™ I /-N L’ g 1 ?: d'-C CU « THeBattalion 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 |98cities 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.”