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Absent absentees As most of us already know, it's another presidential election year. The media, especially in Texas - where one of the Republican front-runners is homegrown - have reminded us daily, even hourly, of the significance of this upcoming November. We've heard all the gruesome details of the primary elections in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Michigan and Arizona primaries are today, and we can expect the results of those elections to run as Wednesday's lead stories in newspapers and television and radio stations all over the country. Texas, of course, is not exempt from the Republican and Democratic primary elections. They are going to be held March 14, the Tuesday of TCU's spring break. It seems that timing could, therefore, pose a problem for students bound for South Padre Island, Cancun or the Rocky Mountains. With Texas residents making up 71.3 percent of TCU's 6,456 undergraduate students, we are looking at 4,603 votes for the new leader of our country lost to the sand, sun or snow. But the solution is simple: Vote absentee. But first, the basics: If you are not registered to vote, by all means, please register. Let's look at our own campus for an example of how one vote can make a difference: Sara Donaldson defeated Kenny Oubre by just 17 votes during last fall's election for the House of Student Representatives' vice president position. Next, log on to (http://www.sos.state.tx.us /function/elec1/early/reqabbm.htm), and simply fill in six little blanks to have a ballot sent to you. It's that simple. And there's no doubt that the process is just as simple in the 49 other states of the union. For once, let's be able to say that TCU students made a difference in an election.
Safety at risk with 'boots' on Wednesday, a curious occurrence caught the eye of several TCU students walking through the fire lane between the Tom Brown/Pete Wright Residential Community and Clark Hall. Someone, it seems, had once again parked his or her car right in front of the steel posts leading into the fire lane, a clear-cut fire safety violation. However, this common occurrence was overshadowed by the fact that TCU's finest had attached the infamous "boot" to the car. Now, as many of you may know, the "boot" is a device that can be attached to the tire of a car to effectively immobilize it. Police departments around the country have been using this tool for some time now to teach people who park in the wrong spot or have outstanding traffic tickets a good lesson. However, since the car was parked in a fire lane, it was ridiculous for the TCU police to boot the vehicle. If someone does not readily see why this is, let's examine the facts. The car was parked in the fire lane's entrance, thus preventing a fire truck from properly responding to any potential fires that could have broken out on the eastern side of Pete Wright or Clark Hall. The most reasonable solution to this problem would be (A) contact the driver and have him or her move the vehicle, or (B) tow the vehicle away at the owner's expense. Ironically, a sign implicitly states on one side of the steel posts that the area is a "Tow-away Zone," you can draw your own conclusions about that one. Instead, the TCU police opted to disable the car from being moved until the owner paid the boot removal and ticketing fees. If the objective was to remove the vehicle because it was parked illegally and thereby creating a safety fire hazard, how can the TCU police justify immobilizing the vehicle until the owner came to them and claimed it? One would think that after the controversy TCU's administration has been receiving over the fire safety inadequacies found in Winton-Scott Hall, they would be a little more mindful about disrupting the safety of its community members by assisting in creating an additional obstacle for the fire department. Instead, they booted a vehicle for over 10 hours in a fire lane (the vehicle was booted around 4 a.m. and released sometime after 2 p.m.). Being that a fire can erupt in a matter of minutes, can you imagine the chaos that a fire would have generated if a fire broke out in Clark Hall? The time it would take the fire department to get the TCU police to remove the boot, then call a tow truck to remove the vehicle would certainly cost many precious, life-saving minutes. What is just as shocking is the fact that this is not the first time TCU has improperly deployed the boot. Roughly two years ago, in the handicapped spot behind Milton Daniel Hall (on the side closest to Moncrief Hall), TCU police booted a vehicle that had been parked in the spot without a visible handicapped sticker. Once again, it is perfectly acceptable to boot vehicles illegally parked somewhere, but considering the fact that the spot is quite unique and specifically designed for granting convenience to handicapped citizens, it was an inane move. Hindering fire safety and taking away a spot from the handicapped are just two incidents at TCU involving the misuse of the boot. Who knows what other incidents like these have gone unreported over the last few years? TCU police need to realize that there is a time and place for everything. This kind of mentality is classified under the same common logic that asks, why should you shoot at an unarmed suspect when you can merely temporarily incapacitate him/her with pepper spray? While many may say this comparison is rather harsh, consider once again that many lives could have been in danger last Wednesday for almost half the day. We, as students, should not take this particular occurrence lightly, and it is high time the administration realizes that we are not interested in becoming fire statistics like the recent tragedy at Seton Hall. Robert Davis is a senior computer
science major from Garland, Texas. Texas SUV drivers should require special licensing Would it be a good idea if the state of Texas required driver training to anyone who purchases a large Chevrolet Suburban or Ford Expedition? Any vehicle taller than the driver should require an over-the-road truckers' license. Folks in the Lone Star state call these large wagons "Texas Cadillacs." The vehicles most often have a lone driver and travel with the broken white line smack down the center of the car. They are built like army tanks, pass other cars on the left, are incapable of slowing down for an emergency and are a hazard to the health and happiness of every other driver on the road. Doesn't it seem like the tiniest persons drive the biggest tanks, especially in the neighborhood around the university? Recently two women in line to check out at Albertsons were comparing which one of them had the best car. One woman had a Lincoln Navigator and the other woman had a new Cadillac Escalade. It was an ego trip because each woman felt safer in her chosen armored vehicle. When they left the grocery store parking lot, the Escalade had two "FOR SALE" signs taped on the front windshield. There was one sign on each the driver and passenger sides. Certainly she could not drive by visual flight rules (VFR) but had to navigate by instruments. There is new scientific evidence that these cars are, in fact, a menace in traffic. Kara Kockelman,a professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas in Austin, recently completed a study for the Transportation Research Board. She concluded that other drivers keep a safe distance from sport utility vehicles and light trucks. This causes all traffic to move more slowly. These cars are so big that fewer vehicles cross an intersection at a stoplight, causing traffic jams. Kockelman had one of her graduate students, Raheel Shabih, videotape thousands of cars going through two Austin intersections with stoplights. The movement of traffic slowed down due to the large vehicles' presence. The weight of the vehicles caused them to accelerate more sluggishly and therefore slow everybody down. Kockelman estimates that these jumbo vehicles are 1.4 times the size of a normal vehicle so fewer cars are getting through intersections. "People shy away from them. They eat up a lot of space," the UT professor is quoted as saying in The New York Times. Why not require a special driver's license for everyone who buys a large sport utility vehicle? Texas could pass legislation so no dealer would be allowed to deliver a vehicle until each driver in the household could prove they have completed 30 classroom hours and 10 driving hours in the vehicle. Curriculum for the course will include three hours of parking (including an hour in the Tom Thumb parking lot), two hours of staying in a single traffic lane and three hours of practice turning corners without hitting the curbs. The written test will include questions on signaling before changing lanes, rules on passing on the left and how to park in places - like in front of the Starpoint School - without completely blocking a driveway. Would it be too great a requirement to require a passing grade of 100 percent on the test? The final driving exam to receive the new TRL - Texas Roadhog License - would require driving tandem down Bellaire or University Drive as students race to class at 7:55 a.m. each day. If these tanks can slow students down, perhaps there is some small redeeming value and automobile dealers can continue to sell a limited number of them in Texas. There is one additional hazard. Recently a Fort Worth dealer delivered a Ford Excursion to a new owner. The Excursion is the biggest sport utility vehicle made on the planet and weights 7,200 pounds. The proud new owner forgot to measure the height of the garage door, and when the new owner pulled into the garage, he peeled off the roof of the Excursion from the windshield to the rear tailgate. It serves him right! David Becker is a graduate
student at Brite Divinity school from Pueblo, Colorado. |
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