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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 4, 1986)
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IT ha requim qualifu ■h, Laa ) prove istitutift consid;: ilarv m te) bet make ioard (ti rlvben aanesai Vol Silver Taps to be observed tonight in honor of 4 Aggies —Page 7 Aggie lacrosse team deals with winning identity crisis — Page 10 The Battalion . 83 No. 90 CISPS 075360 12 pages College Station, Texas Tuesday, February 4, 1986 5 Portions 1 of Texas ) taking g, m m sllooded rakes seep Associated Press ■Heavy rains pounded North and [Central Texas on Monday, flooding I! , |5 , a ( l s anc * creekbanks, snarling big- cit\ traffic and prompting one com munity to seek help from the Texas d pet National Guard. es on a I e cross- ENo deaths were reported. hat inc ght, dm eporten I handle hwab, i letiniesi it’s more ^lore than seven inches of rain fell in less than eight hours in Mexia •to the south of Dallas and in Bon ham to the north, and four to five Thes dropped on numerous other Anmunities, flooding streets and houses. ' a FP^lore than 65 traffic accidents d ou were re p 0r t ec l from midnight to 8 1 a! anr. Monday in Dallas as commuters d to cope with several inches of in after a dry January — a record land 51 days without measurable precipitation. ■The National Weather Service is sued flash flood warnings in numer ous counties throughout the day, with scattered thunderstorms throughout much of the state pack ing winds of up to 50 mph. Af ternoon temperatures were in the 60s and 70s. spy Manager Jack Parker in lemple, 60 miles north of Austin, ■ea the National Guard to provide equipment and help sandbag homes threatened by runoff from swollen geeks. Mike Cox, spokesman for the ^exas Department of Public Safety, said four trucks and eight men were ■patched in the early afternoon. KkV'ater from Bird Creek in south ffemple flowed over its bank and fnto nearby houses. Bfo the east, more than six inches Main fell in the community of Bon- lam by mid-morning and although pi slowed to a patter, authorities tere warned of potential additional d closures and other problems. jHazel Graves watched as rain- oilen waters from Lake Bonham ftnpletely encircled her home. She id spent the weekend putting in a Sv garden and piles of peat moss dried around the knee-deep water in her front yard. I Authorities closed Farm Road 271 ■ding to Bonham State Park, one of many roads blocked off in north £ |p central Texas due to flooding. Rampaging waters cut off eastern rtions of the tiny city of Mart in [Southeast McLennan County south . ofWacoand three families in Stam- T/\t pode Valley near Waco were Branded by rising creeks, its, feC' I A car was sw ept off a bridge on a .'l on g goad near McGregor west of Waco, ! [but the driver, who got out when the Jbie w leaf, engine stalled, escaped without current |injury, authorities said. ^Another car was washed off a d west of Waco, and one car was lept from a road in Burnet County, authorities said. No injuries r ere reported. I ms Ml ebruaf)' ip to elistfe'l I Spo^ Photo by DEAN SAITO Workin’ For A Ph.D. Rosa Llusar, a graduate chemistry student from Valencia, Spain, does inorganic chemistry research in the synthesis of new com pounds Monday afternoon in the Chemistry Building. The re search is for her Ph.D. Pathologists studying remains from Atlantic Associated Press Pathologists are examining hu man remains recovered from the At lantic to see if they are those of Chal lenger’s astronauts, sources said Monday. NASA said Monday that so far it has recovered no shuttle debris from the ocean bottom despite six days of searching with sonar and robot sub marines. Two promising “targets,” the space agency said, turned out to be the old wreckage of a helicopter and a light airplane. That left 17 other potential tar gets about 15 miles offshore where photographs and radar indicated that large objects hit the water, NASA said. But with the sea yielding less de bris each day, officials weighed cut ting back on the search of the ocean surface. The Navy was pulling its ships out at the end of the day Monday, leav ing the sea sweep to the Coast Guard, which also was reviewing whether to continue. The sources, who spoke on condi tion they not be identified, would not disclose how many remains had been found or what they were but said they had been taken to a hospi tal at nearby Patrick Air Force Base to be preserved and studied. Seven astronauts died in the space shuttle’s explosion a week ago, and parts of the shuttle have been found as far away as 220 miles north of Kennedy Space Center. “As we move away from this terri ble day, we must devote our energies to finding out how it happened and how it can be prevented from hap pening again,” President Reagan said Monday in naming a commis sion to investigate the cause of the catastrophe independent of NASA. Whether the human remains were washed up on the beaches or found at sea, the sources would not say. They would not say when the re mains were found. NASA would neither confirm nor deny the report. See Pathologists, page 12 See Related Stories: • First man, page 5 •NASA estimates, page 5 NASA no longer over probe into explosion Associated Press WASHINGTON — President Reagan took the investigation of the space shuttle Challenger ex plosion away from NASA Mon day and entrusted it to an inde pendent board “with no axe to grind.” In an executive order, Reagan directed the panel, headed by former Secretary of State William P. Rogers and former astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, to report its findings within 120 days. By making the commission in dependent of NASA, the admin istration appeared to be trying to avoid criticism that the investiga tion of the Jan. 28 accident, which claimed the lives of all seven crew members, was one-sided or bi ased. Yet, half the 12 commission members have current or past ties to NASA or the space program. Under Reagan’s order, NASA becomes a research arm of the new commission. An interim in vestigative board set up by NASA on the day of the accident is being abolished. The commission, which can be comprised of up to 20 members, includes former test pilot Chuck Yeager, astronaut Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space, and Nobel laureate Rich ard P. Feynman. In another development, Capi tol Hill sources said Reagan will ask Congress to provide roughly $7.7 billion for the NASA budget for the 1987 fiscal year. Speakes said the commission members will serve without pay. Former students eligible to receive refunds A&M will return property deposits upon request By BRIAN PEARSON Senior Staff Writer Texas A&M will return, upon request, a $10 property deposit to former students who have graduated or withdrawn, do not plan to enroll in more classes and who do not owe money for damage to University property. According to the A&M class schedule di rectory, “Every student, unless registered in absentia, must make a property deposit to protect the University from damage to or loss of University property.” Students registered in absentia are doing work outside the formal classroom setting. Students eligible for the return of the de posit must fill out a request form in 004 Coke Building to receive the $10. Bob Piwonka, manager of the Financial Fiscal Department, said the deposit, which is included in stu dents’ first fee payment, will be returned within about 30 days after the request is made. Quoting from the Texas Education Code, Piwonka said, “An institution of higher edu cation may collect a reasonable deposit not to exceed $10 from each student to insure the institution against the losses, damages and breakages in libraries and laboratories. The deposit shall be returned on the withdrawal or graduation of the student less any loss, damage or breakage caused by the student.” Piwonka said students eligible to receive a refund must request the money since the de partment doesn’t know if they will return. “You’re not eligible to receive it ($10) until the semester’s over,” Piwonka said. “At that oint, we have to wait until the department as a chance to bill you for any damage for that semester. “A lot of students stay on and go to grad uate school. A lot of students donate their money to the Association of Former Stu dents.” Faye Pruitt, staff accountant in the Finan cial Fiscal Department, said 362 former A&M students requested their property de- sposit during the 1984-85 school year. Dur ing the 1984-85 A&M school year, 6,242 stu dents received bachelors degrees, 1,093 received masters degrees and 282 received their doctorates. Pruitt said the department does not for mally notify students that a refund of the _ property deposit is available. Piwonka said all the property deposits are held in an interest-earning account. At the end of 1985, he said that about $921,000 had accrued. Besides refunding the deposit upon re quest, there are two other options for the re- - fund. One option is to donate the $10 to the As sociation of Former Students. Pruitt said $350 of property deposit money was donated to the Association of Former Students in 1984. She added that the amount of property deposit donations vary from year to year. Another route for the refund is through the Student Financial Aid Office in the Pavil ion. All property deposits not requested within four years from the date the student last at tended A&M are forfeited into a student de posit scholarship account. Lynn Brown, administrator for schol arships and employment in the student fi nancial aid office, said her office receives the interest from the $921,000 in property de posit money as well as all the forfeited de posit money. She said the office received $90,000 of for feited property deposit money in the 1982- 83 school year and $144,000 in the 1983-84 school year. She said the amount varies widely. Brown said $15,000 of the deposit money received goes to scholarships each year. “The rest of the money goes to grants awarded through the financial aid process,” she said. Past plaguing Cambodian Aggie ES Sources say East West to trade prisoners Associated Press BONN, West Germany — An East-West prisoner exchange w'ill be made next week on a Berlin bridge, a Western government source said Monday, and the svord in Israel was that it includes Soviet Jewish dissident Anatoly |Shcharansky. The source in Bonn said the swap was arranged by U.S., Soviet ind West German officials. Offi- :ials in Bonn and Washington re fused comment on newspaper re ports that such a swap was in the making, and White House spokesman Larry Speakes said: ‘We will have no comment, pe riod. Top to bottom, no com ment.” Israel radio said the United States had informed Israel that Shcharansky would be freed in three days as part of an East-West arisoner swap. It said the Reagan administration sent a message about the plan to Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Foreign Min ister Yitzhak Shamir. An Israeli official in Jerusalem, speaking privately, said the deal involved 12 prisoners held in Western countries to be ex changed for Shcharansky and perhaps one other person held by the Soviets. Shcharansky’s wife Avital was not at her Jerusalem home Mon day. The radio said she would meet her husband in West Ger many. The Bonn source, who is in a position to know the details of such an exchange, said it would take place Feb. 11 on the Glie- nicke Bridge linking Potsdam in East Germany with West Berlin. It will involve both spies and East bloc dissidents, he said, speaking See Sources, page 12 By MARY ANN HARVEY Staff Writer Texas A&M is a long way from Battambang, Cambodia, but one Ag gie freshman has found that he can’t leave the nightmares of his home land behind. Just 11 years ago, Ch- homrith Un, 19, was witness to the atrocities and horror of the Commu nist regime in Cambodia. After witnessing more than 40 ex ecutions, the youngster painted pic tures of what he saw which attracted the attention of refugee officials and journalists. Now Un (pronounced oon) strug gles with pre-calculus and literature classes while trying to put the images behind him. Un was separated from his family in 1975 when Communist-led insur gents occupied most of the Cambo dian territory. The struggle for po litical control had begun and Un’s life would never be the same. “About three or four months after they occupied the whole country they separated me from my family Chhomrith Un for five years,” Un said. “I never saw my family during that time.” Un is the oldest of four boys and three girls. His parents and his si blings were separated from each other and re-located hundreds of miles apart. Un was placed in a prison where he worked like a slave and was sub jected to abuse. “They put me in jail and tortured me,” Un said. “There are several things they did — because I was tor tured several times — but they are things that are hard to tell. I don’t like to say them.” It was in this prison that Un was forced to watch the executions of his fellow countrymen. “Sometimes they’d kill someone right in front of the prisoners to try and scare them,” he said. Un witnessed only one execution where the soldiers used a gun, he said. “After that, all the executions I saw, they never used a gun,” he said. “They tried to do it any way that would make the person really suffer. “They tortured them to death, sometimes using a plastic bag to cover the victim’s head and suffocate him. Other times they would beat him to death.” But before the executioners, who were mostly teenagers, killed their victim, they performed a bloody rit ual to show their power. “Everytime they would kill a man they would chop right here (point ing to his lower back) and pull the gall bladder out and eat it,” Un said. “They did this to show that they were cruel and mean. “Most of the killers were between 15 and 19 years old and they seemed to have fun doing what they did.” Un escaped from the prison seve ral times and tried to survive in the jungles of Cambodia by himself. “I ate wild fruit and animals in the jungle,” he said. An earlier interest in survival techniques became inval uable to his existence in the jungle. However, despite the young boy’s attempts to escape, he was caught and brought back to be punished each time. Un was finally freed in 1979 when a revolution was organized and a new Communist force took over his country. Un, who was then 14, was left on his own to find his family and home. When he located his hometown and family, Un found his parents malnourished and near starvation from the poor treatment they had received in prison camps. Because of the years of separation and drastic weight loss, it was hard for family See Freshman, page 12