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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 4, 1988)
fi } ■i 1 D 3 * i) 3 5 3 3 - The Battalion Vol. 87 No. 109 USPS 045360 14 Pages College Station, Texas Friday, March 4, 1988 Jurors find Soldier of Fortune negligent From Staff and Wire Reports HOUSTON (AP) — A federal jury Thursday found Soldier of Fortune mag- [zine was negligent in publishing a classi- led ad that led to the 1985 slaying of a Bryan woman and ordered the magazine to ay $9.4 million to the victim’s family. Dr. Don Tomlinson, Texas A&M assis- ant professor of journalism and an attor- fiey specializing in media law, said the case’s nain question is whether there is enough of causal relationship between the mag- izine’s publication and Black’s death. “Obviously, this jury thought so,” he said. Jurors, who deliberated for 12 hours tarting Tuesday, said the magazine should pay $1.5 million to the woman’s son and $400,000 to her mother. The two received $7.5 million in punitive damages. Ron Franklin, who represented Marjorie Eimann, 64, the victim’s mother, and Gary Wayne Black, 18, the victim’s son, said the verdict should not be read too broadly. “This will have no effect on the legiti mate press,” Franklin said. “Soldier of For tune knew in fact that it was advertising for contract killers. They’re obviously going to appeal, but we’re going to do everything we can to collect every penny.” Sandra Black, Gary’s mother and Mrs. Eimann’s daughter, was shot to death Feb. 21,1985 at her home in Bryan. Mrs. Black’s husband, Robert, is on Texas’ death row for paying John Wayne Hearn $10,000 to kill her. Hearn is serving three life terms in Florida for the Black slaying and two others in that state. Robert Black contacted Hearn through a personal services classified ad Hearn placed in Soldier of Fortune in late 1984. Thompson said he will appeal but doubts the punitive damages will be upheld. “There was no evidence of gross neg ligence in this whole case,” he said. “. . . You’ve got the emotions and prejudice out of the case and you can concentrate on the First Amendment.” Tomlinson, however, does not believe that the First Amendment has any applica tion in this case. “Clearly, the First Amendment gives the defense (Soldier of Fortune) the right to publish anything it wants, but doesn’t grant anyone the right to avoid liability for any harm caused by the publication,” he said. Tomlinson cites “proximate cause” as the determining factor. “The family is trying to connect the ini tial event with the eventual thing that hap pened — publication of the advertisement with the death of Mrs. Black — and in or der to make that connection, they must show proximate cause,” Tomlinson said. “There must be a logical nexus.” Tomlinson’s opinion is that if this link is too weak, the decision will be overturned on appeal on that basis, in which case the plain tiffs will receive no award. “It will be good for the plaintiffs if they can show in court, to the satisfaction of a jury, that the people at Soldier of Fortune knew what was going on — that these peo ple were using ads to get together and com mit crime — and didn’t care,” Tomlinson said. “Then they would be much closer to being upheld on appeal.” Private dancer Sophomore Jennifer Pak warms up in her begin ning ballet class by practicing pli£s. Pak, a psychol- Photo by Shelly Schluter ogy major from Dallas, works on perfecting this basic ballet movement. 3 3oj d or. 3 XS 0 (0 g ; r, Vi S. | West German hostage released by kidnappers DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Pro- Iranian kidnappers freed West Ger man hostage Ralph Schray in west Beirut on Thursday after holding him for Five weeks, and he was turned over to the West German Embassy in Damascus. The West German charge d’af faires, Klaus Auchenbach, refused to make any comments to reporters as he shuttled between the embassy and the Foreign Ministry, about a mile apart in the Syrian capital. He said it was “not worthwhile” for them to wait around, indicating that Schray would not appear in public. This raised speculation the for mer captive may not be as well as Bonn portrayed him to be after his ordeal. The Bonn Foreign Ministry had said earlier that Schray, 30, was in “good physical condition.” Friedholm Ost, the West German government’s chief spokesman in Bonn, said only that the Syrian gov ernment had handed Schray over to embassy officials. Schray, a Lebanese-born indus trial engineer, was freed before dawn. A Syrian military source in the Lebanese capital said he was driven the 55 miles to Damascus un der heavy Syrian escort. On Wednesday, the Holy War riors for Freedom claimed responsi bility for Schray’s abduction and said he would be freed within hours as a result of Syrian mediation. The official Syrian Arab News Agency said Foreign Minister Fa- rouk al-Sharaa contacted his Ger man counterpart, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, by telephone to report that Schray has been released. Application deadline nears to file for student positions By Drew Leder Staff Writer Students wanting to run for Stu dent Government positions to be Filled in the March 20th general elec tion must have their names on re cord at the Student Government of fice by 5 p.m. today. Students filing to run for student body president, yell leader or any of the Student Senate Chairmen posi tions must have 100 students’ signa tures accompanying their applica tions, election commissioner Bryan Tutt said. Candidates for any other position must have 25 students’ sig natures to get their names on the ballot, he said. Filing for a position also requires a $5 fee. All Student Government positions except those appointed by the stu dent body president will be filled in the March 30th election or in a run off election on April 4. Positions to be filled include: • Student body president. • Academic affairs chairman of the Student Senate. • Student services chairman of the Student Senate. • External affairs chairman of the Student Senate. • ’88 Student Senate seats. • Presidents for each class. • 3 senior yell leaders. • 2 junior yell leaders. • All elected positions of the Off Campus Aggies. • All elected positions of the Resi dence Hall Association. To be eligible for student body president, a student must have at least a 2.5 grade-point ratio and must have attained at least a 2.0 GPR in the last semester he was enrolled at Texas A&M. Eligibility for any of the other positions requires an over all GPR of at least 2.25 and a GPR of at least 2.0 in the preceding semes ter. Jay Hays, speaker of the Student Senate, said Thursday the number of students who already have filed exceeds the level of recent years. “In the past, people usually wait until Friday to file, but this year we’ve had people filing all week,” he said. Hays said that in past years the Student Senate has had 30 percent to 40 percent of its seats still open af ter the spring general election but there seems to be a lot more interest in being a part of the Student Senate this semester. “The Senate is really filling up quick,” he said. “People are going to have to earn their seats this year.” Hays attributed this increased in terest to many students’ awareness and support of what the Senate has been doing this semester. In partic ular, many students supported the Senate’s stance against the current senior finals schedule. At the time the Student Govern ment office closed Thursday, only one person had filed to run for stu dent body president. Hays said that candidates for the highest-elected student office traditionally wait until the final day of filing to submit their names. Campaigning for offices begins March 20. 3 V (/] j c & ’ «•* ^ r* calls ELI symbol of problem rather than source jj’ c oo « 2, 3 *“< C/) fil 0 $ English proficiency at A&M Part four of a four-part series Committee asks for changes in ELI system 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 controversy 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 sections 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. By Karen Kroesche Senior Staff Writer Texas A&M’s English proficiency system has been the subject of By Karen Kroesche Senior Staff Writer Texas A&M could have a new English language pro ficiency system by the fall semester, says Dr. Duwayne Anderson, associate provost for research and graduate studies. A graduate studies ad hoc advisory committee on Tuesday adopted and endorsed recommendations call ing for “immediate attention to needed changes in pro cedures” in A&M’s English language proficiency re quirements, Anderson says. Anderson says the committee did not make specific plans, but it did address complaints that have been brought against the current system. “Although this committee doesn’t have detailed rec ommendations, they called attention to these points and recommended that the provost and his staff continue to work on this problem, urging us to resolve this issue swiftly,” he says. Some of the problems the committee has asked An derson to address include handling of international graduate student applications, minimum English profi ciency standards for graduates and the cost of A&M’s English Language Institute, where at least two thirds of all foreign graduate students are required to take non credit courses taught by non-tenure track faculty. “The committee was concerned, as I am, with the fi nancial burden of the ELI that is imposed on newly ar riving graduate students under the present procedure,” Anderson says. Enrollment in the institute for a four-month session costs students from $400 to $1,300 depending on the number of courses they are required to take. The costs are high because the ELI does not receive funding from either the state or the University, although it does use University facilities. Dr. Ry Young, a tenured professor of biochemistry who is outspoken against the ELI system, says one solu tion to the high costs of ELI courses would be to teach them within the regular curriculum — a method that is already in practice at the University of Texas at Austin. “I think that there’s a need for international students to develop communication skills rapidly if they’re going to be in teaching positions,” Young says. “But I think what we need to do is if we are going to give them reme- See Changes, page 14 heated debate among faculty, ad ministrators and students. No mat ter who’s doing the talking, the En glish Language Institute inevitably is at the center of the controversy. But Lloyd Colegrove, president of the Graduate Student Council, says the ELI is getting a bad rap. Mem bers of the council conducted a study of the ELI and A&M’s English proficiency requirements. They con cluded that there are some problems See ELI, page 14 Legislation would end use of lie detector test for most job interviews WASHINGTON (AP) — Lie detectors, likened by one law maker to “20th century witch craft,” largely would be banned from use in job interviews and the private workplace under legis lation approved by the Senate on Thursday. On a 69-27 vote, the Senate ap proved a bill co-written by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah — nor mally adversaries on labor-man agement issues — outlawing about 85 percent of the current use of polygraph examinations. Conservative opponents pre dicted that President Reagan would sign the legislation once a final version of the bill has emerged from a Senate-House conference. An estimated 2 million people, most of them job seekers, are re quired to take lie detector tests ev ery year and that number is grow ing exponentially, said Kennedy, who chairs the Senate’s Labor and Human Resources Commit tee. Hatch, the committee’s rank ing Republican, said an over whelming majority of the tests are conducted in brief 15-minute ses sions and under conditions that render false results between 15 percent and 50 percent of the time. “I’m sick and tired of the way people are using these devices,” he said. “Some 320,000 honest Americans are branded as liars every single year. That’s a stigma they have to wear every day the rest of their lives and careers.” Similar but more restrictive legislation was approved by the House 254-158 last November. Kennedy said he planned to meet with Rep. Pat Williams, D- Mont., chief author of the House version, within the next two weeks to work out a plan for re solving differences between the two versions in a compromise that could win passage in both houses. “They ban about 90 percent and we ban about 85 percent,” he said, predicting the new prohib- tion will become law before the end of the year “with or without the president’s support.” Just prior to the vote Thurs day, after more than two days of debate, Senate opponents com plained that the administration had softened its opposition after threatening last year to veto any polygraph bill.