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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 20, 1979)
The Battalion Vol.73 No. 14 14 Pages Thursday, September 20, 1979 College Station, Texas USPS 045 360 Phone 845-2611 Weather Gradual decreasing cloudiness today with a high near 80. Winds will be West Northwest at 15 m.p.h. gusting to 20 m.p.h. We are not alone ... by a long shot If you’ve gotten that crowded feeling the first weeks of the fall semester, it’s probably because you’re Battalion photo by Lee Roy Leschper sharing the Texas A&M campus with 31,331 other students — a record number. Rains bring Houston flooding United Press International Thousands of residents from Houston’s sprawling suburbs to the coastal city of Galveston fled their homes Wednesday night and early today in anticipation of a fourth day of steady rain. Some waterways were rising by 4-5 inches an hour. Low- lying streets became small rivers lined with abandoned cars. More than 10 Red Cross shelters were setup Wednesday to handle displaced res idents who were leaving their homes with the aid of the National Guard and Civil Defense. In Harris and Galveston counties 25 subdivisions were ordered evacuated in the fourth wave of heavy flooding this year. Weather Bureau officials said the rain which will not let up until later today is not associated with tropical storm Henri, which currently is breaking up in the Gulf. At least 98 roads were reported closed in the Houston area, including the west entrance of Houston Intercontinental Air port. Some of the worst hit areas were the Houston suburbs of Alvin and League City where up to 1,000 residents fled rising water. Water was reported in some League City and Brazoria County homes. All residents living between Friendswood and Webster in the Johnson Space Center area also were ordered evacuated as were all those in the Nassau Bay area. No deaths or injuries have been re ported. Officials said hundreds of motorists try ing to get home during rush hour Wed nesday had to abandon their cars on roads that were curb-to-curb water. Even in areas considered too high to flood, sewers began bubbling up from the excess rain. Already this year Houston and the south Texas coast have had the worst flooding in memory. In April the spring rains were the worst in 20 years and in July Claudette dumped up to 30 inches of rain in some areas. Following Claudette, Elena, moved over the same area and brought heavy rainfall. This time, the rain has not been hard but it is steady. At Port Aransas the rainfall was mea sured at 13 inches and 5 to 10 inches fell in most places. Civil Defense officials said those evacuated Wednesday in Corpus Christi and Aransas Pass were reluctantly allowed to return after the showers let up there but more rain, which is predicted to be heavy today, will force more evacuations. Flash flood warnings were in effect for the Galveston County area, for the west fork of the San Jacinto River and Spring, Peach and Caney creeks. By far the worst flooding occurred in the Corpus Christi area late Tuesday and Wednesday, due to the 13 inches of rain. Authorities said a total of 400 persons had to leave their homes there. Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby, acting as chief executive while Gov. Bill Clements is touring Russia, issued an emergency proc lamation declaring the coast a disaster area. On the request of Port Aransas Mayor J.M. Attaway, 20 members of the National Guard were activated. Hobby said the guard was needecf to enforce a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew and help in rescue and cleanup work. No looting has been re ported. A Matagorda county sheriff s dispatcher said areas of the town of Sargent and nearby Matagorda Beach, which absorbed 13 inches of rain, were evacuated. Authorities also worried about high tides in Nueces Bay sending water lapping over the edges of the Nueces Bay Cause way (Highway 181), which connects Cor pus Christi and Portland, Texas, closing it “indefinitely. 31,331 enrolled for semester, registrar says By CAROL AUSTIN Battalion Reporter Official enrollment at Texas A&M Uni versity this fall is 31,331, an increase of 3.6 percent over last year, the registrar’s office said Wednesday. The number includes 11,214 women, 35.8 percent of the student body. The official figure is the number of stu dents signed up on the twelfth day of classes, which was Tuesday. The Coordinating Board, Texas College and University System bases its formula for funding state institutions on that day’s enrollment, said Robert Lacey, Texas A&M’s registrar. “That just seems to be their magical day,” said Glenn Dowling, assistant to Texas A&M President Jarvis E. Miller. The ratio of male to female students is about 2 to 1. The greatest variation is in the Class of’80, which has 6,310 students, 67 percent of whom are males. The Class of ’81 is 64 percent male. It has 6,365 students overall. The Class of ’82 has 5,826 students and is the smallest of the University’s under graduate classes. The Class of ’83, with 7,875, is the biggest. Those two classes are the closest in male-to-female ratio. Thirty-nine percent of the freshmen and 38 percent of the sophomores are female. Lacey explains that the conversion of Legett Hall to a women’s dorm and the addition of the 500-unit modular dorms account for the rise in enrollment of wo- Uranium missing from nuke plant Uganda asks Young for $10 million aid United Press International ENTEBBE, Uganda — Outgoing U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young paid an un scheduled visit to Uganda Wednesday and held two hours of talks with President Godfrey Binaisa, who appealed for an im mediate $10 million in emergency U.S. aid. Young arrived from Tanzania where he discussed the Zimbabwe Rhodesian war with “my teacher, ” President Julius Nye- rere. Uganda had not been part of Young’s seven-nation farewell tour of Africa but Binaisa, anxious for American aid, per suaded Young to visit him at the old British statehouse which overlooks Lake Victoria in Entebbe. Young then con tinued to his last African destination, Senegal. Earlier this week, Washington prom ised its first post-war grant of $6.4 million to help in reconstruction. But Binaisa said Uganda urgently needed at least $10 million in short-term aid and “a lot more than that” in long-term loans to put the country on its feet again after the devestating war that toppled Idi Amin. Young and Nyerere discussed the war in Zimbabwe Rhodesia for 90 minutes. Nyerere, asked about Young’s resigna tion as ambassador, smiled broadly and replied, “We don’t interfere in the inter nal affairs of the United States.” Young came to Tanzania Tuesday with a group of American businessmen. The group was on a 16-day swing through seven African countries for trade and polit ical discussions. But the ambassador, who helped shape U.S. policy in southern Af rica, concentrated most of his attention today on developments in Zimbabwe Rhodesia. United Press International ERWIN, Tenn. — An undisclosed amount of highly enriched uranium that could be used in making an atomic bomb apparently is missing from an Erwin nu clear processing plant and federal officials have shut down the facility and ordered an investigation. The uranium was missed during a routine inventory at Nuclear Fuel Services Inc., a private concern in a mountainous region of east Tennessee near the North Carolina border. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent seven inspectors to the plant Tuesday. “An intensive review of accounting methods is under way,” NRC spokesman Frank Ingram said in Washington. “This will be followed by a detailed materials reinventory.’’ He said the shutdown meant the firm would halt the manufactur ing process involving the uranium until the check is completed. Federal officials would not disclose the amount of uranium missing, indicating the information was classified. But, under the firm’s operating license, any discrepancy of 19.8 pounds or more requires a shut down for inventory within 72 hours. Experts do not agree on how much highly enriched uranium would be re quired to make a nuclear device. In 1977, however, the NRC said 40 pounds of the material would be sufficient. Ingram said the agency is “not ignoring” the possibility the uranium could have been stolen, but said “right now it’s con sidered to be an inventory difference. We have preliminarily notified the FBI.” “We haven’t issued an order like this before,” said Ingram, who described in ventory discrepancies as common. “We thought it was prudent in this case.” Last January, a construction worker re moved 150 pounds of low-grade uranium from a General Electric & Co. nuclear fuel fabrication plant in Wilmington, N.C., and demanded $100,000 in ransom. An at torney for David L. Dale said the man simply walked into the plant, picked up the uranium on a handcart, loaded it in a car and drove away. The man, now serving 15 years in a federal prison, vowed to dis tribute the uranium throughout a major city if the ransom wasn’t paid. The Erwin plant’s primary function is to manufacture pellets to fuel the Navy’s nu clear submarines. The plant has had its share of troubles recently. The facility was the scene of a strike earlier this year by the Oil, Chemi cal and Atomic Workers. The strike, began April 14 and ended Aug. 4 with workers getting a $2.45 raise. During the strike, the union charged that the NRC jeopardized public safety by permitting managerial employees to oper ate the plant. In 1977, the facility was fined $53,000 by the NRC for failing to provide adequate guard services, to test its burglary alarm system and provide security barriers. Welcome to Eden; makes are included United Press International NEW YORK — Forget that mini calculator you’ve been packing around in your briefcase — it’s just a toy. If Geoffrey Calvert is right, by the year 2000 you’ll be carrying its big brother in your head and you’ll know all there is to know about ev erything. Futurist Calvert, in a report titled Shaping the Next Three Decades,” pre dicts conversion of the average person into a genuine cyborg, with “picoprocessors,” combined with memory banks, implanted in the skull and interfaced directly with (he brain. Tickets available for Beach Boys About 3,000 tickets to the Sept. 30 Beach Boys concert were still available to day, Town Hall Chairman Michelle Scud- der said Wednesday night. Scudder said she thought “people just assumed it sold out the first day because of the line.” Students began camping out by the Rudder Box Office Friday. Tickets went on sale Monday morning. Ticket prices for the concert, which will be in G. Rollie White Coliseum, are S8.75, $9.25 and $9.75. That, he says, would make “all the stored knowlege of humanity accessible to every person.” Picoprocessors, he says in his report published by the insurance and financial firm of Alexander & Alexander, will be 1 million times more powerful than the mi croprocessors utilized by the present gen eration of computers. He also says the functions of clocks, telephones, typewriters, cameras, checkbooks and a host of other necessities all may be compressed into a single pocket-sized gadget called a “dator.” It will have the capability of providing in stant information, communications, entertainment and medical monitoring on command. But as usual, there are snakes in the 21st-century Eden. Calvert says a lot of people may wind up I out of work — and worse — because of all the “Star Wars” hardware. “Perhaps the principal danger to the public (is that) they will be concentrated in the hands of too small a segment of the population,” he says. “Concentration of the flow of information can provide a basis of control far more comprehensive and ef ficient than developed by any totalitarian regime in the past.” The micro-revolution also may create chaos in the job market if it comes before people are prepared to live with it. “Perhaps one-half of all occupations will in due course cease to exist, while most others will be radically altered,” he says. Groups sponsor Healthy Baby Day Doctor displays children’s exercises By JACKIE FAIR Battalion Reporter Healthy Baby Week peaked Wed nesday as about 30 children and their mothers attended Healthy Baby Day at the Brazos Center in Bryan. The event was sponsored by the Brazos Valley Chapter March of Di mes, the Brazos County Extension Service and Dr. Carl Gabbard of the Texas A&M University Child Move ment Center. Gabbard talked about motor de velopment in children and demon strated climbing and coordination exercises with the children. “Children need to discover how their bodies move,” Gabbard has written in a synopsis of his experi ments. “They must be able to sort out one part of their body from another. They should be able to distinguish be tween right and left by the first grade.” Gabbard recommends “The Baby Exercise Book” by Dr. Janine Levy to help parents enhance the develop ment of their infants. “Designing the home and the out doors is probably the most important factor” in helping a child develop, Gabbard said. Gabbard holds child movement classes each semester at Texas A&M for children aged 18 months to 5 years. His class for 4- and 5-year-olds is new this semester. Classes are also available for hand icapped children and are under the direction of Pat Patterson. “Our purpose in Healthy Baby Day is to make parents aware of what they can do to develop motor skills in their children,” Patterson said. Other groups in Bryan-College Sta tion also participated in Healthy Baby Day, hoping not only to inform mothers, but mothers-to-be as well. Representatives speaking for the Lamaze method of childbirth passed on information and answered ques tions for interested mothers-to-be. Lamaze classes are offered at A&M Presbyterian Church. With four in structors, new classes begin about every two weeks.