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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 23, 1988)
Texas A&MV% m m V • e Battalion Vol.87 No. 101 CISPS 045360 8 Pages College Station, Texas Tuesday, February 23, 1987 nti-apartheid hut built on campus tfEEcao? I tils me relief-1 iy I third strati <as-Arlinpl iix runsinii!| :ee on a fa I m Craig \f*l 0, and rigt-l liad a ik»| sarik :> score Swt| Iked. »s, desigraitil angled, Be I lomas Mcfej kirk drove;] ■Id fence 10 and Jokscl ;Gee s secosil By Richard Tijerina Reporter Protesters erected an anti-apart heid shanty on the Texas A&M cam pus early Monday morning, but the grounds Maintenance Department frore it down that afternoon. Members of a group calling itself [the “Bothabusters” — in reference [to South African President Pieter W. Botha — said they wanted to send [he message that A&M students are pare of the political situation in South Africa. Group members were Interviewed on the condition that [they not be identified. Director of University Police Bob IWiatt said that Grounds Mainte nance dismantled the shanty at ap proximately 3:30 p.m. Wiatt said early Monday af- Iternoon that he had recieved no calls pout the shanty until The Battalion palled to ask about it. “So far, it seems that everyone has laken it for granted,” Wiatt said. A member of the “Bothabusters” said the group sneaked onto campus about 2 a.m. Monday and assembled the small shanty between the Aca- lemic Building and Harrington 'ower. The shanty — which had mes sages painted on it saying “Abolish ipartneid” and “Free South Africa” was a signal of awareness rather [than a form of violent or nonviolent [protest, the group member said. “There’s nothing personal that we rant to gain,” he said. “Instead, we want to bring more awareness to the problem and show that A&M is not a school that doesn’t care. It’s not apa thy. but a gener al lack of knowledge of the problem in South Africa.” He said group members built the shanty in two hours and stored it in an area near Wellborn Road before bringing it to campus. Glen Maloney, assistant dean of Students in the University of Texas Campus Activities Office, said seve ral shanties have been erected at the school’s Austin campus in the past f ew years. Maloney said a shanty put up in October 1986 is still standing be cause it meets the university’s guidelines for posting an exhibit. Jo Hudson, chairman of A&M’s University Concessions Committee, said the A&M shanty could have re mained had it received a permit. But no permit was requested by or granted to the “Bothabusters” group, she said. Group members say they will ac cept any repercussions that result from their actions because they be lieve in their cause. They stressed that they did not intend to of fend or hurt anyone, but merely wanted to make a statement of awareness. According to Students Against Apartheid, A&M had about S5.5 million invested in companies with holdings in South Africa as of last se mester. South Africa’s system of apartheid provides no legal rep resentation for the millions of blacks in the country. • Lucy Son, a freshman architecture major from Fort Worth, exam ines an anti-Apartheid shack behind the Academic Building on Photo by Jay Janner Monday. Other messages asking for the recognition and removal of apartheid rule were on the other sides of the shack. :, an KBl md an Chimelisfcl maid 1 EVERl’ 1C Palestinians demonstrate to recognize Martyrs’ Day ason ms^Sl RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank (AP) — Angry, defiant Pal estinians marked Martyrs’ Day in the occupied territories Monday with graveside speeches and seve ral stone-throwing demonstra tions as they remembered the 61 Arabs killed in clashes since De cember. Attorney General Yosef Har- ish, meanwhile, released a letter to Defense Minister Yitzhak Ra bin, criticizing Rabin’s policy of allowing soldiers to beat protes ters. “You cannot use force as a means of punishment, abuse or humiliation,” Harish said. One Palestinian was shot and wounded Monday in this West Bank town 10 miles north of Je rusalem and another was shot during a demonstration at Jaba- liya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, according to hospital sources. The army said it was checking the reports. About 1,500 additional police officers, brought in from throughout Israel, flooded Jeru salem in advance of the visit of U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, set to begin Thursday. The reinforcements will back up the holy city’s normal contingent of 1,000 officers. Authorities fear Shultz’s pres ence will lead to an upsurge in vi olence by Arabs pressing their case for an end to 20 years of Is raeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, seized during the 1967 Middle East war. The latest spate of unrest started Dec. 8 and has resulted in scores of deaths, hundreds of in juries and arrests. In Kfar Naami, a village of 2,000 inhabitants six miles west of here, about 1,500 Arabs marched through the streets chanting anti- Israeli and anti-American slo gans. In a fiery speech at the graveside of one of the two village residents who have died from army bullets, a speaker rejected the Shultz trip. “From this grave we condemn the Shultz visit and the United States,” he said gesturing to the crowd, “These masses are led by the PLO. We will continue to achieve our goals and not satisfy American policy in the region.” Grafitti in Kfar Naami read: “No for the visit of Shultz; yes, to the Palestinian government. Yes to the PLO.” Despite the rhetoric, Palestin ian moderates are trying to per suade PLO leader Yasser Arafat to lift his ban against local Pales tinians talking to Shultz. If Wash ington’s peace plan is to succeed, Shultz needs to bring Palestinians into the talks. In an interview Monday in Tu nisia, Arafat said the Palestine Liberation Organization was re ady to meet with the United States. “We have declared that we are ready to meet with all of the per manent members of the Security Council, including the American administration,” Arafat said, speaking on CBS-TV’s “This Morning.” “Without a meeting with Pales tinians, the Shultz initiative is bound to fail,” said Sari Nussei- beh, a university professor and one of six Arabs originally slated to meet Shultz. Conservative Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has expressed strong reservations about the American initiative. While sayirig he is willing to listen and consider any ideas from Washington, he clearly does not like the American initiative which revolves around swapping land for peace. He also is worried about moving too quickly. Court: Hospital must give names of suspect donors FORT WORTH (AP) — The Su preme Court’s refusal to allow a hos pital to withhold identities of blood donors to a woman who claimed her baby contracted AIDS through transfusions will assure a safer blood supply, her attorney said Monday. Without comment, the court let stand a ruling that donors’ privacy rights do not override Belinda Jack son’s need to find out their identities in a wrongful-death lawsuit. In a 1986 suit against the Tarrant County Hospital District, Jackson al leged her daughter, Tristainne, died of acquired immune deficiency syn drome after receiving blood transfu sions in 1983 at John Peter Smith Hospital. Jackson’s attorney, Lowell Dush- man, said the ruling allows him to seek depositions from donors on their conduct during the time they donated blood. “I’m not interested in suing any blood donors,” he said. “I wasn’t then and I’m not now. What I’m in terested in is what was done then — to assure a safer blood product.” In pretrial discovery proceedings, Jackson sought to find out the iden tities and addresses of all blood do nors whose blood had been used in the treatment of her prematurely born daughter. “We were disappointed” about the ruling, Van Thompson Jr., a Tar rant County assistant district attor ney, said. “We will comply with the court’s order.” U.S., Soviets plan provisions to halt cheating on accord Mar8‘ ;04 incl^J nefits^.3 d. ^ 126T go# University gives honor to Vandiver Texas A&M President Frank E. Vandiver was appointed an honorary professor of the Uni- versidad Nacional de Asuncion in Paraguay Monday in recognition of his efforts to promote cooope- ration among the world’s intellec tual leaders. The Paraguay university’s rec tor and faculty dean signed the designation that noted Vandiver’s contribution to higher education. A&M and the university worked together on such world wide problems as pestilence and famine. This work, as well as work with several other universi ties around the world, is part of Vandiver’s “world university” concept. Since Vandiver became Uni versity president in 1981, A&M has entered agreements with al most 50 universities and research centers abroad to colloaborate on research and studies of basic na ture. Vandiver was out of town and couldn’t be reached for comment. High court ruling supports use of ‘godless’ books WASHINGTON (AP) — The Su preme Court dealt a blow to reli gious fundamentalists Monday when it killed a challenge to the required use of “godless” textbooks in Ten nessee public schools. Ending one of the most widely publicized freedom-of-religion cases in recent years, the justices, without a recorded dissenting vote, rejected an appeal by seven families. Today’s action left intact a federal appeals court ruling that said it was constitutional to require fundamen talist Christian children to read the objected-to books. Beverly LaHaye, president of Concerned Women for America, a conservative group that aided the families’ legal battle, said following Monday’s ruling, “a dark cloud of religious oppression looms over America’s schoolhouses today.” “Religious tolerance in our na tion’s classrooms has been dealt a devastating blow,” LaHaye said. Mike Farris, a lawyer for Con cerned Women, called on born- again Christian families in the school district involved to remove their chil dren from public schools. “I hope there is a mass exodus from the public school system to morrow, or at least by next fall,” Far ris said. Tennessee Attorney General W.J. Michael Cody praised the court ac tion, saying, “Any alternative dispo sition would have been the cause of chaos in the school system.” At full strength for the first time in eight months as Justice Anthony M. Kennedy took his place at the bench, the court also: The Tennessee textbook contro versy began in 1983, when the Hawkins County Board of Educa tion adopted a new reading list for students in grades one through eight. Pupils initially were allowed to read from other textbooks if they desired, but the school board later eliminated that alternative. MOSCOW (AP) — The United States and Soviet Union told their negotiators Monday to draft anti cheating and other key provisions of a new arms agreement within a month so the treaty can be signed this spring. Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov said the Soviets would begin with drawing shorter-range SS-12 mis siles from East Germany and Czechoslovakia late this month as a display of goodwill. The missiles must be eliminated under the inter mediate-range arms pact signed in December. Secretary of State George P. Shultz reported progress on human rights and emigration, and pro fessed not “the slightest doubt” that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev would make good on his pledge to pull Soviet military forces out of Af ghanistan. A joint statement said progress was made toward banning chemical weapons and verifying nuclear test limits set by unratified 1974 and 1976 treaties. A report by the official news agency Tass, however, quoted Gorbachev as telling Shultz the U.S. stand on a chemical weapons ban “hampers the working out of an in ternational convention.” Addressing a news conference about arms negotiations, Shultz said it was “extremely important” to acce lerate work in Geneva if President Reagan and Gorbachev are to sign the treaty at their fourth summit, planned for May or June in Moscow. He spoke after two days of talks with Gorbachev and Foreign Min ister Eduard A. Shevardnadze. Shultz said anti-cheating measures especially were “an extremely im portant thing to get nailed down” in a pact on strategic, or long-ran,ge, nuclear weapons. Shevardnadze told his own news conference later that the meetings produced headway toward agreement to cut strategic nuclear weapons, which he said “can be ac complished” before the summit. Both men said their Geneva nego tiators were instructed to work out the key elements in time for their next meeting, March 22-23 in Wash ington. Shultz said U.S. and Soviet nego tiators were ordered to prepare three documents dealing with: • Inspection of the projected SO SO percent reduction in overall num bers of long-range bombers, missiles and nuclear-armed submarines. • How the banned weapons can be eliminated or converted into other nuclear arms that would re main legal. • Agreement, in a memorandum of understanding, to exchange in formation about strategic weapons as another way to prevent cheating. According to the secretary, nego tiators will try to resolve “some mis understandings” about the U.S. pro gram to develop a defense system in space. Hospital district officials asked for permission to withhold the informa tion, contending that releasing it would violate the donors’ privacy rights and threaten the future avail ability of a volunteer blood supply program. In response to the latter, Dush- man noted a 10-year-old law exists that blood donors can be sued. “I’m not aware of any drop (in blood donors) because of that,” Dushman said. Dorm offers escort service for women By Todd Riemenschneider Staff Writer A new service has been started by Aston Hall to escort women across campus in the evening. “It is a service to walk girls across campus,” said Frank Krekeler, a sophomore civil engineering major and chairman for the escort service in Aston Hall. Krekeler said women can reach the escort service by calling a dis patcher at the front desk of the Commons. The dispatcher, in turn, will call an escort who is waiting in his room. He said the service can be reached seven days a week, between 6 p.m. and 3 a.m. The service, which was started last Monday, has about 50 men partici pating in the program. Each man was interviewed by the resident di rector and Krekeler to determine if his character was desirable for the escort service. Krekeler stressed the point that the men in the program are all vol unteers. “We are doing this because we like to, because we want to,” he said. “We have concentrated our advertising on the south side (of campus) and have been surprised at the way it has started, and now we are trying to spread the word on the north side of campus.” Krekeler said each of the men participating in the escort service will be wearing a special jacket. The jackets will be accessible only to men who are on duty. Krekeler also said Aston Hall is not trying to compete with the Corps of Cadets’ Guard Room. “We are trying to provide an alter native service; we are not trying to compete with the Corps,” Krekeler said. He said anyone wanting an escort can call the dispatcher at 845-9822.