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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 7, 1986)
English theater company to bring Shakespeare to A&M — Page 8 Ags' Clifford learns to deal with lack of respect in SWC — Page 12 The Battalion ol. 83 No. 93 CISPS 075360 16 pages College Station, Texas Friday, Februaiy 7, 1986 eagan defends budget against criticism Associated Press Washington — President tan and his top aides defended heldministration’s new $994 billion pet, a plan Reagan conceded iigl t require “artificial respira- against sharp attacks Thurs- ayirom both parties in Congress. ®)ngressional critics complained at the administration hact made effuse the top budget priority ■e calling for deep cutbacks in so- al|>rograms. But the president, in his annual economic report to Congress, said he was not willing to sacrifice pro grams essential to the nation or to consider supporting a tax increase. Reagan said the economic outlook was bright through the end of the decade. . But, he cautioned, “changing events, including erratic monetary and fiscal policies, can bring any ex pansion to an abrupt and unex pected halt.” A day after its submission to Con gress, the president’s new budget clearly was running into trouble in both chambers of Congress. A House Republican leader, mi nority whip Trent Lott, R-Miss., said his party would repudiate the presi dent’s day-old fiscal 1987 budget plan and come up with one of its own. And Democratic leaders said they would press on with hearings around the nation next week on Reagan’s budget, an effort they con tended might discredit it. Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole, R-Kan., said people would have , to be allowed to “howl and scream” about the budget for several weeks before lawmakers could get down to serious work. And Reagan himself was asked about congressional criticism that the budget was “dead on arrival.” “We’ll give it artificial respira tion,” Reaganjoked. The president disputed a charac terization by House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., D-Mass., that the budget for the fiscal year that be gins Oct. 1 was “a disgrace.” “I don’t see anything disgraceful about a budget that is spending al most a trillion dollars, and is at the same time starting to move under the laws that they’ve adopted to bal ance the budget,” Reagan said. O’Neill, meanwhile, said the Dem ocrats would ask Reagan to send representatives to next week’s field hearings to defend the spending plan. “There have been reports that Re publican members of Congress have refused to appear on the same plat form as the president’s budget,” O’Neill told reporters. “It’s his bud get. We want him to justify it.” In other budget developments on Thursday: • Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III told the House Appro priations Committee that domestic cuts in the new budget were not as extensive as the $39 billion in cuts approved by Congress in 1981. “I don’t think the task is some thing we have to write off as totally impossible right off the bat,” he said. NASA retrieves tip of fuel tank, brings it to port ith A Little Help From My Friend Photo by ANTHONY S. CASPER INeil Vidrine, a senior construction science major from Houston, gets (motorized assistance from wheelchair-bound Denise Crandon, a [freshman accounting major from Houston. Vidrine is participating in the “wheelchair challenge,” part of Exceptional Children’s Week, which is sponsored by the Student Council for Exceptional Children, to raise awareness of challenges the handicapped face. Associated Press CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A salvage vessel brought the pointed tip of Challenger’s huge fuel tank to port Thursday, and NASA believed it located the shuttle’s second rocket booster under the ocean 15 miles from the launch pad. Public affairs officers for the Na tional Aeronautics and Space Ad ministration said privately that sonar soundings indicated the ieft booster had been located. But, acting under instructions that any statement must be cleared with agency investigators, the spokesmen could not confirm that officially. NASA also would not say whether a helmet brought aboard a Coast Guard cutter, along with tiles and other debris from the shuttle, be longed to one of the seven Chal lenger astronauts. ABC News showed film of the helmet on “World News Tonight” Thursday. The agency’s recovery ships have been concentrating on an area 35 miles offshore where they believe the right booster lies under 1,100 feet of water. But, spokesmen cau tioned, the soundings can’t be vali dated until robot submarines photo graph the wreckage. In any case, it will be days, if not weeks, after positive identification before either of the heavy rocket cas ings can be raised by Navy salvage crews. Some engineers said privately they fear the casings may be broken into pieces and scattered on the ocean floor. The finding of the fuel tank tip was a different matter. News photo graphs showed sailors on the USS Preserver, a World War II Navy sal vage ship out of Little Creek, Va., lifting the tip of the fuel tank’s cone from one deck to another. In the search for debris, NASA is using four ships that are normally employed to recover the spent boost ers when they fall away from the shuttle after two minutes of flight. At least two of the ships returned to port Thursday, a cloudy and windy day, to be outfitted with dif ferent equipment. The Coast Guard was using six planes and six ships to search a huge slice of the east coast from Cape Canaveral to Cape Lookout, N.C. See related story, page 11 benefits from Bowl showing to come next year A&M will net about $100,000 for Cotton Bowl By FRANK SMITH Staff Writer The Texas A&M football team’s I 1 Cotton Bowl appearance lid net about $100,000 for the thlitic Department, an A&M offi- alhas estimated. Wally Groff, associate athletic di- Moi for finance, said the Cotton owl Committee will retain 25 per- of the gross receipts from the ami . The remaining 75 percent is be split equally between the par- ipating teams, A&M and Auburn jniversity, Groff said. ("We’re anticipating our 37‘/a per- fn|(of the gross receipts) to be ap- oximately $2.2 million,” Groff d. ‘Of that, we will be able to keep mewhere around $500,000.” The remainder of A&M’s share of elame’s gross receipts will be dis- buied equally among the nine mthwest Conference schools, in- Ning A&M, Groff said. [“Every (SWC) school’s going to A&M’s Own Cotton Bowl Pi© SWC / 8 Other Schools Cotton Bowl Expenses Texas A&M’s Profit get around $200,000 to $225,000 out of the Cotton Bowl every year,” he said. “We’re going to get that re gardless of whether we’re there.” As for the $500,000 A&M expects to receive as the conference’s partici pating team, Groff said the expenses incurred during bowl week will eat into a substantial portion of that. He said those expenses will proba bly be around $400,000 — which would leave A&M a net total of $100,000 for the bowl appearance. “We just took 250 people to Dallas for a week,” he said of the expenses. “We had to feed them and house them and take them to these (Cotton Bowl) functions and so on. And this costs money.” Groff said the bowl committee only picks up part of the tab for bowl game functions. The participating teams have to pay the rest, he said. The money A&M nets from its Cotton Bowl appearance will be added to the school’s $7.4 million Athletic Department budget, Groff said. Groff said many of the financial benefits from playing in the Cotton Bowl may show up for A&M next season. “Winning the Cotton Bowl is good for us monetarily,” Groff said. “But what it really does is boost your ticket sales for the next year. “Next year’s sales should be con siderably higher than this year’s — based on the fact that people are still optimistic about the program.” roup trying to unionize college athletes By MARGARET ARTZ Reporter What if they had a bowl game and Ipayers were out on strike? A new organization, the Revenue toducing Major College Player’s tfSpciation, is trying to organize a Tiki of next year’s bowl games by ttge athletes. RPMCPA organiz- Jsay the strike would draw atten- ^ to what they see as the exploita- of college athletes. RPMCPA coordinator Dick De- e 'i/io said college athletes are be- cheated by the NCAA because they can’t share in the money awarded to schools for playing in bowl games. DeVenzio said the RPMCPA would act as the players’ union. Money now given to schools that compete in post-season games would instead go to the RPMCPA and be redistributed to the players through scholarships and other programs, he said. “That money is earned by the tal ent and sweat of the athletes, yet they get no part of that reward,” De Venzio said. College athletes must be amateurs according to NCAA rules, he said, but with the current system, to be an amateur is to be poor. The goals of the RPMCPA are: • To change the current NCAA definition of amateur status so col lege athletes can receive the benefits that are now prohibited. • To provide athletes with legal representation, complete medical coverage, career advice and personal counseling. • To represent athletes so rules made by the universities take the athletes’ interests into full consider ation. • To establish a lifetime schol arship program which would pro vide an athlete with room, board, books, tuition, and spending and travel allowances for as long as he continues his education. • To provide advice and money needed for emergencies through a toll-free hotline number. “If an athlete suddenly needs to go home because of sickness or a death in the family and can’t afford the plane fare, it’s against NCAA rules for the coaches or alumni to give him that money,” DeVenzio ex plained. “This would be a way for him to get the money he needs in a bona-fide emergency.” The toll-free number also will help educate athletes about the goals of the RPMCPA, he said. DeVenzio said he hopes players, with the funds of RPMCPA, will be able to finish their education after their days on the field are over. DeVenzio said the demanding na ture of college athletics prevents ath letes from getting their education while on scholarship. “Athletes are accused of having See Organization, page 16 Number of students down Spring '86 figures below last spring's By BRIAN PEARSON Senior Staff Writer Enrollment numbers for the 1986 spring semester at Texas A&M are down slightly from last year’s spring figures. Don Carter, associate registrar, said 32,968 students are enrolled for spring classes, a 2.63 percent decrease from last year’s 33,859 enrollment. “This is the second time in the history of A&M that we’ve had a reduction in the spring compared to the previous spiring,” Carter said. He said the first time A&M ex perienced a drop was last year when enrollment dropped 0.75 percent from spring 1984 semes ter when the enrollment was 34,118. Carter said this year’s drop in enrollment may be attributed to several factors. One possible cause, he said, is the size of the December graduat ing class — the largest December graduating class in A&M history — and the lack of incoming stu dents. “We just don’t get that many new people in the spring,” Carter said. Carter said the tuition hike and the current slump in the Texas economy due to dropping oil prices also took their toll on A&M enrollment figures.