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Screen burns at closed drive-in theater
by NANCY ANDERSEN
Battalion Staff
The old Circle Theater drive-in movie
screen burned Tuesday afternoon, keeping
firemen busy for about 20 minutes and
causing the evacuation of French Quarter
apartment residents.
College Station Fire Marshal Harry
Davis said he is reasonably sure the fire was
set, but added that the department is still
looking into what happened.
He said the blaze started at the bottom of
the screen and engulfed the structure.
Embers flew for about 200 yards, causing
small grass fires in the surrounding dry
field.
“The grass fires were no problem,” Davis
said, “but there were some problems with
the houses.”
Firefighters worked to ensure that em
bers carried by the wind did not land on the
roofs of any of the houses located directly
behind the screen.
The fire started at 2:35 p.m. and burned
for about 20 minutes, but firemen con
tinued hosing the structure after the fire
had been put out in an attempt to knock
down debris.
Davis said he had no idea what the cost of
the damages would be.
He said the owners of the structure had
planned to tear it down eventually.
Ramparts Condominiums, which owns
the property, is currently applying to the
city for a permit to build apartments on the
land.
More than a hundred students, many
armed with cameras, stood watching the
blaze.
“Well,” one bystander said, “something
exciting finally happened in College Sta
tion."
The
Battalion
Vol. 73 No. 150
16 Pages
Wednesday, April 30, 1980
College Station, Texas
DSPS 045 360
Phone 845-2611
Successor to Monroe sought
by DEBBIE NELSON
Battalion Staff
A committee has begun seeking a succes-
orforDr. Haskell M. Monroe, dean of
acuities and associate vice president for
icademic affairs.
Monroe, who has been at Texas A&M
diversity for 22 years, is expected to
issume a new job as president of the Uni-
ersity of Texas-El Paso sometime this
summer.
Nominations for his replacement closed
April 18. Anyone in the University, includ
ing students, could nominate a candidate.
The vice president’s office declined to
release names of the nominees, saying all
candidates except the winner will remain
confidential.
Appointed by Dr. J.M. Prescott, vice
president for academic affairs, the candi
date search committee is chaired by Dr.
Charles E. McCandless, associate vice
president for academic affairs, Office of
Planning. McCandless said the committee
plans to narrow the field to three names by
mid-May.
Criteria for acceptance, as defined by
Prescott, require the candidate to be a pre
sent member of the Texas A&M faculty
with: 1) acquaintance with and respect of
the faculty, 2) academic-administrative ex
perience, 3) ability to listen, cooperate and
make decisions and 4) understanding of
academic programs on campus.
The committee has notified all candi
dates of their nomination, McCandless
said. Nominees who wish to remain in the
race will submit personal reports on their
traits and experience.
The search committee will then review
the reports, narrow the field, conduct in
terviews with several candidates and re
commend the final three nominees.
The final appointment will be made by
Prescott, pending approval from President
Jarvis E. Miller and the Board of Regents.
Other members of the search committee
include Robert S. Stone, dean of the Col
lege of Medicine; Thomas J. Kozik, profes
sor of mechanical engineering; and another
member who has yet to be appointed.
Survival of world disappoints
group expecting Armageddon
l United Press International
MISSOULA, Mont. — A nuclear holo
caust predicted by a religious group hidden
in underground shelters failed to happen,
causing embarrassment for some and dis
appointment for others.
“Tve lost some friends over this,” one
young man groused. “They say they think
I’m crazy. ”
He was one of the followers of Leland
Doc” Jensen who had predicted the holo
caust for Tuesday and convinced his group
to hide in fallout shelters stocked with pro
visions to wait out the devastating after
math.
Despite the lack of a disaster, the young
man said he was sure it would happen
, sometime.” He said he would be embar
rassed if there isn’t a nuclear war by May.
Jensen himself said he was disappointed
there was no war. “I am sure my calcula
tions are accurate,” he explained.
Jensen, a former chiropractor, has about
150 followers in his group, which is called
Baha’is Under the Provisions of the Cove
nant.
His group is not affiliated with the Baha’i
international faith.
Jensen said he based his prediction on
the Book of Revelation in the New Testa
ment of the Bible and on measurements of
features of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
His group were in and out of their shel
ters all day. They hammered up boards,
stocked shelves, counted provisions and
generally kept busy. They didn’t keep their
children in the shelters because they felt
the schools were protection enough from a
holocaust.
One reason they didn’t spend the whole
day underground was their belief it would
take three hours for the deadly radiation
from a nuclear explosion to reach Missoula.
One young woman expressed embarrass
ment over Jensen’s prediction. She said the
odds were “about two in a million” the
holocaust would occur on April 29.
Some of the young men in the group said
their faith in Jensen had caused marital
strains.
But none of Jensen’s followers said the
failure of the holocaust to materialize would
be cause to quit the group.
Many indictated their spiritual strength
had been bolstered by increasing tensions
in the Middle East.
Jensen himself pointed to the Persian
Gulf incident in which two American jets
became involved with an Iranian patrol
plane over the Strait of Hormuz.
Carter defends choosing
Muskie for Cabinet post
United Press International
WASHINGTON — President Carter
has dismissed suggestions Edmund Muskie
lacks the experience needed to be an effec
tive secretary of state and has pledged the
four-term Maine senator will not be sub
jected to interference from the White
House staff.
Carter praised Muskie as a man of
“strength and vision” in appointing the
veteran politician and liberal Democrat to
replace the non-political Cyrus Vance
Tuesday.
At a nationally broadcast news confer
ence, Carter rejected a question about
Muskie’s lack of experience and said he was
“extremely well qualified to be secretary of
state,” particularly with his knowledge of
U.S. aspirations and budget matters.
He also pledged there would be “no un
warranted interference” from the White
House staff, directed by Zbigniew Brze-
zinski.
Vance formally quit Monday in a policy
dispute over the Iran hostage rescue mis
sion.
Muskie, only recently reappointed to the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has
had no direct experience with foreign poli
cy except as a 22-year veteran of the Senate
and chairman of the Budget Committee.
As secretary of state, he will be the senior
member of the Cabinet and will be mana
ger of the Department of State, Agency for
International Development and the coun
try’s more than 170 foreign missions and
embassies. His charges will include most of
the 53 hostages held in Iran.
Well-respected in the Senate, even by
conservative opponents, Muskie is ex
pected to breeze through the confirmation
process without any problems.
He told a White House news conference
Tuesday the president “left no doubt in my
mind” he would be the president’s princip
al spokesman on foreign policy.
Vance, who sometimes had to dispute
national security adviser Zbigniew Brze-
zinski for the president’s ear on foreign
affairs, grasped Muskie’s hand and said,
“God bless you, Ed.”
Muskie was in Nashville Sunday when
Carter first contacted him and asked him to
become secretary of state. Tuesday, Carter
announced that Muskie had been chosen
over Deputy Secretary of State Warren
Christopher, who agreed to remain in his
present job.
“I am very glad that the strength and
vision of Sen. Ed Muskie will now be a part
of the tasks that face us all, ” Carter said.
The reaction to Muskie from Capitol Hill
was uniformly favorable. A typical com
ment came from House Speaker Thomas
O’Neill, D.-Mass, who described Muskie
as “an able public servant capable of doing
any job that comes along in the govern
ment.”
Even Muskie’s famous flashes of temper
were seen to be an advantage by one fellow
member of the Foreign Relations commit
tee, Richard Lugar, D.-Ohio. Lugar said,
“I think there is an important time for using
anger. Senator Muskie is very good at using
that. ”
At the State Department, where Mus
kie’s appointment came as a total surprise,
the first reaction was puzzlement, with offi
cials asking each other if they had had any
dealings with him.
One official who had testified frequently
before Muskie said he was “the most
thoughtful man on the committtee, the one
who did his homework.”
He said Muskie’s values were much the
same as Vance’s and there would be con
tinuity. Muskie’s standing with the mem
bers of the Senate, the official said, will
make it easier for the administration to deal
with Congress.
Carter denounces Iranians
for display of servicemen s bodies
United Press International
WASHINGTON — President Carter
has condemned as a “ghoulish action” the
displaying the bodies of American dead by
Iranian militants and asserted his determi
nation to take “whatever steps are neces
sary and feasible” to secure safe release of
the American hostages.
Carter, occasionally speaking with anger
Tuesday night at his second news confer
ence in 12 days, defended the rescue mis
sion as having been undertaken with honed
preparation, at the proper time and with
good chance of success.
He said the American goal in Iran is not
to conquer, not to destroy, not to injure,
but to gain the safe release of the 53 hos
tages held since Nov. 4.
“This is in sharp comparison to the
ghoulish action of the terrorists and some of
the government officials in Iran,” Carter
said, “who displayed, in a horrible exhibi
tion of inhumanity, the bodies of our
courageous Americans.”
Carter also said:
— Cyrus Vance resigned as secretary of
state because he preferred the United
States “not take any kind of action inside
Iran that might have had any connotation of
a military nature.”
— “I think the inflation rate is going to go
down this summer if we are moderately
fortunate.” It has been hovering above an
annual rate of 18 percent.
But almost every question at his 57th
formal news conference dealt with the Ira-
George Bush, one of the two remaining
contenders for the Republican presidential
nomination, visits Texas A&M University
Thursday. He will arrive at about 1 p.m. at
Easterwood Airport in College Station.
Bush will address students at a special
Political Forum program. His speech, enti
tled “The 80s: A Decade of Decision,” be
gins at 1:15 p.m.
No admission fee will be charged.
His speech will be followed by a question
nian crisis, and one reporter asked why,
after the death of eight Americans, some
“honorable way” could not be found to re
solve the crisis.
“It’s important for American people and
for all the world to realize the tremendous
restraint that we have demonstrated,” Car
ter said. “We have tried every possible and
feasible effort to resolve this crisis by huma
nitarian and peaceful means.”
and answer session. He plans to leave Col
lege Station by 2:30 p.m.
Bush is Ronald Reagan’s only remaining
rival for the Republican nomination. He is
campaigning throughout the state this
week, seeking support in Saturday’s
primary.
Bush is the former director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, a former national Re
publican Party chairman, and has run for
the U.S. Senate seat from Texas.
Bush to speak at A&M
Fired Baylor editors elected to publications board
by DEBBIE NELSON
! Battalion Staff
Jeff Barton and Cyndy Slovak, Baylor
Uriat editors who have been fired, re-
I lieved of their scholarships and urged by
the administration to attend another
school, have been elected to Baylor Uni-
, versity’s Board of Publications.
The Publications Board, which makes
policy for the Lariat, is the same governing
^ body which fired Barton, Slovak and
j another editor earlier this year.
The firings came after a Lariat editorial
that said Baylor women should be allowed
to choose for themselves whether to pose
for an upcoming Playboy magazine feature,
Girls of the Southwest Conference. ”
( Baylor President Abner V. McCall had
threatened to take disciplinary action
against any woman who appeared in the
magazine representing herself as a Baylor
student.
Three thousand of Baylor’s 9,500 stu
dents voted in last week’s elections, giving
Barton the most votes of the 11 candidates,
with 1,600 votes. Slovak got 1,400.
Barton said he did not campaign for the
board position.
“In fact, I went and campaigned for one
of the other people,” he said. “The day of
the election I may have mentioned it to
about a dozen people to remember to vote
for me, but that was the extent of the cam
paigning.
“This is indicative of how the student
body feels. The administration had said it
had all the support (in the editor firings).”
He said the results showed who students
really supported.
He said he felt the students were more
sympathetic to his position than to him per
sonally.
Slovak said she was surprised at the
amount of student and faculty support she
received.
“One of my professors in political science
congratulated me in front of the class (on
being elected to the board) and the stu
dents all clapped. But that was ‘Soviet Poli
tics,’ so the more liberal people were in
there. ”
Six students were elected to the Publica
tions Board. The board also consists of five
faculty members, who will not be selected
until next fall for the 1980-81 academic
year.
Barton said students on the Board of
Publications serve “more an advisory func
tion” than a legislative one.
In order to pass, measures need a major
ity, or three, of the faculty votes. Even if all
six student members vote for a proposal, it
will not pass without three accompanying
faculty votes.
In addition, Barton said, any action the
board recommends must pass McCall’s fin
al approval.
Slovak said she thought the committee
needed to change its outlook.
“The Board needs students who are will
ing to stand up and speak against the faculty
members,” she said. “They need some dis
sent. I’m not saying I’d disagree with ev
erything, but the Board needs some dissi-
dence.”
But the Board of Publications may never
get the chance to hear dissidence from Bar
ton and Slovak, both of whom are consider
ing transferring to the University of Texas
next fall.
Barton said they, along with a few other
journalism majors and staff members who
are eyeing the move, visited the UT cam
pus two weeks ago. “Everyone was very
cordial, very friendly.” Although there was
no mention of monetary assistance, Barton
said the journalism department gave them
the feeling it will help the students from
Baylor in any way it can.
“If we stay here, we’d be continuing to
fight,” Slovak said. “Ifwe go to UT, we’d be
continuing our education.”
Barton said it is possible that he, Slovak
and Sherri Sellmeyer, the other student
who lost her scholarship after the issue,
would get some compensation from sym
pathizers. Sellmeyer was president of
Baylor’s chapter of Sigma Delta Chi, the
Society of Professional Journalists, which
supported the editors after the firings.
“There’s been some talk of Dallas busi
nessman, some people from Chicago and
two former professors — that’s locally —
raising some money,” Barton said. “People
have been talking very generously and I
have great hopes for that. But I’m not gon
na count on somebody’s charity.”