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Texas A&M
176 No. 86 USPS 045360 14 Pages
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staff photo by Octavio Garcia
Let's go fly a kite
The spring-like weather over the weekend prompts Diana
Webber, left, a senior aerospace engineering major from
Sacramento, Calif., and Marsha Ripptoe, a lab
technician at the Kleberg Animal and Food Science
Center, to take advantage of the sunny, warm and
slightly windy weather by test-flying a kite.
-Jfiny crack delays
hew shuttle’s flight
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I United Press International
P4PE CANAVERAL — Launch
d technicians found a tiny crack in
e of the space shuttle Challenger’s
pnb Saturday that apparently
jised a hydrogen leak and forced
pdelays in the shuttle’s first (light.
NASA officials said they hope to
spare for a launch in March after
Placing the defective engine.
NASA spokesman Hugh Harris
d the crack was only three-quarters
an inch long.
rahis crack certainly is the right
e (to account for the leak),” Harris
d.
He said the crack apparently had
'aped detection during weeks of
searching because it is located on the
underside of an engine manifold.
“It’s very, very hard to get to,”
Harris said. “You can’t see it easily.”
Once a technician got to the crack,
however, he was able to feel helium
gas spewing out when helium was in
jected into the engine under
pressure.
Launch technicians will continue to
check Challenger for other possible
leaks in a process that will be com
pleted Tuesday, Harris said. He said
the only replacement engine available
for Challenger would be substituted
for the cracked engine.
“We will set a launch date after the
analysis is complete,” Harris said.
Congress to receive
leagan’s budget today
i ft
I United Press International
WASHINGTON — President
nn may get his spending freeze
ough Congress, but the cuts in his
■ budget for health care, a $30
(ion increase in defense spending
■standby taxes may run into
iuble.
The president will formally send
'ngress today an $848.5 billion
dget for 1984 that would freeze
finding for many domestic prog-
^ins, cut Medicare-Medicaid and
ftnsion costs and raise defense
pending by $30 billion.
^ The budget proposal is $43.3 bil-
<n larger than the 1983 spending
^in, with the proposed increase in
(Jfehse spending accounting for
ipst of that.
Written summaries of the budget
Jre leaked on Capitol Hill Friday,
Jortlv after budget director David
^tckman and others briefed leading
jenibers of Congress on the docu
ment.
Republican and Democratic mem-
l/!® who attended the briefings
afterward that drastic action is
to reduce monstrous budget
tfiqits.
They appeared to support extend-
la six-month freeze on cost-of-
ing increases for Social Security to
'rpad retirement, Supplemental
ity Income, veterans compensa-
land pensions, food stamps and
nutrition and freezing the pay
federal civilian and military em-
yees for one year.
The cost-of-living and pay freeze
together would save $19 billion in
1984 and about $77 billion through
1988.
The members also seemed to agree
with Reagan’s plan to freeze most
domestic spending. Under his
budget, the 1984 spending for
appropriated nondefense discretion
ary programs would be $115 billion
compared to 1983’s $116 billion.
But that is about where any biparti
san consensus ends.
Senate Republican leader Howard
Baker and others have already said
they believe Reagan’s proposed $30
billion increase in defense spending
could be cut by $7 billion. Democrats
want even more cut from the Penta
gon budget.
And Senate Budget Committee
Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M.,
acknowledged after his briefing it
“will be difficult” to enact the admi
nistration’s proposed major entitle
ment changes, such as in Medicare
and Medicaid.
The Reagan plan would “reform”
Medicare-Medicaid, cutting $60 bil
lion from costs over five years by rais
ing patient premiums and setting
physician payments.
Leading the Democratic attack,
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., im
mediately labeled the health care
proposals in the Reagan budget “a
frontal assault on the health of the
American people.”
Battalion
Serving the University community
College Station, Texas
Monday, January 31, 1983
Bush leaves for Europe;
trip crucial for arms talks
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Vice President
George Bush left for Western Europe
Sunday on a delicate sales trip aimed
at convincing Western Europeans to
stay the course in arms negotiations
with the Soviets.
The mission is essentially political,
trying to offset a remarkably success
ful barrage of ideas and proposals
from the Soviet Union. But Bush can
not appear to involve himself in Euro
pean politics.
Both the Bush trip and Soviet cam
paign are keyed to West Germany,
the vice president’s first stop on a
seven-nation, 13-day trip. A strong
vote for peace and environmental
groups in elections there March 6
would give a strong unilateral dis
armament flavor to the new German
Analysis
parliament, weakening Bonn’s
staunch pro-NATO policy.
The latest Soviet suggestion, to
clear a 320-mile-wide swath of central
Europe of tactical nuclear weapons,
was rejected by the State Department
Friday as “unrealistic.”
Before that, Soviet leader Yuri
Andropov offered to cut the existing
Soviet missile force by two-thirds,
matching the size of British and
French nuclear arsenals, if the United
States would forego deployment of
572 Pershing II and ground-
launched cruise missiles. That, too,
was rejected by the United States and
West Germany.
The United States, negotiating
with the Soviets in Geneva for the rest
of the alliance on reductions in inter
mediate-range missiles, has stuck to
its opening position: The United
States will move ahead on the deploy
ment of its missiles in December un
less the Soviets agree to remove all
their estimated 600 medium-range
missiles.
Bush, as sort of a traveling arms
control evangelist, said he will argue
that Western policy “is a strong moral
position, banishing a whole new
generation of intermediate nuclear
forces from the face of the earth.”
But there are Europeans who sus
pect the U.S. insistence on Reagan’s
“zero option” of eliminating missiles
on both sides altogether is really a
device to avoid any arms control
agreement at all.
They believe it was thought up by
hawks in the Pentagon who seek to
move ahead on their rearmament
program to try to intimidate the
Soviets or even engage them in a pre
ventive war.
Bush’s job will be to try to remove
that impression.
New Prairie View A&M official
says ‘drastic change’ possible
by Patrice Koranek
Battalion Staff
The newly appointed president o(
Prairie View A&M says he thinks con
ditions at Prairie View are right to
make it an excellent national univer
sity.
Dr. Percy A. Pierre, former dean
of engineering at Howard University,
said Friday that he had offers from
other universities, but chose Prairie
View because of the “opportunity to
do something that hasn’t happened in
the country in the last five years ... and
that is to make a drastic change in the
stature of this university.”
Pierre was named president of
Prairie View on Friday by System
Chancellor Arthur G. Hansen. The
position opened when Dr. Alvin Tho
mas requested reassignment after 16
years as the head of the Waller Coun
ty school.
Prairie View needs to receive part
of the state’s Permanent University
Fund to achieve national prominen
ce, Pierre said. System officials from
Texas A&M and the University of
Texas already have agreed to share
the PUF with Prairie View; however,
final approval rests with Texas legis
lators and voters.
The PUF is composed of income
from oil produced on land set aside by
the Legislature.
Hansen said that funds from the
PUF probably will be used for equip
ment, salary increases and construc
tion at Prairie View. The Board of
Regents also wants to work toward
making Prairie View a university that
will be nationally recognized, he said.
Pierre, who begins his duties today,
said he will review the personnel at
Prairie View for the next few weeks.
He said he expects to bring in some
new people to fill administrative and
faculty positions, but said no major
changes are in order.
Pierre, who is a former assistant
secretary of the Army for research,
development and acquisition, said he
thinks all parts of the Texas A&M
System can help provide the country
with the research necessary for the
country’s future prosperity. He said
he would like to see more emphasis
given to science and technology and
would like to increase enrollment.
Hansen also announced that Dr.
Ivory Nelson, who was acting presi
dent at Prairie View, will join Pierre’s
staff on Tuesday as an executive assis
tant. Hansen commended Nelson for
“his significant contributions” to
Prairie View.
Dr. Percy A. Pierre, new
Prairie View A&M president
“He came in at a difficult time and
began to vyork at once at building on
Prairie View’s strengths,” Hansen
said. “Through his efforts, improve
ments have been initiated in the phy
sical plant, financial stability has been
improved and new academic prog
rams developed.”
Nelson said he is happy to take
advantage of opportunities that come
along and said he feels good about
becoming the first black administra
tor in the Texas A&M System.
Pierre was formally offered the
president’s job on Wednesday and
signed a letter of intent that sets his
salary at $78,000 a year. He will be
given a car, a house and other be
nefits. The house probably will be lo
cated between Prairie View and
Houston and will be leased by the uni
versity.
Pierre has a bachelor’s degree and
a master’s degree in electrical en
gineering from the University of
Notre Dame and a doctoral degree,
also in electrical engineering, from
Johns Hopkins University. He did
one year of post-doctoral study in
electronic communications theory at
the University of Michigan.
He was selected dean of engineer
ing at Howard University in 1971 and
served as assistant secretary of the
Army from 1977 to 1981. In 1981,
Pierre formed a private consulting
firm, Percy A. Pierre and Associates,
based in Washington, D.C.
Guatemalan troops cause
Mexican refugees to flee
United Press International
LAS DELIGIAS, Mexico — Hun
dreds of refugees have fled from
camps on Mexico’s southern border,
where Guatemalan soldiers allegedly
shot to death three men, beheaded a
fourth and kidnapped another, relief
workers said.
Paul Hartling, head of the United
Nation’s High Commission for Re
fugees, Sunday said he had traveled
to Mexico for urgent talks with local
officials about reports of two incur
sions by Guatemalan troops last week.
Relief workers said the camp of La
Hamaca, 50 yards from Mexico’s
southern border, was attacked last
Thursday by some 200 combined
Guatemalan civilian patrol and army
soldiers who shot to death two men
and decapitated a third.
In a separate attack, refugee work
ers said another Guatemalan force
Wednesday crossed the clearly
marked border at Santiago, intd Mex
ico’s Lagunas de Montebello National
Park about a quarter mile inside Mex
ican territory.
They said the soldiers captured a
refugee whose bullet-riddled body la
ter was found on the Mexican side of
the border near Santiago.
The slain refugee’s mother told
four foreign correspondants that
another man was taken away by the
Guatemalan soldiers and dragged
naked across the border. She said she
feared he had been killed.
“Here we are not safe any more.
Here there is a lot of danger,” said a
camp leader, sitting with his 500
Mayan Indian refugees on a hill over
looking their former home in La
Hamaca.
The camp leader, who asked to re
main unidentified for fear of Guate
malan troop reprisals, said the group
left the camp because of the threat of
another attack.
Independent truckers prepare
to strike over gasoline tax hike
United Press International
Independent truckers, risking
financial ruin and confrontations
with other drivers, parked their rigs
today to protest the Reagan adminis
tration’s 5-cent gasoline tax, but a
spokesman said the strike was “jell
ing” slowly.
An early determination of how
many truckers joined the protest was
impossible, but a strike leader said
100,000 were expected.
Many drivers said they would join
to avoid the violence that marked a
1979 strike and authorities in some
areas increased highway patrols to
prevent attacks on non-striking
drivers.
“Most of the drivers that I know
are definitely parking their trucks,”
said a woman at Jerry’s Truck Stop, in
Delaware, N.J. “It’s hot worth having
their own vehicles shot up, and they
have their beliefs in what they’re
doing.”
Many truckers were waiting to see
if the strike gains momentum or if a
legislative remedy can be found.
“I’ll stop if everybody else does,”
said Jim Danekas Jr., a driver from
Ackley, Iowa, while resting at a truck
stop near Dallas. “I’ve seen a few
trucks rolling by tonight. I have a de
livery to make in Dallas at 4 a.m. I
plan to go ahead with it. I’m justing to
see what happens or doesn’t happen.”
Independent truckers, already
hard-hit by the recession, are caught
between trying to make a living and
staving off an estimated $5,000 in ex
penses they will incur under the Sur
face Transportation Act of 1982, in
cluding the gas and road-use taxes.
“I can’t afford to shut down but at
the same time you can’t afford to keep
running,” said Dale Baker, president
of the Indiana Independent Truck
ers Association.
“I have to strike and Congress is
putting me out of business,” said
Charles Ebberly, 45, a trucker from
Sioux City, Iowa. “Right now I’m an
independent. If I don’t strike I’ll be a
dependent — a dependent on wel
fare.”
The early affects of the strike were
subtle with a sampling of truck stops
saying business was normal or only
slightly slower than usual but ITA na
tional president Mike Parkhurst said
he had reports of drivers heading
home right after the midnight EST
starting time.
“A lot of guys have started,” Par
khurst said from Washington, D.C.
“It’s not going to be jelling right away.
Normally it takes a couple of days to
jell while everybody finishes their fin
al run.”
Ralph Raymond, spokesman for
the New York ITA, said 90 percent of
the state’s independent drivers would
join the protest.
In Pennsylvania, where state police
beefed up patrols and an ITA spokes
woman said the association has asked
members to “take their trucks home
and park them” for the duration of
the strike, but some violence is ex
pected.
almanac
United Press International
Today is Monday, Jan. 31, the
31st day of 1983 with 334 to follow.
Austrian composer Franz
Schubert was born Jan. 31, 1797.
Also born on this date were West
ern novelist Zane Grey, in 1872,
and Norman Mailer, in 1923.
On this date in history:
In 1929, the Soviet Union expel
led Leon Trotsky. He went into ex
ile and was later assassinated in
Mexico.
In 1950, President Harry Tru
man announced he had ordered
development of the hydrogen
bomb.
In 1958, Explorer 1, the first
U.S. earth satellite, was launched
from the Cape Canaveral missile
test center.
A thought for the day: In a 1945
message to Congress on atomic
energy, President Truman said,
“The release of atomic energy con
stitutes a new force too revolution
ary to consider in the framework of
old ideas.”
inside
Classified 8
Local 3
National 8
Opinions 2
Sports 11
State 5
What’s up 9
forecast
Excessive cloudiness today with a
60 percent chance of showers and
rain. Winter thunderstorms are
possible. The high will be about 64.
Southeast winds at 10 to 15 mph,
and becoming stronger near thun
derstorms. Continued cloudy
tonight with a 70 percent chance of
rain. The low will be near 40.
Cloudy on Tuesday with a high of
51 and a 40 percent chance of
showers.