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Opinion
The Battalion
Page 5 • Wednesday, June 19, 2002
local abortion debate Is ridiculous
RICHARD BRAY
S ometimes it is difficult to sort
out the truth when two small
children are fighting. Did
Johnny pull Sally’s hair or did Sally
kick little Johnny in the knee first?
In such situations, it is usually better
to not concern oneself with such
details and chastise them both for their poor behavior. In Bryan-
College Station, both pro-choice and pro-life advocates are the
proverbial Johnny and Sally. It does not matter who kicked who
first or who pulled whose hair. Both groups have embarrassed
themselves through their incessant arguing and their downward
spiral of immature behavior and constant, unconstructive fighting.
However, debate between these groups is good for the commu
nity. Both sides have well-reasoned arguments to explain their
position, and both care deeply about the abortion issue. By creat
ing a dialogue and developing and executing programs which
inform community members about women’s issues, pro-choice
advocates and pro-life advocates have made Bryan-College Station
a more knowledgeable city.
The problem comes when these groups step outside the bounds
of intelligent debate and turn to name-calling, lying and vandalism
to emphasize their points.
On the morning of March 28, pro-life advocates who had
organized a prayer session outside the Planned Parenthood build
ing discovered two to three pounds of roofing nails, according to
an estimate from the Bryan Police Department, placed in the park
ing lot where coalition members frequently parked. On March 22,
similar tactics had been used to flatten the tires of coalition mem
bers. It is unlikely that Planned Parenthood members were the
ones who committed these acts, however.
In the aftermath of the March 28 incident, stories were run in
both The Eagle and The Battalion, as well as on local television
station KBTX. These stories provided the Coalition for Life with
the perfect opportunity to espouse their views to the public while
appearing to be the good guys. In effect, if members of Planned
Parenthood had placed the nails in the parking lot the coalition
members use for their prayer sessions, it would have accom
plished nothing more than to provide their ideological opponents
with free advertising.
More likely, the nails were placed there by an independent indi
vidual or two who was so fervently opposed to the coalition's
prayer sessions they committed the acts without giving serious
consideration to their consequences.
After all, the prayer sessions outside Planned Parenthood
can be extremely intimidating to those who wish to use the
services provided.
Even when the people praying do not speak to those
entering the Planned Parenthood building, the presence of all
those eyes can be a frightening experience, especially for a
young woman who would prefer to maintain her privacy. It
is easy to understand why individuals, even bystanders,
would be frustrated by such a form of intimidation masked
behind a cloak of righteousness. However, by committing an
act of vandalism, the perpetrators did nothing to help their
cause and actually worsened it.
The use of nails is not the only way in which abortion debaters
have been petty. In the aftermath of these incidents, as well as
Christy Ruth’s June 5 column, “Coalition for Life needs new strat
egy,” letters have been sent to Battalion mail call flinging accusa
tions that could not be published due to the libelous material held
within. For example, in Dr. Larson Powell’s June 13 mail call,
“Women’s Center provides inclusion and equal access,” The
Battalion chose to print 98 words of his 829 word letter. The pri
mary reason for this cut was due to the stunning amount of accusa
tions and name-calling included within the text. Other mail calls
of a similar nature, from both sides of the debate, were unable to
be printed at all.
Yet another form of poor behavior surrounding the abortion
debate has been the alleged yelling of profanity at those
praying outside the Planned Parenthood building, as
reported by both The Eagle and The Battalion.
Again, such behavior does absolutely nothing
to constructively further the debate.
The problem with the local
abortion debate in Bryan-
College Station is
that the activists
have personal
ized the debate.
These individuals
are no longer bat
tling in the
arena of
sociological
and philo
sophi
cal
dis
cussion, but instead have taken their debate into the realm of lies
and vandalism. For these activists to save face, they must learn to
better focus upon their goals and not upon those who disagree
with them. Eventually, Sally and Johnny will have to grow up.
Richard Bray is a senior
journalism major.
JEFF SMITH • THE BATTALION
Four-day school week
would hurt students
n;
CHRISTY RUTH
4 4 T° sc hool on Friday!”
That is the cry heard
in over 100 rural
American communities in
response to gutted education
budgets. While some students
might like the idea of three-day
weekends, they are ultimately being cheated by
the very system that is supposed to prepare
them for their futures.
From South Dakota to Louisiana, school dis
tricts nationwide are feeling the pinch of insuf
ficient funding, thanks to sharp reductions in
education spending. While proponents of the
shortened week cite better attendance and less
time lost to such extracurricular activities as
teacher training and doctor appointments, critics
fear the worst.
The first problem with this program is that
supporters assume that elementary age children
will be attentive for classes that last an hour and
a half. Additionally, despite these lengthened
class periods, time is still lost. Sure, teachers
may be more wary of wasting time, but that
does not amount to much when dealing with
children whose attention spans have been
stretched to the breaking point.
Experts in the field of education research at
the Century Foundation, a liberal-leaning
Washington research organization, emphasize
the regressive nature of the plan, setting the
longer school weeks in Asia and Europe as the
basis for mandating higher standards. The con
cerns of the Century Foundation do not just
encompass the present advantages and disad
vantages of the shortened week program, rathei
they focus on the impact such a system will
have on America’s future.
As a country that proudly claims to be the
“leader of the free world,” it would be a traves
ty for America to let education fall by the way-
side. All hope for future leadership in this
nation cannot be invested in private school chil
dren. As long as the United States is democrat
ic, the government is only as strong as it s
weakest, most uneducated voting constituency.
The strong American economy depends on the
minds of its educated and innovative citizens.
Some believe that America would still reign
superior over the global economy in
spite of a weak education system as
long as domestic commodities
maintained a high demand overseas
and American business held a
strong presence in the stock market.
This sort of thinking fails to focus
on the long-term effects of having a poorly edu
cated population, such as an economy plagued
by fragmentation. Domestic self-sufficiency
would dwindle, and the crisis that America has
with the Middle East over oil would spread into
other facets of the economy, thus giving other
nations political power over America because of
their abilities to produce what America cannot.
Technology, for instance, has long been
hailed as the wave of the future, and America
has been the forerunner in the race for
improvement. Japan, however, continually
takes American innovations and improves them
drastically. Japan has battled with U.S. produc
ers in the automobile, computer and electronic
appliance industries with some measure of suc
cess. While this failure on behalf of America to
keep up is certainly not sinking the economy, it
is not favorable.
While the government continues to expand
the defense budget, it is ignoring education at
the expense of its own future. The Air Force
can have all the money in the world to build
fighter planes, but that money serves no pur
pose when there are no workers with engineer
ing skills to design the crafts. The cuts in the
education budget demonstrate what little the
government has in the ability of educated citi
zens to keep a nation strong.
Friday classes are a tragic casualty of
reduced spending that send a strong message to
the nation’s future leaders: education is not
important. Working parents who rely on their
children being at school during the day will lose
more money, while personnel costs, which
make up 80 percent of a typical district’s
expenses, stay exactly the same. The amount of
money that this plan will save cannot possibly
justify the amount of damage it will inflict.
Public humiliation is
legitimate punishment
Christy Ruth is a senior
journalism major.
L ong gone are the days of
public stonings, hangings or
heads rolling after the fate
ful drop of the guillotine.
However, State District Judge
Henry Poe is promoting his own .
form of publicly shameful punish
ment for those who choose to deviate from the
laws that govern our social existence. Only
Poe’s punishment is more reminiscent of
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s shameful Scarlet Letter,
in which his infamous adulterous character was
forced to wear an A on her breast for the
remainder of her life. According to the Houston
Chronicle, as part of Poe’s probation terms, he
often makes probationers march a specific num
ber of times a year wearing signs that tell the
public what he or she was convicted of.
As a result of legislation that Poe helped
write, he has sentenced several hundred proba
tioners to sign carrying. Although many find the
practice futile and harsh, the judge has retrieved
an important element from our social punish
ment history that has been abandoned, and he
has implemented it successfully in modern soci
ety while still maintaining a keen modern per
spective on the prisoner’s right to be free from
cruel and unusual punishment.
The principle behind sign carrying is rela
tively simple. Most people do not enjoy being
publicly humiliated; therefore, a criminal will
feel the public scorn for the act that he or she
committed. Ideally, they will more fully accept
responsibility and will feel remorse. In addition,
public citizens who view the fate of the fallen
man may be deterred from committing the same
crime.
When a person views a probationer wearing
a sign stating that he or she murdered a man,
they are reminded that criminals do get caught,
they do go to jail and they do reap the conse
quences of their actions for years to come.
Also, according to the Chronicle, another
reason society has turned to public shame is
because of its frustration with the ineffective
ness of prisons to punish and rehabilitate. It is
easy for the public to believe criminals are
receiving short sentences in prisons fully
equipped with televisions, weight rooms and the
opportunity to refine their criminal behavior
skills. The astounding number of repeat offend-
JENNIFER LOZANO
ers who do not seem the slightest
bit effected by the threat of
returning to prison solidifies
Americans’ lack of faith in the
prison system. Therefore, even
though studies do not show that
public shame better rehabilitates
or punishes criminals than prison, it allows soci
ety to have the much-needed satisfaction in
visually knowing they have adequately punished
criminals. Society wants its moral attitude
toward crime expressed and public shame does
that, Dan Kahan, a Yale University law profes
sor, told the Chronicle.
It cannot be expected that all criminals will
have a more adequate punishment and rehabili
tation as a result of Poe’s shame punishment.
To assume this would imply that every criminal
has the same acute human emotions of guilt
and humiliation as the rest of the population
and, if this were the case, there would be a sig
nificantly lower number of crimes. However, it
is very plausible that for some probationers, the
public display of humiliation will help them
take responsibility for their actions and think
twice about committing a crime again. For
example, the Chronicle depicts the story of
Michael Hubacek, a 23 year-old who pleaded
no contest to intoxicated manslaughter charges
and now claims the sign carrying has helped
him atone for his mistakes and help others
avoid similar ones. If shame punishment has
this effect on even a few individuals, it will
benefit our society.
Although public shame punishment may
seem digressive and cruel, it must be remem
bered that when an individual commits an act of
criminal behavior, they are not respecting their
community and therefore should expect to
receive a sub-par level of respect from their
community. Whether as a means of deterrence,
punishment or atonement, judges should not be
dissuaded to implement this practice in their
probation terms and should encourage others to
do the same.
Jennifer Lozano is a senior
English major.