Battalion
Thursday, January 25, 1979
College Station, Texas
News Dept. 845-2611
Business Dept. 845-2611
BUS-tling?
Texas A&M’s intra-campus shut
tle bus system has been revamped
in an attempt to help students
scramble from the west campus to
the east in the 10 minutes between
classes. See page 12.
A state senator from Houston has
introduced a bill to the legislature
proposing that a $5,000 reward be
given to anyone supplying informa
tion leading to the arrest and con
viction of a drug pusher. Local
authorities say they don’t know how
that will affect Bryan-College Sta
tion if it passes. See page 5.
iwest Confers
tudent senate OKs
=”||iemorializing bill
[9
By DILLARD STONE
Battalion Staff
|The Texas A&M University student se-
ie’B'eeommendation to memorialize the
^Hial Student Center grass passed
Vednesday, but not in the fashion that
Jpad expected.
Hie recommendation now goes to the
lard pf Regents through President Jarvis
illerjs office,
ithi
^ Ratler than debating the issue of
enBialization, senators mainly confined
^■discussion to one of the bill’s
[ons: financing of the proposed hedge
ich would surround the University Cen-
gnjunds.
^Hne Morrison, vice president for fi-
mcekml one of the bill’s co-sponsors, told
Senate that the hedge would cost be
en [$20,000-$ 25, (MX).
Morrison based his figure on discussions
had with grounds maintenance person-
fAlt*'Ugh no senators rose to speak di
rectly against the bill, debate on the use of
University funds to plant the hedge was hot
and heavy.
Morrison said the $25,000 was an insig
nificant amount when compared to the $5
million spent on the recently completed
grounds renovation program.
“So it’s well worth it to our adminis
trators to expend large amounts of money
for land improvements,” he said.
“If we don’t have the hedge, it defeats
the whole purpose of memorialization,”
said Fred Bayler, vice president for rules
and regulations. He added that conflicts
over the grass’s use were due mainly to
ignorance, not defiance of the tradition.
A hedge would be an aesthetically pleas
ing method of discouraging the
grass’s use, Bayler said.
Other senators weren’t so sure, how
ever.
“It’s a silly expenditure of funds, said
Brian Gross, sophomore liberal arts
senator.
I
esignation
ddens Aggies
Dorothy DuBois, off-campus under
graduate senator, quoted from a letter in
Wednesday’s Battalion which suggested
that $25,000 could better be used to help
living veterans, rather than ‘memorializing’
the dead.
Morrison and others replied that it
would be virtually impossible to manipu
late University funds to provide the sort of
veterans’ assistance DuBois proposed.
In the end, all attempts to change the bill
were defeated.
However, Kevin Patterson, vice presi
dent for student services, and Rob Poole,
senior Corps senator, brought up the pos
sibility of introducing a bill at the next se
nate meeting to provide for an alternative
method of finanacing the hedge.
They favor the creation of a memorial
fund, financed through student donations,
which would pay for the shrubbery.
Although no one speculated on how the
president would act upon the hill, Senate
Speaker Johnny Lane said past senate bills
had occasionally not gotten past the presi
dent’s desk.
The only other bill to come before the
senate, a bill to change the current system
of male dormitory student parking, was
postponed by the rules and regulations
committee pending further study.
Keypunchers of a local firm. Agency Records Con
trol, Inc., are handing out leaflets to fellow workers
Battalion photo by Hurlie Collier
in an attempt to gain support for their attempt to
unionize. This employee declined to give her name.
f.
Hi®
By STEVE LEE
Hiiltulion Stuff
^Bay’s resignation of Dr. Jack K.
as chancellor of the Texas A&M
iversity System was met with reactions
sadness, confusion and speculation from
e students and members of the 1 student
tcIWednesday.
Othlrs had no opinion. Some weren’t
^■f who Williams is.
■ article in Wednesday s Battalion, a
^■president of the Association of
mer Students indicated there may have
^■power struggle involved with the
^Bloi-president system now being
■ims resigned as chancellor of the
^■^&M University System Tuesday.
! j said only that the resignation was effec-
m
immediately and that he planned to
alsix-month leave, then resume a
bchiny career. No University officials or
tent| would speculate on his reasons for
■ ,, Some students said they believed the
iignation may have been the result of
ifliets within the System’s administra-
i\M
| | Thme perhaps is validity to the rumor
it there was a conflict between the office
■ he president and the office of the chan-
||! |lor,|said Jeb Hensarling, a former stu-
it senator and a senior economics major
iexsl A&M. Although he said there may
jVe been some conflict, Hensarling
!$j|Psn’taware that the resignation was com-
J49
49
He has been a great asset to the Uni-
sityknd I’m sorry to see him leave.’
IQeHCano, a junior engineering major
i Santa Rosa, said he was convinced the
}r is valid.
m kery saddened, Cano said. “It is
'opinion that there was friction between
illiams and President Miller,
ano said he didn’t think the resignation
aid affect students as strongly as the res-
ation of Athletic Director Emory Bel-
last October, but still considered it
^■[notional.’
)n4Texas A&M student interviewed
at further in his evaluation of the matter.
T think he got ripped-off, said Jim
bardson, a sophomore finance major
... Richardson. "I think it was a power
tigglc between he (Williams) and Jarvis
ler Once he got kicked out of his
ase, the knew he was running second-
best. ”
Williams had lived in the on-campus
Georgian home for eight years until Miller
moved into the house last semester.
Brian Gross, a liberal arts senator and a
sophomore economics major from Pecos,
said he thought that Williams was “put-out
with his job. He may have even been
bored.”
“My biggest thought was that it (the res
ignation) wasn’t explained,” said Paul Bet
tencourt, a senator and a junior chemical
engineering and management major from
Houston. “I thought it would be explained.
He (Williams) should come out and explain
it. It makes it appear that there is some-
. thing going on.”
“I’m kind of confused,’’ said Laura
Brockman, speaker pro-tem of the senate
and a senior political science major from
San Antonio.
Both Brockman and Gross said they be
lieve the University has advanced during
Williams’s tenure.
“ We re losing a very responsive man, but
I feel we can carry on from here,’
Brockman said. She said she plans to pro
pose a senate resolution to recognize
Williams for “his dedication to the Univer
sity.”
Williams, contacted Wednesday after
noon, said he had no further comment to
make about his resignation. He didn’t say
when he planned to take his leave of ab
sence, but indicated he had work to do first.
Clyde Wells, chairman of the Board of
Regents who was named acting chancellor
Tuesday, said he had no further plans for a
search committee to recommend a new
chancellor. Wells said Williams hasn’t con
tacted him and he doesn’t know of his
plans.
Robert Smith, president of the Associa
tion of Former Students, said Wednesday
that generally, the alumni feel grateful to
Williams.
“They certainly regret his resignation,”
Smith said.
American
home for
first time
Local firm's keypunchers
attempting unionization
i
f
Richard “Buck” Weirus, executive direc
tor of the Association of Former Students,
said he had more calls from alumni Wed
nesday asking why Williams left but said
news of the chancellor’s resignation is not
generally known throughout the organiza
tion because some state newspapers didn’t
carry the story.
United Press International
INDIANAPOLIS — Daniel Kelly,
home for the first day of his 38 years of life,
is dazzled.
“I never thought it would be like this,”
China-bom Kelly said Tuesday night when
he stepped from a plane.
Kelly spent 21 of his 38 years in main
land China labor camps. Plis crimes: re
fusal to renounce his U.S. citizenship and
an escape attempt.
Kelly was born in China, the son of an
American Presbyterian minister who mar
ried a Chinese woman. His only knowl
edge of the United States had been
through books — old ones.
His father died in 1957. Kelly tried a
year later to escape China by swimming to
the island of Macao, but was caught and
sentenced to forced labor.
His sister Elizabeth Peabody, a nurse,
had kept writing to him and sending him
money despite a period of six years or
more when his own letters did not get
through. The letters began coming stead
ily again about five years ago, his sister
said, including her last picture of him, in
1975.
“I always wrote,” he said, but added,
“You must understand China. Everything
depends on mood.’* When China had
internal turmoil, during the “cultural revo
lution,” his letters did not get out, he said.
He credited his release to improved
U.S. relations with China and the new
■ Chinese leadership.
Kelly had to pay lip service, ultimately,
to the Chinese demands.
“I had to sign the forms as a Chinese —
the Chinese passport,” he said. He said he
signed as Lin Hsiao-shu, his Mandarin
name.
To save face, he said, the Chinese
granted him a only a one-year leave, but
he said they know he is not going back.
Kelly brought with him his mother,
Omue, 75; wife. Flora, and their three
children, Lillian, 13; Judith 11, and John,
8.
By REGINA MOEHLMAN
Battalion Reporter
Thirty keypunch operators at Agency
Records Control, Inc. were again passing
out leaflets Wednesday to gain support for
an attempt to unionize.
Last week an equal number of ARC em
ployees passed out union leaflets in front
of the company premises at the East
Bypass.
One hundred and three keypunch
operators have already signed member
ship applications to the union. The other
employees favor the drive to unionize, the
operators say, though they won’t support
it openly.
Those employees feel threatened by the
ARC management, the keypunch
operators say.
“A lot of people are scared. They have
gotten to them,” an operator said. But she
added that “we have a right to be here. I
think we have a good chance to win.”
ARC has about 150 keypunch operators
and about 250 employees in all, the
operators said.
Employees said they are judged for effi
ciency each month and the rating they re
ceive determines their next month’s sal-
Employees said they do not know of any
keyoperator who earns that much. Most
make around $3 per hour, they said.
Employees also criticize the fairness of
the merit and promotion systems at ARC.
“It’s only if your supervisor likes you
that you get a promotion,” one employee
said. One keypunch operator who has
been at ARC for almost ten years has
never been promoted, employees said.
ARC employees also complained that
they receive only three guaranteed mexit
raises. After 21 months they receive a raise
of 15 cents per hour, followed by 10-cent
and 40-cent raises.
Employees criticized Bower’s aloof
ness.
“The only time we have ever seen his
face is when the union showed up,” an
employee said.
In the press release. Bower made sev
eral references to the union as “outside
organizers. ”
Jack Langford, a Houston representa
tive for the Office and Professional Em
ployees International Union, AFL-CIO,
rebutted the label.
“When I met a number of the em
ployees, they told me they had never even
seen the man (Bower). He should take a
good long look at who’s an outsider,”
Langford said.
Bower has accused the union of coming
to the area “to collect money from our em
ployees for their financially troubled
union.” He said that a Department of
Labor report issued in March of 1978
showed “this union local” to have a deficit
of $4,307.
“We have four or five hundred locals,”
Langford said. “I assume he is talking
about one of those. It has nothing to do
with these people in Bryan.”
“It is a phony issue,” Langford said. “I
wish he would sit down with me and the
press and show me exactly what he is talk
ing about.”
The real issue, Langford said, is to ob
tain bargaining rights for the employees.
Langford said the union had no further
plans at this time.
Bower refused to hear about or com
ment on his employees’ actions.
ary.
Once unionized, the employees hope to
gain a fairer and more consistent wage sys
tem. Employees complain that, under the
current percentage system, their pay goes
up and down each month.
“They feel like they have to pay us on
this percentage so they won’t lose money,”
an employee said. Employees are asking
for set wages.
“Frankly, we know of no fair way to
compensate employees than to pay them
on a productivity basis,” Dr. Robert
Bower, president of ARC, said in a press
release last Friday.
“In general, we have found that the only
people who do not like a production incen
tive system are those individuals who are
lacking in ability and-or motivation, and
who do not like to be paid on the basis of
their individual effort or productivity,”
Bower said.
“Our key entry employees earn from
$2.90 per hour as trainees to over $5 per
hour as qualified and experienced
operators. Our top key entry employee
earns $5.41 per hour,” he said.
Scalpers have field-day
Boston’ is sold out
i
WED.
Connolly announces he’s a candidate
United Press International
’ASHINGTON — Former
PTexas Gov. John Connally, saying
the nation is suffering from a crisis
in leadership, Wednesday an
nounced his candidacy for the Re
publican nomination for president
in 1980.
^■Tm getting tired of being no
thing more than a spectator, said
the i'oxmer Democrat who served as
Richard Nixon’s treasury secretary,
“i am today (Wednesday) announc-
ingmy candidacy for the Republican
nomination for president of the
United States.
‘onnally, who switched to the
►P in 1973 and was found inno
cent of bribery charges in the
Watergate scandal, joins a crowded
field of Republican candidates battl
ing actively for the nomination more
than a year before the first primary
in New Hampshire.
^■The 61-year-old Texan is ex-
pwctecl to enter as many of the 1980
primaries as is practical and will
spend most of this year campaigning
flat out for the nomination, unham
pered by the duties of public office.
■l At a luncheon speech at the Na
tional Press Club, Connally
launched his campaign with a
broadside at the administration.
“The leadership we so desper
ately need has not evolved from this
administration and it is growing in
creasingly clear it never will,’ he
said. “We are a nation becoming
lethargic from problems before
which Washington seems helpless.”
He said the nation was going
through its fourth great crisis, one as
serious as the American Revolution,
the Civil War and the Great De-
McGovern calls Connally
double-talking politician
GOi
United Press International
WASHINGTON — John Connally’s decision to join the crowded
field of Republican candidates for president drew a blistering reaction
Wednesday from Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., the 1972 Demo
cratic presidential nominee.
“I wouldn’t trust Connally within a mile of the White House,”
McGovern said. Connally’s luncheon speech announcing his candi
dacy was actually about two blocks away.
Connally, the former Democratic governor of Texas who switched
parties in 1973 and was found innocent of bribery charges in the
Watergate scandal, “combines the worst of both Watergate and
Vietnam,” McGovern said.
“He’s the perfect symbol of the double-talking, double-crossing
politican. He doesn’t even know what party he belongs to.
“In 1972, when he was running the Democrats for Nixon opera
tion, he did more to cover up Nixon’s faults and exaggerate mine than
any other man in America,” McGovern said.
“The fact that Connally never went to jail along with the rest of the
Watergate gang is positive proof that Ed Williams (Connally’s lawyer)
is the best criminal lawyer in the country.”
pression.
“It is a crisis more subtle than the
previous three and to pull us
through these gloomy hours, we
need someone in charge who knows
what he is doing and why,” he
said. Connally said the nation
needs a president who deals toughly
with the Soviet Union.
“In recent years, the Soviet
Union has embarked upon an inten
sified policy of expansionism which
threatens peace,” he said.
“I believe it is time for a strong
president to make it clear that this
policy is not acceptable,” he said.
“It is imperative that no arms con
trol agreement with the Soviet
Union freezes the United States into
an inferior position,” Connally said,
apparently referring to the almost
completed strategic arms negotia
tions. “That would increase not only
the danger of war but also the
danger of defeat without war.”
Connally’s early entry was
triggered in part by a desire to block
fellow conservative Ronald Reagan
from locking up the nomination be
fore the primary season really gets
under way.
By JEAN LONGSERRE
Battalion Reporter
When the rock group Boston walks on
stage in G. Rollie White Coliseum on
Sunday, Feb. 11, a full house of 8,400 Ag
gies will be there to greet it.
“This is the biggest show we have ever
done,” said Brooks Herring, Town Hall
chairman. “Tickets were sold out by 3:30
Monday afternoon. ” The first and last day
of ticket sales was Monday, Jan. 22.
James Randolph, Town Hall sponsor
and booking agent, said negotiations to
book the Boston concert began in early
November. “There were around 60 days of
negotiations before they (Boston) said
yes,” Randolph said. The “yes” came on
Jan. 5.
“Booking a show is not just picking up
the phone and saying ‘Hey, we want you
to come to A&M, ” Randolph said.
“Negotiations have to be made.”
Herring explained that Town Hall tried
booking other groups such as Kansas and
Heart, but was unsuccessful.
“We thought we had a date on
Foreigner, but we found out they were
going out of the country,” Herring said.
“With the Boston concert we just got
lucky.” He added that Town Hall had un
successfully tried booking Boston last
year.
“Expenses for this show are so pheno
menal,” said Randolph. “Our production
costs are going to run about $25,000. ”
Production costs include lighting, stage
work, crew and show preparations such as
signs, ropes and food for crew members.
“We serve at least one meal every show,”
Herring said.
Randolph said that a group the size of
Boston usually receives about $48,000 per
show, but added that the University is get
ting a “special rate.”
“Town Hall won’t make any money off
the show so to speak,” Randolph said. “We
might make $2,000, but that’s all.”
Randolph said Town Hall’s main pur
pose is not to make money, but to “bring
top-notch entertainment at the lowest pos
sible price” to the University.
He added that universities often have
trouble booking dates because of lack of
promotion and financing.
“Concert business is big business,”
Randolph said. “The Town Hall people
will begin working on the show Saturday
and end around 1 a.m. Monday.” Equip
ment for the show will arrive Saturday and
stage preparations will begin then.
Randolph said the concert would in
clude “some sort of light show.” He ex
plained there would be less light equip
ment used than in the Austin or Houston
concerts due to lack of room in G. Rollie
White.
Randolph also said that the security for
the Boston concert would be tight to assue
no illegal admittance backstage.
Lawmaker
in Oklahoma
likes 65 mph
United Press International
OKLAHOMA CITY — A lawmaker said
Wednesday he was preparing to introduce
a bill increasing the speed limit to 65 mph
on certain highways in defiance of the fed- »
erally mandated 55 mph limit.
Rep. Jim Townsend, D-Shawnee, said
the Wyoming Senate’s vote to raise the
legal speed limit from 55 mph to 65 mph
encouraged him to work on the proposal.
“I support Wyoming in their courageous
move to come to grips with federal
blackmail,” Townsend said.
The federal government has tied federal
highway money to enforcement of the 55
mph speed limit. Last week Oklahoma
Transportation Commissioner R.A. Ward
warned Oklahoma could lose $72 million in
federal highway funds if it did not meet the
compliance schedule.
Townsend said Oklahoma law now says
the speed limit will go to 65 mph when 29
other states pass the higher speed limit. He
said his bill would strike the provision that
29 other states will have to raise the speed
limit first.
Townsend said the U.S. Constitution
prohibited the federal govexnment from
wielding appropriations to affect states’ ac
tions.
“They cannot buy power through ap
propriations,” he said.
Oklahoma Safety Council executive di
rector Bob Eastman gave a qualified
endorsement of the higher limit.
(See related story, page 3.)
v