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The Battalion
/ol. 82 No. 159 (ASPS 045360 10 pages
College Station, Texas
Wednesday, June 10, 1987
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Making A Big Splash
The driver of this truck on S. College in Bryan appears to have gotten
in deeper waters than he may have expected. Recent rains have
k" snidi caused high water levels on many Bryan and College Station streets,
r in bed.
die dra»
without i
lessness
tiaitfi
Photo by Robert W. Rizzo
but no roacis have had to be closed yet. The weather has been unusual
for Texas over the past few weeks, with heavy rains, not sunny skies,
dominating the southern region of the state.
Residents of DG
evicted; official
cites vandalism
By Kirsten Dietz
Senior Staff Writer
Students who expected to return
to Davis-Gary Hall in the fall semes
ter have been reassigned to other
dormitories because of excessive pol
icy violations and vandalism during
the 1986-87 school year, said Tom
Murray, assistant director of the De
partment of Student Affairs.
The department notified the 156
students of their new hall assign
ments in a letter dated June 3. Most
of the students were assigned to
Moses, Moore, Crocker or Hotard
halls, whose rates are the same as
Davis-Gary. If a student had chosen
a roommate for the fall semester, the
two were reassigned as roommates.
New residents, mostly freshmen
and transfer students, will move into
the 254-bed dorm in the fall.
The decision to relocate the resi
dents came after almost two years of
continuous vandalism, Murray said.
“We are certainly not making Da
vis-Gary an example,” he said. “It’s a
pretty drastic move on our part. We
didn’t reach the decision lightly.”
This was not the first time Davis-
Gary residents have been relocated.
Last year 15 second-floor residents
were reassigned to other halls be
cause of excessive vandalism, which
included grafitti on hall and bath
room walls.
The student affairs department
tried to curb the incidents by billing
individuals responsible for the van
dalism and by sending letters, dated
Dec 9, 1986 and May 5, warning
residents to stop the damage.
Unfortunately, Murray said,
“That letter didn’t really result in
anything positive. We have some
vandalism and some rowdiness in
other halls, but to have it of this
magnitude was a problem for us.”
Murray says the vandalism in
creased during the spring semester.
According to the May 5 letter, 15
windows, 21 hallway lights, seven
smoke detectors, six room locks and
four bulletin boards had to be re
placed in only a few months. Also,
the letter says, hallways were trashed
more than 10 times and were
flooded three times. Walls were van
dalized five times and arson was re
ported five times, the letter states.
During the weekend of April 24-
26, the letter continues, a fourth-
floor shower drain was stopped up,
flooding rooms on that floor and
other floors as water flowed down
the stairs. Later that week a mattress
was set on fire outside the head resi
dent’s room, the letter says.
“This year we’ve had a consistent
string of incidents,” Murray said.
As of Tuesday, one week after the
final letter was dated, about 12 to 15
students had called the department,
only one of whom was an irate caller,
Murray said. The other callers had
questions about the new arrange
ments, he said.
Davis-Gary is the second hall to
have its students relocated this year.
In February, 32 residents of Walton
Hall’s E-ramp were moved after re
peated warnings by the department
to end vandalism.
Teenager catches 1 dead, 2 wounded in head-on train crash
,120-pound shark,
sets state record
VERY
IT
0
ethis
HOUSTON (AP) — Teen-ager
any Simmons Jr. landed more
than just a big fish when he hooked a
1,120-pound tiger shark off Galves
ton — he may have set a state record.
I Simmons, 16, said he didn’t real-
the size of the creature — more
ftli.m 100 pounds bigger than the
■resent record fish — until it had
Been brought aboard his father’s
Hpshing boat.
I “I thought it was about 700
Bounds,” he said Tuesday in a tele-
Bhone interview. “He (Simmons’ fa
ther) was kind of scared when they
■yeie pulling it up because it could
Bave taken one of the wire men
Btrewmen) in.”
I The record for a tiger shark is
1,010 pounds set in 1983, said Glar-
ence Beezley, an information spe-
palist with the Texas Parks and
ildlife Dept, in Austin. Beezley
|tid the latest catch would have to be
Bterified before it could be listed as a
r< iord.
■ Simmons, of Katy, fought the ti
ger shark for two hours before
Bringing it in. Normally, the fisher-
rjlnan would be kept in a chair se-
fured to the deck of the boat. Sim-
tnons, however, was on his feet the
entire time.
■ “All we had at the time was a har-
fpss, and it didn’t work too well,”
Simmons said.
■ “I kept real heavy pressure on the
fish, but the drag kept heating up
and slipping,” he said. “The shark
never did run that far — maybe 100
ytirds — but it was so strong. It
Stayed close but wouldn’t give up.”
■ Simmons’ father, Larry Sr., and
crewman Ken Cox helped the youth
pud the shark Friday night about 30
nrles off Galveston in the Gulf of
Mexico. The catch earned Simmons
Brst place in the 11th annual Shark
Jtd Sport Fishing Tournament at
Galveston.
Simmons’ father said, “We knew
we had a big one but couldn’t get the
double line on the reel. The shark
was right under the boat. Then,
when we were all looking over the
port side, the fish surfaced on the
starboard. I turned around and
freaked — had no idea it was such a
monster until right then.” “It was
kind of spooky,” he said.
PROSPER (AP) — A conductor was killed and
two other trainmen were injured when a single
engine struck a stopped freight train head-on
Tuesday after a switch apparently was not
thrown, officials said.
Charles L. Bookout, 57, of Tulsa, Okla., the
conductor on the single engine, was pronounced
dead at AMI North Texas Medical Center in Mc
Kinney, a Burlington Northern Railroad official
said.
The accident happened at about 5:50 a.m. on
a Burlington Northern siding about a half mile
north of Prosper, midway between Denton and
McKinney, railroad spokesman Robin Hughes
said.
“From all indications, someone did not throw
the switch,” to keep the single engine off the sid
ing track where the freight train was standing,
Sgt. Anthony Hancock of the Collin County
Sheriff’s Office said. “The single engine struck
the stopped train head-on.”
Hughes said Burlington Northern investiga
tors would examine the switch, a manually oper
ated apparatus, as well as other aspects of the
mishap. “We do have concerns about the position
of the switch,” she said, noting that the Federal
Railroad Administration and possibly the Na
tional Transportation Safety Administration
would investigate the crash.
Hancock said the conductor and the engineer
aboard the single engine jumped just before im
pact.
Injured was Ronald Stewart, 50, of Sand
Springs, Okla., engineer on the single engine,
who underwent surgery for a fractured arm
Tuesday at the McKinney hospital, a hospital
spokesman said.
Rick Shemberger, 25, of Fort Worth, the
freight train’s brakeman, was treated in the hos
pital emergency room and released, the spokes
man said.
Two other crew members on the freight train
were not injured, Hughes said.
The single engine, an “expediter train” given a
high priority main-line clearance on its south
bound run from Tulsa to Irving where it was to
pick up freight cars, was authorized to travel as
fast as 49 mph, she said.
The northbound Irving-to-Tulsa freight train
— consisting of six engines and 51 cars, 45 of
which were empty — was waiting on the siding
for the single engine to pass on the main line
when the trains collided, she said.
All the trainmen had undergone drug testing
according to FRA standards, Hughes said, but
the results of those tests were not available imme
diately.
“It could have been dangerous,”
jflWTMie younger Simmons said. “It
I us! \v Stu ted to come alive when we shot it,
B45 ;
jpnd we had to shoot it again.”
I The female shark was 12 feet, 2
Kiches long and swollen to a girth of
Jp<3 inches, Simmons said. It was car
rying several pups, he said.
$$■ Roy Drinnen, curator of fishes at
tfflBea-Arama Marine World in Galves-
$2: «on, said, “That’s a pretty good size.”
j-Ht added that tiger sharks, which
are among the 16 listed man-eaters,
|average 8-12 feet in length and 600-
|00 pounds.
Reagan wins support for terrorism stand
VENIGE, Italy (AP) — As
bombs rocked U.S. and British
embassies in Rome, President
Reagan won summit support
Tuesday for a tough stand
against terrorism and a fresh dip
lomatic initiative to counter
threats against Persian Gulf ship
ping.
The United States and its six
most powerful trading partners
also hailed the growing momen
tum of arms control talks, but
agreed to remain vigilant in deal
ing with a changing Soviet lead
ership.
Reagan said he was “delighted”
with his six summit partners’
largely symbolic declaration of
support for the free passage of oil
tankers through gulf shipping
lanes. And, for the first time, they
embraced Reagan’s policy of re
fusing to make concessions to ter
rorists.
Although one U.S. official pro
nounced the summit “very suc
cessful from our standpoint,” dis
cord surfaced over the next step
in Soviet-American arms control
negotiations, with West Germany
questioning U.S. strategy in deal
ing with Moscow.
Reagan’s summit partners did
not condemn arms sales to Iran,
which U.S. officials cite as the
principal obstacle to stability in
the region, nor did they offer mil
itary assistance for U.S. efforts to
keep vital oil shipping lanes open.
But Secretary of State George
P. Shultz insisted that “we will be
able to take care of ourselves
well” in the gulf, where British
and French warships also provide
armed patrols and shipping es
corts. “The states that are capable
of providing (military help) are
doing it,” he said.
Kuwoiti tankers to get U.S. escort
by next month, Weinberger says
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S.
Navy ships will begin escorting Ku
waiti tankers in the Persian Gulf
early next month and must do the
job alone if American allies won’t
help, Defense Secretary Caspar
Weinberger told Congress on Tues
day.
Weinberger’s offered his com
ments hours after President Reagan,
meeting with other western leaders
at the Venice summit, gained diplo
matic and symbolic allied support
for his goal of protecting ships in the
vital waterway.
Weinberger told the House
Armed Services Committee that the
Coast Guard is likely to finish the pa
perwork needed to place 11 Kuwaiti
tankers under the American flag
later this month. When that adminis
trative task is complete, he said, the
Navy will begin escorting the ships.
Pressed by legislators about when
the U.S. escort role would actually
begin, Weinberger declined to be se-
cific beyond saying it would be “very
shortly” after the end of June.
“We believe that the reflagging
will be completed by the end of the
month,” he said, disputing
statements by other administration
officials that the U.S. escort role
would start in late June.
Congressional fears about U.S.
policy in the Persian Gulf have risen
in the wake of last month’s Iraqi mis
sile attack on the frigate USS Stark
that killed 37 sailors and Reagan’s
pledge to protect the Kuwaiti tank
ers.
Kuwait is an ally of Iraq in the
nearly 7-year-old Iran-Iraq war, and
Iran has threatened to continue to
target the Kuwaiti tankers.
A key concern in Congress has
been the role of U.S. allies in West
ern Europe and Japan, which re
ceive a higher percentage of their oil
from the gulf than does the United
States. Legislators have complained
that American allies should carry
more of the burden of protecting
the gulf.
In Venice, Italy, Reagan and the
leaders of the six other industri
alized democracies at the summit is
sued a communique that said “the
principle of freedom of navigation
in the gulf is of paramount impor
tance for us and for others, and
must be upheld.”
U.S. officials traveling with Rea
gan said he had not sought military
help from the allies beyond the Brit
ish and French naval forces already
in the gulf.
Meanwhile Tuesday, the House
Foreign Affairs Committee delayed
a vote on a resolution urging Ameri
ca’s allies to do more in support of
the U.S. role in the gulf. The post
ponement was made so the adminis
tration could have more time to look
at the resolution and prepare a for
mal response.
In his testirpony, Weinberger
noted that the United States gets less
than 6 percent of its oil from the
gulf, while Japan receives 60 percent
of its energy from the area and
Western Europe, 30 percent.
“But this ignores the fact that the
world oil market is one market and,
should the Persian Gulf oil supplies
be disrupted, oil prices will rise for
everyone,” the secretary added.
In addition, he said, “the funda
mental issue is leadership, the lead
ership of the free world to resist the
forces of anarchy and tyranny.”
Shultz said the United States
got “the principal thing” it
wanted, with unanimous support
for a U.N. Security Council reso
lution calling for a cease-fire in
the Iran-Iraq war and imposing a
mandatory arms embargo on ei
ther side that persisted in fight
ing.
On the face of it, Reagan and
leaders of Britain, West Ger
many, France, Italy, Canada and
Japan were united on the arms
control issue, too, as they issued a
flurry of resolutions midway
through their 13th annual sum
mit.
The allies expressed approval
of the quickening pace of negotia
tions that have led the superpow
ers closer to signing a treaty that
would eliminate hundreds of nu
clear missiles in Europe and Asia,
and said “more favorable pros
pects have emerged for the re
duction of nuclear forces.”
Since last year’s summit in To
kyo, they said, opportunities also
have opened for progress in im
proving East-West relations. “We
are encouraged by these devel
opments,” their joint statement
said.
The allied leaders said they
hoped that liberalizing changes
under Soviet leader Mikhail Gor
bachev “will prove to be of great
significance,” but noted that
“profound differences persist”
between East and West.
“Each of us must remain vigi
lantly alert in responding to all as
pects of Soviet policy,” the
statement said.
Finance ministers of the seven
major industrial democracies,
meanwhile, vowed to strengthen
efforts to stabilize currencies and
cooperate more closely on mone
tary policies.
Summit concerns about terror
ism were reinforced shortly be
fore Reagan met British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher over
breakfast, when small bombs
rocked the U.S. and British em
bassy compounds in Rome, 340
miles to the southwest. No inju
ries were reported in the blasts.
An anonymous caller linked
the attacks to the Venice summit,
and said they were the work of
the Anti-Imperialist Interna
tional Brigade, the same group
held responsible last year for the
assassination of a French military
attache in Lebanon and bomb
and rocket attacks on U.S., Ca
nadian and Japanese embassies in
Indonesia.
Two hours earlier, military
frogmen retrieved and detonated
a suspicious-looking metal box
from a Venetian lagoon, prompt
ing a further tightening of al
ready heavy security precautions
in this summit city.