| Hang It Up
Riiiiiiiing! They're everywhere: in our cars, in our classes and even in The Main. No matter where we go, we cannot escape the call of a cellular phone. Last week, one girl was talking on her phone on her way to class. When she was walking back after class, she was talking on the phone again. Did she start another conversation, or did she never end the first one? At the TCU women's soccer game Wednesday against Southern Methodist University, two women's handbags started ringing within seconds of each other. "Was that my phone or yours?" one girl asked her friend when the second phone started ringing. "Everyone's talking on their cell phones," another woman said to the caller on the other end of her phone conversation. No, not everyone. Some of us are holding strong, resisting the temptation to be available at all times. Everyone deserves to be away from a phone for some portion of the day. There's no need to talk on the phone in the car or while walking to class. Surely there's nothing that pressing that we students can't wait an hour or two until we get home to use the phone. TCU is filled with ears that are connected to digital phones, cellular phones and every other kind of telecommunications device that has been invented. TCU gives us e-mail. They give those of us who live on campus our own phone lines. Do we really need to be any more accessible? Can we be any more accessible? There's a time and a place for everything. Talk to you later. Bye.
Heed warnings against smoking All of you cigarette smokers, listen up. Your god has finally spoken, and it seems the apocalypse may be near. Philip Morris, Co., the world's largest cigarette man-ufacturer, announced Oct. 13 that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer and various other unpleasant diseases. Duh. The worlds of medicine and science have been telling us this for years, but the tobacco industry has stubbornly refused responsibility for so many deaths. Until now. OK, call me cynical, but I find it hard to believe that Philip Morris has suddenly had a revelation and realized that its product kills people. I find it equally difficult to swallow the idea that this corporation has, out of the goodness of its collective heart, decided to go on a campaign to save the smokers of the world from a gruesome, drawn-out death of lung cancer or emphysema. I'd like to think that the company has finally accepted the truth and will fight to reform society, but I'm too grounded in reality, or maybe pessimism, to believe that theory for longer than it takes to finish laughing. I find it far more likely that this is a strategy for heading off the increasing number of lawsuits against the tobacco industry. Whether that be the case or not, such an admission should at least help stem the flow of litigation by people claiming they or a loved one have lung cancer because they didn't know cigarettes were choking their respiratory systems all those years. Now, come on. Medicine and science have been screaming at us for years: Put down the cigarette and back away slowly with your hands in the air! In practical application, I don't know what Philip Morris intends to accomplish. If you aren't going to listen when the cardiologist tells you not to smoke, what makes a tobacco company think you will heed its warning either? Those of you who care so little about the long-term mutilation of your health and the short-term destruction of your breath, aren't likely to listen to the tobacco companies' confessions of involuntary manslaughter by means of nicotine. You will continue to smoke until you can't hold the cigarette up to the hole in your neck because your arms don't move that high since that stroke you suffered last month. Or maybe you'll cough yourself to death because your blackened lungs are asphyxiating. Cigarette companies can acknowledge the dangers of their product, but it won't help those of you who are either carelessly or deliberately smoking your lungs into a s'more-like state of smoked tissue overgrown with white marshmallows of cancer. No, you need the nicotine fix of today more than the extra years later with your grandchildren. You can't be forced to stop smoking, as excellent of an idea as that may be. So who can be saved by this admission by Philip Morris? How about the kids who haven't proceeded very far with the process of extended suicide? Can the tobacco industry convince them not to buy its lifeblood? Let's be realistic. Contrary to a belief that is inexplicably popular, I don't think people begin the smoking habit because they see commercials that portray it as cool. They get it from you, all right? They learn it from watching you. Not the TV, not the newspapers heralding Philip Morris' brave new world. You. Me. All of us. If there weren't some kind of mystique, some adult glamour about smoking, why would anyone start? When you look at it objectively, it's a method of slow suicide with no redeeming factors other than a drug-induced feeling of well-being that human companionship, exercise or caffeine can easily produce without the fatal side effects. Philip Morris Co., admits that smoking causes lung cancer. How nice. Are they going to continue to produce and sell their Marlboros? No doubt. So fear not, high priests and priestesses of the nicotine god. If you can't change your faith, your idol will still be available at the local Albertson's for $3.50 per pack.
Weekend Editor Pamela Woodhead is a senior English major from Arlington. She can be reached at (pawoodhead@delta.is.tcu.edu). What's in a name? More than you think Freshman. Sophomore. Junior. Senior. For obvious reasons - the main one being we live, study and work in a university environment - we use those terms regularly. "He's dating some freshman" or "I took that course sophomore year" are phrases I hear several times in the course of any 24-hour period. But earlier this month the Faculty Senate narrowly approved - by a vote of 13 to 12 - a proposal to change the name of "freshman seminar" to "first-year seminar." And although Roger Pfaffenberger, chairman of the Senate, said a move to substitute first, second, third and fourth year for freshman, sophomore, junior and senior in all university references is "at least 10 years down the pike," a close examination of those words' meanings and implications urges us to adopt the change sooner. The earliest reference to the word "freshman" as it applied to university students appeared in the mid- to late-1630s, when Harvard University opened as a ministerial training school for men and the first institution of higher education in the country. According to The Oxford English Dictionary, the word was formerly used to refer to any beginner or novice. Therefore, it seemed an appropriate word choice to describe the men who were embarking on their collegiate journeys. But we all know that higher learning has made tremendous strides since 1636. According to recently released figures from TCU's Office of Institutional Research, 869 women enrolled at TCU this fall, compared to 557 men. With 61 percent of the student body female and only 39 percent male, it seems exclusive and inappropriate to continue to refer to all first-year students as freshmen. Now let's examine the exact meaning and origin of the word "sophomore." The Oxford English Dictionary describes a sophomore as "one who is pretentious, bombastic, inflated in style or manner, immature, crude, superficial." And the second edition of Bartlett's American Dictionary, published in 1859, describes sophomoric as "a term applied to speeches and writings containing high-sounding words but little sense." Consider this 1889 excerpt from Literary World and evaluate what it implies about sophomores and their critical thinking skills: "The question of public worship is discussed rather sophomorically by Rev. D.S. Clark, and more thoughtfully and soberly by an unnamed pastor." The terms "junior" and "senior," by their very nature, imply inferiority and superiority. In fact, The Oxford English Dictionary lists "lower than, of less importance" as a definition of "junior" and "of highest importance" as a definition of "senior." Does that imply that a senior is more important to the university than a junior? By using different terms, however, university officials could make clear that one is not more important than the other, but one has just been a part of the university system for a longer period of time. Bruce Elleman, a TCU assistant professor of history who argued against the name-change proposal, said it would create confusion for the 300 transfer students who enroll each year. They would see "first-year seminar" listed in the registration booklet and instinctively register for it, he said. But instructors, expecting to see the work of students fresh out of high school, would rightfully grant higher grades to these students than to the "genuine" first-year students who are not yet experienced in taking college exams and writing college papers, Elleman said. The course would eventually become known as an "easy 'A'" among transfer students, he said. Elleman raises a valid concern. But the solution is simple: In adopting the name-change policy, university officials should blatantly state that "first, second, third and fourth year" refer to the number of years in any institution of higher learning, not just TCU. And adopting such a written clarification and understanding seems especially important in light of the fact that several other national universities and liberal arts colleges are replacing traditional terms of classification with different ones. A 1990 Chronicle of Higher Education article cited five schools that are doing so, including San Antonio's Trinity University, which voted in 1986 to use "first year" instead of "freshman" in all official university publications. Many of the universities' name-change policies date back to the early 1980s, and I suspect many more have implemented similar policies since the article was published nearly 10 years ago. But let's not change our policy simply because everyone else is doing so, although following suit is a good motivation if we want to compete on the national level. Putting that reason aside, however, there is still more than sufficient cause for a change: students. We must erase the stereotypes associated with them simply because of how long they have been in college. Refusing to do so is, in a word, sophomoric.
Campus Editor Kristen Naquin is a fourth-year news-editorial journalism major from Pensacola, Fla. She can be reached at (knaquin1@aol.com). Letters to the editor Angelou should receive condolences, not criticisms I am writing in response to the article about the Honors Program financial losses concerning Maya Angelou's cancellation. I feel that Ms. Angelou has unnecessarily been put into a bad light. Let's put her reputation for cancelling appearances aside. She is a very positive influence on society today and would make a good role model for people young and old. She lost her brother last week. We should be sending our condolences instead of scoffing because some money was lost. I'm sure a majority of speakers would cancel an engagement or put an appearance on hold if someone in their family was gravely ill. If a speaker with a 100 percent appearance rate cancelled because his or her family member was ill, would their credibility for making obligations be questioned? I think not. James Jones freshman computer science major
Both school pride, heckling important at sporting events In regard to Tim Skaggs' column on Oct. 12, "Show of Character Needed," I found some problems with it. I am a TCU student with a brother in intercollegiate sports. I have attended many out of town games. The result I have found is that the heckling that is done at other stadiums does bother the concentration of the other team. My brother has mentioned horrible places to play due to heckling. Home field advantage is a great factor in any sport. If you have rabid fans to back you up it only helps out your sport. My brother and I both played at a high school with attendance that averaged more than 20,000 at home games. The fans were always on our side. This always helped in our advantage. If our fans were this enthusiastic, loud and obnoxious the opposing team would go home hating Fort Worth. No one should ever put down the band. They do an excellent job. They play to annoy the other team, and they always put on a great half-time show. At most stadiums that I have been to, they put the students behind the visiting teams bench and heckle the players. Never say that a little heckling means that this university does not have class. Jon Paul Bobo sophomore premajor
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