag
es, where to work.
lost students look first to the usual job
les — waiting tables, tending bars and
ilemarketing. Although these jobs can be
'■money makers and offer the possibility
jinteract with other college students, they
hiot the only options,
today is the deadline for applications
lummer and fall staff at The Battalion. The paper is cur-
ently hiring for all positions, and applications are open to any-
nterested.
|ome of you may be asking how working at The Battalion could
inefit you. For those students who are seeking journalism de-
ees, the answer is obvious. The Battalion provides an opportuni-
tb put to use the skills you have learned in classes. Whether by
lf| editing, writing feature stories or working as a front-page re
nter, working at The Battalion offers unlimited possibilities for
n lialistic experience.
lowever, The Battalion welcomes students from all walks of
|lipus life. From architecture majors to students pursuing
try science degrees, The Battalion has a place for just about
..i ne who is interested in improving their communications
y siting skills.
?br those students who are more visually oriented, the news-
Isr offers positions for you, as well. Open positions include
hie artists, Web designers, photographers, page designers
artoonists.
ieBattalion offers students the unusual opportunity to gain
ssional experience while still having time for school. It is an
getic, interactive environment in which creativity and new
are not only allowed, but encouraged.
position at The Battalion also encourages student workers to
mulate a growing network of resources both on campus and
md. Employees at The Battalion have, in the past, been in-
ed with covering football games, meeting presidents and inter-
Uim ing nationally-recognized artists of the entertainment industry,
o, those of you who are mulling over what to do with all that
a time you have are encouraged to venture down to the base-
tand pick up an application,
he summer and fall semesters promise to be excellent chances
mprovement both individually and for the paper as a whole,
ideas and a more intense focus on covering the A&M commu-
promise to take the paper in new directions and, hopefully,
rove upon the solid foundation The Battalion has established
the years.
he Battalion does not require that you have previous experi-
3, only that applicants have a strong drive and want to do
ething proactive to improve the A&M community. If you are
rested in being a part of this team, The Battalion welcomes the
nee to work with you. Take the chance to do more than just
e mail call — join the team and make a real difference.
m Applications may be picked up in 013 Reed McDonald.
tw
Mandy Cater is a senior psychology major.
PERSPECTIVES
Smoking Joe
Airlines take sides in debate over in-flight smoking
Chris
Huffines
columnist
J oe Camel,
having lost
his most re
cent job, has
moved on to in
ternational ter
rorism. On a re
cent flight, an
Italian passen
ger tried to light
up in die bath
room. When he
was told not to,
several times, he
assaulted the flight attendant, forc
ing the plane to land, forcing Conti
nental Airlines to kick him off the
plane. The poor man had boarded
the plane in Milan, and hours later,
just really wanted a cigarette.
Is it moral to make long-dis
tance flights completely non
smoking? There are two issues to
look at here, the economy of air
travel and the effects of nicotine
withdrawal.
Airplanes have become the most
efficient way for anyone to travel
between countries or continents. It
is usually impractical to drive or
take a train, and ships are extreme
ly slow compared to airplanes. And,
the cost is pretty competitive.
However, international flights
can be as long as eight or ten hours.
For those eight or ten hours, the
smoker will suffer a variety of
symptoms, including shaking, wa
tering mouth, headaches, hunger,
nervousness, irritability and the
need to do something, anything
with their mouth and hands.
Those symptoms do not sound
particularly pleasant to experience,
but air travel is the only real way to
travel extremely long distances.
And it is not right to cause some
one physical discomfort if at all
possible, in the name of protecting
ourselves. That would be infringing
on their rights.
Yes, I know you haven’t been re
minded recently, but smokers do
have rights. However, it is also not
right for the smokers to endanger
the health of non-smoking passen
gers just for the sake of their habit.
And so, the airline companies
are faced with the problem of pro
tecting their non-smoking passen
gers from the evils of second-hand
smoke while also not causing their
smoking passengers the discomfort
C3
previously mentioned. Protecting
the flight attendants from irritated
smokers and irritated non-smokers
is also important.
Many people would say that
there is no compromise and, sorry,
but the smokers will just have to
suffer. This is not entirely accurate,
a compromise existed over 50
years ago.
The airship Hindenburg, which
flew transatlantic flights from Ger
many to New Jersey and Brazil, was
faced with a similar problem.
During the several-day flight,
the passengers wanted to smoke,
but the ship was full of hydrogen,
which has the nasty habit of burn
ing at the drop of a match. And so,
the Hindenburg physically could
not fly without hydrogen, but she
also could not fly without paying
passengers, most of whom smoked.
The answer was to create an
airtight smoking compartment
on board the Hindenburg. The
compartment was pressurized to
keep hydrogen out and passen
gers entered or exited through an
airlock (which doubled as a bar).
All this was accomplished using
1930’s technology in the middle
of a depression-torn Germany
with a severe weight restriction
on all equipment.
Most of you know that the Hin
denburg burned sometime back
in the late '30s, which would seem
to debunk the whole smoking-
section theory.
However, that fire started about
500 feet back, in the tail of the ship,
not in the forward passenger com
partment, where the smoking
lounge was.
Since then, the severe overreac
tion to smoking has caused an all-
or-nothing approach to solving the
problem of how to allow smokers
and non-smokers to coexist.
Airlines have sided with non-
smokers against the smokers and
have banned smoking entirely on
flights instead of at least attempt
ing to accommodate everyone.
Out there, there is a solution that
would be easy to implement, that
would make all of the passengers
happy, and would keep unfortu
nate incidents like stewardess as
sault at a minimum. All it takes is a
little ingenuity and the desire to
solve the problem.
Chris Huffines is a sophomore
speech communications major.
lUDENT LIFE
[panning education bill exemplifies dollars coming before people
len the Texas Legisla
ture returns to Austin
next year for its 76th
jsion, the House of Represen-
ives will consider a bill that
ermines the most funda-
ntal principles of higher ed-
tion. If passed, Senate Bill
5 would allow state universi-
to charge non-resident tu-
n rates to students who ac-
ulate more than 170
ester credit hours.
Those students who finish
Caleb
McDaniel
columnist
:ir degree plan with no more than six hours in ex-
»s of the minimum number required would be re-
rded with a state tuition rebate for their hurry.
For those students who care more about exploring
ademic interests than about bowing to the
nighty buck, this legislation is bad news.
, s jnn, The legislators, forever out of touch with real edu-
! tional issues, have apparently forgotten that haste
h pees waste.
n sf rl The proposed rebate practically bribes students into
pending the minimum time and effort on their college
[ucation; it pays them to take less courses so that they
the thrown even sooner into the riptides of venture
Ipitalism. It makes learning the lap dog of the markets.
In fact, the Senate’s summary analysis of the bill
cites financial efficiency as a major impetus for the
law: “The longer a student remains in college, the less
of a return on the state’s investment.”
Bet you didn’t realize that the state thinks of you
as its commodity.
And the surcharge for students with “excessive” credit
hours is founded on entirely faulty premises. Tire propos
al seems to stereotypically suggest that any student with
more than 170 semester credit hours must be a lazy leech
on the system who is just taking extra country-western
dance classes so he or she can waste the state’s money.
In reality, students are too often forced to stay for
more semesters because they cannot take the courses
they need. Faculty cutbacks and poor planning often
stagger class schedules so that courses needed for
graduation are not conveniently available.
So legislators and administrators force hefty core
curriculum requirements on the students, offer fewer
courses less frequently, and then complain that those
lazy students just refuse to leave campus and get a
job. Now that is a nifty piece of legislative logic: make
hasty administrative changes and then when they do
not work, blame those ungrateful Generation Xers.
But the proposed surcharge is really representative of
a much more serious and pervasive mistake in higher
education these days.
More and more, stringent pre-professional programs
are being dressed up like baccalaureate degree plans,
when they are really nothing of the sort.
In technical and lucrative fields like computer sci
ence and engineering, students are forced into nar
row specializations and are encouraged not to take
electives that do not relate to their vocations.
The message that the state university system pro
jects to its social security numbers -1 mean, to its stu
dents - is that the most important goal of their educa
tion is to gain the skills necessary to make money.
From the moment many students arrive at college,
finally free from restrictive high school curricula, they
are forced to hurry and declare a major, then told to
hurry and graduate, and then urged to hurry and get
a job so the university can quote more impressive
numbers in its alumni newsletter.
The students have a right to ask, “Exactly what is the
hurry?” Some of us realize that college is the one oppor
tunity we will have to explore diverse academic inter
ests. But policies like Senate Bill 1485 imply that if you
are an accounting major, you just do not have the time
to take that anthropology class that your friend recom
mended. If you are a chemical engineer, quit wasting
your time on “pansy” Shakespeare classes; you are
needed out in the work force.
And to encourage you to stay within the stuffy
confines of your department, if you do not take any
more than you absolutely must, the State of Texas will
send you a juicy rebate check in the mail.
Policies like this preach education for the sake of
economy. What ever happened to education for the
sake of education?
The House Higher Education Committee has at
least revised the bill to exempt students enrolled in
two major programs from the surcharge. But the ex
ception is little more than balderdash. Realistically,
consider what a poor student already facing years of
loan payments would do if the bill were passed.
Faced with the choice between free rebate money
from the state or pursuing that genetics and philoso
phy double-major he or she has always dreamed
about, he or she will probably pick the former.
State legislators are wrong to even implicitly dis
courage flexible degree plans and interdisciplinary
majors, which this bill does in spite of the exceptions
it makes for double majors.
When legislators see dollar signs, they start mak
ing cents and stop making sense. Apparently all the
Senate cared about when it passed SB 1485 was the
$4.5 million that the bill would save the state. Now, it
is up to the House of Representatives and its interim
committees to reject any bill that punishes over
achievers with higher tuition and rewards under
achievers with higher rebates.
Caleb McDaniel is a freshman history major.
reation beliefs depend
n individual truths
response to Joshua Hill’s re
sponse in Mail Call:
I agree with you when you
state that science and religion
are in conflict in western society.
The conflict you refer to arises
due to differing ideas about the
origin of the universe and our
place in it.
Creationism and Evolution
describe the origin of humanity
in mutually exclusive terms.
God and Natural Selection
are the driving forces of each
idea.
To analyze the merits and
faults of these ideas, one must
determine what constitutes the
“truth” in both philosophies.
You point out that “Christiani
ty is based on objective truth, on
actual historical events and com
muniques that were recorded
and continue to be supported by
scientific evidence.”
If this is your criteria of objec
tive truth, then Creationism is in
deed valid because it is stated in
the Bible that God created man
and since the Bible contains
many historical accounts that are
supported by archeological finds,
the Bible must be correct about
the origin of man.
Science however, has other
criteria for what it considers ob
jective truth: one states that if ob
servations contradict a theory,
then the theory needs to be mod
ified or discarded.
Accordingly, Evolution is the
only scientific theory that ex
plains the diversity of life (most
of it extinct) found in the fossil
record and more importantly
the gradual increase in complex
ity of the fossils found on differ
ent soil layers.
It replaced the idea that
species have always been perma
nent and that none have become
extinct since the “beginning.”
If you conclude that the sci
entific method is flawed be
cause it is conducted by hu
mans; do not forget that religion
is also practiced by humans
who have in the past, fallen pray
to their own biases.
Recall that there was a time a
few hundred years ago when
many European Christians
broke away from the Catholic
Church to start their own con
gregations because they dis
agreed with the Vatican.
Finally, as you suggested, I
looked into the history of sci
ence and I noted many cases
were scientific theories were
discarded and replaced with
better ones.
Yet some have never changed:
the evidence still suggests that
the earth is round with a circum
ference of 25,000 miles.
Eratosthenes concluded this
two thousand years ago after he
measured the length of the shad
ow cast by a vertical stick in
Alexandria at noon on June 21.
I do not think that particular
piece of knowledge will change for
another one hundred generations.
Francisco Pinto
Class of’98