University Press (Beaumont, Tex.), Vol. 59, No. 35, Ed. 1 Friday, February 11, 1983 Page: 3 of 4
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UNIVERSITY PRESS February 11, 1983*3
-fair
Com m©PIt Editorials/Qlen and Shearer/West
Viewpoint
Athletics need
participation
by community
Although the Student Govern-
ment Association has set up a task
force to study and improve school
spirit concerning athletics, it is up
against a brick wall.
Lamar is a commuter school,
with up to 10,000 students driving
back and forth to school each day.
That leaves approximately 2,000
living in the dorms.
It is hard to promote school
spirit when everybody has gone
home for the day. By 1 p.m. on
weekdays, the campus resembles
a West Texas ghost town without
tumbleweeds.
The task force is headed by SGA
president Tammy Stroud, who
should be commended for taking
on the project. It is almost a no-win
situation, but somebody has to do
it.
The problem lies not only in the
fact that Lamar is a commuter
school, but that some people just
don’t seem to care about Lamar
sports programs (i.e.: apathy).
For example, head basketball
coach Pat Foster has, along with
former coach Billy Tubbs, built a
winning program. But last year,
there were many games when the
Beaumont Civic Center was less
than full.
One reason people might not at-
tend basketball games is because,
with the longest current home-
court winning streak in the nation,
it is hard to get quality teams to
play here.
Not only does the winning
streak play heavily in major-power
teams not scheduling an away
game against Lamar, but also the
factor of lack of revenue generated
for the visiting school by having
only 5,700 seats in the Civic
Center.
With a new 10,000-seat campus
arena scheduled for completion in
time for the 1984-85 season, big-
name teams could find it more
fiscally attractive to play in Beau-
mont.
Although a long shot, it may be a
solution (to relieve the apathy) for
the basketball program. Another
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Politics becoming pure art form
By DICK WEST
United Press International columnist
WASHINGTON—Modern art, as a visit
to almost any museum will confirm, has
branched off into many different direc-
tions.
Some artists paint only stripes. Others
specialize in painting circles. Still others
employ the splatter technique. And now we
have politicians who have become quite
adept at drawing parallels.
One parallel that is frequently on the
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Editor..........................John Tisdale
Managing Editor..............Clyde Hughes
Editorial Page Editor......David Harrington
Entertainment Editor..........Adrian Pretz
Photo Editor..................Jan Couvillon
Sports Editor....................Joe Rutland
Advertising Manager..........UsaHoffpauir
Advertising RepreoentaUve.................
Margene Lenamon
Cartoonist....................Lance Hunter
Reporters......Elaine Butler, Jim Kilpatrick,
Gail Marceaux, Alice Nolan,
Barbara Rogers, Sandra Schroeder,
Fred Tramel, Sue Wright
Photographer............Martha Jones Smith
Sports Assistants............Richard Bonnin
Jay Toler
Advertisiag Assistant......Vooovia Mllbum
Typesetters....Karen Dwyer, Baxter Faulk,
Ingrid Faulk
drcnlatloa..................Cynthia Brown
Office Assistant............Vickie McIntyre
Production Manager
Gloria Post
Assistant Director of Student Publications
Jill Scoggins
Director of Student Publications
Howard Perkins
Publisher
Student Publications Board
George McLaughlin, Chairman
The University Press is the official student
newspaper of Lamar University, and
publishes every Wednesday and Friday during
long semesters, excluding holidays and
Wednesdays immediately following holidays.
Offices are located at P.O. Box 10066, 200
Setxer Student Center, University Station,
Beaumont, Texas 77710.
Opinions expressed in editorials and col-
umns are those of the student management of
the newspaper. These opinions are not
necessarily those of the university administra-
tion.
drawing boards nowadays depicts the na-
tional economy as President Reagan’s
Vietnam. And indeed you don’t have to
know anything about art to recognize cer-
tain similarities. Just fill in the numbers
with the colors indicated below and you,
too, can draw a parallel suitable for fram-
ing:
1. Quicksand brown—Bit by bit, the
United States has bogged down
economically, just as America gradually
escalated its Vietnam mission.
2. Lantern green—We even have
economic analysts saying, in effect, that
they can see the light at the end of the tun-
nel.
First, according to these experts, there
was supposed to be an economic upturn by
the middle of 1962. Then recovery was
foreseen for the latter part of the year. And
now these same prognosticators are
predicting a revivial of prosperity
sometime in 1983.
If that doesn’t remind you of the military
expertise we used to get from Vietnam,
you must be younger than you look.
3. Joble8s bine—Pro-Vietnam observers
used to make a big deal out of casualty
reports, claiming heavy losses suffered by
the enemy justified the American
presence in Vietnam.
Now we are getting corollary interpreta-
tions of unemployment figures.
Pro-administration economists cite the
monthly jobless count as justification for
National Press Run briefs
Good news for college papers: Recruit-
ment advertising is expected to bounce
back in 1983, according to the Nationwide
Advertising Service. “Help Wanted” ads
fell 20 to 30 percent in the recession of 1982.
But fourth-quarter ad billings were up
sharply, says Nationwide, and a moderate
increase is predicted for the coming year.
* * *
College humorists from the past decades
will be featured in a Carlinsky Features
syndication offering.
tax cuts and other policies Reagan has ad-
vocated.
4. Domino black—During the Vietnam
War we constantly heard warnings that if
South Vietnam fell, other Southeast Asian
countries would topple like dominoes into
the communist camp.
Somewhat the same effect can be spot-
ted in the economic picture.
The closing of an industrial plant in one
section of the country causes a disastrous
loss of business for another kind of com-
pany in another section of the country.
5. Blame-thro wing yellow—Just as Presi-
dent Johnson used to assert that he in-
herited the commitments that involved
American troops in Vietnam, so President
Reagan has blamed the recession on the
economic policies of previous administra-
tions.
6. Defoiiation gray—Some of the anti-
recession measures being urged on the
president sound almost as bizarre as far-
out military actions once proposed in Viet-
nam. As yet, however, nobody has ad-
vocated nuking Social Security back to the
Stone Age.
The authenticity of these analogies I
leave for others to judge, but they make a
beautiful parallel when laid out on canvas.
The next thing we can look for is for one of
Reagan’s potential rivals to claim he has a
plan for ending the recession.
Then, when pressed for details, the can-
didate will say he can’t disclose it until
after the 1984 election.
The pieces, to be drawn from “College
Humor,” a Harper & Row anthology, will
include material written for college
National Press Run
publications by Bennett Cert, Robert Ben-
chley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rube Goldberg,
Milton Caniff, S.J. Perelman, Dr. Seuss,
Art Buchwald and Garry Trudeau.
The second part of the two-part series
will feature timeless campus humor that
has survived many generations of
students.
‘Help Wanted’ ads rebounding
Best interests
for truckers
not pursued
thing that might help LU spirit is a
winning football program.
In an area where God and high
school football are mentioned in
the same breath, a winning foot-
ball program at Lamar would cer-
tainly get the community involved.
Ken Stephens is a good and
disciplined man; better yet, he is a
helluva football coach. His record
at Central Arkansas proves that
point.
Stephens is recruiting more
local talent than ever before, and
the high school football fanatics
will be drawn into the stadium
because of this.
People can rest assured that in
about three years, Stephens will
have the football program on track.
In the final analysis of the lack
of a winning football program, the
fact that Lamar is a commuter
school, along with just plain
apathy on the part of students and
community, has resulted in lack of
participation.
If you have a comment or criticism to
make about any campus issue or would
like to make a rebuttal to any news arti-
cle or editorial, send in a letter to the
editor.
Letters to the editor are printed in the
Fair Comment section of the University
Press on Fridays.
Deadline for submitting letters is 5
p.m. Monday for the following Friday
edition. Because of space limitations, let-
ters should be limited to 250 words, and
they must include the writer’s name,
hometown, classification and a
telephone number where the writer can
be reached if necessary.
The University Press reserves the
right to edit letters for spelling, punctua-
tion and journalistic style. Libelous
material will not be published.
The five cents-a-gallon gasoline
tax of late has stirred a furor with
the nation’s independent truckers.
When Congress approved, and
President Reagan signed, the bill
for the gasoline tax, the truckers
threatened to go on strike if the bill
goes into effect (tentatively in
April).
Since the signing of the tax bill,
there have been scattered in-
cidents of violence (including
shots fired) against truckers who
refused to go on strike.
Such incidents of violence are
unfortunate, especially at a time
when the economy is in such a
fearful state.
The majority of the non-striking
truckers, because of economically
“tough times,” could not afford to
stop driving. With families to feed,
they considered going on strike to
be foolish, to say the least.
The few truckers that are on
strike have been accused of “pull-
ing the trigger” against those
deciding to stay on the road. A
spokesman for the independent
truckers said they were the ones
being shot at.
Despite the recent terrorism,
Reagan said that the-law would
stay in effect, that to change it-
because of the terrorism would be
the worst of all reasons to do so.
The truckers’ strike is a good ex-
ample of a union or a group not
representing the best interests of
the majority of its members.
Were the forced violence to work
in this instance, how would this af-
fect unions across the country?
Our area, where shaky union-
management relations have been a
hornet’s nest for the past two
years, may be affected most of all,
considering past incidents of
violence in area strikes.
If a group considers that they
need violence to persuade those in
their own organization to go along
with their concerns, it could foster
a bad reputation for that group and
its leaders.
But the time will come when all
union leaders in the U.S. will show
true integrity in advocating
peaceful means of settling
disputes, even if they be peaceful
strikes.
The sound of music—
FM radio style losing its originality
By MAXWELL GLEN
and CODYSHEARER
1' Field Enterprises Syndicate
WASHINGTON-Often described by
New Yorkers as a city lacking cultural
and spiritual depth, Washington learned
recently that it would lose a local institu-
tion that suggests an opposite impres-
sion.
A progressive radio station long
recognized as a national pioneer in pro-
moting new sounds and fledgling musi-
cians, WHFS-FM announced that it will
be sold to a Rhode Island media con-
glomerate and would assume a newsier
format. Many people in this city, par-
ticularly its younger residents, were
heartbroken.
Like many FM stations spawned dur-
ing the late 1960s, WHFS challenged the
top-40 predictability of AM radio. Its pro-
gramming dodged commercials for
album play, introducing Washingtonians
to artists such as rocker Bruce Springs-
teen, folk-rock/bluesman David
Bromberg and, more recently, the pop-
rock Go-Go’s and new wave’s Human
League.
Unlike most other “progressive" FM
stations, however, WTO'S refused to go
mainstream during the 1970s. Its pro-
gramming remained too eclectic to
classify: In a single hour, it has been
known to mix rock, new wave, jazz,
Texas swing, latin, English folk, fusion,
rock-a-billy, rhythm and blues and reg-
gae.
For many Washingtonians, life without
WHFS will be akin to confinement in a
cell fed continuously with top-40 hits.
Weekly “play lists,” based on record
sales, already dictate what most FM sta-
tions air here and in other markets.
Indeed, as economics pinch budget-
conscious stations, many owners have
found that outside companies can select,
tape and supply-“music packages” more
efficiently than an in-house music direc-
tor. As a result, radio pre-programming
is a booming business.
In little more than a year, for example,
200 stations have begun to pay a Dallas-
based firm $1,000 a month to provide
24-hour music via satellite. Subscribers
to the Satellite Music Network (SMN)
rebroadcast to local audiences live pro-
grams which originate in Chicago. SMN
programs include station IDs, news and
commercial breaks and generic time
checks, and come in either rock, country
or “beautiful music” formats.
Meanwhile, hundreds of stations
routinely purchase reel-to-reel tapes
from “music consultants.” Tapes pro-
duced by TM Productions, of Dallas, can
provide continuous play on standard
studio equipment for days on end. Sta-
tion managers can flip a switch and walk
away. The technique is about as spon-
taneous as Muzak.
“It’s the McDonald’s of radio," admit-
ted Benue O’Brien, manager of WWWK-
FM, a Warrenton, Va., station which
once resembled WHFS in format, but
now takes its music via satellite. “They
cook out everything but what they know
is going to be absolutely successful.”
Centralized programming, of course,
means that fewer people determine what
Americans hear on their radios. In turn,
reliance on record sales assures little air
time for the new and unhyped music that
has made progressive FM radio ex-
citing.
“Musically, we’ve been pretty conser-
vative up to now,” said Satellite’s pro-
gramming chief George Williams. “We
have to make sure that an artist is expos-
ed in every part of the country prior to
going with a particular record.”
While both consultants and record pro-
moters admit that pre-programming has
overtaken the radio industry, they say
that little can be done to alter the situa-
tion.
The Federal Communications Com-
mission, which has purged a number of
low-watt college stations in the last
several years, has rejected a proposal
that would open the airwaves to more
AM stations. Meanwhile, cable radio
syndicates have begun to sell program-
med audio channels to cable TV
subscribers, further reducing demand
for diverse local programming.
Losers in this centralization abound.
The already-slumped music industry,
whose long-term profits depend on the
success of new artists, is sapping its own
lifeblood.
Cut off from the new and different,
many listeners will also miss out on the
depth and breadth of contemporary
music. Whatever its technological
wonders, the dark side of centralized
programming may be personified by the
rollerskater who, ears wrapped in a
Walkman, listens unwittingly to music
fed from a tape machine 3,000 miles
away.
‘Deadheads ’ mix youth, middle age
By MAXWELL GLEN
and CODY SHEARER
©Field Enterprises Syndicate
LOS ANGELES—A lot of Americans might have been
mystified or embarrassed.
In a park adjacent to the Oakland (Calif.) Civic Auditorium,
about 1,000 Grateful Dead devotees had set up camp for a
series of concerts that the rock band gives at every year’s end.
The campers seemed to have pitched their tents in 1967 and
awakened in 1963. Ranging in age from mid-teens to middle
age, many dressed, talked and caroused as if in the pages of a
Rolling Stone magazine retrospective.
As always with “Deadheads,” they bore a reverential
respect for a band that carved its niche in rock history more
than a dozen years ago.
Of course, for every American who’s witnessed (some might
say “experienced”) a Grateful Dead concert, there are pro-
bably a hundred who haven’t.
Most people have only heard about the marathon jam ses-
sions, goliath sound systems and pervasive aroma of a certain
substance for which the concerts are legendary. Given their
druthers, Jerry Garcia and his band have always preferred
the San Francisco Bay Area to stranger environs.
Resisting industry tendencies to, as Neil Young put it, “burn
out and fade away,” the Dead has maintained an unmatched
cult following among a diverse cross-section of people.
Deadheads are renowned for giving up jobs and college
careers to follow their heroes on tour. Not long ago, the band
took its act to the base of Egypt’s pyramids, and many
pilgrims scrimped and saved just to be on hand. *
Inevitably, such behavior elicits contempt even from those
who might have revered the band way back when.
“The Dead are like bikers, relics of a dinosaur era,” smirks
electronic synthesizer mogul David Friend, 36, who says the
band’s following is a “pathetic” bunch.
Yet the jaded only have to look around and listen to realize
that it’s the old songs that bind us together. Teenagers and
middle-agers sit side by side at concerts; college students still
go hog-wild over the Supremes; FM stations judiciously mix
the old with the new in their programming.
The Dead has merely survived to remind us that rock ’n’ roll
is another cultural revolution that has become an institution;
it has helped to prove that there was more to rock’s popularity
than the rebellion of its origins.
To be sure, eventually some new social upheaval will crane
to tear apart generations and relegate the Dead to the place
that 1940s bandleader Tommy Dorsey notched for himself in
another era.
But, as out-of-date as they seem, it’s still too early to write
off the Deadheads as a group that took a wrong turn
somewhere in the 1970s. If rock is the glue that holds us
together, they and we are made of the same stuff.
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Tisdale, John. University Press (Beaumont, Tex.), Vol. 59, No. 35, Ed. 1 Friday, February 11, 1983, newspaper, February 11, 1983; Beaumont, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth499593/m1/3/?q=%22Business%2C+Economics+and+Finance+-+Communications+-+Newspapers%22: accessed July 10, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Lamar University.