!
A&M spikers slip past UTA
play Texas in South Regional
— Page 11
Bengals shock Cowboys
with potent offense, 50-24
— Page 13
Texas A&M m m •
The Battalion
Vol. 82 No. 69 USPS 075360 14 pages
College Station, Texas
Monday, December 9,1985
exas A&M accused of violating NCAA rules
From Staff and Wire Reports
I Coaches and boosters at Texas A&M gave football
players thousands of dollars in car deals, weekly allow
ances, performance payments, signing incentives and
bonuses, the Dallas 1 imes Herald has reported in copy
right stories.
; In three weekend stories, the l imes Herald said in
terviews with 40 former players and other sources indi
cate A&M players tapped into a wealthy network that
allowed them special privileges in violation of NCAA
rules.
Battalion was unable to contact any A&M Ath
letic Department officials Sunday for comments con
cerning the l imes Herald's allegations,
f, Southwest Conference Commissioner Fred Jacoby
told the Fort Worth Star- J'elegram on Saturday that
the A&M football program is under investigation oy the
NCAA for possible rules violations.
■jcThe NCAA has already started checking into it,” Ja-
cobv said.
I’ Asked if A&M was still conducting its own in-house
investigation, Jacoby said, “Yes, that’s right,” adding
that, "to the best of my knowledge, the investigation is
still going on.”
Garv Rogers of Dallas, a former A&M player, told
the limes Herald he received so much money from
Dallas banker and Dallas A&M Club president-elect Ri
les C. Couch III that he began to doubt one man alone
was supplying it.
In another story Saturday, the Times Herald re
ported that Jackie Sherrill, head coach of the 1985
Southwest Conference Champion and Cotton Bowl-
bound team, has conducted a “cover-up” by denying re
porters access to players as well as information about
their vehicle registrations.
In comments made available Saturday to The Asso
ciated Press by A&M officials, Sherrill denied any im
proprieties.
“If the only thing the limes Herald has come up
with is what the reporters have confronted me with —
and that's a couple of lame allegations made by people
with very definite axes to grind — then I feet good
about our program, past and future, and will probably
limit the extent of our own investigations,” Sherrill said.
The i imes Herald’s allegations are “very vigorously
disputed by people who have a basis for knowing the
facts,” Sherrill said.
Many reports of improprieties came from players
who were dismissed from the team for various reasons,
the Times Herald reported.
Among the irregularities, the newspaper reported:
• Envelopes allegedly stuffed with hundreds of dol
lars were slipped anonymously into lockers and shoes in
the dressing room after games or under doors in the
athletes’ dormitory rooms.
• Elroy Steen of Gonzales, a player dismissed from
the team in 1980 for drug-related reasons, claimed he
and other players got $600 to $700 from coaches at the
beginning of a season in exchange for a season’s worth
of complimentary tickets.
• Kathy Leonard, who tutored Earnest Jackson, a
star A&M running back f rom 1979 to 1982, said Jack-
son and other players “each had a name and a (phone)
number. . . They would always joke about it saying, ‘My
sugar daddy is richer than you sugar daddy.’
Jackson, now a member of the Philadelphia Eagles,
denied the report.
“1 don’t know about any of these things,” Jackson
See Athletic, page 14
Jackie Sherrill
Students
line up for
bowl tickets
By JO BETH MURPHY
Reporter
I The Twelfth Man is already
standing up to show its support for
the football team’s upcoming perfor
mance in the Cotton Bowl on New
Year’s Day.
I And not only are Aggies already
standing up, but they also are lying
down, sitting down and playing
around — as they wait in line for
Cotton Bowl tickets.
. - P
the ticket windows of G. Rollie White
Coliseum as early as three days be
fore the tickets go on sale there
Tuesday at 7 a.m.
I Scott Joachim, a senior industrial
distribution major from Humble,
was first in line at one of the six
ticket windows. Joachim said he set
up camp about noon Sunday.
I And like many of the people in
lines, he plans to get the maximum
of six tickets each student is allowed.
E Equipped with a lawn chair, sleep
ing bag and a set of dominoes, Joa
chim fills his six-hour shift and waits
for a friend to relieve him of his
post.
I Other students brought more
elaborate equipment to make their
wait bearable.
■ Carolvn Nickerson, a senior from
Conroe, supplied a VCR while Mary
Lou Mauro, a senior political science
major from Richardson, brought a
television. The Uvo have a video tape
ol the 1985 Texas A&M-Texas foot
ball game and a copy of “We’ve
Ne\ei Been Licked” to keep them
occupied for a couple of hours dur
ing their two-day wait.
have
offl
And W'hen they get hungry, they
popcorn, chips and a cooler full
ft tirin'
rinks to satisfy their
appe-
See Ags line up, page 14
Don Avant, a civil engineering freshman from
Dallas, studies while waiting in line for Cotton
Photo by JOHN MAKELY
Bowl tickets Sunday. Tickets go on sale Tuesday
at 7 a.m.
Deficit reduction
plan attacked by
Cleveland mayor
Associated Press
SEATTLE — The Republican
president of the National League of
Cities on Sunday called a congressio
nal plan to attack the federal deficit
“cowardice in the worst sense” and
said federal taxes must be raised to
avoid devastating cuts in city serv
ices.
Cleveland Mayor George V. Voi-
novich accused President Reagan
and Congress of avoiding tough de
cisions on taxes. He said the admin
istration and Congress were “like
Pontius Pilate” washing their hands
of urban problems and programs in
a plan to eliminate the $200 billion a
year federal deficit by 1991.
“I just wish he would get out into
American cities and see firsthand
whafs going on,” Voinovich said of
Reagan. “I think honestly if he did
he might feel differently about all
these programs that are being pro
posed to be eliminated.”
Voinovich, w’hose city is one of the
nation’s largest that is headed by a
GOP mayor, made the comments in
a new s conference at the start of the
Congress of Cities, a meeting of
more than 4,000 municipal officials.
Voinovich and other urban lead
ers said the agreement by House and
Senate negotiators to a budget-bal
ancing plan would doom most pro
grams under which federal money is
provided to cities and towns.
Biggest among the
the general revenue snaring pro
gram, providing $4.6 billion for use
in all types of urban services, and the
$3 billion community development
block grants for economically de-
stressed neighborhoods.
Voinovich said the loss of those
programs would mean “devastation”
For many cities, causing cuts in even
basic services like police and fire.
The National League of Cities’
board of directors agreed to a reso
lution backing, with some reserva
tion, the House Ways and Means
Committee’s version of a tax-over
haul bill. Coupled with the measure
was a call for closing income tax
loopholes to raise more money.
In agreeing to the deficit elimina
tion plan, which is separate from the
tax overhaul, the House and Senate
negotiators acceded to a version of
the so-called Gramm-Rudman pro
posal first offered by Sens. Phil
Gramm, R-Texas, and W ; arren Rud-
man, R-N.M.
The measure would require auto
matic cuts in many programs if Con
gress falls short of budget targets.
What mayors want, Voinovich said,
is for taxes to be raised to avoid
many of those cuts.
Cities have already endured cuts
of about 50 percent in their federal
aid programs in the past five years.
University Police arrest
bomb threat suspect
AIDS
Officials: Incidents of exposure to virus up in Brazos County
By SCOTT SUTHERLAND
Staff Writer
Health officials in Brazos County
say more people have been exposed
to the AIDS virus in 1985 than in
1984.
I Local health clinics report blood
tests are revealing more cases of
AIDS contaminated blood.
Dr. Oscar Beck, epidemiologist
and owner of Beck Biomedical, said
his lab has found 38 positive tests
this year, an increase of 19 over last
veai
Beck’s lab does clinical blood test
ing for physicians and clinics in the
Brazos Valley.
1 At the Brazos County Health De
partment, nine people have been
identified as seropositive.
| Seropositives do not suffer from
the effects of AIDS, but can pass the
disease to others through sexual
contact.
Local clinics are using a test to
identify the HTLV-III antibody, the
marker for the AIDS virus in the
blood.
A person who has tested positive
is identified as seropositive.
No one knows when seropositives
may move from the less dangerous
infected stage to the actual diseased
stage.
Homosexuals, intravaneous drug
users and people who often receive
blood transf usions have the highest
risk of coming in contact with AIDS.
In Texas’ testing centers, the
number of individuals exposed to
the disease is growing steadily.
Texas began testing at county
health clinics in April 1985.
Since that time 4,695 people have
taken the test and 537 were discov
ered to have HTLV-III antibody in
their blood.
Al Mayo, communicable diseases
specialist at the Brazos Countv
Health Department, said state health
officials expect 1,400 AIDS victims
in Texas by the end of 1986, up
from the current 748.
l.ocal physicians say they are con
cerned about the spread of AIDS lo-
cally, but they stress caution in using
HTLV-III numbers as an indicator
of the prevalence of AIDS.
“You have to be careful what you
sav because you don’t want to start a
panic,” Beck said. “There are proba
bly several reasons for the increase
that may not signal an actual in
crease in incidence of the disease.”
Beck said the higher numbers
may be the result of more accurate
testing procedures and the fact that
more high risk individuals have be
gun to come in for testing.
Dr. Ted Rea, a Bryan gastroente
rologist and one of the first physi
cians in Bryan to diagnose an AIDS
sufferer, said HTLV-III numbers
accurately reflect the growing pres
ence of the disease.
But Rea said HTLV-III numbers
do not indicate that all of those who
are seropositive will get AIDS.
“Right now we believe only 10, 15,
maybe 20 percent of those who are
discovered to have been exposed to
the disease will ever suffer from af
fects of f ull-blow n AIDS,” Rea said.
Dr. Claude Goswick, director of
A&M’s A.P. Beutel Health Center,
See Officials, page 14
By BRIAN PEARSON
Senior Staff Writer
University Police arrested a man
and are close to identifying six other
suspects connected with a Friday
bomb threat in Bolton Hall, a police
department spokesman said Sunday.
James Andrew Drapela, 21, a ju
nior polical science major from El
Campo, was arrested Friday as his
11:00 a.m. political science class in
Bolton was evacuating the building
clue to the threat.
Bob Wiatt, director of security
and traffic at Texas A&M, said a
man called a secretary in Bolton at
10:52 a.m. Friday and told her a
bomb would go off in the building
within 30 minutes.
As officers responded to the
threat at 10:56 a.m., a student called
University Police and described a
man who had made a bomb threat
several minutes earlier from a pay
telephone outside the Sterling C.
Evans Library, Wiatt said.
He said officers arriving at Bolton
checked to see which 11:00 a.m.
classes were having exams in the
building.
Drapela, who met the description
given by the witness, was found in
one of the classes, arrested and
charged w’ith making a terroristic
threat.
Terroristic threat is a Class A mis
demeanor that carries a maximum
penalty of one year in prison, a
$2,000 fine or both.
After the arrest. University Police
found the telephone number of the
Bolton secretary written inside a
notebook Drapela was carrying at
the time.
Wiatt said Drapela gave a
statement to the police in wfiich he
said he made the call.
He said Drapela told University
Police he and six other students were
studying in the Sterling C. Evans Li
brary Thursday when they decided
to make a bomb threat to stop a class
exam that w'as scheduled for Friday.
Wiatt said Drapela told police his
classmates got the bomb threat idea
from reading The Battalion’s weekly
Police Beat column.
Wiatt said Drapela told police that
the six students offered bim three
cases of beer, a bottle of Jack Dan
iel’s w’hiskey, $20 in cash and three
bar drinks to make the call.
Wiatt said the six students also
may be charged with making a ter
roristic threat.
“We are also going to identify the
six students who urged Drapela on
and they will be referred to the De
partment of Student Affairs for dis
ciplinary action,” Wiatt said. “There
could be possible criminal charges
because it was a conspiracy.”