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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 23, 1987)
'Cull 1)15 , THE) VPfc E E )A.“ TheBattalion Vol.82 No.l 19 CISPS 045360 12 pages College Station, Texas Monday, March 23, 1987 Aquino orders military to crush enemies ionic 'I WON'T / IF ffl/U 1 ! BAGUIO CITY, Philippines (AP) — Speaking from a bomb-damaged grandstand, J President Corazon Aquino said Sunday her I peace policy has failed and she ordered the I military to crush Communist rebels and right- I ist plotters. “God knows I have tried,” she said at grad- ■ uation ceremonies at the Philippine Military 1 Academy. “But my offers of peace and recon ciliation have been met with the most bloody and insolent rejections by the left and the right.” She vowed to eliminate the foes of freedom here before leaving office, and complained that America was giving just advice instead of the aid it promised. The government-run Philippine News Agency said last week was the bloodiest of the year, with 108 people killed in more than 30 politically motivated incidents. Aquino spoke from a podium directly be neath the spot in the grandstand roof where a bomb exploded Wednesday, killing four peo ple and wounding 30 during rehearsal for the ceremonies. The speech was broadcast na tionwide from the academy in this mountain resort region 130 miles north of Manila. “To our enemies, let me say that nothing will intimidate this president,” she said to loud applause from military and government officials, foreign diplomats and hundreds of spectators. “Death holds no fear for us, neither for the commander-in-chief nor for the soldier in the line,” she said. “One nation, one armed forces, acting with the energy and direction of a single hand will smite the foe, on the left and the right, and permanently end all threats to freedom before my term as presi dent is over. This is my solemn oath.” Aquino’s 6-year-term as president began in February 1986 after a mostly peaceful civil ian-military revolution ousted then-president Ferdinand E. Marcos. In a speech later to commanders attending an academy alumni reunion, the president declared, “The answer to the terrorism of the left and the right ... is not social and eco nomic reform but police and military action.” Since taking power, Aquino has had to con front an 18-year-old Communist insurgency and at least five coup attempts attributed to right-wing military men. She criticized delay in delivering promised U.S. military and economic aid. “I have asked our (U.S.) military ally for the hardware to achieve these objectives, but they have given us advice instead,” she said. “So let us not hold our breath.” U.S. Assistant Defense Secretary Richard L. Armitage told a congressional panel in Washington last week that the Aquino gov ernment had no master plan to defeat the Communists. Investigators said the grandstand bomb may have been intended for the president at Sunday’s ceremonies. Manila newspapers said it was possibly part of a new coup plot. No arrests have been made, but the chief military investigator said an officer and three enlisted men were being questioned about the blast. The Communists, who have stepped up at tacks since the Feb. 8 expiration of a 60-day truce, denied any involvement in the bomb- ing. Military officials in Manila said earlier they put the armed forces on full alert nationwide as a precaution while Aquino was away from the capital. Corazon Aquino te| Inaction may bring court fines rv Idler J I i me raid. allS all of i Coca, k! i\e been itional o i ween 0 istian res DO worth | HUNTSVILLE (AP) — The gov ernor’s reluctance to allow early prison releases could bring additio nal court fines at a time when offi cials of the crowded system are in federal court attempting to show progress in carrying out reforms, Attorney General Jim Mattox said. “If the prison population exceeds 95 percent, we are subject to an ad ditional contempt citation,” Mattox said. “When we are in excess of 95 percent, it makes it more difficult to show that we are in good faith and attempting to take the necessary steps to come into compliance.” At issue is the Prison Management Act, a law that gives the governor the authority to reduce the prison sen tences for about 11,000 non-violent convicts during times of crowding within the Texas Department of Corrections. The Texas prison system, the na tion’s third-largest, has been operat- ™ ing under an open-shut cycle of be ing open two days and closed five. Prison doors have been closed to new inmates eight times this year be cause the population has exceeded 95-percent capacity. The management act was envi- | sioned as a safety valve to allow for the release of hundreds of inmates. I It came in response to U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice’s or ders that the state wasn’t doing enough to control its prison popula tion. The judge last week postponed fining the state $800,500 a day for not curbing crowded conditions and improving inmate living conditions. Gov. Bill Clements and other state officials disagree over the interpre tation of the law. Clements last week I refused over Mattox’s protests to call for the third early release of inmates when the prison population went over 95 percent. Although Clements supported the new law when it passed in the Legis- j lature last month, he now seems hes- I itant to call for massive early re leases, said Carl Reynolds, general counsel for the Senate Criminal Jus- | tice Committee. “The original intent was to create ! something that would allow the pris- | ons to get their capacity low enough I to address some of the contempt is- I sues,” Reynolds said. “For whatever i reason, the governor doesn’t want to 1 use early release to do anything but | getjust below 95 percent.” And In This Corner... Plate umpire Ron Stinsen holds back Arkansas player Andy Geiger while Arkansas players clear the bench. The con- a Saturday game. A&M lost all three games in its first con- Skeels, left, as umpire Rick Fieseler backs up A&M’s Gary frontation began when Skeels had to duck a Geiger pitch in ference series. Superconducting alloy may aid state economy HOUSTON (AP) — A scientific discovery by a University of Houston professor in February should bring not only a Nobel Prize but a boost for the Houston and Texas econ omy, a university official predicts. When UH physicist Paul Chu as tounded the world in February by raising the temperature of super conduction well beyond ,a point thought to be unreachable, new pre stige for Texas higher education was ensured, said Roy Weinstein, dean of natural sciences at the University of Houston. The only remaining question was who would reap the predicted huge financial benefits of the discovery, Weinstein said. A personal benefit should be a Nobel Prize for Chu, Weinstein said. But the dean expressed hope that Chu’s discovery also will aid Hous ton’s moribund economy and, per haps, the Texas economy as well. “We very much want it to be the source of a new industry here in Houston,” Weinstein told the Austin American-Statesman. “One of the products that will come out of this is magnets for parti cle accelerators and for levitating high-speed trains above their tracks,” he said. “And Texas already has a powerful magnet-design team, so we’re in a good position for that aspect of it.” UH officials already have applied for a patent on Chu’s process, but they also are hedging their bets. Weinstein said UH is working with the National Science Founda tion, the U.S. Department of Energy and several private companies he de clined to identify to turn Chu’s dis covery into a manufacturing ven ture. Chu’s discovery was termed “the most significant scientific discovery of the second half of this century” in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. He came up with a new alloy that lost all electrical resistence at cold rather than the ultracold tempera tures that previously were necessary. His alloy lost resistence well above See Alloy, page 12 .lacks iree care orite 'eM 3% Archaeology students excavate port Group works in Jamaica for credit By Rene Moody Reporter Their lectures are neither in the Har rington Classroom Building nor in the Blocker Building — they are in a hospital on the Jamaican coast. Their experiments are not done in Heldenfels Hall or in the Chemistry building — they are conducted 12 feet under the Caribbean Sea. They are Texas A&M students enrolled in the underwater archaeology field school in Port Royal, Jamaica. The group of 16 students is returning to Port Royal in June to continue excavation of sunken 17th century streets. Part of the prosperous English port sank into Kingston Harbor during an earth quake in 1692, says Dr. D.L. Hamilton, as sociate professor of anthropology. The Jamaican government, assisted by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology and A&M, is trying to uncover and preserve the sunken parts of Lime, Queen and High streets. The government hopes this, combined with replicas of 17th century buildings in present-day Port Royal, will become a ma jor tourist area on the southern part of the island, Hamilton says. Students in the program enroll in an in dividual anthropology research course (graduate or undergraduate level) and re ceive four to six credit hours. The students in the program are from all over the world, and most of them are graduate students, Hamilton says. Started in 1981, the field school runs for 11 weeks every summer. Afterwards, the underwater archaeologists return to A&M with such artifacts as liquor bottles, spoons, stoneware jugs and clay pipes, he says. This summer, the group will try to un cover the intersections where Queen and High streets cross Lime Street — the best preserved section of the city, Hamilton says. During the fall and spring semesters, students analyze and process the artifacts, record data and write papers, Hamilton says, enabling them to learn preservation techniques of artifacts in addition to exca vation procedures. After analysis, the artifacts are returned to the Jamaican government, and some are displayed in a museum in the Old Naval Hospital of Port Royal, the base of opera tions for the excavation program. For some people, the colorful history and location of the site create romantic images of an archaeologist’s work, Hamil ton says. “But it’s a lot of hard work,” he says. “We take about seven tons of equipment to Ja maica, and bring back three to four tons.” SMU students support board replacement DALLAS (AP) — Students re turning from spring break to South ern Methodist University found a new form of management in place after their Board of Trustees voted to scrap the Board of Governors. Trevor Pearlman, student body president, says Sunday he is excited about the prospects of new govern ance. Students will be picking up their studies with an interim executive committee replacing the Board of Governors, which Texas Gov. Bill Clements says presided over cash payments to football players. “There was not a system of checks and balances,” says Pearlman, a third-year law student from South Africa. “The new system gives a broad representation to a variety of university constituents. I think the problems that existed before will not occur.” Trustees, in their decision Friday, says they had no choice after Clem ents startled the state by claiming that at least half of the Board of Governors knew about improper payments to SMU football players and would phase them out gradually instead of stopping them cold. The interim committee is to run the university through May 8, when the SMU Board of Trustees is sched uled to consider a permanent man- See Students, page 12