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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 15, 1984)
Olympic winners honored at capitol See page 3 Texas A&M Vj > exas Ac Tne Vol 78 No. 187 USPS 045360 12 pages Officer confesses to planting bomb See page 5 m Slocum comments on Aggie workouts See page 11 ■■■ Battalion Serving the University community College Station, Texas Wednesday, August 15, 1984 'I-OUghlj K le unuffrf athleif"! inceAmJ and 'ill ss when i final th hilecomp i Lewis, AA in® ar, nud rht with 10. Gymnast flips — coin Photo by PETER ROCHA Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton meets members of the New York Jets and the Houston Oilers before last Satur day night’s game in the Astrodome. Retton, who is 16, re turned to Houston, where she trains, after finishing the Olympics in Los Angeles. She flipped the coin before the game and received an ovation. Dorm check-in/out starts Friday jarandfl a pew: He wall leadin' tole sec®' rathcer , enter i by H 0 - lore nii» diit, 1 ; , Mari': .ached® 1 jases- A dds lin ( i clear on D 1 " 1 in the i, ad« elder errror Davis' By KARI FLUEGEL Staff Writer Beginning Monday morning, resi dence halls that have stood vacant for three months will open for the Fall semester. However, before the halls can be open for the fall, the stu dents livjng in dorms for summer school must check out. All summer halls will close Friday. All students must be moved out and checked out by 6 p.m., Tom Murray, housing services supervisor, said. To check out students must have their room checked by their resident advisors, return the keys and sign an inventory card. Each student must check out with the resident advisor. One roommate may not check out for the other. Graduating seniors may stay in their rooms Friday night, but must check out with their head residents by 10 a.m. Saturday. Students who have been living in the residence halls during the sum mer sessions will be allowed to check into their fall spaces from 1 to 8 p.m. Friday. Only students who have been living on campus during the summer will be allowed to check in early, Murray said. No exceptions will be made. If summer school students are not checked into their fall rooms by 8 p.m., they will have to wait until the halls open at 10 a.m. Monday. Residence hall staff also will allow freshmen attending Fish Camp C to put their belongings in their rooms from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Sunday. “This will not be an official check in,” Murray said. “They won’t get their keys yet.” Fall dormitory check-in officially begins Monday at 10 a.m., Murray said. Students have until 5 p.m. Aug. 27 to claim their rooms or they will forfeit their spaces. To check in, students should re port to their assigned dorms amd present their paid fee receipts. Murray said the busiest and most hectic time to check in is Monday or Tuesday. “If you can wait, come later,” he said. The first time room and hall change requests will be accepted will be Aug. 24. Requests will not be ac cepted before that time for several reasons, Murray said. First, students who turn in re quests early in the w-eek often change their minds about moving after meeting people in their dorm. Sec ondly, the housing office cannot act on room requests until final housing numbers are available after check in ends. Check in closes at 5 p.m. Aug. 27 which also is the deadline for room and hall change requests. Cards for room changes will be available from the head residents and cards for hall changes will be available in the area offices. The housing office will begin to notify students of room and hall changes and permanent assignments for students in temporary spaces the evening of Aug. 29. Approval cards will be distributed by the head resi dent or resident advisor. Students should not change rooms or halls without proper authorization, Mur ray said. Students moving to a different room or hall must be out of their original space by 5 p.m. Aug. 31. After assigning spaces to students in temporary situations, the housing office will begin assigning spaces to walk-on applicants. Signing the walk-on list does not guarantee that any space will be available, Murray said. If spaces do become available, they will be as signed in priority order according to the date of the student’s application for housing. Students will be able to sign the walk-on list from Aug. 22 to Aug. 30 starting at noon. Beginning at 9 a.m. Aug. 31, stu dents will be able to find out if they have been assigned a space. If the walk-on student has not claimed the space by 5 p.m. Aug. 31, it will be re assigned. It is the student’s obligation to claim check with the housing office to claim his or her space, Murray said. lerw'fi >bbie tc : keof'* Utlli 8' exiCO i -o mp Banks warn: treafcards like money Local credit card fraud growing iers Sylvie ricans' ;U ferM_ •mcerf ,oyco t|f lt ^ Jgoldf dV, laH hroatf By Dolores Hajovsky Reporter The “plastic money” of today that makes life easier for shoppers also can bring difficulties they can’t af ford. Credit card abuse is a growing problem because stolen credit cards are so easy to use. Credit card purchasers seldom have to show identification or proof of ownership, said Angie Scar- mardo, bank card manager at First Bank and Trust. And in most cases, nothing hap pens to people caught using a stolen credit card unless they confess to the crime, said Lt. Bernard Kapella of the College Station Police Depart ment. Credit card fraud is a third degree felony, which means if a per son is convicted of the crime the penalty is 2 to 10 years in the state penitentiary and/or a fine of up to $5,000. Last year 40 cases of fraud with loses totalling $1,963, were reported to College Station Police. Thirteen of the cases still are not cleared, said Chris Schommer, a records techni cian for the College Station Police Department. Last year there were more than $ 1 million in stolen card costs reported to First Bank and Trust by its card holders, and about $15,000 had to be written off, Scarmardo said. So far this year there have been 25 cases of fraud, Schommer said — a 67 percent increase over the same time last year. Most of the time it is one or two people who keep using a stolen credit card, she said. Kapella said people need to be careful when using credit cards so they will not become victims of credit card fraud. He said that after using credit cards the owners should be sure to take the carbon papers along with their part of the receipt. Any one can learn credit card numbers and card holder names from dis carded carbons, and once an account number falls into the wrong hands the bills add up, he said. Kapella said customers should be wary of giving out credit card num bers over the telephone for pur chases. There is no way to tell what happens with the account number after the intended purchase is made, he said. Kapella said all bills should be checked to make sure purchases equal receipts in hand. When a MasterCard or Visa card is reported stolen the account num ber is put in a warning bulletin for 30 days, Scarmardo said. If someone is caught using a stolen card the card is cut apart. It is up to the store to deal with the indiviual. Banks that issue cards give this ad vice: Treat credit cards and account numbers as you would cash and never let them out of sight. GOP platform committee nixes tax hike United Press International DALLAS — Rebellious conserva tives ignored opposition from White House watchdogs Tuesday and re wrote the Republican Party platform to prohibit President Reagan from raising taxes after election day. Reagan aides who thought up to the last moment they could forge a compromise that would give Reagan a loophole in case of emergencies, caved in after a unanimous subcom mittee vote went against them. “We can live with it,” said former Transportation Secretary Drew Le wis, Reagan’s chief operative at the platform drafting. “He will not have to repudiate the platform.” The rest of the platform, which Reagan can ignore as Republican and Democratic presidential con tenders have frequently done in the past, went straight down the conser vative White House line. The document made no mention of the Equal Rights Amendment, proposed a constitutional amend ment banning abortion, called for a hardline stance toward the Soviet Union and demands a continuation of Reagan’s military buildup. Lewis said the White House likely will not fight against the tough anti tax language on the floor of an otherwise coronation-like Republi can National Convention that opens in Dallas next Monday. The administration suffered a se ries of setbacks in the economic sub committee which also inserted lan guage calling for a modified flat tax that would tax most incomes at the same rate. The committee had to roll back on a proposal to stop taxing in come from saving account interest when they were told by the adminis tration it would add $7 billion a year to the deficit. The determination of conserva tives was voiced by Rep. Vin Weber of Minnesota, who told reporters: “I believe we should have an unequivo cal, absolute, ironclad statement against taxes and I’m not going to back away from that until the con vention is over. I don’t want to com promise.” The anti-tax hike language con cludes: “We therefore oppose any attempts to increase taxes, which would harm the recovery and re verse the trend to restore control of the economy to individual Ameri cans.” The key to the sentence was the comma after “taxes” which when in serted, bans all tax hikes. Without the comma the sentence would ban only those tax increases which hurt the economic recovery. Disciplinary hearings begin in assault case By SARAH OATES Staff Writer Disciplinary hearings began Tues day for six Texas A&M students ar rested Thursday and charged with an attack on another student. “The hearing process will proba bly be completed this week,” said Bill Kibler, assistant director of student affairs. Kibler said no decision has been made about whether the students will be expelled. That decision de pends on each student’s involvement in the incident. He said he may try to get additional information about the incident from other students. The students and their lawyers re fused to comment Tuesday. The closed hearings continued for about three-and-a-half hours Tuesday afternoon. The incident occurred Aug. 5 when the victim was invited to an other student’s dorm room for a pizza, police said. He reported to po lice that he was grabbed, stripped to his underwear, bound and gagged, then taken outside and put in the back of a pickup truck. He told po lice he was covered with molasses and feathers and left in front of Tinsley’s restaurant in College Sta tion after unsuccessful attempts to chain him to a light pole. College Station police found him as he walked down Texas Avenue. The students have been charged with criminal assault and false im prisonment, both misdemeanors. The county court administrator’s of fice said the students probably will be arraigned later this month. The students charged in the inci dent are: Evagelos Lorentzatos, 19, of Houston, Manuel Gardea Jr., 21, of Galena Park; Philip E. Shaw, 21, of Galena Park; John S. McDonald, 18, of Houston and Ernesto Rodri guez, 17, of Houston. Each paid a bond of $375 Thursday night and was released from Brazo County Jail. University officials said the victim withdrew from the University Fri day. In Today’s Battalion Local • A Texas A&M architecture professor says Texas is lack ing energy efficient building designs. See story page 4. • A Hindu religious leader will speak Thursday at Texas A&M. See story page 5. State • Riding with a load of watermelons, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower drew attention to the state’s program to help farmers market their produce directly to food stores. See story page 10.