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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 12, 1985)
Membership steadily rising in Aggie credit union — Page 4 Ag spiker makes transition to an unfamiliar position — Page 11 The Battalion Serving the University community Vol. 81 Mo. 52 GSPS (75360 14 pages College Station, Texas Tuesday, Novemberl2,1985 iimeni rnderi' in Ik s," Cat erchants increasing security for dr able to libran as thei d coot lownat s'omeni sk ft get he tad yoneiii ch wtl By ANDY RICHARDSON Reporter Shoplifters beware! Bryan-Col- ege Station merchants and police ire beefing up their security pro- |rams in anticipation of holiday sea- ion shoplifting. Lt. Bernard Kapella of the Col lege Station Police Department says hat nationwide merchandise losses ire estimated at $3.5 billion an nually. Locally, shoplifting increases 15 to !0 percent during the Christmas hopping season, Kapella says. Sgt. Qioya Walling of the Bryan ’olice Department says the increase n theft is due to the increase of peo ple in the store, which makes it eas ier for shoplif ters to operate. I Also, Walling says, more people Ire trying to stretch the dollar at tnis lime of the year, and this leads to 'Shoplifting. I Local snopkeepers are working iblv d llosely with police in the battle ^gainst shoplifting. Walling says the department of fers a shoplifting awareness pro gram for local businesses. The program is designed to help Employees be more aware of what to Took, for when watching for possible Arabian nd am lat's all lainlyai ay froi| cl have. Ouch! Blood donor Matt Hutchings, an A&M senior psy chology major, clenches his fist as Loretta Porter of the Wadley Blood Bank prepares to take his blood. The Blood Drive, sponsored by Alpha Phi Photo by GREG BAILEY Omega, Omega Phi Alpha and Student Govern ment, ends 1 nursday. Donations can be made at the Commons, Pavilion, Fish Pond or the Memo rial Student Center fountain. Top officials to study case of Soviet sailor Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Immi gration and Naturalization Service has completed an internal probe into its handling of would-be Soviet de fector Miroslav Medvid, and that re- E ort is being reviewed by the Justice •epartment, an administration offi cial said Monday. The official, declining to be iden tified publicly, said the INS report was being studied by high-ranking officials at the department, induct ing aides to Attorney General Edwin Meese and Deputy Attorney General D. Lowell Jensen. Meese will likely review the report before any final action is taken, the official said. Vice President George Bush, in New Orleans on Monday to speak to the National Association of Realtors, said he was concerned about an ap pearance that the Reagan adminis tration had changed its position on the Medvid issue. “It doesn’t look good,” he said “My heart is troubled by it.” Bush said American authorities did all they could to find out whether Med vid wanted to defect. Meanwhile, Peter Roussel, a White House spokesman, declined to comment on a published report that the White House favors punish ment for officials found responsible for prematurely returning Medvid to his ship. The Washington Times quoted an unidentified senior administration official as saying: “It is in order that the investigation of this incident should lead to severe disciplinary ac tion and a clear record of punish ment.” ", Americans J's ITS hoplifters and to show store man agers how they can better arrange inventories so they are less accessi ble. | Kapella says some of the tech- : niques used by shoplifters are unique. | For example, he says, many Women wear fake fronts under their flothing to appear pregnant. False bottoms on shopping bags gre another popular guise for shop lifters. I Parents also use their children as a front by putting articles in the child’s troller, Kapella says. The average woman, he says, can arry up to 18 pounds between her egs under her oress and such things shams, bacon and pork chops have een taken this way. Clark Petty, operations manager or Dillard’s department store, says professional shoplifters follow cer tain techniques. ] Petty says the store has discovered ^professionals who travel from town See Stores, page 14 Associated Press Weeping at The Alamo and beat ing drums along the nation’s main streets, Americans Monday honored those who fought their wars, holding Veterans Day vigils, memorial ded ications and parades — including a controversial march in New York that excluded a homosexual veter ans group. VVTile the wife of a missing Navy pilot was delivering thousands of let ters to officials of Vietnam, demand ing help in tracking down those still unaccounted for, President Reagan called on the nation to remember “the things that will continue the peace.” Speaking to a crowd of 6,000 at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Ar lington National Cemetery, Reagan said, “All we can do is remember them and what they did and why they had to be brave for us. All we can do is try to see that other young men never nave to join them.” A somber service concluded a four-day vigil by Vietnam veterans in front of The Alamo in San Anto nio also in remembrance of the 2,500 combatants who never re turned from the Southeast Asian war. “There’s a patrol still out,” said Michael Martin, who led a 300-mile march of veterans from Dallas to San Antonio last week. Some in the audience wept. In New York, angry members of the Gay Veterans Association pro tested a decision barring them from marching under the group’s banner in the annual American Legion pa rade down Fifth Avenue. The group held a separate wreath-laying. The American Legion barred ho mosexuals from taking part as an or ganized group, and two federal court rulings upheld the ban. “We wouldn’t have minded them marching as individuals, we have E in our organization,” said John ahan, spokesman for the pa rade. “But we didn’t want them com ing in with signs about AIDS.” Mayor Edward I. Koch used the parade podium to blast the exclu- Veterans end march across Texas at Alamo Associated Press SAN ANTONIO — About 250 Vietnam veterans sang, chanted and marched in front of the Alamo Mon day, saying they would not rest until all the missing American soldiers in Southeast Asia are found. “Keep the fires burning; there’s a patrol still out,” said Michael Martin, who led a 300-mile march from Dal las to San Antonio last week. Martin, 36, said he organized the march to honor Vietnam veterans and to dramatize the need for an ac counting of the 2,500 missing Amer ican soldiers in Vietnam. Mayor Henry Cisneros spoke at the Veterans Day ceremony and read the names of 19 San Antonio soldiers listed as missing in action. Cisneros asked the crowd for a moment of silence and prayer “in hopes that they are well and that sometime in the future on Veterans Day they will be in our midst.” Cisneros’ comments were met with shouts of “Bring ’em all home,” and “Bring ’em back. “I don’t know of any other cere mony that will have more heart-felt emotion in the country than this one,” Cisneros said. After his remarks, Cisneros was presented with an MIA bracelet with the name of Julian Escobedo, a San Antonio soldier missing in action since Sept. 1, 1969. Ofelia Sandoval, Escobedo’s sister, said she and her mother presented the bracelet to Cisneros “just to bring awareness of all the men that are still missing. So the people won’t forget.” Sandoval said her brother, then 20, was among seven people aboard a helicopter that crashed in Viet nam. The bodies of the six others were recovered but there was no trace of her brother, she said. See March, page 14 sion. “I believe it was a mistake,” he said. The 2,000 spectators along the Manhattan parade route barely out numbered me 1,500 marchers, dis appointed parade officials said. In Dallas’ Thanksgiving Square, bells pealed 11 times at 11 a.m., commemorating the moment when the armistice ending World War I took effect on Nov. 11, 1918. Faculty Senate may investigate divestiture issue By MARYBETH ROHSNER Staff Writer The Faculty Senate passed a resolution Monday stating that the group would consider in De cember a proposal to form a com mittee to investigate the possible divestiture of Texas A&Ms inter ests in South African corpora tions. If the proposal is approved by the senate next month, a commit tee will be formed to gather infor mation on the University’s hold ings in South Africa and report to the Faculty Senate, which would then suggest action to President Vandiver and the Board of Re gents. Faculty Senator Chester Dun ning, acting for the Liberal Arts caucus, brought the resolution to the floor in tne last few minutes of the meeting. Dunning said he wants a group to explore the is sues of divestiture. “We want to be armed with the facts to present to the Faculty Senate,” Dunning said. He said Students Against Apartheid esti mates the ifniversity’s holdings in white-controlled South Africa to tal 1 percent to 2 percent of A&M’s investments. Senate speaker Jaan Laane said the senate’s executive committee last month denied Dunning’s re quest to place a divestiture appeal to the Board of Regents on the November agenda oecause the committee felt the senate had au thority only in matters of direct importance to A&M. In other business, the senate approved a proposal to drop the final oral examination now re quired for M.B.A. students. The senate also approved the following for submission to Presi dent Vandiver: • A request for a graduate de gree program for health physics to be administered by the nuclear engineering department. • A proposal to create inter collegiate faculties to administer undergraduate degree programs in academic disciplines which cross departmental lines and dis ciplines for which no department exists. • A proposal that would allow the return of approximately 2 percent of the total amount of a research grant to the primary re searcher instead of the research er’s department or college. The funds would be used as “seed money” for new research pro jects. Women’s studies Seven classes available for interested students at A8dVI By SONDRA PICKARD Reporter Seven classes that focus on the study of women currently are avail able at Texas A&M. One of the major priorities of the Women’s Studies Task Force at the University is to increase student awareness of these classes and in form students that it is possible to minor in the subject. Six of the classes are taught at the undergraduate level and one is an interdisciplinary graduate course in education. • English 374: Women Writers. In this class, students read works written by women from the late 18th and early 19th centuries into the present, including fiction, poetry, short stories and plays. “I definitely tnink that women’s literature has been neglected,” says Dr. Harriette Andreadis, associate professor of English and course in structor. “Even though there have been some attempts to redress that in traditional curriculum, and even though we get a couple of women on most syllabi now, when a student goes in to take a class, the balance hasn’t really been redressed, by any means, enough. “One or two women may be in cluded in the course, but you don’t really get a sense of how women’s writing is often different from men’s or how their concerns or visions of the world are different.” English 374 will be offered in the spring on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 2 p.m. The prereq uisite is completion of a freshman writing requirement. • History 461: History of Ameri can Women. • History 489E: A History of Modern American Women. Dr. Sara Alpern is the instructor of the course, and, according to her syllabus on History 461, the class “surveys relevant religious, legal, po litical and cultural factors which helped shape the role and character of women in American society from colonial times to the present.” Women’s historical role in the na tion’s development is examined “a- long with women’s continuing at tempts to achieve political, economic and social equality,” the syllabus says. In History 489E, the syllabus says the “emergence of the American woman in the 1890s and her history through the 1980s” is studied. According to the syllabus, women are examined as “organizers, inno vators, political reformers, workers, social activists, housewives, mothers, consumers and feminists.” “In both courses I stress a multidi mensional approach to women’s his tory,” Alpern says. “I don’t just focus on prominent women in history.” Alpfern recommends her classes to students who are interested in learn ing about the various dimensions of women’s lives. “1 think that students will get a sense of what it was like to be a woman during those time periods,” Alpern says. “It’s a good way for the men to gain insights into female per spectives over time.” History 489E will be offered in the spring on Tuesdays and Thurs days at 2 p.m. There is no prereq uisite for the class. Hist 461 will not be offered next semester. • Psychology 300: Psychology of Women. A student taking Psychology 300 will begin by learning to evaluate re search and make logical conclusions based on that research. The content of the class includes learning about the biological and so cial influences on sex differences, studying the female menstrual cycle and its influence on behavior and identifying how women are pre sented differently in the media. The class also focuses on women’s issues, dating relationships, sexual ity, rape and women in the work force. Dr. Charlene Muehlenhard, assis tant professor of psychology and course instructor, says women have been neglected in the field of psy chology, and because most of the theories only apply to males, stu dents only get the male perspective. “In our society, women are put into a double bind,” Muehlenhard says. “They are expected to be femi nine, but society expects something different from them at the same time.” Muehlenhard describes this dou ble bind as a choice of being either feminine or competent. She says most of our societv thinks a woman must be one or the other, without achieving an equal mix of the two. “It’s easier For someone to deal with these kinds of problems if they know what is actually going on,” Muehlenhard says. “Sometimes so ciety’s expectations of a woman are not always the best for her.” Psychology 300 will be offered this spring on Tuesdays and Thurs days at 2 p.m. The prerequisite for the class is completion of Psychology 107. • Sociology 424: Women and Work in Contemporary Society. Dr. Elizabeth Maret, associate professor of sociology and course in- stuctor, says her class starts out with a discussion of the meaning of work and looks at the divisions of labor by sex in work organizations. The con cept of gender stratification then is introduced. Students also learn assumptions about the nature and nurture of women, influences on women’s work roles, consequences of women’s work, women in the paid work force, women in traditional occupations and women in non-traditional occu pations such as management, science and agriculture. Sociology 424 will be offered this spring on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12:30 p.m. There is no prereq uisite for tne class. • Sociology 489: Sex Roles and Society. Dr. Barbara Finlay, associate pro fessor of sociology and course in- See Women’s, page 14