The Battalion
Vpl.82 No. 126 CSPS 045360 12 pages
Colleae Station. Texas
Wednesday, April 1, 1987
I Photo by Tracy Staton
I Mr. Bubble
I Nadine Clements, right, teaches three-year-old Phillip Brooks how to I uesday. (dements is selling the wands at the fair, which continues
I blow bubbles with a star-shaped bubble wand at the MSC Crafts Fair through today between the MSC and Rudder Tower.
Telephone preregistration to begin;
students warned to check for blocks
K By Daniel A. La Bry
r Staff Writer
■Touch-tone telephone preregis
tration for fall will begin Monday
■d continue through April 24. Pre-
1. ^fcistration for the first summer
and the 10-week semester will
^^^Bfrom April 27 to May 15.
■To prevent unnecessary delays, all
^^■idents preregistei ing lor fall and
■miner classes are encouraged to
B by the Pavilion starting today to
^^B^Bkesure they aren’t blocked.
^^■Lists will he posted in the Pavilion
1 by social security numbers in de-
sfcc nding order with the department
thai has the student blocked.
■ Donald Carter, associate registar,
id students on the block lists won’t
■ allowed to register. Since students
■ve only one day in which they can
prnegister, he said, blocks not
kjflBared before a student’s desig-
rated day will result in waiting until
■eopen registration period.
^■Students have from today until
■Heir designated registration day to
blocks to avoid the delay.
I ■ Starting Monday, pictures for stu-
■ pent I.D. cards will be taken in the
Pavilion from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the
■BBident’s convenience. Carter said.
Y I ■Although I.D. card pictures will
® be taken throughout the entire sum-
0k \ mcr, Carter said students taking
■sj them early would avoid the lines in
■■iftitgust. I.D. cards taken early will be
Sailed during the summer.
iHCarter said the telephone registra-
2
tion system, used for the first time
last semester, worked well and had
just a few minor problems. For a
university the size of A&M to imple
ment a system that worked so well
the first time is impressive, he said.
To increase the efficiency of the
system, the phone company changed
the exchange of the registration
number from 845 to 260. Last se
mester’s 845 exchange caused an un
expected overload for the phone
company because it is the same ex
change as University telephones.
Carter said the 260 exchange should
give better access to the telephone
registration system for all students
— both on- and off-campus.
At the suggestion of the phone
company, Carter said, the University
also has broken up the registration
schedule alphabetically to decrease
the number of calls per day and cut
down on the waiting time.
For summer registration, a lim
ited number of terminal operators
will be available in the Pavilion from
June 3-11 for students having prob
lems with the touch-tone telephone
registration and drop-add or who
have “raise limits.” Terminals will be
available from Aug. 24 to Sept. 4 for
problems with fall registration.
Detailed telephone registration
instructions can be found in the class
schedules for fall and summer.
Schedules are available Monday
through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5
p.m. at Heaton Hall.
Preregisfration schedule
Seniors
• April 6
• April 7
• April 8
Juniors
• April D
• April 10
• April 13
Sophomores
9 April 14
• April 15
• April 16
Freshmen
• April 17
• April 20
• April 21
1987 Fall Telephone Registration
A-G
H-O
P-Z
A-G
H-O
P-Z
AAT
H-O
P-Z
7 a.m. - 10 p.m,
7 a.m. - 10 p.m.
7 a.m. - It) p.m.
7 a.m. - It) p.m,
7 a.m. -6 p.m.
7 a.m. - 10 p.m.
7 a.m. -10 p.m.
7 a.m. -10 p.m.
7 a.m. - 10 p.m.
A-G 7 a.m. - 0 p.m.
H-O 7 a.m. - 10 p.m.
P-Z 7 a.m.-10 p.m.
• Graduate students
• May register at any designated time from April 6-21.
Fall 1987 Open Registration and Drop/Add
• April 22-23 7 a.m.-10 p.m.
• April 24 7 a.m. - 6 p.m.
1987 Summer Telephone Registration (First Term 8c 10-week)
• Graduate students April 27 7 a.m.-10 p.m.
Seniors April 28 7 a.m, - 10 p.m.
Juniors April 29 7 a.m. - 10 p.m.
Sophomores April 30 7 a.m. - 10 p.m.
Freshmen May 1 7 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Summer Open Registration and Drop/Add
May 2-15
7 a.m. - 10 p.m.
7 a.m. - 6 p.m.
7 a.m. - noon
• Monday-Thursday
• Friday
• Saturclay
June 1-4
• Monday-Thursday
7 am. -10 p.m.
Judge decides
Baby M lawsuit
in father’s favor
Surrogate contract upheld;
Whitehead vows to appeal
HACKENSACK, NJ. (AP) — A
judge awarded custody of Baby M to
her father Tuesday and stripped
surrogate mother Mary Beth White-
head of all parental rights to the
child she bore under a $10,000 con
tract.
In the nation’s first judicial ruling
on surrogate parenting, Bergen
County Superior Court Judge Har
vey R. Sorkow upheld the validity of
the contract on the grounds that just
as men have a constitutional right to
sell their sperm, women can decide
what to do with their wombs.
Immediately after William Stern
won custody in the landmark case,
his wife, Elizabeth, adopted the year-
old baby, whom they call Melissa.
The child has been in their care
while the case was argued.
Sorkow ordered Stern to pay
Whitehead the $10,000 agreed to in
the contract. That money had been
held in escrow since the contract was
signed.
Whitehead, who had vowed to ap
peal, awaited the ruling at her home
after visiting with the baby earlier in
the day and then stopping at a
church to light a devotional candle.
The Sterns held hands in the
crowded, locked courtroom
throughout the 2’/a hours it took the
judge to read his ruling.
They clutched each other when
the custody decision was announced.
Sorkow said the Sterns had shown
a stable, secure, loving relationship,
the ability to provide financially and
psychologically for the future needs
of the baby and “an ability to make
rational decisions in the most trying
of circumstances.
“The Sterns live a private, unre
markable life,” the judge said. “Mrs.
Whitehead seems not to have found
the time for family therapy sessions
while making herself and her chil
dren available to the media.”
Sorkow also said the Sterns would
better be able to explain to the child
her unusual beginnings in the years
to come.
The judge said the Whiteheads’
life has been marked by domestic
and marital instability and that Mrs.
Whitehead has been shown to “im
pose herself’ on her two other chil
dren.
“Too much love can smother a
child,” Sorkow said.
The judge, who made no provi
sion for Whitehead ever to see her
daughter again, condemned her as
impulsive and exploitive and said
she either selectively omitted infor
mation or lied outright during testi
mony about aspects of her life.
“This inability to tell the truth es
tablishes a tarnished . . . environ
ment” for raising the child, the
judge said.
Whitehead, who was artificially in
seminated with Stern’s sperm, said
she realized during the baby’s birth
March 27, 1986, that she could not
give up her daughter.
She refused her $10,000 fee and
fled to Florida with the infant when
the Sterns obtained a court order
giving them temporary custody. For
87 days she moved from relative to
relative, until authorities tracked her
down and returned the chubby,
blue-eyed girl to the Sterns.
The couple — he a 41-year-old
biochemist and she a pediatrician —
sued for permanent custody, setting
the stage for Tuesday’s landmark
decision.
The precedent set by the judge’s
ruling applies only in New Jersey,
but will have implications for other
courts, religious leaders, politicians
considering laws on the issue, adop
tion advocates, potential surrogates
and childless couples.
Since the first birth under a surro
gate contract in 1976, about 500 ba
bies have been born under similar
circumstances, but no state has regu
lated the practice.
The child’s court-appointed
guardian, attorney Lorraine A.
Abraham, recommended that the
Sterns get custody and that White-
head be denied visitation rights for
at least five years.
The three-month trial stirred up a
worldwide debate over surrogate
parenting.
Opponents maintain the practice
amounts to baby selling and exploits
women, while supporters endorse it
as one way for childless couples to
become parents.
The Vatican condemned surro
gate motherhood last month, saying
it “offends the dignity of the right of
the child,” and feminists picketed at
the courthouse to support White-
head, saying that no mother should
be forced to give up her baby.
Attorneys for the Sterns con
tended the surrogate agreement
reached Feb. 6, 1985, was valid be
cause all involved knew what they
were signing.
But Whitehead testified she did
not read the contract until after the
custody battle began.
Candidates
relinquish
their records
By Christ! Daugherty
Staff Writer
All nine student body presidential
candidates turned in preliminary
spending records by 7 p.m. Tues
day, an election commissioner said,
and the actual reviewing process will
start after Wednesday’s election.
Derek Blakeley, one of the two
election commmissioners, said that
while all candidates did not get their
records — photocopies of receipts
and a list of unused materials — in
by the 5 p.m. deadline, all had com
plied with the commission’s decision
and submitted material by that eve-
salaries below national average
oordinating Board figures say faculty pay gap has risen since 1984-85
By Amy Couvillon
Staff Writer
I Faculty salaries at Texas universi-
ijies for 1986-87 are almost 9 percent
lower than the national average, a
difference that has increased sub-
Bntially since 1984-85, according to
■figures released by :he Coordinating
Btiard, Texas College and Univer
sity System.
■ Texas faculty members, along
with the rest of the state, are feeling
the negative effects of the budget
j ! trisis begun by the decline in oil and
gas prices.
■ “It certainly is a serious problem,”
Isaid Don Brown, assistant to Higher
iducation Commissioner Kenneth
Ashworth.
■ As a whole, Brown said, other
states are paying their faculty more
and increasing their salaries faster
fthan Texas.
■ And the gap is widening.
■The figures, released last week,
show that for 1984-85, the average
Bxas salary in all faculty levels was
only 1.7 percent behind the U.S. av
erage. In 1985-86, however, the
Texas salaries were 4 percent behind
the average, and according to the
1986-87 figures, Texas lags behind
by 8.9 percent.
Texas salaries are not getting
lower; in fact, the report shows an
only with the national average, but
with the states that we’re most often
competing with.”
Texas competes for quality faculty
with the 10 most populous states, he
explained. The Coordinating
“Our ability to bring better faculty members to Texas
— and hold on to the best and the most mobile faculty
members — will be hurt quite severely if the faculty sal
aries in Texas do not catch up. ”
— Don Brown, assistant to Higher Education
Commissioner Kenneth Ashworth
increase of 1.3 percent from last
year. But compared to the last year’s
average increase of 6.9 percent
across the United States, Texas is not
keeping up.
“Our ability to bring better faculty
members to Texas — and hold on to
the best and the most mobile faculty
members — will be hurt quite se
verely,” Brown said, “if the faculty
salaries in Texas do not catch up, not
Board’s figures show that these
states are even further ahead of
Texas in faculty salaries.
Texas’ first four levels of faculty
(professor, associate professor, assis
tant professor and instructor) are
earning an average $33,572 an
nually, compared with $36,850 na
tionwide and $39,817 in the 10 most
populous states.
Dr. Clinton Phillips, Texas A&M
dean of faculties and associate pro
vost, said the problem of faculty
members leaving A&M for economic
reasons is worse than in past years,
but added that A&M has been able
to reduce the number of losses this
year by using some of the $3.3 mil
lion allocated from the Available
University Fund last fall.
“We still have money that we can
use if a faculty member gets an of
fer, to match it or try to do some
thing,” he said. “Some people have
called it shark repellant.”
The AUF money was allocated by
the Board of Regents after last sum
mer’s two special legislative sessions
to supplement faculty salaries and
counteract offers from out of state.
“The ideal way to handle these
matters is to not let salaries get too
low,” Phillips said. “That causes peo
ple to start looking elsewhere.
“And so when we got the AUF
money, we did put a significant part
of it into just raising the salaries of
pedple that we were trying to ret
ain.”
Some of the AUF money is still
available, he said, and is being used
to supplement salaries.
“It’s helped us keep from losing
more than we would otherwise have
lost,” he said.
Brown said Texas faculty salaries
were equal to and above the national
average in the early 1980s, which
helped to bring faculty to Texas.
“But that ability that we had dur
ing that period to attract fine faculty
members here has clearly been har
med,” Brown said.
Brown said A&M and the Univer
sity of Texas have traditionally paid
their faculty more than the Texas
average.
But Phillips said he doesn’t think
A&M’s faculty salaries are above the
Texas average, mentioning that UT
and the University of Houston, in
the last figures released, ranked
above A&M in average faculty sala
ries.
In a March 9 speech to the Faculty
Senate, A&M Chancellor Perry Ad-
kisson expressed concern about fac-
See Salaries, page 9
mng.
After six candidates filed an over
spending complaint against candi
date Miles Bradshaw Monday af
ternoon, the commission required all
candidates to prepare and submit
preliminary spending reports by
Tuesday evening to prove they are
under the $300 campaign expendi
ture limit.
Because of the time involved with
running the election, Blakeley
added, the actual investigation will
probably not be in full swing until
Thursday, at which time the com
missioners will call printing shops
and lumber stores to check on the
prices listed on the receipts.
Questions had arisen about a
clause in the election guidelines
which states that reported expendi
tures must be “consistent with accu
rate local retail values as determined
by the Election Commission.” Some
candidates felt that all materials used
must be judged by local costs.
However, Blakeley said the rule
was used to judge the value of
material acquired as gifts, not all
material used in the campaign.
“Local retail value is not intended
to mean that people can’t buy things
in their home towns,” Blakeley said.
“That rule has never been that
strictly interpreted in the past, and it
isn’t now.”