Newspaper Page Text
I
4 • The Red and Black • Wednesday, April 18, 1990
OPINIONS
■ QUOTABLE
"Cm going alone without my husband and will not be staying
with anyone else who Is on the trip. I hope my Georgia family
speaks English."
— Phyllis Barrow, on her upcoming trip to Soviet Georgia.
The Red & Black
Eitabluhed 1893—Incorporated 1980
An independent student newspaper not affiliated with the University of Georgia
Charlene Smith/Editor-in-Chief
Amy Bellew/Managing Editor
Hogai Nassery/Opinions Editor
■ EDITORIALS
Get serious
The students who manned the voting booths
Tuesday for the Student Association elections have
joined the ranks of Baby Doc Duvalier in Haiti, Manuel
Noriega in Panama and Ferdinand Marcos in the
Philippines, by violating election standards. Perhaps
the students missed one day too many of Political
Science 101, because they certainly ignored a few basic
principles of democracy.
Several students complained of voting
irregularities they witnessed while casting their
ballots, which were anything but secret. One student
watched in amazement as an election worker watched
her complete her ballot, then opened and read it in
flagrant disregard of her right to secrecy.
Another student was told who to vote for when she
hesitated before filling out her ballot.
Ballots were placed in cardboard boxes that could
be easily opened. Instead of allowing students to
deposit their ballots in the boxes themselves, election
workers placed the boxes out of reach, preventing
proper voting procedure. There’s no telling how many
other violations went unnoticed.
Last year, the SA received strong criticism for
similar election transgressions. This year, not only did
the Schisler administration fail to publish campaign
guidelines for this year’s candidates, it failed to correct
serious descrepencies in the voting procedure. Here’s a
news flash. Before the University can take the SA
seriously, the SA senate has to take the SA seriously. If
the SA blows off the election, so will the rest of the
University.
The incoming SA senate begins its quest for
credibility with its election. The outgoing senate has
already given the next senate an obstacle to overcome.
More Macs
In February, The Red and Black graded Charles
Knapp on his performance as University President
over the year. He got a C. But he also got a chance to
bring up his grade if he could successfully complete an
extra-credit project: Reduce the crunch for Macintosh
computers.
Well, Knapp has been working on the project and if
he meets his goals by the end of the quarter, he will
indeed improve his score. By bringing attention to
student needs, he has helped them become fulfilled.
Starting Monday, the Macintosh lab in the
journalism building is open the same hours as the main
library. So when the lines get too long over there,
students have another alternative. Journalism
students will find their labs open longer and thus take
some of the pressure off the library lab.
Knapp says that by the end of the quarter eight
Macintosh PCs will be installed in the science library
computer lab and a new lab will be installed in the
basement of the graduate studies building. Other plans
to improve the system’s efficiency are in the works.
While these changes are certainly welcome —
they’ve been a long time coming — Knapp can’t take all
the credit. The new computers were allotted for in the
fiscal 1990 budget, which was approved last year.
University Computing and Networking Services has
worked hard to improve student access to the
computers.
Knapp has brought attention to the problem by
visiting the library lab and publicly promising to
improve the situation, and that may have put pressure
on others to act. Nonetheless, students are getting the
computers.
So Knapp is on his way to highermarks for student
relations. His final exam will be the final
determination. We’ll see how the new plan works and
how it holds up to the final exam crunch at the end of
the quarter.
STAFF
NEWS: 543-1809
New* Editor JenrUfet Renpey
So art* Editor Trover P*a|c»i
Ent*rt*l«vn*nt Editor. Weston
AMoeiito Now* Editor*: Chris Gnm#*. Jennifer
Wmun
Root Pago Co*y Editor Oavid Johnston
mold* Copy Editors .0*1 Qroovtr. Kelly K*«t,"|.
Mary Ratcliff*. Int» Schmidt. Johanna van dar Wei
UOA Today/Wlrs Editor Robert Ajui*
Qraphico Editor: 0*w* 0'K**ff*
Ctilef Pilotagrsphor: °*t*' Fr*y
Photo Editor: Maria Clay
Stoll Writer*: Waiter Con. Maria Edward*. Arne-
Mar* Eanguy. lane* Haim*. Christopher Hightower.
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Sparta Writer Chns Ipncetta
Spaed al Seed or*/Tread* Editor Cara May
AaaioUrrt Special Sept Ion e/T rondo Editor:
Stone RowPotnam
(Otadd A ears la nt »ama* W**en
Canaan tat M M Moreau
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AUGUSTS W76:TVIE STANDING ARMY OFTHE
UNITED STATES PEC1PESTP SIT POWN...
TC 6CT UP! MAfiGCfTT
You hme Horan amekka
to pef&np!
Time to terminate our National Nanny
Conceived of paternal benevolence, nou
rished on the ugly and the unsympathetic* now
poised to devour free speech in the market-
lace, the rampaging National Nanny is a two-
eaded, fire-breathing example of the mischief
government tends to make when the real de
mons—inflation, unemployment, cold wars—
have been, if not destroyed, at least heavily se
dated.
Taking a page from the script of a Japanese
monster flick, the National Nanny began to stir
in early January thanks to the radioactive rhe
toric of Health and Human Sevices Secretary
Louis Sullivan. Dr. Sullivan said he was
“alarmed and angered” that R.J. Reynolds, the
tobacco giant, planned to tailor a new brand,
Uptown, for black consumers. "Black leaders
and doctors,” reported Newsweek, gave the
menthol smokes a “fiery reception” before “RJR
could start test-marketing, and “health ex
perts argued that blacks don’t need more en
couragement to smoke.” RJR pulled Uptown.
In a fit of self-flagellation, RJR tried again.
The company set its sights on “virile females,”
the sort of 18 to 20 year-olds with high-school
educations who, according to an RJR memo,
work in factories, live in trailer parks, and
enjoy chain-smoking Marlboros during tractor
pulls, wrestling matches, and “Roseanne.”
With shoe-banging subtlety, the president of
the National Organization for Women, Molly
Yard, led the feminist charge. “I cannot under
stand," she admitted, “how any self-respecting
company could seek to exploit so deliberately a
group of young women.”
On Capitol Hill, the National Nanny’s second
head—the one which resembles Ted Kennedy—
was roused by the cries of “exploited" minori
ties. The Nanny vomited up 72 anti-tobacco
bills, including one by the Massachusetts sen
ator that would allocate $185 million to create a
regulatory Center for Tobacco Products. Rep
resentative Henry Waxman of California pro
posed that cigarette ads feature only
informational text and no appealing pictures
that, presumably, are now used to trick unsus
pecting dolts into smoking.
Several observations:
1) The current campaign to keep tobacco
companies from targeting blacks and women
with tailored products and advertising is a ter
rible insult to the very groups Sullivan and
Yard want to defend. Surely one need not be
white, male, or affluent to resist enslavement to
advertising. The lack of protest against, for ex
ample, Benson and Hedges ads—which cur
rently feature a couple of seemingly
heterosexual white yuppies flirting in an up
scale bar—exposes motivations founded on
race, gender, and economic status.
2) Dr. Sullivan bellows, “Cigarettes aro the
only legal product that when used as intended
cause death." As such, cigarettes may be fought
with unique ferocity. Disregarding constitu
tional provisions such as freedom of speech and
long-term American habits like a generally free
market, Field Marshall Sullivan has declared
total war on the “immoral and irresponsible”
enemy. 1
3) Cigarettes are “the only legal product”
that “cause death." This is absurd. What about
butter, mayonnaise, or red meat? What of the
Corvette ZR1 or the 300 ZX Turbo? What about
trampolines? Pogo sticks? The crosswalks on
Baldwin Street? As a doctor, Sullivan should
know the scientific fact: Everything kills.
Smoking is just a particularly inefficient and
unpleasant way to go.
4) Why should government be policing a
nnstv and unhealthy activity nevertheless en
joyed by nearly 30 percent of “we the people”?
Smokers are, obviously, trading time they
might have er\joved later for the pleasure of
smoking today, but government bubbleheads
with nothing better to do should not be trying to
legislate against such bartering. When beltway
bureaucrats learn that school kids waste bil
lions of hours playing Nintendo, will they de
clare homework a priority and outlaw Super
Mario Brothers?
President Bush should end the prejudiced
and anti-capitalist crusade that his administra
tion is waging against the tobacco industry be
fore someone shows Sullivan an ad for Colt 45
Malt Liquor. Also, someone should inform
Louie and Molly and Teddy that blacks and
women are, like other American consumers, not
mindless robots programmed by slick adver
tising.
Our National Nanny deserves to go the way
of Godzilla. Lay a nuke on him, George.
Luke Boggs is a senior history major.
Commercial
On a recent bus trip from the Tate Student
Center to the Coliseum, I got the pleasure of
being sandwiched by a multitude of students
and being forced to stand directly under a
speaker that was playing the tail end of the
country song “I Want a Redneck Girl." This was
followed by two minutes of commercials that
expounded on the virtues of name-brand
clothing, an upcoming rodeo (not at UGA), an
American-made automobile, and ‘quality* hard
ware.
To me, there were (at least) two things inher
ently wrong with that bus ride. First, the music
was moronic, pointless, and annoying, as it
often is on University buses, and it seems to me
that the University community shouldn’t be
forced to submit to such garbage, en masse.
Second, a public institution (and the University
buses at school surely are part of a public insti
tution), should not he taking part in advertising
in any shape, way, or form.
I imagine the only thing that the University
bus drivers are told about playing the radio on
the buses, is something to the affect of, “I don't
care what you play, just don’t play it too loud.”
So, in affect you have one person deciding the
listening fate (he it pop, country, religious, or
whatever), for hundreds of bus riders during
his or her shift. This policy differs greatly with
that of Athens Transit; the City Buses in
Athens do not play the radio.
I talked to a spokesman at THE BUS, who
said that there was no music on the city buses
because the music that is played on the radio
“bothers people.” He also pointed out that most
transit systems across the nation don’t play the
radio pollutes University
Casey
Curran
radio for the very same reason. Naturally, this
is true in the University community as well, be
cause there is no true consensus radio station.
So, for the three years that 1 have been riding
the UGA school buses, I have listened to what
our bus drivers have deemed as musically en-
e; thus, for over three years my ears have
en saturated with a noise, that in my opinion,
is no better than all the most common forms of
‘noise pollution’ put together.
Musical aesthetics aside, more important is
the ouestion: do the University buses even have
a right to be playing commercial radio stations?
If a University bus is playing commercial radio,
it is in efTect advertising and promoting prod
ucts that have nothing to do with the Univer
sity; this is wrong. It troubles me to think that
we are increasing the sales of certain products
(eg. cosmetics, soft drinks, suntan lotion,
etc...), because some conglomerate's message
reached a portion of the University community
that was using University transit.
Nevertheless, if we are going to sink to the
lowest common denominator and continue to
play the "radio of the masses,’ we might as well
get paid for it. We could work out agreements
with the radio stations in the area and charge
them a fee for the privilege of having their radio
stations played on our buses. (Hey, come to
think of it maybe we could use the money raised
to increase the salaries of our impoverished fac
ulty.)
Fortunately, there is room for compromise,
and we can have music on the buses thanks to
the fact that there are two high-quality, com
mercial-free radio stations located on campus.
In case you’ve been lost in the air-waves of At
lanta radio, these are 90.5 (WUOG) which fea
tures progressive music, and 91.7 (WUGA)
which features classical music and the best
news coverage anywhere. Anyway you look at
it, WUOG is the radio station of University stu
dents (being run 100% by students), and
WUGA is the radio station of the University at
large (being the radio equivalent of what Uni
versity’s should be striving for.) If these choices
don’t provide one with enough variety, then
there is a third alternative which is also quite
adequate. Turn the damn radio off.
Granted, the issue of world peace isn’t riding
on whether there is music on the buses, but the
principle is important. As a non-profit organi
zation that is geared towards higher education,
in no instance should the University intelli
gentsia be constrained inside a bus having to
listen to the sophomoric pop or country music
(of another generation no less), with intervals
in between that feature thirty second blips
which pander to our lowest instincts. So, let’s
leave commercial radio to the confines of eleva
tors and curious middle-schoolers, and reserve
the air-waves of the University buses for
[ uality radio that is worthy of us.
asey Curran is a senior political science major.
Ci
Alma mater should change
On April 2, a meeting was held
regarding the possible alteration of
the University’s alma mater. The
proposed changes include re
placing the words “sons” and
’brotherhood" with terms which
acknowledge the immense contri
bution women make to this institu
tion.
One of the most noteworthy facts
of Monday's hearing (leaving aside,
for the moment, the question of
why a fifteen member task force is
thought necessary for dealing with
an obvious issue of equality) was
the distressing lack of student
presence.
An issue as important as the
equal representation of the contri
butions both females and males
make to the University should not
be ignored.Though lack of student
interest in a hearing held the first
night of spring quarter is under
standable, continued lack of input
is not.
Students concerned that the
University take this step toward fi-
■ FORUM
□ The Red and Black welcomes letters to the editor end prints them In the Forum
column et specs permits. All letters are subject to editing for length, style and li
belous material. Letters should be typed, doublespaced end must include the name,
address and daybme telephone number of the whter. Please Include student classifi
cation and rngjor other appropriate identification Names can be omitted with a valid
reason upon request. Letters can be sent by U S. mail or brought in person to The Red
and Black's offices at 123 N. Jackon St.. Athens, Ga.
nally equalizing the position of
women and men on this campus
are asked to drop a letter or post
card in the mail.
Please send to: Alumni House
Athens,Ga 30602.
Mary McDowell
Junior, philosophy