University of Arkansas Monticello - Boll Weevil Yearbook (Monticello, AR)

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foreign policy. And it’s our fault. Americans have become a bit to nosy concerning government ; affairs. At the risk of condoning covert activities, had the CIA not had its hands bound by the purges of the seventies and subsequently its effectiveness drastically diminished, many of | our problems could have been foreseen. American intelligence actually warned of potential | dangers to Americans in Iran, but the Carter administration characteristically listened with deaf ears. Though far from the point of desperation, America and the rest of the “‘free” world is staking | much on the outcome of November’s election. The question is, do we stick with an ex-peanut farmer, or elect an ex-actor as our next President? As for this writer, politics and acting seem much nearer kin than politics and peanut farming, even if the actor is typically | characterized (especially by | Pravda) as as ‘“‘warmonger.”’ Priorities and Progress A special interest group is a section of humanity, or in our case, Americans, opposed or devoted to a certain ideal or situation. As a rule, in order for them to have any success they must deal with a subject common to many Americans, and sympathetic to the same. Civil rights groups represent a special interest, and rightfully so as our country is founded, or supposedly so, upon justice, freedom, and equality for all of its citizens. The particular special interest that is so newsworthy today is that anti-nuclear group. They’re mothers and housewives and doctors, automobile mechanics, ex-flower children and earth- people, lawyers, politicians, in short, regular people like you and I, screaming ‘‘please save our children,” and “‘Hell no, we won’t glow.”’ With those battle cries they’ve lobbied their way into the Democratic Platform committees and have ala Ted Kennedy written in a provision that declares that nuclear energy IMPEACH HIM ABSURD PT, INFLATION THERMOMETER gradually be dumped like so much radioactive waste. This was effected at precisely the same time that Jimmy Carter, virtually uncontested Democratic nominee, proclaimed to a Venice Summit the development of that same fuel source. Small wonder that Europe has lost faith in the U.S.’s ability to make a clear decision. Nuclear alternatives? They are scarce. Oil is out of the question. Coal reignites the anti-pollution lobby and will result in the destruction of many beautiful acres, though it is our most practical alternative and considerably less expensive than oil. Solar energy as a sole source of power on a large scale is out of the question until our solar technology has time to advance. Maybe when we can post solar collectors on satellites orbiting earth and micro-wave the energy down to power stations, it will be feasable. For now, though, the idea of solar collectors for every home is not only grossly uneconomical but absurd. The modern home could not possibly function continuously on solar energy without a battery storage system too large to consider. Student Life 123 nnn Dace ee C“C:isCtCC

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Son tS ON HIS VACATION THERE 122 Student Life Decade of Crisis Decade of Decision The sixties were a decade of social turmoil, of antiwar and civil rights protest, of social upheaval. The seventies were a decade of change. The eighties will probably be remembered as a decade of crisis, a word which has come to be used as much as is the word “apathy.” Individual situations vary about the nation. Some people fare better than others, but as Americans we are becoming more ALSO... affected as a whole by occurances abroad. As the eighties begin, we face a crisis in leadership, a crisis in Iran, a crisis in Afghanistan, and fuel and inflation crises. As of this writing, there is no end in sight to any of the crises, unless possibly to that of leadership, and apparently it will not be resolved until November, when we’ll face another four years under Jimmy Carter or a change to a somewhat ominous Ronald Reagan. Old-timers assure me that we’ve yet to experience “‘hard times’ despite all of our economical woes. Perhaps that is the only optimistic assessment available in regard to our current situation - we’ve a long way to go before we sink to the low of the Great Depression. It’s true that we continue to zoom around in our cars, though gasoline prices have nearly doubled in the past two years, we continue to pay our rent and put food on the table, though inflation rose to over eighteen percent last year. We continue to feel a modicum of security though the Soviets have surpassed us in ground, sea, strategic air and nuclear strike capabilities. Our Middle-Eastern ace-in-the-hole, Iran, has been wrenched from our grasp. It’s next-door neighbor, Afghanistan, is under total Soviet control. The Soviets have established strongholds in Yemen, Somolia and other strategic points in the Mideast while we’ve condescendingly turned our backs with such iron-gutted statements as ‘‘the status-quo is unacceptable” (Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). We’ve lost our credibility, and consequently power, among our NATO allies and Japan through a flaky hit-and-miss (mostly miss)

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124 Student Life Synthetic fuels are an option, but one that will take time and money to develop, and will probably not be much cheaper than oil. It will reduce our dependence upon the Mideast, though, which is the ultimate goal. Back to neclear fission - radio- activity is the overriding fear. It’s a justifiable fear, though not deserving the general paranoia that it now creates. Sharks eat more people than reactors kill. In progressive terms, hundreds more die per year in car accidents (that ( () convenient contraption, a necessity not needed eighty years ago) than do “‘nukes.’’ How about electricity itself? Live wires kill people each year. Admittedly, the spectre of indiscriminant and overwhelming death by radiation is much different from the isolated car electrical line accident examples. The day that there is a nuclear accident which results in harm to the surrounding inhabitants, then let it end. To this day, there has not been a major accident, not even TMI (Three Mile Island). That may sound like a cruel game of risks to play with the American public, but we took greater risks when we sent troops into Iran on an abortive rescue mission. We must live with the constant possibility (however “ONE- ARMED BANDIT” remote) of nuclear warfare. Why don’t anti-nukes concentrate on the real nuclear threat - the one- and-for-all curtailment of nuclear weapons development? Besides, safe nuclear fusion (the reverse of fission, atom splitting, fusion joines nuclei and emits much smaller amounts of radiation) is technologically around the corner. We must figure out a way to generate a heat high enough to carry out the process on an economically feasable level. The sun does it every day, and with fusion we won’t have to be 93 million miles distant to harvest that power. On the home front, UAM experienced a successful year. Sports flourished and student life and activities received a much- needed boost. At the end of Dr. Fred Taylor’s first three years as Chancellor, notable progress has been made. Foremost in terms of benefit to the student body was last year’s