Texas A&M m m m 0
The Battalion
Vol. 87 No. 107 (JSPS 045360 12 Pages College Station, Texas Wednesday, March 2, 1988
Blood center says allegations hurt drive
Photo by Timothy J. Hammons
Russell Downey, a sophomore biology major and Hall. Wadley is trying to raise 3,000 units of
member of the Aggie Band, gives blood at the blood, but recent rumors have slowed down
Wadley Blood Center in front of Sbisa Dining blood donations.
By Richard Williams '
Senior Staff Writer
Allegations that the Blood Center
at Wadley sells blood to cosmetic
companies are false, and have hurt
its blood drive at Texas A&M, Wad
ley officials said Tuesday.
Dianne Hall, director of donor re
cruitment for Wadley, said the alle
gations are “out-and-out not true.”
Based on previous donation figures,
she said, the allegations have caused
donations to drop by about 120 units
in the first two days of the blood
drive.
A Feb. 18 letter to the editor of
The Battalion said Wadley sells
blood collected on campus for
profit. The letter, written by Melvin
G. Brinkley, also said Wadley “gets
approximately $100 per unit from
labs, corporations or from patients
in the hospital.”
Hall said this is not true. She said
Wadley charges the hospital a nec
essary $45-per-unit processing fee
— similar to that of other blood
banks — which pays for testing and
handling of the blood. Wadley also
charges a $10-per-unit replacement
fee, to those who do not have “cre
dits” built up in the Wadley system.
Hall said Brinkley offered last
week to write another letter to The
Battalion retracting his accusations.
Hall said she told Brinkley that she is
willing to provide him with informa
tion refuting the charges, but as of
Tuesday, he had not requested the
information.
Accusations also have been made
that Wadley is not a tax-exempt or
ganization.
Carol Hill, Wadley’s A&M rep
resentative, said Wadley is a self sup-
Wadley is collecting donations
at the following campus locations:
• The Commons, 10 a.m. until
B p.m.
• Rudder Fountain, 10 a.m.
until 6 p m.
• Sbisa Dining Hall, 10 a.m.
until 6 p.m.
• Zachry, 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.
Only the Rudder Fountain and
Sbisa locations will be open on
Friday. They will be open Friday
from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.
porting, tax-exempt organization.
She gave The Battalion a June 1982
letter from the Internal Revenue
Service documenting this status. A
spokesman for the IRS confirmed
this status Tuesday.
Hill also provided a March 6,
1951 document filed with the Texas
Department of State that states a
charter was granted for a non-profit
corporation under the name of the
J.K. & Susie L. Wadley Research In
stitute and Blood Bank.
John Osborn in the state comp
troller’s office confirmed Tuesday
that Wadley’s charter is still in effect.
The Blood Center at Wadley, the
group that holds blood drives on
campus, is a part of the chartered or
ganization.
Because of changes in the tax
code. Hall said, Wadley now is classi
fied as a not-for-profit corporation.
In his letter Brinkley said his in
formation came from a Red Cross
nurse.
Lynda Falkenburg, of the Central
Texas Region Red Cross, said she
does not know if any Red Cross per
sonnel are making those allegations
against Wadley.
Emily Stiller, the Brazos county
Red Cross representative, also said
she did not know if local Red Cross
personnel were making any allega
tions against Wadley; however,
Stiller did hint some of those
charges were true and offered help
in confirming them.
Hall, Wadley’s director of recruit
ing, said shp is not sure who started
the rumors, but she said it is a prob
lem Wadley is having only at A&M.
She also said Wadley would not al
low its employees to make similiar
statements about another blood
bank because “it is not the profes
sional thing to do.”
“We would terminate an em
ployee who made a statement like
that,” she said.
Brinkley’s letter charged that
Wadley “gets approximately $100
per unit from labs, corporations or
from patients in the hospital.”
Hill said that is not true.-Hill said
most hospitals charge about $100 to
$125 for each blood unit, which is
used to cover the processing fee, re
placement fee and the hospital’s cost
for administering the blood.
Wadley charges hospitals $45 for
processing and $ 10 for replacement.
The money generated by replace
ment charges helps to fund blood
drives and recruit donors.
The replacement cost is dropped
if credits from a blood-bank account
are used, and the processing fee
usually is covered by insurance, Hill
said.
If an individual does not have in
surance, Wadley can arrange to send
enough credit to cover the proc
essing fee, Hill said.
Falkenburg said the Red Cross
charges hospitals a $33 processing
See Rumors, page 11
Assault claim
ends in firing
for CS officer
By Tom Eikel
Staff Writer
A College Station police officer
was dismissed from the depart
ment last week following investi
gations into allegations that a 20-
year-old woman was assaulted in
her apartment Jan. 22 by an off-
duty police officer.
Sgt. Walter Stoebe, of the uni
formed patrol division, was dis
missed, effective Friday, accord
ing to a City of College Station
press release dated Monday.
In a letter to Stoebe dated Feb.
25, the police chief stated, “it
would be a dereliction of duty to
allow you to remain a police offi
cer of the City of College Sta
tion.”
Stoebe had been suspended
with pay while the allegations of
the woman were being investi
gated by the department.
Police Chief Mike Strope said
the woman filed an official allega
tion of criminal action with his
department on Feb. 10, and that
same day he ordered a criminal
investigation to be conducted si
multaneously with an internal ad
ministrative inquiry.
“The results of that criminal
investigation have been sub
mitted to the Brazos County Dis
trict Attorney’s Office for their
review,” Strope said Tuesday. “It
will be up to their office to decide
what, if any, criminal actions may
result.”
Strope said the district attor
ney’s office will probably make its
decision on the case in the next
week.
“This case is being handled in
the very same manner as we
would any other sexual assault al
legation,” Strope said.
An assistant to Brazos County
District Attorney Bill T urner told
The Battalion Tuesday that no
formal criminal charges have
been filed.
Strope cited two violations of
the department’s policies and
procedures as his reasons for fir
ing Stoebe.
“There were two regulations
that were violated; conduct unbe
coming an employee of the Col
lege Station Police Department
and failure to cooperate with an
official internal investigation,” he
said.
Strope declined to comment
further on the results of the de-
parment’s investigation.
“On the advice of council rep
resenting the interests of the city
of College Station, I have been
advised to confine any kind of
comments on this particular mat
ter to those contained in the press
release because of pending ap
peals and potential civil arid crim
inal actions that may develop,” he
said.
Strope said that the officer has
until Friday afternoon to appeal
his dismissal from the depart
ment.
“As of this time (Stoebe) has
not filed an appeal based upon
my decision,” the chief said.
English proficiency requirements
may discourage foreign students
By Karen Kroesche
Senior Staff Writer
Editor’s note: Texas A&M’s En
glish proficiency program for for
eign students has come under re
peated fire in recent months. The
coittroversy centers on the forced
enrollment of foreign graduate stu
dents in the English Language Insti
tute. When international students
arrive at A&M, they are required to
make a certain score on the Univer
sity’s English Language Proficiency
Exam. If they don’t make the score
on any section, they must enroll in a
non-credit ELI course — taught by
non-tenure track faculty — for that
section.
More than two-thirds of interna
tional graduate students are re
quired to enroll in at least one course
at the institute. Costs range from
$400 to $1,300 per four-month ses
sion, depending on the number of
courses they have to take. In this
week's four-part series, The Battal
ion looks at the controversy sur
rounding the English proficiency re
quirements.
Texas A&M administrators are
finding themselves stuck between
the proverbial rock and a hard place
when it comes to recruiting foreign
graduate students.
Research professors on campus
maintain that A&M’s extensive En
glish proficiency requirements —
and the cost of those requirements
— are scaring away top foreign
graduate students.
And some foreign graduate stu
dents say foreign students haven’t
been adequately informed of those
requirements before admission.
They say they feel frustrated and
misled, and some say they wouldn’t
have come here if they had known.
From either viewpoint, the ad
ministrators are being charged with
shoddy advertising.
A&M’s English testing stricter than most
By Karen Kroesche
Senior Staff Writer
Most colleges and universities
across the country have some type of
English proficiency program in
place, but the administration and
structure of those programs vary
widely from school to school.
Texas A&M’s English proficiency
system has come under fire from
professors and students for practices
that are called “ludicrous” at best,
and “unethical” at worst.
The controversy centers on the
forced enrollment of international
students in the English Language
Institute, a self-supporting sub-unit
of the Department of Modern Lan
guages. Upon arriving at A&M, all
foreign students are required to take
an Enlish Language Proficiency
Exam and then required to enroll in
a course corresponding to each sec
tion of the test on which they don’t
make the required score. More than
two thirds of these students are re
quired to take at least one course at
the ELI, with costs ranging from
$400 to $1300 depending on the
number of courses they have to take.
Most of these incoming interna
tional students have already taken
the Test of English as a Foreign Lan
guage, and their TOEFL and Grad
uate Record Exam scores are pri
mary factors in their admission to
A&M.
Texas A&M buys four compo
nents of its six-section English profi
ciency test from the University of
Michigan. But Michigan doesn’t use
an English proficiency test as widely
as A&M does, says Dr. Sarah Briggs,
a research associate in the test office
of the English Language Institute at
the University of Michigan.
“At Michigan, not everybody is re
tested right now,” she says. “It’s at
the discretion of the admissions peo-
See English, page 11
English Language Institute
Part two of a four-part series
Associate Provost for Research
and Graduate Studies Duwayne An
derson says he undeistands both
points of view.
“We have here a two-edged
sword,” he says. “If we do not warn
the graduate students of our present
procedure when they arrive here, as
you know, they have an awful shock
when they get here.
“On the other hand, if we send
them information (on the require
ments) that is now going out, it circu
lates widely in these foreign coun
tries, and the word spreads that
Texas A&M is greatly different in
the way it treats graduate students
from Columbia and Cornell and
UT-Austin and many of the other
fine schools in the country. Then it
works to our disadvantage in recruit
ing graduate students.”
Anderson has asked a subcommit
tee of an interim advisory committee
to the Office of Graduate Studies to
address this dilemma. That subcom
mittee made its recommendations to
the advisory committee Tuesday.
“What I think we need to do is
find the middle ground here, and
address both of those issues,” An
derson said in an interview before
the committee meeting. “And this is
what I’ve asked my advisory team to
do.”
Last year the Graduate Student
Council conducted an investigation
of A&M’s English proficiency re
quirements for foreign graduate stu
dents.
As part of that investigation, the
council surveyed faculty members
and foreign students and sent 10
recommendations to the ELI and
the Office of Graduate Studies based
on its findings.
One of the graduate council’s big
gest complaints was that students
were not adequately informed prior
to admission that they would have to
take the English Language Profi
ciency Exam — and possibly courses
at the ELI.
Graduate Student Council Presi
dent Lloyd Colegrove says the real
ization of these requirements often
comes as a shock to the students.
“A lot of the complaint, and a lot
of the hurt and a lot of the anxiety
that graduate students were feeling
coming into the University was
based mainly on the fact that they
didn’t understand what they were
facing when they came here,” Cole-
grove says.
The graduate students found
from their survey that 32 percent of
the foreign students who responded
said they did not realize before they
arrived at A&M that they would be
required to take the English Lan
guage Proficiency Exam in addition
to the Test of English as a Foreign
Language, a standardized exam that
most of them take before coming to
the United States. (The score on the
TOEFL, along with the score on the
Graduate Record Exam, is a primary
See ELI, page 11
Battalion wlW run ads
for Playboy models
From Staff and Wire Reports
Two Southwest Conference
school newspapers have refused to
run advertisements searching for
women to pose for a Playboy layout,
but The Battalion will run the adver
tisements as long as they are in good
taste, according to the advertising
manager for Texas A&M’s Student
Publications.
Polly Patranella said The Battal
ion ran an such an advertisement —
which solicited A&M women to pose
in the layout — in 1980. The Battal
ion advertising staff is a separate op
eration from the editorial staff.
This year, Playboy is again seek
ing to have advertisements placed in
the student newspapers at all nine
conference schools for a pictorial on
girls of the Southwest Conference
scheduled to run in its October issue.
Texas Christian and Baylor uni
versities said last week they will not
allow advertisements for Playboy to
run in their school newspapers.
“We don’t promote racism, we
don’t promote stereotypes and we
don’t promote pornography,” said
Mark Witherspoon, student publica
tions adviser at TCU.
Lisa Bianchi, a TCU junior and ad
manager for The Skiff, which
turned down the $444.26 ad Mon
day, said the newspaper also doesn’t
accept advertising for alcohol or ris-
que lingerie.
“To me it represents something
that puts women in a bad light,” Bi
anchi said of Playboy. “I feel it’s very
sexist.”
The 1980 pictorial similar to the
one Playboy is planning caused a
major uproar, and the controversy
caused Baylor to refuse to allow a fe-
See Advertise, page 8
Photo by Gary Bean
Firefighters try to extinguish the flames that burned the First As
sembly of God church on Texas Avenue across from K-Mart Tues
day afternoon. _
Early morning fire
damages church
in College Station
By Tracy Staton
Senior Staff Writer
A College Station building that
used to house an Assembly of God
church was extensively damaged by
fire early Tuesday morning, a Col
lege Station Fire Department investi
gator said.Tuesday.
Investigator George Spain said
the fire at 118 Morgan Lane was re
ported at 12:33 a.fn. Tuesday. The
fire department is still investigating
the cause of the fire, he said.
No one was inside the church
when the fire department arrived,
Spain said. About half the building
was extensively damaged by the fire.
Rev. Calvin Durham of College
Heights Assembly of God in College
Station said the church was formerly
occupied by the First Assembly of
God. But the sectional governing
body of the Bryan area Assembly of
God churches merged the small con
gregation with another congregation
in Bryan, Durham said. .
The building has not been used
since the congregation moved, he
said. The District Council of the As
sembly of God owned the building
and was trying to rent it to another
church.
Spain said the fire department is
still considering arson as a possible
cause of the fire. No evidence di
rectly points to arson, he said, but it
is still a possibility.