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Vol. 82 No. 61 CJSPS 045360 12 pages
College Station, Texas
Monday, November 24, 1986
quino fires Cabinet after failure of coup
1ANILA, Philippines (AP) —
President Corazon Aquino fired her
entire Cabinet, including controver
sial Defense Minister Juan Ponce
Emile, after the army foiled a coup
attempt Sunday by dissident officers
and political foes.
■\quino credited army chief of
staff Gen. Fidel V. Ramos with tak
ing “preventative measures against
the recklessness of some elements in
the military.”
Bhe warned that stern measures
would be taken if anyone tried to un-
ombing
ills 112
anians
^JlICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Iraqi
warplanes bombed two western Ira-
cities Sunday, killing 1 12 civil-
Iran reported. It vowed to re-
^^nte by shelling Iraqi cities.
confirmed it bombed the cit-
■|es. liakhtaran and Islamabad
^Krb. It said the targets were an air
]bas< an oil refinery and military
Scamps.
^■ran's official Islamic Republic
Agency said the attack killed
|98<ivilians and wounded others in
iBakhtaran , also known as
^^Bmanshah. It said 25 houses were
^^■troyed or badly damaged.
HRNA, monitored in Nicosia, said
Iraqi bombs killed 14 people and de-
^^Bryed eight houses in Islamabad
Ghprb, also known as Shahabad.
^■Var information headt]uarters in
.Tehran said Iranian forces would
TjBll Iraqi cities “in retaliation for
the savage Iraqi air raids,” IRNA re
ported.
Hi he Iraqi News Agency said
3 squadrons of Iraqi jets bombed the
^H>cities and left “tire targets on fire
and covered with smoke.”
■JjBlrhe state-run agency, monitored
in Nicosia, said two civilians were
BSHgunded by Iranian shelling Sunday
;in the city of Khanaqin 100 miles
northeast of Basra.
■The two sides have been at war
-since September 1980. Their battle
llaims can rarely be verified since
Ihecombatants do not as a rule allow
■ependent observers into war
zones.
dermine her nine-month-old gov
ernment.
The president also accused the
communist rebels, who have waged a
17-year insurgency, of showing no
interest in peace and said she would
end negotiations if a cease-fire is not
reached this month. Enrile and
other critics accused her of being
soft on the rebels.
Aquino spoke over national tele
vision.
Ramos issued a statement con
firming that politicians loyal to de
posed President Ferdinand E. Mar
cos, backed by “some elements in the
military,” had planned to set up a ri
val government. He said the situa
tion was under control.
He did not identify plotters or
mention Enrile. The defense chief,
who served under Marcos but
helped oust him last February, has
been increasingly critical of Aquino.
A senior government official said
the plot involved taking over the Na
tional Assembly, reinstating the pro-
Marcos National Assembly abolished
by Aquino and calling presidential
elections.
The official, who demanded ano
nymity, said more than 100 mem
bers of a military faction identified
with Enrile were in on the plot, with
the coup to begin at 2 a.m. Sunday.
The government learned of it at 10
a.m. Saturday, he said.
Troops loyal to Aquino sur
rounded radio and television sta
tions in Manila and elsewhere Satur
day, and tightened security at the
presidential palace.
On Sunday, after holding a
lengthy Cabinet meeting, Aquino an
nounced on television that she had
asked all Cabinet members to resign.
She said Enrile complied, and she
immediately swore in his replace
ment, Deputy Defense Minister Ra
fael Ileto.
Ileto, 66, later met with officers of
the Reform the Armed Forces
Movement, who, like Enrile, wanted
a tougher line taken against commu
nist insurgents.
“He (Ileto) asked for unity and we
said yes,” said Col. Gregorio Hona-
san, Enrile’s security chief.
Enrile refused to see reporters
who gathered outside his home at a
fashionable suburban village, but
sent out his daughter, Katrina.
She said Enrile “is taking it very
well,” and added, “We’ve waited for
this day for such a long time,” refer
ring to her father’s leaving govern
ment after more than two decades.
Ileto told reporters he did not
think there would be “a reaction”
from pro-Enrile soldiers.
Skinhead
A member of the TCU marching band performs
his rendition of “Farmers Fight” at the A&M-TCU
football game Saturday. Several of the musicians
Photo by Greg Bailey
donned rubber skull caps and yelled, “Hey, we’re
skinheads, too” while doing the yell. The Aggies
defeated TCU 74-10.
'tudent hurt in hit-and-run accident
By Mike Sullivan
Staff Writer
man who was hit by a car while he was driv
ing;! motorcycle on campus early Sunday morn
ing was listed in critical condition with a skull
frauure at Herman Hospital in Houston Sunday
night, Texas A&M’s director of security and traf
fic said Sunday.
Itfiob Wiatt said Richard H. Cutrer Jr., 21, was
hit on Bizzell Street while driving a friend’s 1985
nda motorcycle at about 1 a.m. Sunday by a
car driven by a high school senior from New
Braunfels.
JQuoting from the police report on the case,
|| Wiatt said the 17-year-old girl, who was visiting a
friend at A&M, was arrested and later charged
with driving while intoxicated and failure to stop
and render aid and was taken to the Brazos
County Jail at about 2 a.m.
fitnesses told University Police that a car
pulled out of Parking Annex 24 onto Bizzell
Street and ran into Cutrer, who swerved to avoid
the crash, Wiatt said.
Wiatt said the girl and her passenger, Deborah
Zimmerman, a 21-year-old student at A&M, did
not stop after they hit Cutrer, and University Po
lice had to locate them based on descriptions of
the car given by witnesses.
Wiatt said the girl drove to the parking lot by
Mosher Hall, and she and Zimmerman went to
Zimmerman’s dorm room in Krueger Hall.
“Based on witnesses’ descriptions of the car,
our officers found it and then located the girl
and her student friend,” Wiatt said.
He said the girls told officers that they knew
they had hit something but kept driving.
“They (Zimmerman and the girl) said they
heard ‘thump, thump, thump’ but they didn’t
know what it was and just kept on going,” Wiatt
said.
Wiatt said Zimmerman and the girl told offi-
HSE plans
to broadcast
Aggie bonfire
University News Service
The Aggie bonfire will have a
potential audience of a quarter of
a million viewers this year when
broadcast via satellite to a five-
state area on the Home Sports
Entertainment cable network.
H The broadcast, a cooperative
effort of HSE and Texas A&M’s
public television station, can be
seen by viewers in Texas, Arkan
sas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and
New Mexico who subscribe to
HSE, as well as by local viewers on
KAMU-TV, Channel 15. It will
aii at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
■ Crowds numbering up to
40,000 have been on hand at
Duncan Field to watch the blaze.
In addition to the actual lighting,
the hour-long HSE presentation
will include interviews with Head
Football Coach and Athletic Di
rector Jackie Sherrill, members of
the football team, students in
volved in building the bonfire
and various University adminis
trators.
Help may be around the corner
for chronic bores, scientists say
NEW YORK (AP) — Researchers
are studying an acute social disease
whose victims at one time or another
afflict almost everyone around
them: bores.
The scientists are looking at why
some people are boring, in what
ways they can be boring, and just
how boring they can get. They’ve
even established a “boringness in
dex.”
Among other things, their studies
suggest that, to those who have to lis
ten to them, people who complain
about themselves and mutter triviali
ties are worse than people who over
use slang or try too hard to be nice.
They also found that boring con
versation tends to include more
questions and utterances like “Uh-
huh,” with fewer statements of fact
or self-disclosure, than more inter
esting talk.
The experiments are among the
first in an area that could lead to
help for “chronically and excessively
boring persons,” the researchers
wrote in the November issue of the
Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology.
“We’re all boring sometimes and
we’re all interesting sometimes (but)
some people are more boring than
others,” said Mark Leary, assistant
psychology professor at Wake Forest
University in Winston-Salem, N.C.,
co-author of the report with three
students.
The work may sound tedious but
it’s “a first step in a whole new direc
tion that we need to know more
about,” said Harry Reis, psychology
professor at the University of Ro
chester in New York.
The experiments were based on a
survey of undergraduate students
and analyses of brief conversations
between undergraduates who had
just met.
More work will be needed to see if
the conclusions apply to other kinds
of people and situations, Leary said.
In one experiment, 42 students
suggested 210 tiresome things other
people do that bore them, which re
searchers distilled into 43 themes for
a second survey of 297 students.
That survey found that the most
boring behaviors were banality, such
as talking about trivial or superficial
things or showing interest in only
one topic, and “negative egocen
trism,” which essentially meant com
plaining about oneself and showing
disinterest in others.
The least objectionable behaviors
were “boring ingratiation,” or trying
to be funny and nice to impress oth
ers, and a mixture of distracting be
haviors such as going off on tangents
or overusing small talk or slang, such
as:
“Hey wow, man, this was far out,
it was too cool,” Leary said in a tele
phone interview.
“It gets a little old,” he said.
A second study focused on five-
minute conversations between 52
pairs of strangers.
Transcripts were reviewed by 12
undergraduates who rated a ran
domly chosen person in each con
versation for boringness. That per
son’s conversation also was studied
for grammatical form and commu
nicative intent, and the results com
pared to his “boringness index.”
You might get tired of people who
talk on and on and on, but the study
found that more boring people
tended to talk less. In addition, their
conversation tended to have higher
proportions of questions and of sim
ple acknowledgements that they
were listening, such as “uh-huh.”
“They were not reporting their
own feelings and attitudes and opin
ions as much as the less boring peo
ple were,” Leary said. And they
made fewer statements of fact, he
said.
Legislators seek
joint laboratory
for sea research
cers that they had been drinking at a local bar
and that they also had been drinking with some
friends at a friend’s house.
Wiatt said the A.P. Beutel Health Center am
bulance took Cutrer to Humana Hospital in
Bryan, and he was then taken to Herman Hospi
tal.
He said police still hadn’t determined where
Cutrer was from, and they hadn’t been able to
contact the owner of the motorcycle he was driv
ing late Sunday evening.
Betty Kolsta, a relative of Cutrer’s who was at
the hospital, said Cutrer is not a student at A&M,
but she said she thinks he was living and working
in the Bryan-College Station area.
Kolsta said Cutrer, who was not wearing a hel
met when he was hit, is unconscious and in an in
tensive care unit.
“It’s a live or die situation right now,” she said.
“We won’t know anything for the next 72 hours.”
By Mona Palmer
Assistant City Editor
and
Sondra Pickard
Senior Staff Writer
State Sen. Chet Brooks told the
Texas A&M Board of Regents Fri
day that he and other representa
tives from Galveston are working on
a proposal to create a “window to the
sea” laboratory and research insti
tute at Galveston.
The institute would be a consor
tium including the A&M University
System, the University of Texas Sys
tem and possibly other higher edu
cation components, he said.
He added that the response from
the Select Committee on Higher Ed
ucation has been favorable.
In a letter Brooks circulated to the
Regents, he said the Maritime Aca
demy mission at A&M at Galveston
must be preserved as a natural base
and resource for the new institute.
He added that the Galveston uni
versity could be a significant force in
the state’s economy but its under
graduate program must be strength
ened.
“Since 1981, there have been no
new course offerings, primarily be
cause of opposition of the Coordi
nating Board (of the Texas college
and university system),” Brooks said.
Brooks cited a new program, com
puter science for maritime studies,
that was approved by the Regents.
The Coordinating Board has not
even permitted the item to come up
on its agenda, he said.
Regent William McKenzie of Dal
las said the Galveston university is
having problems that can’t be ig
nored and cited decreased enroll
ment and roadblocks from the coor
dinating board. But, he said, the
Regents support the university and
want it to grow.
He agreed that a complete mari
time program won’t “cut the mus
tard” and that the university’s pro
gram needs to expand to include
other areas of study.
“There’s no thought by this board
to do away with the program,” he
said, “but we need to enhance it and
make it grow.
“We want to continue that school.
We have a solid investment down
there.”
After Brooks’ presentation, the
Planning and Building Committee
convened to discuss construction
projects for the University System.
Gen. Wesley E. Peel, vice chan
cellor for facilities planning and con
struction, addressed two projects
slated for the A&M campus.
A representative from a Houston
architecture firm introduced a pre
liminary design for the new Com
puter Science and Aerospace Engi
neering Building. The design was a
seven-floor building and included
an underground floor which would
house laser laboratories and wind
and water tunnels.
The total cost for the project was
estimated at $ 11.1 million.
Peel also addressed the Duncan
Dining Hall renovations which have
a projected cost of about $5 million.
The bid for the project was awarded
to Hill Constructors, Inc. of Hous
ton at a low bid of $4 million.
Duncan will close officially Mon
day at noon, he said, and will remain
closed until renovations are com
pleted next fall.
Peel assured the Board that the
project would be completed within
See Regents, page 12
Board nominates
first male since ’84
as Battalion editor
By Olivier Uyttebrouck
Staff Writer
Loren Steffy, Fall 1986 Opinion
Page editor, was nominated for Bat
talion editor for Spring 1987 and is
the first male to be nominated for
this position since 1984.
The Student Publications Board,
which is composed of three students,
three faculty members and an ad
ministrator, chose Steffy, whose
nomination must be Approved by
Texas A&M President Frank E.
Vandiver.
Steffy has been Opinion Page edi
tor for The Battalion for the last one
and one-half years. He was first
hired as a columnist in December
1984.
Steffy brings devotion to the job.
He’s always up at the newsroom —
talking to callers (usually irate letter
writers), typing something into a ter
minal, telling a story or combing
through one of the many publica
tions he reads.
Steffy replaces Cathie Anderson
on Dec. 11. He graduates in Decem
ber, but will take spring classes.
Steffy, who will serve as editor
through May, says he doesn’t think
any major changes are in order.
“I think that one of the problems
we always have is that everyone blus
ters into this position with sweeping
changes in mind,” he says. “I think
one of the best things that could
happen is that we didn’t have any
sweeping changes. I think there’s a
certain amount of continuity’you’ve
got to strive for.”
Loren Steffy
Steffy says that since five editors
will be leaving the paper at the end
of the semester, this continuity is
necessary.
“One of the problems is the turno
ver,” he says. “The way that always
manifests itself is that everyone
comes in and wants to change every
thing. I think we really just need to
tone up the things we already have
going for us — if you don’t build on
what you’ve already established, you
don’t make any progress.”
One of his criticisms of The Bat
talion is that there’s too much em
phasis on event coverage and not
enough long-term issue awareness.
“We might do a really good job of
covering things when they first hap-
we,, }# A y? u fyj° b of
Tonow-up, he said. That s some- ^ '
thing that I’d like to see improved.”