University Press (Beaumont, Tex.), Vol. 71, No. 1, Ed. 1 Friday, August 27, 1993 Page: 3 of 8
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Friday. August 27,1993 [ ^
University Press
Lamar University
Campus revival:
Students surprise many;
see a future with hope,
determination, maturity
With one eye on their new
president and the other on
their wallets, students may
look to outsiders as though
they are a bit cockeyed, but
level heads may turn out to
be their greatest asset.
After a year of unprece-
dented turmoil brought to
the forefront by a critical, at
times scathing, report from
the now infamous state-
ordered audit, the Lamar-
Beaumont campus was left
beaten and bruised with
observers wondering if the
system, let alone the cam-
pus, would survive.
But, survive she does and
one minute on the campus
will prove to even the most
staunch nay-sayers, that the
campus has not only sur-
vived but emerged with an
air of strength and maturity
that owes itself to a student
body determined to rebound
from a rocky bottom.
Part of the reason seems
to be the strong early show-
ing of leadership by the
campus’ new president, Rex
Cottle.
“A people person,” “an
honest Joe These are the
references you will hear
from most who have
observed the man at work.
The ousting of former bas-
ketball coach Mike Newell,
the timely and meticulous
search and hiring of head
coach Grey Giovanine, the
naming of athletic director
Michael O’Brien and the
restructuring and replanning
of campus housing, sports,
the Montagne Center and
other student supported ser-
vices have made a generally
positive impression on the
temperament of a somewhat
gun-shy student body, facul-
ty and staff.
“Infomercials” on
Channel 12? Well, we’ve got
to start somewhere. At least
someone has finally got the
right idea — you can’t sell a
lemon to a buyer of gold.
If you’re looking for ban-
ners to fly or listening for
battle cries of victory and
jubilance to be sung, you
will probably be sadly disap-
pointed. Students aren’t
quite ready to call it a truce.
Not until all of the spoils
have been secured and the
skirmishes quailed — and
perhaps a few traitors made
to walk the plank — will the
students prevail with an hon-
est and earned sense of
school pride and not just a
half-hearted recant of
rhetoric.
The campus is alive, stu-
dents are eager and hungry,
and the staff and faculty
seem ready to tackle some of
the hard issues with the sup-
port of a ready leader.
Let’s hope Picasso was
right and the strife is benefi-
cial. “Life’s greatest beauty
is formed in destruction —
and reconstruction,” he said.
Guaranteed, though, it will
not be found in yesterday’s
print.
Vigilante justice
Americans cannot
condone murder
;; “A hero of our time.” These are
;the words written to Michail F.
Griffen, the accused gunman of
^Florida abortion doctor, David
;;Gunn, from Rachelle Renae
Shannon, the woman arrested last
week on the charge of attempted
murder of Dr. George Tiller, an
abortion doctor in Witchita. Kan.
; Hero? Of our time? Did the
doctor deserve to be shot or killed
in order to “save one unborn
child’s life,” as Lambs of Christ
members said publicly following
the last shooting?
• Or, there is the recent case of
.'the Colorado woman who, in a
crowded courtroom, killed the
; accused molester of her young
!son. Townspeople called her a
! hero.
> And, lest we forget Bernard
I Goetz who in the mid-1980s shot
land killed a young man who he
claimed harassed him in a New
! -York subway. The entire nation
was glued to the set for that one.
> Burning abusive husbands.
irShooting negligent parents.
-Shooting foreign students who
trespass on your property. These
■are the recurring headliners which
perpetually test the lines of law
ipnd justice.
> We are no longer talking about
! ^freedom of speech. We now have
! people shooting other people who
>do not agree with them on an
tissue. Worst, we have Americans
!*deciding arbitrarily who can and
!*cannot live without due process.
> Is a woman justified for killing
her husband if he abuses her and
their children? What if he cares for
the children and only abuses her?
What if he only threatens to abuse
his wife? There are many questions
as to what the abuser does and does
not deserve.
But, who answers these ques-
tions? It cannot be the individual.
As virtuous and American as is the
idea of individualism, we cannot
afford as a nation to leave the
power of justice to the individual.
People have the right to say
what they wish, when they wish to
say it — within reasonable bound-
aries set up to protect society as a
whole and not a specific interest
group. The KKK has as much right
to assemble and speak as do the
Right to Life groups.
There is always at least two
sides to every story and the world
deserves to hear all of them. This is
not network television or
Hollywood and we are not Charles
Bronson vigilantes.
We are civilized human beings
who should, without reservation,
condemn any violent act against
another person, be it in the name of
God, power or conviction.
r*' St S1
|||||
Louviere
A
Freedom of choice disunites
groups of similar interests, goals
WASHINGTON — When
President Clinton was elected, a
Freedom of Choice Act to set the
Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade
decision into law looked like a
sure thing.
No longer would there be a
President Reagan or Bush to block
Congress’ pro-choice majority.
No longer would there be Rep.
Henry Hyde’s, R-Ill., “Hyde
amendment” to block federal
funding of abortions for poor
women.
But nothing is certain in poli-
tics. First, Hyde outmaneuvered
his rivals. After years of resis-
tance, he wrote in exemptions for
abortions resulting from rape and
incest That concession amounts to
a small fraction of abortion cases,
but in a Congress as ambivalent as
the rest of the nation on abortion
funding, Hyde’s amendment won
enough Democratic support to
pass the House.
On one side of the dispute, the
National Organization for Women,
the National Black Women’s
Health Project and others in a
coalition called the Campaign for
Abortion Rights for Everyone are
withholding support from the bill
until it does more to make abor-
tion available to every woman,
regardless of her age or income.
That means no parental consent
rules and no bans on public funds.
They helped persuade the not-
insignificant voice of Illinois Sen.
Carol Moseley-Braun to withdraw
her support from the bill, which
brought a harsh reaction from the
other side, which includes Kate
Michelman, president of the
National Abortion Rights Action
Clarence
io
4 **sc
League, who says any codification
of Roe is better than none. Leave
the other battles for another day,
she says.
But, a sure way to disunite your
union is to divide concerns along
class lines, which is just what will
happen if freedom of choice is leg-
islated as a fundamental right for
everyone except poor women and
teen-age girls.
The public mind yearns for clo-
ture of unpleasant issues. At the
time of the 1973 Roe v. Wade deci-
sion, most pro-choice Americans
cheered and settled back into apa-
thy, as if to say, ah, at last that’s
settled. It wasn’t By overriding the
states so suddenly, the court only
infuriated and energized a new
antiabortion coalition that fueled
the rise of the New Right and car-
ried Ronald Reagan to the White
House.
Similarly, President Bush
signed a Family Medical Leave
Act that effectively took all the
steam out of the national push for
family leave, even though its
exemption for businesses that have
fewer than 50 employees effective-
ly leaves out half the workers in
the country.
That’s why NOW President
Patricia Ireland, among others,
says she is drawing a line in the
sand. Once a Freedom of Choice
Act is passed that allows parental
consent laws and does not provide
funding for poor women, Clinton
undoubtedly will sign it, just to be
able to say he has signed a
Freedom of Choice Act. Then it
will be much tougher to persuade
politicians and the public to reopen
the issue, just to help teens and the
poor.
Has class warfare broken out in
the pro-choice movement? Not
quite. NOW, NARAL and the rest
still agree on far more than they
disagree about goals. It is strategy
that divides them.
A potpourri of abortion legisla-
tion has been proposed by various
legislators. Democratic leaders
hint they will not let the act reach
the floor unless they are sure it has
the votes to withstand additional
weakening amendments.
The three conservative H’s
(Hyde, Sen. Orrin Hatch and Sen.
Jesse Helms) have a barrel full of
restrictive amendments to stop or
stall the Freedom of Choice Act. If
their restrictive position is to be
prevented from becoming the new
political middle, pro-choice forces
need to keep the heat on. Even if
they don’t get all they want, at
least they can prevent the compro-
mise from slipping too far in a
restrictive direction.
President Clinton articulated
the ambivalence that shows up in
polls when he said he wanted to
make abortion "safe, legal and
rare.” To prevent this from
becoming another hot potato issue
like gays in the military, Clinton is
likely to sign any bill Congress
sends to him, as long as it says
Freedom of Choice Act on it He,
too, understands the public’s
yearning for cloture. It is a desire
not unlike his own, judging by his
constant striving for compromise,
even when it is an unhappy one.
In the spirit that enabled her to
single-handedly reverse the
Senate’s highly symbolic approval
of a Confederate trademark, Carol
Moseley-Braun showed how much
one person can do to change
minds. She has another chance
now to help the poor and the
young.
I wish her luck.
Students get short end of financial aid
Chuck, a student at Bogus
University, begins his day at 6
a.m. with a Norton anthology, a
can of Coke and a strawberry
poptart
This is early for Chuck consid-
ering he returned from his job
waiting tables somewhere around
midnight. After last-minute cram-
ming, Chuck goes to his 8 a.m.
literature class and hopes he will
be able to stay awake in there
and his statistics lab that follows.
After class and a rushed lunch,
Chuck goes to work as an unpaid
intern at a local newspaper in
order to gain professional experi-
ence so he can get a “real job”
before going to his evening job,
one that he must have in order to
pay his bills.
Typical? You bet. According to
the “Chronicle of Higher
Education” (Oct. 21, 1992),
tuition at public universities rose
every year during the 1980s and
increased by 10 percent, three
times the rate of inflation, during
the 1992-93 school year. It’s no
wonder that more and more stu-
dents spend more time working
at jobs than on their class work.
You could probably guess that
during this same time financial
aid awards decreased. This has
placed a strain on working-class
students because the financial aid
pool is smaller and it signals the
start of a unjust cycle; of financial
need vs. welfare.
Available financial aid is dis-
tributed according to unrealistic
formulas that can be construed in
such ways that a middle-class stu-
dent attending an expensive, pri-
vate university can be deemed
“needy,” while at the same time
a working-class student with part-
time employment at a public
institution is considered ineligi-
ble.
In “Commentary” (Aug.
1992), economist Thomas Sowell
said approximately two-thirds of
the undergraduates at Harvard
receive financial aid, including
400 applicants whose families
earn more than $70,000 per year
and 64 applicants whose families
earn more than $100,000 a year.
This is not an unusual occurrence
and it would not be a problem if
the money came from private
benefactors, but not so. Sowell
says it comes mostly from the
government. Just think, the
$30,000 it takes for one student
to attend Harvard one semester
could provide tuition for about 30
of Lamar’s students a semester.
Student loans offer an option
to fund a college education but
more often than not students are
trapped in what “Generation X”
author Douglas Coupland refers
to as “Student Loan Prison.”
(The average student finishes
school $10,000 in debt, “Utne
Reader” Sept./Oct. 1993.)
Graduates often find that at cur-
rent interest rates and repayment
time it is more than they can
cope with.
The system is no longer
acceptable, but there is hope.
Finally someone has enough
sense to formulate a national plan
that would allow students to
receive an education and be able
to repay their debt in a reason-
able amount of time and effort.
I’m talking about President
Clinton’s national service plan
that would allow students to earn
tuition money in return for public
service work upon graduation.
It’s a novel idea and will allow
us — students — to provide nec-
essary services and leadership
that can only help to improve our
nation. Sure, it will cost us all
some money; but, as a taxpayer, I
cannot think of anything more
rewarding than knowing my tax
dollars might actually go to some
good use. It could fund the edu-
cation for the poor soul who
might know how to reduce the
deficit
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Bankston, Mark. University Press (Beaumont, Tex.), Vol. 71, No. 1, Ed. 1 Friday, August 27, 1993, newspaper, August 27, 1993; Beaumont, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth500118/m1/3/?q=Lamar+University: accessed June 10, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Lamar University.