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The Battalion
Vol.82 No.l 10 CiSPS 045360 10 pages
College Station, Texas
Tuesday, March 3, 1987
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Photo by Dean Saito
On The Flying Trapeze
Chris Garhold, a junior marketing major from
Victoria, dives for a trapeze bar between two trees
as classmates make sure he doesn’t fall. The activ
ity is part of the venture dynamics class offered by
Texas A&M’s physical education department and
is intended to make students trust their classmates.
President withdraws
nominee for CIA post
WASHINGTON (AP) — Presi
dent Reagan on Monday withdrew
his nomination of acting CIA Direc
tor Robert M. Gates to head the spy
agency, saying confirmation hear
ings at this time “would not be in the
interest of the CIA or of the nation.”
In a statement read to reporters
by his new chief of staff, Howard H.
Baker Jr., Reagan said he withdrew
the nomination at Gates’ request.
Baker also read to reporters a let
ter from Gates to the president, say
ing, “It is apparent that there is
strong sentiment in the Senate to
await completion, at minimum, of
the work of the Senate Select Com
mittee on Iran before acting on my
nomination.
“I believe a prolonged period of
uncertainty would be harmful to the
Central Intelligence Agency, the in
telligence community and poten
tially to our national security.”
Baker said Gates met with the
president Monday afternoon.
Reagan’s statement said he ac
cepted Gates’ request “with great re
gret.”
Reagan said, “I have asked Bob to
continue serving as deputy director
of intelligence under a new direc
tor.”
Praising Gates’ 20-year record of
service to the CIA, he said, “I have
been impressed with the class he has
shown under the enormous pres
sures of recent weeks.
“At any other time, I am certain
that he would easily have been con
firmed without delay.”
Baker said selection of a new
nominee would be “an urgent item
on the president’s agenda” and some
names had already been discussed.
Gates met with Baker and Presi
dent Reagan’s national security ad
viser, Frank C. Carlucci, for about
30 minutes earlier in the day.
Before the meeting, Marlin Fitz-
water, assistant to the president for
press relations, said, “The president
stands behind his nomination of
Robert Gates to be CIA director. I
have seen the stories about Robert
Gates’ consideration of this matter,
but I don’t have any direct knowl
edge of his position.”
“It’s a matter for Robert Gates to
decide. The president made the
nomination and he thinks it’s a good
one, and I won’t have any comment
on that.”
Monday was Baker’s first day as
chief of staff. He was chosen by Rea
gan on Friday to replace Donald T.
Regan, whose handling of the Iran-
Contra crisis was sharply criticized in
the Tower report.
Senate Republican Leader Bob
Dole, R-Kan., said Sunday that
Gates’ nomination “could be in some
difficulty” if brought to a confirma
tion vote soon after the Tower re
port, and other senators have been
even more negative about Gates’
chances in the current climate.
Gates, 43, was picked to head the
CIA after William Casey resigned in
December because of brain cancer.
Arms control talks extended
following Soviet concession
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one
rivafe prison debate
robes more than costs
By Amy Couvillon
Staff Writer
The debate over private prisons in
Efexas includes ideological questions
as well as monetary issues, said a
[Texas A&M professor familiar with
he Texas prison system.
“There are issues other than just
lollars and cents that are raised in
his debate,” said Dr. Ben Crouch,
ssociate professor of sociology.
Prison Privatization
?arttwo of a fwo-parf series
tea" 1 '
many issues raised are purely the-
retical, he said.
“For example, should the govern-
ent pass on to someone else its so-
ial-control function?” Crouch
isked.
“Is that not a fundamental re-
|uirement of the state?” he said. “If
you privatize all that, are you not
Relegating something that is quintes-
sentially a function of a government,
not of private industry?”
Considering the often violent na
ture of the prison environment, an
ther important consideration is the
uestion of liability.
When a private corporation is
running a prison, and something
joes wrong, who can be sued?
“Those are questions that are of
ykal importance, particularly in a so-
:ety as litigious as this one,” Crouch
id.
“Ultimately, presumably, the state
■ responsible because the state con
victed them,” he said. “It has turned
over their care and custody to a pri
vate firm, but it does not cut them
hose; the state must still parole
them. So the state never cuts that ju
risdictional umbilical cord.”
1 Problems might arise in a future
situation where the private firm runs
the entire operation and the state
just pays the bills, Crouch said.
T'You could have the state saying,
I wasn’t there; I wasn’t involved in
the loss of that man’s hand, or that
man's life, or that fire or riot,’ ”
Crouch said. “But the state sent
lem there.”
In addition to the liability ques
tion, there also could be problems
th the transition from public to
private ownership.
■ “There are some political issues,”
ht said. “Prison personnel are con
cerned that if all this begins to be
come private, what will happen to
their jobs? There may be some strat
egic issues.
“Some prison managers may re
sist, not necessarily because they
think they may lose their jobs, but
because of a sense of expertise: Tve
been in this business for twenty
years. Who are you to come in and
take over?’ ”
There are some large corpora
tions such as RCA Corp., Crouch
said, that have diversified into some
states’ prison operations as part of
their many enterprises, and the fact
that a corporation could buy a
prison just like any other business
has the potential to rankle prison of
ficials.
“What large corporations are in
the business of doing is making
money,” Crouch said. “Some of
them own ball teams or whatever;
some of these apparently are getting
into the prison business.”
However, other corporations have
been formed solely for the purpose
of running prisons, he said. One ex
ample is the Corrections Corp. of
America, based in Nashville, Tenn.
Corrections Corp., less than a de
cade old, runs a county jail in Pan
ama City, Fla., he said, as well as
other operations around the nation.
The firm was one of several that put
in bids to build a 1,000-bed prison in
Harris County near Houston, he
said.
Charles Brown, a spokesman for
the Texas Department of Correc
tions, said TDC had consulted with
Corrections Corp. to discuss the pos
sibility of a privately-run Texas
prison, but that no decison had been
made.
“Privatization (in prisons) really
hasn’t been going on that long to see
the feasibility of it, or how cost-effec
tive it would be,” Brown said. “It’s a
viable option, but we would have to
look at it.”
A bill authorizing private Texas
prisons is now in committee in the
Texas House. Crouch said the bill
could serve to legitimize more exten
sive privatization of Texas prisons.
“I think in Texas, the reason
they’re having this bill is there is no
precedent for doing this,” he said.
“And it’s not possible for one person
to say, ‘Hey, let’s hire somebody to
keep these prisoners.’ We need an
open, representative debate on these
issues.”
Crouch explained that completely
turning over prison operations to
private industry is the extreme case,
and that there are many in-between
scenerios of privatization already be
ing used in Texas.
A frequent kind of privatization is
for services, Crouch said, such as
construction, where the state would
grant a contract to a private com
pany to build a prison, then pay the
company on completion of the pro-
ject.
“A strategy having the private
firm provide the financing and the
construction is speedier,” Crouch
said, “and may permit the state to
move more quickly than they would
be able to if they had to get voter ap
proval or float bonds.”
Contracting services out to private
See Prisons, page 10
GENEVA (AP) — American and
Soviet arms control negotiators met
in special session Monday, and the
Soviets presented Mikhail S. Gorba
chev’s new proposal to eliminate me
dium-range missiles in Europe.
Searching for a breakthrough in
the negotiations, the two sides
agreed to extend the talks indefi
nitely. U.S. officials in Washington
said the American side would re
spond by presenting a draft treaty to
remove intermediate-range missiles
now aimed at Soviet and European
targets.
Soviet officials said Gorbachev
made his new offer on Saturday in
an attempt to break the Geneva
deadlock. The proposal dropped a
Soviet demand that the United
States restrict its Star Wars program
before an arms control package
could be agreed on.
European governments generally
reacted favorably to the Soviet initia
tive but cautioned that they would
want to examine it closely before
moving toward banning Soviet SS-20
missiles and NATO’s U.S.-made
Pershing 2 and cruise missiles that
are now being deployed.
British Foreign Secretary Sir
Goeffrey Howe said, “We shall need
to look carefully at the fine print.”
The missiles that would be
scrapped under an agreement in
clude 316 U.S.-made cruise and Per
shing 2 missiles already deployed in
Western Europe. In all, 572 are to be
deployed.
On the Soviet side. Western offi
cials estimate that 441 medium-
range SS-20s have been deployed in
the Soviet Union. Gen. Sergei F.
Akhromeyev, Soviet chief of staff,
said on Monday that 243 of the SS-
20 missiles were aimed at Europe.
The Soviet proposal would elimi
nate medium-range missiles based in
Europe over the next five years, with
the Soviet Union keeping 100 mis
siles on its Asian territory and the
United States maintaining 100 on its
territory.
In Washington, the White House
welcomed the Soviet move. But
American officials said any
agreement would seek to protect
Western Europe with short-range
nuclear weapons and the Americans
would insist on verification to guard
against Soviet cheating.
Seven U.S. senators in Geneva
said they were optimistic about the
prospects for an agreement after
meeting with both the U.S. and So
viet delegations.
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., told a
news conference, “Each one of us is
more optimistic leaving than com
ing.”
But he said the negotiations will
be “tedious, and we all pray that the
next round will lead to a great deal
of progress so that drafting (of a
treaty) can begin in the summer.”
IRS official introduces
simplified W-4 form
WASHINGTON (AP) — The In
ternal Revenue Service, apologizing
for its confusing four-page tax-with
holding form, offered a slimmed-
down version Monday that will allow
half of all taxpayers to complete the
chore in 15 minutes.
“The Internal Revenue Service
has heard the reactions to the long
form — from members of Congress,
from the media and from individual
taxpayers,” IRS Commissioner Law
rence B. Gibbs told a news confer
ence. “We have not ignored what we
have heard.”
What the agency heard was that
the four-page W-4 released last No
vember was incomprehensible. The
IRS defended the form as meeting
Congress’ requirement for a W-4
that allowed taxpayers accurately to
match their withholding with actual
tax liability.
Accuracy is not enough if a form
is too complex to understand, Gibbs
said Monday, so the new two-page
W-4A gives up some accuracy to get
some simplicity. As a result, he cau
tioned, the latest form is more likely
than the four-page W-4 to result in
overwithholding, although average
refunds probably would be less than
in the past.
If the White House Office of
Management and Budget goes
along, the W-4A will be available to
taxpayers in mid-April, Gibbs said.
Campus presents physical challenge
A&M students live with handicaps
By Daniel A. La Bry
Staff Writer
While such tasks as pushing el
evator buttons and opening doors
often are thought of as trivial,
they can become major obstacles
for a handicapped individual.
To bicycle riders on their way
to class, sloped curve cuts are a
convenience. But for the wheel
chair-bound person, the curb cuts
are necessary to get across the
street.
A handful of Texas A&M stu
dents confront these problems
every time they go to class.
Laurie Marshall, a sophomore
general studies major from Dal
las, has been confined to a wheel
chair because of a nervous disor
der since she was in the eighth
grade.
Marshall says the main reason
she came to A&M was the
friendly atmosphere, but the ge
ography of the campus ran a
close second. After visiting seve
ral Texas colleges, she found
A&M to be one of the flattest and
most accessible for a handicapped
person in a wheelchair.
A Fish Camp counselor for
1986 and 1987, Marshall says she
has never let accessibility prob
lems stop her from doing any
thing.
But when it comes to visiting
friends in dorms, she usually re
sorts to a piggyback ride in order
to get to the proper floor, which,
she says, is more of an inconve
nience for her friends than for
Handicapped Students at A&M
Part one of a two-part series
her, but that they usually are
happy to oblige.
Since the dorms at A&M aren’t
equipped with elevators, those
wheelchair-bound often experi
ence access problems to upper-
level floors.
The first floors of Krueger and
Dunn halls have rooms equipped
for handicapped students. .Mar
shall says modifications in her
dorm room include wider doors,
a bigger bathroom, a modified
shower and lower light switches.
Doing what most people think
is a simple task can turn into quite
an amusing experience, Marshall
says. She can’t help laughing as
she explains how she tried to bal
ance books on her lap while
jumping for the elevator buttons
in the Harrington Classroom
Building.
Some isolated buildings on
campus are problems for hand
icapped students, but professors
usually relocate a class if a hand
icapped person is having trouble
getting to the class.
Marshall recalls having prob
lems getting to a psychology class
held in the Physics Building. Al
though the building has been
modified for handicapped stu
dents, she had to use a key-oper
ated wheelchair lift on the west
side of the building to access an
elevator which she then took to
an upper-level floor. Then she
had to wheel herself to the other
side of the building.
On the first day of class, Mar
shall arrived just as the class was
being let out, she says. The class
then was relocated to a more ac
cessible building.
The Handicapped and Veter
ans Services office in Hart Hall
reviews Marshall’s class schedule,
along with the schedules of other
handicapped students, and sends
letters to the appropriate instruc
tors informing them that a hand
icapped student will be attending
their classes. Any foreseeable
problem for the handicapped stu
dent is then worked out between
the student, the instructor and
the handicapped services office.
A common problem faced by
handicapped students in almost
all classes is taking tests. The
problem is especially great for
those who, like Marshall, don’t
have full mobility in their hands.
Marshall says it usually takes
her twice as long as other stu
dents to take an all-essay test, so
many of the handicapped stu
dents are allowed to take their
tests in special, quiet rooms in the
handicapped services office.
Overall, A&M’s handicapped
services seem to be up-to-date,
Marshall says, but a few things on
campus still bother her.
For example, to get a book on
the fifth or sixth floor of Sterling
C. Evans Library, Marshall either
See Handicapped, page 10