Texas ASM - - V •
The Battalion
Serving the University community
Vol 79 No. 187 (JSPS 045360 22 pages
College Station, Texas
Wednesday, August 29, 1984
Bell tower
complicates,
elays traffic
By KARI FLUEGEL
Stuff Writer
With the beginning of school ev-
Iry year, traffic throughout campus
sually increases as students relearn
the streets and parking lots.
■ This year, however, traffic con
gestion has an added complication
■- construction of the Ford D. Al-
Iritton Bell Tower.
I When construction began on the
bell tower last spring, the north side
ol Old Main Drive was closed and all
affic was detoured into the two
ties on the south side. Lamar
Itreet, in front of the Grove, also
Bas closed to accommodate con-
Hruction of the tower.
I Since last spring the detour lias
Bianged — from the south side to
[ the north side of the tower. Lamar is
still closed.
I Stipulations were made in the
[ builder’s contract to keep one side of
I Old Main open at all times, Bob
Hiatt, director of the University Po
lite, said.
“Whenever you have construc
tion, you’re going to have prob
lems,” Wiatt said. “It hasn’t affected
ing, except delaying traffic.”
No accidents have resulted from
- invth
the traffic being squeezed into a bot-
■ieneck, but a few tempers have
Bared which always happens when
■here is an obstruction in the traffic
flow, Wiatt said.
■So far the problems, because of
the construction, have not been in
stil mountable, Wiatt said.
■“But I’ll be glad when it’s com-
Beted,” he said.
■The roads will return to normal
the week of Sept. 17, Conrad Loz
ano, assistant project achitect of
Morris-Aubry Architects in Hous
ton, said. At that time only minor
work — such as street repair, lights
and landscaping — will remain.
■The tower currently is about 80
Hrcent completed. The tower will
■ dedicated Oct. 6 before the Texas
Tech football game.
■During the summer, work on the
tower was delayed, but not halted,
Intracampus shuttle
offers general public
three route options
By ALIS MAHENA
Reporter
A new intracampus shuttle bus sys
tem began operating Monday at
Texas A&M. The free Park and
Ride shuttle service travels three dif
ferent routes around campus Mon
day through Friday. And transpor
tation is available to everyone — no
bus passes are necessary.
The Park and Ride shuttle service
consists of 10 small buses, capable of
carrying 26 to 28 seated passengers,
and two larger buses, capable of car
rying 46 passengers. The buses will
run at 10 to 12 minute intervals.
Two of the bus routes, the Aca
demic Run and the Rudder Run, will
operate from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. The
third, the Express Run, stops on
campus at the Blocker Building and
the Engineering Research Center
only, and will be operating from 7
a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 6
p.m. The buses for all three routes
start out from Olsen Field each
morning.
At present, there are few marked
bus stops along the Rudder and Aca
demic runs, therefore the buses will
pick up and drop off passengers at
most stop signs along the routes.
Douglas Williams, assistant manager
of Shuttle Bus Operations, said bus
stops will be designated and signs
marking the stops will be put up
later in the semester.
The Express Run is designed to
carry large numbers of students
quickly to the Blocker Building and
the Engineering Research Center. It
will travel down Beef Cattle Road to
Agronomy Road to University
Drive. It will stop at the Blocker
Building and the Engineering Re
search Center. The shuttle will re
turn the same way.
The Academic Run will leave Ol
sen Field and travel to the campus
via Old Main and Houston. The
shuttle will cross to Jones street at
the fountain and run east on Ross
Street to Bizell. It will return to Ol
sen Field via University Drive and
Agronomy Road.
Rudder Run will leave Olsen Field
and travel on Joe Routt to Coke
Street. The shuttle will then turn
north onto Lubbock Street, travel
down Lubbock to Bizell Street and
from Bizell, head south on Lamar
Street to Nagle Street. The Shuttle
will then travel around to Lamar Ex
tension (the street between the phys
ics building and the Trigon) and
west on Joe Routt back to Olsen.
Check cashing policy
tightens; 2 ID’s needed
• Photo by JOHN R YAN
The Ford D. Albritton Bell Tower.
when difficulties arose with the bell
shipment from France. Weather has
not caused any delays, Lozano said,
but due to the size of the tower, it
has been difficult to have workers
working in the same area at the same
time.
Though traffic around the tower
is heavy, John Lake, bus operation^
manager, said the operation of the
Park and Ride system, the new intra
campus shuttle service, has not been
affected by the blocked streets.
“Everything is going according to
plan,” Lake said.
The system is running into some
tmffic problems at other areas across
campus, but not around the bell
tower, Lake said. Traffic currently is
a problem around the Rudder,
Blocker and Commons areas.
By LISA SPILLER
Reporter
Check forgery at Texas A&M is
the cause of a new, more stringent
check cashing policy. The policy be
gan this summer when Texas A&M
signed a contract with Check Worthy
of Bryan, said Bob Piwonka, man
ager of Student Financial Services.
The new check cashing policy re
quires two sources of identification.
At least one of these must be a pic
ture ID. The fiscal office and Check
Worthy prefer the forms of identifi
cation to be a student ID and a
Texas driver’s license, Piwonka said.
The additional identification is ac
tually for the protection of the stu
dent, Piwonka said. The student ID
picture is often blurry which makes
its validity questionable, he said. T he
extra ID also provides more sources
for investigation if there is a prob
lem.
Personal checks still can be cashed
at the MSC main desk for up to $25.
Check cashing has, however, been
discontinued at the Coke Building.
“The fiscal office has physically
outgrown the building,” Piwonka
said. “We simply do not have the
space to continue the check cashing
service.”
But, he said, students now have
the PULSE and MPACT machines
for 24 hour service and can with
draw greater amounts through the
machines.
Piwonka said forgery has been a
problem on this campus for several
years and seems to be increasing.
Many checks are forged after they
are stolen from someone else. The
greatest amount of check theft
usually occurs in the dorms at the
beginning of the semester, Piwonka
said.
The worst part of this type of
theft is that it goes undetected for so
long, he said. The checks are usually
stolen in a batch from the middle of
the checkbook or singly from differ
ent places in the book. Many stu
dents do not notice that checks have
been stolen until their account has
been overdrawn, Piwonka said.
elief on way for student tripples in dorms
By ROBIN BLACK
Senior Staff Writer
he deadline for checking into
Imitories was Monday at 5 p.m.
Amone who failed to check in by
that time lost their space, housing
Coordinator Toni Murray said
Tjesday.
■‘We’re still frantically trying to
J»cess all the head counts we got in
ay,” Murray said.
nee the number of no-shows is
lermined the housing office can
in reassigning those students
who have been temporarily tripled-
upm dorm rooms.
Murray said that as of Tuesday
mbrning, approximately 250 men
and 200 women have been assigned
to rooms on a temporary basis. That
means those students share — on a
temporary basis — a dorm room
with two other students.
Of those listed as temporaries,
Murray said, about 45 men and 35
women have been moved into study
carrels in the commons area.
Murray and the three dorm area
coordinators (commons, central and
northside dorms) will meet today to
evaluate the number of no-shows so
that students temporarily assigned
to dorms can be moved to a normal
two-occupant situation.
There were fewer no-shows this
year than in the past, Murray said,
and that may interfere with resolv
ing the dprm room over-assigning
situation.
“Last year we had no triples after
the first week of classes,” he said, “So
even though we had fewer no-shows,
we hope the same thing happens this
year.”
Students are not tripled up in
non-air conditioned or balcony
dorms, he said.
“We think it would just be too un
comfortable for the students to be
tripled in the non-air conditioned
dorms,” Murray said, “and the fur
niture in the balcony dorms cannot
be moved around to make more
room for an extra roommate.”
But all estimates are just that,
Murray said, because exact figures
won’t be in»until today.
Murray said that the campus
housing office intentionally over-as
signs students in order to compen
sate for those who don’t show up.
If there are empty dorm rooms, it
costs the University money, and as a
result the cost of dorm rooms must
be increased to make up for the loss.
Respective resident hall advisors will
notify students of any housing
changes by early this evening.
If there are still empty rooms af
ter all students already on campus
have been reassigned as needed, stu
dents may apply for the rooms on a
walk-on basis, he said!
“We started taking walk-on candi
dates on the 22nd, and we’ll con
tinue accepting them through noon
Thursday,” Murray said. “These stu
dents will be given rooms only after
the triples have been moved out, so
we’ve told not to be optimistic since
there’s no guarantee that they’ll get a
room.”
There is no waiting list right now,
Murray said, because a waiting list
for any given semester becomes de
funct when the semester begins.
“We have to assume that 99.9 per
cent of the students on the list have
already made other arrangements,”
he said.
Daniel Mizer, housing coordina
tor for the commons area dorms,
said that the moving-in process has
gone smoothly this semester.
“We’ve had a steady flow so far,”
he said, “and there’s not been any
real rush. People have been trickling
in steadily to check in to their
rooms.”
Denise Heitkamp, head resident
advisor for Briggs Hall, said she’s
having little trouble with the tripling
situation.
“I think all of our temporaries will
be put into rooms,” she said, “and
the women temporaries have been
limited to freshmen women.”
More inmate violence in TDC; death
count to 125, stabbing count to 265
United Press International
| Uni
■HUNSTVILLE — Four separate
Ribbing attacks in Texas Depart-
Pem of Corrections units pushed
At inmate death count to 12 and the
n Umber of stabbing incidents to 265
Ai' year, officials said Tuesday.
■Two inmates died in attacks Mon-
U night, a third was hospitalized in
Hical condition and a fourth was
Hiatal for a minor wound Tuesday,
BC spokesmen Charles Brown and
■I Guthrie said.
■Terry Black, 21, was stabbed in
Ae shoulder about 7 a.m. Tuesday
l the Barrington Unit as a guard
B searching a cell for weapons.
Bother inmate ran out of the cell
and attacked Black, Guthrie said.
Both Black and the suspect, Rolando
Bolano, are black and prison offi
cials have no motive, he said.
The dead inmates from Monday’s
stabbings were Curtis Ray Williams,
22, serving a 5-year Howard County
burglary sentence at the Clemens
Unit in Brazoria, and Raymond Ma
thias, 25, a convicted murderer serv
ing a 99-year sentence at the Wynne
Unit in Huntsville.
Everitt Matthews, 20, was in crit
ical condition at John Sealy Hospital
in Galveston Tuesday with multiple
stab wounds he received during an
incident at the Darrington Unit at
Rosharon about 10 p.m. Monday.
Brown said the fatal stabbing at
the Clemens Unit and the Monday
night assault at the Darrington Unit
appeared racially motivated. A white
suspect was being questioned about
the death of Williams, who is black.
Three Hispanics were being ques
tioned about the attack on Matthews,
also a black.
Brown said authorities had no ex
planation for the killing at the
Wynne Unit.
Authorities locked down an esti
mated 180 inmates in cell blocks on
both the Clemens and Wynne Units
and guards Tuesday were searching
for weapons.
So far this year, 12 inmates have
been killed inside the walls of Texas’
26 prison units. TDC reported a to
tal of nine inmate homicides last
year and eight the year before.
Thirty-nine stabbings have occurred
in August.
Ray Procunier, who took over as
TDC director in June, attributes the
increased inmate violence to a short
age of guards and poor inmate clas
sification in which hardened crimi
nals live alongside younger, weaker
inmates.
Officials also cite the eliminaton
of the use of inmates as building ten
ders, as ordered in a federal reform
mandate, as another factor in prison
violence.
In Today’s Battalion
Local
• A special phone number offers emergency help. See
story page 4.
State
• Study shows elderly Texans going hungry. See story
page 5.
National
• The Agriculture Department plans to continue an emer
gency disaster program. See story page 6.