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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 11, 1987)
The Battalion /ol 82 No. 159 GSPS 045360 10 pages College Station, Texas Thursday, June 11, 1987 Iran warns U.S. not to interfere in Persian Gulf hese Little Pigs Went To Market Photo by Robert W. Rizzo These four residents of the Texas A&M swine farm seem to have little concern over the heavy rains that have recently deluged the Bryan- College Station area. Researchers at the center say the pigs might even enjoy the rain because they do not possess sweat glands. The rain acts to cool a pig’s body temperature as it evaporates on its skin. In the ab sence of rain, however, pigs usually lie in mud holes to keep cool. NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Iran intensified its verbal attacks against the United States Wednesday by threatening to turn the Persian Gulf into a “graveyard” if America inter venes in the region. “In the event of an aggressive in tervention in the Persian Gulf by American forces, the region will be turned into a graveyard for aggres sors and their allies,” the state-run Tehran radio, monitored in Nicosia, said. On Tuesday, the radio issued a thinly veiled threat to attack U.S. nu clear reactors if American forces were to strike Iranian missile batte ries in the Persian Gulf. Defense Secretary Caspar Wein berger told Congress Wednesday that the Navy didn’t expect Iran to attack American ships in the gulf. “In the past, Iran has assiduously avoided even the mere hint of a threat toward U.S. ships, either com batant or commercial,” he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We do not expect that situation to change, Iran’s violent rhetoric notwithstanding,” he said. “We be lieve they will not launch any attacks on American ships.” In Tuesday’s broadcast, Tehran radio said the United States’ warning that it might attack Chinese-made HY2 Silkworm anti-ship missiles de ployed on the strategic Strait of Hor muz was premature. Washington considers Iran’s de ployment of the missiles a serious threat to freedom of navigation in the strategic waterway. “Contrary to what they claim, (they) are unable to accept the risk of attacking Iranian missile bases in the Persian Gulf or other forms of con frontation,” the radio said.“U.S. cen ters and nuclear reactors can be more vulnerable than the missile bases of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The radio apparently was refer ring to nuclear reactors in the United States, most of which are used to generate electricity, al though a few facilities also provide fuel for nuclear bombs.Outside the United States, American-owned re actors are found only on board nu clear-powered submarines and sur face warships of the U.S. Navy. The Iranians have made several threats in recent weeks to show their willingness to fight the Americans if they attacked Iranian forces. s alsoh | educing postpoi )m a con ‘It isn't! ightly be in record were not t believe Tiering t." 1957 at 44 age i? rid War! e United is in thfll 975 as t dbearin ummit ends with human rights plea in AIDS fight ENICE, Italy (AP) — Allied leaders ended their business-as- usual summit Wednesday by urging ^fcect for human rights in combat ing AIDS, “one of the biggest poten tial health problems in the world,” and prescribing a series of cures for the world’s economic ills. Hn a joint communique issued at the summit’s conclusion, the leaders ol the United States, Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, Ganada and Japan called the AIDS epidemic “one of the biggest potential health problems in the world.” P'hey called for a coordinated in ternational effort to check the spread of the fatal, incurable disease and said this campaign “will have to ensure that the measures are taken in accordance with the principles of hitman rights.” ■The AIDS statement appeared to /eject the kind of mandatory testing for certain people that Reagan has Boca ted. Reagan and Vice President Task force to study homosexual bisexual men to find ways to encourage safe sex practices DALLAS (AP) — An AIDS prevention task force of the Dallas County Health Department will begin recruiting homosexual and bisexual men beginning next week for a long-term study to determine the best way to encourage safer sex practices. Dallas is one of six cities nationally where the study will be undertaken as part of a federal pre vention project, AIDS counselor Marc Lerro said. All homosexual or bisexual men who inquire about being tested for antibodies to the AIDS vi rus will be asked to participate in the study, Lerro said. The project hopes to recruit 1,000 men over the next few years, he said. “We’re actively going to advertise in news pub lications we feel gay people read,” Lerro said. “Right now, one of the startling things we have found in Dallas is that about one of three men in the gay community appears to be infected with the virus,” Lerro said. To homosexual men, Lerro said, that means “Every time you go into a bar, one out of every three men might as well glow in the dark.” Nationwide, some homosexual organizations have discouraged healthy members from being tested for AIDS antibodies, AIDS counselor Barry Skiba said. However, when one of three homosexual men might be infected, “the whole term healthy gay male sort of becomes shaky,” he said. Men who agree to participate in the new study will be tested every six months for antibodies to the AIDS virus and asked to complete a 25-page questionnaire about their sexual practices and at titudes, Lerro said. The usual $ 10 testing fee will be waived and all study participants will be assigned codes to en sure anonymity, Lerro added. George Bush were jeered in Wash ington recently when they told re searchers at an international AIDS conference that they favored wider testing for the disease. The summit leaders said that “in the absence of a vaccine or cure,” the best hope for combating the disease is a strategy of public education in how the AIDS virus is transmitted and “the practical steps each person can take to avoid acquiring it or spreading it.” Acquired immune deficiency syn drome is a viral disease that attacks the body’s immune system. The World Health Organization esti mates that 100,000 people have con tracted AIDS and that as many as 10 million are infected with the virus. AIDS already has killed 20,798 people in the United States alone. The three days of summit talks ended with a formal reading of the communique by Italian Prime Min ister Amintore Fanfani at a news conference attended by all the lead ers except British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who had de parted Tuesday to resume her re- election campaign in national elec tions to be held Thursday. That done, the summiteers parted after a formal luncheon in the Doges’ Palace near St. Mark’s Square. Their final statement expressed largely symbolic support for Rea gan’s Persian Gulf policies by en dorsing the right of free navigation, and then turned to economic and other issues. The leaders endorsed a declara tion by their finance ministers that any further, substantial shifts in cur rency exchange rates “could prove counterproductive.” This was viewed as reaffirmation of agreements made in Paris in Feb ruary and in Washington in April that the U.S. dollar had fallen enough. itxpert says job prospects look bleak for college grads, especially in Texas -Thefrj posed estexpte'j a con#| ^ By Becky Weisenfels -sky, M Reporter ilso pill'■Shiny new shoes. Everyone gets in [real' 1 new shoes for the most important aation p®casions in life. A wedding, a for- hesif r ft'l and those job interviews before [I jniiial) graduation. jrrtoiwMBut now graduation is over and ■eemeni' Be soles are wearing thin as job op- ilie pif portunities diminish. mnier#B Flie leather cracks as yet another unferentf week passes with no offers. And world'sn now the shoes don’t seem so shiny. 1 forum Neither does the future. )y pein®College students are discovering agreed i; |jhat it is harder to find jobs after for a/Had nation than in the past. Cavil lotous l"K —“ i qiiid'l Jobs after graduation oviet 1 would] n U.S'' which H jilatend id the -9 w itl# igreenq ar ii on A lly kind aid tiUl'J edeM ans a r( | iferaui aid, In 11 1 ion ih f ] be A Id oli' 1 '; lotonJ ■ to nl . Part one of a two- gart series engineering major M.L. Morrow gjaduated in December 1986. He, like many college graduates, had a tciiigh time getting a job. ■ “When I graduated in Decem- bei, I was also getting married,” Mm row says. “My wife was working fqr NASA. So, that limited my choices to the (dear Lake area. I in terviewed through the Placement Service two or three times. I actively pursued a job, but there just weren’t that many that came through. ■ “There’s just not that many out tljere. From what I hear, I can go oni of state and get a job pretty easy. I would if we were more mobi le ” ■ Most people attend college to im prove their chances for employ ment, according to Jim Lovan, em ployment supervisor of the Texas Employment Commission in Bryan. But a college degree can narrow their choices. “If a young man or woman wants to be a plumber, he goes to a com pany and serves an apprenticeship, takes a test and becomes a plum ber,” Lovan says. “But he’s not a bricklayer. He’s not an automobile mechanic. He’s a plumber. “When you go to college, you’re doing the same thing. But a lot of people don’t know that. You’re not going just to get a degree unless you’re wealthy or just have this thirst for knowledge. You’re going to use that degree in this field, in this discipline.” Lovan says students need to ask themselves some hard and fast questions about their futures. “Why would anyone take a de gree in English, for example?” he says. “Why would anyone take a de gree in psychology? What are you going to do with a degree in psy chology unless you get at least a master’s but preferably a doctorate and become a psychologist? “We have one out here who has a degree in psychology. He’s working for the state. You can’t do anything in your field with a bachelor’s in psychology. Maybe you can go to work with food stamps out here, but so can anyone else.” Many college graduates are un able to use their degrees because they cannot find a job in their field, Lovan says. “My son-in-law has a degree in engineering technology,” he says. “After he graduated he moved to Houston. He went to work for Campbell’s Soup as a salesman be cause he could not find a job in his field. Nobody told him when he took engineering technology that the job opportunities were very low in that field.” Lovan says the blame for a stu dent’s poor career choice doesn’t al ways lie with the student. “What I have found out, espe cially since I’ve been working here, is that a great deal of fault lies with some universities,” he says. “Kids that go in as freshmen and sopho mores are never told (about their employment chances). A lot of times I think that they’re not told because the professors themselves don’t know.” Employment chances can be greatly improved by simply going where the jobs are, Lovan says. That may mean leaving Texas, where the unemployment rate is high. The state is in a depression be cause of the problems the oil busi ness is having, he says. “I have a very positive outlook,” he says. “But I don’t think we’re going to see anything happen for about a year because we have to catch up. What’s going to have to happen is we have to expand enough, get enough work and start spending enough to catch up.” Lovan says many people don’t know that there are a lot of areas in the country that are booming now like Texas was a few years ago. For example, he says, the upper East Coast is doing well right now. “A private employment agency out of Virginia came down and used our Houston regional office two months ago and advertised to interview people,” he says. “They had about 350 openings. There are other areas of the country that are doing well, like California and Vir ginia.” If students decide to stay in Texas, they will find that some cit ies offer better opportunities than others depending on their major, Lovan says. “San Antonio is probably one of the least-hurt cities in Texas,” he says. “But there is a very substantial reason for that. San Antonio is ba sically a military city. It’s not a fac tory city or an industrial city. Don’t go there looking for work unless you’re going to work in the civil service sector.” Dallas is more of a white collar area, he says. It’s beginning to hire a little bit and it’s not hurting like other cities. Dallas has a whole dif ferent type of business. “My son, for example, went to Dallas in early 1984 and found a job within three days,” he says. “He worked in that job for almost three years and then quit to take a better job. Within six months he was laid off and stayed in Dallas five months looking for a job.” The worst thing students can do is to stay in the Bryan-College Sta tion area after graduation, he says. “I can’t think of a single disci pline out of college that a person can do in Bryan-College Station ex cept maybe teach,” Lovan says. “We have a lot of people who are what we call ‘under-employed.’ They are working, but not in their field.” INS agents start work of giving Texas aliens legal citizenship in U.S. TYLER (AP) — Not too long ago, when Immigration and Naturalization Service agents came around, illegal aliens fled the area in fear of deportation. But this week, after years of avoiding government agents, Mexican-born East Texans met willingly with INS agents in a small community hall. They walked away with pre liminary legalization documents that could eventually lead to full U.S. citizenship. Under the new U.S. immigra tion reform law, illegal aliens who have lived continuously in the United States since before January 1982 are eligible for amnesty. Aliens who complete their amnesty applications are issued temporary work permits. Since the yearlong amnesty application period began May 5, Texas has had nine legalization centers operating in major cities. To help meet the needs of aliens in outlying towns, the INS put a roving amnesty office on the road this week for the first time in Texas. The office is staffed by Okla homa City-based agents who were relatively free of applica tion-processing chores at home. The crew began operating last week in Tulsa, Okla., and will be in Amarillo next week. The roving amnesty crew ar rived in Tyler on Tuesday and, by the end of the office’s first day of operations, had granted temporary legal residence to more than 70 illegal immigrants^ including many farm workers who took the day off to apply, said Jim Ward, a supervisor on the amnesty assistance team from Oklahoma City. “We had a good day in Tyler,” Ward said. “Everyone who ap plied today walked out with their temporary card (work permit).” The INS workers planned to stay in Tyler two days to process the paperwork of an estimated 300 illegal immigrants. Ralph Carrasco, director of a church-sponsored assistance center where the INS set up shop, said the visit helped send a message to illegal aliens in East Texas who remain wary of the agency they have eluded for so long. Carrasco said many Hispanics first feared that the vans’ two- day visit to the area signaled that a roundup was under way. Daniel Arroyo and his wife, Asbedama, were the first to be processed in Tyler. Arroyo, 26, a warehouse worker who slipped into the United States in 1971 by swim ming across the Rio Grande, said he is proud he no longer will carry the stain of his illicit entry. “I always felt I had done something wrong,” he said. “Now, I am free.”