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The Battal on
1982
Serving the University community
ekends ol. 76 No. 12 USPS 045360 20 Pages In 2 Sections
College Station, Texas
Thursday, September 16, 1982
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United Press International
I BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israeli forces
® 1 ned into west Beirut today to “in-
e quiet” after the assassination of
banese President-elect Beshir
mayel, the military command said
Jerusalem.
Unidentified assassins killed
mayel Tuesday with a 450-pound
b that took more than 20 lives,
unded 60 other people and re-
lumed Lebanon to relentless secta-
an violence.
[“As a result of the assassination of
[shir Gemayel, Israel Defense
■ices entered west Beirut in order to
in vent possible severe occurrences
n in order to insure quiet,” a state-
Sl) 1/ Sint by the Israeli military command
■The entrance of the IDF was per-.
m led without clashes,” it said.
■The death of the Maronite Christ-
1, only nine days before he was to be
lugurated as Lebanon’s president,
Ised fears of a new round of fight-
np between Gemayel’s troops and
NT
iND
3
Moslem forces in the deeply divided
country.
“This plunges half the country into
despair, and the other half into ter
ror,” said a university professor in
wident, delayed confirming the death
of the 34-year-old right-wing leader
for nine hours.
Israeli tanks took up new advance
positions inside the mainly Moslem
half of the divided capital where ten
sion was high following the assassina
tion, witnesses said.
Israeli planes also streaked over the
city starting at 11 p.m. EDT Tuesday
and kept up the flights for more than
four hours.
The witnesses said tanks sat behind
the City Sports Stadium and a few
hundred yards from the Sabra Pales
tinian refugee camp and the Arab
University area, a neighborhood
where the Palestine Liberation Orga
nization once had many important
offices.
The area is still densely populated,
mainly with Palestinians.
Witnesses said Israelis fired several
rounds into the air each time they
advanced a few yards. But there were
no reports of clashes between the
Israelis and any militiamen in west
Beirut.
“With great pain I face this shock
ing news with the strongest denuncia
tion for this criminal act,” Prime
Minister Chefik Wazzan said late
Tuesday in an official statement ab
out Gemayel’s death.
President Elias Sarkis ordered
seven days of official mourning and a
state funeral today in Gemayel’s
hometown of Bikfaya.
Searchers pulled at least 20 other
bodies out of the wreckage and a
steady stream of ambulances carried
at least 60 wounded people to hospit
als, Phalangist sources said. The
count was expected to rise.
Six hours after the blast, Gemayel’s
mangled body was pulled from the
rubble. Government sources said it
could only be identified by a ring on
his finger.
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Mexican troops display
illegiance to Portillo
United Press International
1EXICO CITY — The greatest
centration of Mexican troops in
fory converged in Mexico City
dnesday for an Independence
y show of support for President
e Lopez Portillo in the midst of the
(intry’s economic crisis.
‘Jose Lopez Portillo rules, and he
es well,” said Defense Minister
ix Galvan Lopez in a review-of the
ops Tuesday, according to official
/ernment daily El Nacional.
A squadron of seven new F-5 war-
,recently purchased from the Un
led States, was also inspected by
iez Portillo during the ceremony.
The government said it brought
troops — a third of the ria
l’s military strength — to the capit-
jfor Wednesday night’s “El Grito,”
traditional cheer, and for Thurs-
l\ Independence Day parade.
" Nacional said it was the greatest
mber of Mexican troops ever
mbled in one place.
The Mexican army has about
92,000 soldiers. The air force and
navy have a combined total of about
28,000 men.
In a break from tradition, Mexican
officials will no longer be sent to other
parts of the world, including the Un
ited States, to lead the independence
cheer.
Mexican officials announced the
cutback last week as part of a budget
trimming plan caused by the lack of
foreign exchange.
Mexico, in the midst of the its worst
economic crisis in more than 50 years,
is struggling to pay interest on its $80
billion dollar foreign debt — the.
world’s largest.
Newspapers were splashed with
patriotic headlines praising Lopez
Portillo’s bank nationalization
announced Sept. 1.
The leftist daily Uno Mas Uno cal
led it “proof that the state does not
favor the rich,”
Special commemorative articles in
Notimex, the government news agen
cy, compared Lopez Portillo with
such historical Mexican heroes as for
mer President Lazaro Cardenas, who
nationalized Mexico’s petroleum in
dustry in 1940.
Lopez Portillo has accused “unpat
riotic Mexicans” of holding $45 bil
lion in foreign bank and real estate
holdings.
Leopold© Zea, head of the National
University’s Latin American Studies
Institute, told Uno Mas Uno that eco
nomic and external pressures could
act to radicalize nationalism in Mex
ico, as in Cuba.
Tourist Minister Rosa Luz Alegria
announced Tuesday that tourists ex
changing dollars for Mexican vaca
tions will now be able to redeem their
unused pesos when they leave the
country.
Dollar-holding tourists must regis
ter the money they brought into Mex
ico, and then declare the unused por
tion at exchange centers before leav
ing Mexico, Alegria said.
Umbrella, what umbrella
staff photo by David Fisher
Heavy rains and high winds fell on College
Station Wednesday and a lot of people got
caught in it. Russell Johnson’s umbrella
decided to collapse on him and left him
unprotected to make his way across
campus and to the shelter of his class.
Library soon to install new
check-out system for books
by David Hatch
Battalion Reporter
The Sterling C. Evans library will
start using a new circulation system
Oct. 1, and all library users will need a
new library card for the system.
The new cards will have an Optical
Character Recognition number. All
books in the library’s collection also
have OCR numbers attached to them.
To check out materials, a hand-held
scanner is passed over the user’s OCR
number and then over the OCR num
ber on the book. This immediately
records all needed information.
All persons who want to check
material should complete a library
card application form before Oct. 1.
The forms are available at the circula
tion desk with a box to deposit the
completed forms near the front exit.
The cards may be picked up at the
circulation desk after the first of the
month.
Library materials that have been
checked out for an extended period
need to be returned to the circulation
desk for processing.
Emma Perry, head of the Evans lib
rary circulation division, said the new
circulation system should replace the
old system entirely by spring.
“Because the older circulation sys
tem will not be totally phased out until
the spring, users must have both their
student or faculty ID cards and their
OCR cards to check out materials,”
Perry said.
“We have been actively pursuing
this new system for about a year and a
half,” Perry said. “We need it because
our present system is over 15 years
old and was never designed to carry
the load it currently does.”
The new system will have a back-up
and will improve the accuracy of effi
ciency of the library’s record keeping,
she said.
nrollment
up by 1,000
by Beverly Hamilton
Battalion Staff
Enrollment at Texas A&M Uni-
ersity for the 1982-83 school year
as increased by nearly 1,000 de-
aite higher acceptance standards
:t by the University to control
fowth.
Enrollment after the twelfth class
ay totals 36,108, Donald Carter,
ssodate registrar, said. The twelfth
lass day is the official reporting
late for the Coordinating Board,
’exas College and University Sys-
fm. Last year’s enrollment was
'5,146.
The figures include a graduate
nrollment of 5,534. The number of
Indents seeking master’s and doc-
oral degrees last year was 5,331.
Last fall’s enrollment reflected an
icrease of 1,300 over the previous
ear and prompted Texas A&M
drainistrators to initiate tougher
intrance requirements.
“We’ve been bringing in larger
reshmen classes and taking out
mailer classes,” Charles McCand-
ss, interim vice-president of
academic affairs, said. “Overall, the
'umber had to go up.”
McCandless said he expects the
nrollment to become steady and
vel off around 36,000.
“We’ve grown so fast for so long,
s difficult to absorb students or
nhance programs.”
The leveling off of enrollment
Hallow the University to catch up
nd move ahead in its building
rograms, McCandless said.
^Pre -registration procedure frustrating
at best; hopes abound for new system
inside
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)pinions
. 2
'ports
11
tate
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Vhat’sUp
. 9
forecast
Today’s Forecast: High in
the
ow to mid 90s, low in the low 60s.
10 percent chance of afternoon
howers.
by Phyllis Henderson
Battalion Staff
Dawna Davis hopes her first experi
ence with the Texas A&M registra
tion system isn’t a sign of things to
come.
The freshman only wanted to add
a second P.E. class, and she had to go
through drop-add three times.
“It was too much of a hassle,” she
said.
For Bob Sebree, the process was
more a horror than a hassle.
A graduating senior in engineer
ing technology, Sebree was looking
forward to a good semester — a light
load of 11 hours and a chance to focus
on his job as photographer for the
Aggieland.
But after going through drop-add
nine times and missing classes for a
week and a half — during most of
which only one hour was credited to
his schedule — Sebree’s enthusiasm
sagged.
“It takes a lot to make me mad,”
Sebree said, “but they managed to do
it.”
The frustrations associated with re
gistration range from the typical to
the terrible, but most administrators
agree those frustrations result from
dealing with a computerized registra
tion system the University outgrew
several years ago. And all of them
agree the system must be replaced.
But time, money, changing tech
nology and a “lack of a clearly under
stood goal of what we wanted to
achieve” kept the University from
coming to grips with the need for a
new system when it became apparent,
Interim Vice President for Academic
Affairs Charles E. McCandless said.
The University finally has decided
upon that goal, he said.
“Our goal is to provide a first-class
student records system,” he said.
Registrar R.A. Lacey said his office
recognized the need for an updated
system three or four years ago.
“We’re running with basically the
same software we put in place in
1969,” Lacey said.
Computer software, or programs,
should be replaced or redesigned ev
ery five to seven years, said Hugh
Massey, data base manager for the
registrar’s office.
“We’ve been yelling ‘wolf for sev
eral years now,” Associate Registrar
Donald D. Carter said. “It was hard
for us to go out and find what we
wanted when we were spending all
our time trying to get the kids in class
and get the kids registered.
“We are just now getting what I
feel like hopefully is the go-ahead for
possibly changing our way of doing
this and having the funds provided to
put these changes into effect.”
Recognition of the problem has
come at both the System and the Uni
versity level.
“At A&M, we have to take a long,
hard look at where the computer di
rection is going,” Chancellor Arthur
G. Hansen told The Battalion in
April.
University President Frank E.
Vandiver agrees.
“We’ve got to bring registration
into the 20th century,” he told The
Battalion recently. “We have an old
system, an old set of software that
we’ve patched and taped and glued
and cut time after time, and it’s about
to go down the tubes.”
Lacey said time is running out for
the current system.
“We’ve about stretched that prog
ram as far as it can be stretched,” he
said.
Carter agreed.
'“We’re operating on borrowed
time,” he said. “Regardless of what
the faculty and students think of re
gistration, it’s a necessary evil. You’ve
got to have it to get the kids into class.
“If a major problem arose in our
program, we wouldn’t be able to put
the students into class, and we
wouldn’t be able to change their sche
dules. We would probably have to
back up and do it by hand.”
The system nearly crashed twice in
the past several years, Lacey said.
That possibility scares college-level
administrators.
The College of Engineering, with
about 12,000 students, would be har
dest hit by such a computer crash.
“It would be devastating not to
have any data processing associated
with student records, student grades
and the registration process,” Assis
tant Dean of Engineering Terry E.
Shoup said. “I’d hate to think what
the consequences would be of losing
the capabilities that we now have.”
Assistant Dean of Business Admi
nistration Samuel M. Gillespie said a
system crash would be terrible for his
college.
“If it crashed, that would mean
that all those who were registered
would no longer be registered,” he
said.
Carter traces the problems in the
system to the tremendous growth in
enrollment experienced by the Uni
versity in the 1970s.
The University bought the regis
tration program from Purdue Uni
versity in 1968. It was modified to
provide the University with auto
mated fee assessment capabilities and
was tested on the entering freshmen
classes in 1968 and 1969.
In the fall of 1969, the system was
put into action for pre-registration
for the 1970 spring semester.
“We went from 14,000 students in
1970 to better than 33,000 students in
1980,” Carter said. “The enrollment
caught up with us. The program was
not designed to handle the volume we
put through it.”
Initially, the program didn’t give
students a choice of class time or in
structor, but as students became more
sophisticated, they began requesting
changes in the program to give them
those choices, Carter said.
“The University was changing,” he
said. “The administrative policies
were changing. We were trying to do
what the faculty wanted. We were
trying to do what the students wanted
as far as modifying our registration
See SYSTEM page 10