[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