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TheBattalion
Vol.82 No.l 19 CISPS 045360 12 pages
College Station, Texas
Monday, March 23, 1987
Aquino orders military to crush enemies
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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
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| 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
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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