A
W'
The' Battalion
Serving the University community
Vol, 76 No. 18 USPS 045360 32 Pages In 2 Sections
College Station, Texas
Friday, September 24, 1982
pouncil
rejects
budget
by Robert McGlohon
Battalion Staff
The College Station City Council,
approved unanimously a resolution
disapproving the 1983 budget prop
osal of the Brazos County Central
Appraisal District on Thursday night.
The proposed budget totaled
$617,645, a 47.3 percent increase
above the 1982 budget.
The council is the third of the five
taxing entities served by the appraisal
district to vote for disapproval, which
forces the appraisal district to pre
pare another budget.
The five taxing entities are College
Station, Bryan, the Bryan Indepen
dent School District, the College Sta
tion Independent School District and
Brazos County. This is the majority
needed to reject the budget.
The move by the council follows
the resignation Wednesday night of
the chief appraiser for the appraisal
district, Johnny Neece.
The council also discussed a Com
munity Cablevision rate increase re
quest.
A Community Cablevision spokes
man said rising costs, recent copyr
ight laws and a high turnover rate are
a few of the major reasons an increase
is needed.
He also said College Station's rates
are the lowest in Texas and the Un
ited States for comparable communi-
:ies.
In accordance with the franchise
af Community Cablevision, the com
pany must abide by the rates set by the
:ouncil if the council so chooses. The
:ouncil never has set the rates in the
past. The proposal was tabled until
he council’s regularly scheduled
[workshop meeting on Wednesday.
The council also considered a
ransfer of funds from the Hotel/
vlotel Tax Fund to the Bryan/College
itation Athletic Federation.
Councilman Larry Ringer prop-
ised $7500 be transfered to the athle-
ic federation with a portion of this
noney to be used to hire a part-time
:oordinator for community athletic
events. The motion was not seconded.
Councilman Robert Runnels prop
osed an alternate motion in which
$5000 would be transfered to the
federation with the stipulation none
ofthe money be used for salaries. The
motion was passed.
Kathy Golley, a computer science major, decides not to
look until Inge L. Vasovski, a medical technician,
finishes drawing the blood from her arm. Teams from
the Baylor College of Medicine have been at the
University this week, obtaining blood samples for
influenza research. Golley is a freshman from Conroe.
Plane crashes; students arrested
by Jennifer Carr
Battalion Staff
Three Texas A&M University students were
arrested and charged with two felonies and a mis
demeanor Thursday morning after a plane belong
ing to the Texas A&M Flying Club crash-landed at
Easterwood Airport.
Chuck D. Holdridge and Saumya Kanti Sanyal
— both sophomore electrical engineering majors —
and Holly Louise Raif, a senior finance major, were
released on $850 cash bond each after being
charged with burglary of a building, unauthorized
use of a vehicle and evading arrest.
The charges carry minimum penalties of two
years in prison and/or a $5,000 fine. The maximum
penalty is 20 years and/or $10,000.
Holdridge had no comment on the situation.
Sanyal and Raif could not be reached for comment.
Greg Bates, president of the flying club, said the
group will press charges. The University also could
press charges since the incident occurred on Uni
versity property.
Detective William S. Scott of the University
Police said the crash occurred at about 2 a.m. The
keys to the plane were missing from the offices of
the flying club, he said.
“The door was apparently open to the Aggie
Flying Club area or one of the hangars that houses
the keys to the airplane,” he said.
Scott said someone got into the key box and took
the keys to one of the flying club’s Cessna 172
airplanes.
The plane was apparently flown around “for
some period of time,” he said.
Patrolman Ed Forsom was making rbunds at Eas
terwood when he noticed a plane trying to land
without using lights, Scott said. Forsom said the
E lane was having difficulty and made a mild crash-
triding.
Scott said three people got out of the plane and
began to run. He said Forsom identified himself as
a police officer and told them to stop. After calling
for a back-up, Forsom chased and caught them.
“Fortunately nobody was hurt,” Scott said. “It
could have been disastrous. (He) didn’t really know
what he was doing — the one who was flying the
plane — not very well.”
Bates said he didn’t know the students who were
arrested and said none of them are members of the
flying club. He said he was told the person flying
the plane was not a licensed pilot, but apparently
had some knowledge of planes.
Damages to the aircraft initially were estimated
at $10,000, Scott said. Bates said the incident is
being investigated by the Federal Aviation Admin-
stration.
Prices
drop
overall
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Consumer
prices dropped overall in August with
some important products getting
cheaper, prompting analysts to pre
dict inflation would be even lower this
year than expected.
At the same time, administration
officials acknowledged the recession
was deeper than anyone thought it
would be, but that recovery was still
on the way.
The Labor Department’s Consum
er Price Index turned in an excep
tionally modest increase Thursday of
only 3.3 percent, at an annual rate,
for the month of August.
So far the year has had an inflation
rate of 5.1 percent and some analysts
are predicting even more improve
ment before the year is out.
Previously the administration and
private analysts had forseen a 1982
inflation rate between 6 and 7 per
cent.
Treasury Secretary Donald Regan
said the progress against inflation
came largely because the administra
tion refused to force farmers to cut
their harvests and because the price
of domestic crude oil was decon
trolled.
“Again, the free market system has
worked,” he told reporters.
Regan acknowledged that the Fed
eral Reserve’s tight money policies,
backed by the administration, also
helped bring down prices by slowing
economic activity.
“The impact of monetary and fiscal
policies has led to a decline in the
inflation rate,” he said.
Food prices actually declined for
the month, as did gasoline prices and
auto finance charges. Altogether,
prices climbed only 0.3 percent for
the month.
In other economic developments
Thursday:
— The government announced
another half percentage point drop in
the allowable FHA (Federal Housing
Administration) federally-insured
mortgage interest rate, bringing it to
the lowest level since March, 1981, —
13.5 percent. The same rate applies to
VA (Veterans Administration)
guaranteed loans.
— The United States also explored
a series of moves to break the trans-
Atlantic deadlock over the Siberian
gas pipeline project.
Lebanese Aggies talk
about civil war’s woes
by Robert McGlohon
Battalion Staff
For many students, picturing re
cent events in Lebanon is a diffi
cult task. But it isn’t for at least five
1 * Texas A&M students — they’re
I Lebanese.
Elias Rmeili, Nabil Abokhair,
I Sami Raphael, Tony Prince and
I Ali Khalil have one thing in com-
I mon: they were all born and raised
1 in Beirut, Lebanon.
They describe pre-war Beirut
as a wonderful place to live — a
place where one could snow-ski in
the morning, swim on the beach in
the afternoon and sample the di
versions of a metropolitan city at
night.
“Beirut was called Paris in the
* Middle East,” said Rmeili, a senior
civil engineering student. “You
could get whatever you wanted —
the best hotel, the best disco. All
the tourists from all the countries
. went to Lebanon and lived it up in
Beirut.”
The war has changed all this.
Present-day Beirut bears little re
semblance to the old Beirut, wTere
people were friendly and carefree,
Rmeili said.
I “You go on the street and see a
woman wearing black clothes,” he
| said. “Probably her husband died
or her child was killed by a sniper.
It’s pretty bad.
“One hundred thousand
Lebanese people have been killed.
It’s hard to find a family in Leba
non that doesn’t have anybody
hurt, or at least their property or
home destroyed.”
Prince, a graduate student in
mechanical engineering, said the
dvil war is said to have started in
April 1975. But the fighting began
in 1969 with a clash between the
militia of Bashir Geymayel, the re
cently assassinated president-elect
of Lebanon, and a rival force.
A popular misconception about
the civil war is that it is primarily
between Moslems and Christians,
the students said.
“Everybody says that the prob
lem is between the Moslems and
the Christians,” said Raphael, a
freshman electrical engineering
student. “But I don’t think the
problem has ever been between
the Moslems and Christians.”
Prince agreed.
“This fact of Christian and Mos
lem is more of an artifice used bv
one external force on another to
bring people against each other,”
Prince said. “It actually doesn’t ex-
sist. In the Phalange Party there
are a lot of Moslems. I know Pha-
langist militiamen who are Mos
lems. It’s not the fact whether you
are Moslem or Christian, it’s the
fact whether you are Lebanese
first — then Moslem or Christian. I
am Lebanese before being any
thing else.”
The students agree the war
probably would not have begun
without the Palestine Liberation
Organization’s occupation of
Beirut.
“When the war started, it was
between the Lebanese Christian
forces and the PLO,” Prince said.
“Like four guerrillas hijack a
plane, the PLO hijacked the city.
They took it hostage. They took
500,000 people hostage.”
Raphael said he doesn’t consid
er the PLO a liberation organiza
tion.
“I never saw them liberating
any of their land,” Raphael said.
“They are fighting in Lebanon,
and I don’t know what is the con
nection between Palestine and
Lebanon.”
Rmeili said the wrong people
are paying the price for the PLO’s
fight for its own land.
“I wouldn’t mind for the PLO to
have their own state,” Rmeili said.
“But I don’t (want to) see my coun
try — where I was born, where I
was raised — destroyed to pay the
price for the PLO.”
The students also hold Israel re
sponsible for Beirut’s destruction.
“The invasion of Lebanon by
the Israeli army has caused a lot of
uneccessary casualties in the civi-
lan life in Lebanon,” said
Abokhair, a graduate student in
biochemistry. “They have des
troyed our third and fourth major
cities and now they are destroying
the capital of Lebanon,”
see LEBANON page 12
Inflation rate
slows again
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The govern
ment’s broad measure of consumer
prices rose only 0.3 percent in Au
gust, as falling food and gasoline costs
helped temper the August inflation
rate, the Labor Department said
Thursday.
The Consumer Price Index for
August, if spread over 12 identical
months, would show an annual infla
tion rate of only 3.3 percent, depart
ment analysts said.
But more impressive was actual
past performance of the price index
so far this year. If the moderate infla
tion through the first eight months
holds steady through December, as
most analysts expect, 1982 will pro
duce a rate of only 5.1 percent, the
Labor Department said.
The White House welcomed the
latest CPI figure. Deputy news secret
ary Larry Speakes said, “It indicates
the inflation figure has returned to
the excellent performance we had in
the first four months of the year.”
A Georgia State University eco
nomist who specializes in the price
index, Donald Ratajczak, said August
was only “the beginning of a series of
good months on the inflation front,”
primarily because “mortgage rates
will be declining significantly.”
A combination of good weather,
the oil glut, the recession, and the de
cline in interest rates has helped keep
prices from accelerating at anything
near the 8.9 percent of last year.
Regents to discuss
automatic tellers
One of the obstacles to commercial
banking on campus will be removed if
members of the Texas A&M System
Board of Regents approve a proposal
for the installation of automatic teller
machines on campus.
The teller machines will be discus
sed during a meeting of the Commit
tee for Academic Campuses at 3:30
p.m. Sunday. The full Board will vote
on the proposal Tuesday.
If the proposal is approved, Uni
versity President Frank E. Vandiver
will be authorized to negotiate a con
tract for automatic teller machines
with local banks.
The machines would be located
under the walkway between the
Memorial Student Center and Rud
der Tower.
An expansion of electrical utilities
at Texas A&M will be discussed dur
ing the meeting of the Planning and
Building Committee at 1:30 p.m.
Sunday.
The $5.5 million expansion, which
will be completed in two phases, calls
for the campus to receive power from
the Brazos Electric Power Coopera
tive.
The regents will meet as a commit
tee of the whole at 8:30 a.m. Monday
in the MSC Regents’ Annex. The full
Board will act on committee recom
mendations at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Correction
by Robert McGlohon
Battalion Staff
There was an error in a caption of a
picture in The Battalion Thursday.
The accident reported was one that
occurred in the same area a few hours
earlier that day.
The accident pictured involved
Debra Six, a freshman secondary
education major, and Chris Toney,
who is also a student.
According to the accident report,
Six was driving north on Houston and
hit Toney while attempting to turn
onto PA 48. Toney was headed south
on Houston on a bicycle at the time.
Toney sustained a fractured right
leg, multiple abrasions and a face
laceration from the collision, the re
port said.
inside
Classified 8
National 9
Opinions 2
Sports. 13
State 5
Whatsup 11
forecast
High in the mid- to upper-80s, low
in the lower 60s tonight. Clear
skies.