JBep. Barton comments on
local Gramm-Rudman effects
— Page 3
Ag baseball set to receive
first pitch of 1986 season
— Page 9
The Battalion
i/ol. 83 No. 95 CISPS 075360 14 pages
College Station, Texas
Tuesday, February 11, 1986
iow, ice
It Texas
4old snap
4aIts traffic
Associated Press
11118 Snow covered the Panhandle and
Hi Plains and icy roads created
, Hdons driving conditions across
*\J jdi sections of Texas on Monday,
Jr Hear skies prevailed after the
feci] Station.
Tr. vel advisories were posted for
t.. Hanhandle, South Plains, North
T jH and portions of West Texas
Hing the Concho Valley and the
pman Basin.
i r . i: Snow piled up to more than a foot
>en!t'H nv areas °f l h e Panhandle and
an(f lUth Plains over the weekend, clos-
Hhools Monday and stranding
■ travelers.
it's fiHtherly winds at 10 to 20 mph
liffica opped temperatures to the teens
tin, tm Panhandle, the 20s in North
Hentral Texas, and into the 30s
intsamiHOs over the remainder of the
le Monte.
and ItHremes at 3 p.m. were 18 de-
; foun jfes at Amarillo and 53 at Corpus
: conti pisii and Kingsville.
, SidntHe forecast called for decreasing
i fortl Hidiness and continued cold.
■e Texas Department of Public
fet\ said crews reopened a 120-
dlsection of Interstate 40 from
inlrillo west to Tucumcari, N.M.
(Drtly before midnight Sunday.
Hcials at West Texas State Uni-
lity in Canyon, south of Amarillo,
lied off classes Monday. Police said
tny area school districts were also
H. Several schools closed Friday
ten the snow first hit.
Hses also were called off Mon-
y at Amarillo College and in Am-
lo public schools.
In Lubbock, where over a half
otofsnow had fallen, Texas Tech
Bversitywas closed Monday, along
m Lubbock Christian College and
piboi k public schools.
The weather service said Borger
jpon
;e IS
I See Icy roads, page 13
1
■wpspiis
Photo by DEAN SAITO
Steam from the physical plant cooling towers became more evi
dent Monday because of the sharp drop in the temperature.
Official vote canvass
begins in Philippines
Associated Press
MANILA, Philippines — The
government-dominated National
Assembly held the first meeting
Monday on its official vote canvass,
which by law will determine who
won the disputed presidential elec
tion.
In the slow count of ballots cast
last Friday, the government election
commission showed President Ferdi
nand E. Marcos leading by 53 per
cent to 47 and an unofficial count by
a citizens’ poll-watching group of
more votes showed challenger Cora-
zon Aquino ahead by the same mar-
gin.
The election was marred by vio
lence, which continued Monday. A
gunman fired at about 50 Aquino
supporters in an open truck from
which Aquino had delivered a
speech earlier, killing a 20-year-old
man and wounding a woman.
At the gathering in suburban Ma
kati, Aquino had told 2,000 cheering
supporters she was “claiming the
people’s due,” and pledged: “We are
going to take power. The people
have won this.”
Aquino accuses Marcos of wide
spread election fraud in attempting
to extend his 20 years of rule over
this archipelago of 7,100 islands.
Both Aquino supporters and offi
cial U.S. election observers called the
slow count an attempt by Marcos to
manipulate the results. T he observ
ers left for home Monday.
In Washington, a senior Reagan
administration official appealed to
Filipinos “not to have violence, not
to have demonstrations in the street
just because you didn’t like the elec
tion (outcome).”
“Get on the team and work with
the government to form a govern
ment, whether it’s Marcos or
Aquino,” said the official, who spoke
on condition of anonymity.
National Assembly members, two-
thirds of whom are from the presi
dent’s New Society Movement, spent
four hours Monday debating rules
for the canvass and then adjourned
until Tuesday afternoon. The galle
ries were packed with Marcos sup
porters and Aquino loyalists who
chanted their candidates’ names.
Thousands more gathered outside.
Returns at the end of the day
from the so-called quick count by the
government commission gave Mar
cos 4,017,277 votes, or 53 percent, to
3,610,099, or 47 percent.
A count by the National
Movement for Free Elections, a poll-
watchers’ group known as Namfrel,
had Aquino ahead by 6,658,838
votes to 5,971,693, a 53-to-47-per-
cent lead, with 60.4 percent of pre
cincts reported.
The election commission’s count
was suspended after 30 computer
operators walked out Sunday, charg
ing fraud in the tabulation that
showed Marcos leading.
Faculty Senate
Input sought in department head choices
By SONDRA PICKARD
Staff Writer
Texas A&M faculty members will
have broad participation in the selec
tion of department heads, and a uni
form policy on granting emeritus
status to professors will go into effect
if two resolutions adopted by the
Faculty Senate Monday night are ap
proved by A&M President Frank E.
Vandiver.
Also, the Senate approved recom
mendations giving academically su
perior undergraduates the chance to
apply graduate-level courses toward
their undergraduate degree pro
gram.
After almost two hours of debate,
the Senate voted unanimously to
give faculty members a significant
role in a department head selection
process that is not currently regu
lated by the University. Instead, the
selection process is determined by
the deans of individual colleges, and
in many cases involves little, if any,
faculty input.
The proposal was described by
Dr. Jaan Laane, Senate speaker, as
probably the most significant resolu
tion ever passed by the Senate.
When a department head position
becomes vacant, the proposal sug
gests the establishment of a faculty
search committee elected from the
department, which would meet with
leading candidates, evaluate them
and deliver a report of its findings to
the dean.
The resolution proposes that the
department head’s normal tenure in
office be from four to 10 years, and
that he will serve with the approval
of the faculty, dean, provost and
president. Periodically, the faculty of
each department will evaluate the
head. The dean, in compliance with
faculty sentiment, will decide if a
new head is needed.
In other business, the Senate ap
proved a professor emeritus status
proposal which states that, at the
time of retirement, professors hold
ing a tenured appointment at A&M
who have served here at least 10
years must be considered for emeri
tus status. However, individuals who
have served less than 10 years also
may be considered.
A committee of faculty members
See Faculty, page 13
IASA says rocket may have pivoted into fuel tank
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Associated Press
I WASHINGTON — NASA investigators
He Challenger’s right booster rocket
Ithave pivoted into the huge space shut-
ffuel tank, crushing it and setting off the
Hll that destroyed the ship and killed its
tew.
A space agency source, who declined to
e identified, said such a scenario — first
pined Monday in the industry magazine
iviation Week and Space Technology — is
Bossibility under examination.
A major focus of the investigation has
been the possibility that a leak between seg
ments of the right booster allowed a plume
of flame to spurt toward Challenger’s liquid
fuel tank, either puncturing it or raising the
pressure inside to cause the explosion.
The source said other avenues of investi
gation include wind shears aloft as the 4.5-
million-pound shuttle stack climbed
through a period of maximum stress and a
seal leak between two segments of the
booster rocket that caused a sideways thrust
and put additional structural loads on the
ship.
The presidential commission invesdgat-
See related shuttle stories, page 13
• 3 shuttle flights cancelled
• Trust fund set up to replace Challenger
ing the Jan. 28 accident met in secret ses
sion Monday to discuss an internal mem
orandum last July warning officials of the
National Aeronautics and Space Adminis
tration that shuttle flight safety was “being
compromised by potential failure” of
booster seals.
“Failure during launch would certainly
be catastrophic,” one NASA analyst warned
in a memorandum, according to The New
York Times.
Arriving for Monday’s commission meet
ing, chairman William P. Rogers said the
Times story gave the impression that NASA
had not told his panel everything it knew
about the boosters’ history.
“That’s not the case and I hope we can
correct that,” he said, adding that the public
will learn more about the documents at an
open meeting Tuesday.
Aviation Week said a redesign of the
joints might cause the next shuttle mission
to be postponed a year.
The magazine said NASA’s interim acci
dent review board believes that the plume
of Fire jetting out of the side of the right
booster rocket caused the bottom half of
the rocket to separate from the tank.
“The lower portion of the booster then
rotated outward from the climbing vehi
cle,” Aviation Week said. “As the bottom of
the booster moved outward, its top section
pivoted into the external tank and crushed
the upper right side of the tank.”
■toper: Shcharansky will be traded early
Soviets agree to release
dissident
Associated Press
BERLIN — Soviet officials have
feretd to release dissident Anatoly
pcharansky moments before three
intern spies in the expected East-
pel prisoner exchange because the
iked States insisted he not be
Bed like an undercover agent, a
Nspaper said Monday.
, AU.S. official, meanwhile, con-
Bed at a news briefing that Shcha-
Rsky would be part of the swap,
jtpected to take place today on the
Hicke Bridge between West Ber-
Parid Communist East Germany.
FHe will be on the bridge,” the of-
■ said, speaking on condition of
^Wvmity. “The exchange will be
na d< and the cars will drive out.”
1A U.S. diplomatic source in Ber-
Hpeaking on condition of ano-
Bty, told The Associated Press,
ll'ill happen on the bridge before
poti”
■he Hamburg newspaper Bild
■ in an article written for today’s
“The exchange was in real danger once again in the last
few days. The Soviets insisted that Shcharansky would
be swapped ‘as an agent, like the others. ’
— the German newspaper Bild.
editions, “An agreement has been
reached so that Shcharansky will
clearly be freed before the other
prisoners.”
The newspaper did not identify
its sources, but it has had other ex
clusive reports from the Soviet
Union that have turned out to be ac
curate.
Bild said the swap will begin at 11
a.m. (5 a.m. EST) today.
“U.S. and Russian military vehi
cles will drive to the middle of the
bridge from both sides — then the
passengers will be handed over,”
Bild said. “The East bloc will let So
viet rights activist Shcharansky free
first.”
“The exchange was in real danger
once again in the last few days. The
Soviets insisted that Shcharansky
would be swapped ‘as an agent, like
the others,’ ” Bild said. The Ameri
cans objected, saying Shcharansky is
a human rights activist, according to
Bild.
Shcharansky, 38, was convicted in
1978 on a charge of spying for the
CIA and was sentenced to 13 years
in prison and labor camp.
Shcharansky, a mathematician
and computer scientist, has said his
only crime was seeking to emigrate
from the Soviet Union to Israel.
Western specialists on the Soviet
Union have said Moscow hopes by
freeing Shcharansky along with im
prisoned spies to convey to the world
its position that he is a spy, too.
Bild quoted an unidentified West
German official as saying, “Whether
the Soviets stick to the plan (to free
Shcharansky first), only God
knows.”
Reporters have been positioned at
the Glienicke Bridge since Bild re
ported Feb. 1 that an exchange was
pending.
The newspaper said then that the
East would free two East German cit
izens and a West German in ex
change for five agents imprisoned in
the West.
U.S. sources, speaking on the con
dition they not be identified, have
confirmed the West will trade five
people.
Five legion of Doom 7
members plead guilty
Associated Press
FORT WORTH — Five teen
agers pleaded guilty Monday to
charges stemming from their par
ticipation in a group known as the
“Legion of Doom” that used vigi
lante-type activities in a mis
guided effort to end crime and
drug use at their high school.
State District Judge Don Leon
ard ordered a pre-sentence inves
tigation for each defendant and
admonished them to “behave
yourselves.”
Leonard said he would take at
least a month to decide on the
sentences for the teenagers.
Although some of the felony
counts are punishable by up to 20
years in prison, Leonard could ei
ther probate the sentences or or
der a type of probation by which
the defendants eventually could
have their records wiped clean.
In a variety of felony and mis
demeanor charges, the young
men were accused of threatening
another student with a gun, mak
ing bombs, bombing cars and
other property, damaging school
property and killing a cat and
leaving it in a car, according to in
dictments returned last year.
Entering pleas were James H.
Mathis Jr., 18; Darren K. Di-
etrick, 18; Joe David Dorris, 17;
James A. Turner, 18; and David
Edward Norman, 18.
Two other defendants, Charles
Fillmore, 18, and Michael Taw
Guthrie, 17, were scheduled to
appear before Leonard today.
The case of Bradley James
Bielss, 18, who was indicted on a
single misdemeanor charge will
be settled later, according to Scott
Wisch, an assistant Tarrant
County district attorney.
See High school, page 13