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The Battalion
il. 87 Mo. 63 GSPS 045360 10 Pages
College Station, Texas
Monday, November 30,1987
Haiti junta puts end
to electoral council
Jump!
Members of the Texas A&M 12th Man Kick-off
Team celebrate after Keith Woodside’s 90-yard
touchdown run in the second quarter of Thurs
day’s game against the University of Texas. A&M
Photo by Jay Jaimer
won the game by a score of 20-13, giving the Ag
gies the Southwest Conference football
championship and sending them to the Cotton
Bowl for the third straight year.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)
-The military-dominated junta dis
solved the Independent Electoral
Council after the council canceled
Sunday’s elections because of vio
lence that left more than two dozen
people dead.
At least 15 voters were shot and
hacked to death at one polling sta
tion in the capital. Twelve other
deaths were reported in scattered lo
cations.
Junta chief Lt. Gen. Henri Nam-
phy, in a television announcement at
6:30 p.m., condemned the violence,
said elections can still be held and he
plans to step down as promised on
Feb. 7, 1988, to make way for a
freely elected president.
As Namphy spoke, sporadic gun
fire could be heard in the streets in
renewed violence that started shortly
after sunset.
In a decree read over television at
3:30 p.m., Namphy’s three-member
National Governing Council accused
the electoral council of taking an ac
tion that “endangers the unity of the
nation and invites the intervention
of foreign powers in the country’s
internal affairs.”
Foreign countries, including the
United States and Canada, had pro
vided millions of dollars in assistance
for the balloting and sent obser
vation teams. The United States pro
vided $7.9 million for the election.
Voters would have elected a presi
dent and National Assembly to re
place the governing junta that took
over 22 months ago when President-
for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier
ended a 29-year family dictatorship
by fleeing to France.
There were 22 candidates for the
presidency and 328 candidates for
104 seats in the bicameral National
Assembly.
French Ambassador Michel de
LaFourniere protested the junta’s
measure in this former French col
ony. Asked if the junta’s decree
amounted to a coup, he responded,
“The coup was this morning,” refer
ring to the violence at the polling
places.
In Washington, the State Depart
ment said America was immediately
cutting off all non-humanitarian aid
to Haiti.
The electoral council canceled the
elections less than three hours after
the polls opened at 6 a.m.
The free elections would have
been the first in Haiti, which shares
Hispaniola Island with the Domin
ican Republic, in more than 30
years.
From Saturday night into Sunday
morning Port-au-Prince, the capital
city of 1 million, resembled a war
zone. Bodies lay scattered about the
downtown area. Explosions rocked
neighborhoods. Gunmen sprayed
slums and shantytowns with bullets.
U.S. plans to suspend
non-humanitarian aid
to Haiti after violence
orean officials call crash likely
tier jet carrying 115 disappears
WASHINGTON (AP) — The
United States is cutting off all non
humanitarian aid to Haiti in the
wake of violence that forced the
cancellation of elections, State De
partment officials said Sunday.
“The United States has decided to
remove all United States military as
sistance personnel from Haiti and to
suspend all military assistance to
Haiti,” department spokesman Ben
jamin Justesen said in a statement.
“In addition, all non-humanita
rian economic aid programs to Haiti
are being suspended and only hu
manitarian assistance will continue,”
the statement said.
The move, he said, comes “in view
of the . . . actions of the national gov
erning council of Haiti dissolving the
provisional electoral commission
and aborting all electoral legis
lation.”
The department spokesman said
he did not have exact figures for the
amount of aid being cut off. For fis
cal 1987, Justesen said, the United
States provided Haiti with $1.2 mil
lion in military assistance and $100
million in economic assistance, in
cluding both humanitarian and non
humanitarian aid.
Justesen said he did not have de
tails about the number of military as
sistance personnel present in Haiti
or the nature of non-humanitarian
aid being cut off. However, he said
the United States would continue to
give Haiti money to fight narcotics
trafficking.
“The United States government
reaffirms its support for the Haitian
people in their efforts to secure a
democratic political system through
free and fair elections,” State De
partment officials said.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A Korean Air
Ijetliner carrying 115 people on a flight from the
iMiddle East vanished Sunday somewhere near
IBurma and apparently crashed into the sea or
|thickjungle, officials said.
An air operations official at Seoul’s Kimpo In
ternational Airport said KAL Flight 858 from
Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, to Seoul was missing
without a trace and officials were trying to find
put what happened.
“It just disappeared,” one official, who spoke
on condition of not being identified, said.
KAL officials said it appeared the three-en
gine Boeing 707 crashed, although they would
not rule out the possibility of hijacking. Airline
officials also said a bomb may have destroyed the
Ijet.
“There is the possibility that a crash may have
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Senators’ plan will give A&M students
access to evaluations of professors
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been caused by explosives,” a KAL airline
statement said.
The jet was carrying 95 passengers and a flight
crew of 20, airline officials said. All but two peo
ple, an Indian and a Lebanese living in Abu
Dhabi, were South Korean, officials said.
Burmese Civil Aviation Administration offi
cials in Rangoon said the plane was over the An
daman Sea, about 150 miles west of the Burmese
coastal town of Tavoy, when contact was lost.
Officials in Rangoon said the plane was mak
ing routine contact with air traffic controllers at
Rangoon Airport before proceeding into Bur
mese air space when it disappeared.
The officials said the plane’s last radio contact
did not indicate any problems and the plane was
due to make another routine contact with the
tower 21 minutes later. It never did.
Burmese officials informed the South Korean
government that a search operation for the plane
was launched, but initial sweeps found nothing,
officials in Seoul said.
Thai provincial police said the plane may have
crashed near the Thai-Burmese border, but the
time they gave for the incident did not agree with
flight details released by Bangkok flight control.
KAL officials said Thai authorities would con
duct an air search for signs of the missing plane.
A provincial police chief said villagers said
they saw an aircraft plunge into a jungled area
along the Thai-Burmese frontier and patrols
were dispatched to determine whether it was the
South Korean jet.
Police Col. Punlop Roongsumphun said in a
telephone interview that the villagers came from
Huay Kaper, a border hamlet in Kanchanaburi
Province 150 miles west of Bangkok.
Released hostage:
American prisoners
suffering in captivity
By Mary-Lynne Rice
Staff Writer
A common complaint recurs in
registration lines at Texas A&M
each semester — students often say
they have no idea of which professor
to choose, that they must trust tips
from friends, word of mouth or just
luck.
No student comments or other
evaluation information is made pub
lic for students to see before regis
tration. Students now have access
only to professors’ grade distribu
tion rates.
The Student and Faculty Senates,
however, expect to hear fewer la
ments in the registration line if their
second-try proposal to make each
professor’s student-evaluation re
sults available to anyone interested is
approved by University administra
tion.
Results from a semi-standardized
evaluation form to be used through
out University departments would
be organized and compiled for stu
dents to learn more about profes
sors’ grade distribution rates and to
read other comments about them,
said Tom Black, a student senator.
The idea first was proposed two
years ago, Black said, prompted par
tially by a similar program at the
University of Texas.
“They were trying to figure out a
way to standardize course instructor
valuation forms each semester
“The more information a student can find out about a
faculty member, the better. ”
—J.M. Rosenheim, assistant professor of history
throughout all the colleges on camp
us,” Black said. “The result would be
that a student in biology, for exam
ple, would have the same questions
to answer as a student in engi
neering.
“The form was made flexible
enough that there could be additions
for specialty items, like classes with a
TA or classes with labs associated
with them or classes that give only
essay tests.”
Sophomore journalism major
Marc Giller said he would like to
have evaluation information avail
able to him before he registers for
classes.
“That’s probably a pretty efficient
way of doing things,” Giller said.
“It’s a way of dipping your feet in
the water before jumping in.”
The Student Senate submitted the
first proposed evaluation form to
the Faculty Senate, which approved
it with minor changes and then sent
it to University administration,
where it was stopped, Black said.
“They asked for a clear purpose
to the bill,” he said. “They said there
was a problem with implementation,
and they asked us to redefine the
purpose of the evaluation.”
Faculty Senator Manuel Daven-
E ort, professor of philosophy and
umanities, said the administration
brought up questions of manage
ment, including how many forms
would be made, how different they
would be and whether the cost
would be assumed by each depart
ment, each college or the University.
Faculty and administration mem
bers have registered some objec
tions, Black said.
“They (professors) ask, ‘Can you
devise an evaluation form to suit my
subject area?’ ” he said. “We’ve said,
‘You devise the form.’ We’ve tried to
be as flexible as possible.
“They also say that students are
not qualified to judge the faculty.
That’s a half-truth. They certainly
can tell how effective a faculty mem
ber communicates, but perhaps they
can’t judge the quality.
“We’re not arguing that a student
evaluation tells you everything you
need to know.”
Some say students don’t recognize
who the good teachers are until after
they graduate, Black said.
“But that’s a myth,” he said
“People don’t change their minds af
ter they leave. The judgment they
give now is the judgment they’re
going to retain.”
Other professors fear the evalua
tions could be biased, he said, that
evaluation is not a student function
and that it could hurt careers.
“This is a way to compare profes
sors across campus and across colle
ges,” Black said. “There’s concern
that they could be used against the
professors. They could be used to
determine a faculty member’s ten
ure — but that’s just conjecture on
my part.”
Despite the objections, however.
Black said the majority of the faculty
has been willing to cooperate with
the Student Senate in the project.
J.M. Rosenheim, assistant profes
sor of history, said he approved of
the idea of compiling faculty evalua
tion results, although he said he
would be “a little skeptical” of a stan
dardized form.
“I would have no objections,” he
said. “The more information a stu
dent can find out about a faculty
member, the better. I think it (the
result of an evaluation) should be
available to them.”
A new joint committee soon will
be formed, Davenport said, to re
work the evaluation form.
Black said he hopes the project
can be implemented within a year.
PARIS (AP) — A French hos
tage just freed in Lebanon said
Sunday that Terry Waite, the
Archbishop of Canterbury’s spe
cial envoy, was in the room next
to him during his captivity and
that American hostages were suf
fering greatly.
Roger Auque, 31, a free-lance
journalist, was released Friday in
Beirut by his Shiite Moslem kid
nappers along with Jean-Louis
Normandin, 36, a lighting engi
neer for the Antenne 2 television
network.
In an interview on French tele
vision, Auque said Waite also was
being held by the Revolutionary
Justice Organization.
“I knew that Terry Waite was
held by the same people as me,
the same kidnappers, and was in
the room next to mine in the
apartment where I was held,” he
said.
Auque was optimistic about
more releases soon.
“I think the French govern
ment has now found the key to
hostage releases and that there
will be more in the future,” he
said.
Normandin and Auque were
the sixth and seventh French hos
tages freed since Premier Jacques
Chirac’s conservatives came to
power in March 1986.
Chirac heatedly denied a re
port by the respected newspaper
Le Monde that a ransom was
paid. The French government
has maintained an absolute si
lence on all matters relating to the
hostages and negotiations for
their release.
Waite dropped from sight in
Beirut on Jan. 20 while on a mis
sion from the Anglican Church to
negotiate with Islamic Jihad for
the release of foreign hostages in
Lebanon. His whereabouts were
unknown though it was widely as
sumed he had been kidnapped.
Auque said he learned two
Americans held by the Shiite or
ganization were suffering.
Auque said he got information
from a South Korean diplomat.
Do Chae-Sung, kidnapped Jan.
31, 1986 and freed Oct. 29, with
whom he shared a cell.
UPD chief colls crowd
orderly despite orrests
of 8 of bonfire, gome
By Clark Miller
Staff Writer
The crowds at bonfire and the
Texas A&M-University of Texas
football game last Wednesday and
Thursday were well behaved, al
though eight arrests were made, Bob
Wiatt, director of the University Po
lice Department, said.
Wiatt said there were six arrests
made during and after bonfire, and
two more on the day of the game.
There were also 75 citations is
sued by the Texas Alcohol and Bev
erage Commission agents and Uni
versity Police officers for minors
being in possession of alcohol, for
making alcohol available to minors
and for possessing altered driver’s li
censes, he added.
Overall, though, Wiatt said, both
the bonfire and Football crowds were
manageable.
“Everything was very peaceful,”
he said. “There was a well-behaved
crowd at bonfire. It wasn’t nearly as
raucous as the last two years.”
There were an estimated 45,000
people at the bonfire site.
Wiatt said that of the eight arrests,
seven involved A&M students or
graduates of the University, and the
other arrest was of a UT student.
Wiatt said that final reports of the
arrests were not completed because
of the holiday and the weekend.
Most of the arrests involved public
intoxication and disorderly conduct,
although one A&M student was ar
rested because of several outstand
ing traffic warrants, he said.
“I was yery much impressed by
the behavior of the crowd,” Wiatt
said. “I hope they continue to act as
well next year.”