1997_10 The Daily Collegian October 1997

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COLLEGIAN
Friday, October 10, 1997
Telephone: (209) 278-5732
Useless program
has no mission
By Joel Eanes
In 1936. in the depths o\ the
Great Depression/Congress created
the Rural Electrification Adminis¬
tration to give market-rate loans to
- local electric cooperatives loextend
electric serv ice to'ruriil America In
1948! ihe Rural telephone Hank
was added io extend the program
to rural telephone service Today.
although 9991 of Americans have
electricity and/9691 have telephone
service, the program continues in
the form.of the Rural Utilities Ser¬
vice (RL'S). With its original task
all but completed, the agency is
without a mission.
Today, only u few extremely re¬
mote areas lack electric and tele¬
phone service. The problem here is
one of scale. A program to complete
the original goal of universal ser¬
vice may be justifiable, but a pro¬
gram that is larger than it was in the
Depression, when onlyi few urban
areas had service, is Another mat¬
ter The RUS is using the same tech¬
nique that it used sixty years ago—
loaning public funds to electric co¬
operatives at 5l7t interest. This was
the market rale sixty years ago.
Today's government borrows the
money at 12c7r interest. In addition,
despite the popular image of the
small local cooperative made up of
struggling farmers, hundreds of old
Depression-era cooperatives have
been purchased by major utilities in
order to take advantage of the
RUS's low interest rates. Many of
the independent cooperatives are
now major utility companies them¬
selves, with shareholders and multi-
million dollar profit margins. And
due to urban expansion, many ar¬
eas that started receiving service
decades ago now serve heavily
populated urban areas instead. Ac¬
cording to the RUS's own figures,
al least fifty cooperatives have more
than 250,000 customers apiece.
Some are using their subsidized
funds to invest in unrelated fields.
One Texas cooperative, for in¬
stance, bought a savings-and-loan
using RL'S loans.
This is a part of a shll more fun¬
damental problem The purpose of
the R.US and its predecessors was
to install power and telephone lines
Installing lines is much more ex¬
pensive that operating them In the
depths o\ the Depression, private
companies did not have the capital
to install lines, so the RUS did it
instead. There is a big difference
between the expense oi building the
lines, which was to be paid tor by
the RUS. and of operating them af¬
terward, which was to be paid for
by the customers using the service.
In order to give itself a reason to
survive, the RUS has continued
subsidies for decades after con¬
struction has been completed.
This is done today in order to try
to equalize rates for rural and ur¬
ban areas. This is just not a realis¬
tic economic goal. Much of the ex¬
pense of installation goes to putting
up the wiring. Urbarf areas have
short electric grids, because of their
small geographic area, and a large-
number of customers, because of
their population. Rural areas face
Ihe exact opposite situation. Be¬
cause of this, rural rates will inevi¬
tably be higher than urban rales.
The system is simply more expen- .
sive to operate, and the number o\
customers to pay for it is lower.
Despite all of this, rdral con¬
gressmen almost unanimously sup¬
port the continuation of the agency.
They propose maintaining the RUS
to extend power and telephone lines
to the few remaining areas. This
proposal may even have merit, but
it hardly justifies maintaining the
program at its present scale, let
alone the continuation of subsidies
to "rural cooperatives" that are ac¬
tually profitable utility companies.
A simple solution to the RUS's
dilemma has been proposed by
Please see PHONES, page 6.
SIGNE
PHILADELPHIA DAILY \e»VS
Ph.adeipha*
USA
Programs to stop students from
binge drinking add up to babysitting
By Froma Harrop
Anyone suspicious that the
American university experience has
become a four-year extension of
childhood need to look no further
than the colleges' latest response to
the binge-drinking "problem "
Now. in a grown-up world, college
administrators would tell students
who down four or five still drinks
in a row that they are jerks. If they
commit violent acts as a result, the
police get called. If they drive alter
drinking, they go to the slammer
If they die from alcohol poisoning,
they have nothing but their own stu¬
pidity to blame. But if they can
drink responsibly, then have a good
time.
Forget about hearing any such
counsel, for that would turn %tu-
dents into self-directing adults. Bel¬
ter to blame the problem on all-pur¬
pose "cultural attitudes" and "soci¬
etal pressures" abetted by the vil¬
lainous alcohol industry.
Thus, demands grow for better
policing of off-campus liquor out-
•lets. That is. turn local businesses
into baby-sitters. There arc calls to
ban sponsorship of college events
by companies selling alcohol or the
marketing of such beverages on
campus. That is. protect their
charges from evil influences and
trample on free speech.
One former college official has
suggested universities stop serving
champagne at parents' weekend
brunches or"at fund-raising events
Remove the bad example for the
sake of the children (Somehow it
is hard to believe a college with any
sense of self-preservation would
insist that its big-check writers re-
fhxuxu.oJd sober)
The truth is, most Americans can
drink without a problem. Careful
use of alcohol relaxes and warms
the drinker with a sense of well-
being. Winston Churchill and
l:ranklin Roosevelt saved Western
Civilization w ithout ever missing a
cocktail hour. Students have long
enjoyed their own drinking tradi¬
tions. Brahms's Academic Over¬
ture, the stately piece heard over
and over again at college com¬
mencements, took its melody from
a student drinking song.
Where is there a campus drink
ing crisis, anyway.'Six college stu¬
dents have supposedly died this
year from excessive drinking
These cases are lamentable, but
many more college students died
from sporis-related injuries or cat v
accidents
An even more interesting ques
lion is How many non-college
people in late teens or early 20s
have died from alcohol poisoning '
Take note, tut one is memorizing
this particular statistic even though
the majority of high school students
do not go on to college That num¬
ber is not etched on our national
worry list for the follow ing strange-
reason: Our society considers the
19-year-old who has a jjob an adult
while universities see the 19-year-
old pre-law student as a child
Working people who cause trouble
because they drink are punished
College students are given others to
blame.
Please see BOOZE, page 6.
Daily Collegian
California State University, Fresno
Business Manager
Ginger Terstegen
Copy Editors
Cheramie Taylor
Production Manager
Matthew Hart
Editor in Chief
Derek Walter
Managing Editor
Luis Hernandez
Assignment Editor
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Staff Writers:
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Sports Writers:
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Toni A. Garcia-Dclgado, Phil
Kakligian. Stephen Case. Ryan
Estrada
Columnists:
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Manuel Annear,
Joel Eanes,
Larry Famsworth
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Circulation:
Sam Robles
The Daily Collegian is pub¬
lished five times a week for and
by Ihe students of California State
University. Fresno.
Opinions expressed in The
Collegian are not necessarily
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