Opinion
The Battalion
Page 11 • Wednesday, April 16, 2003
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n March 31 in
Albuquerque, N.M.,
two Highland High
School teachers were told by
[the school district that they
vould be suspended if they
[refused to take down student-
created anti-war and pro-war
posters in their classrooms.
They refused and were placed
on leave. School officials
[removed the posters the next day and the teachers
vere not allowed to return to their classrooms for
one week, according to The Albuquerque Tribune.
The school districts’ actions were out of line.
The teachers, Geoffrey Barrett and Allen
hooper, should never have been put on adminis-
|trative leave. They were simply doing their jobs.
A school district official told The Associated
[Press that Barrett and Cooper were suspended
(“in connection with the district’s policy on the
presentation of controversial issues.” However,
[Barrett, a history and current events teacher for
[the high school, told the AP he walked out of a
neeting with school officials because they
could not point to a district policy prohibiting
|the artwork.
“Our district policies are that I can’t display
[my own personal opinion, but that is not what
[this is about. This is about the students’ rights
land they are too thick-headed to see the differ
ence,” Barrett said.
The posters were the students’
opinions, not Barrett’s. His students
made the posters he was suspended
for as part of a class assignment. They
represented both sides of an important
and prominent world event. As a
current events teacher, it was
Barrett’s job to encourage
students to voice their
opinions on this topic.
High schools should
be a place that fosters dis
cussion on issues, especially
issues as dominating as wars.
The war in Iraq has permeated
almost every aspect of
American life. News chan
nels such as CNN and
MSNBC have become “All Iraq, all
the time” channels. The New York
Times has a special section
everyday called “A Nation at
War.” The war is everywhere and
it affects all Americans, which
includes high school students.
Barrett told the AP, “I think this
is mostly a violation of the students’
rights to have a voice and express their
opinions. Asking me to take down the
posters was taking away the voice of
the students and 1 was not going to do
that.’
Students should not be stopped from
expressing their opinions about things
that affect them simply because a
school district
deems the issue too
controversial. Barrett
and Cooper put them
selves on the line to
ensure their students’
voices were heard and they
should be commended for it,
not punished.
Barrett and Cooper were not
the first teachers to be suspended
because of war posters. Earlier in
March, two teachers and a
counselor were suspended from
Rio Grande High School in
Albuquerque for refusing to take
down anti-war posters, according to
the local NBC affiliate KOBTV. In
protest, 45 students walked out of
class and four were later arrested for
refusing to return to school.
Freedom of speech is the most
important tenet in a democratic socie
ty. Suppressing speech not only
destroys the liberty Americans hold so
dear, it is unconstitutional. And yet,
across the United States, Americans
are finding themselves punished for
expressing their opinions about a war with which
they do not agree.
According to the Pacifica Radio Foundation, a
man in Albany, N.Y. was arrested in a mall last
month for wearing a T-shirt that read, “Give
Peace a Chance.” A girl on the basketball team at
St. Mary’s College in Newburgh, N.Y. was booed
off the court for refusing to sing “The Star-
Spangled Banner.” A high school student in
Michigan was suspended for wearing a shirt call
ing Bush an “international terrorist.” A 15th
anniversary celebration of the movie “Bull
Durham” scheduled to be held at the Baseball
Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y, was can
celed due to the anti-war opinions of Susan
Sarandon and Tim Robbins who both starred in
the film, according to The New York Times.
This is getting ridiculous. The war may be a
touchy subject and anti-war opinions may not be
popular, but all Americans have a constitutionally
guaranteed right to say what they feel. People
have a right to agree with the American govern
ment’s actions or to disagree.
People have the right to at least discuss the
issue. Barrett and Cooper were ensuring this
right for their students and should not have been
suspended. The students of Highland High are
lucky to have instructors who care so much for
their opinions.
Jenelle Wilson is a senior
political science major.
Graphic by Leigh Richardson.
Revisionist theory of history is misguided
T exas A&M remembers its own. We memo
rialize our fallen Aggies at Silver Taps and
Muster. We memorialized Lawrence
Sullivan Ross for the prestige and improvements
that he brought to A&M. We memorialized E.
King Gill for milking his legendary stand for the
football team that is embodied by the 12th Man
tradition today. We memorialized Earl Rudder for
his heroics on the field of battle as well as in the
position of A&M President. However, tonight, the
Student Senate will vote on whether to construct a
memorial on campus to honor someone without a direct connection
to A&M, or the historical merit to justify it. Matthew Gaines did not
earn a statue at A&M. but those willing to rewrite history are
attempting to do it for him.
On April 2, the Senate established an ad-hoc committee for the
purpose of memorializing Gaines. The following week, the com
mittee e-mailed student organizations on campus with a letter
extolling the virtues of a Gaines memorial and inviting them to
participate in its creation.
In the e-mail written by the Gaines memorial committee, they
wrote that “Gaines was an African American who is responsible
for the establishment of the A&M College of Texas...Without his
efforts, it is likely that A&M would not exist today and the state
of higher education in Texas would not be nearly as strong.”
Gaines’ actual contribution to A&M is deceptively less than
the misinformation distributed by the Senate. Gaines voted for
Senate Bill 276 that allowed Texas to take advantage of the feder
al Morrill Land Grant College Act, eventually leading to the
establishment of The Agriculture and Mechanical College of
Texas. Gaines’ role in the process could not be called anything
more or less than what at least 62 legislators, who would have
been required to vote for the bill’s passage, contributed.
Historians generally attribute the authorship of the bill to a mem
ber of then - Gov. Edmund Davis’ cabinet. As former A&M histo
ry professor and author Henry Dethloff wrote in “A Centennial
History of Texas A&M University 1876-1976,” “The future of
Texas A&M was not to be determined by any individual, legisla
ture or administration.” While Gaines’ vote on Bill 276 indeed
furthered the establishment of A&M, it is doubtful that the bill
would have failed without his support. Gaines deserves a “thank
you” rather than a monument, as do Davis and the other members
of the legislature who supported the bill. The Senate later sent out
an e-mail saying that they over elaborated about Gaines’ part.
Unfortunately, due to the lack of a historical justification for
the memorializing of Gaines and as evidenced by the Senate e-
mail and the list of supporting organizations, another reason has
taken shape: racial tokenism.
In the same e-mail from the Gaines memorial committee, they
wrote, “We sincerely hope that your organization chooses to join
this progressive coalition to memorialize the priceless contribu
tions of one of A&M's greatest African American heroes.”
After the catastrophic loss of several hundred New York City
firefighters in the attack on the World Trade Center, there was a
movement to memorialize the image of three firefighters raising
an American flag over the ruins of the towers. A statue was to be
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America has to be aware
R
or most
Americans,
Sept. 11,2001
was a day of shock
and devastation,
atching them com
pletely off-guard.
|Some might say it
marked America’s
coming of age. Its
| youthful innocence
J was lost alongside the twin towers,
sloughed off by its merciless introduc
tion to life in the 21 st century. For
many Americans, it was a reality check,
a tragic reminder that the rest of the
world exists too.
The 1990s saw relatively far-reach
ing peace and prosperity for this great
nation, breeding an atmosphere of
omplacency and self-absorption.
[Many prominent social commentators,
most notably, Washington Post colum
nist Charles Krauthammer, have
dubbed the 90s America’s “holiday
Tom history.” Yet, while Americans
end to know little about the rest of the
world, the rest of the world watches
merica intently.
Mark Hertsgaard, in his book, “The
Eagle’s Shadow: Why America
Fascinates and Infuriates the World,”
describes with great insight and clarity
how the rest of the world takes cues
from the United States — on every
thing from the clothes worn in Japan,
to the music listened to in Sweden and
:othe movies watched in Brazil.
America’s political, military, cultural
nd economic institutions have a deci-
ive influence, he elaborates, on the
lives of people everywhere on Earth,
shaping the answers to such questions
as “Will I have a job next month?
Will there be war?” and “What’s on TV
tonight?” Thus, foreigners must pay
attention to America, whereas
Americans have traditionally cared
very little about the outside world. In
the years leading up to Sept. 11, the
stock markets crept higher and higher,
birthing countless millionaires every
day, so who cared what was going on
in the rest of the world?
Furthermore, America receives a dis
proportionate amount of media cover
age around the globe, reinforcing for
eigners’ sense of always living in “the
Eagle’s shadow.” The foreign press
scrutinizes our government and its poli
cies much more thoroughly than our
own media do, so outsiders often see
things about the United States that
natives are blind to. This was apparent
to Alexis de Tocqueville even in 1835
when, in his famed “Democracy in
America,” he mused that we tend to
“live in a state of perpetual self-adora
tion...only strangers or experience may
be able to bring certain truths to the
Americans’ attention.”
Hertsgaard, who has spent a good
portion of his life traveling the world
gauging foreign opinion of the United
States, from business leaders to illiter
ate peasants to starry-eyed teenagers,
explains why Americans’ lack of inter
est in the outside world is not surpris
ing. Because the United States is so
immense and is protected on two sides
by oceans, the rest of the world seems
very distant in our consciousness.
Americans, for the most part, lack the
sense, so common on other continents,
that foreign peoples with different lan
guages, cultures and beliefs live just
over the next ridge or river.
Consequent to its indifference,
America’s plunge back into reality on
that horrific Tuesday morning was all
the more painful and disorienting. As
Hertsgaard writes, “one minute we were
enjoying the most privileged way of life
in history. The next, terrorists had
destroyed totemic symbols of our civi
lization and inflicted more deaths than
the United States had suffered in a sin
gle day of combat since the Civil War.”
Suddenly Americans had learned the
hard way: what foreigners think does
matter. Hertsgaard is quick to point out,
however, that Osama bin Laden and the
Taliban are not representative of inter
national opinion; that hatred of
America, though intense where it exists,
is relatively rare.
Nevertheless, we no longer live in a
world that allows blissful ignorance to
be our security blanket. It is high time
we give some serious thought to the
public image we are projecting to the
world. The time is now to reassess our
values and to take stock in what is
important to us. James Madison,
referred to as the “Father of the
Constitution” and fourth president of the
United States, once stated “a people'
who mean to be their own governors
must arm themselves with the power
which knowledge gives.” If we are seri
ous about preserving our freedoms and
preventing more terrorist attacks, we
must be aware that abusing the power
the greatest military force in history
affords us will undoubtedly agitate this
whole situation. Only by informing our
selves, by pulling our heads out of the
sand and waking up to the world around
us, by keeping a vigilant watch on the
actions of our government and other
nations, and by facing more than a few
uncomfortable truths about the new
world we now inhabit, will we be able
to finally expose the roots of this terror
ism phenomenon.
Scott Monk is a sophomore
agronomy major.
constructed of the moment, much like the statue memorializing
the raising of the Stars and Stripes over Iwo Jima. However, the
feelings of unity after the tragedy were cut short when the spon
sors of the statue wished to divide the depicted figures into racial
categories. Instead of memorializing the three white men who
raised the flag,the statue was to be composed of a Hispanic man,
a black man and a white man for political correctness sake. That
memorial was doomed because of its revisionist view of history
and it should do the same to the local memorial movement.
The proposed Gaines memorial, like the scrapped NYC fire
fighter statue, would be a permanent tribute to race instead of
actual accomplishments. Looking at those who are already memo
rialized on our campus, each walked this campus, fought for our
school, and inspired us with his individual stands. To elevate
Gaines’ contributions to that level would be to trivialize thosethat
came before it.
Also important is the issue of cost. The Bonfire Memorial
price tag is an estimated $1.5 million. Estimates on the Gaines
memorial in 1996 were $200,000. That is enough money to help
salvage the Department of Journalism or keep the Dairy Center
solvent for a year.
Before erecting a memorial, the Student Senate should con
sult a history book, and then the student body by referendum. If
the Gaines memorial passes both of those tests, then and only
then can it claim to be an accurate reflection of the past and
campus sentiment.
Matt Maddox is a senior
management major.
MAIL CALL
Concerns about Student Media Board are
unfounded; controls needed at The Battalion
In response to the April 15 editorial:
While I will wait until reviewing
Brady Creel's proposal to vote on its
merits, there are several reasons why
the Texas A&M community should
initially be critical of the proposal.
Earlier this semester, approxi
mately 200 students participated in
a forum voicing concerns of the
Battalion: accuracy in reporting,
misinformation and breadth of cov
erage. Several students shared
specific instances in which The
Battalion committed these acts,
sometimes in a seemingly deliber
ate way.
It seems as though these con
cerns have not been addressed in a
substantive way. There are still no
central controls to ensure accuracy
and no formal repercussions for
staff accused of malfeasance.
Surprisingly, a news reporter, after
being accused of misquoting
University President Robert M.
Gates and Texas Sen. Steve Ogden,
was promoted to news editor. It is
my hope that this is not how the
members of the Battalion earn
their "stripes".
These are serious concerns. This
year, Gates, Ogden and Student
Body President Zac Coventry had to
write to The Battalion to correct the
record. In some instances they
have had to e-mail the entire stu
dent body.
Interestingly enough, as many
times as the editors mention the
potential for conflict on the board,
they never point to an instance of
that conflict. Their reporters should
stick to reporting the news instead
of attempting to create it.
In writing their article, they
attempt to influence the board and
student opinion before the board
meets to discuss the issue, a move
far more political than the charges
they level against student leaders.
Brady's proposal represents a
view inconsistent with what is in
the interest of the community. The
Battalion cannot have it both ways
- they can either be "fiercely inde
pendent" and refuse the $25,000 in
student service fees they receive,
the free faculty advising, and the
office space they use, or they can
follow the rules that all of us in stu
dent organizations have to follow.
Whether you are in Fish Camp,
Student Government, the MSC or
The Battalion, you are not inde
pendent of the University, no mat
ter how many articles you write
wishing it were so.
Barry Hammond
former MSC President
ED: The Battalion receives
$22,000 in student services fee
money yearly, which is used to
fund the distribution of the
paper, which cost approximately
$30,400 last year. The salary of
the Battalion's adviser is paid by
the Divison of Student Media,
which is funded by Battalion
advertising revenue.