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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 14, 1981)
HE Serving the Texas A&M University community Vol. 74 No. 134 10 Pages Tuesday, April 14, 1981 College Station, Texas USPS 045 360 Phone 845-2611 The Weather Today i Tomorrow High 78 High 73 Low 67 Chance of rain. . . . 60% tudents testify against tuition hike (In ) U By LIZ NEWLIN Battalion Staff jAUSTIN — Raising tuition rates from $4 to $8 a credit hour for most Texas follege students may not sound like much, but students testified Monday that just that much could close universi- doors for thousands. ■ Jeff Williams from Texas Tech Uni versity said a survey there shows 17 HJercent of the students would be forced to quit school if the rates go up. The Marketing Department at Tech con- Bucted the random survey, he said. ernationil — Ken run homeii ee hits, ii Sunday xlgers ti 'ouston ir three-i The Legislature has been using a 5 brcent drop-out rate from a study in Wisconsin of students facing a similar uition increase, but without any prop- led drop in financial aid, as the case is Others said minority, middle- and w-income students would be even rderhit, especially when the increase ds coupled with President Reagan’s a cause ft reposed $9.1 billion cut in student aid. lick hits in victory. Si! nal Leafj ne save, icquired inesotaW ;t home Lopes Id About 100 college students from toss Texas came to the House Higher Si* ducation Committee to get their first t of an eij u bljc shot at proposals to increase tui- on at public colleges and universities, lanning for the legislation has taken than a year, and lobby efforts jainst it began about the same time, ep. Wilhelmina Delco, D-Austin and h a single mnmittee chairman, sent the three tui- giecameiil on bills to a subcommittee Monday loser k ight for further study after hearing iree hours of testimony. ave Bergi homer o(s Student lobbyists say the bills are second of: lore likely to be defeated in the Senate r to openl [igher Education Committee, where a , Thedefei earing is scheduled for next week, nps got tk eighth "t Students, joined by representatives Puhl sinf if the AFL-CIO, LULAC and other inority groups, waited almost six tours to begin the hearing, which could start until the House finished busi- icss on the floor. k third Dennis If) [eff Leoi 1 No one spoke for the bills except ieir authors, who said students should paying a higher percentage of the ictual cost of their education. Currently state undergraduate students pay ab- iut4percent of the cost, down from the 15 percent level they paid in 1957. Two of the bills would double in-state ilds I® RY and out-of-state undergraduate tuition. Tuition for medical school would in crease from $400 to $3,600 per 12- month year. Rep. Doyle Willis, D-Fort Worth, introduced another bill that would re quire foreign students to pay the full cost of their education in Texas. Now they pay $40 an hour like out-of-state students do, and all their fees cover less than 10 percent of the actual cost of going to school. Several students testified against Willis’ bill, calling foreign students a valuable resource on Texas campuses for cultural enrichment. Most of the testimony, though, pro tested the two main tuition bills. About 30 medical and pre-medical students attended the hearing to oppose the bills. Amy Johnson, a junior liberal arts student at the University of Texas, com pared the tuition increases to tax hikes. “Exactly what they (the bills) do is raise taxes,” Johnson said. “The Texas motor fuel tax is 50th in the nation, and you haven’t raised it,” she told the legislators. Texas tuition is one of lowest among the states. “You’re singling out the student to take an in creased cost of a service that has been going on.” The possibility of an enrollment drop, she said, is “just a bad public policy.” She said Texas has long provided inex pensive education for its citizens, and tuition raises would penalize the towns the colleges are in as well as students. A 1 percent drop statewide, she said, • would mean an estimated $9 million loss to the these towns. “Texas is a wealthy state, and you do not want to restrict college to anybody. Texas is a privileged state,” said John son, who works with a group of UT stu dents known as the Texas Student Lobby. “Low tuition is not necessarily a bad thing. Low taxes are not necessarily a bad thing. You don’t raise taxes just be cause they’re low.” She urged legislators to consider alternatives to higher tuition, such as a severance tax on the state’s oil and gas wells, the Permanent University Fund or a temporary state property tax to fund college construction and repair needs. Steve Player, the student body presi dent at North Texas State University, agreed with Johnson. He also repre sented the Texas Student Association, a lobby for student governments at col leges that enroll about half of the state’s students. Texas A&M University does not belong to TSA, but student officials at Texas A&M asked the group to repre sent them. David Collins, a vice president in Texas A&M’s student government, said earlier in the day that the tuition in crease is unfair. “Education is such an important thing that if one student gets nailed, it’s too many,” said Collins, who had to leave Austin before the hearing began. “The main argument for the increase we get is, ‘Well, because we’re so cheap. ’ Is that sufficient reason?” Collins doesn’t think so. Nor does he agree with the reasoning of Texas A&M officials, who have said this university will not be hurt because its enrollment is growing. Ray Valdez, a second year medical student at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said he’s concerned the tuition hike will decrease the already-low number of minority physicians. “It will be an expecially pronounced impediment for Mexican-American stu dents,” he said. At UTMB, for instance, 86.5 percent of the minority students receive financial aid. Many of the stu dents already have debts from under graduate school, he said, and can’t work while they’re in school. Valdez, who received his bachelor’s degree without going into debt, said he will have to borrow more if the bill pas ses. In his two years of medical school, he has already borrowed $11,000. After the hearing, Steve Morrel, a registered lobbyist for the Texas Stu dent Association, said the first public hearing on the bills went well. “It looks like the House committee is well on its way to decreasing the tuition hike,” he said. Amy Johnson, a junior at the University of Texas, says increasing tuition is like raising taxes. She and other students were in Austin to testify before members of the House Higher Education Commit- Photo by Liz Newlin tee in an effort to avoid the raise. A survey at Texas Tech University indicates the proposed doubling of tuition would force 17 percent of its students to drop out of school. Pulitzer awards bring both cheers and tears lldcrly need health care research United Press International NEW YORK — The staff of the Char lotte (N.C.) Observer celebrated their 1981 Pulitzer Prize for meritorious pub lic service with champagne and cheers but Thelma D. Toole, the mother of the ““Official urges cuts in medical costs tallied fc ir batters i«| ayder, Si illis, and nt Brenl rs other ind 3rs it, as diet lean-up ^ 3-2 triun? 1 mla Ezdl and Jo® a run d twice, ame in d Sue Gan ored Staff photo by Chuck Chapman Dr. David A. Hamburg, Harvard University’s director of health policy and research and education, spoke in Rudder Tower Monday night as part of the University Lecture Series. Hamburg spoke on health policy issues in the ’80s. By KATHY O’CONNELL Battalion Staff A top health care official urged an attentive audience Monday to initiate reseach in caring for the elderly and in finding effective ways to cut health care costs. Dr. David Hamburg, director of Harvard University’s health policy re search and education program, said there is a desperate need to conduct research in the areas of heath care for the aging, and preventative measures to cut medical costs. Author of more than 100 publications in basic sciences research, clinical medicine, public policy and social analysis, Hamburg spoke Monday night in Rudder Tower as part of the Universi ty Lecture Series. Before an audience of approximately 100, Hamburg said, “The demand for health service in this country is virtually unlimited. There may be a limit out there somewhere," he said. Hamburg said there is an enormous desire for “near perfect health” in the U.S. He said each American spends ab out $1000 yearly for medical expenses, this compares to China, which spends $2 per year per person. There has been a tremendous growth and complexity of health care since World War II, he said. With technological advances, he said scientists need to “establish a data base system to clarify the nature and scope of illness in this country. ” It is also neces sary to find ways of measuring function al disabilities, as well as information ab out economic costs of health care. To begin with, Hamburg said, basic research must be protected as well as extending research in the areas of diag nostics, counseling and health care costs. Hamburg said universities can play a vital role in initiating research in these areas. However, universities in the past have not been organized enough to tackle these problems, he said. Because of industrialization, Ham burg said, there is a large proportion of the American population living longer., At least half of the people who reach 65 are alive today, he said. There is a need to prepare for the increased longevity of people, he said. About five percent of the 23 million Americans over 65 are in nursing homes and 10 to 12 percent need some kind of help in their own homes. Hamburg said past research has underestimated the “wear and tear” of the aging human body. More recent re search has shown that the elderly can function well beyond what has normally been expected. He said there is a need to “foster the functional independence” of these people. “This is a problem we’ve (the U.S.) have been inclined to avoid. ” Research in nursing homes, he said, shows that “simple intervention in nursing homes has improved the dignity, morale and functional longevity of old people. ” Another way to approach the prob lems of the aging, he said, is to look at how some of the countries of Europe handle their problems. He said many countries give this problem top priority and the U.S. should do the same. As far as cutting health care costs, Hamburg said, a greater emphasis should be put on prevention measures, such as immunization. For instance, he said, five years ago the immunzation rate of the polio vaccine was 60 percent; however, in Europe it was about 90 per cent. He also said primary medical care in terms of taking care of the problem quickly is necessary. Individuals in medical care “should be gatekeepers, he said. “When do you really need hos pital care? When do you need diagnos tic care?” He said surgery Or diagnostic care is like the “heavy artillery of the army.” “You want to use the heavier artillery care when it is really needed,” he said. Among Hamburg’s many honors are the Research Prize of the International Society for Research on Aggression; the Menninger Award of the American Col lege of Physicians; the Bicentennial Medal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Vestermark Award of the American Psychiatric Associa tion. fiction award winner, marked the mo ment with bittersweet memories of her dead son John. “This is just exquisite and at the same time I am experiencing a great deal of despair and sadness,” Mrs. Toole, 79, said. Her son. New Orleans-born John Kennedy Toole, committed suicide in 1969 at age 32 — 11 years before publi cation of his Pulitzer-winning comic novel, “A Confederacy of Dunces.” “He yearned for recogniton,” Mrs. Toole said. “He killed himself when he couldn’t get it published. He was so distraught.” The Charlotte Observer won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize gold medal Monday for its series on the failure of govern ment and industry to fight “brown- lung” disease in the nation’s textile mills. Three awards went to newspapers owned by the Knight Ridder organiza tion — the Observer, the Miami Herald and the Detroit Free Press — and two went to The New York Times. The 1981 prizes won by Times staffers John M. Crewdson for national reporting and Dave Anderson for commentary, bring the total number of Pulitzers won by The New York Times to 14. Winning teams gathered in their newsrooms for champagne celebrations and at the Observer, after speeches and cheers, a belly dancer performed in the city room. In New Orleans, however, Mrs. Toole quietly recalled how she took her son’s manuscript to publisher after pub lisher — all of whom rejected it. “I tried eight publishers and died each time they returned it to me be cause I believed in it. And I thought to myself, ‘These stupid publishers,”’ she said. Finally she got novalist Walker Percy to read it. Percy persuaded the Louisiana State University Press to publish it in 1980. Critics have since called it a “rollick ing, foot-stomping wonder” and “a mas- terwork of comedy. ” Two reporters from the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson — Clark Hallas and Robert B. Lowe — were selected from a record field of 159 entries for a Pulitzer for investigative (special local) report ing. The pair uncovered irregularities in the University of Arizona Athletic De partment that led to the resignation of the head football coach and his indict ment on 88 felony counts stemming from an airline ticket fraud. Detroit Free Press photographer Taro M. Yamasaki, won the feature photography award for a series of pic tures taken over a 2-day period at the state prison in Jackson, Mich. Shirley Christian of the Miami Herald won the Pulitzer for internation al reporting for her dispatches from Central America. The Longview (Wash.) Daily News won the award for distinguished local reporting for its cov erage of the eruption of the Mt. St. Helens volcano. Mike Peters of the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News was awarded the Pulitzer for editorial cartooning. In the criticism category, Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Star won for his book re views. In feature writing, Janet Cooke of the Washington Post won for the story ab out an 8-year-old heroin addict. In arts and letters, winners were: — Drama, Beth Henley for “Crimes of the Heart.” — History, Lawrence Cremin for “American Education: The National Ex perience.” — Biography, Robert K. Massie for “Peter the Great: His Life and World.” — Poetry, James Schuyler for “The Morning of the Poem. ” — General non-fiction, Carl E. Schorske for “Fin de Siecle Vienna: Poli’acs and Culture.” For the first time since 1935, the Pulitzer board did not give an award for editorial writing and for the first time since 1965, no award was given for Schedule booklets available in Heaton Fall 1981 Class Schedule booklets may be picked up this week from tables in front of Heaton Hall. Preregistration will be held next Monday through Friday in Rudder Ex hibit Hall. However, because preregistration schedules vary from department to de partment, students need to check with their individual departments to find out when they will be eligible to prere gister. Card packets to be used in preregis tering may also be obtained at depart mental offices. Delayed registration will be held Aug. 24-28.
