Watch for hugging hazards
Students should not be punished for showing affection

When I looked at the headlines of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Saturday, I couldn’t help but break into laughter. Staff writer Gina Best’s article about two Euless Junior High School students who were given detention for hugging in the school’s hallways was absolutely priceless. Just when you think our nation’s public school system couldn’t provide us with any more absurd incidents, we are offered up this gem to marvel at.

Although hugging isn’t listed as an offense at the school, it is severely frowned upon, and warnings are issued before detentions are given out. However, the girls got into more trouble since David Robbins, Euless Junior High School principal, described the hug as a “sexual encounter” because they “were fronted up, body to body.”

Wow, I never realized I was actually hitting on every girl I greeted with a “fronted up” hug and, heaven forbid, a kiss on the cheek. For anyone who’s reading this whom I may have hugged, I am truly sorry for sexually harassing you.

Also, I beg of you not to press charges. I meant no harm, and I’m not worth much if you try to sue. From now on I vow to hug people with just a pat on the shoulder, or maybe by fronting up our backs to each other to avoid sexual “fronted” contact.

Never mind that I wouldn’t want to risk contact with someone else’s buttocks.

Even worse, I just realized I sometimes hug my mother in a “fronted up” manner. I hope she hasn’t taken that the wrong way. Although, that would explain why she hasn’t been calling me as much lately.

It’s amazing how many times a day I see girls hugging each other. I know college is supposed to be a time for experimentation, but good grief, how is a guy ever supposed to get a date on this campus with so many girls apparently unavailable. It really makes me wonder what’s going on in those sorority houses as they promote their so-called ‘sisterhood.’

In all seriousness though, I find it to be pretty ridiculous that students are allowed to hold hands, which could potentially be stretched to be considered sexual, but they aren’t allowed to greet or comfort each other with a simple innocent hug. One of the girls was hugging the other just to calm her down because she was upset about something, and Robbins has the gall to describe the hug as sexual.

My only guess is Robbins didn’t get hugged enough by his parents and went through high school without any friends and is now trying to enact some sort of perverse revenge.

The sad thing is, my aforementioned reason is more plausible than the ‘hugging incident’ actually having been sexual in nature.

The two reasons Robbins gave for this rule were that hugging can lead to inappropriate touching and hugging can create peer pressure for those who don’t want that kind of contact. Personally, I can’t recall any instances of people hugging in public and suddenly beginning to grope each other (at least not while sober). But, maybe I’m just missing out.

Also, if you don’t want to be hugged, then just put out your hand. Was that really so hard?

It sounds to me this school needs to put just a little more emphasis on academics, at least based on my impression of the intelligence level of the school’s administration.

Jordan Blum is sophomore broadcast journalism major from New Orleans, LA.
He can be reached at (j.d.blum@student.tcu.edu).

There were more news stories in 1999 about or relating to Latinos on the three major television networks than ever before.

According to (www.freedomforum.org), if Elián Gonzalez and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson were taken out of the equation, Latino-related stories would have dropped to the lowest point in the five years since the National Association of Hispanic Journalists has been monitoring network news coverage for Latinos.

TCU has the problem of not having Gonzalez or Richardson on campus. More importantly, other than the lecture by Latina magazine’s Christy Haubegger, the TCU community has done nothing to promote Hispanic Heritage Month.

Darron Turner, director of intercultural and educational services, said the Haubegger lecture was too expensive to allow for many more events. But in the past, money was poorly spent, even when it was available.

Last year, some of the “memorable” events TCU hosted included a jalapeño eating contest and The Main’s Mexican food days.

During Black History Month in 1998, TCU was the host of a dominoes and a spades contest.

These events hardly represent the cultural learning that is the basis for having months relegated to an individual ethnicity or racial heritage.

The Skiff needs to cover all the issues and stories representing different ethnicities and races, but it takes everyone’s help.

Until then, Student Development Services has provided Salsa dancing lessons and a contest on Oct. 3 and 11 for the students to “learn” about the heritage of Hispanic people.

Professor says piece on “fraternity” points finger in wrong direction

Thank you for printing Mike Still’s hilarious satire “GOP not unlike fraternity” in the Sept. 19 Skiff. What a hoot!

Imagine likening the Republican party to a “beer-swilling, skirt-chasing” institution when in fact it is the Democratic party that has, to a man and woman, lined up in defense of Bill Clinton’s outrageous sexual antics in the Oval Office. Great irony there!

And how about saying that people who vote Republican can’t “expect much in return” for their votes when it was Democratic president John F. Kennedy who said, “Ask not what your country can do for you,” etc. — an uproariously funny way of showing how the Democratic party has changed since 1960, at least in its public appeal.

Then there’s Still’s side-splitting parody of affirmative action — asserting that opposition to it is “exclusionary,” when in fact affirmative action is all about excluding the most qualified applicants in order to meet racial quotas.

Another howler is Still’s claim to have learned his political principles in “fifth-grade civics class” — a biting comment on the immaturity that lies behind the Democrats’ politics of envy. Well, the rest of the article is equally entertaining.

I can’t remember when I’ve laughed so much, and I can’t think of any better way to point up the absurdity of leftist policies.

— Steven E. Woodworth
associate professor of history

Student claims Oliver should be praised for use of business skills

I don’t see why the police and administration of TCU are making such a big deal about William Stuart Oliver. As I understand the situation, TCU and the police have set out to ruin a young entrepreneur’s life.

Presumably, Oliver sought out a foreign supply of Valium at a lower cost and sold it on the domestic market. When Ford, IBM or Disney does this, they are validated by NAFTA; Oliver is arrested and expelled from school.

It is ludicrous that he is being expelled for practicing the basic tenants our business school preaches: free market economics, capitalism and free trade. A more fitting punishment, it would seem, would be the forced transfer of Oliver to the business program and three hours credit for the creation of his enterprise.
After all, with a $1,000 in a lock box in his room, he seemed to be quite proficient.

I’m tired of the hypocrisy in America:

1) We as humans have the inalienable right to control the processes relating to our bodies, yet when one attempts the free exercise of that right they face expulsion and imprisonment.

2) America holds on high capitalism and free market economics, but when a citizen attempts these practices they face expulsion and imprisonment.

Laws curtailing the right of an individual to regulate their own body are by definition invalid. Allowing corporations, a social construction, rights but denying those rights to an individual is ludicrous. Someone explain these contradictions, please.

— Chris Dobson
senior political science and history