Page 4B/The Battalion/Wednesday, August 27, 1986
Colleges beg
stricter policies
to end drug us<
Cooling off
Randy Hickok, a senior Business Analysis/Finance major from Houston, beats the summer heat by floating in the Brazos River.
Photo by Robby Smith
Spindletop depicts end of oil success
BEAUMONT (AP) — Like dust
to dust, the Big Oil era is returning
to its Jefferson County birthplace to
die.
Here, Spindletop was an unex
pected and tremendous First. Here
was started an 80-year orgy of enter
prise, when every Texan with a
hunch about a chunk of land could
make his play. Now Jefferson
County may be first in the state
again. But this time it’s a sad distinc
tion, as Spindletop’s domain teeters
on the edge of drilling oblivion.
“It’s just open-and-shut,” laments
G.P. “Pete” Cokinos, a Beaumont-
based wildcatter of more than 32
Gulf Coast wells over 24 years.
“Domestic production onshore as
we know it is a thing of the past,” Co
kinos, Texas A&M Class of’38, says.
“As far as I can tell, it’s all in the
hands of the majors now.”
The only major still working
Southeast Texas last week was Mobil
Oil Co., with a 9,000-foot effort
northwest of Beaumont. Only a
company such as Mobil can afford to
cut other operations to subsidize the
$26 cost of producing a $ 12 barrel of
crude. That kind of mathematics
just lays the average independent
wildcatter on his back.
In the 1970s, for example, Coki
nos paid contractors $700,000 to
drill each of 20 wells at his Orange-
Field stake. Now he could get the job
done for $280,000 a shot, but it’s just
too late.
Cokinos has left the era when he
had contractors working 32 wells
across two Louisiana parishes and a
Texas county. What remains for him
is a few working interests, a few roy
alty checks, and his own consulting
business.
But for bigger companies, the
mathematics of cheap oil don’t spell
an overnight change of pace. Majors
and larger independents will do any
thing to bring that $26 closer to $12.
There’s a tragic irony at work
here. To stay in the enterprise
they’ve learned to love, survivors of
U.S. drilling are forfeiting all the ro
mance and adventure of “the Long
Shot.”
True, the Texas independent
producer was always beholden to the
major refiners, or to federal subsi
dies of independent refiners. But
bucking the big boys, after all, was
half the fun. In 1973 and 1974, for
example, Cokinos was selling his
Port Barre, La. oil to Humble Oil
Corp. (now Exxon), his Starks, La.
crude to Cities Service Oil Co., and
Orangefield production to Sun Pro
duction Co. Each major had a corner
on local markets, but they all paid
Cokinos the same $3.15 a barrel.
Nineteen days after the cocaine-
induced death of University of
Maryland basketball star Len Bias,
Education Secretary William Ben
nett advised college presidents to
write students this summer: “Wel
come back for your studies in Sep
tember. But no drugs on campus.
None. Period.”
As the new school year ap
proaches, the call for harsher drug
policies is being heeded at some col
leges.
Ohio Wesleyan’s President David
L. Warren wrote letters to parents
and students serving notice that
drug use would bring on a range of
reprisals, including dismissal. The
school is also outlawing drug par
aphernalia this year.
At Newberry College in South
Carolina, the police, rather than the
tiny school’s disciplinary council will
be called in to handle even minor
drug offenses.
Freshman orientation at Mount
St. Mary College in Newburgh, N.Y.,
will include drug education for the
first time, offered by college offi
cials, health experts and law enforce
ment officers.
drugs the biggest problem
schools, and 49 percent aj
drug testing of students, w
percent opposed it.
Some congressmen hope tot
added pressure for campus
drug action with a proposedant
ment to the Fiscal 1987 educatiot
propriation bill which would 1
federal funds to any school
doesn’t have a drug prevention
gram.
v
i
But many college officials
(acted by I he Associated Press
issue with suggestions that i
drug policies weren't toughenotj
Only a minority said they plan
stiffer penalties for drug olfe#
or tighter campus security,
The University of Michigan
Boston University, for instance,
among many schools that have
claimed the right to search a
dent’s dorm room for illegal
stances or terminate a students
deuce hall lease for sale or utt
drugs.
McKlN
ound-fac
as the ^
icnts m;
erry Boj
“Wildcatting and the drilling con
tractors have been curtailed,” Coki
nos concluded, “and the forerunner
of all this was the major oil compa
nies. The independent always
marched to the drumbeat of the ma
jor companies, you know?”
Many other schools have begun
voluntary or mandatory drug testing
programs for athletes. The Univer
sity of Maryland this summer an
nounced it will have more frequent
unannounced drug testing of its ath
letes in the wake of the Bias death,
along with closer scrutiny of the test
ing to ensure that urine samples
can’t be switched.
An annual Gallup poll on educa
tion issues released last weekend
found that the public considers
M any argued that more an
ter drug education, rather
harsh le^.il > >i .u adcmir non:'
would better solve the problem
College of ficials said that ar^ ■
bounty.
Althou}
,vork and
nessman t
spoken B<
enforcenn
however,
becoming
ther, who
McKinney
his retirer
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Box Jr., m
Even tli
since he w
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call the f
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“My fa
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this fire ti
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somebody
chuckling
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help font
ciples.”
Box d
about lav
I reer until
fre
drug use is down considerably ft*
the 1960s and 1970s. For moj
dents, alcohol is by far the “dm
choice.”
An annual survey of 17,000(■FRESNO
lege students nationwide pubkt me locus on
in July by the University of ^1 Idjice, “Frest
gan’s Institute for Social Reve;:: rips format t
found that roughly one-thirdvBCBS’ six-
have tried cocaine by their sawt and grt
year. Ipital is a
■rial, not (
Concerns voiced about Japan’s treatment of
TOGANE, Japan (AP) — The
mentally ill and the physically hand
icapped are less visible in Japan than
in many other advanced societies,
and public discussion of their plight
is something of a cultural taboo.
But new attention is being drawn
to what goes on in Japanese mental
institutions, most of them private,
and the Japanese government has
promised reforms. Nevertheless the
problem runs deeper than changes
in the rules.
There is a new pay telephone in
Ward 1 at the Asai Mental Hospital
in this pleasant seaside town. It is a
recent concession to human rights
for Japan’s mentally ill. It can put
them in touch with the outside
world.
Many doctors and human rights
ai (I niuch-r
m i’s hearth
ol San Fram
I “If peopi
Red, they
id Barrv
activists in Japan claim that thou
sands of people are unnecessarily
confined in mental institutions be
cause the hospitals want their money
— and their families, often fearing
social stigma, don’t want them back.
“The people and government feel
the mentally ill should be secluded
from society,” says Etsuro Totsuka, a
lawyer who campaigns for patients’
rights. “It’s the Japanese form of
apartheid.”
Government figures show that
more than 60 percent of Japan’s
330,000 mental patients are in
closed wards. About 45 percent are
hospitalized for five years or more,
the highest average in the world.
The country was shocked in an in
vestigation at the Hotokukai Utsu-
nomiya Hospital which uncovered
222 unexplained deaths in three
years. Police say they found patients
were subject to heatings, forced la
bor, treatment by unqualified
nurses, and unauthorized loboto-
mies.
being held involuntarily.
The organization pointed to Ja
pan’s 1950 Mental Health Act, which
allows the head of a hospital to com
mit an individual without his consent
if the family or guardian agrees.
A district court sentenced hospital
superintendent Bunnoshin Ishikawa
to a year in prison and a $1,807 fine
for violating fundamental human
rights. His appeal is pending in To
kyo High Court.
“In many cases,” the league’s
statement said, “the very person
making the decision to commit is the
person who will Financially benefit
from the commitment — the head of
the hospital.”
The affair spurred interest else
where. The New York-based Inter
national League for Human Rights
reported to the United Nations in
1984 that 80 percent of the patients
in private Japanese hospitals were
Private hospitals treat 85 percent
of Japan’s mental patients.
i iglus advocate Totsuka and his sup
porters claim many hospitals have
not complied, many patients have no
money to make calls, and their mail
continues to be censored.
Dr. Kunihikb Asai, vice-director
of this prestigious hospital 43 miles
southeast of Tokyo, said that only
about a fifth of the hospitals have so
far complied. He agrees in general
with Totsuka’s demands for re
forms, saying almost half of Japan’s
mental patients now confined
should be handled as outpatients.
month monthly for abed —aft
■TM Fme
■heduled
lion of fees in the West — mantt— u
is struggle to meet exptnst iesn<)
solutions
The p resstire to keep patiet
hospitalized too long, he said,oil
comes from relatives who ladi
time or space to care for them
home, and from patients whothei
selves shrink from becoming ah
den on their families. Some [ami
also bow to pressure from neighb
to “do the best thing" by sendi
awav sick members, he says.
In response, the Health and Wel
fare Ministry asked hospital direc
tors last October to install pay tele
phones in all locked wards. But
But he disputes the charge that
hospitals and doctors are making
large profits by confining patients.
He says that psychiatrists’ salaries av
erage only about $3,012 a month,
and with patients paying $1,024 a
“Family tolerance for the ment
ill and senile has become vend
because the new nuclear famih
longer has the energy or capa®
care foi them," Asai says. “Wed —itcha
cure the disease,
the family.”
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