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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 15, 2000)
Page 11 ith edn ^day, November 15, 2000 [>u A 'ay s settii Universal e rights MP3.C0H ^ percent, k Market, lount of tli{ 'en disclostL l fa|| s v ni ic 1870s, unions :ompanv v || crc established in the ■nited States to ensure ivith smallei itfecurity an d fair Ived but jpaiment for workers, reat toMP:® a iiy» employees who Jsiness, unions were differs fr, ase-pay workers at low- tlle-su.l-level jobs who relied J by Na: n|ie union group for their miK Bted financial security. Unions have tak- Niapsteo non a more complicated meaning today. v p\ they are not reserved to only the base- dia giant ftiay workers — unions have been formed in joinwithfi lllealms of employment. Unions are orga- embersh szed for educators, professional athletes, air system taftic controllers and anything in between, to artist' ixcept students. lastly gkAn Nov. 1, a precedent was set when the Bional Labor Relations Board (NLRB) |ifed that unions cannot exclude graduate tudents who teach or conduct research at irivate universities. Graduate students are $ Bgnized as workers, and therefore have j Bsame opportunity to organize and bar- Pip/jaliasaunion. ^ l vPlPrivate universities across the nation fear lis new mling will weaken educational Bidards, but educational standards should | be their only concern. Graduate students Iv have unlimited opportunities to “bar- ■n” with their “employers,” professors. JWhile unions once were a means of sur- 'XplOm, they have now become a luxury that * ■dents can abuse. Student unions will ex- of the tx® Jolt the academic world. Learning should was told:"^■the prime concern, but bargaining will be- we resMBne t 0 graduation. . warship®! According to ABC News, the decision es. Pentapmde. by the NLRB cannot be appealed, cific rules" 1 Sheldon Seinback, general counsel of the ers said iuBnerican Counsel of Education, said in a r iled a de-CNN interview, “It erodes a relationship be llowed. tween faculty and students, from grading, to have goftyho should graduate, to the curriculum that too far step \tudent unions frivolous, prone to exploit academic world their extensive labor be compensated. This will not only weaken educational standards, it will also threaten relations between teach ers and students. Professors, as employers, will be less likely to act as superiors when they obvious ly are. These professors were once graduate students with less-than-satisfactory working conditions and overwhelming expectations. These professors had no legitimate say as students, and therefore succumbed to those in authority. A graduate student’s purpose is not to take the place of the professor by teaching class and grading papers. To achieve a respectable degree, a certain amount of work is required. Most people accept that blue-collar labor ers and their supervisors can have difficulty reaching an agreement and therefore resort to unions, but one would expect a professor and a student seeking his master’s degree to reach a compromise without threats. This is the world of academia, where intellects should prevail. Scholars should not have to resort to unions when controversy arises. They should be able to evaluate the situation reasonably and decide what would best suit both sides. As John Beckman, New York Universi ty’s spokesman, has said, “These graduate students are first and foremost students. They are admitted as students — not re cruited as employees.” There is no justification in assuming gradu ate students are employees of the school. These are temporary positions where students serve as teachers to aid the professors and work to compensate for the financial burden of graduate school. Graduate student unions are unnecessary. There should be no collective bargaining in ' education, especially at the graduate level. Private universities should protest this mling and take it to the Supreme Court. In the world of academics, standards are set and curriculums are followed. Graduate school is a higher form of education that cannot with stand the effects of statutory rights. Unions will threaten the educational system and pre vent advanced learning from taking place. Cayla Carr is a junior speech communication major. federal < lent and ut down ME ;aii lifer KuM lingaboiiut' hooting two'i s.” leek w iccounts,c l! | lersofthesl e nd survey gfit be taught — they could all become jjectsof collective bargaining.” A union’s ose is to prevent a substandard work en- onment. Substandard work environments for duate students could result in low en- ce scores, insufficient pay and excessive duate requirements. Graduate students e not only been awarded the opportunity ispute their “less than satisfactory condi- one of tli'Ions,” they are now expected to insist that ie SuezC®! crew' ineifll 1 vho guid^ igitated'^ Yemeni M er reported nay have' sed throng Joined at Birth operation separating conjoined twins neccessary, best medical decision .nAug. 18, con joined doors »|n girls Mary letall# idJodie were iec | and fni in Man- ons be fester, Eng- ail-safeffukl. Their par- ; passeOMs, who are nt. pout Roman imendaWltholics, came to England from tional T^plta to seek medical assistance afety Bo<Jith their daughters' birth. The :ed by adfls were joined at the abdomen, nto a scMhey had a fused spine, and shared t in upline heart and one pair of lungs, at injured jp ors sa j(j both Mary and Jodie j their ctjuld certainly die unless they :t. 21. Ire surgically separated, but the —- fgery would almost certainly kill , try, who was being kept alive by ^ lie’s heart and lungs. The twins became the focus of idia attention in England, espe- illy since their parents refused to tisider such an operation. The rents’ argument was their inter- ttation of the Catholic belief that , y wrongdoing is evil, even if the ion would result in good. They Id they did not believe in “mur- ring” one child to save another, tponents turned this argument pkon them, saying that it is also il to “kill” two babies in the tne of a religious doctrine. Every person is entitled to hold “p personal religious convic- ns, but, when it comes to legal Pates, basing an argument on re lion can cause problems. Society "a whole tends to demand that should not adapt to the morals |individuals. The parents faced a rible moral dilemma and chose )ase their decision on their faith. But doctors launched legal ac- |n to win the right to proceed |th the operation, and judges de led the most socially and legally .fits responsible path. While many may object to taking the parents’ rights from them, in this situation, the doctors did the right thing. When the first round of court proceedings ended with a ruling that the twins should be separated, that case was appealed and addi tional medical opinions were sought. Both specialists appointed by the court endorsed surgery. “The sad fact is that Mary lives on borrowed time, all of it borrowed from her sister,” stated Lord Justice Alan Ward in the mling. “She is in capable of independent existence. She is designated for death.” With the surgery pending, a last-minute appeal was filed by the Pro-Life Alliance, a group that sought to have the weaker twin Mary’s legal representative re placed when he did not appeal. The group wished to have the case heard in the House of Lords. The Pro-Life Alliance even tried to compare the doctors to Nazis, and the surgery to eugenics. “Mary’s life is being extin guished not because she is a con joined twin, not because her heart beats inadequately, not because Jodie’s life is under threat, but be cause she is mentally impaired and her life is deemed of no intrinsic value,” said the group in a state ment, as reported by CNN. “These are very sad times for English law and English medicine.” Comparing an intense and com plex operation to save a life to the terrible horrors of Nazi Germany is a stretch. Conjoined twins have ex isted for centuries, and the first successful separation surgery oc curred as early as 1689. The sur vival rate for conjoined twins is be tween 5 percent and 25 percent, but about 75 percent of the surgical operations that have taken place since 1950 have resulted in the sur vival of one or both of the twins. This appeal was rejected, up holding the Sept. 22 mling by three appeal court judges who said the case came down to an issue of self- defense — the right of Jodie, the stronger twin, to be released from a sister who would eventually kill them both. The marathon 20-hour surgery began Nov. 6, and ended at 5 a.m. the next day. The state ment the hospital re leased that morning was not detailed, in or der to protect the anonymous family, but it stated, “Jodie is currently in a critical but stable condition. Unfortunately, despite all the efforts of the medical team, Mary, sadly, died.” Neither solution was good. The death of a child is never less than tragic. In this case, surgery was the lesser of two evils. In stead of losing two lives, doctors were able to save one. Throughout human history the willingness to give one’s life to save another has been a mark of tme human ity. Mary made this sacrifice for her sister. The doctors had no real choice in the matter because they had sworn an oath to try to save human life. Surgery was the only way to save a life. As of Nov. 9, Jodie was in criti cal condition, but was ntaking a “rapid recovery” and breathing without a ventilator. Experts be lieve that Jodie’s progress will con tinue and she will have a good chance at a normal life, although she will face years of corrective surgery and skin grafts. The doc tors say if Jodie makes it through, she will have normal intelligence, walking ability and average life ex pectancy and could even have chil dren. These good results help to justify the tough decision the courts in England had to make. Their actions have given a young girl a chance for life. Andrew Stephenson is a sophomore environmental design major. Technology is too dangerous C an technology de stroy humanity? The question brings to mind Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator on a murder ous rampage — it is silly. This idea of technology destroying humanity has become so cliche in sci ence fiction that it is hard to take the idea se riously. Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun Microsystems, takes the question seriously. Joy first ex pressed his concerns in an essay “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” published in Wired magazine earlier this year. Joy makes the argument that more scientists should ac knowledge that technological advancement in the current fashion could lead to disaster. In his essay, Joy discusses three poten tially devastating technologies: genetics, nanotechnology and robotics. Genetics could allow a devastating plague to be cre ated by terrorists or by accident. Nanotech nology, the control of matter at the molecu lar level, could create self-replicating molecules capable of destroying the atmos phere. Robotics technology could result in humans being slavishly dependent on com puters or oppressed by superior intelligent machines a la Terminator. These technologies could become self- replicating and spiral out of control. Conventional weapons of mass desfruc- tion - like nuclear weapons - require large facilities or rare resources. These new tech nologies are knowledge-enabled mass de structors that require knowledge but require far fewer resources. Skeptics believe technological advance ment will plateau and that many of these supposed threats are not possible. However, it does not appear that advancement will slow anytime soon. Moore’s law says computers will double in speed every 18 months. This trend has held tme since the 1970s. Current silicon computer technology is projected to reach its limit by 2005. However, many scientists believe that computer advancement will not be hindered by the limits of silicon components. Research has shown that many building blocks of computers can be built at the molecular level. If Moore’s law holds, in the year 2030, com puters will be more than a million times faster than they are today. Many argue that computers cannot make intelligent decisions, so they will not be able to take over. But, no one can really say what they will be capable of if computers were a million times faster. Many of Joy’s critics have pointed out that many dire predictions about technology have been shown to be false; there were sci entists who believed detonating a nuclear bomb would ignite the atmosphere. Howev er, it is easy to point out that many of the problems caused by technology were not predicted, either. There are even scientists who believe that the public need not worry about robots taking over because people are superior. Hans Moravec, a robotics expert at Carnegie Mellon University, believes that humans should encourage research to cre ate robots that will replace humans as Earth’s dominant species. It is optimistic to say that technology could not destroy humanity. Government bans on research would stifle innovation but not pre vent the creation of technology. During World War n, halting nuclear research and never creating nuclear bombs may have benefited the United States, but if the Germans had de veloped the nuclear bomb first, who is to say how history would have turned out? No one is more able to evaluate the possi bilities of a new technology than Bill Joy, the scientist who discovered it. Joy advo cates a code of ethics for scientists to follow, similar to the Hippocratic Oath of the med ical profession. However, the code would ' not be effective unless all scientists followed the rules. At present, no one can destroy the entire world on a whim. That capability is present only in science fiction, but the scientific com- munity should make sure it stays fiction. Shannon Greenwood is a senior "In life, the real stuff is the rough stuff. And the rough stuff makes us stronger.' Bonfire... a year later. The Battalion invites the Texas A&M student body to sub mit letters to the editor reflecting on the anniversary of the 1999 Aggie Bonfire collapse. The Battalion - Mall Call 013 Reed McDonald Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-11.11 Campus Mail: 1,111 Fax: (409) 845-2647 E-mall: battletters@hotmall.com In this case, letters must be 200 words or less and Include the author's name, class and phone number. The opinion editor reserves the right to edit letters for length, style and accuracy.