1983_03 The Daily Collegian March 1983

              !_*§_
Letters
Biting irony
DearEettor.
1 find it a bit ironic that Jeff Domingues
did a story on women's athletics (3/21),
and yet he failed to quote or interview the
subject on winch the entire story was
based — the woman athlete. Wake up
Jeff, girts don't bite.
Steve Smith
that there isn't anybody left to challenge
themf)
1 am furious with my "representatives
who supposedly have my "best interests
at heart" for planning a senate meeting in
which they did not take their constituents'
priorities into consideration.
I suggest that each senator take a class
in base planning and consideration for
others — and then get a tutor to make
sure they learn the subjects well.
Rebecca Braeman
£lp,anning  Journali$m?
Dear Editor,
I would like to congratulate our school
senate on their mastery of ill-planning and
lack of consideration.
I am (was) both a tutor and a tutee. and
due to the scheduled closure of the tutor
idl program (which took effect as of 3/10) I
cancelled a tutorial session last week,
which resulted in a loss of money for me,
in order to attend the senate meeting in
which the tutorial situation was to be
discussed.
The audience was large, which indi¬
cated much interest in the issues which
were to come up.
After an hour of listening to the sena¬
tors quibble over administrative details
which were pertinent only to themselves,
I left to attend a class. I was later told that
the budget did not come up for yet
another half hour, of course, by that time
everyone interested in the tutorial pro
gram had long since left. (Maybe they
should be complimented on their well-
planned meeting. They simply out-wait
those in opposition to their decisions so
BLOOM COUNTY
DearEdtior,
This letter is in reply to the March 16th
letter by Stacy Horn, a self-proclaimed
journalism student and future politician.
Nicolo Machiavelli, writer and theorist
ol the late 15th and early 16th centuries,
would be proud of you, Stacy. He wrote,
"The ends justify the means." Or, as you
put it, "Anything goes."
This is the same philosophy that Richard
Nixon held when he went about his pro
gram of wiretapping, mail opening, and
break-ins — the programs that spawned
Watergate and ultimately forced him to
You said, Stacy, and I quote, "Anything
goes when it comes to making money."
This was the attitude of the factory
owners who paid men a dollar for every
12-hour day and who brutally crushed any
attempts to form labor unions.
This is the philosophy of the Detroit car
makers who sell shoddy, dangerous cars
that kill, just to make ah easy buck.
This is the attitude held bv the Hooker
Chemical Company when it dumped
toxic chemicals into a large ditch in New
York State just so they could save money.
The result was death and disease at a
place called Love Canal.
Stacy Horn, you hold no concern for
those who are not as cold-blooded as you.
More important than what you are,
however, is what you are not. You are not
a journalist. A real journalist would not
consider journalism an economic "busi¬
ness," but a duty — a duty to protect the
public interest, to be a watchdog over
lying, stealing, cutthroat politicians — to
protect the public from people like you if
you ever get elected to office.
Politics may be just the right field for
you, if past experience is any guide.
I pity you, Stacy Horn. I feel sorry for
anyone who views life as a job where
"anything goes" to make money.
Bruce Armstrong
Political science major and
future servant of the
public good.
Intervention
Dear Editor,
Twenty years ago, a U.S. administra¬
tion decided it would intervene in the
Vietnam Civil War in order to prevent a
progressive and neutral regime from top¬
pling the corrupt, right-wing government
of Ngo Dinh Diem. It did so under the
pretext that the insurgent National Liber¬
ation Front was nothing more than a
catspaw for "Communist aggression,"
and that "fundamental American stra-
were at stake. This past
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week those same arguments, indeed the
same phrases, have cropped up once
again in Washington, and we had best not
dismiss them as simple historical analogy.
This is the real thing. Central America is
already a Southeast Asia.
ft is not simply that the parallels of "mil¬
itary advisors," stepped up aid for "taking
the war to the guerillas," and the elabo¬
rate hype surrounding farcical elections
are the same in El Salvador as they were
in Vietnam. It is the Reagan administra¬
tion, like the Kennedy-Johnson adminis¬
tration, has decided it will do anything
possible to prevent a people from seizing
control of their own country and their
own destinies. It is not the two small
nations that are the same, it is the politics
of escalation that is identical.
Unless we the people in this country
stop them, the Reagan administration will
soon have the nation engaged in a major
war in the Western Hemisphere.
History repeats itself only for those
who do not study its lessons. As much as
the White House pooh-poohs the Viet¬
nam experience, the step-by-step descent
into the quagmire has been almost iden¬
tical.
In 1964 General Khanh overthrew
General Minh in order to prevent negotia¬
tions between the National Liberation
Front (NLF) and the Saigon regime, and
because the military situation had "dete¬
riorated." At each point that a military
stalemate had developed or the NLF had
made substantial progress against govern¬
ment forces, peace feelers were put out
by the insurgents linked with international
pressure for negotiations. In each case,
the U.S. backed a regime that refused,0
talk, and sabotaged the possibility of
negotiations by escalating the fighting.
They did it in August, 1964, with the Ton¬
kin Gulf Resolution; they did it in Febru¬
ary, 1965 by bombing North Vietnamese
cities in the midst of a major, international
push for peace talks.
As in Vietnam, they have attempted to
somehow expand a local civil war into a
regional conflict between East and West.
State department spokesmen solemnly
intone the domino theory; Nicaragua is
gone, if El Salvador goes, so does Gua¬
temala, Costa Rica, Honduras, the Pan¬
ama Canal and Mexico. Then Secretary
of State Robert McNamara recited the
same litany for Vietnam, Laos, Cambo¬
dia, Thailand, Korea and the Philippines.
It is the terrible deja vu of escalation.
Just as in Vietnam, we are pouring
more and more money down an endless
corridor. If the Administration gets its way
with the $110 million in arms aid to the
junta, $1 billion will have gone to H Salva¬
dor since 1980. As in Vietnam, this admin¬
istration is carrying out a not-so-
secret war on bordering nations, like
Nicaragua, while defoliating the country¬
side and encouraging the indiscriminate
bombing of civilian populations.
Lastly, they are usigg the old "free elec¬
tions" nonsense that brought Nguyen van
Thieu to power and served as an excuse
for another round qt escalations. State
Department applause over last March's
phony elections is echoed virtually
nowhere else in the world. The left was
not allowed to participate. The present
push by Reagan for yet another round of
elections in El Salvador will produce
nothing more than a pretext for further
U.S. military involvement in the region.
As in Vietnam, the"only resolution to
the crisis in H Salvador is negotiations
between the contending parties. Such
negotiations are favored by Mexico,
Cuba. Costa Rica, Venezuela and a host
of other nations in the region and the
world. U.S. hawks and the rightists in San
Salvador will dp whatever they .can to
prevent those talks, and if we can draw
any lessons from Vietnam, the major tac¬
tic of obstruction will be escalation.
We can stop it. There is already a great
deal of sentiment in this country against
U.S. involvement in Central America, tax
more than there was at the equivalent
stages of the Vietnam War. A massive
outpouring of protect, in the streets,„and
to the Congress, can block the politics of
8m INTERVENTION, pafle 12
To your health
Marcfi231l9«  $
By John A. Vandrlck, M.O.
Contributing Writer
A couple of years ago, just as I was
again assuming some administrative
responsibilities, rencountered an intrigu¬
ing title to an article in the Journal of the
American Medical Association. It read
Death Caused by Fermenting Manure."
The symbolism was so heady I clipped the
article and kept it on my desk in an
inconspicuous location as a timely
reminder of one of the more unique
hazards that may be encountered in life.
As I looked at the article from-time to
nme I was impressed gradually with the
realization that we lived in an agricultural
heartland and the more literal aspects of
the article could be meaningful for many
of our students, especially for those study
mg agnculture, darticularly animal hus¬
bandry. The article tells of a young farm¬
worker in Wisconsin who was using high
pressure hot water to wash down the gut-
lers of an empty call barn.
The barn contained an underground
liquid manure storage tank in which an
agitator was operating. Alter a few min-
A wariness of safety factors can help to
prevent unnecessary, tragic accidents
utes, the young man began to cough, then
vomited, collapsed and died. This took
place in Wisconsin. A subsequent survey
in that state revealed several other inci¬
dents of human and animal sickness and
death under similar circumstances.
, Decomposing manure releases a
number of toxic gases; hydrogen sulfide,
carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia
being those of particular concern. I can¬
not help but think that if instruction in
safety were given more prominence in our
educational systems, this life and many
others could have been spared.
•In my-last article, relating to the
hazards of excessive insulation and the
generation of carbon monoxide in our
homes and recreational vehicles, I intro¬
duced the concept of a safety intelligence
quotient. One might think that safety
intelligence would bear a direct relation¬
ship to general intelligence, but expe¬
rience would seem to dictate otherwise.
A few brief examples uatftllustrate this
point. When I was worWbg in thje Ma of
India a number of years back, one of my
colleagues was a well trained lawyer. He
was burned because he held up a pres¬
sure gas lantern to give light while some¬
one else was pouring gasoline into his
Jeep. How many of us have committed
similar error by pouring a fresh supply of
gas into a hot hwnmower?
In another instance, a bright and very-
effective physical education instructor in
a children's, hospital reached under a
power mower while it was operatin__nd
had his fingers mangled.
I thought, that wa$~\unusua!, but just
recently in "The Morbidity and Mortality
Weekly Report" they described a survey
of emergency rooms following the recent
big snow storms in the midwest that
revealed large numbers of snowblower
hand injuries. As I recall, the average age
of the injured wasaboutU      '     "r~-
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and the«e^fhe^^ed_w_?£Sm^
indicate ah intelligent and mature group.
Yet the majority of injuries were c*3e_
by reaching into the outflow port to
unblock it while the machine wa* *__
operating or the operation tempdrt&Oy
suspended by .the packed snow, -,' V    '"
In some instances, the machine had
been switched off but not sufficient time
was allowed for the blades to cease rotat¬
ing. I maintain that in all these cases, a
heightened^ awareness of safety factora,
or safety intelligence, could have -vnUAF
the accident.
It might be ao inte res t ing and profitable "
experience for us all to estimate our own
safety intelligence quotient by rating our
safety behavior regarding seat belts,
drinking and driving, use of safety glasses,
powertools, gasoline, electricity (particu¬
larly electricity and water), boating *nd
water sports, defensive driving, etc.
A heightened awareness can be the
first step toward positive change. There is
no need to be anxious or fearful, just take
care — reasonably and intelligently. ..
Senate
Continued from page 1
Also Tuesday, the senate passed a
resolution calling for the removal from
campus storage areas of electrical equip¬
ment containing the deadly chemical poly-
chlonnated byphenyls.
Fourteen electrical transformers con-
laming the chemical are stored on the
CSUF campus. A copy of the resolution
will be sent to the chancellor of the CSUC
*tf_^S2?. ,90uenor Geor9e Deukmejian
and CSUF President Harold Hakk,
Although PCB has not been linked with
cancer, studies have said that an accident
involving the chemical could cause
serious health and environmental prob¬
lems by contaminating water supplies.
The U.S.. Environmental Protection
Agency has determined that PCB pres-
ents a danger to public health and has
banned manufacture of electrical equip¬
ment containing the chemical.
The Senate also voted Tuesday to
approve a revised version of the Asso¬
ciated Students constitution.
After three years of work, the Senate
Legal and Legislative Committee finally
completed the new. draft. 'It will come
before the student body for approval dur¬
ing elections in April.
And after lengthy debate yesterday, the
senate voted to approve a funding
request by the CWnep* Overseas Student
Association fo«4250 to publish a cultural
magazine. The request was trimmed from
$600.
Sigma Nu is planning to move into the
house sometime in June, and the frater-
nity'is willing to' help Kappa Sigma relo¬
cate "_ tl>ey want h," Moten said.
"I've got friends in the Kappa Sign-
house and they've got friends in our -•
„ house." he said. "I mean, there's that cer-
Animal House image"associated with fra- tain rivalry where you want to be better
temities in general, which he said is "Jar than them, but we're not going to art their
fromtnu." throats."
Kappa
Continued from page 1
from true."
Criminology department offers
two-unit study tour in Holland
A course on the "Administrainon oi
Justice in The Netherlands will be offered
by the Division of Extended Education
and Department of Criminology at CSUF
June 7-21.
Dr. Ruth Masters and Dr. Lester Pincu,
both professors of criminology at CSUF!
will lead the two-unit study tour of
Holland.
The study tour program will include
ume to visit various sightseeing locations.
There is a canal tour of Amsterdam,
excursions to The Hague, Delft, and
Madurodam, and sightseeing tours of the
villages of Marken and Volendam.
The CSUF study tour to the Nether¬
lands costs $1,432. The price includes
round trip air fare from Los Angeles to
Amsterdam via KLM Dutch Airlines,
ground transportation and transfers, first
class hotel accommodations, continental
breakfast, the various tours, tuition and
the CSUF Foundation handling fee.
A $500 deposit is required by April 15 to
insure a reservation on the tour. The bal¬
ance of the fee is due on or before May 6.
For complete details and a reservation
form, contact the CSUF Division of
Extended Education at 294-2549. -.
Enjoy the sounds of
Classical Guitar Music
at
TGI COFFEE
this Friday March 25     (
imported Coffees &
delectible edibles
available from 8-midnite
at the Newman Center
(across from the stadium)
LEONARD
WIBBERLY'S
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