ifopday, August 6, 2001 o PINION In ad). This rate ap; j get an additiona, luled to end to qui: THE BATTALION construction begins s the West Campus garage beneficial to all... LP WANTED sign Engineer: /olve all aspects tii ng: concept tfc design, and dels trill also include ir< /, testing, relinem^_ r .. , , . np-up. a wotejijM iter years or debate and o/E and rapid discussion, construction ability to work ^ t * rapidly understr:l| mis set to be g ln on the and requirements Best Campus parking utred. Whileexpe* ra p, e 'fhe never-ending jectftc areas is nets D , D r , ° dude fuel ceils, pc* process or campus ennance- and test equipme- meat at Texas A&M will equipment. . ^ despite some con- lomtonng equip-- i 1 ■ ediation equipme Mrns the garage will be an etc. a minimumEiu nt . onvei -d ence to students. In reality, the park- or Physics or si. • , elated fields; As* garage is a necessary improvement that a expected to ac sljould be welcomed. It will better serve those development, ter. ::m ve j- n to t he growing complex of buildings effort of prototyp« ?T & ° ■ j- , commercial or West Campus tiy providing covered parking 3uid possess sic?.»d safer access to the area. ® , ^ n J .1. Vaughn Construction 77840 ait »o. of Houston. With construction to begin 979-764-5794 jjjiis fall, the garage will occupy the parking area -soor, SoftwMOwM'rth of the Student Recreation Center. The is looking forar •'•Bx- S tory r building will feature at least 3,190 r1 wiS r sy2® aces ’ providing easy passage to three fre- round in Active ),;Miented facilities: the Rec Center, Kyle Field r»g atl and MFC p eec ] \ re na. Construction also will include i a ve a backgmnitK . . ., .... i strategies on Pedestrian walkway connecting both main Ability to tratwBid West campuses through an underground j^embe^ wr l 111116 ^ be l ow Wellborn Road. The archway ling are required i|iitit currently stretches above the road will be m Engineering, n lemoved because it does not meet the standards nee or equivalertsC’ | r . , . eicfs, As an eng'- t* 16 Americans with Disabilities Act. to actively parte Tony Heger, director of the A&M System ^fa.-.lmes Administration Division, said the ap es well as tecta'i proximately two-year long construction is y based on ec ■rranged to cause as little trouble for students t for detailed info. sf:€ ., , . ,. , . . itech@iynntecncrj|f s possible. According to a news story last Mon- 76io Eastmp; Bay in The Battalion, ITeger said the construc- r784o Atm fel |j on team “bas been doing great work with the oedical center in Houston where he has been forking in tight, cramped quarters but in such way as to allow the functioning of the medical enter to continue unimpeded.” For students, construction of the West Cam- Jius parking garage will be a temporary nui- ance. In the end, the finished product will be forth it. Unfortunately, Wellborn will have one ^closed at a time. Also, John Kimbrough ftiilevard from Wellborn to Olsen Boulevard dll be shut down as improvements are made, uch closures cannot be avoided when working msuch a large project, and it could have been a Or an inefficient bother to students traveling to class? o pany currently"- )vide classroori- etitive wages. PS t 823-1775xt.ltf| vays looking oositions in on: and Design ero de: 1) Machine 3) Prototype AsS ie CAD package' R, Analysis pao* d the manufad* ifacturing. Our (PITS) announced that f a CNC Mill, Me' ! group works' Plonday througt )le schedules. I; ndividuals that iment and are: iprovementsol" ie company are: .ynntech E0E ech@lynnteciit : g resume to: If tmark Dr„ CoP in Aug. 1, the Parking, jTraffic and Trans portation Services oreparations for the new West Campus parking garage were underway. Any student can attest that find ing a place to park on cam- 3iis is next to impossible, so a new parking garage sounds like an excellent solution. However, the University should realize that the solution to the parking problem is not as led for S^A | siln P le as building a new garage, ard worker, c. The most adverse and immediate effect of kskfofRick* tbe garage, albeit temporary, is the construc tion itself. As a result of the construction, Joe Routt Boulevard will be closed from Well born Road to Clark Street, and John Kim brough Boulevard will be closed from Well born Road to Olsen Boulevard. The --'I convenience of being able to drive on Well born and go to the Recreation Center on John Kimbrough or go down Joe Routt to check their mail at the Memorial Student Center will be lost. Some students will be concerned that traf fic that usually goes down those roads will back up. They need not worry, because the parking garage is being constructed on Park ing Area 56, where there are over 900 parking spots for students. That means that these 900 | spots will disappear during construction — I which means much less traffic to clog up these I particular roads. Instead, parking space seek ers will back up traffic elsewhere. The timing of construction is illogical. Why would construction for a parking garage start during the fall, when school is starting, inng: inject® Lab Tech# ludent applying' commencery*' jme to (979f on at 2706 Osf 7895 Fri., 1-5. Appi zes 2729-A E$ re in my hff' i :y of full-time 7 ' October. Re 1 ' »5 ger for local A? Smaintenand science preie^- ply in per»: -ssociation, in exchange- en ages 9,6 S-' tired. Call O 7 O - and more notably, football season is begin- dents j notetakers'-' pply at 701U7 :ross from t* 3-2255 for nW cal concess: Call 694-362* d on pat ning? During any football game this season, nearly 4,000 people will have to find a spot to park further away. The defense that although people may be parking further away, they will have the luxury of riding new buses is no solace to the situation. The fact remains that students, alumni and visi tors will not be fighting for spots closer to their lot worse. Getting around A&M is not nearly as difficult as it is at some other campuses. We are fortunate to have the room to expand in the first place. Some schools^ including the Univer sity of Texas, are completely locked in with no way to expand. It is far better to have to take a different route because of growth and improve ment than to feel claustrophobic when going to class. More spaces, a safer environment and a greater amount of covered parking is what students and alumni understandably want. But it cannot be had without paying a price. The West Campus parking garage will better serve the students who wish to park in the area. One will no longer have to maneuver around potholes filled with filthy rainwater to fight for a spot under the blistering sun. An under ground tunnel can be taken instead of crossing a busy, five-lane street. Parking also will be more plentiful. Currently, there are about 1,000 parking spaces occupying the area where the garage will be located. After construction is complete, the amouniitaof available parking spaces will more than triple. Students who might complain about the lack of available parking should consider how well they have it here compared to other campuses. And now, more spaces are on the way. Two years of taking another route or parking somewhere else is a small price to pay. Parking garages will last a lot longer than the memory of an inconvenience. The West Campus parking garage also will make it easier on alumni who attend football games. Many of them now will be able to park in a covered area very close to Kyle Field. The crit icism that the garage is being built only for foot ball season is misguided. The school should strive to keep wealthy alumni happy. Yes, their support often benefits athletics first, but why is that a bad thing? Alumni should be well taken care of. Often, it is their dollars diat help to re furbish buildings, build new ones, provide schol arships and assist in research. Many of them want the garage, and it will benefit the students after a temporary inconvenience. The adminis tration should take steps to ensure that students can use the garage for both contract and day parking, similar to the other garages around campus. More spaces, a safer environment and a greater amount of covered parking is what stu dents and alumni understandably want. But it cannot be had without paying a price. Jonathan Jones is a senior political science major. class or football game but further away and hav ing to ride a bus to get there. And what happens after the lot is construct ed? Under student body president Laurie Nick el, the Student Senate passed the West Campus : f £ft The University should realize that the solution to the parking problem is not as simple] as building a nei9\ garage. ' r - nr parking garage bilL j£ptated, “Commuter per mit holders will be-fckbporarily affected ad versely through the loss of current spaces, the placement of the gartge is not consistent with the general trend cmwgstward expansion and the location appears to primarily benefit special RUBEN DELUNA/7h£ Battalion events, rather than academic expansion.” Those issues are true now, just as they were true then. The location of the garage seems to be constructed with the football game visitor in mind. This is even made more apparent since the new pedestrian crossing of Wellborn is be ing constructed at the same time. Not to be misconstrued, the need for more parking during football games and other special events is a great problem for the University and its students. But the issue remains that once the garage is built it will be filled iifimediately, and there will still be students fighting for a space. What Texas A&M needs is a detailed, all-en compassing plan that can truly resolve the park ing problem it has, rather than a quick fix such as a parking garage that might cause more trou ble than it is actually worth. Reid Bader is a junior political science major. « Page 5 Sexual safety, not abstinence, must be taught (U-WIRE) — There are times when ig norance isn’t exactly bliss: When a professor calls on you in class and you have no idea what the answer is. When you don’t read the weather report and you find yourself stranded in a blizzard. When what you don’t know can, in fact, hurt you. When it comes to sex education, what you don’t know can do more than hurt you — it can kill you. In the era of AIDS, ignorance about sex can be deadly, and young people are often the ones who are dying. Here are some scary statis tics: HIV infection is increasing more rapidly among young people than any other age group, according to die New England Journal of Medi cine. One in four new HIV infections in the United States occurs in people younger than 22. In times such as these, “abstinence-only” programs — through which teenagers are told virtually nothing about sex beyond “don’t do it” — are not going to cut it. Sex education, or the lack thereof, has be come an issue again with the news that the Bush administration is “scaling back efforts to promote family planning and contraception while aggressively promoting ‘abstinence-only’ programs” (“Administration Promoting Absti nence,” The Washmgton Port, July 30). Refusing to provide young people with sex education — basic knowledge about what they can do to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies — is patently irresponsible. Keeping teenagers ignorant about how to protect themselves if they have sex is like send ing a soldier into war with a blindfold on and nothing but a butter knife for self-defense. Conservatives are concerned that putting teenagers through sex education somehow en courages them to have sex. They believe that putting teenagers through a program where ab stinence is the only option will prevent them from having sex. As nice as that may sound, the fact is that most teenagers have sex, regardless of what they are told about it. The 1995 National Sur vey of Family Growth, found that more than half of teenagers ages 15 to 19 were sexually ac tive — specifically, 51 percent of females and 56 percent of males. Two-thirds of all teenagers are sexually active by the time they are 18, and there is nothing, really, that parents can do to stop them, short of building dungeons in their basements (no one get any ideas, now). So if teenagers do have sex, the best we can do is to encourage them to postpone becom ing sexually active until they’re ready, and provide them with information they need to keep themselves free of STD infection and unwanted pregnancies. We must face the reality that most teenagers will have sex no matter what we tell them. We can all moan about how terrible it is that teenagers are sexually active before they really know what they’re doing. We shouldn’t, how ever, act as if not telling teenagers anything about sex will prevent them from having it. That’s just not the way it works. There is proof that abstinence-only educa tion is less effective than sex education when it comes to preventing one obvious consequence of teenage sexual activity: teenage pregnancy. Research shows that recent sharp declines in teenage pregnancy rates among sexually active teenagers are due more to teens’ use of contra ceptives than a newfound devotion to absti nence. According to the Alan Guttmacher In stitute’s 1994 report entitled “Sex and America’s Teenagers,” only 20 percent of the decline in the pregnancy rate was due to decreased sexual activity, while 80 percent was the result of the more effective use of contraceptives. Even with the progress that has been made, teen pregnancy rates are far higher in the Unit ed States than in other developed countries, ac cording to the AGI report. U.S. rates are twice as high as those in England and Canada, and nine times as high as those in Japan or the Netherlands. The age at which young people become sexually active in the United States and those countries is similar, so looking at the sex education policies in the other countries can point to what causes the pregnancy rates in the United States to be higher. It probably isn’t a coincidence that policies in England, Canada and the Netherlands favor sex education, openness about sex and access to contraception. If the United States continues in the direction of encouraging sex education and giving young people access to contraceptives, the rates of teen pregnancy and AIDS infection may decrease further. Abstinence-only educa tion is more about morality than it is about re ality and it simply won’t get the job done. Laura Sahramaa Cavalier Daily University of Virginia