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Vol.87 No. 101 CISPS 045360 8 Pages
College Station, Texas
Tuesday, February 23, 1987
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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.
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Palestinians demonstrate
to recognize Martyrs’ Day
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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
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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.