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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (July 22, 1986)
P .0. MX 12188 4 DALLAS* T1 7522V-0188 I t —^^TexasA&M _ The Battalion Voi. 82 No. 180 CIS PS 045380 6 pages College Station. Texas Tuesday, JJy 22. 1986 Regents devote A&M resources to aid Texas By Mom Palmer Asautmmt C*y Edtto* The Texas AAM Board of Re gents Monday announced the for mation of “Commitment to Texas.” a five-year program to commit intel lectual ana pnyskal resources to helpmgthe Texas economy. The Texas Legislature recognized the importance of university re search to the state’s economy in the last legislative session when they passed the Texas Advanced Tech nology Research Program The Board intends to reallocate a total of $53.5 million in resources — following the lead of the Legislature and goals of the research program “Trus program is going to be the most exciting thing to hit the state in 50 years." AAM Ihesident Frank E. Vandiver said. AAM is in an economic crossroad. he said, and has the ability to make a difference in the Texas economy. Vandiver added that the Universi ty’s role as a Texas resource depends on what it does in the next few years and that the plan is to re-direct Uni versity resources to benefit Texas and its people "We are teetering on the brink . .. of becoming one of the top five re search universities (in the nation !,** he said. "We are interested in mak ing a real difference " AAM Provost Dr. Donald McDon ald gave the board a detailed decrip- tion of the five-year plan. He said it will pursue areas of re search the University already has strength in and research that is im portant to the Texas economy. Enhancing A A M's research also will contribute to the fundamental body of knowledge which is a posi tive long-term investment. McDon ald said. Regent Henry Cisneros added that the program should include an impact statement to assure Texans that the program is in their best in terests. The Board asserts that the pro gram is good for Texas, he said, but people need so know that they are the top concern The Regents also allocated $41(1.000 to establish a branch office of the AAM System in the Texas Medical Center in Houston Chairman David Eller said that the medical center has formally com mitted four acres to the University System for the branch office. He said Gen. Wesley Peel, vice chan cellor for Facilities Planning and Construction, has been working on a location for the building The Board also approved a revi- Mon of AAM’s investment policy, which will allow proceeds from the sale of bonds and related bond issue accounts to be placed in a common account. The common account will permit daily investments or withdrawal of funds on a unit basis. In other action, the board: • Approved an expansion of AAM’s computer network for a total cost of $501,656. The program will expand the Ethernet high-speed computer to computer network and the port selector, terminal to com puter. network. • Approved a holiday schedule for the University's state employees with the total vacation being 15 nays. 'Excellence fund' will support program Uaivcrsity News Service The Texas AAM University System’s "excellence fund" will be the source of allocations for AAM’s “Committment to Texas’’ program aimed toward assisting the state in moving forward more rapidly in economic diversifica tion. Board of Regents Chairman David G. Eller of Houston said the program calls for the system to redirect a portion of its share of the Available University Fund to help the state overcome its fi nancial crisis by broadening its economic base. Emphasis will be placed on re search and development in prom ising high-technology areas that could create thousands of new jobs for Texans over the next de cade, he said. The AUf is derived from the proceeds from the investment of the Permanent University Fund, which includes oil and gas roy alties and related income from land committed to providing an endowment for the state’s two (Me Eller, page 4) Unmasked Photoby Tmm Owmbey These firefighting masks are part of the training equipment used at the Bravton Fireman Training Field. Approximately 2900 fire fight ers from 755 cities and 25 states are partKipaiing in training sessions at the field this week. 2 severe temblors shake California, felt in Nevada, Utah High temperatures force Austin to ration water AUSTIN (AP) — With high tem peratures nearing 100 degrees, Aus tin residents face fines beginning to day for violating provisions of a mandators water conservation pro- gratn “I guess the day we were trying to avoid has finaMv come." Cicy Man ager Jorge Carrasco said. I he decision to impose manda tory water rationing rules again — as has occurred during the past two summers —- was made Sunday after ckvwide water use topped 155 mil lion gallons daily for the third straight day. Spokeswoman Faith George of the city’s resource management de partment said Austin residents used 161.27 million gallons of water Sat urday. Sunday's high temperature hit 100 degrees, the hottest of the year. Voluntary water controls went into effect May 1. The biggest differ ence between those restrictions and the Stage 2 rationing plan is that po lice can issue tickets Tor violations The maximum fine is $200, George said. Carrasco said the ability to have adequate water pressure for fire fighting was a prime concern. “We have not experienced any unusual problems, but we feel that because of the hot weather and high demand, the only course of action is to impose Stage 2 mandatory conser vation measures,” he said. The city’s key problem isn’t with water supply but with a distribution system mat hasn’t kept pace wkh Austin's booming growth, officials said. George said the conservation rules require that residents may use water for outdoor purposes, such as lawn watering, only every fifth day as determined by the last number of street addresses. Should the controls fail and water use tops 165 million gallons daily for three consecutive days, the city could impose even tougher Stage 5 restric tions. BISHOP. Calif (AP) — A severe earthquake and a powerful af tershock rumbled across California and parts of Nevada and Utah Mon day. wrecking up to 20 homes, cut ting off a town's water and trigger ing rockslides in the High Sierra. One giant fissure — 200 yards long and 150 yards wide <— swal lowed a parked pickup truck and stranded 50 campers, but no injuries were reported. Later Monday, vio lent thunderstorms prompted a flash flood warning. The temblors measured 6.1 and 5.2 on the Richter scale, according to the University of California at Ber keley. and was the second strong earthquake in as many days. It was Hb* fifth suable quake to lut Califor nia in two weeks The quake struck at 7:42 a.m. in the White Mountains. 240 miles north of Los Angeles and was felt from San Francisco to Las Vegas. Nev., and in Salt Lake City, more than 500 miles away. The aftershock came nine minutes later Both were centered 15 miles north of Bishop in the same area where a 5.5-magni tude auake hit Sunday, said Dennis Mereaith. spokesman for California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “A number of mobile homes were rocked off their foundations” in Chalfant Valley. 17 miles north of Bishop. Mono County sheriffs Sgt. Tfrrv Padilla said. "Currently there are about 145 homes in the immediate Chaifont area with about 500 residents," For est Service spokeswoman Lorraine Parrish said “Of those, about 50 to 60 are mobile homes. . . Probably about 50 mobile homes were shaken off their foundations." Chalfant firefighter Rick Mitchell said 20 homes, mostly mobile homes, were damaged beyond repair. But he said several non-mobile homes also were damaged, and one frame house nearly collapsed System helps predict juvenile behavior COLLEGE STATION — Brazos ountv authorities are using a new coring system created by a Texas tAM criminologist in an effort to >redirt if juvemle offenders will nove on to more serious crimes "It’s like the actuarial tables used jy insurance companies." the sys- em's creator Ben Crouch said Crouch received a $9,200 grant rom the Cnmmalfustice Division of he governor's office to develop the neasunng tool that is expected to telp juvenile probation officers non nor their charges He and E.A. Wentrcek Jr., Brazos County’s chief juvenile probation of ficer, sav they expect tne test to be accurate 69 percent of the time. "We can flip a coin and be right half the time." Wentrcek said "With this svstrm. we’ve improved on that by 19 percent." The juvenile probation chief asked Crouch to develop the system after reading about a similar pro gram in Calhoun County. Mich Crouch and a graduate assistant, with the help of Wentrcek’s staff, pored through records of 500 juve nile offenders in Brazos County, checking cases stretching back seven years. They were looking for more than 100 different variables in each case — such as school background, pre vious offenses, family history and age After feeding the information into a computer, they found six fac tors that suggest a juvenile may have more run-ins with the law. The factors include crimes com mitted at art early age. school prob lems and whether the offender has spent more than 24 hours in a juve nile detention facility, Wentrcek said. Using these factors. Crouch then developed a three-page tool that ranks an offender’s probability to fu ture crime. "Lots of departments in Texas have their own systems, but this is the only one developed scientifically with university research," Wentrcek said Officials will use the system to help decide what type of probation to give to a client as well as determin ing a probation officer’s workload, he said The tests also will alert workers to which youngsters they should spend more time with, he said Both men said the system isn't foolproof. “All of these systems have short comings," Crouch said. "You will al ways have errors. But a tool like this is used in conjunction with the pro bation officers common sense and experience." Although the system is modeled for Brazos County only, it can be modified by plugging local statistics and data into the formula. Crouch said. Customers of the Denny’s restau rant m Bishop dove under tables or broke for the doors when the 6.1 ? iuake hit, assistant manager Dave ampbell said. "They were grabbing hold of each other and just trying to hang on." he said. "Anything that was laying down flat was just going across the counter." Part of the ceiling caved in at a Burger Ring restaurant in Bishop, U S. Forest Service spokesman Brian Miller said. At Pleasant Valley campground near Bishop, 50 campers were stranded when a crevasse obliterated a road and swallowed a parked C kup truck. Inyo County snerifTs . Dick. Wood said All those in the tamp's $00 campsites were safely evacuated later Monday, authorities said. Wood said the opening was 150 yards wide and 200 yards long but didn't know how deep, although it was “enough to put a pickup truck down into. The pickup truck sank about 30 feet deep and caught fire, Parrish said. At Kast one occupant was re moved uninjured and tne truck was later pulled out as well, she said. The Richter scale is a measure of ground motion as recorded on seis mographs. Every increase of one number means a tenfold increase in the strength of the shaking. Thus a reading of 7.5 reflects ground movement 10 times stronger than one of 6.5. An earthquake of 3.5 on the Rich ter scale can cause slight damage in the local area. 4 moderate damage, 5 t (insider able damage. 6 severe dam age. A 7 reading is a "major" earth- 3 m uake, capable of widespread heavy a mage. H is a “great" quake, capa ble of tremendous damage. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 has been estimated at 8.3 on the Richter scale. Energy summit postponed AUSTIN (AP) — A second en ergy summit meeting planned for Thursday in Houston was post poned Monday, Gov. Mark White’s office announced. White's aides said the meeting was being delayed because of the upcoming Aug. 6 special legis lative session. White, who for six months has unsuccessfully urged President Reagan to tax imported oil. orga nized a summit meeting of oil state governors and energy in dustry leaders in Dallas last April. Southeast drought forces farmers to ask for federal aid (AP) —- Farmers in the Southeast need immediate help, beyond loans they can't pay off, tor the drought that has dried up their crops, farm ers and state officials told a federal task force Monday in the midst of a triple-digit heat wave already blamed for 27 deaths “The farmers are absolutely broke," Frank Strickland, who stows tobacco near Lakeland. Ga . told the panel "We re going to see farmers walk into the bank, throw their pa pers on the desk and tell the banker. ‘Here — take k.’ And rural banks can’t handle that." Crop losses in the Southeast’s worst drought tn 100 years are esti mated at up to $700 million in just Virginia, the Carolina* and Georgia. The drought also is withering crops in parts of Alabama, northern Flor ida and into Delaware and Maryland. Some major Georgia rivers are Howmc at less than 40 percent of normal and scattered towns in the Southeast have imposed water-use restrictions In addition, temperatures have been near or above 100 decrees for 15 days in parts of the CaroTinas and Georgia, and some cities have had highs above 90 for more than a month. Although scattered thunder storms cooled some parts of the re gion Monday, the official high for the 48 contiguous states was a record 105 at Augusta and Macon, Ga., and at Columbia. S.C., where it tied the record, the National Weather Serv ice said. Atlanta and Columbus, Ga., hit a record 102 and Charlotte. N.C., reached a record 103 degrees The U.S. Department of Agricul ture task force, headed by Assistant Agriculture Secretary George Dun lop, met with Georgia officials and toured an Alabama farm. They also planned to study farms in the Caroli na* "We re heading for one of the worst disasters Southeastern agricul ture has ever experienced, Rep Lindsav Thomas, who represents southeast Georgia, told the group. “I don't know of anyone with a crop in the ground and a considerable in vestment in it who can survive this without outside help." Politicians and farmers asked Dunlop for money, livestock feed and debt restructuring. "We don’t need any low-interest loans," U.S. Sen. Mack Mattingly said. “What we’re looking for is free commodities, surplus commodities.’’ Dunlop touted the Federal Emer gency Feed Assistance Program, which provides surplus commodities at low cost, but saicf there is "no pro vision in the law" for free commodi ties. "We have to recognize that the farm bill provides $2? billion worth of freebies this year, and many farm ers qualify.” Dunlop said. Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace has already asked for federal drought disaster assistance, but only limited relief so far has been ap proved. Two Air Force cargo jets took off for South Carolina Monday with hay donated by farmers in Illinois end other Midwestern states, and a third trip was scheduled Tuesday to Georgia with another flight planned Wednesday "Farmers always receive a lot of rhetoric and politics ... and this is really something concrete." Gov. Dick Riles of South Carolina said.