Friday, January 23, 1987AThe Battalion/Page 3
State and Local
"Prairie View students told dream
of change should be daily goal
1
By Sheryl Taylor
Reporter
The celebration of Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.’s birthday was
Monday, but his dream of social
change should be a daily goal for
everyone. This was the major fo
cus of Yolanda King’s speech at
Prairie View A&M University.
Speaking to a full house at the
university King, the daughter of
the civil rights activist, said “the
dream of eliminating racism that
is still present in society is a
dream that we must not let be de
ferred.”
She feels that many people
have emerged partially out of
poverty and have become “laid
back,” forgetting that the civil
rights movement inspired other
movements to bring about
change.
“The civil rights movement
wasn’t a mirage or just a television
show,” King said. “It was live in
living color.”
King emphasized that the
greatest miracle of the 20th cen
tury was seeing President Ronald
Reagan sign the bill proclaiming
Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday
a national holiday.
She said that the priorities of
our government are warped be
cause they place more emphasis
on defense than education.
There are people that cannot
read or write but the government
insists on spending a billion dol
lars a day on defense, she said,
and the “fear of it all is that we
still don’t feel safe.”
King said that even though we
may think that the Jim Crow era
is dead, in actuality he is still
around “alive and kicking,” as
was demonstrated in the For
sythe, Georgia protest march and
the killing of three black men in
Queens, New York.
In the final analysis King feels
that the root of today’s problems
is not racisim, but greed. “Greed
is a perverted and excessive de
sire to be number one,” which is
embedded in the psyche of hu
manity, she said. “We can not af
ford to sit around and hope that
some one will save us. . . . We
need to get up and stop sitting on
our apathy.
“We can build a world where
people can live as brothers and
sisters. To live without my fa
ther’s dream would be a night
mare and we must not let the
dream be deferred.”
At the close of the program the
entire audience joined hands and
sang the spiritual song “We Shall
Overcome.”
Yolanda King is a producer,
lecturer, actress and director of
cultural affairs of the Martin Lu
ther King Center for Nonviolent
Social Change. She is also co
founder of the performing arts
company Nucleus, which is de
voted to promoting positive en
ergy through the arts. She at
tended Smith College in
Northampton, Massachusetts,
where she received a B.A. in
theatre and African-American
studies.
Texas officials fear
prison admissions
will force closing
A&M grows despite lack of state funds
University expansions continuing
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By Carolyn Garcia
Staff Writer
Texas A&M University is growing by leaps and
junds. Leaps and bounds? How about expan-
kions and buildings.
In a time when the state is strapped for funds
and anxiously searching for a way out of its fi-
tancial dilemma, A&M is managing to build, ex
pand and remodel. It has been able to do so be
cause its building funds come not from the state
budget but from a state endowment.
The University draws money from the Avail
able University Fund, which is the income gener-
ated by the Permanent University Fund. The
TUF money comes from an endowment of land
in West Texas.
Dan Whitt, assistant vice chancellor for Facili
ties Planning and Construction, said nine major
jrojects are in the works.
One of these projects, the new chemistry
auilding, is scheduled for completion in March.
he nearly $18 million facility will not replace
Ithe old chemistry building, Whitt said, but will be
lused primarily for research. The old building
will be renovated a wing at a time for classroom
and laboratory use.
The first of the three wings to be renovated is
under design and the renovation should run ap
proximately $3.6 million, Whitt said.
He said employees of the University’s physical
plant currently are moving into their new $6.9
million facility.
Also, the $4.4 million renovation of the Hal-
bouty Geosciences Building should be finished in
June, while the $15 million engineering building
for the Texas Transportation Institute and De
partment of Civil Engineering is scheduled to be
completed by September.
A $1.7 million renovation of the Veterinary
Medicine Complex is under way and should be
wrapped up by next month.
The departments of Horticulture and Forest
Science are scheduled to get four new green
houses with a total price tag of $500,000, and the
A.P. Beutel Health Center is being expanded
and remodeled and should be finished this
month, Whitt said. Unlike the above projects, this
$2.2 million construction job is being financed by
health center funds from student fees, he said.
And Food Services’ reserves are paying out al
most $5 million for the rehabilitation and im
provements for Duncan Dining Hall.
Separate from these projects was the removal
of asbestos from the Memorial Student Center
during the holidays.
Ben Woods, Physical Plant engineering and
design supervisor, said the asbestos was detected
when workers went to make repairs in the ceiling
of the MSC .
The 60,000-square-foot area was cleared of the
asbestos to prevent workers from having to deal
with it. Woods said there is no state or federal law
requiring the University to strip all its buildings
of the suspected cancer-causing agent.
The asbestos removal, paid for from Univer
sity center funds, cost $450,000, and Woods said
there is no plan to remove asbestos from other
buildings until workers are faced with it.
“As they (workers) deal with these buildings,
they will have to deal with it,” Woods said.
HUNTSVILLE (AP) — Texas
prison officials feared a large num
ber of new inmates admitted Thurs
day would push the system beyond a
court-ordered population cap and
force prison doors shut for the sec
ond time in a week.
At least 190 inmates were ex
pected to be admitted Thursday,
while only 65 were known to be re
leased, Department of Corrections
spokesman Charles Brown said.
Thursday’s deliveries included
prisoners from the state’s most pop
ulous counties of Harris, Dallas,
Tarrant and Bexar.
“We’ll probably be OK today,”
Brown said. “But tomorrow we’ll
probably be in the same posture as
we were last Friday.”
Prison officials closed the doors to
new inmates last Friday after the
prison population exceeded the 95
percent limit set by the Legislature
to avoid overcrowding in the na
tion’s second-largest prison system,
behind California.
Paroles over the weekend helped
reduce the population, allowing offi
cials to reopen Monday. Since then,
however, the population has crept
back toward the limit.
Monday’s count totaled 38,238 in
mates, or 94.68 percent of capacity.
By midnight Tuesday, there were
38,250 inmates, or 94.72 percent of
capacity. That was I 14 inmates short
of the 95 percent limit of 38,364
prisoners.
Wednesday, the count rose to
94.80 percent, or 38,288 inmates,
just 80 short of capacity.
The results of Thursday’s admis
sions and departures would be
known midday Friday.
The capacity limit was set in 1983
after a federal judge ordered offi
cials to take steps to reduce crowd
ing.
U.S. District Judge William
Wayne Justice, who ordered sweep
ing reforms in Texas prisons in
1981, already has issued a contempt
order against the corrections depart
ment, saying the agency failed to live
up to agreements made in 1980 to
improve inmates’ living conditions
and staffing in the prisons.
The judge gave the prison system
until March 3 1 to meet the standards
or risk fines of up to $800,500 a day.
The board said it would appeal
the contempt order.
Feathers fly
over new plan
for bordello
LA GRANGE (AP) — Feathers
are ruffled again over the notorious
La Grange Chicken Ranch, whose
spectacular closing in the early 1970s
was immortalized on stage and film
in “The Best Little Whorehouse in
Texas.”
The flurry this time is sparked by
a plan to commemorate the famous
bordello by selling of 45 million
square-inch plots of ground around
the original site, by building a mu
seum to tell its history and by staging
an annual “Chicken Fest” on Memo
rial Day.
The chamber of commerce is en
dorsing the plan while the city coun
cil and the La Grange Ministerial As
sociation are hot in opposition.
The two latter groups are urging
residents to join in “openly and
strongly opposing this blight on our
homes, our families and the genera
tion to come.”
Fayette County Commissioner
Dan Beck said the commissioners
have not taken a stand on the issue
and he has no problem with the pro
ject as long as it is legal and con
ducted with dignity.
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Cambridge
Buskers —
What do they know
about music?
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Come try our Authentic Mexican food
and experience: outdoor patio dining,
our own tortilla machine on display,
making fresh tortillas daily, and a
fully stocked bar with margaritas.
■
4501 Texas Ave. • Bryan • (409) 846-3696
Sun.-Thurs. 11 AM-Midnight
Fri. & Sat. 11 AM-1 AM
"The music is irresistible, the playing first class"—
RECORD WORLD
The MSC Opera and Performing Arts Society (MSC OPAS) presents the irresist
ible Cambridge Buskers Thursday, January 29 in Rudder Auditorium at 8 p.m.
Michael Copley and Dag Ingram were Cambridge University students who
began their career as street musicians (buskers) playing classical music to
earn train fare. Since busking is illegal in London, they were arrested. Since
then they have played the concert halls of the world in order to live outside
the confines of jail.
Hear them for yourself! Dag Ingram plays solo on the piano accordion and
Michael Copley, flutist, comprises the rest of the orchestra (33 other wind
instruments) — sometimes with more than one instrument in his mouth at
a time! The San Francisco Examiner calls them "astonishing musicians!"'
This delightful performance will surely sell out. Reserve your seats today!
Tickets are on sale at the MSC Box Office, 845-1234. VISA and MasterCard
accepted.
MSC Opera and Performing Arts Society
Memorial Student Center • Texas A8fM University • Box J-l • College Station TX 77844-9081