The Battalion
Monday, January 23, 1978
College Station, Texas
Inside Monday:
Yell leaders’ presence necessary, p.
2.
News Dept. 845-2611
Business Dept. 845-2611
Anti-abortionists don’t show sup
port, p. 4.
Metcalfs men lose again, p. 8.
Committee checks
leaders’ grades
By KIM TYSON
Battalion Campus Editor
Grade qualifications for student gov
ernment members will be checked, says
Allison King, vice president of rules and
regulations.
King said Friday she set up a credentials
committee to check mid-year grade aver
ages, after rumors circulated that certain
student leaders do not meet grade
standards required to hold office.
Tom Paterson, the committee’s chair
man, said he plans to issue waivers to all
student government members at Wed
nesday’s student senate meeting.
The waiver would permit the registrar’s
office to see if grades meet the minimum
requirement stated in the constitution.
Grades cannot be checked without written
consent according to privacy laws regard
ing access to personal records.
The constitution states, “All members of
the student government executive com
mittee shall have an overall grade point
ratio of at least 2.500 at the time of their
election or appointment and post at least a
2.000 GPR during their term of office.”
(The Battalion incorrectly reported this as
“during their first term of office in a story
last Thursday.)
“Members of the student senate must
have an overall grade point ratio of at
least 2.250 at the time of their election and
maintain a 2.000 GPR during their term of
office.”
King had previously not acted, she said,
because she felt it was not her delegated
duty. She said she also plans a constitu
tional by-laws revision to formally tell stu
dents that student government is respon
sible for seeing whether their grades meet
academic standards of their offices.
King said Paterson will report directly
to her, and that she will report his findings
to the senate.
“We aren’t sure whether well have
problems with senators saying they won’t
sign to have their grades released,” King
said.
Paterson said he though most members
would sign if they felt the requirement was
justified. He said the fact that both the
constitution and the University Rides and
regulations have grade requirements
would make students feel this was jus
tified.
Eugene Lyles, assistant student legal
adviser, said that legally the grades can’t
be checked without consent but that refus
ing to have their grades checked would
make students eligible for removal by the
judicial board. The judicial board has final
authority to rule on constitutional
violations.
A writ of mandmus was filed Thursday
ordering King to act, but was withdrawn
after she announced she had set up the
committee.
Begin blasts Sadat’s speech
Israel won’t attend talks
Battlaion photo by Jamie Aitken
maintenance workers fill a wheelbarrow full of
leaves gathered in front of the Academic Building.
United Press International
JERUSALEM - Israel says it will not at
tend military talks in Cairo, bringing all
direct negotiations with Egypt to a halt.
But a senior U.S. official predicts the two
nations will resume peace talks within 10
days.
Prime Minister Menahem Begin, after a
3 1/2-hour cabinet meeting Sunday, an
nounced Israel would postpone the depar
ture of its delegation to the defense minis
ters’ conference in Cairo. He said it was
because of Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat’s tough speech Saturday.
In his speech, Sadat told his Parliament
Egypt would fight “until the end of the
world” if Israel refuses to withdraw from
captured Arab land. He asked for sophisti
cated American arms, like those included
in Israel’s arsenal.
“Before the Eqyptian people’s assem
bly, President Sadat made an extremist,
aggressive speech and addressed ul
timatums to Israel that are totally unac
ceptable,” Begin said.
Begin today was scheduled to address
the Knessest, Israel’s parliament, on the
stalled peace moves. Sadat was meeting
with Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel
to “reassess the situation,” the official
Cairo daily Al Ahram said.
Begin s announcement Sunday, which
halted all direct negotiations between
Egypt and Israel, followed Sadat’s surprise
recall of Egyptian delegates from a foreign
ministers’ meeting in Jerusalem last week.
Despite their harsh statements, both
sides left open the possibility of resuming
peace talks.
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance returned
to Washington Sunday from a Middle East
mission. A senior official aboard his plane
said direct talks woidd resume in one week
to 10 days with the United States acting as
mediator. He said the rhetoric of both
sides would cool and the talks eventually
would progress slowly and quietly.
The official, who could not be iden
tified, also said the United States “would
be willing to take a look at” Sadat’s request
for sophisticated American weapons, in
cluding fighter planes.
U.S. Undersecretary of State Alfred
Russians complete
first in-space docking
'rimary, caucus season limited
Party reforms favor Carter
United Press International
MOSCOW - The Soviet Union has ac
complished another space first by docking
a pilotless space capsule with a manned
orbiting space laboratory.
The Progress 1 linked up with the
Salyut 6 space station early Sunday, deliv
ering fuel and other supplies to two Soyuz
26 cosmonauts now in their seventh week
in orbit.
The official Tass news agency said it was
the first time a robot spacecraft had carried
out an automatic docking to deliver
supplies to a manned station in orbit.
But it was not thought to involve a
breakthrough in technology because the
Soviets are believed to carry out even the
dockings of manned capsules by ground
control.
“The mutual search, rendezvous,
tethering and linkup of the spacecraft was
carried out automatically with the use of
onboard radio-technical means and com
puting devices,” Tass said.
United Press International
WASHINGTON - Any Democrat think-
g of challenging President Carter for the
arty nomination two years from now can
nd little to cheer about in the work of the
arty’s special panel on delegate selection.
The 58-member Winograd Commission
enciled in the final changes on two years
of reform work Sunday. It managed to
N!
Scotland police find five
bodies scattered in snow
United Press International
EDINBURGH, Scotland - Police have
low found five bodies scattered through-
)ut snowbound Scotland in a a bizarre
nurder case involving a former member of
Parliament and his wife.
A suspect in the case was scheduled for
court appearance today. British law bars
W.
VEI
limit the primary and caucus season, wipe
out often-mischieveous, cross-over
primaries and devise a complex system for
delegate allocation.
Now the reforms go to the Democratic
National Committee for routine review.
The process was not smooth, and there
were frequent complaints that the lan
guage was inexplicable.
As it stands now, at the end of two long
days of debate:
The 1980 Democratic caucus and pri
mary season should run 13 weeks from the
second Tuesday in March to the second
Tuesday in June. A special exemption for
New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation pri
mary was expected, however. States that
selected delegates in that 13-week time
identifying the suspect until he is formally
charged.
Police already had found the body of
former MP Walter Scott-Elliot, 82. he was
educated at Eton with World War I serv
ice in the elite Cold Stream Guards. Also
discovered were the bodies of his butler’s
University ranks seventh
in support, gifts received
Texas A&M University ranks seventh
among the nation’s public institutions in
eceiving gifts and other support from pri
vate sources, reveals a survey by Brakeley,
John Price Jones Inc., a development-
related firm based in New York.
Texas A&M’s ranking was based on
1975- 76 gifts totaling $14.4 million. The
1976- 77 total, which will not be reflected
in national surveys until next year, is $15.5
million.
While ranking seventh nationally over
all, Texas A&M placed third in two
categories: support from business and in-
00 dustry, and alumni. Only Michigan and Il
linois topped Texas A&M in the business
and industry category, while the top spots
in amounts of money received from alumni
are held by Michigan State and Wisconsin.
In percentage of alumni donating to their
alma mater, Texas A&M ranks second,
with 37 percent, topped only by Georgia
Tech at 41.8 percent.
Texas A&M placed seventh in the cate
gory for foundation assistance. The leading
institutions are Minnesota, Michigan,
Wisconsin, California at San Francisco,
California at Los Angeles and California at
Berkeley.
brother and the brother’s common-law
wife.
Police, battling a weekend blizzard,
found another woman’s body Sunday near
a power station on the road from Comrie
to St. Fillens, 58 miles northwest of Edin
burgh. She was believed to be Mrs.
Scott-Elliot.
Saturday they had found the body of a
man on an estate 10 miles from the Scot
land home of Scott-Elliot. It was believed
to have been David Wright, a gardener
wfio once worked for the Scott-Elliots.
The investigation moved to Scotland
Jan. 15 after police in London broke into
Scott-Elliot’s posh apartment to find it
ransacked, bloodstained and robbed of an
tique porcelain, jewelry, cash and credit
cards.
The search for the Scott-Elliots linked
their disappearance to the Christmas Day
discovery of the body of a woman dressed
in man’s clothing in a stream at Dumfries,
60 miles south of Edinburgh.
She was identified as Mary Goggle,
common-law wife of Donald Hall, 37, the
brother of Scott-Elliot’s butler, Archibald
Hall.
Donald Hall’s body was found naked
and hooded in the trunk of a car outside a
hotel 40 miles north of Edinburgh Jan. 16.
frame in 1976 are forbidden to move out
side it in 1980. The primary-caucus period
in 1976 was more than 20 weeks. Carter
partisans were all for this one.
The ruling will have no bearing on so-
called “beauty contest” primaries that do
not award delegates.
To win delegates in future primaries or
caucuses, a candidate now must exceed an
escalating threshold of vote percentages -
another Carter-backed move. In 1976 that
threshold was 15 percent of the vote. It
also was optional. In 1980, the threshold
will be 15 percent up to the second Tues
day, go to 20 percent by the second Tues
day in May and rise to 25 percent thereaf
ter. For primaries, the thresholds are
mandatory. For caucuses, the rules are
more flexible.
There is an asterisk, however. To pre
vent a winner-take-all situation in the
event only one candidate exceeds the
threshold, the commission said a percent
age of the delegates will be awarded to the
second-place finisher.
The escalating percentages will make it
tougher to mount late challenges to Car
ter. The strict 13-week selection limit will
stop any hopeful from building
momentum in caucuses before New
Hampshire - something Carter did in
1976.
State at-large delegate spots will be
used to address deficiencies in the number
of women or minority delegates. The
commission also agreed to increase each
delegation by 10 percent to provide voting
rights to state party officials and elected
officeholders. This means at least 300
more delegates will attend the 1980 con
vention.
Open primary states - Michigan, Wis
consin and Montana in 1976 - which allow
Republicans to vote for Democratic candi
dates and vice versa, will have to discon
tinue that practice or drop their primaries.
Party officials say the crossovers have
fouled results of their contests in the past.
Congress to battle
over Panama treaty
United Press International
WASHINGTON - Formal action on the
Panama Canal treaties was beginning this
week in two Senate committees. But at
least one senator thinks the issue’s shock
waves already are causing delaying tactics
on the Senate floor.
Ratification preliminaries on the canal
accords were the major business of the
first full week of the 95th Congress’s sec
ond session. The Foreign Relations Com
mittee began its work on the documents
and the more hawkish Armed Services
Committee started three days of hearings
on it.
The Armed Services Committee has no
jurisdiction over the treaties, but there
could be a damaging impact if it should
make an adverse report on the military
and operational impact of the treaties.
President Carter has said he is not will
ing to accept any amendments, which
would require new negotiations with the
Republic of Panama. But many Senate in
siders believe ratification probably cannot
be obtained without them.
One key foreign relations member may
be the committee’s lowest-ranking
Republican-Senate minority leader How
ard Baker, who in an interview on NBC-
TV’s Face the Nation Sunday warned
there is a “tough fight” and uncertain out
come ahead.
He said following a trip to Panama dur
ing the recess he would support the ac
cords and work for their ratification - if
certain changes were made.
Meanwhile, Sen. Edward Kennedy,
D-Mass., and others feel the floor fight
over the treaties may already be under
way. Kennedy’s effort to win action on
amendments to the criminal code reform
Atherton is remaining in the Middle East.
He will continue working on a statement
of principles that was under discussion in
Jerusalem,
In Sadat’s speech Saturday, he called for
total withdrawal from land occupied by Is
raeli in the 1967 war and recognition of
Palestinian rights to self-determination,
two points repeatedly rejected by Israel.
Begin said Israel is interested in a “suit
able atmosphere for the calm conduct of
negotiations.”
Cosmonauts Yuri Romanenko and
Georgy Grechko “conducted observations
and control over tethering and linkup,”
it said.
The Soyuz 26 cosmonauts blasted into
space Dec. 10 and boarded the Salyut
Dec. 11. They were joined Jan. 11 by the
Soyuz 27 cosmonauts, making history’s
first double space docking.
The operation gave the Soviets at least a
temporary lead in space shuttles over the
United States, which will not launch its
first shuttle until next year. The U.S. shut
tle will regularly ,carry men, equipment
and satellites to and from orbit on missions
lasting up to a month, while the Soviets
are concentrating on long-term stays in
space.
Tass said that after unloading fuel, life
support and scientific materials from the
Progress, the cosmonauts will reload the
robot craft with their waste and it will be
sent into the dense layers of the atmo
sphere to burn up.
legislation has been stalled with some of
the treaty’s best-known opponents in the
vanguard.
As a result, it appears the Senate may be
tied up all week on the proposed sweeping
overhaul of the archaic statutes.
The House planned action on 14 bills
this week, almost all of them routine. The
major one - if it clears the Rules Commit
tee - would tighten up existing procedures
for offshore oil or other type exploration.
A&M’s tuition
rates favorably
in comparison
Texas A&M University’s rates for tui
tion, fees and room and board compare
favorably with those of other major public
institutions of higher learning, according
to results of a national survey.
Only 15 of 131 institutions responding
to a survey by the National Association of
State Universities and Land-Grant Col
leges (NASULGC) showed lower totals
than the $410 reported by Texas A&M for
tuition and fees for resident students.
Texas A&M was one of 53 institutions
which did not increase resident tuition and
fees this year and one of 50 which held the
line on slich expenses for non-resident
students.
In room and board, the university ranks
as the 60th most economical of the insti tui
tions included in the NASULGC . 'L.