The Battalion
Vol. 70 No. 109
16 Pages
Wednesday, April 20, 1977
College Station, Texas
News Dept. 845-2611
Business Dept. 845-2611
l&M economics
|ourse helps
igh schools
By KIM TYSON
instructors who have been teach-
Jgh school economics without formal
mg are now being helped by the Texas
i economics department.
|cas high schools are required to offer a
> “on the essentials and benefits of the
enterprise system because of an
issued by the Texas legislature in
It most teachers are “economic illiter-
I according to a pamphlet issued by
IV. David Maxwell, Dean of Liberal
jcording to the pamphlet, the Joint
Icil on Economic Education reported
p that “one-half of the nation’s 60,000
l studies teachers have no formal train-
i economics.” The study showed that
[two states require students to take a
le in economics before high school
Lation, and that three out of four col-
|students never take a course in eco-
:s.
! Center for Education and Research
|ee Enteq^rise, approved by the Texas
Board of Regents in January, was
ed to provide instruction and research
fcachers on the free-enterprise system,
program begins operation in Sep-
ber.
Ians for the Center include month-long
per conferences and workshops held
ligthe school year at high schools. Re-
ph will be conducted on the free-
Irprise system, and the Center’s staff
nbers will serve as program consult-
frobably a lot of schools are teaching
lomics with people who aren’t certified
[ach it,” said Wayne Lincecum, a Bryan
i School social studies teacher. He said
I sometimes the free-enterprise course
ategrated into existing courses that
tiers are certified to teach,
lincecum said his course includes the
; and effects of prices and the effects
lade unions on the economy. He said he
Ihes both benefits and drawbacks of the
l-enterprise system.
[Since Texas A&M is now offering to
elop such a program program, we hope
to emerge over the next several years as
one of the nation’s leaders in this field,”
said Dr. John Allen, an economics profes
sor who originated the idea.
“We will be one of the first major univer
sities to establish a program in economic
education with emphasis on the free-
enterprise system,” Allen said.
An integral part of the new center will be
the American Economy Institute, which
has conducted summer workshops for the
past four years and will conduct the one this
summer.
The main difference between the Center
and the American Economy Institute is
that the Center will be a year-round pro
gram. Staff will be A&M faculty members
who spend work at the Center part-time.
Teachers are given $250 in lodging, fees
and books to attend the summer workshop.
“We have actually gone out and raised
money in past years from various foun
dations and businesses to pay teachers to
come back and take the course,” Allen said.
The workshop for this summer is already
filled, and teachers from 75 different com
munities are expected to attend.
In the past four summers the workshop
has had only 25 of its 35 openings filled.
Lincecum said many teachers can’t take
part in the program because they use
summers to work on advanced degrees. He
said that the free-enterprise course is usu
ally a small part of a teacher’s curriculum
and isn’t important compared to the other
courses they must teach.
Students can take the summer workshop
but will not receive financial assistance.
The course is a combination of two
graduate courses, Economics 615 and
EDCI 685, an education course. It can be
taken for college credit.
The Center will be funded entirely by
private business and foundation donations,
Allen said. The annual budget for the Cen
ter’s first year is $60,000. It is expected to
spend around $150,000 after the research
begins. The Association of Former Stu
dents helped start the Center with a
$300,000 donation.
Allen said similar programs have been
offered by other schools on a smaller scale.
Big wheels in new wheels
Dr. John Koldus, vice president for student services, followed by Dr. Charles
Powell, Toby Rives and other Texas A&M University administrators and
instructors propel themselves out of the MSC mall as participants in the
Third Annual Wheelchair Awareness Day. They’re taking time to become
aware of the problems faced by wheelchair-bound students in their every
day movements. The event is sponsored by “Students Concerned for the
Handicapped. ”
Yarborough tells students to take action
Former Senator Ralph Yarborough
called on Texas A&M students yesterday
to take the initiative and help Texas fight
its poverty and education problems.
“I want to issue a plea to this great uni
versity to take the lead, to do something
about the deprived, the underprivileged
and those in Texas who don’t have a
chance,” Yarborough said.
The 73-year-old former U.S. Senator
appeared at Texas A&M as a Political
Forum speaker.
“Students are going to have to go out as
missionaries,” Yarborough said. “Take a
new objective in life that you are not only
going to college to see how much money
you can earn, or how far you can advance
in your profession. But you are going to do
something about bringing Texas into the
fourth quarter of the 20th century with a
compassion that matches its wealth.”
r
Squeeze
Army . .
iBi
m
Cepheid Variable mem
bers try to become one in
the Car-Cramming Con
test during the MSC Gas
Week. A group from Pur-
year and Keathley dorms
won the contest by cram-
^ ming 23 persons in a Volks
wagen.
Battalion photos by Jim Crawley
4 4
•SI
,4MF
»ia
Citing statistics from the 1977 World
Almanac, Yarborough said that Texas
ranks 31st in the United States in average
per capita income and 34th in education.
“Being the richest of all the states in
natural resources, we shouldn’t permit
this to exist,” he said of the low rankings.
“If you study education and study eco
nomics, states are never very far apart in
these two categories,” said Yarborough.
Yarborough served 13 years on the Se
nate Education subcommittee where he
authored or co-authored every major edu
cational bill in the nation.
He also introduced in the U.S. Senate
the first bilingual education bill ever in
troduced in Congress, and fought eight
years to get the Cold War GI bill pushed
through Congress.
Criticizing the state’s lack of spending
for social needs, Yarborough said
“whether it’s the unemployed, dependent
children or old people, we are no better
than 48th in the Union in treating human
beings. No wonder we have two million
people in the poverty bracket.”
He said that in tbe Texas legislature,
concrete always wins out over people, and
that no elected statewide executive is cry
ing about this problem.
Yarborough said he hopes the prophesy
that Thomas Jefferson made about Texas
in 1819 will someday come true. Jefferson
wrote that “the Spanish province of Texas
will one day be the brightest star in the
American constellation.”
“I hope that’s the destiny of Texas, Yar
borough said. “The opportunities are
great. I want to see Texas move ahead, but
we’ve got to do something about the
people in this state. Then we can say we
have the brightest star in this constella
tion.”
YARBOROUGH
Human rights violations in Iran
not reported ? attorney says
By MARY HESALROAD
Battalion Staff
Houston attorney Nancy Hormachea,
back recently from a two-week visit to
Iran, last night said she felt the U.S. Em
bassy in Tehran was negligent in reporting
cases of torture, imprisonment and other
violations of human rights.
She spoke at a meeting of the Iranian
Student Association of Texas A&M Uni
versity.
Hormachea went to Iran as a represen
tative of the American Committee for Ira
nian Human Rights and the National
Lawyers Guild.
Norman Forer, a professor at the Uni
versity of Kansas, accompanied her.
Hormachea said the Arms Assistance
Act passed by Congress in 1976 states that
a U.S. Embassy in any foreign country is
supposed to investigate allegations of
violations of human rights, and that the
embassy in Iran is not doing this.
She noted that John Stemple, first sec
retary at the embassy, said the act was
very new and that they weren’t familiar
with it.
“He said they had perhaps investigated
a few cases but he couldn’t give me any
details.”
Stemple had also told Hormachea that
the embassy had the right to interpret the
Arms Assistance Act according to their
particular needs.
“I felt he was suggesting they (the em-
HORMACHEA
bassy) had a certain relationship with the
Iranian government and that they had to
be careful not to disturb that relation
ship,” Hormachea said.
Hormachea and Forer were denied
permission to visit 18 political prisoners.
But they did visit with friends and mem
bers of the prisoners’ families.
Leonard Weinglass, a Los Angeles at
torney vvho planned to travel with Hor
machea and Forer, was denied a visa to
Iran because he specifically asked to see
the 18 prisoners’ jail conditions.
Hormachea said reports from Amnesty
International, a world-wide organization
opposed to political oppression, state that
there are about 25,000 to 100,000 political
prisoners in Iran.
The U.S. State Department supports
the Shah’s figure of only 3,000 political
prisoners, she added.
The Houston attorney said she got dif
fering impressions on how general condi
tions in Iran actually were.
She talked to the' son of a store owner
and was told that conditions were good,
thanks to the Shah of Iran.
One of the employes disagreed. The
employe said things were bad in Iran and
that it was the Shah’s fault.
Hormachea said she saw evidence of an
employment problem, bad housing for the
lower class and food shortages.
One young man she interviewed said
his people were hungry and that food was
imported to feed them.
Hormachea said she is not sure what the
Carter administration is going to do about
the human-rights issue in Iran.
“The government has been dragging its
heels for a long time. These violations of
human rights are not something that has
been going on just recently. I’m not very
optimistic because they haven’t done any
thing for so long,” she said.
Survey to help students pick classes
Professor evaluations available
By ANNETTE CUELLAR
Students no longer have to rely on rec
ommendations from friends when choos
ing a professor.
The Texas A&M University Student
Senate sponsored a Professor Information
Survey and the results are now available to
students. The information has been pub
lished in pamphlet form and may be
picked up in the Registrar’s Office in the
Coke Building.
The survey questions included how dif
ficult the instructors are, how frequently a
text book is used, the quality of the lec
tures and whether or not the professor was
helpful outside of class.
Richard David, student chairman of the
professor information sub-committee said
that students may choose instructors who
will be assets to them in their college
careers.
“For example, if I wanted to take his
tory 105, and didn’t know anyone who had
previously taken it, I could look under his
tory in the booklet and see which prof
would be best for my curriculum,” David
said.
Not all instructors are included in the
evaluation booklet. Letters were sent to
all professors and they had the option of
refusing to be evaluated, David said. Only
350 out of 1,600 professors participated.
Student volunteers administered the
14-question forms to students in classes
last semester and the results were com
piled by computer over Christmas break,
David explained.
The booklet shows the number of stu
dents who agreed or disagreed with par
ticular characteristics of professors. It also
gives the average response to each ques
tion, David said.
The survey in past years was called Pro
fessor Evaluations. David said the re
sponse to the survey is better now than it
has been in the past.
The survey does not affect the instruc
tor’s job in any way, David said. The pur
pose is mainly to serve as student-to-
student communication.
Weather
Overcast with SO per cent chance
of showers and thundershowers
today and tonight. High today In the
upper 70s, Low tonight in the low
60s. Continued mostly cloudy to
morrow with a 40 per cent chance
of thundershowers. Expected high
Ifor tomorrow is 80,