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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 27, 1996)
larch 26,19% -9 th off Astros ;rry made it 9- ren he singled ;cored two un to make it 9-6 indo Miller to ect innings for f the spring. iiig^ t? the ugh! ily $25 •upon) npany, Inc. icket futoring jsen > J ’ STUDIO Udraw 3.0 HINTS h it our T-Th al and Wed ;uit special UP AGAINST THE BEST The Lady Aggies face off against Stanford. SPORTS, PAGE 9 H. 102, No. 117 (14 pages) Stidvent: B-CS night life caters to a select clientele. OPINION, PAGE 13 ADDICTED TO THE NET A&M students network through the IRC. AGGIEUFE, PAGE 3 Battalio Serving Texas A&M University Since 1893 Wednesday • March 27, 1996 Perot pays visit to A&M Shane Elkins, The Battalion H. Ross Perot spoke to a sold-old crowd Tuesday evening in Rudder Theatre. The tickets were sold out by noon on Monday. By Misty Hataway The Battalion Representing the newly organized Re form Party, H. Ross Perot visited Rudder Theatre Tuesday at 7 p.m. Rudder Theatre was packed to capaci ty with Brazos County citizens, students, professors and even a few out-of-state visitors interested in hearing the billion aire from Dallas. Kevin King, a junior industrial distri bution major who works the Rudder tick et office, said people were being turned away from the box office shortly after noon yesterday. Refik Sahin, director of programming for Political Forum, anticipated the large crowd. “We planned to fill the auditorium,” Sahin said. “We had extensive advertis ing and public relations. We passed out fliers, handouts, posters and local news paper coverage informing about the event.” Before the forum was held, the lobby was filled with petitions and pamphlets available for anyone interested in the Reform Party. The organization needs more than 44,000 signatures on the petitions for the party to be established on the 1996 Texas presidential ballot. The party is already on ballots in seven states, in cluding California, Utah, North Dakota, South Carolina, Montana, Minnesota and Virginia. With an arsenal of statistics as evi dence, Perot discussed “building a strong moral and ethical base” to solve current and future problems. Perot used parallels between politics ) andbusiness, saying that in business /on have to deal with reality; in politics you deal with magic. “Here you see it; here you don’t,” he said. “In business, if you can’t manage money, you go broke. In politics, you just raise money. In business, you promote on performance. In politics, you select on acting ability.” Perot said politicians “tell people what they want to hear,” and that “we get car ried away by the act.” In exit polls, two-thirds of voters said government is heading the wrong direc tion and are searching for a new voice in government. Perot said his independent party may offer that voice. “If you think a new party is a good idea,” he said, “we’d love to have you join.” Jeff Livingston, vice president of pro grams for the College Republicans, said Perot generally addressed the issues that affect most Americans. Livingston said Perot’s solutions for social programs are valid, but remain too close to the methods used by Republi cans. Perot spoke about economic reform and balancing the budget while expand ing the tax base. “We are the world’s last superpower,” Perot said. “We have to be an economic and industrial superpower.” Perot said the national debt is greater than the amount of currency in print, and that “by raising interest rates 1 See Perot, Page 8 Alternative lighting options could save University money Some schools use motion sensors in classes By Marissa Alanis The Battalion At the University of North Texas in Denton, a few min utes after the last student leaves a classroom, the lights shut off automatically. Installed in the ceilings of two-thirds of UNT classrooms are dual motion sensor sys tems that detect movement through body heat. The lights stay on when people are in the rooms. The dual sensor sys tem allows UNT to save energy and re duce electricity bills. UNT is one of many institutions U | ' across the country trying to save money by energy conservation. Don Thompson, a former Texas A&M power plant superin tendent, has suggest ed to the A&M admin istration several ener gy conservation mea sures similar to those used at other institu tions. Thompson said A&M can save money by turn ing off comfort air condition ing systems in about 25 acad emic buildings, excluding com puter labs and laboratories, between 2 and 5 a.m. Some institutions, such as Rice University in Houston, Griffith University in Aus tralia and the University of New Mexico, save money by shutting down their comfort air conditioning systems in certain buildings that remain unoccupied for extended periods. Jim Riley, the operating manager of facilities and engi neering at Rice University, said that in the last four years, there has been a 20-per- cent reduction in utility costs — a savings that can be direct ed into research and may indi rectly reduce tuition. Riley said he attributes this reduction to restructured and renegotiated utility contracts and implementation of two co generation projects since 1989. Cogeneration projects use natural gas to gener ate electricity. This process creates heat that can be : , V:., reutilized. A cogenera tion project was suggested by Thompson, who said A&M could generate its own electrici ty and save S3 million to $6 mil lion each year. Riley said that before a cogenera tion project is im plemented, the com pletion of a thorough economic analysis is necessary to deter mine the optimum bal ance of purchased elec trical power versus produced power. “Cogeneration gives you a lot of flexibility,” Riley said. “If you don’t have that, you have to run electric-driven chillers and buy much electricity at a given rate.” Jim Pack, building and util ities maintenance manager at UNT, said cogeneration has not been implemented there because it is not economically feasible. FF janing or More ented with in ipon per day.. ith other offers. >.1996 5 Longmire ege Station 94-2249 =d) :hling ^ N L. LEGE URN LCOME EARNED" VRTNERSHIPS A '■9 •fcUuf, dailif,. Stipend stifles recruits k task force will study the graduate retention rate By Kendra S. Rasmussen The Battalion Concerns about decreasing enroll ment in Texas A&M’s graduate and professional programs have prompted University officials to boost funding for graduate student stipends. The University has also created a special task force to evaluate how A&M compares with peer institutions in terms of graduate student recruitment. Dr. Dan Robertson, director of grad uate studies, said graduate student en rollment at A&M has declined 10 per cent in three years. The decline, he said, is symptomatic of A&M’s difficulty attracting graduate students. “One of the reasons why we have dif ficulty attracting graduate students to the University is the stipend,” he said. Robertson said that aside from last year’s 2- to 3-percent increase, A&M’s graduate student stipends have re mained fundamentally unchanged for a number of years. “We have not had a raise in most stipends for several years, so if you then compare us to other universities, what has happened is that A&M has ceased to be competitive with other ma jor graduate universities,” he said. “I can cite examples of some stipends that have not changed in 15 years.” Robertson said one-third of A&M’s 7,000 graduate students receive teach ing or research stipends ranging from $550 to $2,000 per month. The average See Graduate, Page 5 A&M makes mends daily Students discuss being real doctors, for animals By Lisa Johnson The Battalion The one question that grates most on Texas A&M second-year veterinary medicine student Michelle Wilbank’s nerves is why she did not go to school to become a “real doctor.” “We are real doctors,” she said, “it’s just that our typical patients have four legs instead of 2, fur and a tail. “In fact, in my opinion, becoming a veterinarian is harder than becoming a fegular physician because they are only responsible for knowledge of humans. As vet students, if you can name a species, we have to know about it.” Shannon McFall, a third-year veteri nary medicine student said that she, too, has faced similar misconceptions. “Lots of people don’t understand that I you actually graduate from college be fore you ever go to vet school,” she said. “They think that it’s some kind of two- year trade school, when actually we learn the same things as any other physician.” Veterinary medicine students have ac cess to the same technology as modern physicians. The same machines used to monitor and improve the health of people can and are used on animals in the Uni versity’s large animal hospital. “Just because we don’t use the tech nology doesn’t mean that we don’t have it,” McFall said. “If someone wanted us to, we could do a heart transplant on Fluffy, but people just don’t have that kind of thing done for their pets. “There’s nothing tried on a person that hasn’t been tried on an animal first.” Last weekend, surgery was done on a camel at the hospital, and llamas are fre quent visitors. This necessitates operating See Animals, Page 6 Evan Zimmerman, The Battalion MY, WHAT BIG TEETH YOU HAVE Melissa Wilcox, a sophpmore English major from San Diego, California, is looking into the skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex at the Forsyth Center in the MSC. Affirmative action case goes to Washington AUSTIN (AP) — Texas will take the fight over affirmative ac tion in university admissions to the U.S. Supreme Court, state Attorney General Dan Morales said Tuesday. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week struck down the University of Texas Law School’s admissions policy, saying UT failed to justify favoring some racial groups. The decision came in a lawsuit filed by four white law school applicants. Morales said he expects the Supreme Court to agree to con sider Texas’ case. If it doesn’t, he said, it could be years before a similar case is presented. Nearly two decades have elapsed since the court last is sued a formal opinion on affir mative action, he said. “It has the opportunity in this litigation to speak to, I think, one of the more impor tant issues facing us as a soci ety,” Morales said, predicting arguments in the case would be scheduled for the fall. Morales said he will ask for a stay of the 5th Court’s ruling while the case is under appeal. A stay would allow universities to use whatever admissions system they see fit until the case is final ly decided, he said. UT institutions, which had suspended admissions after the 5th Court’s ruling, got the go- ahead Tuesday from UT System Chancellor William Cunningham to resume admitting students for summer and fall. 696-' 9626/