Vol. 70 No. 132
6 Pages
basement fire ruins supplies
The Battalion
weather
Monday, July 11, 1977
College Station, Texas
News Dept. 845-2611
Business Dept. 845-2611
Partly cloudy, hot and humid today
and tomorrow. High both days in
the mid-90s. Low tonight in the
mid-70r|. No precipitation.
: is the remains of some of the materials stored in the Memorial Stu-
Center basement after the fire Friday night.
Battalion photo by Bernard Gor
exas Legislature
olds special session
United Press International
JSTIN, Tex. — The Texas Legisla
ted into special session by Gov.
Briscoe for the first time in four
!,|scheduled quick hearings on school
legislation today in an effort to pass
imillion increase in state aid to pub-
»ls within a week.
le governor said he would tel! the
lakers during the opening session how
(refers the money be allocated —
Sier the bulk of the funding should go
educing the amount of taxes local
ol districts must raise, or to poor
ol districts to help equalize educa-
bpportunities between rich and poor
ts.
i Briscoe and Speaker Bill Clayton
sed hope the session will be a short
yton has predicted the school finance
bid be passed in as little as four days,
ng the House to consider Friday a
lion demanding the removal from of-
embattled Supreme Court Associate
: Donald B. Yarbrough,
coe optimistically said the school
play be completed in a week to 10
“I would hope that would be possible.
But I don’t think anyone would want to
make a definite prediction on how quickly
it could be done,” he said.
Briscoe has called only one previous
special session since he took office in 1972,
a three-day session in December, 1973, in
which the legislature reduced the state
speed limit to 55 miles per hour in com
pliance with a federal energy program.
School finance is considerably more
complex than the speed limit issue, how
ever, and lawmakers were unable to agree
on it during the 140-day regular session
which ended May 30.
Clayton is pushing a $900 million plan
which places its major emphasis on
teacher salaries and decreasing the
amount of money local districts are re
quired to raise to fund school programs. A
Senate plan gives a slightly smaller
amount to teacher salaries, less in direct
aid to the local districts, and more money
to an equalization fund for poorer school
districts.
House liberals have offered a bill which
is similar to the Senate plan, but with even
more emphasis on equalization.
ijackers release hostages,
nds 43-hour takeover
United Press International
MlASCUS, Syria — Five Palestinian
tiers overpowered their leader in an
?ht scuffle, freed their last six hos-
S and surrendered to Syrian au-
|ties, ending a 43-hour takeover of an
wait jetliner.
least two of the heavily armed hijac-
nd three hostages jumped the
der yesterday, said to be a corn-
accused by the Palestinian Libera-
rganization of “looting, embezzle-
t and forgery.”
Traitors,” 36-year-old Abu Saed
Professor taking
leave of absence
to run for House
jir. Phil Gramm, Texas A&M University
jpmics professor and a candidate in last
s Democratic primary for United
|s Senate, announced Friday he’s tak-
l leave of absence from Texas A&M to
ider running for Congress,
ramm said hf will probably run for
gressman Olin Teague’s sixth district
if Teague, D-Bryan, does not run for
lection. The 33-year-old professor said
he doesn’t expect Teague to run again
that his own campaign does not depend
Teague’s.
ny campaign announcement would
e in the fall, Gramm said, after he has
it the remainder of the summer build-
campaign and financial support within
strict.
igue has been a member of Congress
1946.
elieve much of the support that I
is contingent on what Mr. Teague
s,” Gramm said. Gramm said he ex-
ts to get almost of all of Teague’s support
e congressman does not run again.
Bias been rumored for some time that
gue will not run for re-election because
^occurring health problems including
loss of his left foot in January,
amm discounted opposition in the
essional race from Alvarado
icssman Don McNeil, who announced,
indidate in the race June 29. Gramm
id he does not expect Chet Edwards,
iistant to Teague, to run. Edwards
last week he will run if Teague does
By LEE ROY LESCHPER
Battalion Editor
A fire in the basement of Texas A&M University’s
Memorial Student Center Friday night destroyed a large
amount of stored supplies and filled the entire student
center with heavy smoke.
The fire, which officials say may have been started by a
student painting in the basement, sent two College Sta
tion firemen to the hospital with abdominal cramps from
heat stress and smoke inhalation. The two, firemen James
Golden and Richard Lee, were treated and released.
Four fire units from College Station and one from
Bryan worked for about an hour to exstinguish the blaze,
first reported at 6:48 p.m. Toxic fumes from burning
plastic cafeteria furniture and trays stored in the base
ment overcame several firemen. They were treated with
oxygen at the scene. '
The firemen worked late into the night clearing burnt
and burning paper and boxes from the basement..
“It’s just a big cleanup job now,” one fireman said about
9:30 p.m., when the cleanup job had just begun.
The basement area, directly below the Post Office, was
used to store a wide variety of furniture, forms, paper ana'*
books from MSC offices and student organizations. The
fire started in one of several bins filled with dishes and
flammable packing material. College Station Fire Mar-
shal Harry Davis said.
MSC employe s said Friday night that students had
been using the basement for some years to paint large
signs. At least one student was in the basement before the
fire Friday, they said. Two paint cans and a paint roller
were found near where the fire started.
Davis said he’s not sure what started the fire.
“There’s a couple of people I’ve got to talk to,” he said.
“One of them is a student who was supposed to be in the
area when the fire started. As soon as I locate him we may
know a lot more. ”
Most of the materials burned in the fire belonged to the
Former Students Association. The fire was concentrated
in tall stacks of former students directories.
University officials hadn’t estimated the cost of the fire
damage yesterday.
“It’ll be two or three months before the insurance
people can estimate the cost. They’ll have to make an
extensive inventory of the place. There’s no way of know
ing what was destroyed,” Davis said.
Most of the stored materials may have been damaged
by water the firemen used to douse the fire. Almost
everything stored in the basement received some water
or smoke damage.
Thick black smoke from the fire was pumped through
out the MSC by the center’s ventilation system. Officials
had initially feared that smoke would do considerable
smoke damage within the complex, but apparently it did
not. The University ventilation system carried some of
that smoke as far as Wofford Cain Hall and the University
Physical Plant.
“We found out it was not what I call ‘residue smoke’
which leaves a black residue on everything,” Davis said.
By Saturday morning the smoke had been cleared out by
large exhaust fans from Texas A&M’s fire school and little
smoke smell remained in the center.
Only traces of that smell remained on the first floor
yesterday. The main portion of the center was reopened
to the public Saturday afternoon.
The fire knocked out power in the basement itself by
melting electrical wires running through the basement.
The main electrical cable providing power for the entire
center was scorched but not destroyed by the fire, MSC
Assistant Student Program Coordinator Don Rohel said.
About 25 people were staying in the MSC hotel when
the fire started. All were evacuated and moved to other
hotels in town.
There’s no sprinkler system or other fire control system
in the basement, MSC officials said.
“There’s not any type of protection at all, ” Wavis said.
There are six to eight other unprotected basements on
campus that are also being used as storerooms, he said. A
similar fire damaged a storage basement below Duncan
Dining Hall a couple of years ago.
But this fire may make University officials reevaluate
fire safety measures on campus, Davis said.
“This will make them stand back and take a look at
safety,” he said.
shouted after he was wrestled to the
ground just as the Air Kuwait Boeing 707
took off from the Damascus Airport, offi
cial Syrian sources said.
“We’re not traitors, ” one of the gunmen
answered, “The demands you’re making
have nothing to do with what the hijack
was originally about.”
The split among the hijackers appa
rently involved their recent expulsion
from the PLO’s mainstream Al Fatah
guerilla group.
The hijacking began late Friday night
when six men, dressed as Syrian soldiers
and armed with several handguns and a
machine gun, commandeered the jetliner
with 45 passengers and a crew of 10 on a
flight from Beirut to Kuwait.
They ordered the jetliner flown to its
original destination, Kuwait, and ex
changed the passengers, including the
Kuwaiti ambassador to Lebanon, for two
Palestinian Liberation Organization offi
cials and Kuwait’s public security chief.
They then took off for South Yemen.
But the plane instead landed early yes
terday in Damascus, where the gunmen
pressed Palestinian Liberation Organiza
tion and Syrian negotiators to resolve their
dispute with Al Fatah during eight hours
of talks under a broiling sun that raised the
temperatures inside the plane to over 100
degrees.
The stocky, fair-haired Saed then or
dered the three-man British crew to take
off, apparently satisfied with a Palestinian
Liberation Organization promise of
reunification and safe passage to Lebanon.
But he was jumped as the plane took off.
Once they were returned to Damascus the
gunmen were taken to an undisclosed lo
cation under heavy security.
Although Saed made a series of demands
ranging from the release of several
hundred prisoners in Arab jails to an un
disclosed ransom, in the end the hijacking
seemed to focus on his dispute with Al
Fatah.
A Palestinian Liberation Organization
statement yesterday said Saed, who ran
the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s
post office in Lebanon during the civil
war, was “arrested” briefly by Al Fatah last
month for “looting, embezzlement and
forgery,”
The Palestinian Liberation Organization
hinted that “a certain Arab intelligence
apparatus” helped Saed escape from Al
Fatah and hijack the plane, but did not
name the Arab country involved.
Rejects gasoline sale
Carter considering
temporary rationing
Standing in line
The “L-through-R’s” stand in line Thursday morning to register for the
second summer semester at A&M. At one point, the line of students wait
ing to register stretched from DeWare Field House and along three
sides of the Wofford Cain Pool. Preliminary estimates on Texas A&M
University’s second summer session enrollment show a significant de
crease from the first session’s enrollment. An unofficial report taken
Friday from a computer print-out was 7,677 students.
Battalion photo by Steve Goble
United Press International
WASHINGTON — President Carter is
considering temporary gasoline rationing
and other moves to limit foreign oil im
ports. He has rejected suggestions that oil
from the new Alaska pipeline be shipped
to Japan.
In making the disclosures yesterday,
Carter’s energy chief, James Schlesinger,
agreed there were technical advantages to
a deal in which Alaskan oil would be trans
ported to Japan in exchange for Japanese-
bought supplies from the Middle East.
But in spite of reduced shipping costs,
Schlesinger said President Carter consid
ers the idea “undesirable.”
“There will be no exchanges,”
Schlesinger said in a television interview '
NBC-TV’s Meet the Press. “All of the oil
coming out of Alaska will have to be ship
ped to the United States. This will have
the advantage of increasing pressure on
the companies to bring pipelines from the
West Coast into the interior part of the
country.”
Schlesinger, who soon is expected to be
named the nation’s first secretary of
energy, said the White House is intent on
adopting measures that would cut the in
flow of Arab oil from an average of 10 mill
ion barrels a day to less than 6 million bar
rels a day.
He said “all sorts of possibilities” are
being considered by the administration to
stem oil imports and make the nation more
energy self-sufficient: “some limitation on
the flow of oil into the United States is one
possibility, shutting of gasoline stations
might be considered.”
“Even some temporary rationing
schemes might be considered,” he said.
“The point is that we are looking at a
whole array of options in addition to the
standby gasoline tax.”
He said “an excessive amount of im
ported oil is coming into the courltry, forc
ing onto service stations an unwanted
amount of gasoline, which they are push
ing on their customers.” «
As for emergency gasoline rationing,
Schlesinger said Carter’s contingency plan
“is in response to the requirements of
Congress.”
Schlesinger said the administration will
stand by its 1985 target for converting
most industries and utilities to coal despite
tough environmental and economic pi^jb-
lems.
House Republican leader John Rhodes,
interviewed yesterday on ABC-TV’s Issues
and Answers, said Congress “is in no
mood” to give Carter any standby ration
ing authority beyond that already pro
vided in law.
Limited resources
might force some
colleges to close
United Press International
POINT CLEAR, Ala. — As resources
for higher education become more lim
ited, state legislatures may be forced to
let some colleges close, Texas Commis
sioner of Higher Kducation Kenneth
Ashworth said today.
Changing student populations, com
bined with a possible slowdown in busi
ness and industrial growth, can have dire
consequences, Ashworth told the 26th an
nual legislative work conference of the
Southern Regional Education Board.
Ashworth said new responses should be
developed to replace the panacea of the
1960’s — the “build another building, start
a new doctoral program” approach.
Administrators and faculty members
must continue to evolve with society, he
said.
According to Ashworth, there ^vill be 15
per cent fewer students in science and en
gineering in 1985 than 1970 and the physi
cal sciences will have a 55 per cent de
crease in students.
“Schools are lowering admissions stan
dards to find new clientele,” he said.
“Then they have to inflate grades and drop
performance standards to keep the stu
dents in school.
Heavy equipment operators’ union pickets
construction firm building baseball field
The local union of heavy equipment
operators is picketing the Bryan firm build
ing Texas A&M University’s new baseball
stadium. And the disagreement seems to
center around a contract the union wants
and the firm has not intention of giving.
The firm, Thurmond & Stuart Construc
tion, of Bryan, doesn’t have a contract with
the Local 450 operating engineers union.
The firm doesn’t own its own heavy equip
ment and so has no use for a heavy equip
ment contract, John Holloway, project
manager for the west campus project, said.
But apparently union members became
angry when one union member, John
Norman, began working on the project as
an employe of a local equipment company
subcontracted by Thurmond & Stuart, Hol
loway said. Union members complained
that Norman didn’t have a front-end man
— an assistant to help with the machine —
as required by union rules. But because the
firm doesn’t have a union contract those
rules don’t apply, Holloway said.
So the union began to picket the con
struction site June 23, a Thursday. That day
and the next the laborers and carpenters on
the job — both union-contracted by the
firm — honored the pickets and didn’t
come to work, Holloway said. But after
talking with the business agent for the
operators union, the other two unions re
turned to work the next Monday and have
stayed on the job since. And the operators
have kept on picketing.
The union member picketing last week
said the union just wants the same kind of
contract it has had on earlier Texas A&M
construction projects. They don’t want to
stop anybody from making a living, he said,
but they do want construction jobs with all
union labor or none.
He suggested the firm is trying to make
larger profits by paying wages lower than
the union’s minimum $10.37 per hour.
Holloway doesn’t deny it.
Without the union contract operators
have to be paid $9.87 per hour, according
to a set of minimum wage requirements set,
up by the University under State law, Hol
loway said. Because Thurmond & Stuart
subcontracts for heavy equipment and
operators, they don’t pay that wage directlyj
— the subcontractor does. But, wages are
still 50 cents per hour cheaper than under
union contract.
A union picket also complained that the
subcontracted firm. Van Delden Construc
tion of San Antonio, was taking the con
struction money out of the local economy.
But the real concern seems to be getting a
union contract for the next university con
struction job.
Holloway is more concerned about his
own deadlines.
“We’ve got a job to build,” he said.
“We’ll just do it. We’ve got a deadline and
we just can’t wait.”
—Lee Roy Leschper. Jr.
Joe Cortes, a member of Local Union 450, at the construction site of the
new Texas A&M baseball field.
m photo by SU-ve Goblu