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.