The Battalion
Serving the University community
ol 78 No. 70 USPS 0453110 14 pages
College Station, Texas
Friday, December 9, 1983
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Gilbert Flores works on setting up
his color theory project on the
Academic Building lawn. The pieces
Ciadi Tackitt, Battalion staff
were strung together and laid out in an
8-foot square. Flores is a graduating
senior from San Antonio.
Dr
its
Senior makes colorful art on campus
Id
by Charles Preston Dungan
Battalion Reporter
ny patches of color and light spun in the sun-
Bht in front of the Academic Building Thursday
ptefnoon. The orderly rows of color and reflections
ofcolor were hardly the usual sight on a stroll across
L iianipus.
■ The pieces of cardboard painted different colors
inttmiMtii or Wrapped in foil were parts of Gilbert Flores final
imes StemRoject in a color theory class. The pieces were
and MikcBBung together and laid out in an eight-foot square,
id halfcomBorles, a graduating senior from San Antonio, said
ck ouiatsHe project required a couple of months of work. He
Id'this is the second time the project has been set
b. The first time, it was on the grass between near
kn afford Architecture Center. Flores said he moved
to the Academic Building lawn to allow more peo-
p to see it and to get more response from them.
iFiores, who said his artwork is completely open to
interpretation, did not title the display.
“{t is the way it is. If someone sees something else
in it jor it reminds them of something that’s fine. I see
| as dance,” Flores said. “If it’s enough to bring
ople over to look at it then I’ve accomplished what
wttnt to do.”
* Flores said color is a playful medium to work in.
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He feaid he found that out working on his project.
“It’s a big toy,” he said.
Fjores said he got a lot of satisfaction out of mixing
the colors for the cards. He hopes he can use what he
has learned about color in future architectural pro-
jecti.
Dick Davison, instructor for Flores color theory
course, said this was the first time the course has
been offered by the Department of Environmental
Desagn. He said he hopes to see the course become a
permanent part of the environmental design curri
culum.
Davison said Flores’ project is basically simple but
with some very interesting color effects.
Students in the class experimented with other
effects, using color and producing color. The stu
dents used models to explore how color modifies
three-dimensional spaces. In another experiment,
color was created with black and white images using
a c|)lor filter.
“The course tried to increase students sensitivity
to color and its potential in the environment,” Davi
son said. He said color has been ignored by architects
in recent years. He said he wants to see students
getting back to studying its use.
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arines make Moslems raise
hite flag after heavy firing
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Inttrnitio^
United Press International
BEIRUT — Druze Moslem militias
d U.S. Marines again Thursday,
the Marines fired back so fiercely
ttackers raised a white flag. The
e later turned their guns on
risdan east Beirut, wounding at
it three people.
No Marine casualties were re-
l — t ^ ie morn i n £>’ s 90-minute
d21ofM
lie on the red dirt hills that form
i . ...■Marines’ northeast perimeter.
11 ^ But Druze leaders and Syria vowed
' \| PV f COllt ' nue t ^ e repeated assaults on
; American forces and the 1,200
5 “^^nes deployed around the Beirut
rt spent another night confined
iarkened bunkers on a Condition 1
imum alert.
The battle came four days after
eight Marines were killed and two
wounded in assaults following an
American air strike on Syrian troops.
At mid-evening, Druze artillery
shelled Christian neighborhoods in
the capital for nearly 100 minutes and
three people were reported wound
ed, the state-run radio said. Shelling
between Druze and Lebanese army
units also erupted in the Shouf moun
tains southeast of Beirut.
Christian Phalange radio said Pres
ident Reagan’s Middle East envoy,
Donald Rumsfeld, arrived for a new
effort to end the Lebanese fighting.
There was no immediate word of his
plans for talks.
However, with the deepening U.S.
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Gemayel’s Christian-dominate'
ernment.
“We hit back with wire-guided Dra
gon missiles, M-60 tanks, light anti
armor weapons and machine gunfire,
destroying one bunker,” Brooks said.
Although the fire gutted the bunk
er, Druze gunmen resumed firing on
the Marines less than a half hour later,
and the compound’s front gate came
under sniper fire, he said. The
Marines responded with 60-mm mor
tars.
Columbia home
Shuttle landing perfect
United Press International
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE,
Calif. — The shuttle Columbia glided
to a smooth landing after an eight-
hour delay in orbit Thursday, bring
ing back six men, Spacelab and a
f tnceless payload of scientific findings
rom 10 days of research.
Space pilots John Young and
Brewster Shaw flew the veteran rock
et plane in from the north for the first
time, made a broad left-hand turn
and touched down on the dry lake bed
runway 40 minutes before sunset.
Astronomer Robert Parker served
as flight engineer and scientist-
astronauts Owen Garriott, Byron
Lichtenberg and Ulf Merbold were
strapped in on the lower deck.
Landing of the 110-ton Columbia
came at 5:47 p.m. CST — 3:47 p.m.
California time.
“What a stop, Columbia,” said
Young, who has been in space six
times.
“Welcome home, beautiful land
ing,” said John Blaha in mission con
trol as the ship rolled to a stop from its
sixth return from space.
Tucked safely in Columbia’s cargo
bay was the 17-ton, $ 1 billion Spacelab
research module that is the pride of
European technology. It will fly again
next November.
For a while, the landing was in
doubt Thursday. A double computer
failure five hours before the original
landing time forced controllers in
Houston to “wave off’ the astronauts
twice.
The unprecedented landing delay
meant the astronauts had to approach
the high desert landing base from the
north, following a path taking them
over the Aleutian Islands, 80 miles
north of San Francisco and over
Fresno.
The 10-day, 4.3 million-mile mis
sion was the longest yet for a shuttle.
It also was one of the smoothest be
fore the electronic gremlins struck.
Young reported that one computer
aboard the ship failed just as the nose
wheels touched down.
The computer troubles came when
the shuttle’s big positioning jets in the
nose fired, giving the ship what
Young said was a hard jolt. One com
puter quit after one thruster firing
and the second stopped after another
firing.
Flight directors delayed the land
ing from the original 9:59 a.m. CST
time to try to understand what hap
pened. One computer was later re
vived but the second was lost for the
flight. Officials said they had not de
termined the cause.
But John Blaha in mission control
assured the astronauts there was no
evidence the jet firings had anything
to do with the trouble.
“We do not think it was related to
thruster firings,” he told Young.
“Just happened to be at the same
time,” said Young, indicating he still
was not convinced.
Blaha said the astronauts ran the
revived computer while they fired the
thrusters and no problems occurred.
Columbia, which previously had
flown as long as eight days, has five
computers, any one of which is able to
direct the critical operations needed
to guide the winged space glider back
into the atmosphere and to a safe
landing.
The delay did not threaten the
wealth of information the ship’s four
scientist-astronauts gathered on their
flight.
After landing Garriott, Parker,
Merbold, a West German physicist,
and Lichtenberg, a biomedical en
gineer at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, still faced eight days
of intense medical tests to see how
they re-adapt to Earth’s gravity.
Their experiments with Spacelab
— the $1 billion European-built re
search station in Columbia’s cargo bay
— produced 2 trillion bits of data ex
pected to produce major advances in
scientific knowledge that will benefit
future space travelers and have im
portant applications on Earth.
There nad been no major problems
with Columbia on the record-length
shuttle flight until five hours before
the orginally scheduled landing when
Young told mission control the two
computers had failed.
He said the failures appeared link
ed to the firing of the control jets.
“I think it was up-firing jets that
made this thing fail,” Young said. “I
really do. It really hit the vehicle
hard.”
Although any of the flight compu
ters aboard Columbia could handle
the critical tasks necessary for land
ing, ground controllers in Houston
wanted to make sure the cause of the
problem was understood before they
attempted to bring the shuttle home.
“We would not want to do a re
entry not understanding this particu
lar computer problem,” said Steve
Nesbitt in mission control.
The scientist-astronauts had
already finished the complicated pro
cess of deactivating Spacelab when
the landing was delayed.
Scientists on the ground were an
xiously awaiting the thousands of
photographs, super crystal samples,
unique alloys, frozen blood samples
and other experiment results still
onboard the 23-foot-long, 33,548-
pound cylindrical laboratory.
In 10 days, Spacelab gathered 50
times the information radioed back
from Skylab during 24 weeks of man
ned operations in 1973, mission scien
tist Charles Chappell told the astro
nauts.
“All of us want to express our
appreciation to the crew of Columbia
and Spacelab 1 for the absolutely su
perb jobs you had done,” mission
manager Harry Craft told the crew
early Thursday.
System will replace
food coupon books
military involvement, Italy said it
wanted to slash its peace-keeping
force in Beirut by half, to the 1,100
originally committed.
At a NATO meeting of foreign
ministers in Brussels, the U.S. and
three nations contributing troops to
peace-keeping forces in Lebanon —
Italy, France and Britain — vowed
they would stay on to support
Lebanese President Amin Gemayel. -
Describing the morning battle.
Marine spokesman Maj. Dennis
Brooks said the Marines came under
“heavy and concentrated” small arms,
mortar and rocket-propelled grenade
fire from an enemy bunker northeast
of the airport.
The area is controlled by Syrian-
backed Moslem Druze who oppose
id e<
gov-
by Kay Mallett
Battalion Staff
A new computer system to replace
food coupon books on campus will be
tested by a group of student volun
teers next spring.
“We’re aiming toward installing
the new system over the Christmas
holidays or shortly thereafter,” said
Tom Awbrey, business manager of
the Department of Food Services. “It
should be operational by Jan. 16 for
testing in the spring semester.”
The testing will be done by 20 per
cent of the students who usually pur
chase coupon books. Instead, they will
use their student I.D. cards.
The new computers will read the
magnetic strip on the cards.
One out of five students that sign
up for coupon books this spring will
be asked to volunteer for the testing.
If they agree, they will go onto a point
system.
Under the point system, a student
may purchase an initial “point plan”
for $150 and increase the amount by
$50 increments.
The points will be placed in the
computer and the I.D. card will be
encoded to activate the reader. As
food is bought, the balance for each
student will be reduced.
Awbrey said that after each purch
ase, students on the point system will
receive a receipt with the remaining
balance in his account.
“It’ll be a decreasing balance type
thing,” Awbrey said.
The point plan will operate under
the same rules as the regular board
plan. Anyone will be allowed to drop
the plan at any time and receive a
refund for the remaining balance —
less a 10 percent fee of all money
placed into the account.
Awbrey said the new system is
being installed to help the validation
lines into the dining halls should
move more quickly and to save the
students money.
In the past, if a student lost his
coupon book, there was no replace
ment or refund. Awbrey says that the
new system would save the students
from losing their their coupon books
and ultimately their “food money.”
“The only difficulty with the new
system that I can foresee would be the
removal of the magnetic strip from
the i.d. cards,” Awbrey said. “Some of
the students may rub off the strip
which would make the card impossi
ble to encode. We’re hoping for a
more durable, more dense magnetic
strip for next fall.”
This spring will be the time to work
out any “kinks” within the system
Awbrey said.
“I think it’s going to be a darn good
system once we get it going,” he said.
“We just want to go slow and be care
ful. We hope that by summer, we can
implement the whole thing. Then
we’ll open up the whole thing and
burn our coupon books!”
V
ead of English emphasizes lit study
by Tracie L. Holub
Battalion Staff
David Stewart, head of the English de
partment, says students should study dif
ferent types of literature as well as learn
ing the skills of writing.
Jerome Loving, a literature professor
in the department, says in a letter written
to Stewart in March that the English de-.
partment has been harassed by many “bot-
lom-line” thinkers who believe the prim-
Classif^ lr y duty of the department is to teach
Writing.
Loving says writing is not the only
aspect of English that is important — liter
ature also is very important.
Loving says enrollment has dropped in
many literature classes. One reason, he
says, is that many departments are asking
for more technical training from English
classes.
In too many cases, Loving says students
are locked into majors by the beginning of
the sophomore year. In many majors, elec
tives a student has are controlled or li
mited by his/her department and he/she
can’t take many different kinds of classes.
Another reason Stewart cited for de
clining enrollment in literature courses is
that many people have a bad attitude ab
out literature.
“There are a lot of people that think
that studying literature won’t help,” Ste
wart says. “Many of them want students to
take the course in technical writing saying
that it will be more of a benefit. Skills are
important, but it is also important to be
come a better reader which is what litera
ture helps to do.”
Stewart says students should study liter
ature because it better equips one for a
more flexible lifestyle after graduation.
“Students should get exposed to a whole
range of subjects,” Stewart says. “Writing
is important. Literature is important too,
though. Studying literature actually im
proves a person’s ability to read contem-
pory stuff.”
Katherine O’Brian O’Keeffe, professor
of literature, says that writing is only the
tip of the iceberg — the main part of any
class is the thinking aspect.
“We aren’t teaching writing but think
ing,” O’Keeffe says. “Literature is where
the heart of what we do is.
Rings here
Senior rings which were ordered
during the second summer session
have arrived. They may be picked
up in the Pavilion from 8:30 a.m. to
4 p.m.
inside
Around town 7
Classified 12
Local 3
National 11
Opinions 2
Sports 13
State 4
What’s up 12
forecast
l </
High today in the low 70s, sunny
with clear skies, low tonight in the
40s.