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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 8, 1985)
'e,weli{|| icy tests unselors Local liquor stores report sales still good after tax increase — Page 4 Ag spikers use mental expert to gear mind toward winning — Page 7 ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ ; i<M <V): miration id f pain? | ParfopaJ ies,k 133 ON FUN Texas A&Mm m I • The Battalion Vol. 80 No. 26 CISPS 045360 12 pages College Station, Texas Tuesday, October 8, 1985 ?:00 PH niREaai FREE 7:30 PH k & AU! at Tower Ross Volunteers induct 2 women A&M group breaks tradition Palestinians hijack Italian cruise liner rgcniufl ippteiwfr Mtai. 6. Team; tdiati 7,6 p.m. iy, Oct. I 'rested i By Tammy Kirk Stuff Writer ■ Nancy Hedgecock, 20, of Hamburg, Ark., and Mandy Schubert, 19, of Houston, are the first women in Texas A&M’s his- tory to become members of the Ross Volunteers. ■ Monday night these two women, along with 70 other ju nior cadets, received their letters of acceptance into this elite orga- nuation. I “I was shocked,” Hedgecock lliid. “But I was honored just like the rest of the juniors chosen.” ■ Hedgecock, a member of Squadron 14, said she hadn’t Biought about becoming a mem- txr of the RVs as a freshman or Iphomore, but as a junior she ■ecided she’d apply and do the pest she could. Hedgecock said Jhe didn’t think the earlier admis sion of three women into the Texas Aggie Band influenced the RVs’ decision to select her. ■ “They’re two totally different tilings,” Hedgedcock said. 1 Hedgecock, a civil engineering Riajor, is a Kai Epsilon pledge, a liiember of the American Society ■f Civil Engineers and is on the (fcorps public relations committee. I Schubert, a member of Corps Htaff, said the RVs was something ||he’s worked towards for a long Bme and that she was honored just as any other RV would be. “Only 72 of us made it,” Schu bert said, “And you know more ■ian 72 were qualified.” Schubert believes the three Jtomen admitted into the band joined because they wanted to Kin, not because of any court Base. The court case Schubert re ferred to is the Melanie Zentgraf ^se, a sex discrimination lawsuit Igainst Texas A&M. A court or der forced A&M to encourage [(omen to join its previously all- nale organizations. ■ Schubert said, like the women I in the band, she applied for the RVs because she wanted to. “I put my name down just like any other RV,” she said, “ And I was chosen on my qualifications just like any other RV.” Whitaker said the admission of women into the band was not a factor in the RVs’ decision to se lect women. Out of 143 appli cants, he said, six were women. “They were not treated any better or any worse than the other juniors who applied,” Whi taker said. Although women have pre viously applied to the organiza tion, which is the official honor guard of the governor of Texas, they have been turned down. Whitaker said last spring, even before women had been admitted into the band, the senior RVs got together in small groups to dis cuss the selection of women. He said the RVs decided that al though the group had been an all-male organization, it did not mean that it would continue to be so. And the question of whether a woman could do the rifle drills was not an issue because some men can’t do the drills. Schubert, Hedgecock and two male cadets said they were tense before finding out that they were chosen. Seniors in the organiza tion slide the letters of acceptance under the juniors’ doors while the applicants are at dinner. Larry Anthis, a new inductee, said, “You could feel the tension in the air at dinner. And we kinda half-walked, half-ran back to the dorm to see if we had gotten a let ter.” Jim Cunningham and Anthis, said they were elated when they discovered the letters under their doors. mningl filled i were tilled with “Whoops!” from the cadets who made it. The RVs are made of seniors and juniors who are selected based on how they uphold the ideals of the Corps at the Univer sity and in the state. Whitaker said the seniors con sider three things during the se lection — the cadet’s dress, bear- Photo by MIKE SANCHEZ George Knox, left, a new member of the Ross Volunteers, reads his letter of acceptance as Jeff Brady, a senior RV, looks on. Mandy Schubert, far left, became one of the first two women to be admitted into the group in its 98-year history. ing and conduct and how each reflects on the University and the Corps. Also, a cadet must maintain a 2.3 grade-point ratio to be se lected or to stay in as a senior, he said. The juniors were selected Sept. 30, Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 by the senior members. Associated Press PORT SAID, Egypt — Palestinian hijackers seized an Italian cruise liner at sea Monday with more than 400 people aboard, demanded that Israel release 50 prisoners and threatened to blow up the ship if at tacked. officials reported. Italian Defense Minister Giovanni Spadolini placed the nation’s armed forces on alert. An Italian Foreign Ministry re port said 72 Americans were listed as passengers aboard the Achille Lauro._ Hours later, Patrizia Terese, a duty officer at the Foreign Ministry, told The Associated Press that 72 Americans and 20 Britons were among 600 passengers who left the ship in Alexandria for a day-long land tour. That would mean that all of the Americans and Britons listed in the previous ministry report had disembarked; but Terese em phasized that the figures were pre liminary, and there could still have been Americans aboard the ship when it was hijacked. In Washington, State Department spokesman Mike Austrian said the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was trying to locate the cruise organizers to find out how many Americans left the ship to visit Cairo and the nearby pyramids. Egyptian officials said the Achille Lauro had left Alexandria and was about 30 miles west of Port Said, its next destination, when it was com mandeered by an undetermined number of hijackers and headed far ther out into the Mediterranean, its destination unknown. Word of the takeover came in a ship-to-shore radio report by the hi jackers’ leader to Port Said at about 9:30 p.m. — 4:20 p.m. EDT. The guerrilla said the hijackers were members of the Palestine Liberation Front, a dissident faction of the Pal estine Liberation Organizaion. Many of the passengers who left the Achille Lauro in Alexandria had been scheduled to rejoin the cruise at Port Said, the northern entrance to the Suez Canal and 150 miles east of Alexandria. A Palestinian named Samir Ko- naiterry headed the list of prisoners the hijackers said were being held in Israel and whose freedom was de manded in exchange for the ship and passengers, the officials re ported. In Tel Aviv, a spokesman said the Foreign Ministry was in close contact with Italian officials and the Israeli Cabinet was being summoned for a meeting this morning. It was not known how the hijack ers took control of the ship, which had been scheduled to dock in Port Said at 9 p.m. (4 p.m. EDT). Italian news agencies quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying the hi jackers were armed and had a large supply of explosives with which to blow up the ship. An Italian official involved in the crisis command said there were 340 crew members and “about 60 to 80 passengers aboard the ship.” “The passengers seem to be treated well on the basis of what we’ve learned from Egyptian au thorities” who were in radio contact with the ship, the official added. In Rome, PLO representative Fuad Al-Bittar issued a statement saying the PLO had been informed by the Foreign Minister of the hi jacking “and we have expressed our full readiness to offer all our collabo ration to shed light on this episode which, above all, has hit the PLO.” The Italian AGI news agency said - PLO chief Yasser Arafat, in a tele phone conversation with Italian For eign Minister Giulio Andreotti, con demned the hijacking. I beti ier. ft ules, Local animal shelter helping pets find homes By LORA BEST Reporter Kvlhere are old and young ones and big and little ones. There are cats and dogs and puppies and kit tens. But they all have one thing in common — they are all living at the Brazos Animal Shelter. !:0Some are strays, some have been surrendered by their owners, some were abandoned and some were were brought in by animal control workers. A limited number of these ani mals are actually available for adop tion. Many cannot be adopted for health or behavioral reasons. “We work very hard to keep ani mals that are adoptable in the shel ter,” says Kathy Ricker, the shelter’s executive director. In fact, the Brazos Animal Shel ter’s adoption and claim rate is three times higher than the national rate, she says. Ninety percent of the animals that are wearing tags when found will re turn to their homes, Ricker says. An adoptable animal also has a chance to go to a new home. Ricker says the staff tries very hard to get an animal back to its owner or into a new home. But she says that keeping a high rate of adoption is not what is most impor tant at the shelter. “All that is important is how the animal will be cared for and incorpo rated into the home,” Ricker says. The shelter has an adoption proc ess every applicant must go through before a pet can be adopted. An application must be filled out by all prospective owners, Ricker says. The application is reviewed by the shelter’s adoption committee See Brazos, page 12 jctieefJf E Kidnappers threaten U.S. and Soviet Union Aggies fare well in national stats GOP's Ha nee running for governor Associated Press AUSTIN — Kent Hance came to Austin Monday to announce what’s been obvious during his several months on the early sea son campaign trial — he’s run ning for governor. The former Democratic con gressman from Lubbock joined U.S. Rep. Tom Loeffler and for mer Gov. Bill Clements as the ma jor GOP contenders in the May primary. At a Capitol news conference, Hance appealed to Republicans’ desire to unseat Democratic Gov. Mark White. The possibility of beating White could emerge as the major issue in the Hance- Loeffler-Clements scramble. “I’ve served as an elected offi cial in Washington and Austin,” Hance said. “I have the experi ence. . . . it’s a pretty well-known fact that I’m the one that can beat Mark White and will beat Mark White.” Associated Press iver, Cd} d MetfeSl San Ait 1 e Oct t 7,7^ BEIRUT, Lebanon —' A caller iming to represent the captors of three Soviet Embassy employees said Monday they will be held until the United States and Soviet Union join forces to end Lebanon’s 10- year-old civil war. ■ He also threatened the abduc tions of more Soviet and American tizens as a means of putting pres- Jlire on the superpowers. The au thenticity of the call could not be termined. An anonymous caller who said he represented a fundamentalist Sunni Moslem group named the Is lamic Liberation Organization daimed responsibility for the kid- [ nap of four Soviet Embassy staff members a week ago. One of them was killed and his body dumped in a vacant lot. ■ The group demanded that Mos cow force Syria, its main Middle East ally, to call off leftist militias that were besieging fundamentalist Sunni fighters in the northern port ■ty of Tripoli. The body of Cultural attache Ar kady Katkov, 32, was found Wednesday, and the Syrians de clared a cease-fire in Tripoli on Thursday, ending 19 days of fight ing in which more than 500 people had been killed. The man who telephoned a Western news agency Monday called the truce in Tripoli move that does not necessarily mean the conspiracy against the Moslems is over. “The heretics think they can in vest this truce to deceive us into re leasing the (Soviet) hostages,” he said. “We emphasize that this (kidnap) operation will not end that easily and it will not be the last. We shall not release the hostages.” The statement said no Soviet hostages would be freed unless President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev agree at their summit next month in Geneva to “terminate the Lebanese tragedy and the sufferings of the Lebanese people.” A&M grads hired, paid more By SCOTT SUTHERLAND Staff Writer A comparison between national employment statistics and those for Texas A&M graduates reveals that Aggies are hired more and paid more. University deans say they aim to keep it that way. Lynn Zimmerman, associate dean of business administration, says his department encourages students to get involved in activities on campus. “Employers want students to shew that they will be contributors, not only to tne company but to the com munity they'll be living in as well,” Zimmerman said. Bart Childs, professor of com puter science at A&M, says his de- E artment is encouraging students to roaden their fields of study if they want to increase their chances of get ting the best jobs. “Students with good grades, who are open minded, have a reasonable way with politics, and who contrib ute to their school . . . will land the best jobs,” Childs said. He said students especially should t Comparison of National ■ and TAMU ED Average Monthly Salaries for 1985 ] 3 u $2,369 hech. E. Pet. E. CQmcL-Sc. Chemistry $2,396 $2,283 $2,310 $2,259 $2,245 I $2,583 I$1,4 74 $1,419 $2,082 •HD $2,163 $1 ,897 $1,919 Average Monthly Salary Data from CPC Salary Survoy and T AMU Salary Survey consider improving writing and those areas. speaking skills by taking courses in In computer science, govern ments are predicting growth in em ployment for the next 13 years. Childs says his department is thrilled about government predic tions, but that it is not complacent. In the past, A&M has been able to place computer science majors at sal aries above the national average. According to the College Place ment Council survey, A&M com puter science majors reported aver age salaries this year at $1,000 per year above the national average. Other departments also acknowl edge the importance of a balanced education. According to the council survey, A&M graduates fit this description. A&M accounting graduates re ported average salaries of $1,882 per month, outpacing the national average by more than $100 per month. A&M business analysis graduates reported salaries of $1,908 per month, $173 per month above the national average. Childs says the reason for higher See Job, page 12