Battalion photo by Pat O’Malley
Battalion photo by Annette Cuellar
Visiting craftsmen and A&M students display their wares
n
)n
:rnatjt«
nerin
or be
n*. y
ladys Stone of Navasota (far left) shows her wiggle worms and stuffed
nimals during the Arts and Crafts Fair held around the Rudder Foun
tain Wednesday. Misty Gibson, a graduate student in Industrial Educa
tion, looks at a necklace she’s interested in through a pottery mirror.
Pottery was a popular commodity at the fair, and Bob Burns, a graduate
student in Wildlife Fisheries, relaxes behind his display. Even the cam
pus police officers were interested in what the artists had to show at the
fair. Officer Les Cline (far right) was particularly drawn by the portrait
sketches on display. The Arts and Crafts Fair is sponsored by the MSC
Summer Programming Committee and continues today until 3 p.m.
The Battalion
Vol. 71 No. 183
8 Pages
Thursday, August 3, 1978
College Station, Texas
News Dept. 845-2611
Business Dept. 845-2611
Inside Thursday:
• “Pajama Tops” performance
superb - p. 3.
• Dollar hits another record low on
foreign market - p. 4.
• Cowboys, Oilers begin pre-season
-p. 7.
iller asks KAMU
o take off program
By SCOTT PENDLETON
Battalion StafT
“Options in Education, a pro
gram broadcast by KAMU-FM, has
been discontinued, perhaps indefi
nitely, at the request of the adminis
tration.
Jarvis Miller, president of Texas
A&M University, listened to the
program Monday night. During the
broadcast, he heard a girl talk about
performing oral sex and other
explicit sexual material.
“It was raunchy,” Miller said.
John Merrow, the producer of
Options in Education,” termed the
program that Miller heard “perhaps
the most important we’ve done in
the four years that the series has
been on the air.”
The subject of the program was
children in mental institutions.
“Today, 70,000 children (ages
0-18) are in mental institutions,
M errow said in a teletype message
that National Public Radio uses to
communicate with member sta
tions.
Miller said that he did not order
KAMU-FM to stop broadcasting
“Options in Education.”
“All I said was that I didn’t want
that kind of language on the air, ” he
said.
He brought the matter to the at
tention of Dr. John Prescott, vice
president for academic affairs. Pre
scott is having Dr. Leatha Miloy, di
rector of Educational Information
Services, study the matter.
“Mrs. Miloy will really decide
what happens (to Options in Educa
tion),’ Prescott said. He expects to
receive her recommendation today
or Friday.
Hill Country flooding
causes deaths, damages
iT
!l&M, state officials
discuss next budget
,01)1 By SCOTT PENDLETON
Battalion Staff
5 ;Top administration officials met with
embers of the Legislative Budget Board
jd the Governor’s Budget Board Wed
nesday to discuss Texas A&M University's
, Wget for the next two years.
Jarvis Miller, President of Texas A&M
Diversity, set the tone for the 9 a.m.
Reeling with comments about increasing
lands on Texas A&M and the need for
Aifeased appropriations.
Burgeoning enrollment has put a major
fj]|l lin on our facilities, faculty, and staff,”
iller said.
JtThe number of students at Texas A&M
[doubled in eight years. This has
* |ped to create a boom economy in the
e a which causes some of the University’s
C: oblems.
lie University no longer sets the wage
te. Miller said. Employees are being
away from the University because
e are no funds available to give them
is.
Dr. John Prescott, vice president for
demic affairs, struck a more positive
)ur growth has been qualitative as
as quantitative,” he assured the
Bget boards.
Over an 18-year period, the number of
vangers can t
\ull trigger
Sugarplum
United Press International
[OSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif.
■It’s hard to shoot a bear named
jarplum.
lational Park Service rangers said re-
|tly they are going to stop naming bears
losemite National Park because of the
Biological problems the practice causes
[n rogue bears have to be eliminated.
) is “blatant foolishness” to name bears
mislead people who do not realize a
(with a cute name may be a dangerous
bt with a nasty disposition, he said,
lenceforth, delinquent bears, like
pan criminals, will be known only by
nber — Sugarplum has become “247”
I Sunset now is “224.” There are fewer
Bctions to ridding the world of trou-
emaker known only as “bear 247.”
students at Texas A&M who graduated
from high school in the top quarter of their
class increased from 37 percent to 70 per
cent, Prescott said. During the same
period, the number of students in the
lower quarter of their high school class
who attended the University dropped
from 27 percent to eight percent.
Only six percent of lecture classes and
17 percent of lab classes are taught by
teaching assistants, Prescott said. The
University is able to do this by adding
more faculty members rather than giving
raises to present faculty members. But he
said that the Texas A&M faculty generally
are paid less than faculty at similar institu
tions.
During the hour-long meeting the ad
ministration stressed the accomplishments
and value of the University and the need
for more money.
But afterwards Pat Westbrook of the
legislative budget board said the meeting
was basically for the benefit of the public
and press.
Before the budget boards make an ap
propriations recommendation, Westbrook
said, they will study the University’s
budget recommendation in much more
detail for several weeks, asking questions
of. University officials and traveling to
Texas A&M to study pertinent material.
The governor will use the budget
board’s information to make a recom
mendation to the Texas Legislature, which
will also make a recommendation based on
its budget board’s information.
“By the time the appropriation is finally
set, you may not recognize it,” Westbrook
said.
Howard Vestal, vice president for busi
ness, hopes that he will recognize it.
“They better give us at least level three
funding, unless they want us to close down
part of the University. We can’t operate
with anything less,” Vestal said.
The state coordinating board deter
mines the Texas A&M budget using a
complicated formula. When the adminis
tration meets with the budget boards, this
budget is considered to be level three
funding.
Level one would be 90 percent of that
figure. Level two would be 100 percent of
the previous budget adjusted for inflation.
“We desire level four,” Vestal said,
which includes funds for “whatever we can
justify.” He cited badly needed im
provements, such as fence and road mend
ing for 3,700 outlying acres of campus.
These repairs aren’t included in the for
mula with regular maintenance funds.
United Press International
Torrential rains from a dissipated tropi
cal storm flooded vast areas of the Central
Texas Hill Country Wednesday, sweeping
away homes and cars and forcing hundreds
of residents to high ground for safety.
At least two elderly persons died in the
flash floods which began late Tuesday. But
authorities feared the death count would
rise appreciably once the swollen creeks
and rivers began to recede.
“We’ve got lots of inquiries about
people missing and right now we don’t
know if they’ve been found,” said a Band-
era County sheriff’s dispatcher. “They’re
picking people out of trees. Our main con
cern right at the moment is just rescue.”
At midday, Frank Velasquez, a Sabinal,
Texas, cable television employee, said he
stood by the Medina River outside Band-
era — about 40 miles northwest of San
Antonio — watching homes and house
trailers float past him.
He said one dwelling had two residents
on its roof frantically waving for help.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I saw
those people sitting on top of the roof and
there was nothing I could do. I watched
them for about 300 yards as they sat there
waving their hands.”
Among those rescued at Bandera was
the 1977 Miss USA, Kim Tomes, 22, of
Houston, who spent four hours in a tree
with her mother, two sisters, brother-in-
law and nephew. She said the water struck
in the early morning while she and her
family were vacationing at a dude ranch
near the town.
More rains were expected later in the
day that would again push the river out of
its bank.
Evacuations were conducted in a half
dozen other hill country towns during the
day. The DPS said communities south of
the deluged towns also were on the alert
for rising waters.
The rainstorms were the aftermath of
tropical storm Amelia, which weakly
pommeled the Gulf Coast Sunday and
Monday before dying Tuesday over the
mesquite and cedar thickets west of San
Antonio.
Farmers and ranchers had at first wel
comed the precipitation as saving grace to
rain-starved crops and pastureland. But
the year-long drought left many creek
beds hard as concrete.
As the deluge continued — some areas
reported rainfall of up to 20 inches — cat
tlemen began moving their stock away
from the creek beds when the National
Weather Service issued the expected flash
flood warnings.
The first reports of massive flash flood
ing came at sundown Tuesday in Uvalde, a
Floods force evacuation
of popular summer camps
United Press International
AUSTIN — Department of Public
Safety officials said two popular summer
camps along the Guadalupe River had to
be evacuated because of flooding Tuesday.
A DPS spokesman said children were
evacuated from Camps Cristalles, La Junta
and Hermann Sons, but no evacuation was
necessary at Camps Arrowhead, Mystic,
Heart of Hills, Stewart, Waldemar or Kic-
kapoo.
“We’ve been besieged by calls from
parents wanting to know about the chil
dren in the camps,” said DPS spokesman
Jim Robinson. “Early this morning before
the flooding developed, DPS troopers and
sheriffs deputies went to camps and told
them to move to higher ground if neces
sary. All the people there are OK. The
safety of all the camps has been checked
by DPS and National Guard helicopters.
Robinson said there have been no re
ports of any casualties from flooding on the
Guadalupe River.
valleylocked Southwest Texas city of about
11,000 located 90 miles west of San An
tonio. Texas A&M University employee
Barry Jones said he stood in the yard of his
hillside home and watched a 5-foot-high
wall of water turn the normally tranquil
Leona River into a roaring torrent.
T was standing outside working in my
yard and all of a sudden I heard trees
cracking,” he said. "My dog went beserk.
In a matter of seconds it was 8 to 10 feet
high.”
The flood waters reached to within a
block of the Uvalde County Courthouse at
the center of the city, but receded by
midnight. Police said more than 150
families were evacuated.
Meanwhile, two of the hardest hit
communities — Bandera and Medina —
were virtually cut off from the rest of the
state.
The only open telephone line left in
Bandera — the largest town in the county
with 1,020 — was the sheriff s and the dis
patcher said only one road remained open.
“We’ve got an Army helicopter and a
private one out circling and looking for
peoph^,” she said.
The Department of Public Safety also
dispatched helicopters to Kerrville and
Medina as well as Bandera.
Medina, located about 13 miles north
west of Bandera, was reported completely
cut off by high water from both the
Medina and Sabinal rivers.
Fear rising over U.S. farmland buyers
Bill to identify foreign land owners
United Press International
WASHINGTON — A bill requiring
foreign owners of U.S. farmland to report
their ownership to the federal government
was approved Wednesday by a House Ag
riculture subcommittee.
The legislators reacted to concern
among some farm groups that purchases of
farms by foreigners, mostly Europeans,
with stronger currencies than the dollar
were driving up the price of American
farmland.
It has been estimated that foreign inter
ests purchased $800 million to $1 billion
worth of U.S. farmland last year.
Previous studies of the issue, including
a recent General Accounting Office re
port, have been limited by a lack of infor
mation.
Rep. John Krebs, D-Calif., a prime
sponsor of the bill co-sponsored by 73
House members, said the bill would
provide information which is fragmentary.
The bill is far short of what could have
been a more extreme reaction to foreign
purchases: legislation to prohibit foreign
purchases.
The measure would Require that pur
chases of U.S. farmland by foreign indi
viduals, corporations or domestic corpora
tions controlled by foreigners be reported
to the secretary of agriculture. Reports
also would be required by foreigners who
already own farmland.
Resident aliens would be excluded from
the bill.
The required report would include a
buyer’s name and address, his citizenship
or the location of a corporation, a purchase
price, intended use for the land and a de
scription of the land, including the
number of acres.
Penalties for failure to report or false re
ports would be fines of up to 25 percent of
the value of the land.
The agriculture secretary would be re
quired to analyze the effects of foreign
purchases on American family farms and
rural communities and the effectiveness of
the law’s reporting mechanism.
A similar bill was introduced in the Se
nate by Sens. Alan Cranston, D-Calif.,
and Malcolm Wallop, R-Wyo. The Senate
Agriculture Committee has not considered
a similar bill. A committee aide said the
legislation might be premature, but that
the senators had an open mind.
Administration officials, involved in
some ongoing farmland surveys, also have
called the legislation premature.
Whafs up doc?
Battalion photo by Becky Leake
Frank Griffin, a first-year vet student from
Gruver, Texas, takes time out from his studies to
get acquainted with a friendly Doberman. Friday
marks the last day of the second trimester and the
end of finals for first-year and second-year students
in the School of Veterinary Medicine.