| Fresh faces The search is on. Actually, according to Chancellor Michael Ferrari and Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs William Koehler, the search is practically drawing to a close. In an attempt to move the university to the next level of academic distinction, an administrative decision was made at the beginning of last semester to revamp TCU's academic structure by reorganizing the AddRan College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Fine Arts and Communication and the Harris School of Nursing. As a result, a national search for deans of the AddRan College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the College of Fine Arts, the School of Education and the M.J. Neeley School of Business was launched. Last week, a committee composed of faculty, staff and students compiled a list of two to five candidates for each of the four positions. Committee members will soon submit their recommendations to Ferrari and Koehler. But as the final decisions draws closer, we find ourselves hopeful that the new group of academic administrators will bring fresh faces to the university pool. "Diversity is not only the right thing to do to prepare for the global community," said Cornell Thomas, special assistant to the chancellor for diversity and community. "It is the key and moral thing to do. It is important to have experience with different people in all sorts of varying positions." We applaud administrators for hiring a woman, Carol Campbell, as the new vice chancellor for finance and business, and appointing Rhonda Keen-Payne as the interim dean of the nursing school. But stopping there is not enough. If Ferrari is truly interested in "looking for people who can lead us into the future," he must look toward people not already overrepresented in the university's academic administration.
Patrick Harris/Skiff Staff
Flag misunderstood by some One week ago Monday, 46,000 people, mostly black, descended on the capitol of South Carolina to protest the state's flying of the Confederate flag over the capitol building. The protest - coordinated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People - coincided with the national observance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Another 500 people staged their own protest, waving the Confederate battle flag in defiance of the NAACP's protest. Obviously, the debate over the Confederate flag remains one of the nation's most controversial. However, the issue would not be so heated if there weren't any misrepresentations about what the flag represents. Most people see the Confederate flag as it was used during the Civil Rights Movement. During that time, it was used as a symbol of hatred by racists and bigots who never understood what it was supposed to represent. Therefore, I understand the feelings of my black friends when they see the Confederate flag because it was used so horribly against their parents during the 1960s and 1970s. But I do not like the flag identified as a symbol of all the bad uses to which it was put in the 1960s and 1970s. So what does the flag truly represent? Shelby Foote, perhaps the nation's best-known Civil War historian, said the Confederacy stood for law. While civil rights demonstrators who carried the flag were opposed to nearly all law - they wanted to abolish the Supreme Court and directives from the federal government - the Confederacy represented obedience to the law. That is, the South fought for the right of the states to retain powers guaranteed by the original Constitution. Eleven of the first 12 amendments had limited the powers of the national government, but six of the next seven, beginning with the 13th Amendment, vastly expanded those powers at the expense of the states. Essentially, the Confederacy stood for the law and its power to stop the federal government's domination of the states. True, the flag did fight in support of slavery, and the opponents' flag, the U.S. flag, was flown for the abolition of slavery. But that representation only developed in the course of the war. It was not the true cause of the war. It was an element in the cause, but it was not what the war was really fought about. In addition, the Confederate battle flag currently flying over the state capitol building in Columbia is a war memorial. It memorializes more than 18,000 South Carolinians who died in the war between the states. The flag was placed in its current location by the state legislature in 1962 in honor of the centennial of the war. Because no other war in the history of South Carolina claimed so many lives - including those of soldiers, sailors, Marines, civilians, the young, old, rich, poor, black and white - leaders decided that flying a flag representing the war would be an appropriate act. They did so out of respect for their state's dead citizens, not as an act of hatred. Ironically, Martin Luther King Jr. - whom the 46,000 protesters were supposedly honoring one week ago Monday - never once called for the abolition of Confederate symbols. He never registered any objection to his own Georgian flag, which has included the Confederate battle flag in its own state banner since 1956. As a powerful public speaker with a firm understanding of symbolism, King certainly would have utilized the symbolism of his native state's banner had he viewed it as a symbol of racism, oppression, white supremacy, the Ku Klux Klan or defiance to desegregation. It seems King understood the rich symbolism embraced by the Confederate flag. It represented the courage and bravery of states'-rights advocates trying to protect themselves from a huge, menacing federal government, fighting to uphold what they saw as the law as set forth by the Constitution. It wasn't until more than 100 years later, when ignorant people used the flag as a symbol of hatred and bigotry, that it lost its purity. But the flag does not have to remain a symbol of hatred. The closer we come to understanding its true intention, the closer we come to being able to appreciate its true value.
Managing Editor Kristen Naquin is a senior news-editorial journalism major from Pensacola, Fla. She can be reached at (knaquin1@aol.com). Online sales tax is unneeded, would hinder electronic
business As e-commerce sales are expected to triple this year, a growing political movement involving the implementation of an online sales tax has the potential for undermining the success of e-business. Now, most online businesses do not include a sales tax on any purchases from their sites. This same practice has been going on for years in the catalog and televised shopping club domains. However, the escalating spotlight e-commerce has been receiving these past few months has apparently made it a target for this congressional crusade. Recently this movement has even gained the support of Texas senators Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey Hutchison, who both argue that an online sales tax would keep so-called "brick and mortar" businesses from having to unfairly compete with their digital competitors. However, a Gallup Poll from last September of a thousand Internet users indicated that almost three-quarters of those polled were not in favor of an Internet sales tax, with only 14 percent in favor. Despite the fact that one can pretty much find anything for sale online, be it pizza to new cars, there are still some things that the average consumer most likely will not purchase online. For example, if a television goes bad in a busy household, the family involved will most likely buy a new television from a real-world department store, as opposed to ordering it online and having to wait several days for the order to be processed and shipped to them. Also, shipping on such an item may very well exceed the sales tax cost found when buying the item in a regular store. In fact, contrary to popular belief, e-businesses actually spend as much time gathering shipping and handling costs as regular businesses do with sales taxes. If we take away the shiny bells and whistles of this matter, we are simply left with a demand for another tax during a time when many Americans are calling for a reduction in taxes and tax rates in general. E-commerce will not hinder traditional retail businesses the way politicians would like you to believe. In all actuality, taxing e-commerce sales would hinder the growth of this new electronic industry before it even is given a chance to fully develop. For many consumer items, there is a clear-cut price advantage to purchasing the products online (mainly books and small electronic goods). However, according to NFO Research Inc., a whopping 75 percent of consumers have yet to use their computers to buy electronic goods. If anything, until that number substantially lowers, it would be manifestly ridiculous to create an online tax. Then again, the state of Texas claims that it lost over $300 million last year in tax revenue because of untaxed online sales. From the state's point of view, it looks at that $300 million as a sizable loss. From a consumer's point of view though, it should be viewed as a gain because that is money that we really saved. Besides, returning to the Texas government's standpoint, if there is a state online sales tax imposed across the country, the state of Texas, as well as many other states, would face losing even more considering that many e-businesses are located in California. As previously mentioned, mail-order catalogs and televised shopping clubs, as well as infomercials, have been untaxed since their inception. It honestly seems unjustifiable to single out online sales for taxation simply because it is the proverbial new kid on the block on the commercial front. Nonetheless, it is our freedom as consumers to find the best prices on goods no matter where they are located. Since many e-businesses do not have the high overhead costs that are found in "brick and mortar" stores, they will typically have lower prices on goods. On the other hand, not every consumer is swayed by the promise of lower prices, as evidenced by the fact that we do not see mobs of cars rushing to a gas station advertising lower gas rates than its competitors. Therefore, the argument that e-commerce must be taxed to keep the "brick and mortar" businesses from going out of business is essentially a weak attempt by the government to impose another unneeded tax on the citizens of this country, all the while regulating the Internet. If one will recall, several great wars have been spurred by unwarranted taxation, so who is to say that we may not see another for the same reason in the near future, albeit on a digital front?
Robert Davis is a senior computer science major from Garland. He can be reached at (rddavis@-delta.is.tcu.edu). Hopping on saddle, heading West to friendly Cowtown
don't make no lost cause A few weeks ago, I walked into my old high school newspaper room in cowboy boots and a Stetson. I drew in a breath and shouted in my best imitation Texas accent, "Howdy, y'all!" By the way they all looked at me, I could have been a sticky green blob with five eyes. But I knew what my friends were thinking. I was a lower life form: a hick, a redneck, a hillbilly. What they didn't know is that I've been a hick for a long time. I went to high school right outside Washington, D.C., in the northern Virginia suburbs, and the moment I mentioned TCU to my career counselor, I think she subconsciously shuddered. My school prided itself on the large amount of students who went on to the big name, Ivy League schools. Princeton. Yale. Harvard. It is a place where 90 percent of the student body go on to college and where kids are presented with Volkswagen Beetles on their birthdays. But many students drowned in the constant competitive nature of school. The want, or rather the need, to do anything for an A was overwhelming. The Washington metro mantra: "Kill or be killed" reverberated in every classroom. Teachers raised their eyebrows and students snickered when I expressed my excitement about getting into TCU. For my friends, they didn't understand why I wanted to go to "hick country." I asked how many of them had actually been across the Mississippi River. None. (Excluding the ones who flew to Aspen or Vail for skiing trips.) How many of them had been to Texas? None. Their lack of knowledge didn't matter. They still saw me as a lost cause. I was throwing away my chances at a "good" school, an Eastern school. And what was worse to them, I didn't care. I don't know what told me to go West. I had to get away from the perpetual rush that saturates the East Coast. Everything out here moves at a slower pace, except for the driving. I've never been to a place where people smile and say hello on the street to people they've never met and probably will never meet again. I'm still baffled by men that open doors for women. Pumping the radio up in my car, singing along to Trisha Yearwood, always got me strange looks before. And then there is the Texas land and sky. When the sun droops in the West and makes the clouds burst into fire, expanding into ranges and depth of orange, red and pink that can only challenge the imagination, I have to stop and take a breath. Why does a pick-up truck, a sleeping bag and a couple dogs sound better than a Mercedes, a studio apartment and political celebrities? Every time I think about these things, I can't help but smile. For the first time in my life, I feel like I've made all the right choices. When I went back to visit my friends for winter break, they didn't seem to recognize me. They saw a hick. A country bumpkin. They were unwilling to accept that I loved my college and Texas. And I finally decided that was OK. I wasn't like them in many ways anymore. I love open plains and friendly people. I suppose I am what they call a "hick." Just because I've moved to Texas, doesn't mean I have to trade in my Cosmo for Southern Living. I'll admit to buying cowboy attire and adopting "y'all" into my personal vocabulary, but I won't be bleaching my hair blond anytime soon. I will continue to explain TCU's acronym back in Washington, and I'll deal with the looks people give me. But my heart lit out for the territories a long time ago, and there ain't no going back now.
Laura Berry is a sophomore English major from Washington, D.C. She can be reached at (lmberry@delta.is.tcu.edu). |
The TCU Daily Skiff © 1998, 1999 Credits |