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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 23, 1979)
- p' a ys latet, ‘earned o, :i ° wn Pass l, of reach. (letl a tort ainin g intlfi 11 tau gliiai B ; orini. placed early r W Sam oduetivity welcome cks, The Battalion Vol. 73 No. 37 10 Pages Tuesday, October 23, 1979 College Station, Texas USPS 045 360 Phone 845-2611 Few voters show up to meet candidates By ELLEN EIDELBACH Battalion Reporter Ninety-seven freshman candidates, who expected to campaign among interested freshman voters, ended up shaking hands and passing out literature mainly to each other in a campaign gathering Monday night. “Meet the Candidates Night,” spon sored by student government, was in tended to give freshman voters an oppor tunity to meet their class candidates. Election Commissioner Bruce Russell estimated about 20 freshman voters at tended. Ken McCullough, an election commis sion member in charge of the meeting, said it was a “real informal type thing. ” “We have 97 candidates, so any type of plan to introduce all of them would take too long,” he said. Instead of an organized program, candi dates wandered from person to person in troducing themselves. Fifteen minutes after the meeting started, one senatorial candidate said he’d List of candidates, page 6. -met two people at the meeting who we ren’t candidates. Another senatorial candidate said he met “about 15 people who weren’t candi dates.” “It was a good idea, but it wasn’t as suc cessful as I’d wished it had been,” he re ported. Melanie May, an off-campus freshman voter, came with a friend to find out what the candidates were like. “I thought it would be more organized and they (the candidates) would get up and say their platforms,” she said. May said the informal meeting wasn’t as effective as having candidates give speeches. Many candidates complained there was not enough publicity about the meeting. “We put some fliers out and these people (the candidates) were supposed to tell others about it,” Russell said. An article in Monday’s Battalion men tioned the meeting, and most of the voters present said they had found out about the meeting through that story. Candidates posted their goals and qual ifications on papers hung in the room. Russell said this was the first year a meeting of this type has been held. No cause determined yet in fair tramway accident ‘Eel fishing 9 Battalion photo by Lee Roy Leschper Jr. Jason Crawford, 8, says he’s fishing for “electric eels” in Texas A&M University’s north mall foun tain. Whether or not Jason is having any success. Aaron Parks, 2, seems to be enj’oying the show. Aaron’s father, Clarence, is a doctoral student in sociology at Texas A&M. United Press International DALLAS — Investigators converged Monday on the nearly deserted grounds of the State Fair of Texas, scene of an aerial tramway accident that killed one man and injured 15 others Sunday just hours before the scheduled end of the nation’s largest state fair. Fair officials said they had not yet de termined the cause of the “Swiss Skyride” accident Sunday afternoon which occurred nearly 100 feet above a crowd of 100,000, but some fair-goers blamed the high winds that before the accident had caused the multicolored gondolas to sway back and forth along the half-mile route. .Witnesses said one.gondola, swaying in the high winds, became jammed as it passed over a supporting post and three other cars slammed into it, causing two of the cars to plunge to the ground. One car ds ® Budget problem prevents printing Magazine to go unpublished this fall landed on the roof of a concession stand while the other ripped through the canvas roof of another stand, scattering debris into the crowd. “There was too much wind for them to have that ride running. The cars were banging against other cars,” said Venancio Rosales, who was in one of the gondolas that hit the stalled car. Sharon Dell, who was in the stalled car, said, “One (car) hit us and then another. We thought they’d stop the ride, but they didn’t. And then, all of a sudden, people were falling through the air.” State Fair officials, however, said they had not determined the high winds had caused the accident, “The investigation continued Monday as to the reasons for the tragic Swiss Skyride accident Sunday on the closing day of the State Fair of Texas,” said a statement is sued by fair director Wayne Gallagher. Witnesses said the gondola cars sounded “like a big bass drum” when they fell into the crowded midway area. “People were screaming and running,” said David McGee, an employee at a nearby booth, “It all happened in a split second. One car got stuck and the rest banged into it.” The ride was immediately shut down but it took another three hours for Fire Department personnel using a “cherry picker” apparatus to rescue 84 people stranded in the other gondolas along the route. Officials closed the fair early for the first time in history and the grounds were deserted Monday except for inspectors and concession operators removing their booths. “There’s unusually light traffic at the fairgrounds today,” said Police Capt. John D. Squier Monday. “There’s just a lot of thankfulness. Considering all the options, we could have had a much worse situation out here.” Gallagher said local and federal gov ernment inspectors, insurance adjusters, fair officials and representatives of Van Roll Co. — also manufacturers of a gon dola ride that crashed to the ground and killed three people in July 1978 in St. Louis — had completed a visual and pho tographic inspection of the ride by Monday afternoon. He said the next step would be to re move all of the cars and inspect them, a process he expected to be completed by today, but said no conclusive results were expected for several days. By LOUIE ARTHUR Battalion Staff loebius, the Texas A&M University literary magazine, will not be published 'this fall due to financial problems pikountered by last year’s staff. ue to staff changes, there has been fusion among committee members and "concerning two major questions: why 1’t the 1978-79 Moebius published, what happened to the funds budgeted that magazine? he magazine, a part of the Memorial ident Center Arts Committee, is fi- ced through committee funds and nsor contributions. loebius is usually published in the fall, [esult of the work done by the staff dur- the previous school year, indsey Scoggin, acting chairman of S Arts, said “because they didn’t watch 5 budget,” it was the committee’s fault the magazine didn’t come out. “The ’78-’79 Arts Program spent too much,” Scoggin said. “The whole commit tee wasted the money in the print fund by buying Battalion ads that were too large and printing too many posters. There were not enough contributions to cover the printing of Moebius. ” The print fund, Scoggin explained, is not used solely for the printing of the magazine. Money from this fund is spent for all printing done for the Arts Commit tee. Karen Penny, staff adviser for the 1978-79 Moebius, said the main problem was a lack of contributions. “From the very beginning, there was not enough money to print,” Penny said. “Unless the students earn the money through contributions there is no magazine. Contributions from sponsors that would have been used for the 1979 Moebius “probably went back into the budget,” said Bart Block, 1979-80 Moebius staff ad viser. “It was the obligation of the committee members to solicit support from the com munity,” he said. “They just didn’t come up with the money.” Block said another reason for the lack of funds was poor attendance of some Arts Committee programs. “Income that was supposed to be gener ated from these programs just didn’t come in,” he said. Jada Thacker, Moebius’ 1979-80 editor, said an edition will be published in the spring of 1980. She said it will not be a late printing of the fall 1979 magazine, but an early publication of the fall 1980 issue. “We re not using am' money from last year’s Moebius for this year’s magazine,” Thacker said, “but we will be using some of the (literary) contributions. “From now on,” Thacker said, “Moebius will be put out in the spring.” Penny said that proofs made last spring for the fall 1979 magazine are still at the Printing Center. The proofs were early in the semester. Penny said, “before they (the Moebius staff) realized there wouldn’t be enough money to go to print. They just didn’t an ticipate it. Penny said the estimated cost of the proofs at the time of submission was $700, which was unpaid as of Sept. 1. Block said there is $850 earmarked in last year’s budget for the proofs. Thacker said the Moebius staff is taking great pains to be sure it doesn’t make the same mistakes as last year’s staff. “The expenditure control has been tightened,” he said. “We have started periodical internal audits to keep a check on ourselves.” chool teaches police to drive fast, safely By CHERYL CESSNA Battalion Reporter Tires were squealing, my heart was |unding and the word “fishtail” was tak- on a new significance. I was being pwn first-hand the maneuvers a car is through in the High Performance liver Training course at the Texas A&M during , Gary fief Car crash kills student By NANCY ANDERSEN Battalion StafT A 19-year-old Texas A&M Univer ity student was killed early Saturday loming in a car accident on Uni ver ity and Fed Mart drives. Stuart R. Black, a freshman gen- ral studies major from Corpus Chris- i, apparently lost control of his con vertible, causing it to overturn, ac- xirding to a fire department report. Black was pronounced dead on the >cene, but his passenger was taken to it. Joseph Hospital and treated for icratches on his arms. Funeral services were held Monday n Corpus Christi. Black in the fourth student fatality his academic year. Silver Taps will be it 10:30 p.m. Nov. 1. University Research Annex. Rob Winkler, driving instructor and graduate student in traffic safety, was be hind the wheel. He described the track as he drove. It was all I could do to hang onto my notebook. The ride ended with a long skid and a blown tire. “We go through a set of steel-belted radials about once a week,” Winkler said. Bruce Bramlett, training coordinator, said the school, a division of the Texas Transportation Institute, was started in 1975 under a grant from the governor’s of fice of traffic safety. Its purpose, he said, was to provide re search statistics on how to lower accident rates of police forces in the state. “The law enforcement bodies in the state of Texas are really given no formal driver training other than what they’re hired with. They get a lot with weapons, law, procedure and those sorts of things, but no advanced driver training. And yet we ask them to do a type of driving we don’t ask anyone else in the country to do,” he said. “We wanted to do something to prove that the high accident rate involving these people could be reduced, and that what we were doing could be cost effective.” Bramlett said the research phase of the program has ended and that a final report is expected this summer. But, he said, the school is continuing to provide training to police officers and ambulance drivers. And a one-week course, costing $350, may be See Driver’s ed, page 3 Jarvis Miller to speak on personal safety at crime prevention program this week By ROSEMARIE ROSE Battalion Reporter Off-Campus Aggies will present a spe cial program on crime prevention and per sonal safety for Texas A&M University students Wednesday at 11:45 a.m. at Rud der Fountain. President Jarvis Miller and investigator Ken Nicolas of the University Police will speak on personal safety awareness and methods of crime prevention. The program, entitled “Crime — Are You Next?” was planned after a Texas A&M student was stabbed to death, said Scott Terry of OCA. OCA has planned several other projects. An “Apartment Manager Happy Hour” is scheduled for next Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at Jose’s Restaurant. OCA President De bbie May said one of OCA’s goals is to familiarize the apartment managers with the OCA organization and representa tives. Community Relations Chairman Carlo Corso attended a meeting of the Texas Apartment Association where he ex plained the goals and purposes of OCA. The apartment managers reacted posi tively to. the idea that OCA wanted to promote cooperation between managers and student tenants. May said. Plans are also being made for off-campus students to host members of the Associa tion of Former Students when they visit College Station on Nov. 2 and 3 for their annual conference. May said the additional housing space is needed be cause the conference is on the same weekend as the A&M-SMU football game. Students who volunteer their apart ments will be visited by a board of OCA officers and staff members from the As sociation of Former Students to make sure the students have adequate accommoda tions for the visiting former students. In return for OCA’s cooperation. May said, the former students will set up an available cash fund to help operate OCA. May said if the project is a success it may be continued for football \veekends. Waterworks Battalion photo by Cary Rodgers Otto Atherton is using “high-pressure tactics” on the Texas A&M Uni versity’s Halbouty Geosciences Building. Atherton, an employee of Mid Continental Waterproofing Co., is cleaning the building’s brick with water under high pressure before renovations begin on the structure.