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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 1986)
Tlw4 &M D 1 lie Battalion 33 No. 44 USPS 075360 14 pages College Station, Texas Thursday, October 1986 nterpole rise at 4:03 today Several hundred Texas A&M itudents are expected to gather to- jayln Duncan Field at exactly [lOip.m. to raise the centerpole hr the annual Aggie bonfire. For four weeks, hundreds of tggics have pushed aside their egular social activities to cut and lauhmore than 6,000 logs for the :vem. With the centerpole in ilace, construction of the three- tory bonfire can begin. The bonfire, recognized by the iiiifiiess Book of World Records s the largest in the world, will be glued Nov. 25 at “dark-thirty” 50 minutes after dark). jjr.idition dictates that if the enirpole remains standing past lidlight, the Aggies will defeat he Texas Longhorns. M reports enrollment gain for '86 University News Service Texas A&M reported the irgest enrollment increase flong Texas public universities lis fall and was the only one of the jurlargest to have a gain. Flutes compiled by the Texas lollege and University System Pollinating Board placed &M' < ntollment at 3 1,943, lt>i n inti ease of 887 over the pre- iouyvear. [ A&M officials attributed a pot ion ihl the hike to an increase in ladiiaie enrollment. More than i,000 graduate students now itudfat A&M. The Coordinating Board re torted that overall college enroll- tient is up 2.2 percent with [67,Si8 students taking classes his fall in community colleges, bur-year colleges and universi- p.The largest increase was at [ie community college level. y Bk’im ' < Life In The Bike Lane Photo by Greg Builey A&M students put the new bike lanes on Ireland Street near the Blocker Building to good use in between classes Wednesday. The bike lanes were painted Tuesday. Some students, however, continued to ride in the the traffic lane. Government opens trial for captured pilot MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — A government prosecutor Wednesday opened the case against U.S. mercen ary Eugene Hasenfus by presenting documents found after Sandinista troops shot down his Contra supply plane. The prosecutor, Ivan Villavicen- cio, handed evidence one piece at a time to the court secretary, including a card Nicaraguan authorities say gave Hasenfus access to restricted areas of Ilopango military airport in El Salvador. Villavicencio also asked that the court view the videocassette of an in terview Hasenfus gave to Mike Wal lace on the CBS program “60 Mi nutes.” The program, translated into Spanish, was shown on Nicaraguan television. Hasenfus said in the interview that he believed he was working for the U.S. government when he made the supply runs. A book of names, addresses and telephone numbers of former crew members of Air America, which Hasenfus said in the interview was a CIA airline that he worked for in Southeast Asia, also was entered as evidence in the court. Neither Hasenfus nor his Nicara guan lawyer, Enrique Sotelo Borgen, was in court. Presentation of evi dence by the prosecution and de fense to the special political tribunal trying the first American captured in Nicaragua’s T'/a-year war was to last eight to 12 days. Hasenfus’ lawyer told the Associ ated Press in a telephone interview that once the prosecution presents its case, the tribunal has to notify him in writing so he can respond in writing. It was not clear whether he would be allowed to present defense argu ments in person. Hasenfus, a 45-year-old former Marine from Marinette, Wis., is charged with terrorism, conspiracy and violation of public security. If convicted by the three-member tri bunal, he could face up to 30 years in prison. Griffin Bell, a former U.S. attor ney general who is acting as an advis er to the Nicaraguan lawyer, left Wednesday to prepare the defense after Sandinista authorities barred him from seeing Hasenfus. Bell said he would return Sunday. Reynaldo Monterrey, the tribun al’s president, said on the govern ment Voice of Nicaragua radio that Hasenfus’ lawyer could have 50 advisers if he wished, but only Sotelo Borgen could see evidence presented in the case. The card, which purportedly gave the captured mercenary access to res tricted areas of Ilopango, was num bered 4422, was made out to Hasen fus and bore the Salvadoran air force emblem. Issued July 28 with an expiration date of Jan. 28, 1987, the card read “Group: USA” and “Specialty: Advis er.” On the reverse, under “Res tricted areas,” was a list of numbers. Hasenfus has said that he partici pated in 10 arms drops to the U.S.- backed rebels from bases in El Salva dor and Honduras and that the oper ations were coordinated by the CIA. Tons of arms were stored at Ilo pango, then shipped to the rebels, known as Contras, who are fighting the leftist Nicaraguan government, he has said. Hasenfus parachuted from the burning C-123 when it was shot down Oct. 5 and was captured a day later in southern Nicaragua. Wallace B. Sawyer of Magnolia, Ark., American William Cooper and a third crew member died in the crash. Among other evidence Villavicen cio submitted were what he described as flight documents from the plane, an Arkansas fishing license made out to Sawyer, a business card from Cen tury 21 real estate company in the name of Hasenfus’ wife, Sally, and Sawyer’s and Hasenfus’ U.S. drivers licenses. In Washington, the State Depart ment contended that Hasenfus has been denied due process. oviet viewer: ilm on Stalin List ‘stunning’ DSCOVV (AP) — The cinematic acker of the season is an allegory of llin terror and its effect 50 years fir, Its release was delayed by cen ts for two years. “I’ve never seen anything like it in ) life.” a middle-aged Moscow imaiisaid Wednesday. “You can’t /it'sigood film. It’s just stunning.” tij§W>vie is called “Pokayaniye” onfession) and was made for televi- >n ill Georgia, Stalin’s native re- iblic. Neither Stalin nor his feared chief secret police, Lavrenti Beria, is tttioned by name, but no Soviet dience could mistake the subject dthe final message that the coun- ! has yet to address — Stalinism and conse<|uences. It took 30 years for the film to be tde. Nikita S. Khrushchev denounced din in 1956, three years after his ath, and the dictator’s name dis- peared from public places. His dy was removed from the Lenin ausoleum on Red Square and tied at the Kremlin wall. “Confession” opens in a Georgian then. A middle-aged woman is Ling cakes. \fter she reads of the death of a ty official named Varlan, who re- ibles Beria, the action switches to dan’s burial and ensuing events, disbody is dug up three times and tosited in his family’s garden. The ve robber is caught and turns out be the woman who was baking es. ihe defends herself at the trial by ailing her childhood under the e of Varlan, a figure clad in black h a Hitler moustache and Beria’s ce-nez and bulging neck. Harlan befriends the girl’s father, artist who arouses suspicion when demands an electric power station removed from a church converted the atheist government. He is arrested and taken away. His wife and daughter join many other women anxiously awaiting news of vanished relatives, but an impersonal voice intones: “Transferred. No address.” A demented woman screams, “Just tell me he is dead! Tell me he is dead!” The frantic heroine and her mother hear that names and addres ses of prisoners are etched on logs at the railway station. They inspect the logs in vain. Another woman, finding her rela tive’s address, caresses it as she would a child. The girl plays with wood shavings as she watches a machine make pulp of the logs that have come to symbolize the prisoners. A surreal court complete with a blindfolded woman holding the scales ofjustice is then shown judging her father. After other friends disappear, the girl’s mother is seized. The flashback ends with the screams of the women as they are separated. Back in the present, the woman tells the court she will dig Varlan up again if she is freed, because “to bury him is to hide what he did.” Varlan’s son, frightened by the dis closures, tries to have her committed to a mental hospital. The son’s own son, symbolic of Soviet youth who know little of Stalin’s terror, is horri fied by what his grandfather did. “Times were different then, it was a difficult time,” his father says. “Your grandfather never killed any one with his own hands.” The grandson commits suicide. His father exhumes Varlan’s body and hurls it into a ravine. At the end comes the revelation that all the action has been a fantasy of the cake baker and society still has not dealt with Stalinism. Academy of Sciences calls for commission on AIDS WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Academy of Sciences, lamenting “woefully inadequate” federal programs to cope with America’s new health threat, cal led Wednesday for creation of a National Commission on AIDS. The prestigious academy, in a major report on the increasing problems of acquired immune de ficiency syndrome, said the only way to avoid a health catastrophe in this country is to launch “perhaps the most wide-ranging and intensive efforts ever made against an infectious disease.” A panel of experts convened by the academy said the nation should be spending about $2 bil lion annually by 1990, most of it new federal money, in a multi pronged effort to thwart the dead ly disease. Research into the nature of the viral disease, treatments and vac cines should get $1 billion a year by the end of the decade, said Dr. David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate who was co-chairman of the study. “Our committee believes that sufficient areas of need and opportunity exist to quadruple the 1986 AIDS research funding by 1990 to about $ 1 billion in new ly available funds,” Baltimore told a news conference. “We empha sized that these funds must be new appropriations, not funds re directed from other health and re search efforts.” An additional $1 billion a year — mostly federal money but with substantial contributions from state and local governments, in dustry and private sources — should be spent on education and public health programs, said Balti more, director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass. These programs would include sex education in schools, efforts to get people at high risk of getting AIDS to change their sexual habits, blood screening to identify those infected with the AIDS virus, rehabilitation for drug abusers, and testing the idea of providing disposable syringes to addicts who refuse treatment, the panel said. Proposition 2 Proposal would require bill titles to apply to subject By Dawn Butz Staff Writer Texas Railroad Commissioner Clark Jobe says he is worried that the Leg islature, by writing an unclear synop sis of a proposed amendment on the ballot, is trying to trick the press and voters into taking the headlines off bills and into removing the courts’ ability to look over the shoulder of the Legislature. But the sponsor of Propositon 2 contends that the measure will pre vent bills from being struck down by the courts for legal technicalities con tained in their captions. Jobe is fighting against the prop osed amendment, which will be sum marized on the Nov. 4 ballot as: “The constitutional amendment requiring each house to include in its rules of procedure a rule that each bill con tain a title expressing the bill’s sub ject, and providing for the con tinuing revision of state laws.” Jobe contends that the wording on the ballot is deceiving. He says what it doesn’t tell you is that by requiring each house of the Legislature to have such a rule, they’re taking it out of the actual text of the constitution, making the Leg islature the solejudge. In effect, it’s a repeal of the caption rule that’s in the constitution. But nowhere in the bal lot caption do you find any sugges tion that they’re taking away the court review or that they’re taking this provision out of the constitution and putting it in the rules of each house, he says. “People see it on the ballot and say, ‘Oh yeah, both houses of the Legisla ture ought to have a rule that says there ought to be a description of the bill,’ ” he says. “That caption is a sham.” “Sure, everybody is for that, but I don’t think everybody is for taking away the courts’ power to review.” The caption rule Jobe refers to dic tates that there be only one subject addressed in a bill, and that subject must be expressed in its caption. It also states that if a bill containing sub jects not included in its caption be comes a law, the entire law may be declared void. The amendment would take the caption rule out of the constitution and, Jobe says, strip the courts of their power to review bill captions for fair notice. “Apparently the Legislature just kind of views this as bureaucratic paper work, but it’s really not,” Jobe says. “It’s an important safeguard.” However, state Sen. Bob Glasgow, D-Stephenville, the sponsor of the amendment, says that a constitution al provision limiting a bill to one sub ject already exists and that the pro posed amendment is designed to re move the rule stating that just be cause a bill’s caption contains an error, the entire bill is unconstitu tional. Glasgow says bills are often struck down because of technicalities in their captions. As an example, he re lates a case involving the drug penal code. In 1984 the Court of Criminal Appeals struck down a substance code as unconstitutional because they didn’t feel the caption gave fair notice of the law, Glasgow says. So for a year, until we revised the codes in 1985, we were without the code. We’re trying to keep the bills we pass now from being struck down in 10 to 20 years. Glasgow says Jobe’s assertion that this proposition would authorize the Legislature to put all sorts of matters into one bill is incorrect. You can’t do that in Texas anyway, Glasgow says. The constitution says only one subject per bill. Glasgow says the caption rule gives no definition of what a caption should include. He says the captions are written by staff members, and that many times erroneous captions are the results of honest mistakes. Nobody intentionally tries to write erroneous captions, he says. If they did, that would be a violation of the rule of germaneness. Rules of germaneness exist in the Legislature to ensure that all subjects included in the bill are pertinent to that specific bill. Jobe says the proposition would hurt the media’s attempts to cover legislative actions effectively. The capital press corps relies heavily on captions to determine which bills to cover, Jobe says. Bills are posted for action by their cap tions, both in committees and on the floor. But Glasgow says he doesn’t think the press evaluates the importance of a bill on the basis of its caption. Nobody that I know of that knows anything about the legislative process reads the captions to determine what’s in a bill, he says. Glasgow says each bill is presented with a bill analysis — a description of the old law and what the new law would do. He says most people use the bill analysis as a reference to what a bill includes.