Cancer treatment
The preparation of a patient for “fast neutron therapy”
is demonstrated in the treatment room known as the
“cave”. There are four “caves” in the Cyclotron
building.
Photo l>y Y'alorie Lyng
n
yclotron treats
ancer patients
$(JI
JTexas A&M’s Cyclotron is giving
peer patients a look at the future
y thought had ended.
Fast neutron therapy has been
d to treat patien ts at the cyclotron
Since 1972. Patients who, under any
Bier conventional treatment, would
Be only three to six months, now
Bi live up to five years longer.
|Thecancer treatment program is a
iint effort of Texas A&M and Hous-
msM.D. Anderson Hospital. The'
Sogram has treated 300 patients
pee its beginning and is expected to
jeat an average of 100 patients in the
ext two years.
| T he average age of the patients is
About the same number of men
as women are treated at the cyclot-
li. All types of cancer are treated.
It certain cases are more frequent,
lead and throat patients are treated
le new therapy because
[rgery would cause extensive disfi-
Irement. Breast, cervix, and lung
Incer are also treated.
B A patient who could be treated
jth a reasonable probability of cure
Jth any other accepted method is
|t treated at the cyclotron,” said
. James Smathers, one of the ini-
I members of the program. “Only
bents with a very poor prognosis
| cure are accepted. ”
Patients may come to the program
■two ways. A patient may be refer-
to the program directly by a
ysician or a cancer organization, or
)e may go to one of the clinics at M.
D, Anderson and then be sent to the
Cyclotron.
jTwo different sets of patients are
Currently being treated under the
[jbgram.
JEvery Tuesday and Friday a
imousine arrives from Houston with
lie patients from M. D. Anderson.
Hiey are accompanied by a staff of
Ictors and nurses. About seven pa
rents out of 20 come from the Hous
ton area. They are treated for six
weeks.
iOther patients are housed at
Sweetbriar Nursing Home in Bryan.
lese patients are treated four times
Iweek on Monday, Tuesday, Thurs-
E
if
day, and Friday. They are also in
therapy for six weeks.
A patient under conventional
therapy is is treated five days a week
for 30 weeks.
The housing in the cyclotron is
basically a research facility, but ef
forts have been made to improve the
atmosphere for the patients com
fort.
The patient lounge is painted
bright yellow and is furnished with a
color television set, comfortably
padded chairs, and a game table. A
clinical nurse is on hand at all times
to see to the patients’ special needs.
Patients are served a lunch supplied
by St. Joseph’s Hospital in Bryan.
Efforts to keep the patients com
fortable are extended to the treat
ment room, commonly called the
“cave.”
The walls here are also painted
yellow. There are four caves but only
one is in constant use. The walls sur
rounding the cave are four feet thick.
The patient is placed in a dentist
like chair, a special stand for upright
positions, or a table, depending on
the type of tumor being treated. The
patient is then positioned by a nurse
and a medical physicist in front of a
tube with a window in it. The win
dow is sized for the specific section
and size of the tumor. The location of
the tumor is marked on the patient
with a blue dye.
After the patient is positioned, a
strip of masking tape is placed across
his head to remind him to stay in the
exact position. The patient is then
left alone, the four-foot thick doors
are closed and the room is darkened.
Treatment is started from the con
trol room adjacent to the cave. In the
control room are two physicists and a
radiotherapy nurse. A resident doc
tor and aclincal nurse are available at
all times.
“Fast neutron therapy is painless
and fast,” said Dr. Jess B. Caderao,
M. D. Anderson radiotherapist. He
added that the actual treatment lasts
only one to two minutes. But the
patient must be set up and the cor
rect tube placed for the beam direc-
See cyclotron, page 5.
Wednesday, Feb. 4, 1976
Revision to be considered
By LEE ROY LESCHPER JR. '
Battalion Staff Writer
Student Government will consider pos
sible changes in its constitution this
weekend during a constitutional conven
tion.
Discussion will include possible changes
in Student Government’s name and its
method of electing senators.
The convention begins at 9 a.m. Satur
day in the Student Programs Conference
Room.
Amendments approved by the conven
tion will be presented to the Senate next
Tuesday. The Senate will vote on the
amendments Feb. 25 and those approved
will be scheduled for a student body re
ferendum about March 11.
Amendments ratified in the referendum
will go into effect immediately. Any elec
tion changes will affect the Student Gov
ernment general election April 7-8.
Senators elected by colleges
The convention is primarily an effort to
get student input on the amendments.
Student Body President Jeff Dunn said.
Most preliminary work on the amendments
has been done by several Student Gov
ernment vice-presidents.
Under one proposal student senators
wovdd be elected strictly from each college
within the University. At present 40
senators represent colleges and 30 repre
sent A&M living areas. Five freshman
senators are elected at-large.
The proposal would set Senate member
ship at 50.
The idea of living-area representation is
that each senator represents one geog
raphic area, Dunn said. In recent years all
student body growth has been off-campus
and fewer senators have been required to
cover on-campus students.
Eight senators now represent all on-
campus students. Dunn said this requires
each senator to represent several dorms
and makes it impossible for a senator to poll
his constituents.
Off-campus senators have an equally dif
ficult job, and most seem to wind up living
in the same general area, Dunn said.
Tenure, promotion
guidelines proposed
By LILLIAN FOREMAN
The Academic Advisory Committee on
Faculty Evaluation Procedures at TAMU
has been working for the past year and a
half devising a new set of faculty evaluation
guidelines for tenure and promotion. The
proposed guidelines have been submitted
to Dr. John C. Calhoun, Vice President of
Academic Affairs, for approval.
To be granted tenure, a faculty member
must begin his teaching career at the rank
of a full-time instructor or a higher rank.
Then a probationary period of not more
than seven years of service must be com
pleted. If service has been at another in
stitution for more than three years, then
the faculty member is subject to a prob
ationary service period of not more than
four years at A&M.
The proposed evaluation form condenses
abiguous evaluation terms, said Haskell
Monroe, Dean of Faculties, and is de
signed to eliminate the burden of paper
work on deans and department heads.
The students will also have a voice on
faculty evaluation procedures by com
pleting professor evaluation question
naires.
Many colleges participated in the last
evaluation procedure by allowing Student
Government questionnaires to be distri
buted to their classes. Other colleges used
their own questionnaires.
The biggest problem during the last
evaluation stemmed from the lack of man
power needed to distribute the evaluation
packets, J.H. Marsh, committee chairman,
said.
Marsh also stressed that the committee
worries about ambiguous words like
superior, excellent, good, acceptable and
average.
Presently, no evaluation forms are com
pleted, he said.
Letters of recommendation are used in
stead.
The old evaluation form consists of an
Individual Faculty Member’s Annual Re
port (Form 3) and a Staff Achievement Re
cord (Form 4).
Form 3 asked the faculty member to
make suggestions on his own work, obsta
cles encountered, what type of oppor
tunities that he desired the university to
provide and to record activities that were
the most significant to him.
Some significant activities that Form 3
listed for comment were: relationships to
students and student activities,- research
projects undertaken and completed, pro
ductivity and creativity, professional ac
tivities and responsibilities outside of the
university, community and public rela
tions, honors and distinctions received,
administrative and committee activities
and assignments.
Form 4 was to be completed by the de
partment heads on each faculty member.
This form included such questions as: per
sonal data, comparison against other faculty
members, contributions to faculty groups,
basis of the record, faculty member’s
achievements and departmental recom
mendations for promotion and and tenure.
Corps-civilian split produced new system
The system of. electing living-area
senators grew out of the Corps-civilian
split some years ago. Civilian living-area
senators reduced the amount of Corps in
fluence on S.G.
If present trends continue, living-area
senators coidd eventually be elected almost
entirely from off-campus, Dunn said.
The Senate has previously approved
amendments which provided for the elec
tion of senators entirely by college. But the
student body has failed to ratify such
amendments in student referendums.
Dunn blamed those defeats on civilian
fear that the Corps would take over all Se
nate positions.
“I personally feel that the majority of
students don’t feel that way anymore,’
Dunn said. “I would say that the split bet
ween the Corps and civilians isn’t as great
as it used to be.”
S.G. could become Student Association.
Another proposal would change the S.G.
name to something similar to the Student
Association, said Duane Thompson, stu
dent vice president of rules and regula
tions.
Index
AGS SCORE victory over Texas.
Page 9.
CHAIRMANSHIPS FOR MSG
committees will be selected soon.
Page 4.
LYNN ASHBY, Houston Post
columnist presented his views on
the election year. Page 2.
THE FORECAST for Wed
nesday is increasing cloudiness,
continued warm with gusting
winds from the south. Mostly
cloudy with scattered showers is
expected Thursday. High today
81; low tonight 57; high Thurs
day 78.
S.G. is a recommending body and can
take no direct action of its own. The name
change would make that more apparent to
students, Dunn said.
S.G. operations would not be changed,
he said, but attitudes towards S.G. would.
A third proposal would move freshman
class elections to the first week in October.
Currently those elections are after mid
semester grade reports are released, about
Oct. 30.
The Oct. 1 election date would allow
freshmen earlier representation in the Se
nate and would give freshman officers more
time to work together, Thompson said.
Proposed amendments also include a
number of wording changes. These involve
areas either not covered or not applied in
the present constitution, Dunn said.
Constitution intent not changed
Such amendments don’t really change
the intent of the constitution,’ he said.
Dunn said he didn’t anticipate having a
large number of students at the conven
tion.
“From personal observations, I know it’s
not the greatest issue on the tip of peoples’
tongues,” he said.
Bryan to offer
College Station
new utility deal
The Bryan City Council voted in a closed
session yesterday to arrange a meeting with
College Station to try to reach an agree
ment on the utility contract.
Bryan City Manager Lou Odle said he
and Mayor Lloyd Joyce will meet with the
city managers and key staff members of
each city to discuss their differences on the
contract. Odle said Bryan wants 30 days to
negotiate on the contract.
The College Station City Council voted
Thursday to reject Bryan’s proposed con
tract and gave Bryan officials 14 days to
submit a new proposal containing competi
tive rates and terms. At least one College
Station councilman had been reluctant to
grant even 14 days.
A closed meeting of the College Station
City Council is scheduled for 5 p.m. today
at City Hall.
Loc^I man’s Senate bid
focuses on economics
)0 mile diploma
How far do you walk in 4 years
pical undergraduate at Texas A&M
bbout 1,000 miles to get his diploma,
sis a conservative estimate based on a
eight-semester schedule and 124
hours, the minimum required to
ate.
figure includes the distance bet-
classroom buildings, with one mile
:ek included for stairways and library
ions.
jors with more than 124 hours walk
More accurate estimation of the distance
would include the necessary detours
around construction sites, the pre
registration runaround, and refueling stops
at the Memorial Student Center.
The accompanying chart measures the
mapped distance in feet between build-
BUILDINGS
1. ACADEMIC
2. AGRICULTURE
3. AGRONOMY
4. ARCHITECTURE
5. BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
6. CHEMISTRY
7. CIVIL ENGINEERING
8. DATA PROCESSING CENTER
ings. All distances should be multiplied by
a correctional factor of 1.5, which partially
adjusts for walls and other obstructions.
Compute your own distance generously,
and intermpt y'our parents with it the next
time they begin to sing the classic, “In my
day we had to walk . . . .”
9. ENGINEERING
10. FRANCIS HALL
11. G. ROLLIE WHITE COLISEUM
12. GEOSCIENCES
13. HARRINGTON EDUCATION
CENTER ANNEX
14. reed McDonald
15. MILITARY SCIENCES
16. NAGLE HALL
17. OCEANOGRAPHY AND
METEOROLOGY
18. PHYSICS
19. PLANT SCIENCES
20. SC OATES HALL
21. SOIL SCIENCE
22. SPECIAL SERVICES
23. ZACHRY ENGINEERING
CENTER
By ROD SPEER
Contributor
Phil Gramm says he has the answer to
inflation, unemployment, poverty and the
energy crisis. With this, a good public rela
tions campaign and the backing of the small
Texas businessman, he hopes to upset U.S.
Senator Lloyd Bentsen’s bid for re-election
in the May Democratic primary.
Dr. William Philip Gramm is a 33-year-
old Texas A&M economics professor who
has averaged two speeches daily since last
spring to business and civic groups in Texas
and throughout the country. No matter
what group he talks to, the theme is basi
cally the same—the government should ba
lance its budget and cut down, if not elimi
nate, regulation of private industry.
“I’m trying to educate, he said. “These
people (his audiences) are ignorant. That’s
too strong. Strike that word. They have
good instincts, but lack reinforcement.
They’re told what makes sense in a house
hold doesn t apply to government. That’s
just bullshit.”
Gramm told a Chamber of Commerce
regional conference: “No individual can
spend more than he earns or more than he
can borrow, but for him to borrow, some
one else must earn and save. ” He contends
this applies to business and to state and
local government, but not to the federal
government, which can print the money it
spends.
wage laws, wants the federal budget ba
lanced, opposes national health insurance,
is anti-busing, opposes wage-and-price
controls and would like to scrap the poverty
program.
However, in the definitive sense, a lib
eral is one who supports the freedom of the
individual from arbitrary restraint, and
Gramm is definitely in that category. He
pulls no punches in criticizing government
policy, especially regulatory commissions
and government spending. Gramm prefers
the tag “fiscal conservative, ’ one who
wants the government to spend only as
much money as it collects in taxes.
There are enough people who have been
impressed with Gramm (he categorizes
them as small businessmen) to give him
financial backing for his Senate candidacy,
which he formally announced on Oct. 8.
Through the end of 1975, according to a
financial statement filed with the Federal
Election Commission last week, Gramm
had raised $90,000 from an estimated one
thousand contributors.
(Besides Gramm, other Democrats run
ning for Bentsen’s Senate seat are Hugh
Wilson of Port Arthur, Alfonso Veloz, a
Houston banker, and Leon Dugi, a Cuero
service station attendant. On the Republi
can side, there are U.S. Congressman Alan
Steelman of Dallas, Louis Leman, a Hous
ton engineer-executive, and Hugh
Sweeney, a Houston tennis tournament
promoter.)
Gramm has taken a leave-of-absence
from teaching and opened up a small office
below TJ’s cocktail lounge across from the
A&M campus on Texas Avenue.
Gramm is his own campaign manager,
indicative of the small paid staff he has
working for his election.
. See Gramm, page 3.
“The occurrence of inflation,
like the occurrence of pre
gnancy, is dependent upon
numerous factors but has only
one cause.”
“As I tell my Aggies in language they
understand perfectly, the occurrence of in
flation, like the occurrence of pregnancy, is
dependent upon numerous factors but has
only one cause. Inflation results when the
demand for goods and services grows at a
more rapid rate than the supply of goods
and services can grow.”
By spending printed money, the feds
drive the demand past the supply, forcing
higher prices, he said. “The federal gov
ernment is the only cause of inflation, and
government edict cannot override the laws
of economics.
In the common usage of the word,
Gramm would be branded a conservative.
He supports the oil depletion allowance,
would like to do away with the minimum
m mrmft senate seat