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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 18, 1972)
Cbe Battalion tssM College Station, Texas Warmer and cloudy Tuesday, January 18, 1972 Wednesday — Cloudy, intermit tent light rain. Southerly winds 15-20 mph, becoming northerly late afternoon 15-20 mph. High 73°, low 61°. Thursday — Mostly cloudy. Northerly winds 10-12 mph. High 47°, low 35°. 845-2226 Death penalty under attack before court •••••'—• PLAYMAKING GUARD MARIO BROWN (13) tries to move past DeWayne Brewer (31) of Athletes in Action in Monday night’s exhibition basketball game. Brown scored 11 points and gathered in 12 rebounds in the contest. The junior college transfer is the third leading scorer for the Aggies with a 12.1 season average. A&M lost to AIA, 82-74. For more on the basketball team, see page 3. (Photo by Mike Rice) WE GIVE X OPBBN artAMP* WE GIVE s m WE JIVE Ex-leaders Grads A&M’s 1970-71 student body president and one of its recent student center leaders have re turned to their alma mater to join the administration. Dr. Jack K. Williams, A&M president, said Kent Caperton of Caldwell and Dave Mayfield of Waco will serve as “academic interns.” Caperton, former student body president, has been assigned to the president’s office. Mayfield will work in the office of the vice president for academic af fairs. “I think it’s to the credit of our system and our student body that we make these positions available to former student lead- ers — and that they accepted them,” Dr. Williams noted. ( “These are two exceptionally j capable young men, and we are privileged to have them join our return to school staff.” Caperton, who was graduated last spring, has been studying under a fellowship at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He elected to return to A&M for the internship and will enter law school next fall. He studied finance as an undergraduate. Mayfield, just released from a three-month active duty obli gation as a second lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers, was active throughout his A&M career in the Memorial Student Center, which is responsible for most of the institution’s extra curricular programs. He was chairman last year of the Stu dent Conference on National Af fairs and recipient of the cen ter’s top award, the Thomas H. Roundtree Award. He received his undergraduate degree in architecture in 1970 and spent last year studying for a master’s degree in business administra-< tion. Caperton will be working di rectly with Edwin H. Cooper, as sistant to the president. Cooper’s responsibilities include close liai son with students. “I consider this job a rare combination of an opportunity to learn and a challenge to make some contribution,” Caperton said. “It promises to be an inter esting experience.” Mayfield will assist Dr. John C. Calhoun Jr., vice president for academic affairs, Dr. Richard E. Wainerdi and Dr. Haskell M. Monroe Jr., assistant vice presi dents, whose activities include organization and coordination of a variety of new and on-going programs. “This is not only a stimulating challenge,” Mayfield observed, “but it also is a learning experi ence that I feel will be extremely beneficial in years to come.” Applications being accepted for SCONA 17 positions Formal degree applicants near filing cut-off date WE JIVE S WE JIVE February 11 is the deadline for formal degree applications by A&M graduate and undergradu ate students who expect to com plete degree requirements dur ing the spring semester, an nounced Registrar Robert A. Lacey. Formal degree application be gins with payment of the $5 graduation fee in the Fiscal Of fice, Richard Coke Building. Graduate students then make application in the Graduate Col- lo ge office, 209 Coke Building. | Undergraduate student applica- ; Lons should be made in Room 7 j °f the Registrar’s Office. Lacey emphasized that formal degree application is the respon- sibility of the graduating stu dent. The requirement should be kept in mind by students who may be off-campus during the semester for practice teaching, etc. Announcement of the Feb. 11 degree application deadline also will be made through notices to TAMU department heads. All students should report to the Registrar’s Office for a de gree program check at least a semester before the semester de gree requirements will be com pleted, Lacey reminded. A&M students have begun ap plying for 32 delegate positions to the 17th Student Conference on National Affairs. Applications will be taken un til Jan. 26, Dean of Students James P. Hannigan announced. Interviews will be conducted Jan. 24-31. SCONA XVII will examine “The Impact of the University” during Feb. 16-19. Delegates from throughout the U. S. and Mexico will participate. Keynote speakers will include Senator John Tower and Dr. Lawrence E. Fouraker, dean of Harvard University’s business administration faculty. TAMU delegates will include 16 upperclassmen and graduate students, four freshmen, four sophomores and eight internation al students, Hannigan said. They will be selected from ap plications by two four-member interview committees. Each will include three faculty members and a student, the dean said. In terviews will be from 3 to 7 p.m. daily Jan. 24-31. Applications should be picked up and turned in at the Memorial Student Center director’s office no later than Wednesday, Jan. 26. WASHINGTON UP) — The evolving national conscience must govern the meaning of the Eighth Amendment in condemning capi tal punishment, lawyers contend ed Monday in asking the Su preme Court to declare the death penalty unconstitutional. “The death penalty is virtually unanimously repudiated by the conscience of contemporary soci-< ety,” argued Stanford University law professor Anthony G. Am sterdam. The high court sets up the his toric confrontation over the Con- Stevedores strike again on Pacific SAN FRANCISCO <A>) — West Coast longshoremen resumed a strike Monday on the order of Harry Bridges, their leader. The White House quickly announced it would ask Congress to stop the walkout. Pickets started marching again in the Pacific Coast ports closed down last year in a 100-day strike halted Oct. 6 by a Taft-Hartley injunction. Marathon weekend negotiations, with J. Curtis Counts, the Nixon administration’s chief mediator, taking part, broke off at the 8 a.m. strike deadline in the face of threatened federal interven tion. In Washington, Labor Under secretary Laurence Silberman said Congressional action is “the only remedy we have left” to halt the strike. Ronald L. Ziegler, presidential press secretary, said chances of settlement were slim. Silberman has said the admin istration would ask Congress ei ther to extend the time period of a Taft-Hartley injunction or to submit the dispute to a so-called final offer selection board. The board could impose a set tlement after selecting what it deems the most reasonable offer extended by the union or man agement. It could not piece to gether fragments of both offers. stitution by accepting the appeals of four cases — two for murder and two for rape — in which the defendants were condemned to death. A ruling on the issue is ex pected before the court term ends in June. It will directly affect nearly 700 condemned men and women on death rows in 34 states. Prior to Monday, 41 states and the federal government still had the death penalty. However, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled Monday its law subjects an ac cused murder to death only if he pleads innocent, thereby co ercing him to plead no defense and face a maximum sentence of life in prison. Under the New Jersey ruling, all 20 men on Death Row in Trenton State Prison will have their sentences reduced to life in prison, with eventual eligibility for parole. Moreover, the max imum penalty in pending and fu ture murder cases will be life in prison. The U.S. Supreme Court often has considered capital cases but only on individual, procedural grounds. The sole question before the court now is whether the death penalty constitutes the “cruel and unusual punishment” which is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. Amsterdam, arguing for the two murder defendants, suggest ed that the test is whether the punishment would be acceptable to the general conscience and standards of decency if applied generally. His own answer was no. The death penalty, he said, is rarely applied and then only to minority members, the power less, “The personally ugly and socially unacceptable.” Amsterdam appeared for Ern est James Aikens Jr., who was convicted of murder in Califor nia and for William Henry Fur man, convicted of murder in Georgia. There have been no executions in the United States since 1967, when Colorado and California each carried out one. Arguing the Aikens case, Cal ifornia Asst. Atty. Gen. Ronald M. George maintained judicial action to stay execution pending a resolution of the issue was what reduced and finally stopped executions. He told the court the test under the Eighth Amendment is not the contemporary conscience but rather determination of “unnec essary cruelty.” 2 students killed in Saturday wreck Two A&M students and a Nav- asota man were killed Saturday night in a two-car head-on col lision four miles east of Nava- sota on Hwy. 105. The A&M students were Dale L. Hjornevik, 23, of Dickinson and Sharon A. Dabney, 24, of Conroe, both chemistry graduate students. A Department of Fublic Safety spokesman said Miss Dabney and Hjornevik, the car driver, were headed west on Hwy. 105 and Roosevelt Arrington, alone in the second car, was headed east. Arrington’s vehicle was on the TV leads to violence in aggressive children WASHINGTON <A>) — Televi sion viewing may lead to violent acts by some children already prone to aggressiveness, a U. S. Surgeon General’s report con cluded Monday. “The accumulated evidence, however, does not warrant the conclusion that televised vio- Russia claims congressmen —urnty 01 tne graduating stu- /» I • 1 • Students audition violated rules of hospitality for memberships mi Ringing Cadets A&M students interested in be coming members of the Singing adets will be auditioned this week. Students should report to Room J 19 of G. Rollie White Coliseum between 2 and 4:30 p.m. Director Robert L. Boone said 6 group is most interested in au ditioning tenors where its ranks ^e thinnest. Prospective mem- ers ni ust have a minimum of 2.0 ^overall grade point ratio. ^University National Bank “°n the side of Texas A&M.” —Adv. MOSCOW UP) — The govern ment newspaper Izvestia accused two U.S. Republican congress men Monday of violating the rules of Soviet hospitality while on a tour to study Soviet educa tion in Moscow. A third member of the touring group, Rep. James H. Scheuer, a New York Democrat, was ordered expelled from the So viet Union last week after meet ing with Soviet Jews seeking to leave for Israel. of the In an article on the tour seven-member House sub committee on education, Izvestm charged that Rep. Alphonzo Bell of California met privately with critics of the Soviet government. It said Rep. Earl Landgrebe of Indiana distributed religious ma terials. It is believed that a Soviet Foreign Ministry official com plained about Bell and Land- grebe last Friday when Scheuer was ordered expelled. Scheuer was accused of “im proper activities,” a blanket charge connected with his meet ing with the Jews. “We cannot tolerate Scheuer and those like him in our house,” Izvestia said in declaring that the entire committee tour was “on balance, frankly speaking, negative.” It is thought to have been the first time the Soviets had ex pelled an elected American offi cial, and the pursuit of the mat ter in public Monday, with the airing of Bell’s and Landgrebe’s names seemed intended to spoil the honeymoon atmosphere dip lomats had hoped would develop for President Nixon’s Moscow trip in May. There was one theory that the atmosphere was being deliber ately allowed to deteriorate to gain approval of Nixon’s trip to Peking next month and that the rabid anti-Americans were being given their head. For the record, U.S. diplomats have been unwilling to comment on the long-range effects of the “Scheuer affair” on Soviet- American relations. lence has a uniformly adverse ef fect, nor the conclusion that it has an adverse effect on the ma jority of children,” said the 12 behavioral scientists who studied the problem for 2% years. Even before its public release, the 279-page report was criti cized by Federal Communica tions Commissioner Nicholas Johnson, a Democrat. “The trouble with this report is that like so much of what the administration has done on these things, the cynicism of anybody being interested in the truth is apparent from the beginning,” he said. Johnson criticized the decision of former Surgeon General Wil liam H. Stewart allowing the television industry to veto 7 of the 40 persons originally consid ered for the study committee. The 12 scientists, in the fields of psychology, child develop ment, sociology, psychiatry, po litical science and anthropology, said they feel there was a seri ous error in the selection process. “This study is not a white wash,” Surgeon General Jesse L. Steinfeld told a news confer ence. “The study shows for the first time a causal connection between violence shown on tele vision and subsequent aggres sive behavior by children.” The study’s primary benefit, he said, should be to stimulate more research on the effects of television violence. “I do believe the data . . . should provide the basis for in telligent action by the networks, the FCC and Congress,” he said. The study was requested March 5, 1969, by Sen. John O. Pastore, D-R-L, who said he was “exceed ingly troubled by the lack of any definitive information which would help resolve the question of whether there is a causal con nection between televised crime and violence and antisocial be havior by individuals, especially children.” The committee said the ques tion is a “very complex issue, for which there are no simple an swers.” There is a need for more study in this area, the panel said. It followed orders to avoid making policy recommendations, and said solutions would be difficult any way. “If broadcasters simply changed the quantity balance be tween violent and other kinds of shows, it is not clear what the net effect would be,” the study said. “More drastic changes, such as general censorship, would clearly have wide effects, but of many kinds, and some of them distinctly undesirable.” wrong side of the road at a curve and the two cars hit head- on, the DPS reported. Hjornevik and Arrington were dead at the scene of the 9:30 p.m. accident. Miss Dabney died at 10:15 p.m. in Grimes County Me morial Hospital. Services for Miss Dabney were scheduled at 4 p.m. Monday in the Metcalf Funeral Home Chap el, Conroe. Burial followed in Conroe Memorial Cemetery. Miss Dabney is survived by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. George Dabney of 917 Cable, Conroe; one brother, David Dabney of Conroe; one sister Judith Dian Dabney of Conroe; maternal grandmother, Mrs. John G. Simp son of Conroe, and paternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. S. H. Dabney of Shepherd. Miss Dabney was completing Ph.D. requirements at A&M. She was a 1969 honor graduate of Austin College. Rites for Hjornevik will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday in Faith Lutheran Church, Dickinson. Bur- (See Two Students, Page 2) Clayton named as temporary Maritime head Dr. William H. Clayton will serve as acting superintendent of the Texas Maritime Academy un til a permanent successor has been found for Adm. James D. Craik, announced A&M President Jack K. Williams. Clayton is dean of TAMU’s Galveston-based College of Ma rine Sciences and Maritime Re sources, of which the academy is a part. Admiral Craik, who joined TMA in 1967 after a 38-year career in the Coast Guard, announced last fall he planned to “re-retire,” ef fective Jan. 31. Dr. Clayton joined the TAMU faculty in 1954 and was serving as associate dean of the College of Geosciences when he was named dean of the new college last fall. He also is professor of oceanography and meteorology. He has offices in the new ad ministration building at TAMU’s Mitchell Campus on Pelican Is land.