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.