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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (May 3, 1988)
m V Texas A&tA mm « # The Battalion Vol. 87 No. 146 USPS 045360 12 Pages College Station, Texas Tuesday, May 3, 1988 hildren’s hospital wing collapses, 14 die a regions. 1 nthelWEW DELHI, India (AP) — A jlture's ne[v wing of a children’s hospital has lississippi cojlapsed, killing at least 14 and tra- to its Kojp^ing at least 50 children in the rub- thiswoultBrhe three-story building disinte- neothe gnued shortly after sunrise in program Jammu, winter capital of the north- ork forttiHi state of Kashmir. rofhounBrhe wing, completed in 1985, had that ec. been lined with cracks. An older ampalloawing remained standing. HMore than 16 hours after the building came tumbling down, In- HHm army rescue teams were trying to remove the debris by hand and with cranes, but hopes were fading. Some rescuers pulled severed limbs from the wreckage. “I heard children moaning in the morning, but in late evening there was nothing, a kind of strange si lence amid the noise of rescue work,” Kashmir Times reporter Arun Joshi said. “They may be dy ing” By evening, 14 bodies and 29 sur vivors had been found. Some news reports placed the death toll as high as 30. “But the worst is yet to come,” Joshi said in a telephone call to New Delhi. “At least 50 children and their parents or attendants are trapped on the first floor. It is a terrible sight up here.” Joshi said a total of at least 75 chil dren and their parents or attendants were caught in the hospital. A police spokesman in Jammu, 340 miles north of New Delhi, said the collapse was caused by a weak foundation in the new wing of the hospital. “The entire new wing has come down,” spokesman Satish Gupta said. “Much of it has just gone inside the earth.” The government ordered an in vestigation, and three civil engineers who were responsible for construc tion were suspended. Gupta said it will take at least 24 hours to remove the debris. “Until then it is all guesswork, but we fear the toll will go up,” he said. The new wing, which housed three wards, collapsed at 6:30 a.m. Joshi said the wing contained 51 beds, but some were shared by two children. “I saw limbs of children being re covered from the debris,” Joshi said. “The death toll is likely to go up un less by providence the children are saved.” Joshi said there had been cracks in the ground floor walls. He said a doctor told him the cracks widened Sunday and that he evacuated 35 children. Jammu, with a population of 500,000, is the second-largest city in Kashmir, which borders Pakistan and China. Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, the highest government official in Kashmir state, rushed back to Jammu from Srinagar, where he was attending a ceremony. ^fighting in Beirut camps leaves 19 dead, 68 hurt selves ref« ■r the ultiir d China ii e port said, ich exatr.: Chinese 1 d in a o ar. cs indie in the istrial gi or prod ■BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Palestinian factions fought with mortars and machine guns in Beirut’s refu ge* camps Monday and Shiite Moslem clans battled each other in neighboring slums. Police said 19 people were killed and 68 wounded. ^■Lebanon’s Christian community was shaken by the discovery of the bullet-riddled body of a prominent Ma- ronite Catholic priest five days after he was kidnapped from his home in Jounieh, a Christian port city. ■Fighting in the Chatilla and Bourj el-Barajneh refu- . le camps pitted guerrillas of Palestine Liberation Or- I0n CUganization chief Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Fatah ■ainst Syrian-backed dissidents, police reported. Kh was the first such battle since Arafat and President Hafez Assad of Syria took steps toward reconciliation last week in Damascus. ■Police said they had no information on what caused rs expm* he breakd.' which tli to shore upi tew avenui m-OPECji proposed! ch happic reed one oinister b the clash, which began Sunday night and continued Monday. Both sides used mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns. Intense fighting kept reporters and photographers out of the area. PLO spokesmen said Arafat’s supporters overran three of the four main positions in Chatilla held by fighters of Col. Saeed Mousa’s Fatah-Uprising faction. At least eight combatants were killed and 43 others were wounded in the two camps on Beirut’s southern flank, the police report said. A 50-man committee, including members of several guerrilla factions and Lebanese Moslem groups, was or ganized late Monday to try for a cease-fire, the police report said. Eleven people were killed and 25 wounded in night long fighting between two Shiite clans in the Rami el- Aali and Roweisse slums, police reported. Illegal aliens line up to apply for amnesty before offer ends ■ HOUSTON (AP) — Thousands of procrastinating illegal aliens, armed with lawn chairs, ice chests and toys, queued outside the nation’s busiest immigration office Monday to apply for amnesty just two days before the unprecedented pro gram’s deadline. To help brace for the last-minute crush of applicants, anxious Immi gration and Naturalization Service officials hired police officers for crowd and traffic control and even brought in portable toilets to ease the wait. “This is an incredible amount of RVICi Attorney: Notaries public victimize amnesty applicants e would 1 ^ ireational* EL PASO (AP) _ Some i rnm ig ra - reational tj on amnesty applicants have been adlities 6> victimized by notaries public who Auqust3ll overchar g e f° r th e i r services and il- . ihpBgally dispense legal advice, an as- 9° ' ‘ sistant state attorney general said. hiS SUrtlfieB The problem probably is more either rei? widespread than it seems because il- ^nMon-#^g al i mm ig ran ts are reluctant to re- dm Tr. P ort problems with notaries, said Es- ' ° pher Chavez, assistant attorney general for consumer protection. ■■1 1—» § Chavez filed a petition in state dis- Wict court last week to restrain two iVITB El Paso notaries public from engag ing in any abuses and to order the pair to return any documents they have kept to secure payment. Seven families have accused Maria Elena Hargrove and George Har grove of giving legal advice, adver tising legal counsel regarding am nesty matters, not returning documents and selling documents that falsely purport to grant the holders immunity from deportation, Chavez said. activity,” regional INS commissioner Mario Ortiz said. “The pace is really phenomenal, particularly in Dallas and Houston.” Due to the crush, officials were keeping offices open 24 hours per day and waiving interviews with ap plicants until after the deadline at midnight Wednesday. The INS says that anybody not in line by that time is out of luck. “This is exactly what we ex pected,” Ortiz said of the crowds. “It’s like an inverted bell curve — there was a lot at beginning, then a lull and then a mad rush at the end.” The INS’ latest figures show that as of Saturday, just under 1.8 million aliens had applied for amnesty at 107 INS offices nationwide, Ortiz said. That number is drawing ever closer to the agency’s planning esti mate of 2 million applicants. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act gives aliens who can prove continuous residency in the United States since Jan. 1, 1982, un til midnight Wednesday to apply for legal status. SHP? ' .. t. jis A*. *0* * * rl* . . ** **&->,* ^ •*! 4.. ' t----tWtfzWK & ^ ■BRMH S , • Catch the wave Photo by Phelan M. Ebenhack James Lewis, a junior speech communication ma- Pool between classes Monday. Lewis says he swims jor from Galveston, works out at Wofford Cain 3,000 meters every day. luring tie I ples($15f: as, racque- tries fori ', June 9. on who to 1 a recreai ipate. m Bentsen ranks first in funds WASHINGTON (AP) —Texas en. Lloyd Bentsen was the top jPAC pick nationally and man aged to raise more than $5 mil- 1 W'ljcf’Mlion in campaign loot to boot. ■’ ™ The Democrat’s re-election campaign war chest makes his the most lucrative congressional race nationwide, while Republican challenger Beau Boulter has raised only a sliver by compari son. Bentsen, chairman of the Sen ate Finance Committee, snared the largest share of contributions from political action committees — $1.46 million — in the first 15 jl months of the current election cy- scle, the Federal Election Commis- jjsion found. In rankings released this week I of the 50 top Senate campaigns I for fundraising and spending, I the FEC put Bentsen in first for ^receipts with just over $5 million; k second for cash on hand, with $3.65 million, and fourth for I spending, at just over $2 million, | through the end of March. Boulter, a U.S. representative ;; from Amarillo, who had so little | cash on hand at the end of March See Money, page 8 gin on v iples finals 1 at )ftball V ;o liege Stf aylor won' I for Nation apt in Men': m State' 1 Darylix lird. hts is sp<« UniversityC 1 '; Mall. Stories ire by Markf artmentinll' A&M groups support different methods for stopping apartheid in South Africa By Stephen Masters Staff Writer You go to sleep in fear. You awaken in fear. Perhaps you will be killed today by someone who feels you are inferior simply because you were born with black skin. You live in a place where people with black skin are the majority numerically, but have no control politically. You’re under a system of govern ment that regards blacks as less than real people. The place is South Africa and the system is known as apartheid. The country’s segregation policy is offensive to many, but there is dis agreement over the best way to solve the problem. Texas A&M Students Against Apartheid protests the fact that American companies and many uni versities — including A&M — con tinue to invest in South African com panies, which aids South Africa’s economy and indirectly helps to maintain the policy of apartheid. SAA’s purpose is to encourage A&M’s divestment in South Africa. Divestment is an economic sanction that removes all foreign monetary support from a country. David Luckenbach, vice president of SAA, said that according to SAA calculations, A&M has almost $5.5 million invested in seven South Afri can companies. The calculations were made from the University’s portfolio of its investments, he said. “The Board of Regents came out with a study later that revealed simi lar numbers to what we showed,” he said. Another A&M group, the Young Conservatives of Texas, opposes di vestment, because the sanctions would hurt more than they helped, said Dick Lonquist, YCT president. “I think that divestment will cause hyperinflation, which could lead to a civil war or something along that li ne,” he said. “Economic sanctions are not the way to go in order to help (South Africa). “If we divest, it means that Ameri can companies will be selling their business there for as little as 40 cents on the dollar. All that will happen from divestment is that the South African companies who buy the Americans out will get richer while continuing to deny blacks jobs. The principle will drive American com panies to bankruptcy.” Lonquist said the YCT supports the Sullivan Principles, which his group sees as a better method than divestment for ending apartheid. The principles are a set of volun tary guidelines for American compa nies to follow in which companies agree to hire on the same equal op portunity basis as required in Amer ica. After the Sullivan Principles were made public in 1977, Lonquist said that three-fourths of all American companies approved them. Luckenbach said divestment is im portant because of the impression the current situation is creating — that A&M condones apartheid, which SAA sees as immoral. He said he hopes his group can make a dif ference, at least at A&M, by working from the bottom. “Students Against Apartheid has two goals,” Luckenbach said. “The first is to educate and inform the stu dents and faculty of Texas A&M University and the Bryan-College Station community about South Af rica and, in particular, the wrongful policy of apartheid. “The second, and most important, goal is to get the Texas A&M Board of Regents to divest from all hold ings in South Africa.” Lonquist, however, said the ideas behind the Sullivan Principles are good ones, even though they haven’t been as effective as is possible. In addition, the ideas prove that divestment is not the best method of helping the country, he said. Lonquist also suggested that mak ing the Principles a federal law would increase the effectiveness of the principles significantly and bring about a quicker end to apartheid. “In Europe, we invested in coun tries after World War II instead of divesting and it turned out well,” Lonquist said. “We as a nation had some of the same problems in the 1960s that South Africa is having now and we worked through them,” he said. “I’m confident that they will too.” Norman Muraya, SAA’s divest ment chairman and a graduate stu dent in mechanical engineering, said the organization’s original goals were similar to the demand for di vestment but somewhat simpler. “The goals of the organization are still pretty much the same,” Muraya said. “Originally we were for aware ness because the South African con sulate came to campus often and gave the point of view of a white in power. We started the organization to offer the point of view of an op pressed person in South Africa. “As divestment became more and more of an issue, we began to incor porate it into our goals. “Now we are set up to provide a podium for people against oppres sion anywhere in the world, not just South Africa.” Of the small group that founded SAA three years ago, Muraya is the only original member left. “The original meeting was called in May 1985 during finals week for those who wanted to form an organi zation against oppression and rac ism,” he said. “From that original meeting, I am the only member left,” he said. “Eve ryone else either graduated or just didn’t stay interested. Then the sum mer came and we thought that was it. “Most organizations die during the summer but ours took off. We had one rally that was very well at tended. It was against the Texas Coin Exchange (for the sale of Kru gerrands, a South African-minted gold coin) and we had a good turn out.” Luckenbach said his desire to end apartheid stems from his personal opinion of evil in the world. “My experiences with the way men of different nations treat each other have led me to believe that rac ism and prejudice is the underlying core of all evil in the world,” Lucken bach said. “Whether it’s in the Middle East See Apartheid, page 8