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Texas A&M V#
The Battalion
Vo!. 82 No. 161 GSPS 045360 8 pages
«
College Station, Texas
Friday, June 12, 1987
DG residents,
official differ
on relocation
Down, But Not Out
Students of the Brayton Fire School take part in a scenario designed
to simulate a hazardous materials fire. The fireman on the stretcher is
not really injured but rather plays “dead” during the scenario. The
Photo by Robert W. Rizzo
space-styled suits the men wear are self-contained in order to protect
them from the potentially hazardous gases produced by a real acci
dent. Participants in the training course come from around the world.
By Kirsten Dietz
Senior Staff Writer
A housing of ficial and some for
mer residents of Davis-Ciary Hall of
fered differing opinions over how
the reassigning of residents should
have been handled.
Reassigning the 156 returning
residents of Davis-Gary Hall to other
dormitories because of excessive
vandalism was too drastic, several
students who were to live in the dor
mitory this fall said Thursday.
But this was the only alternative
after all other attempts to curb the
vandalism failed because residents
refused to cooperate to stop vandal
ism or to pinpoint those responsible
for it, Debbie K. Owensby, the Cen
tral Area coordinator, said.
Excessive policy violations and
vandalism during the 1986-87
school year led to reassignment of
the students, said Tom Murray, as
sistant director of the Department of
Student Affairs. The department
notified the returning residents of
their new hall assignments in a letter
dated June 3. New residents, mostly
freshman and transfer students, will
move into the 254-bed dorm in the
fall.
Bruce Jones, a senior economics
major who was to be vice president
of Davis-Gary, said, “I think it (the
reassignment) was overreacting. I
think a lot of the intermediate steps
were avoided.”
Brandon Jacob, a junior business
administration major who was to be
the hall’s president, Darrel Renfrow,
a senior agriculture economics ma-
[Thatcher elected
e for 3rd straight win
las prime minister
Clements signs bill making taverns
liable for patrons who drive drunk
LONDON (AP) — Prime Min-
! ister Margaret Thatcher was win
ning a historic third successive vic-
I tory in Thursday’s elections, but
with a sharply reduced majority in
the House of Commons.
The socialist Labor Party made a
strong comeback from its election
disaster of 1983, with a more mod
erate platform and the leadership
of Neil Kinnock, eloquent son of a
Welsh miner.
With 425 of the 650 House of
Commons seats decided, Thatch
er’s Conservatives had 244, Labor
took 169 and the centrist Social
Democrat-Liberal Alliance cap
tured 9.
Early in the official count, the
British Broadcasting Corp. said
the prime minister was “certain” to
achieve victory and projected a
Commons majority of 74 seats.
Her Tories won a 144-seat ma
jority in 1983.
Air controllers
form union
once again
WASHINGTON (AP) — Thou-
Isands of air traffic controllers de-
Icided overwhelmingly Thursday to
■ form a new union in a vote cast six
See related story, Page 6
■ years after President Reagan broke
■ their 1981 strike and fired those who
■ walked off their jobs.
The controllers cast ballots in fa
vor of a union by more than a 2-1
margin.
With 84 percent of the eligible
controllers casting ballots, the Na
tional Air Traffic Controllers Asso
ciation was approved as the control
lers’ bargaining agent by a vote of
7,494 to 3,275, the Federal Labor
Relations Authority announced.
Union organizers had predicted
[Victory. Observers from the union
(and Federal Aviation Administra-
| tion monitored the vote count at the
FLRA’s regional office.
Independent Television pro
jected a 96-seat majority, and Press
Association, the domestic news
agency, forecast 91.
Any of the projections would
give her the firm control needed to
continue her program of disman
tling the welfare state.
Of the first 58 seats decided, the
Conservatives had 31, Labor 25
and the centrist Social Democrat-
Liberal Alliance 2.
Bryan Gould, the Labor Party’s
campaign chief, said: “If Mrs.
Thatcher is re-elected it’s a great
achievement for her personally,
but it’s sad for the country as a
whole.”
The last prime minister to win
three consecutive terms was Lord
Liverpool in 1826.
With her husband, Denis, 72,
and son Mark, the 61-year-old
“Iron Lady” of British politics ar
rived from her 10 Downing Street
residence at her constituency of
Finchley, north London.
Her aides had baked her a cake
iced in blue, her party color.
Initial results showed both
Thatcher’s Tories and Labor hold
ing their votes, with no gains for
the centrist Social Democrat-Lib
eral Alliance, which had hoped for
the balance of power in a stale
mated Parliament.
Liberal Party leader David Steel
said, “It doesn’t look as thought it
is going to be a riproaring success.”
All predictions showed Labor
recovering from its 1983 trounc
ing, when it ran on a far-left plat
form that alienated many support
ers.
Projections of the Labor vote in
early results showed that the 80-
year-old socialist movement, which
narrowly beat the Alliance in pop
ular vote four years ago, easily
fended off the centrists and held
its place as the alternative ruling
party.
Kinnock, 45, led the party in the
month-long campaign on a plat
form of increased public spending
and scrapping nuclear arms unilat
erally.
Labor could not wrest the key
target seat of Basildon east of Lon
don from the Tories, however, and
Thatcher’s party dealt Alliance a
blow by retaining Cheltenham, a
genteel southern English spa town
where the centrists ran a close sec
ond in 1983.
AUSTIN (AP) — A bill allowing courts to hold tav
erns liable for serving alcohol to drunken customers
who become drunken drivers and cause damage and
death on the highways was signed into law Thursday
by Gov. Bill Clements.
“We must crack down on drunk driving, and this
measure will do just that,” Clements said.
“It will go a long way in helping to save lives,” he
said. “But even if it saves just one life, I’m all for it.”
Reggie Bashur, the governor’s press secretary, said
Clements approved the measure while reviewing
some of nearly 1,000 bills left on his desk by the Legis
lature.
The so-called “dram shop” measure, which takes
immediate effect, was approved on the final day of the
regular session.
A conference committee earlier had scrapped a sec
tion that would have made party hosts liable for dam
ages or deaths resulting from the actions of drunken
drivers who left their parties.
Under the new law, the survivors of a person who is
killed by a drunken driver could collect damages from
a business that sold drinks to the driver if it was dear
that the patron was sold the drinks after he or she had
become intoxicated.
The law would not affect cases already in the
courts.
But the Texas Supreme Court ruled on June 3 that
bars could be ordered to pay damages.
In that opinion, the court said the time had come to
hold liquor sellers responsible for the drivers they put
on the streets.
The unanimous opinion, authored by Justice
Franklin Spears, stated, “Injury to a third person is no
longer unforeseeable in an age when death and de
struction occasioned by drunk driving is so tragically
frequent.”
Clements has 20 days from the adjournment of the
regular session, which occurred on June 1, to make up
his mind on bills passed during the Legislature’s final
days.
Among bills already signed into law is one making it
illegal to drink while driving.
That measure takes effect Aug. 31, the governor’s
office said.
Also on Thursday, the governor signed into law
bills that would:
• Make it a crime to manufacture, sell or possess
any document that is deceptively similar to a driver’s
license or certificate used by the Department of Public
Safety.
• Create a mandatory hunter safety program.
jor, and Jones said they think the of
fice should have billed the entire hall
for the damages instead of relocat
ing the residents.
Owensby said the office in effect
billed the entire hall by taking
money from the hall’s activity fund.
“This is not something we like to
do,” she said, “but the department
can’t absorb all the costs.”
No running total of the vandalism
over the past year has been kept,
Owensby said. But, for example, she
said, close to 100 windows have been
broken, each of which cost $50 to re
place.
The department can levy a “com
mon area billing” in which residents
of a certain floor or area are billed
for the damage. This was done last
year when a group of Davis-Gary
residents were billed for vandalism.
But, Owensby said, vandalism oc
curred throughout the hall this year
and not concentrated in one area, so
common area billing was not an op
tion.
The three former residents also
said they thought the Central Area
office did not try hard enough to
track down the individual vandals.
Jacobs said that if the office had
asked more of the residents for co
operation in identifying the vandals,
it would have gotten it.
Renfrow said, “They didn’t really
try.”
All three of the former residents
interviewed said they would not
have turned in someone they caught
vandalizing because most of the peo
ple in the hall were friends.
Jacob told of watching a graduat
ing senior trash a hallway. He said
he thought about turning him in,
but that he didn’t think it would do
any good.
“I was guilty of the fact that I
didn’t stop it,” he said. “If it had
been hinted that I would lose my
privilege of living in the dorm, I
would have made sure something
was done.”
Jones said, “I never in my wildest
dreams figured they could kick out
an entire dorm.”
In a May 5 letter to the residents,
the student affairs department de
tailed numerous incidents of vandal
ism, warned those guilty to stop im
mediately and asked those with any
information about the incidents to
contact the Central Area office.
Reports filed with the Central
Area office show that between the
date the letter was written and the
end of the spring term 10 days later,
22 toilet paper dispensers were torn
from bathroom walls, a fire was
started with charcoal in a second-
floor shower, a fire was started in a
third-floor trash can, smokebombs
were set off in the third-floor hall
way, a smoke detector was pulled off
its base and fireworks were set off in
a third-floor hallway six times within
a few hours after midnight.
Director: College grads need
awareness of degree prospects
By Becky Weisenfels
Reporter
College students need to be
come more aware of what their
academic majors entail and what
job opportunities await them af
ter graduation before they pick
Jobs after graduation
Part two of a two-part series
up their sheepskins and shake
hands with the University presi
dent.
Ann McDonald, associate di
rector of the Texas A&M Career
Planning and Placement Center,
says a lot of students don’t know
what they are getting into when
making a career choice.
“Most people are going down a
path to a goal that they really
don’t understand,” says Ann Mc
Donald, associate director of the
Texas A&M Career Planning and
Placement Center.
One way for students to find
out what’s down that road, Mc
Donald says, is to take summer
jobs and internships, but they also
should be flexible.
“The world is changing so
quickly with all the technology,”
she says. “In five or 10 years, lots
of us will have jobs that lots of us
have never heard of before. So I
think one of the keys for grad
uates is to be a little bit flexible.”
And a strong liberal arts back
ground increases flexibility, she
says.
“Nobody knows exactly what
jobs are out there,” she says.
“And in liberal arts, you’re not
going to be trained in a specific
area. You are learning to do a lot
of things, to be able to adapt, to
be flexible, to be open to these
ideas. These people, in the long
run, are going to be successf ul.”
Just because someone gets a
degree in a so-called high-de
mand major, she says, that
doesn’t ensure a decent job.
“I really cringe when students
say, ‘Well, I major in what’s going
to be hot when I graduate,’ ” Mc
Donald says. “All majors get jobs.
Some of them tend to be sought
after more some years than oth
ers during that same time peri
od.”
Citing the oil and gas business
in Texas as an example, McDon
ald says the industry once could
provide jobs for everyone who
wanted one, but it can’t do that
In three or four years, she says,
the business will recover and few
graduates will be qualified to fill
job openings — the labor supply
is always out of sync with de
mand, she says.
A tool A&M students can use
to see what jobs are open and
when they’re available is A&M’s
job placement center. More than
500 employers descend upon the
University each semester — seek
ing new employees among the
3,000 seniors registered with the
center.
Everyone who registers with
the center is given a certain num
ber of points which are used to
bid on interview appointments.
“Most employers don’t come
with enough people to interview
every student who might like to
interview with them,” McDonald
says. “That would be ideal, but
that’s not reality. We' would like
students to make that decision
(about who gets interviewed). We
don’t want to make it, we want the
student to have some control over
the people that he is going to in
terview with.”
Interviews are set up weekly.
The center advertises who is com
ing and students who bid qualify
according to their major, degree
level, graduation date and cit
izenship.
“They make the decision about
how important it is to them by the
number of points they bid,” Mc
Donald says.
Employers look at a variety of
traits when making hiring deci
sions, she says, including grades,
experience and campus activities.
“It’s a combination of all these
things,” she says. “Some people
are real grade-point conscious.
And, with the market the way it is
right now — a buyer’s market —
they’re being a lot more partic
ular.”
But regardless of what specific
strengths a company is looking
for, communication skills are very
important for students, McDon
ald says.