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— Page 3
Poll says Americans favor use
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— Page 5
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— Page 6
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Texas A&M
The Battalion
Serving the University community
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College Station, Texas
Tuesday August 6, 1985
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Associated Press
PIETERMARITZBURG, South
A-frica — The treason trial of 16
anti-apartheid activists began Mon-
dav and black miners announced an
impending boycott of white busi-
i|sses to protest the state of emer
gency.
■ Police reported 16 more arrests
under the emergency imposed last
month in an attempt to quell the tide
■ riot and protest that has swept
Hardware
io blame
for backup
at Pavilion
By KAREN BLOCH
Staff Writer
1 Building a better mousetrap is not
always easy.
I Texas A&M students learned this
Hie hard way when the Student In-
| formation Management System
I (SIMS) was put to its first real test
[ Monday at open registration.
| Students attempting to register or
drop-add were greeted at the Pavil
ion by long lines. Don Carter, asso
ciate registrar, said the lines can be
attributed to the fact that more stu
dents showed up for open registra-
! Bon than had been expected and
s that there were several problems
with the system’s printer.
“We stress-tested the system,”
arter said, “but there’s no way we
m predict that we’ll have a problem
like this.” Also, SIMS has been used
to register some of the incoming
freshman.
With SIMS, students register at
mputer terminals and know im-
ediately if the class is available,
♦i Students also receive copies of their
jHhedules and may pay their fees be-
Jervice fore leaving the building.
I However, a problem with the
Jjprinters caused long lines Monday.
Steve Williams, assistant director
;™ ) p flofthe SIMS project, said that there
• A i>*t>B ave ^ een no problems wirh the ac-
Hal program, only with the hard-
black cities and townships for nearly
a year, claiming 500 black victims.
The trial of 16 leaders of the
United Democratic Front, in this city
of eastern Natal province, is seen as
the most significant treason case in
South Africa since 156 activists were
acquitted after a four-year-long legal
contest that began in 1956.
Charges in this case range from
praising Nelson Mandela, jailed
leader of the outlawed African Na
tional Congress, to making speeches
that further the aims of what the
government calls the “revolutionary
alliance.”
The United Democratic Front is
the main group fighting apartheid,
the institutionalized race segregation
through which South Africa’s 5 mil
lion whites control the voteless black
majority of 24 million. Defendants
include two of the group’s three co-
presidents.
National police headquarters in
Pretoria said the new detentions
brought the total arrests to 1,428
since the emergency took effect July
21, and 109 have been released.
Most of those detained are in the
second and third rank? of the UDF
and its 600 affiliate organizations.
In Johannesburg, the black Na
tional Union of Mineworkers said it
was preparing a boycott of white-
owned businesses to protest the
emergency. The same union an
nounced Sunday it will call a gold
mine strike Aug. 25 that could
cripple the gold-dependent econ
omy.
A three-day day period during
which President P.W. Botha can
avert the boycott by liftng the emer
gency probably will be set to start
Tuesday, union spokeswoman Ma-
noko Nchwe said.
At the treason trial in a heavily
guarded red brick courthouse in Pie
termaritzburg, defense lawyers de
scribed the indictment as unfounded
and began a procedural battle. They
contended that the indictment, cov
ering alleged offenses over the past
four years, was too sweeping and
vague.
The 16 defendants stood with
heads bowed for a minute in mem
ory of Nonyamezeleo Mxenge, trial
lawyer for two of the accused, who
was killed by gunmen last Thursday.
She was the fifth senior member of
the United Democratic Front slain in
mysterious circumstances in recent
weeks.
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Photo by LORI CHANEY
Students wait in line during open registration Monday morning.
0
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recent
iscle or
r taking
ition
Inc.
Today, 18 more terminals will be
added in the Pavilion, bring the total
■number of terminals to 36. This
should speed up the registration
process. Carter said.
Williams said that since the system
problems were with the printer, no
schedules were lost.
Carter said that the problems
seem to have been solved and regis
tration will be held tomorrow as
planned, from 10 a.m. to noon and 2
p.m. to 4 p.m.
Open registration and drop-add
continues through August 23.
Students who were eligible for
preregistration in the spring, but did
not register, may register during
open registration. Those who did
not attend A&M during the spring
semester, but have attended the Uni
versity before, and students who
were blocked for preregistration by
their academic departments should
contact their departments to see if
they will be allowed to register.
Carter warned that some aca
demic departments will not have ad
visers availabe to register students at
all times. So, students coming to
campus to register or drop-add must
call their departments ahead of time.
Associated Press
GRAPEVINE — Delta Air Lines
Flight 191 already was breaking up
when air traffic controllers franti
cally warned the pilot to abort his
landing, federal investigators said
Monday.
The voice recorder of the L-1011
jumbo jet, which killed 133 people in
Friday’s crash, picked up sounds of
the airplane coming apart, “sort of a
crackling, grinding” sound, said Na
tional Transportation Safety Board
member Patrick Bursley.
Over the sound of the breakup
could be heard the frantic order of
the Dallas-Fort Worth International
Airport flight controller, “Delta, go
around!” urging the pilot not to
land, said Bursley.
An automatic device in the cockpit
also told the pilot in its electronic
voice, “Pull up! Pull up! Pull up!”
just before the crash, he said.
Bursley also said the flight data
recorder revealed some speed fluc
tuations before the crash, which he
said must be analyzed further.
Bursley for the first time fixed the
exact time of the crash as 6:08 p.m.
CDT, based on the observation of a
person at the airport who was setting
aircraft clocks aboard an airplane
and witnessed the crash.
Investigators earlier said the
jumbo jet might already have hit the
ground by the time the controller in
the tower was able to issue the com
mand to “go around.”
Tape recordings made in the
tower show that just before the crash
an air traffic controller watched as
the plane emerged from a thun
dershower 50 to 100 feet above the
ground, authorities said. The plane
at that point may have been bounc
ing after initial impact, investigators
said.
“Delta, go around!” the controller
ordered, but Bursley said Monday it
was unclear whether the pilot heard.
He said he did not know whether
the pilot heard the order or tried to
respond, but that plane’s digital
flight recorder indicated a surge in
engine power just before the crash.
“Power is an answer in overcom
ing problems in flight control,” Bur
sley said. But he said investigators
who listened to the voice recorder
detected no alarm by the cockpit
crew.
Rudy Kapustin, head of the
NTSB’s investigative team, said his
agency probably would be at the
crash site for at least a week.
Bursley said officials are investi
gating the role of wind shear — an
abrupt change of wind direction and
speed — in the crash. Instruments at
the airport showed low-level wind
shear in the area minutes after the
crash, but might have missed wind
shear farther away, he said.
Since wind shear was registered
10 minutes after the crash, Bursley
said it was reasonable it could have
occurred during the crash.
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Reagan says skin
taken from nose
was cancerous
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President
Reagan revealed Monday that tis
sue removed from his nose last
week was a sun-induced skin can
cer, the most common and easily
curable form of the disease.
Reagan said no further treat
ment was necessary.
The tissue on Reagan’s nose
was removed by a dermatologist
at the White House last Tuesday.
The White House did not reveal
the procedure until two days later
and then refused to say whether
it had been biopsied or whether it
was cancerous.
Dr. T homas Nigra, chief of the
Dermatology Department at
Washington Hospital Center and
a recognized expert in his field,
said there was no relationship be
tween the skin cancer and the ma
lignant tumor removed from
Reagan’s colon July 13.
While describing skin cancer as
the most common and curable
form of the disease. Nigra said
the existence of the disease “puts
you at risk” in the future. Statisti
cally, one in seven people who
have had skin cancer will get it
again within a year and a half, Ni
gra said.
Reagan revealed the existence
of skin cancer as he answered
questions at his first news confer
ence since his surgery.
In other areas, Reagan said:
• The United States would
agree to a nuclear test ban mora
torium at some undetermined
time in the future, but only if the
Soviet Union refrained from fur
ther testing and allowed the
United States to complete testing
for its weapons programs.
• The United States will stick
with its policy of quiet diplomacy
— also known as “constructive en
gagement” — toward South Af
rica although the administration
opposes the state of emergency
imposed by the white-ruled gov
ernment in Pretoria.
• The budget compromise ap
proved by Congress last week
“was not as much as we had
hoped” for in the way of savings.
He promised to examine future
spending bills from Congress
“with my veto pen hovering over
every line.” The budget calls for
$967.6 billion in spending in the
fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 and
projects $55.5 billion in savings
during the year.
• He will “pull out all the
stops” for passage of a tax-over-
haul plan after Labor Day, and
also will call on Congress for a
constitutional balanced-budget
amendment and for authoriza
tion to veto individual items in
spending legislation.
3 percent below national average
A&M students’ GSL default rate low
By JERRY OSLIN
Staff Writer
Texas A&M students are doing a
better job of paying back their feder
ally sponsored Guaranteed Student
Loans than other students in the
state and the country, says Tom Me-
lecki, a spokesman for the Texas
Guaranteed Student Loan Corpora
tion.
Nationally, the GSL default rate is
4.4 percent, for the state, 3.2 per
cent, and for A&M, 1.29 percent,
Melecki says.
The TGSLC, a public, nonprofit
organization established by the
Texas Legislature in 1979 to handle
GSL’s in Texas, regularly reports on
the default rates in the state.
Melecki attributed A&M’s and the
state’s low default rates to Texas’
strong economy and the willingness
of its students to pay back their
loans.
“The healthy economy in Texas
does a lot to keep the default rate
down,” he says, “and students in
Texas have it in their minds that
they are going to pay back their
loans when they borrow.”
A1 Bormann, assistant director of
student financial aid at A&M, says
the national and state GSL default
rate is getting better but the default
rate for A&M has always been low.
“The responsibility of the individ
ual is much better today than it was
in the past,” Bormann says, “but I
don’t think we’ll see much change
here at A&M because we basically
have a conservative student body
that always did take care of their re
sponsibilities.”
Students are expected to start
paying back their loans five months
after they graduate, he says.
Bormann says the default rate on
all educational loans to A&M stu
dents over the past 20 years has been
about 3 percent while the national
default rate has been as high as 18
percent during the same period.
He says college students across the
nation have been doing a better job
of repaying their loans because of
better loan counseling by adminis
trators.
“Students in the past sometimes
did not know if they were receiving
gift aid or loan aid,” Bormann says.
“Communication between adminis
trators of the loan program and stu
dent borrowers was that bad.”
Bormann also attributes the im
proved default rate to better collec
tion efforts.
“Sometimes in the past students
felt that the government wouldn’t do
anything to them,” he says. “They
felt they would be lost in the num
bers, but they are quickly finding out
that the government has ways to
track down people.”
A GSL is financed by a bank, sav
ings and loan or some other finan-'
cial institution, Bormann says. But in
case of default, the federal govern
ment assumes responsibility for the
loan and will try to collect from the
borrower, he says.
“The state of Texas will stop a
state employee’s payroll check if he
defaults on a GSL,” Bormann says,
“and the federal government will
stop a federal employee’s paycheck
also.”
He says the crackdown on de
faulted GSL’s is a result of federal
budget-reducing policies.
A-bomb dropped 40 years ago today
Associated Press
Peace activists around the world
are marking the 40th anniversary
Tuesday of the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima with rallies, speeches,
churchbells tolling the grim hour
and shadows painted on sidewalks to
recall those vaporized in the flash of
light and heat.
In Hiroshima, tens of thousands
of religious pilgrims, dignitaries and
survivors stood silently today in
Peace Park, which encompasses
“ground zero,” at 8:15 a.m., the time
the bomb struck that Japanese city.
School children in San Francisco
will display hundreds of paper
cranes — symbols of peace — while
residents of West Virginia will set
lighted paper lanterns afloat in the
Kanawha River. Demonstrations
also are scheduled at nuclear weap
ons and research facilities.
Louisiana residents readied a gi
ant ribbon made of flags and pic
tures to be tied around the gover
nor’s mansion, a reprise of a
weekend demonstration in Washing
ton, D.C.
An eight-day “festival of life” be
gan Sunday near the Rocky Flats nu
clear weapons plant in Colorado.
Some 4,000 people gathered Sun
day at a riverfront park in Nashville,
Tenn., for a peace rally that in
cluded music by country singer
Roseanne Cash and a speech by a
survivor of the Hiroshima bombing,
which occurred at 8:15 a.m. Aug. 6,
1945.
“The terrible atomic and hydro
gen bombs should never be dropped
on the Earth again,” Hiroshi Miwa
told the crowd. “We should raise our
voice for a total ban of nuclear weap
ons, louder than ever. We hope that
this year will be a year of a decisive
turn.”
Estimates of those w ho died in Hi
roshima from the bomb called
.“Little Boy” range up 140,000.
Three days later, on Aug. 9, 1945,
an estimated 70,000 people were
See Bomb, page 5