State expenditures
Bullock cuts to reduce spending
Page 6
I Coastal
; Wetland
habitat loss
bird population down
Page 3
Report urges
humanities
restoration
University News Service
Until the humanities are restored
to a place of prominence in the re
quired curricula in higher education,
most of tfie nation’s college grad
uates should he considered trained,
rather than educated, sa) s a member
of the National Endowment for the
Humanities panel which issued a
critical report late last year.
“Home economists and field engi
neers don't necessarily need a broad
education to do theii jobs.” said Dr.
David Stewart, head ot Texas A&M’s
English department. “If you’re
going to follow that route, fine, hut
don’t claim to be educated with only
that training.”
He said it is important to provide
training in specialized fields such as
engineering, business and law. How
ever, he said training as well as an
understanding of the humanities
can be obtained at the same time.
“We can give all students adequate
minimum education before they
specialize,” he said.
Recommendations fot basic col
lege requirements in the report au
thored by Nidi director William
Bennett include a chronological un
derstanding of the development of
Western civilization, an understand
ing of the most significant ideas and
debates iff the history' of philosophy
and demonstrable proficiency in a
foreign language, either modern or
classical.
Stewart said failure to expose col
lege students to the humanities is the
same as “depriving a whole genera
tion of human beings of their cultu
ral legacy. The whole past is our le
gacy and you are impoverishing
yourself.”
The foreign language require
ment is essential, he said.
“It is impossible to be an educated
person unless you have had expo
sure to a foreign language,” Stewart
said. “Through study of foreign lan
guage we become sensitized to our
own language and we also become
sensitizecl to another culture.”
But Stewart believes it will he a
long, hard-fought battle to restore
the humanities to a position of
prominence in the required curric
ula of the nation’s colleges and uni
versities.
“It will take a long time to con
vince people to prefer broad-based
education to professionally-based
training,” Stewart said.
Reforms also will he difficult be
cause the university is somewhat in
sulated from pressures of the out
side world, lie said.
Stewart faults professors in the
humanities for the slip of literature,
philosophy, foreign language and
nistory to a secondary position in
college requirements.
“It is partly the responsibility of
people in the humanities that, there
lias been a decline in requirements
and standards,” he said in reference
to a period in the 1960s and 1970s
when colleges and universities
dropped many requirements, often
at the urging of humanities prof es
sors as well as students.
. “It was one of the biggest mistakes
colleges and universities ever made,”
he said. “Curriculum means hurdle
in Latin — like an obstacle course.
The hurdles are not established by
the people running the course. It’s
like someone saying ‘take the net
down, and then I’ll learn to play ten
nis.’ ”
Glacial
Associated Press
The glacial blasts that kept Texas
shivering over the weekend began to
abate slightly on Monday, but not
before contributing to the deaths of
at least eight people, off icials said.
Under mostly sunny skies, Texas
temperatures warmed into the 3()s
and 40s Monday afternoon and at 4
p.m. hit 46 degrees in El Paso, the
National Weather Service reported.
The polar high pressure system
that pushed wind chill factors as low
as 55 below zero and drove t he wind
up to 77 mph had begun to drift
slowly eastward and was expected to
Photo by DEAN SAITO
Sunlight and Shadows
The sun shining through the windows of the houettes in the foyer’s darkness and illumi-
Chemistry Building’s front doors forms sil- nates a preoccupied student.
Reagan talks
‘release’ from
federal ties
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President
Reagan’s call in his second inaugural
address for “a new American Eman
cipation” reflects the unshakeability
or his conviction that Americans are
held in bondage not by race or dis
crimination but by big government.
White House spokesman Marlin
Fitzwater called it “an old word with
new meaning.”
But the word “emancipation” has
a special meaning in American his
tory, and in using it to press home
his war against big government, the
3resident risks angering civil rights
eaders, who are already estranged
from this administration.
For more than a century they
have equated the word emancipation
with a single event: President Abra
ham Lincoln’s proclamation in 1862
freeing all slaves in the states still at
war with the Union.
But in his address on Monday,
Reagan proposed “a new American
Emancipation — a great national
drive to tear down economic barriers
and liberate the spirit of enterprise
in the most distressed areas of our
country.”
Although he mentioned else
where in the speech the federal gov
ernment has a role to play in defend-
ing civil rights, the Reagan
emancipation would grant another
kind of freedom.
“At the heart of our efforts,” Rea
gan said, “is one idea vindicated by
25 straight months of economic
growth: Freedom and incentives un
leash the drive and entrepreneurial
genius that are the core of human
progress.”
It was classic Reagan rhetoric. It
coupled his vision of f uture prosper
ity for all with a view that govern
ment should give people incentives
and get out of their way, rather than
stepping in to assist where it can.
“We must act now to protect fu
ture generations from government’s
desire to spend its citizens’ money
and tax them into servitude when
the bills come due,” he said.
Rather than government social
programs for the needy, Reagan
said “a growing economy and sup
port from family and community of
fer our best chance for a society
where compassion is the way oflife.”
It is the concept at the core of the
“fairness issue” that Reagan’s critics
have tried to use against him, argu
ing that private aid programs and
family assistance efforts are inher
ently inadequate and unequally dis
tributed.
Although promising there would
he “no turning back or hesitation on
the road to an America rich in dig
nity and abundant with opportunity
for all our citizens,” Reagan offered
no specifics to allay the concerns of
civil rights advocates who claim he is
trying to reverse the gains of recent
years.
But the president said last week
he rejects the charge, accusing his
opponents in the civil rights
movement of acting in their own
self-interest.
“I know there are a number of
leaders of various organizations that
are coming forth all the time with re-
orts that build this idea, that some-
ow we’ve relegated the black com
munity to a second-class status,” he
said. “Well, that’s not our intent, and
that’s not our practice.”
Blacks who voted overwhelmingly
against him last November, Reagan
said, were misled by their leaders.
“I have to come to the conclusion,
that maybe some of those leaders are
protecting some rather good posi
tions that they have, and they can
protect them better if they can keep
their constituency aggrieved and be
lieving that they have a legitimate
complaint,” the president said.
Worst disaster since Pan Am accident in 79
64 dead in Reno charter plane crash
Associated Press
RENO, Nev. — A chartered tur
boprop carrying 67 people home
fr om a gambling junket crashed and
burned just after takeoff Monday as
the pilot tried to return to the air
port because of vibrations. Authori
ties said all but three people on the
plane were killed.
Galaxy Airlines Flight 203, a four-
engine Lockheed Electra 188,
crashed in a field and slid onto a
four-lane highway after narrowly
missing motels and apartment build
ings. The plane had taken off at 1:05
a.m. bound for Minneapolis on a
charter by Caesars T ahoe Resort-
Hotel of Stateline, a subsidiary of
Caesars World Inc.
T he plane was the same one that
had been used by both the Rev. Jesse
Jackson and Sen. John Glenn, D-
Ohio, during their unsuccessful
campaign for the presidency. Jack-
son said the plane had once been or
dered grounded at Dallas after Hy
ing through a storm.
The Galaxy crash was the worst in
the United States since a Pan Ameri
can World Airways jet crashed in
Kenner, La., on July 9, 1982, killing
153 people, including eight people
on the ground.
Bruce Laxalt, an attorney rep
resenting the airline said there were
67 people aboard the plane, five of
them crew members. In all, 64 peo
ple died, including the entire crew,
and three passengers survived, he
said.
“Galaxy Airlines is cooperating
fully with the NTSB and believes it
would be inappropriate to make any
statement concerning the accident
until the investigation is completed,”
he said.
Earlier, officials had said up to 74
people may have been aboard.
“It was really shocking,” said
Mark Brenner of Reno, who was
driving by the scene when the plane
went down. “The plane never
seemed to get off the ground.”
Brenner said one person, burned
beyond recognition, ran from the
airplane crying, “Help me, Help
me,” and was rolled in the dirt by
passers-by. It was not immediately
known whether he was among the
survivors.
“All I remember is the explo
sions,” said another witness, Elisa
Pagni. “I saw flames flying up in the
air. It was so loud. I was terrified.”
Survivor George Lamson Jr., 17
— whose father also survived — said
the crash “happened so fast he
couldn’t remember anything,”
according to his mother Adrianne in
St. Paul, Minn.
“It’s a miracle,” said Jerry Calva-
nese, medical triage officer at the
scene. “This boy essentially walked
away from a crash where everyone
else died.”
Young Lamson was “emotionally
shaken hut doing reasonably well,”
said Dr. Stephen Grace, who per
formed surgery on his father.
Grace said the boy told him an ex
plosion threw him from the plane
and he found himself on the ground
in his seat, then “pulled the (seatbelt)
buckle and unstrapped himself .”
Four people on the ground suf
fered minor injuries, Swinney said.
The pilot apparently veered off to
avoid apartments and residential
motels along the highway, the sher
iff said at a news conference, and
may have been attempting to return
to the airport.
“The pilot did an admirable job,”
Swinney said. “It could have been a
lot worse.”
The force of the crash threw flam
ing recreational vehicles from the
dealership onto U.S. 395 south of
Reno. At daybreak, the fuselage of
the plane and the charred skeletons
of the vehicles littered the highway,
along with ice from firefighters,
travel bags and a football auto-
See Disaster, page 11
cold abates slightly under sunny skies
break its hold on the state by week’s
end, said weather service forecaster
Buddy McIntyre.
But the damage left behind by
that arctic air mass was extensive.
The bodies of two teen-agers were
recovered from Granger Lake, near
Taylor in Williamson County, after
their boat capsized in freezing tem
peratures Saturday, authorities said.
A 29-year-old man died Sunday at
Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital
after he apparently spent Saturday
night outside, officials said. The
cause of death was believed to have
been hypothermia — subnormal
body temperature.
A 58-year-old E-Systerns Inc. en
gineer from Dallas, Lloyd Lauder-
clale, was presumed drowned after
his boat was blown over by the wind
on Proctor Lake in Comanche
County. Two companions made it to
shore.
An 86-year-old Austin woman
died when a space heater ignited her
mobile home Sunday, and three chil
dren died in a weekend mobile
home fire in Houston. Authorities
were investigating the possibility that
the fire was started by a space
heater.
The front swooped in late Satur
day, plunging temperatures more
than 30 degrees in five hours.
“We’ll he going through a gradual
warm-up throughout the week,” Mc
Intyre said from his Fort Worth of
fice. “It should be into the 40s by
Thursday and stay that way through
at least Saturday.”
The front tried to hold on to the
state Monday, however, and did
manage to keep temperatures cool
in the Panhandle, where Dalhart re
ported a 4 p.m. high temperature of
27 degrees.
Winds had subsided to light and
variable across much of the state ex
cept for South Texas, where a north
erly wind at 15 mph to 20 mph
drove wind chill factors to 5 degrees
below zero.
In Abilene, a man, 45, and his
daughter, 19, survived nearly 16
hours in the cold after their single-
engine plane crashed about 10 miles
from the airport.
Wind gusts of more than 50 mph
and temperatures well below freez
ing left more than 30,000 homes in
the Texas Golden Triangle and west
of Austin without electricity parts of
Sunday and Monday.
Gulf States Utilities reported sys
temwide power outages in the Beau
mont, Port Arthur and Orange area
and as far away as Baton Rouge and
Lake Charles, La.
The national death toll blamed on
arctic weather reached 76 as subzero
temperatures and icy winds gripped
the eastern half of the nation from
Texas to New England again Mon
day, making it the coldest day on the
books in more than 20 cities.
More than 80 records were set in
the Southeast and East for the cold
est temperature for the date.