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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
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■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
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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.
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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.
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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
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Mall. Stories
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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