V TexasA&M — — V •
The Battalion
Serving the University community
80 No. 73 USPS 045360 14 pages
College Station, Texas
Wednesday, December 12, 1984
Party hosts
responsible
for guests
By LYNN RAE POVEC
Staff Writer
No doubt parties will be a part of
ihe fast-approaching holiday cele
brations, and planning ahead can
teep the good time from being
spoiled.
Ifa host serves alcohol at his parly
and a guest later is injured or killed
in an alcohol-related accident, the
host could be sued for damages. The
host also could be sued if the drunk
guest injures someone else or causes
damage to another’s property.
In a New Jersey case about eight
months ago, a judge found the host
of a party liable tor damages later
caused by his intoxicated guest, said
Kirk Brown, president of the local
chapter of Mothers Against Drunk
Drivers and a member of the Texas
AiM faculty.
i Brown and Jan Winniford, assis
tant director of student affairs at
AiM. suggest some steps a host can
take to keep guests from over-in
dulging:
• Don’t make drinking the pri
mary focus of a party. Provide activ
ities like games and dancing to cut
jdown on the number of people
standing around.
• Make sure non-acoholic beverages
are available to guests. Let the guest
choose whether or not to drink, and
honor his decision. Also, don’t en
courage drinking by proposing toast
after toast.
• Serve snacks that are high in pro
tein rather than salt. Potato chips
usually make guests thirsty, but
high-protein cheeses and vegetable
dips slow the rate at which alcohol is
absorbed into the blood.
• Toward the end of the party,
serve less alcohol and more food. A
dessert, like cake with coffee, will
turn guests attention from snacks
and drinks.
• Serve alcoholic drinks yourself,
and don’t serve doubles. Some peo
ple count and pace their drinks, and
serving singles will cut down on their
consumption. By serving guests
yourself, you can monitor the pro
portion or alcohol in a mixed drink.
• Finally, take responsibility for
guests. Designate drivers, those who
will not drink, at the on-set of the
party. If a guest is too intoxicated to
drive, get him a ride or a taxi, or in
vite him to stay the night.
What flamingo is this?
Texas A&M students David Restivo, Allan nativity scene this Christmas. This scene is
Joy and Walter Smith got creative with their at 409 Aurora Court in College Station
MSC spraying to go on
for about 2 more weeks
By KARLA K. MARTIN
Staff Writer
The parking inconvenience
caused by the roof spraying of the
Memorial Student Center should
end in about two weeks, says Dennis
Busch, assistant manager of the Uni
versity Center.
The old MSC roof, which is about
10 years old, is being replaced be
cause of water leakages. The roofs of
Rudder Tower and Rudder Theater
were also replaced.
Busch said that the new roofs are
made with a new type of chemical
foam that dries in seconds.
“It’s sprayed on three or four
inches thick,” Busch said, “and we
saw that the strong winds could be a
big problem blowing that foam
around.
“If cars parked next to the build
ing and the foam landed on them
before the it dried,” Busch said,
“then the only way you could get it
off would be to chip it off, and when
you chip off the foam, you would
probably chip off the paint too.”
This $750,000 project, done by
the CIA Roofing Construction Co.,
began in June and was expected to
be finished by October, but bad
weather slowed down its completion.
Maj. Mike Ragan, assistant chief
of the University Police Department,
said there has not been too big of a
problem with blocking off part of
the road and the drive in front of the
MSC.
“For a while, the buses had prob
lems manuevering between the bar
rels (set out to block the parking
spaces),” Ragan said. “But we finally
got the barrels adjusted just right to
where they^can drive through easily.
“On the whole, people have hon
ored the barrels and not parked the
re.”
While no complaints of car dam
age caused by the roof spraying have
been reported, Busch said the park
ing still remains an inconvenience.
Probation difficult to overcome
This is the final article in a three
part series on scholastic probation at
Texas A&M.
BySUZANNA YBARRA
Reporter
Most students say the hardest thing
about scholastic probation is getting
off.
Philip Beard remembers his bout
with scholastic probation in 1974
quite well. Beam, manager of LTni-
versity Bookstore, was placed on
robation after his first semester
ere. Although he earned a 1.91
GPR — a grade point average that
almost 4,000 students below a 2.0
here would envy — Beard says that
first semester’s grades haunted him
all the way to graduation.
Why does Beard think he did so
poorly? His reasons are common.
“The college was so much differ
ent from high school,” he says. “I got
up here and didn’t know how to
study and didn’t apply myself.” He
attended help sessions but didn’t
know where to go for outside help.
Beard says his worst fear if he
didn’t meet his probation terms was
getting kicked out of married stu
dent housing.
“I probably couldn’t afford to live
anywhere else,” Beard says. “Rent
was $45 a month in the fall of ‘74.”
He feared he would have to go to
work full-time to support his wife
Sandra. If he did that, he would
never finish school.
Beard says he was all on his own
when it came to studying. His wife
tried to help, but his studies went
past what she had had in high
school.
Michael Foderetti gives his fiancee
Lenette Mandola much of the credit
for helping him overcome his grade
problems. Foderetti, a manager
trainee for Luby’s Resturaunts in
San Antonio, transferred from
Youngstown State in Ohio in 1981.
He says moving down from Ohio
by himself and learning to adjust to
college life away from home were
some of the reasons he posted a 1.8
his first semester here. He started
working while going to school, which
added an extra burden, and he says
Texas A&M is more difficult than
Youngstown State.
“What turned it around was I put
a lot more time into studying,” Fode
retti says. “Lenette helped out a lot.
It was through her studying habits
that mine increased. Her major
made her study so much that it
rubbed off on me. I wanted to spend
See Probation, page 13
Town keeps Christmas spirit all year
United Press International
CHRISTMAS, Fla. — Cards and
packages are flowing into the post
office, lines are forming and strang
ers are finding their way around
town.
It’s Christmas time in Christmas.
The atmosphere around
Christmas hardly resembles a pic
ture-book Christmas — the town in
central Florida is 4,000 miles from
the North Pole and snow would
scare the residents to death.
But Santa Claus is alive and well in
Christmas and so is the Christmas
spirit.
“We always greet people with a
smile,” said Joy Chittum, the post
master. “We try to make them feel
good, and we want them to leave in
good spirits. The Christmas spirit.”
Chittum’s tiny post office,
adorned with orange shutters and
Christmas greens, is the center of
holiday activity in Christmas.
Residents from all over Florida
and tourists from all over the world
— in central Florida to visit Walt Dis
ney World or other attractions -—
flock to the post office each Decem
ber to mail tneir cards and packages
for one reason: the Christmas post
mark.
People drive miles out of their
way to stand in line at the post office.
“With all the crowds we have and
the long lines, we very, very rarely
have anybody grumble or corn-
lain,” said Chittum. “They come
ere in the right frame of mind.”
Others who can’t make the trip
mail their cards in boxes to the post
office for the postmark. Mail seeking
the phristmas mark comes from as
far away as Germany and Japan.
Chittum expects her five-person
office will hanale more than 150,000
pieces of mail this Christmas season.
On some particularly busy days, the
postal workers might handle 20,000
pieces of mail — 40 times the normal
daily workload.
The town has such street names as
Reindeer Road, St. Nicholas Street
and Antler Street, and a 40-foot
“permanent” Christmas tree stays
decorated year-round across the
street from the post office.
Christmas was named during a
siege on Christmas Day 1837 when
soldiers fighting the Seminole Indi
ans occupied a Tog fort and called it
Fort Christmas.
A community grew up around the
fort, which still stands, and many
current residents are descendants of
those settlers.
Hostages say
Iran supplied
hijackers guns
United Press International
Two Americans freed from a hi
jacked Kuwaiti airliner headed
home Tuesday as other hostages
charged that Iranian authorities
supplied the hijackers with guns,
ropes and handcuffs during six ter
ror-filled days at Tehran airport.
The Americans, scarred and
bruised from beatings and torture at
the hands of the hijackers, arrived in
Kuwait with other hostages aboard a
Kuwaiti jetliner that picked them up
in Tehran, the official Kuwaiti News
Agency said.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, in Wash
ington President Reagan’s spokes
man charged Iran “clearly encour
aged extreme behavior” by hijackers
who murdered two Americans and
warned the Khomeini government it
must bring the sky pirates to justice.
Deputy White House press secre
tary Larry Speakes said Reagan “has
a sense of outrage” that the tet rify-
ing drama continued for six days.
“Many aspects of the government of
Iran’s handling of this situation raise
profound and disturbing questions,
to which we are seeking answers,” he
said.
Nonetheless, Speakes said, “WeVe
seen enough to justify our conclu
sions” that Iran failed to act
promptly or humanely.
Speakes noted that under an anti-
hijacking treaty that Iran has signed,
the government of the Ayatollah Ru-
hollah Khomeini “has an obligation
to submit the hijackers’ case to pros
ecutorial authorities or to extradite
them to another country for trial.”
He warned that the “American at
titude and actions toward (Iran) will
be conditioned on whether it meets
its obligations and by our assessment
of its role during this tragic inci
dent.”
As Reagan ended a meeting with
President Seyni Kountche of Niger,
he was asked whether he planned to
' retaliate against Iran. “We’re waiting
to talk to our people when they get
back and understand” what hap
pened, he said.
“Even if they weren’t in collusion,
the Iranians could have done a bet
ter job,” Reagan said at the Wbite
House.
The Americans on board the hi
jacked plane were Charles Kapar, a
U.S. Agency for International De
velopment auditor from Arlington,
Va., and John Costa, 50, a New York
businessman. Both were treated at a
medical center in the Iranian capital.
Two Britons, presumably Kuwait
Airways pilot John Henry Clark and
flight engineer Neil Beeston, four
Kuwaiti officials and several passen
gers from Tanzania and Middle
Eastern countries, also were on the
plane, the news agency reported.
Two Americans, both AID offi
cials, were killed by the air pirates,
who seized the plane with 166 peo
ple aboard last Tuesday after it
stopped in Dubai en route from Ku
wait to Pakistan.
The ordeal ended Sunday when
Iranian security guards stormed the
Kuwait Airways jet and seized the hi
jackers and freed the last hostages.
The return of the hostages coin
cided with charges from two re
leased passengers in Karachi, Paki
stan that Iranian authorities
supplied the four Arabic-speaking
hijackers with ropes, handcuff s and
weapons.
“They had silver-colored pistols
when they hijacked the plane and
they had nothing except that,” said
Sheik Abdul Hafiz, 50, a Kuwait Air
ways catering officer.
“After two days, they had .38 re
volvers, iron handcuffs they put on
the American passengers and nylon
ropes by whkm they tied me and
other passengers,” he said.
Speakes said Kapar and Costa
would be flown to Frankfurt, West
Germany to meet with U.S. officials.
The bodies of the two Americans
slain by the hijackers were flown ear
lier to Frankfurt from Tehran.
They were believed to be AID of
ficials Charles Flegna, of Sterling,
Virginia, and William L. Stanford, a
resident of Karachi, Pakistan. Posi
tive identification of the bodies was
expected to be made in Frankfurt.
The hijackers had demanded the
release of 17 comrades jailed for
bombing the U.S. and French em
bassies and other U.S. commercial
interests in Kuwait on Dec. 12, 1983.
Kuwait refused to consider the de
mand, a decision praised by Reagan.
Koldus receives
award for service
By SARAH OATES
Staff Writer
! Dr. John Koldus, Texas A&M
-vice president of student services,
has been named recipient of the
regional Fred Turner Distin
guished Service Award for out
standing administrative service to
students.
The award, presented annually
by the National Association of
Student Personnel Administra
tors Inc., honors Koldus as the
top university student adminis
trator in the Association’s region
III, which is comprised of 11
Southeastern states. NASPA is di
vided into six regions in the
United States.
“It’s nice,” Koldus said of the
award. “It’s nice to be recognized
by your colleagues.”
The award is given to NASPA
members who make “contribu
tions above and beyond the nor
mal service required by a position
of leadership,” said Becky
Tinker, a graduate student and
NASPA member at the Univer
sity of Louisville.
Other requirements include 10
years of NASPA membership and
nomination by three association
members who are in leadership
Dr. John Koldus
roles. Koldus joined the Associa
tion in 1967.
“It’s very prestigious,” said Jan
Winniford, A&M assistant direc
tor of student services and a
member of NASPA. “It’s a great
honor to receive it.”
Koldus also has been nomi
nated for the award at the na
tional level. The national Fred
Turner Distinguished Service
Award will be awarded in March
at the Association’s annual con
ference. Koldus said he plans to
attend the conference.