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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 7, 1972)
:: ;i ' *r'. • ‘ ,y ; :• ■■■' -■,• ,■ :j] Battalion Partly cloudy. Saturday — Cloudy in the morning, partly cloudy in the aft ernoon. Northerly winds 10-15 mph. High 77°, low 58°. warm Sunday — Clear, northerly winds 10-15 mph. High 76°, low 47°. Vol. 67 No. 105 College Station, Texas Elections held Friday, April 7, 1972 845-2226 one day, enate decides iy Hayden lor' Whitsett club’s think,” ive t to In their last meeting, the senate had voted to select the sweetheart from TAMU coeds only. Pro- e student general elections will be held one tests from Texas Women’s University, where all (only rather than the two originally planned, the previous sweethearts came from, brought the issue lent Senate decided Thursday night. back up. r^rSTom Autrey, parlimentarian, proposed that elec- Tony Best (Sr-Eng) told the senate that a h s ins be held only on April 13 rather than April 13 petition calling for a referendum has been circulated outs id 8 as previously planned. and collected 1,500 signatures. He said he believed ■The general election results will be tabulated by that 1,500 more could be collected “without much Iputer while the living area results will be counted trouble.” ■and Opposition to the move developed when Spike _ tolls for the election will be open from 8 a.m. to Dayton, treasurer, brought up an opinion poll taken 3C p.m. Fee slips and activity cards will be during spring preregistration in which 53 per cent of ■ qu ed. the participating students favored having a TAMU All Corps members and civihan students in the coed only. area will vote at the guardroom, David Moore, The referendum depends upon 20 per cent of the ion commission chairman, said. All other student body signing the petition before the election, mpus students will vote in their respective dorm The senate also recommended that the Rules and ges, he said. Regulations of TAMU (the Bluebook) be changed to " hBsn't ■ Qff-campus students will vote in the Memorial allow alcoholic beverages to be possessed and 5 doneiBj en t Center, the Library, Sbisa Dining Hall, and consumed on campus. X m I apartment areaS- Locations of the apartment “We are really concerned with only the guy’s ping places have not been decided upon, Moore room,” he said in making the proposal. Best disliked the proposal, saying that he felt it The senate also decided to hold the elections would disrupt study conditions in dorms. “There will alphabetical listing of candidates on the ballot, be a party every night,” he said, the past, but following elections will have a Debi Blackmon, freshman senator, said that at ry to decide ballot position. other universities with like policies there had been a Autrey felt that a lottery should be used in this few initial blowouts but would eventually settle ion but Moore said that to retype the computer down. s to be used for ballots would possibly delay the The motion passed 45-22. tions. • Also passed was a resolution calling for letting “We’re running about 40,000 cards in 19 differ- political candidates campaign on campus as long as groups,” Moore said, “The master cards for these selection of speakers was done on a bipartisan basis, re already been prepared.” To change the master The law that has been interpreted in the past as s would create problems for both the commission prohibiting political candidates from speaking on the Data Processing Center, he added. Icampus is “fuzzy,” according to Fred Campbell Reviving part of a past meeting, the Student (Jr-Sci). ■' re lA! f 5 k,"Mio RoiAan STUDENT CAMPAIGNERS are doing their part, along getting thicker as all the 267 candidates jockey for a small with construction workers, to help blockade the campus, piece of land to stake their claim to student politics. (Photo The signs, for the April 13 general elections, are thick and by Mike Rice) Coalition government Cong’s aim also decided to hold a referendum on the <YL£ FIELD day :int ON N Sweetheart question if 20 per cent of the lent body, about 3,000, signed a petition request- such action. John Sharp, senate president, said that President Jack K. Williams has written a letter to Texas Attorney General Crawford Martin asking for a i ruling. PARIS (A*) — Claiming major victories in the offensive in South Vietnam, the Viet Cong’s chief delegate to the Paris peace talks said Thursday the over-all aim is to set up a coalition government in Saigon. Mrs. Nguyen Thi Binh also insisted the United States return to the peace table. She and the North Vietnamese delegation re iterated charges that the United States had sabotaged the peace talks. Mrs. Binh claimed at a news conference that S o u t h Vietna mese and American forces in the two northern provinces of South Vietnam had suffered heavy de feats during the offensive that began there March 30. There are no U. S. combat forces known to be in the battle area. She in effect denied a sugges tion that the Viet Cong might establish a provision government seat in the northern part of South Vietnam, saying that such a capital had long ago been set up in a “liberated zone” of South Vietnam. Nguyen Van Thieu and repre sentatives of other forces favor ing peace, independence and neutrality. “What we want and what we are doing is to liberate all of South Vietnam from American aggression to permit a govern ment of national concord, which will be formed, to install its seat in Saigon itself.” Mrs. Binh told reporters she hoped that the Viet Cong peace plan will be accepted by the United States at the Paris talks. But since the United States sus pended the conference indefi nitely March 23, she continued, the “national liberation forces of South Vietnam” were obliged to step up military action to achieve their goal. The government of national concord, which is a key point in the Viet Cong peace plan put forth last July 1, would include the Viet Cong, members of the present Saigon administration after the departure of President The news conference was called on the day the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese had proposed resumption of the peace talks. The United States and South Vietnam rejected the pro posal, claiming the Communists were still not ready to negotiate seriously. . President Nixon suspended the talks, saying he was trying to break a 314-year filibuster by the Communists. Since then the United States has indicated it will not resume the talks under military pressure. Elsewhere, Red China restated its support for North Vietnam and said the Communist-led thrust into South Vietnam dealt a major blow to the U.S. Viet- namization program. A broadcast of an article in the official Peking People’s Daily declared: “No matter how frenziedly U. S. imperialism may struggle, it can by no means save the U.S. aggressors and the Sai gon puppet clique from their doomed defeat.” 1 Civilian Weekend tickets vill be on sale April 10 Tickets for this year’s Civilian eek-Weekend activities will be sale from April 10-20 at the isa newsstand. Sales will begin at 9 each week- y morning and continue until p.m. Dorm students who have a ring hall activity card will re ive one free Las Vegas Night :ket. Others must purchase a cket at $2 in advance and $2.25 the door. A&M students with a student tivity card can get a free gen- al admission ticket to the “Rare arth” concert. A&M date tickets 11 for $2.50 and all others for will be on sale at the Sbisa news stand while both general admis sion and reserve tickets can be purchased at the Student Pro grams Office. Students with a fall dorm ac tivity card can receive one free ticket to the Civilian Sweetheart Presentation Dance. Students without this card must pay $3. Advance date tickets for all stu dents will be $1. The cost at the door will be $4.50 per couple. Only general admission tickets Dorm students holding hall ac tivity cards must present them for Las Vegas Night and dance tickets during the advance-sale period. The cards will not be hon ored at the door. Private use of marijuana permissible, expert claims We unanimously agree that marijuana use is not desirable, but when placed in perspective with the other problems of soci ety, it is wrong to criminalize users of the drug, said noted drug abuse authority Dr. J. Thomas Ungerleider Thursday night. Ungerleider, a member of the 13-man National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, pre sented the commission’s findings at a Great Issues program in the Memorial Student Center Ball- use of the drug be decriminalized when used in the privacy of the home. But use in public, sale of or cultivation of marijuana should still be illegal, they emphasized. Anyone caught with it in public would have it confiscated as contraband, the commission added. “We found that at least 24 million Americans have tried marijuana at least once, more than 40 per cent of the college students have tried the drug and most users use it less than once a week,” Ungerleider noted. Dr. J. Thomas Ungerleider The commission, following a one-year study, recommended the TAMU reactor Kinirar ^ H for education purpose A bluish glow in the bottom of a calm pool of water is actually the slow, controlled unleashing of the most power ful forces known—those that form the atom. (Photo by Mike Rice) By MICHAEL RICE Staff Writer Swimming in A&M’s nuclear reactor cooling water may not be everybody’s idea of fun, but for Tom Godsey it is one of life’s little pleasures. “Though we don’t get the op portunity to do it often, swim ming in the 33-foot-deep pool is a warm and invigorating exper ience,” said Godsey in a recent interview. He emphasized, however, the only time a person is allowed in the pool is when underwater maintenance must be conducted or for installation of an experi ment. In either case, the reactor is shut down completely and the unit is moved to the opposite end of the pool. Godsey described the Nuclear Science Center, which is located at the end of the Easterwood Airport runway, as a research organization which “maintains and operates the nuclear reactor to produce radioactive particles for research.” The center was designed in the late 1950’s and site operations began in 1962. All operations people working for the center are licensed by the Atomic Energy Commission, which enforces stringent rules on reactor opera tions. The heart of the facility is, of course, the reactor core. Sus pended from a movable bridge in the blue-water pool, the reactor is powered by fuel elements con taining uranium-235 and emits a bright blue-white glow while in operation. The nuclear facility is con trolled by placing boron rods in side or outside the core. When inserted within, the boron rods become highly radioactive, yet when pulled out they will lose all their radiation. The reactor facilities are used by researchers and students from colleges and universities in Tex as and three neighboring states. Godsey said 85 per cent of the work done at the center is for educational purposes with the re maining 15 per cent going to private individuals or businesses. Godsey, a licensed reactor oper ator, described himself and his fellow staff members as busdriv- ers for researchers. “We know what is going on as far as reactor operations are concerned,” said Godsey. “We get the researchers to wherever they are going but we don’t know why they’re going there.” Public opinion has attacked the use of nuclear reactors be cause of the pollution given off. Godsey said their complaints are only valid for thermal pollution which is also given off by coal burning plants. “Coal-burning plants release much more radiation into the at mosphere than do nuclear reac tors,” Godsey said. “People shouldn’t attack reactors until they know all the pluses and minuses.” There is a danger of nuclear poisoning that can occur at the reactor but a person would delib erately have to violate reactor procedure for that to happen. “For what it’s worth,” said Godsey, “if I were to know in advance that I would live to be 70 years old while working here at the reactor, my chances of dying from radiation poisoning increased by ten to the minus fifth degree each year.” If Godsey reaches the age of 70 he would have lost only two and one-half days from his life which he considers will be “total ly insignificant” by then. As radioactive materials are brought on the A&M campus there is one office that knows (See Reactor, page 2) The commission was authorized by Congress to study the growing use of drugs and their abuse in this country, Ungerleider said. “We were widely criticized at first for the extremely conserva tive nature of the commission; all of the members were on record previously as being against mari juana use,” he noted. But the conservative nature did enable us to see many law agencies’ information which we might not have been able to see, Ungerleider stated. We conducted many hearings around the country in big cities, he said, and talked to people in public as well as in private homes. Many so-called ‘captains of in dustry’ have different views in private that they are afraid to express publicly. Our survey was the most in tensive ever made, Ungerleider stressed. We talked to over 3,000 people face-to-face and got some interesting facts. One of the great problems we found is the great amount of mythology which surrounds the use of marijuana, he said. “Fifty to sixty per cent of adults thought that people could die from an overdose of marijuana,” Unger leider said. The commission found no evi dence of any physical or psychi atric dependence in users and no brain or genetic damage. But there is a temporary intoxication of the senses, Ungerleider noted. The commission’s report has been presented to President Nix on, but no immediate action is planned. Nixon did sponsor the Uniform Drug Law a year ago which makes first offense arrests for any drug a misdemeanor, Ungerleider said. The commission recommenda tion is a lot like the prohibition plan used for liquor in the 1920’s, Ungerleider said. This is a way to discourage use, but to solve the current problem of criminali zation of users. O’Hair, renowned atheist. slated for church program Madalyn Murry O’Hair, a noted American atheist, will speak at the College Station Unitarian Fel lowship at 7 p.m. April 9. O’Hair is best known for her participation in the court case that culminated in the Supreme Court order prohibiting Bible reading and prayer recitation in public schools. She is an attorney, has written three books on atheism and has brought several federal suits con cerning separation of church and state. Because of her beliefs O’Hair has been denied the right to travel outside the United States. She was not issued a passport on the grounds that she did not believe in a higher power. O’Hair’s talk is open to the public and infant care will be pro vided by the Fellowship. Banking is a pleasure at First Bank & Trust. University National Bank “On the side of Texas A&M.” —Adv.