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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1979)
[The Battalion /ol. 72 No. 107 Thursday, March 1, 1979 News Dept. 845-2611 8 Pages in 2 Sections College Station, Texas Business Dept. 845-2611 Wanna volunteer? This student is helping a re- duty today in the Memorial Stu- cruiter for the Peace Corps and dent Center. See page 6 for de- VISTA who is ending her tour of tails. Seven-month-old Ryan Fisher finds a pen of ewes at the Houston Livestock Show good enough to touch. Parents John and Sheena Fisher are animal science and elementary education seniors, respec tively, at Texas A&M. John was one of about 50 Aggies who worked at the stock show checking in livestock and keeping records. For a closer look at the Houston show, see today’s Focus section. itkM offers scholarships o up minority enrollment By DIANE BLAKE Battalion Staff increase the number of minority stu- its attending Texas A&M Unviersity, lident’s Achievement Awards have l offered to 25 students planning to r college next fall. bese $1,000-year, four-year schol- Inps have been established primarily for omomically disadvantaged, mostly nprity students, said Dr. Edwin H. er, dean of admissions and records. r e in the administration have been kerned that Texas A&M has not at- t :d minority students, particularly 5,” he said. Texas A&M has tried to ore minority students to attend here, fid. HVe’ve not done a good job.” list semester, out of approximately lOO students enrolled, about 120 were ac) Of those, black athletes numbered in e low 30s,’ Cooper said. Mexican rican enrollment usually ranges be- n 400 and 600 students. H Texas’ general population, 12.5 per- nt is black and 18.2 percent speaks ish or has a Spanish surname. Texas s percentages are approximately 0.4 ent black and 1.64 percent Mexican Other Texas universities, such as the University of Houston, have greater per centages of minorities than does Texas A&M. This is due in part, Cooper said, to the schools’ locations. U of H has a larger local minority population to draw from than Texas A&M, he said. “They can live at home and get jobs easier there,” the dean said. Cooper said Texas A&M and the Univer sity of Texas at Austin are “very close” in the percentage of minority students, de spite the fact that UT can draw from a larger, more diversified local population. Another reason for the lack of minority students here is Texas A&M’s long history as an all-male military school. “You’d be surprised at the number of people who don’t realize we’ve changed,” he said. The President’s Achievement Awards will be offered primarily to outstanding minority students who could not attend Texas A&M without that help. “We are not changing the admission re quirements,” he said. “It would be grossly unjust to admit a student here with frill knowledge that the odds are good he can’t pass.” These awards will not be given for out standing athletic achievement. “They are for students who have not been offered any other type of scholarship,” Cooper said. To continue receiving aid, each student must maintain a grade point ratio of 2.5 or better. Although these scholarships are primar ily for economically disadvantaged or minority students, no student is excluded entirely. “We offer $14 million worth of financial aid,” Cooper said. “And the law does allow us to earmark specific funds for certain groups, as long as in the total picture everyone has a chance.” Cooper hopes to increase the number of awards as funding is available. The first scholarship recipients have not yet been chosen, but 25 offers were made by letter last week. To further help attract minority stu dents, the Office of Admissions and Rec ords has asked for three new staff members who would have full-time responsibility for contacting students in high schools and in two-year colleges. In the past the office has had to “borrow” people from other departments to attend meetings at high schools when two or three were scheduled at the same time. “A school this size should not have to limp along like that,” the dean said. Vietnam, China trade charges; l/.S. renews call for peace United Press International Bhina and Vietnam exchanged charges |r their 12-day-old war Wednesday, with ling saying Vietnamese troops struck rhss the frontier into China and Hanoi i ning of a new “large-scale offensive” by I invading Chinese. The United States t new pressure on China to pull out its I ps. I he United States urged China to with in as “quickly as possible, and at the I ted Nations a call by U.S. Ambassador llrew Young for an immediate cease-fire I stymied by the Soviet threat of a veto. I State Department said it favored a Inprehensive solution.” The Soviet Union, in a commentary in I official Communist Party newspaper yda, warned Wednesday the fighting •M spread in Indochina if China “is not > Ped immediately.” Intelligence sources in Bangkok, Thai land, said a front may be opening near the historic Dien Bien Phu battleground in Vietnam. The official New China News Agency said hundreds of Vietnamese broke through Chinese lines at two of the strongest invasion points — the Clear River Valley 150 miles northwest of Hanoi and the Friendship Gate area 95 miles from the capital. Vietnam countered with a charge that Peking, while calling for a negotiated set tlement, was actually preparing a new of fensive in an attempt to “punish” Hanoi. “The invading Chinese troops are pre paring to launch another large-scale offen sive against Vietnam,” Vietnam’s Ambas sador to Japan Nguyen Giap said in Tokyo. Giap ridiculed Chinese Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-ping’s war policy as reminis cent of the late President Lyndon Johnson during the American involvement in Vietnam. But Giap said, “China is not so strong as the United States.” In Peking Wednesday U.S. Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal, acting as President Carter’s personal emissary, re newed American pressure on China to pull its troops out of Vietnam. In a 75-minute meeting with Premier Hua Kuo-feng, Blumenthal said he re peated the U.S. position he first delivered on Tuesday to Teng. The meeting in the Great Hall of the People began 40 minutes late, raising speculation that some diploma tic maneuvering was being conducted by the Chinese to show displeasure over the U.S. position. Blumenthal said Hua told him that the border fighting would be a “limited opera tion” and “of limited duration. ” Q-drop date change offered by deans By KEITH TAYLOR Battalion Staff Students may have to Q-drop during the first 18 days of classes in the fall semester of 1979 if a motion passed by the Academic Operations Committee is enacted. Dr. Diane W. Strommer, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts, said the committee, made up of associate deans of the colleges, voted 6-4 to abolish the pres ent system of Q-drops. The motion, passed last Friday, still must go before the Academic Program Council and the Academic Council for final approval. The Academic Program Council is made up of the deans of the colleges and the Academic Council consists of the Univer sity president, vice presidents, deans, de partment heads and elected faculty mem bers. Dr. Edwin H. Cooper, dean of admis sions and records and chairman of the Academic Operations Committee, said he did not know when the motion would go before the Academic Program Council or the Academic Council. Presently, a student can drop a class with a “Q” instead of a letter grade on his record until the first Monday after the end of mid term. This year that day is March 19. The motion, introduced by Associate Dean Gordon G. Echols of the College of Architecture and Enviromental Design, would make the student decide before the end of the first 12 class days whether to drop a class. Strommer said she opposed abolishment of the Q-drop policy, but she did give a reason for opposition to the current policy: “I don’t think I should argue a point that I don’t hold, but I can say that the Q-drop presents an expense to the state, the people of Texas.” She said students pay only a portion of the cost of education and tuition, and the rest is paid by the state. The amount of money allocated for a particular course is determined by the number of students enrolled on the 12th day. “I think that it is an alternative students should have,” she said. “There are good reasons for dropping courses, such as an overload of courses, unexpectedly having to work, or class conflicts. It is useful to encourage students to experiment with courses. Dr. Phillip J. Limbacher, associate dean in the College of Education, introduced a similar motion last semester. Limbacher said the issue is not the abolishment of Q-drop — it is the purpose of Q-drop. “The purpose of Q-drop has never been defined. If the purpose of the Q-drop is to give a student the opportunity to avoid an F, it (the last day to Q-drop) should be moved to the last day before finals, as it was when I first came here,” he said. Cooper said many of the deans feel that students abuse Q-drop by over-loading, or taking courses they know they will drop. “We re trying to think of how we can make it benefit the most students in the University,” he said. The current motion would reduce the Q-drop period from mid-term to the 18th class day. Cooper said. Strommer said the Q-drop issue comes up two or three times a year. She said she is not sure what the decision will be this semester. If the motion is enacted, it will take effect during next fall, she said. “If the students want to keep Q-drops, they had better get on the ball,” she said. Strommer said the student government could pass its own motion that could affect the final decision. She also said the motion passed by the Academic Operations Committee would have no effect on the drop-add period being used. A student can drop or add courses any time during the first five days of classes, if a course is dropped during the first 12 class days, no record is kept of the student’s enrollment in the course. Iran chief cuts ties with 13 oil companies United Press International TEHRAN — Iranian oil chief Hassan Nazih said Wednesday Iran will have no more to do with the 13-company consor tium of American, British, French and Dutch oil companies that have handled most Iranian oil for 25 years. Nazih accused the consortium of “wheel ing and dealing” and making “secret deals. ” He did not elaborate. Nazih, the newly appointed director of the National Iranian Oil Co., told a crowd of cheering employees at the agency’s headquarters in Tehran, “The word consor tium is to be deleted from the company’s dictionary.” He said the consortium companies would now only be dealt with on an indi vidual basis and here “will be no conces sions to them on oil sales.” Nazih gave his address a day after an nouncing that Iranian oil exports would be resumed Monday after a four-month pause because of the oil workers’ strike that helped topple Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. He said he expected the oil to be sold to the highest bidder at between $4 and $6 more than the $14 rnwrimum recom mended by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. He answered Western oil experts who have expressed scepticism over Iran’s abil ity to produce and sell its own oil without the aid of western experts who have fled the oilfields since the revolution. “Western experts are saying we cannot produce 5 million barrels a day,” said Nazih. “Don’t you believe it. If they order it, we can produce 6 million barrels.” Nazih condemned what he said was waste of billions of oil dollars “because of corruption unequalled anywhere else in the world.” Nazih said the shah’s wife Farah was paid $14 million a year out of company funds. “At first we thought it was $42 million,” he said, “but now we find it was $14 mil lion. But why should it have been even one cent?” The revolutionary government an nounced its greatest priority was restora tion of law and order hours before a gun battle early Wednesday near a hotel where most foreigners live. Childrens author fascinated by ocean A&M sponsors sea literature seminar By TRACEY WILLIAMS Battalion Reporter For some people the sea is a place to spend a vacation surfing and sun tanning. For award-winning chil dren’s author Theodore Taylor, the sea is a place at which to live and work. Taylor, one of several speakers here this week at the Children’s Lit erature of the Sea Seminar, told a group of area children and teachers that the ocean has always fascinated him. “No matter what I do, I keep com ing back to the sea,” Taylor said. “Right now I have a house in Laguna Beach, Calif, and I’m on the beach every day of the week. ” Taylor said he began his writing career at the age of 13. “I wrote sports for a paper in Virginia for 50 cents a week,” Taylor said, “and years later I’m still pound ing the typewriter.” Taylor said his financial situation has improved since then. One reason is the popularity of Taylor’s book, “The Cay,” which has won several awards since its as publication in 1969. Taylor said he is probably most best known for “The Cay,” which de scribes the survival of a prejudiced white boy and an old black sailor who end up on a deserted island after a shipwreck. After Taylor spoke, the children were encouraged to ask about his career. These “career” questions in- Theodore Taylor said he began his writing career at the age of 13. “J wrote sports for a paper in Virginia for 50 cents a week, and years later I’m still pounding the typewriter. ” eluded what type of car he drove and what his children did. Children’s literature scholar Re becca Lukens and author-illustrator Jan Adkins also spoke at the two-day seminar, which was sponsored by the Sea Grant College in cooperation with Texas A&M English Depart ment and Continuing Education Department. Norma Bagnall, director of the seminar, said the meetings were de signed to educate children ages 5 to 12 on the importance of marine awareness. “Although most of the United States population lives within 100 miles of an ocean or one of the Great Lakes Lakes,” she said, “the major ity of children have not experienced the vast waters firsthand. “And even a trip to the beach is only the first step.” Children’s author Ted Taylor, from California, autographs a copy of his book “The Cay” Tuesday afternoon during the fourth annual Children’s Literature of the Sea Seminar. Battalion photo by Colin Crombie