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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 31, 1985)
5 utsfor IJ 7614 Ka TUDYlii injury rt'onfswefc hea t. 16%. of Sdaydufj. h only 2 fo 4. dr ug studies Aggie Band, C-2 outfit enact Great Pumpkin flight tonight — Page 5 Ag defense foresees season's biggest test against Mustangs — Page 13 The Battalion Vol. 81 Mo. 44 GSPS 075360 16 pages College Station, Texas Thursday, October 31,1985 Four Soviet journalists to interview Reagan zrl Associated Press I Washington — President Reagan, in a pre-summit gesture to MSoviet Union, will be questioned toda\ by four journalists from Mos- ^lin the first interview granted by Werican president to the Soviet Is in nearly a quarter of a cen- q, /ai, Hhe session, at 2 p.m. EST in the 1 '0-QOi. Qyjj office, is “a unique and historic ,opportunity for the president to ^^^^^■municate directly with the peo p ii “House approves legislation freezing defense spending E le of the Soviet Union,” said White louse spokesman Larry Speakes. “We hope it is a sign of a new and more open information policy on the part of the Soviet Union.” No restrictions have been im posed on the Soviets’ questions, al though they are likely to focus on Reagan’s summit Nov. 19-20 with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva and superpower relations, Speakes said. He said the United States has not asked to review in ad vance what will be published. “They will report it as they wish to report it,” he said. Likewise, he said there was no requirement for the So viets to publish the full text of the questions and answers. “We think a sufficient amount of the interview will be conveyed,” Speakes said. “We have no reservations about the mat ter.” He said the material probably will be published first on Sunday in the Soviet government newspaper Izvestia, followed by the release of a complete transcript by the White House. In other developments related to the summit: • It was announced that Reagan will address a joint session of Con gress at 9 p.m. EST on Nov. 21, im mediately upon his return from Ge neva. On his way back to Washington, Reagan will stop off for two hours in Brussels to report to al lied leaders at NATO headquarters on the summit. • Reagan said he was “striving” to present a counteroffer — before the summit — to the recent arms propo sal from Moscow, which a j for a 50 percent reduction in strategic nu clear weapons. In an interview with Britain’s BBC radio, Reagan said the Soviet proposal contains Doth “seeds to nurture” as well as “some thing that we believe are so disadvanta geous to us that they should be nego tiated and some changes made.” >y he hoped to accomplish in the sum- . -. . 1 P 1 mit, said, “I think that the most that we could get out is if we could elimi nate some of the paranoia, if we could reduce the hostility, the suspi cion that keeps our two countries particularly ... at odds with each other.” The last time an American presi dent was interviewed by Soviet jour nalists was on Nov. 25, 1961, when then-President John F. Kennedy was interviewed in the living room of his home in Hyannisport, Mass., by the editor of Izvestia. Associated Press M1179 1247 ■WASHINGTON — The House ptnl 359-67 Wednesday to approve sabill freezing Pentagon spending af ter it avoided fights over money for i“Stai Wars” anti-missile research and new chemical weapons. I In the only major controversy, a Itlosi Iv divided House first voted to relimmate but later reversed itself and restored $1.7 billion to buy a dozen MX missiles, the nuclear weapon that has been the center of a long-running Capitol Hill Fight. ■he measure to delete the MX fujtds first passed by a 211 -208 mar gin hut was later defeated 214-210. f Sixteen congressmen switched sides during the votes to delete the MX money, an amendment pushed by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. He contended it was useless to spend the money because the House has al ready voted to limit the future de- plounent of the weapon. Tip The House bill would appropriate \ most of a $292 billion Pentagon bud- get for the fiscal year that began Oct. ■That’s the same as the Defense Department got last year but far un- > der the $322 billion budget Presi dent Reagan originally proposed for it this year. : Meanwhile, the Senate Appro priations defense subcommittee gave voice vote approval of its ver sion of a Pentagon spending bill that would total $302 billion. The Senate measure includes $250 million more than the House for Star Wars and also provides money for chemical i | '(.. weapons. I ClOW} Major fights were expected on the House floor over nerve gas and nding for Star Wars, President agan’s Strategic Defense Initiative to develop a shield against nuclear attack. lights!!' it«! Photo by MIKE SANCHEZ Aggie-O’-lantern From the eery glow of her Gig ’em carved pumpkin, you freshman accounting major Kirstin Hamacner, from Hoi ready for Halloween. can see Houston, is Propositions A, 2 could affect future water supply of B-CS By JENS B. KOEPKE Staff Writer The Texas Water Bill and its ac companying constitutional amend ments, Propositions 1 and 2, could provide more money for local or re gional water projects, but short-term local water resources will not suffer without its passage, city officials say. Propositions 1 and 2 are the fi nancing mechanisms for the Texas Water Bill, House Bill 2. The bill’s fate will be decided when Texas resi dents vote on the propositions in the Nov. 5 election. “As a government entity which is responsible for supplying water to its citizens, I should think that we would be in favor of any amendment that would help provide for future water needs,” says George Ford, Col lege Station’s director of utilities. Although the city would not be hurt in the next five years by reject ion of the water plan, Ford says, the city probably would be adversely af fected in the next 20 or 30 years. “It would allow future needs to be satisfied at a lesser cost to the citizens of College Station,” he says. The development of a regional reservoir and the expansion of a wastewater treatment plant could be facilitated by the water bill, says Jack Cornish, operations manager of en vironmental services for the city of Bryan. “It (amendment rejection) would certainly delay any improvements in future reservoir and wastewater treatment expansion,” Cornish says. The Panther Creek Reservoir would be located on the Navasota River south of Highway 21 and would be built by the Brazos River Authority, Cornish says. It would provide water for both cities, Brazos County, adjoining eastern counties and possibly parts of the Houston metroplex. Although both cities have ex pressed interest in helping fund the reservoir, he says, the project’s chances of getting built would be greatly enhanced by the additional revenues in the water plan. He adds that reservoir approval and con struction is a 20- or 30-year process. The City of Bryan must expand the smallest of its three wastewater treatment plants in the next five years, he says, and the expansion could be delayed without passage of the amendments. In addition, passage of the amendments would provide the city a source of money to replace dwin dling federal aid for water projects, Cornish says. Currently, 75 percent of the money that Bryan is using to expand its second-largest wastewater facility comes from the federal gov ernment, he says. The federal share will drop to 33 percent between 1985 and 1989. Dr. Wayne Jordan, director of the Texas Water Resource Institute, says if the amendments are approved, the Bryan-College Station commu nity will feel the same effects as most of the other cities in Texas. Growing cities and those with antiquated wa ter facilities will feel the most pro found effects from the amendments. Opponents of the amendments say that the plan throws money at the water problem without guar anteeing how it will be spent and that a sleeper clause in Proposition 1 allows the Legislature unlimited wa- See Funding ,page 3 No injuries reported in bombing of airliner Associated Press GRAPEVINE — An explosive de vice inside a cosmetic bag apparently detonated Wednesday inside a bag gage compartment of an American Airlines 727, destroying the bag but causing no injuries, officials said. “I can confirm the presence of an explosive device, said Joe Dealey, a spokesman for the Dallas-Fort _ Worth International Airport. “It did explode to the best of my knowled ge” The 147 passengers and seven crew members aboard Flight 203, en route from Austin to San Francisco, quickly were removed from the craft about 8 a.m. after smoke was found inside a baggage compartment, said American spokesman Tohn Ray mond. The plane was on the ground when the incident ocurred. Dealey said the device was con tained in a cosmetic case inside a baggage pod used to transport lug gage to and from the plane. The bag did have some identification on it, but it was damaged and may be im possible to decipher, he said. Airport police and the FBI were investigating the case, Dealey said. Enrollment State colleges, universities blame drop on tuition hike By FRANK SMITH Staff Writer Texas A&M wasn’t the only school to experience a drop in enrollment this fall. i Preliminary headcount figures re leased Oct. 18 by the Texas College and University System Coordinating loard show decreases at 91 of the 40 campuses of higher education across the state. 1 The figures, based on the twelfth day enrollments reported by ichools, indicate that public se- olleges and universities this fall fxperienced their first collective en- 11 gUment dip in more than 30 years. Twenty-six of the 37 such campuses eported lower enrollments. Overall, :nrollment for the four-year public \ools were down 2.48 percent r (j ium last fall. Many of the state schools pointed T Oan increase in tuition as a primary iKon for their enrollment declines. s/| The Texas Legislature this spring passed House Bill 1147, which ripled the tuition rate for resident -. | r-j md non-resident students at public ^ in ‘‘ ,'[‘/iniversities in the state. Full-time PffCu * es ‘dent students now pay $12 per * # ! |niester hour in tuition rather than Is. Full-time non-residents and in ternational students pay $ 120 per se mester hour, compared to $40 per lour last year. At A&M, the current enrollment Prellmlnaru Enrollment Based on 12tn Class Day Lists Fall ‘84 Fall *85 Change % Change State Schools: Lamar University 13,161 11,825 -1,336 -10.15 Texas A&M University 36,827 35,675 -1,152 - 3.13 Texas Southern University 8,834 8,076 - 758 - 8.58 University of Texas at El Paso 15,322 14,119 -1,203 - 7.85 University of Houston 31,095 29,900 -1,195 - 3.84 Private Schools: Baylor University 10,990 1 1,481 ♦ 491 ♦ 4.49 Houston Baptist University 2,632 2,775 ♦ 143 ♦ 5.43 Howard Payne University 818 1,060 ♦ 242 +29.58 McMurry College 1,482 1,644 ♦ 162 ♦ 10.93 Texas Christian University 6,747 6,925 ♦ 178 ♦ 2.64 Sourca: Coordinating Board. Texas College and Univarsity System of 35,675 students is down 3.13 per cent from last fall’s enrollment of 36,827. A&M’s Associate Registrar Don ald Carter said the enrollment de crease could be attributed to the tu ition increase and a combination of other factors. Those other factors in clude a smaller number of high school graduates in the state this year, higher admission requirements by A&M in recent years and an in crease in the number of students graduating from the University. Other public senior colleges and universities experiencing enrollment declines include Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas Southern Univer sity, the University of Houston and the University of Texas at El Paso. Lamar’s enrollment dropped by more than 10.2 percent. Elmer Rode, the school’s registrar and dean of admissions, said Lamar this year lost 400 part-time students — those taking six credit hours or less. He said this was a result of the casual student’s unwillingness to pay the higher tuition rate. Rode said Lamar also lost just un der 300 students because of new re quirements for transfer students. Another 400 were lost because of a smaller number of high school se niors being turned out in the school’s basic recruiting area, he said. At Texas Southern, an 8.58 per cent decrease in enrollment also was considered to be largely a result of the tuition increase. “Many of our students come from the poorest part of the population of Texas,” Registrar John Westberry said, “and even a $100 increase in tu ition would be more significant to them than to the average A&M stu dent,” Westberry said the added expense has impacted TSU’s resident student enrollment as much as it has affected its large population of international students. “Actually we were a bit surprised, to be frank, that the number of Texas students dropped off as much as it did,” Westberry said. See A&M enrollment, page 9 Aggies in Spain' report Spaniards maintain distorted view of U.S. Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series on Spain. By JUNE PANG Staff Writer The image that people from other nations have of Americans is derived from a combination of America’s superpower status, American tourists and exposure to American television series. When 39 Texas A&M students spent six weeks in Spain this sum mer, they learned what Spaniards think of Americans. The students, led by Dr. Bart Lewis and Dr. Antonio Martinez from the modern languages de partment, were participating in the “Aggies in Spain” program. They spent two weeks traveling around the country and four weeks in class at the University of Santiago. “They think Americans are self-centered,” says William Grimes, a senior in history. “(When we were there) there was an article in their school newspa per saying that. “Dr. Lewis and Dr. Martinez wrote a letter protesting. They (the newspaper) wrote another article that changed a little bit.” Grimes thinks that Americans are more visible because they talk louder and make more gestures. “People (in Spain) don’t do anything that make themselves stick out,” Grimes says. Junior Spanish major Minette Riordan has a similar impression. “They think Americans are loud and obnoxious,” Riordan says. Spanish people watch shows like “Dynasty” and “Falcon Crest” religiously, she says. “Everyday at five o’clock, every house, every bar would watch “Falcon Crest,” Riordan says. “ ‘Dallas’ was popular, too.” Spaniards associate Texas with cowboys, cowboy hats and guns, she says. If you say Texas to a boy, he would make a gesture of drawing a gun and then say “Bang! Bang! ’ she adds. Riordan also noticed that Spaniards like to talk politics with Americans. They like to talk about Reagan, but they generally don’t like him, she says. But, Riordan says, if you ask them why they don’t like Reagan, See Falcon Crest, page 9