Battle of the Booze

While Harvard's Undergraduate Council members go about their business quietly, their peers at University of Massachusetts-Amherst have been battling for beer. They have been trying to change a college rule that prohibits students over 21 from having more than 24 cans of beer in their rooms at any given time. They want to expand the limit to 30 cans. This impetus for this drive has been the launch of larger cases of beer which would not conform to university regulations. The administration toyed with the idea, but several days ago decided to maintain the original limit of 24. They argued that allowing students to have more beer in their room would promote drunkenness--rather like combating obesity by setting a cap on the number of Twinkies and other sundry Hostess snack cakes that one can own.

This rule raises a remarkable and baffling array of questions and problems. How does one exactly enforce the limit? Do wandering proctors and administrators periodically stop by dorms, notebook in hand, poking around for cans and bottles? Perhaps a team of forensic experts who can determine whether the slew empty cans on the floor are evidence of recent infractions or a casual approach to cleaning?

Moreover, having beer cans as the standard unit for measurement raises an array of problems. The student government must work to develop a system of conversion where other spirituous liquors are pegged to cans of beer, just like currency exchange rates. A bottle of red wine would equal however many cans of beer, a bottle of port somewhat more and a bottle of bourbon would equal quite a few. University officials could carry the exchange rates on a convenient laminated card and rapidly work out whether a room owning a half bottle of amontillado, a third of a liter of brandy and jug of moonshine had broken the laws.

Perhaps like representatives manipulating the tax code to benefit sorghum growers and bauxite mines, administrators could hope to shape students taste with favorable exchange rates for quality products. A couple of changes to the fine print and U-Mass Amherst students will soon be known throughout the Commonwealth for their subtle and sophisticated taste in drinks.

--Charles C. DeSimone

Aqua-Man Combats Campaign Doldrums

The national media wasted precious inches this week in its endless, dry and rather pointless coverage of the Super Tuesday primary elections. Blinded by its incomprehensible quest to champion the story with the fewest number of interesting angles, it overlooked a veritable news gem which broke early Monday morning at the California Yacht Club in Los Angeles. Instead of reading about how Al "the Bore" Gore and George W. "I-went-to-Yale-so-I-stink" Bush were probably going to capture instead their respective party nominations (duh), we should have found the famous French adventurer Remy Bricka adorning the front pages.

Who, you may ask, is Remy Bricka? The pretentious thing would be to make the reader feel intellectually inadequate for not recognizing such an important pop culture icon. But since the writer herself had never heard of the man before she was assigned the story, we'll pity the reader somewhat. Quite simply put, Remy Bricka is a man who can walk on water--literally.

In fact, Bricka might just be the world's expert on water walking. He accomplishes the feat by balancing himself with a double-sided paddle on a pair of cance-like skis--and for overnight trips, he uses as his "rest stop" the catamaran that he drags behind him and which is stocked with supplies. In 1988, Bricka walked 3,502 miles across the Atlantic Ocean from the Canary Islands to Trinidad--a stunt which landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records for longest distance walked across water (though one has to wonder what kind of competition he was really getting in that category).

And this Monday morning, as hundreds of frazzled journalists followed hundreds of frazzled campaign staffers and their equally frazzled (though hiding it quite well) candidates from bake sale to support group to school at a hundred different press conferences with equally bad lighting and equally stilted speeches, Bricka set off--unfettered by the petty questions of politics--into the wide blue yonder. He plans to walk the Pacific Ocean to Sydney, a trip which will take him across 7,800 miles in six months, provided he struggles forward at an average of 14 hours a day. One oceanographer was quoted in the New York Times as saying: "People are lost at sea every year because of this foolishness--this guy sounds like an excellent candidate."

Foolishness? Perhaps. Well, definitely. But disregarding the danger of death by strange sea animals, high winds, dehydration, etc., it might just seem tempting to some of these politicians and their entourages. But, seeing as we're not as dumb as Bricka, we won't hold our breath waiting.

--Alixandra E. Smith

Checking Back With the Joneses

Texas Gov. George W. Bush's speech at Bob Jones University has come to be held as a symbol of intolerance and bigotry that his opponents can wield against him at will. Prior to New Hampshire, Dubya had tried to remain moderate, but his loss forced him to veer to the right in order to shore up his nomination. Rather than lean to the far right, Dubya chose more of an all out sprint. This tendency of the Republican Party to force its candidates to move to the right during the primaries has been its method of choice in recent elections for political suicide in the general election.

At the time of Dubya's appearance at Bob Jones University, the school had a ban on interracial dating and an anti-Catholic reputation. The decision of a candidate who wants to campaign on inclusion and compassionate conservatism to make an appearance at such a university said more about his position on tolerance than any debate. The press rightfully slammed him for the speech and this was supposed to hound him well into the general election.

And then Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University, declared on Larry King Live that the school had dropped its ban on interracial dating. Before Dubya starts raising more money, now that he has solidified the nomination, he needs to send some of his pricey spin doctors out to draw attention to this change in policy.

This change has serious ramifications for how we deal with intolerance. Rather than deride it and put a blanket over it, perhaps what we really ought to do is bring into the light and draw attention to it. Whether or not Dubya deserves credit for this change is debatable considering he did not express any regret about the policy during his speech. Nevertheless, he had no right to campaign as an environmentalist or as advocate for breast cancer research. If Dubya is going to insist on spending obscene amounts of money on his campaign, the funds should at least go towards something he almost has the right to take credit for.

--Benjamin M. Grossman