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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 30, 1999)
I* : Battalion O PINION Page 13A • Monday, August 30, 1999 Close* sfcele+ons ir jyjegot/°ns of past drug use against Bush t relevant to his pursuit for presidency 'ON (AP) - ied teammate.i- orge W. ush ants to nefeident, ' niw some ik it is time iegiu worry about him igp man i a past. ^—JMhere anyone out there in po! tical world who does not , el past’ Forget politicians. Is it in tnesixtniiii* one over 30 w i 10 ^oes 'SS 10 h » i lave a past? ■ great, anonymous “they” it to know what drugs he d, when he used them and it le did with whom, lid anyone notice during 9a Lewinsky’s circus side wihat people do not care? pans did not seem to care K ey made Bush governor. ime to be selective has 9. Bush already occupies highest executive office in 9te. To worry about his im- |past is absurd. Ire are just some things ■ do not need to know ut others. ■urday night entertainment ■ one’s college days does "■■■■■■■'■““feem important from a dis- lof 30 years. Ink about it. If Bush had ten deeply involved in drugs MUNriY9ayed there, how would he ChurchJl gotten to be governor? ■ does not seem to be a King rate of career success Big practicing drug addicts, e can pass a drug test to- at should be enough. His- history. It is what he is today that is of interest, at people do care about is rformance. of interest whether he re ed in Houston before he d to run for governor or ' owned real estate there. TO ^Bewise, it would be interest ed : tlknow how honestly he & ^Ks income taxes. ce he is putting himself s the nation’s premier he first for the his own team 52nd double added a tht ie seventh. 1 (17-3) overt , tying seven ed to 8-Oinhii llowed threei 3 innings. ■d off the Ast ith a single a; Iked. With tve ndez gave 5 homers by an into thei public servant, perhaps one should ask what kinds of service he has given to his country, his state and community. Voters want to know about what he has given back to the community, not about what (or whom) he did. Fiscal responsibility is also relevant: On how many credit cards does he carry a balance? What kinds of gifts did he give to government officials when he was in business? The current cul tural milieu is centered on entertainment. Consequently, news has been redefined as that which sells papers rather than those things that an informed people need to know, When election time comes around, the media will move in like sharks smelling blood. Unfortunately, they don’t deliver meat, but old, picked bones. It is time for the electorate to de mand relevant information and insist that dirt be confined to su permarket tabloids. Whatever possible bearing past drug use could have on,.Bush’s .. qualifications as a pres idential candidate, it was not important when he ran for governor. Never forget that Adolf Hitler was a non-smok ing, teetotalling vegetarian. Purity of lifestyle does not necessarily qualify one for public service, and it is impor tant to stress that the focus here is on past drug use. If he is on drugs now, that is news, and it is important. Other wise, it should be a freebie. Anyone who has never done anything wrong is welcome to cast the first stone. Ann Hart is a senior English major. Candidates must be willing to subject themselves to criticism of past actions T I he Re publican Party’s overwhelming. zeal for uncov ering an office holder’s past transgressions has turned bad on them faster than year-old milk. However, just because Mark McPherson/Thh Battalion investigating a candidate’s past would be inconvenient now is no reason for them to stop. In fact, the Republican Party watchdogs were on the right track all along. Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the likely GOP choice for the ballot in the 2000 presi dential campaign, now finds himself under the same kind of scrutiny Pres ident Bill Clinton en dured during his terms in of fice. But this kind of pre-emptive background check of a candi date’s history should be conduct ed in public in or der to prevent the kind of embarrass ing situations that can taint a presiden tial term. Once all the facts come out about a candi date’s past, then the people will ‘decide with their votes whether he or she has enough merit to be considered for the of fice of president. Questions have surfaced concerning Bush’s alleged past drug use, which friends have hinted at and he avoids discussing. He skirts the question, say ing if there was anything to the claim, the said use was at least a generation ago. Now Republicans are wav ing the flag of personal privacy for Bush after they made every effort to uncover all of the dark secrets in the Clintons’ closets. This hypocrisy concerning a candidate’s privacy hurts the country by withholding possible past illegal actions from the. voters. This charge differs from being wild in high school and going out drinking after the big game. Drug use is a serious offense, and the people of the United States, Bush’s possible con stituents, have a right to know about this part of his life, if the allegations are true. Other government offices have endured and even benefit ed from personal background checks. A prospective U.S. Supreme Court Justice faces a virtual inquisition before his or her nomination can be approved. Presidential candidates should be subject to the same public scrutiny. After all, the.people who interpret the Constitution should not be held to a higher standard of scrutiny than the person who is charged with carrying out those laws. Currently, though, the only public background check for a president seems to occur after he has been elected. Perfection is not what anyone is looking for out of a candidate. The presi dent should be in touch with society. The American people are supposed to be in control. But people need assur ances that behind the white toothed smile and perfect hair, there is a law-abiding citizen who might have a few parking or speeding tickets but no history of ille gal drug use. Everyone has their menacing skeletons hang ing in the dark corners of the closet, but those with the ones that resemble museum exhibits should settle for city council runs instead. Jeff Webb is a senior journalism major. sper trial gives Bryan community chance for self-reflection ’’bile students and faculty are working their first of classes, [ence Russell ler is facing the ■week of a murder las the accused. }ry selection for pal officially starts ay, but controversy about the trial gan months ago. ■ewer is one of three men indicted gruesome murder of James Byrd d is facing the death penalty if icted. Brewer’s trial follows seven [ths after the trial of the first defen- John William King, which took in Jasper, the backdrop of the . le and the incessant media coverage followed. ow it is Brewer’s turn to face a jury, —because the likelihood of the sec- PA 3.^i tr ' a l mimicking the first is high, the Ind trial has been moved to Bryan. rMotetakefjving the trial to Bryan was a decision 1999 Notes >623 HORT 201 JOUR 102 MGMT105 MGMT211 MGMT363 IVIKTG 321 IVIKTG 345 IVIKTG 401 IVIKTG 435 made out of the fear of juror partiality due to the aggressive coverage of the first trial. For many weeks it was debated if Bryan should be the host of the new murder trial. Many people were against it, but now that the decision has been made, Bryan has the most to gain from the murder trial. It seems strange to characterize a murder trial as beneficial, especially when considering the nature of the crime. Not only was James Byrd Jr. mur dered, he was tor tured in a way remi niscent of past Texas lynchings, his body dragged for miles to ward the formerly segregated cemetery. More than a year has passed since his death, and it is just as shocking now to note the details of the murder as it was then. From the trail of blood his body left behind the truck to how prose cutors in the first trial proved Byrd was ''The effects of the Bryan trial will run deeper than the verdict itself." alive when the dragging began — by cit ing the bone damage in his elbows, showing he was frantically trying to hold himself up from the road surface until he was overcome by the over whelming trauma, the crime was horrif ic. Hearing such details makes people flinch with disgust, condemning the in dicted without even considering their side of the story. That is why the trial had to be moved from Jasper. The resi dents were too close to the crime and too ready to make racial amends, no matter the cost. Justice is hard enough to get when jurors are impartial; it is impossible when the jurors are biased. If Brewer had remained in Jasper along with all of the media circus sur rounding him, then any conviction com ing out of Jasper would be tainted. Also, by moving the trial to Bryan, there is a better chance that the media will not hound the residents or present so much fevered coverage. The security issue will also be less pressing in Bryan. “The only thing we have to draw on is the first trial, and it went very smoothly in the security as pect,” Bryan Sheriff Chris Kerr said. “There is no reason we should expect any difference.” Judicially, it is best that Bryan is now the site of the murder trial instead of Jasper. No city wants to be picked as the new site for a racially charged murder trial, but in the case of heavy media coverage, it is a necessity if fairness is to be achieved. . The effects of Brewer’s trial in Bryan will run deeper than the verdict itself. Brewer’s trial has the chance to make people re-evaluate the nature of race re lations here in Bryan, and hopefully on the A&M campus. Bryan is a racially diverse communi ty, and it is not unheard of for people to make derogatory remarks toward the community. Bryan has been unfairly characterized as “the ghetto” by some A&M students, largely due to the black population. This is something that should be ex plored. Racism on college campuses is dangerous, not only because of the di verse, young group it involves, but be cause racists tend to get even more adamant about bigotry as life progress es. When young adults choose racism as their new dogma, by the time they are middle-aged, the chances for them to act out unfairly against another race are even more viable. The trial will proceed, whether resi dents of Bryan want it to or not. But due to its presence, everyone has the chance to rethink the generalizations that often supersede race relations. There is always the possibility that if people review the way they treat each other enough, then a tragedy like the James Byrd dragging death might not happen again. Beverly Mireles is a junior microbiology major. urrent students have vested interest in supporting Vision 2020 exas A&M University has always a committed nproving its ty. e Vision 2020 project, com- dover the past 18 months, is ample of the University’s de- o continually improve what IVIUSC201.51ll5f er s its students and the peo- F^OLS 206 Texas. |ision 2020 aimed high — it |d project participants to con- what the University must do widely considered as among ation’s top 10 public institu- by the year 2020, while still Gaining its distinctiveness, s good as we know we are. Iso know that reality and our tation do not yet place us in group of top 10 schools dally. F^OLS 207 F^SYC 107 30CI319 THAT 101 3O0L 107 From June 1998 to June 1999, nearly 260 dedicated faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students, former students and friends of the University gave their time, energy and creative abilities to discussing the right ness of this ambition for A&M and suggesting ways the ambition might be realized. The resulting report was pub lished last June and can be found on the Vision 2020 Website, ac cessible by hyperlink from the University homepage. Why should a current A&M student care about a vision of the University not expected to be ful ly realized for 20 years? President Ray Bowen has said the degree he received in 1958 had great value then, but is even more valuable today because of the increase in the quality and reputation of A&M since he first slipped on his Aggie ring. That kind of increase in quality is not always the case with large universities. Complacency and in difference about the core issues of quality will undermine develop ing excellence. The intent of Vision 2020 is to make sure that we continue to improve, so that what a student acquires here, manifested in a simple way through the degree he or she receives, will appreciate, rather than depreciate, in value. The only way to do that is to improve the whole University — to make it a better institution and to increase the real and perceived quality of the enterprise to a wider audience. The prestige of a university is increased through long-term stewardship of academic quality. In the end, the way we serve our students — past, present and fu ture — is by improving the quali ty of the degree that we offer. The only way to do that is with honest self-assessment that results in positive change. Students who want to improve their academic per formance must evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and concen trate on im proving those areas where they are weak and perhaps get even bet ter in areas where they are strong. An institution that wants to prosper and return great value to 2 0 2 its students and its state must do the same. Vision 2020, as well as earlier planning efforts that resulted in positive change, have demon strated A&M is willing and able to chart a course of positive change and achieve it. The role of current students in achieving Vision 2020 is to work hard at being out standing students. A significant part of |r an institution’s ex cellence is the quality of its stu dents and their achievements both before and after graduation. During the Vision 2020 process, former students, many of them highly successful in their chosen ca reers, were an integral part of helping us see ourselves as the world sees us and helping deter mine the direction we must go to achieve greater excellence. Twenty years from now when I am retired, I fully ex pect to read in the Texas Aggie that the University is embark ing on another long-range planning process aimed at con tinuing its culture of excel lence. I also expect to see that many students, who are now just beginning to discover and build their own futures, will be involved in helping the Univer sity plan for a yet brighter fu ture. That is what makes us Texas Aggies. Walter Wendler directed the Vision 2020 project.