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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 22, 1987)
The Battalion ^2 No. 82 GSPS 045360 16 pages College Station, Texas Thursday, December 22, 1987 Jyto dite reported j) negotiations >ver hostages F.II.UT, Lebanon (AP) — Angli- Clurch envoy Terry Waite has ■eeting in a secret place with appers who hold two Americans age, one of his escorts said Ineiday night, more thati 24 Rtfter Waite dropped out of t. Kcond West German disap- H, apparently abducted. 4r. Waite is having a meeting the hostage-holders,” said Jihad airi, spokesman for Walid Jumb- i Druse militia, which is responsi- olWaite’s security, not her Druse official, speaking condition of anonymity, said te would be allowed to “see and 'erse ’ with American hostages ry Anderson and Thomas Su- land during his talks with the ors fait was seen leaving the seaf- ■viera Hotel in the Ein Mreis- residential district in a jeep at H.m. Tuesday. He has made ral trips to Beirut seeking free- i for hostages. he personal emissary of Arch op of Canterbury Robert Runcie escorted by three Druse body- rds, who returned half an hour ahairi showed up at the Riviera :30 p.m. Wednesday, 18 hours «■ Waite left for the second round ilkswith Islamic Jihad. H pro-Iranian Shiite Moslem ip says it holds Anderson, chief ale East correspondent of the tciated Press, and Sutherland, acting dean of agriculture at the American University of Beirut. “Like all previous Waite outings, he will call and we send the escort to pick him up and bring him back to the hotel,” Zohairi said. He would not reveal the meeting site. An anonymous telephone caller to a Western news agency in Beirut said Wednesday that a second West German was kidnapped overnight in Moslem west Beirut. “We kidnapped last night German national Alfred Schmidt in the vicin ity of the Summerland Hotel,” the caller said in Lebanese-accented Ar abic, then hung up. Abductions of West Germans are believed to be linked with the arrest of a Lebanese man in West Germany and the U.S. request that he be ex tradited and tried for the 1985 hi jacking of a TWA jetliner. In Washington, Attorney General Edwin Meese III predicted that the extradition of Mohammed Ali Ham- adi would go ahead despite the ab ductions of West Germans. A Summerland Hotel spokesman said Schmidt, 46, an engineer for the large electronics manufacturing company Siemens, checked into the seaside hotel in Beirut’s suburban Jnah district Jan. 15. He left the hotel Tuesday morn ing “and has not returned,” said the spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Hop To It Photo by Tracy Staton A professional art mover and several A&M Physical Plant workers hoist these sculptures of frogs onto an overhang at the Harrington Classroom Building. The sculptures are part of an exhibit which will be on display until May 4. See related story, page 3. arents of murdered CS resident sn Je magazine over gun-for-hire ad By Olivier Uyttebrouck I Scnioi- Statt' Writer ftei College Station resident ■ Kay Black was murdered , 211, 1985, an issue of Soldier of 57^ ;une magazine was found in the home, with the following clas- —""datlvertisement circled: HCEx-Marines, ’Nam vets, weapons I'^aaljsts, seeking high-risk assign- its in U.S. or overseas.” ■three-line, “personal” adver- Bent allowed Sandra Black’s hus- '9 rar d, [Robert V. Black, to get in :h with killer John Wayne ilOOpnrn, a former marine from I* f r gi a now serving a life sentence rW three hired killings — Sandra j.OOp'k’s among them. he ad is also the subject of a 7;00p7-5[rnillion lawsuit filed in Hous- fetieral court Jan. 7 by Sandra :k’s parents, Marjorie and Glenn , ann and 17-year-old son, Gary ,ne Black, all College Station res- tT«s. JVlHEimann’s lawyers say the cou- ^jowa^ts more than just cash com- ^S^lsation for their daughter’s death, ston attorney Ron Franklin says hefty $100 million in punitive ages demanded by the suit is enough to put Soldier of Fortune out of business. “It’s unlikely that it will be settled out of court,” said Franklin, who ex pects the case to reach the trial stage within eight months. “One of the goals that Sandra Black’s family has is to remove Soldief of Fortune mag azine from the newsstand. They want a judgment large enough to put them out of business.” The attorneys say no laws on the books specifically forbid a publica tion from running gun-for-hire ad vertisements. The backbone of the lawsuit resides with the Texas wrongful death law, which makes a person or company responsible for a person’s death if negligence can be proved, Franklin says. Bryan attorney Travis Bryan III, also representing the Eimanns, says he is confident Soldier of Fortune can be proven guilty of gross neg ligence in the shooting death of the 36-year-old College Station daycare center owner. “Our suit is based on just common law theory of negligence,” Bryan says. “We’ve claimed that the mag azine has in effect been publishing lists of hit men. Were it not for that, our clients’ daughter would be alive today.” The criminal case concerning Black’s murder has long since been resolved. Black, who hoped to collect on a $150,000 life insurance policy following his wife’s death and join his girlfriend in California, is now awaiting execution on Texas’ death row. The Eimann suit against Soldier of Fortune is the second in what may be a long line of murder-for-hire claims against the magazine and its Boulder, Colo.-based publisher, Omega Group Ltd. A suit pending in Arkansas was to have moved to the trial stage by now, Bryan says, but the trial date was postponed for reasons he couldn’t state. The Arkansas suit stems from the attempted murder of a Fayetteville student whose husband is charged with hiring a professional killer via Soldier of Fortune’s classifieds. The same man also has been im plicated in an October grenade at tack on a home in Pasadena, Texas. In this case, a dying Colorado widow has been charged with hiring the man through the magazine’s classi fieds to kill the Pasadena resident for stealing her life’s savings. A&M professor loses legs in tragic holiday accident By Christi Daugherty Staff Writer On the door of Dr. Stephen Dan iel’s office he posted a tribute to the sport he loved best. It’s a color pic ture of himself in a kayak, seemingly daring the white water to challenge his strength and ability. During the Christmas holidays, Daniel and a group of companions attempted to be the first group ever to successfully kayak the Rio Mezqui- tal in central Mexico, but became in stead the second to succumb to the river — this time with tragic conse quences. Daniel, 36, assistant head of the Texas A&M philosophy depart ment, is in stable condition in a Houston hospital after both his legs were amputated following a kayak ing accident. On Dec. 30, Daniel was on the river south of Durango, Mexico, when his kayak overturned on the river’s rapids, pinning him under neath. Jeff McDowell, a family friend who was not on the kayaking trip but is in close contact with the professor and his wife, said Daniel and one companion were taking some partic ularly rough rapids when Daniel’s' kayak flipped. By the time his com panions found him and pulled him to safety, he was unconscious and appeared to have a broken right leg. After he was given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Daniel began breath ing and was treated for symptoms of shock. When they felt they’d stabilized him, several members of the group went looking for help, some by way of the river, and others hiking. Since they were deep in rural Mexico, it was three days before the first group — the hikers —reached the city of Durango and arranged for a Drug Enforcement Adminis tration helicoptey to move Daniel from the shore of the Rio Mezquital to a city hospital. McDowell said that after Daniel was moved to the hospital, family and friends immediately began working to try and have him moved to Houston’s Hermann Hospital, but they encountered opposition from the Durango hospital, which wouldn’t let him go until the $2,000 bill was paid. McDowell said he then contacted 'acism in classrooms disturbs blacks at A&M Discriminatory acts ‘destroy zeal for school’ ice iitor’s note: This is the final Hent in a four-part' series on acks at Texas A&M. This part 'scribes the experiences several udents have had with racism at e University. |By Cathie Anderson | Special to The Battalion Students can sell a university ttei than anyone can, one K A&M official says, but ![ht now there aren’t many stu- ■ to sell A&M in the state’s ick community. But Barry Davis, an associate ■or of the Of fice of School stations, says this is slowly chan- nt ?£• JBere getting more and more ^j||r that now,” Davis says. “We’re ^^tting students whose dads went ■lool here. . . . We’re getting at kind of return now.” As Davis points out, however, ■ returns depend on whether fcks who come to the University ve good experiences. ^ ^^vo A&M seniors say they ■ A 4 ve ^ ost zea * l taey brought to *1 ■University as freshmen be- cause of discrimination leveled against them in the classroom. Morgan and Joan (not their real names) say they would never recommend this University to a black friend or relative because of what they’ve gone through here. Morgan, who came to A&M from a predominantly white high school with a history of racial troubles, says she has considered transferring several times, but each time she was convinced not to. Now, with only 18 hours re maining to graduate, she’s just trying to finish up. Morgan says it’s not A&M pro fessors in general but professors in her department who have given her the most trouble. She says only one incident of racism occurred outside her de partment. In this particular inci dent, Morgan says, a professor told her she must have “wander ing eyes” after she made the high est grade on the class’ first exam. “I made the highest grade, so whose test could I cheat off of?” she asks. Although she let that statement go, she says she couldn’t ignore what happened after her next exam. “I didn’t get an exam back,” she says, “so I went to the front of the room to tell him. I said, ‘I didn’t get my exam,’ and he said, ‘Just sit down.’ ” But Morgan says she ques tioned him two more times, and finally he told her she must not have taken the exam. She says students in the classroom said they had seen her there, and he then told her she must not have turned it in. She says the professor stood next to the door as students left the classroom and took their tests from them. Morgan says the pro fessor told her that he counted the exams after he arrived at his office and that only 41 of 42 ex ams were there. She says the pro fessor said his system of filing the exams ensured that none of the tests could be lost. “I went to my mentor,” Mor gan says, “and my mentor sug gested that I talk to my dean, which is what I did.” The professor was forced to give me a make-up exam, she says. “When I took the (make-up) exam,” Morgan says, “there were 10 problems, and they were all proofs. One of the proofs used Green’s Theorem, and it’s three pages long, and he expected me to just know it. This was the make-up test he gave me. “I looked at the test and told him, ‘I’m not taking this test. I don’t think this is fair. It’s not even comparable to the test the other students took.’ He said, ‘Well, it wouldn’t be fair to the other students in the class for you to take the same exam.’ I said I didn’t think it should be the same exam, but the material should at least be comparable. “I told him I wasn’t taking it and that I was going to the dean. I was going to take the test with me, but he said, ‘No, your test stays here because I don’t want another one of yours coming up lost.’ “I went to the dean, and he told me he had no control over what type of make-up test he (the professor) gave me. That really, really pissed me off.” Morgan says several other inci dents have occurred inside her department. She says she went to ask a pro fessor about partial credit for a problem since she had derived all the correct values but had made a mistake when punching them into her calculator. “I went up there (to the front of the classroom) and showed it to him,” she says, “and he said, ‘Well, I think that was just a stu pid thing to do.’ He called me stu pid in front of the entire class.” See Blacks, page 13 U.S. Rep. joe Barton who assured the hospital Daniel would pay the bill, and he was released. A Hermann Hospital spokesman confirmed that the hospital sent a private jet to Durango on Jan. 3, and Daniel was flown to Houston. Dr. Herman Saatkamp, head of the philosphy department and fam ily spokesman for the Daniels, said See Accident, page 13 Lewis names Rep. Smith to committee By Sondra Pickard Assistant City Editor Rep. Richard Smith, R-Bryan, on Wednesday was made a member of the House appropriations commit tee, an appointment his spokesman said would give Smith the opportu nity to better serve Texas A&M and the 14th District. He was one of several committee chairman appointed by House Speaker Gib Lewis, who also an nounced committee vice-chairmen and membership positions for the 34 congressional committees about to begin work in the 70th legislative session. Kent Martin, his staff director, said Smith was appointed chairman for budget and oversight for the nine-member House Committee on Elections. This automatically entitles Smith to membership on the House Committee on Appropriations. The appropriations committee is made up of all chairmen for budget and oversight found in most of the House committees, Martin said, each of whom submits his respective com mittee budget to the appropriations committee. The appropriations committee members then meet as a whole, debate and discuss the bud gets taken together, and send a com prehensive budget on to the Senate. Because only sophomore con gressmen are eligible for appropria tions committee membership, Mar tin said this is the earliest in Smith’s legislative career he could have been appointed to the influential and powerful committee. Martin said the committee carries the heaviest workload of any others, and that Smith will be meeting with it every day for the next three or four months. The appointment brings Smith much closer to the im portant budget-making decisions now heavily affecting higher educa tion in Texas, Martin said.