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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 28, 1984)
Discovery damage only minor — so far Top Secref review in Entertainment TV ruling's effect on colleges unsure See page 11 Battalion itiona] Vol 79 No. 165 USPS 045360 12 Pages Serving the Gniversity community College Station, Texas Thursday, June 28, 1984 >h hit nit | i Stadim inate Cal home ns knodd: | from tli e runs,& st iiinicj I -old n s tie in (I* ir liorntt bleachm tly s« i least oa antes, fj e honwi J seatss a 7-0 Id o leftM tlte fotni in and ahttintoi I tht to the rigii h ng LyMB .1 in lb ileacheni ited withij md anouj ; in a nt»i iiing te : ;nated lia- uggedS five lioE- f a Dai tion ■ Tennis Anyone? Bryan’s Gage Gandy, 11, returns a serve at attending the Texas A&M All Sports Camp the Omar Smith tennis complex. Gandy is which ends this Saturday. 75 percent increase in tuition proposed By BILL ROBINSON Senior Staff Writer Students at state colleges and uni versities could be hit with a 75 per cent increase in tuition costs this fall if Texas legislators approve a tax plan now being considered by the House of Representatives. Tuition at all state-supported schools would rise from $4 to $7 per credit hour in the 1984-85 academic year as part of Rep. Stan Schlueter’s $4.9 billion tax package to fund pub lic education and highway repairs. Schlueter, D-Killeen, is chairman of the House Ways and Means Com mittee. Terry Kirkpatrick, a member of Schlueter’s staff, says in-state tuition will increase to 15 percent and out- of-state to 75 percent of the total cost of education over a six year period. “After it reaches 15 percent, tu ition will be about $19,” Kirkpatrick says. “It’s an increase of about 500 percent.” Non-resident tuition would re main about 10 times higher than Texas residents pay, or about $190 per credit hour. Texas A&M student leaders are preparing a battle against the mea sure. The Texas A&M legislative study committee has called a press conference for 2 p.m. today in Aus tin, committee director Johnny Hatch says. “As it stands right now we’re going to be opposed to an increase in tuition for three reasons,” Hatch says. “First, they are simply raising tu ition; second, they are doing it doing a special session when we don’t have a chance to voice our opposition, and third, they are trying to intro duce it on a tax bill — tuition is a fee not a tax, it should be introduced separately.” The committee’s opposition is centered around the method legis lators are taking to enact the in crease. “They suspended rules and didn’t have to announce the committee hearing so we didn’t even have an opportunity to testify,” Hatch says. “We are students and we do op pose a tuition increase, but we do re alize that Texas is ranked 47th out of 50 states in tuition cost. The cost for you and I is $108 per credit hour to go to school — the state pays $104 and you and I pay $4. “We realize that one of these days Texas is going to have to raise tu ition — we just want to have a voice in it.” Texas students now pay for 3.7 percent of the cost of education and non-resident students pay 35 per cent. The increases in tuition will not benefit the state’s colleges, though. Some state higher education funds would be shifted to to public schools. Kirkpatrick says the state won’t make any money off of the tuition plan. “It doesn’t raise any money — it takes a little pressure off of the state,” he says. The proposal to increase tuition costs did not surprise Texas A&M University System officials. “Texas is, if not the lowest tuition in the nation, close to it,” Board of Regents secretary Bob Cherry says. “We’ve been expecting an increase for some time — it didn’t come as a surprise.” Cherry says system officials would prefer low tuition if given a choice.. Committee completes education reform bill United Press International AUSTIN — A House-Senate con ference committee ended negotia tions Wednesday on a $2.8 billion education reform bill but delayed a final vote on the measure, appar ently fearing the entire education package could be scuttled if the Leg islature fails to pass a tax bill. The education bill is written to take effect Sept. 1, 1984, but law makers’ rejection of a pending tax hike bill would effectively make the measure moot since no funds would be available to finance the education reforms. If a tax bill failed, the education bill could be amended in the confer ence committee to take effect Sept. 1, 1985, giving the Legislature time in the January-May 1985 regular session to pass a tax increase. “We’ve got a pretty good educa tion bill,” said Rep. Wayne Peveto, a member of the conference commit tee. “If we can’t pass a tax bill, we could change it (the education bill) and make it effective in ’85. That’s the strategy. The tax bill’s in big trouble.” Also throwing a wrench into the education bill’s progress was re newed opposition from teacher groups, who last week endorsed the House version of the bill. “Even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked. As (the education bill) stands in its final form, Texas teach ers are being kicked and the Texas State Teachers Assocation cannot support it,” said TSTA President elect Becky Brooks. Teacher groups were angry that the conference committee took money from a career ladder plan for teachers to cut the cost of the mea sure. However, House leaders said they doubted the opposition would affect the bill’s chances of adoption. Once the House and Senate adopt the compromise education bill, it then heads to Gov. Mark White, who described it as “the best in the coun try” and promised to sign it into law. The adoption of a plan to revamp the state’s complicated school financ ing system was the final step in the negotiations. Committee members agreed on a modified version of the House plan calling for the state to pick up about 65 percent of the cost of education with local school dis tricts paying the rest. Education Commissioner Raymon Bynum said the new system would better equalize funding between rich and poor school districts, but also could force some wealthier districts to raise taxes to make up for lost state revenue. The bill requires teachers to pass a competency test by June 1986 in or der to keep their jobs, allows school districts to decrease annual bonuses awarded in a four-level career lad der if the state fails to fully fund the ladder, forces students to pass all subjects (except honors courses) in order to participate in extracurricu lar activities, and mandates pre-kin dergarten for poor and non-En glish-speaking 4-year-olds Jackson obtains of 22 United Press International HAVANA — Jesse Jackson an nounced Wednesday he will bring 22 American prisoners, most con victed on drug charges, home from Cuba Thursday, and said Fidel Cas tro agreed to review the list of politi cal prisoners in Cuban jails. The 22 jailed Americans will be met by the FBI, officials from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Marshall Serv ice, the Justice Department said in Washington. With the Cuban president at his side at a post-midnight meeting with reporters, Jackson listed issues the two men discussed, with mixed re sults, in eight hours of talks, ranging from the prisoner questions to nor malization of relations between the communist island and the United States. After visiting the American pris oners in jail, the black Democratic presidential candidate was to fly to Managua, Nicaragua, for talks with the Sandinista government — the target of CIA-financed rebels — be fore stopping again in Cuba Thurs day to pick up the prisoners en route to Washington. U.S. officials said there are 29 Americans in Cubans jails, 24 on drug charges, four for hijacking air planes and one for a sex offense. It is not clear which of the prisoners are being released, but Castro said the hijackers would not be freed. Announcement of the prisoner release was welcomed at the White House but jeered in Miami’s Cuban community. “What about the thousands of men rotting in jails because they have stood up to Castro?” Pedro Suarez, a security guard, asked. High Court OKs college TV deals United Press International WASHINGTON — The NCAA suffered a multimillion-dollar jolt when the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that colleges are free to cut their own deals for televison cov erage of football games. With the 1984 football season only two months away, the court ruled 7- 2 that the NCAA’s arrangement to broadcast collegiate football on tele vision networks violated federal anti trust law. The ruling allows college teams — most notably traditional power houses — to reap more revenues by negotiating their own television packages for the upcoming season, which begins on Labor Day, rather than relying on the association. A lower court had ruled the NCAA package was anti-competitive because it reduced the number of games available to TV viewers na tionwide. Writing for the high court. Justice John Paul Stevens held the NCAA’s contracts placed a “ceiling on the number of games” that was an “arti ficial limit on the quantity of tele vised football that is available to broadcasters and consumers.” He concluded that was an unreasonable restraint trade in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The NCAA’s role of representing both large and small schools is not aided “by curtailing output and blunting the ability of member insti tutions to respond to consumer pref erence,” Stevens wrote. Instead, the group “has restricted rather than en hanced the place of intercollegiate athletics in the nation’s life.” NCAA’s television rules do not promote equality among schools but only limit one source of revenue, Stevens noted. There is no evidence, he said, that this produces “any greater measure of equality through out the NCAA than would a restric tion on alumni donations, tuition rates or any other revenue produc ing activity.” Justice Byron White, an All- America halfback who kept alive the NCAA schedule last fall by issuing a stay continuing the NCAA’s broad casting schedule, dissented. Joined by Justice William Rehnqu- ist, he argued the court erred in “treating intercollegiate athletics un der the NCAA’s control as a purely commercial venture, or even pri marily, in the pursuit of profits.” In Today’s Battalion Local • The College Station city manager says the city's land fill may fill up by the 1990s. See story page 5. • A professor of agricultural engineering was appointed a Fellow of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers. See story page 6. State * Interest groups lined up to criticize as unfair the Texas Legislature’s proposed $4.9 billion tax plan. See story page S. World • Israeli warplanes bombed a suspected Palestinian guerrilla base hours after Israel and Syria announced a Red Cross-mediated prisoner exchange. See story page 10.