University of Houston - Houstonian Yearbook (Houston, TX)

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The new moderation reigned supreme: people were drinking less, smoking not at all, and only having sex with permanent partners. Bill Clements handily defeated incumbant Mark White in a nasty governor's race that touched on everything except the issues. After the death of college basketball star Len Bias, cocaine abuse — specifically crack abuse — became the biggest media scare since herpes. The Texas Department of Corrections was at one time releasing as many as 500 prisoners a week early due to overcrowding. The White House almost fell apart as Iran-scam rocked the National Security Council nearly to its foundation. Ronald Reagan, the country's first Teflon president, escaped remarkably unscathed. UH Budget Advisory Council proposed to eliminate the College of Technology and the Department of Human Resources and Consumer Sciences. Students were only mildly outraged. Essentially the feeling on campus was that the whole world was going to hell in a handbag. 13

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 s ijmissni k®' «s«fiarjL •ii During the 1986-87 school year, UH students had to contend with the following annoyances: UH Chancellor Richard Van Horn changed his name to President Van Horn. Apartheid still remained the cornerstone of South African domestic policy. Both the Super Bowl and the World Series were won by awesome teams from New York. Texas unemployment soared. The drinking age was raised to 21. Gasoline prices dropped to 59 a gallon. Oral Roberts claimed that the good Lord would take his life he failed to raise $4.5 million. 12

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 It is the prescription for anarchy in a democratic society.” Louis Stokes Senator, Ohio A Student's State of the Union Address. Today's col lege generation will probably be remembered by political historians as the passive generation. The generation that grew up watching television through the late seventies and early eighties offers little in political motivation. One obvious reason for the great drought of political awareness is that this generation developed on the heels of a most embarrassing fiasco — Watergate — that is best remembered for having crowded out daytime TV programming for months. With the networks airing the Watergate hearings, and no cable TV to turn to, children of the seventies developed a great frustration with politics. Most of them have little or no rcmemberancc of life before Watergate. The turbulant sixties is dry-textbook material for most college students who not only take for granted, but cannot possibly remember the intense changes of that time period. While nearly everyone feels they have the right to observe a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, most fail to recognize the value of the Civil Rights Movement. In only a few short years in history, the American public has gone from civil rights marches to the assassination of Martin Luther King, and from the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. the John F. Kennedy assassinator, to protests of the Vietnam War, and from Watergate to an obsession with Arbi-tron ratings. In a crucial time period when world affairs are esculating at a dangerous rate, college students u limes are likely to remember the changing of the Coca-Cola formula or the entangled lives on Dallas as the issues of our time. Coca-Cola received more media coverage as people became angered over the elimination of the original formula Coke than the U.S. government did when the military overran the tiny island of Grenada. Public protest was able to bring back a worldwide commercial product, but it is very unlikely that the public could detour U.S. involvement in a global conflict. That is evident by the public attitude towards the Iran-Contra hearings. People were disturbed. mostly because the hearings interrupted the afternoon soaps. But the American public soon found an American hero in Oliver North for his noble television presence during the hearings. And even with such blatant foreshadowing, the American public generally accepts. without question, our role in the Persian Gulf. The American people hesitate to make any connection between the six percent of our oil that we defend as it is shipped through the Persian Gulf, while other countries relax, and the unemployment in our own oilfields that contributed to our weak economy. Another major oversight on the part of the American people is FI Salvador. While a military advisor was killed there in April, a scene reminesccnt of Vietnam. the American people were preoccupied with Jim's sexual preferences and Tammy's makeup obsession in the PTL scandal. The people once again went with the best television