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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (May 11, 1988)
a P^W»» ■* Texas A&M • ff K , 0 1 • o. The Battalion ife-thfeal 87 N 0 - 150 9 SPS 045360 10 Pages in cancets ere mixejl AIDS; stem cell; ( >f theviJ 1 1 able toy >e saliva« ^e subni ands atilil fesearctier! o of then tions frotf neaife College Station, Texas Wednesday, May 11, 1988 and tcretionsi; he i Faculty Senate OKs new finals proposal rs aren't 7 elemec ' interferei s thoujl ire infe rs are o lude wot le inff mpji u it ntrar \P) - .i t its bid to a McClurt devision i ea local an r of choicf id appoir: ispute r« 2 that 1:- rscope a the ston after ati abandon! ry Spive': troductiwi dommunic i, Ca levs are i eparationl; m law fin ng that! ndation to I reek,” hti By Stephen Masters Staff Writer An amended resolution passed londay by the Texas A&M Faculty enate would return A&M finals to he traditional format which requires full dead week and Finals week ith graduation following all final xams. The proposal now goes to Presi- ent Frank E. Vandiver for possible pproval. The proposal was the result of a acuity-student Senate committee urvey which examined four possi- le finals options. Vandiver will await the report of a special commission on the finals is sue before making the final decision on the exam issue. Option 1, which was recom mended in an amended form, would have a full dead week and finals week, but diplomas would not be given out until after the ceremonies and there would be a problem with the military commissioning of around 40 Corps seniors. Option 2 would have two “dead days" followed by three days of se nior finals with no undergraduate classes. Under Option 2, non-senior finals would be given the following week with graduation ceremonies after all finals were completed. lent in the 1 negotiaii dth an •rs who rescue, anti. • tract reiMl elation anii: anded resj r of munfjl agreed to| of Inters® icer. ! years oWJ ned well las® ys-longel! ;• w internal 1 : diich woiitj television for aboil ard said. H Id be done! Frompag el deal with is versities ad ng from? al pressurfii ressures.T A&M’s i®} the larg el1 iwding f att A&M seniors returning to graduate By Susan Stubing Staff Writer Graduation weekend, tradi tionally a time of rambunctious celebration, may not appear such a joyous occasion in College Sta tion this semester as an ef fect of the new final examinations sched ule. Although the semester ended Tuesday, graduation ceremonies will not be until this weekend. Under the new schedule, grad uating students will have to re turn to A&M for commencement exercises in G. Rollie White Col iseum after the rest of the student body already has left for the sum mer. Gov. Bill Clements will give the commencement address for grad uate students, doctoral candi dates and undergraduates in the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Ar chitecture at 2 p.m. Friday, May 13. Students in the colleges of Ed ucation, Engineering, Geosci ences, and Veterinary Medicine will hear Secretary of the Navy Edward Aldridge speak Friday at 7:30 p.m. during their gradua tion ceremony. The final ceremony will be at 9 a.m. Saturday, May 14, for un dergraduates in the Colleges of Agriculture, Business Adminis tration and Science. Speaker of the House Jim Wright will give the commencement address. A list of all students cleared to graduate will be posted outside of Heaton Hall at 8 a.m. Thursday, May 12. Students have until 5 p.m. Thursday to clear any blocks that would prevent them from graduating. Option 3 is a modification of the current system with finals starting Thursday instead of Friday and run ning through Tuesday. There would be no finals on Sat urday under this option. The major concern over Option 3 is that the campus would be “dead” for gradua tion with two vacant days after finals are over before the ceremony. Option 4 is the same as the May 1988 schedule with finals Friday, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday and graduation Friday and Saturday af ter finals. The same concerns exist about the “dead” campus with Option 4. Of 449 surveys mailed to Sen ators, 227 were returned. A majority of Senators surveyed chose Option 2 first, then Option 1. The Senate deemed Options 3 and 4 “not acceptable” on the rating scale. The survey was available to stu dents in the MSC and drew 663 re spondents. Students surveyed se lected Option 1 narrowly over Option 3 and showed Options 4 and 2 were “not acceptable.” The committee’s report left open the graduation date, providing for ceremonies either after dead week or after finals week. In either case an empty tube would be presented during the cere monies. An amendment that met with some argument was introduced and passed to hold the commencement following exams. One Senator ar gued that graduation would be bet ter held the week before finals since the tubes would be empty anyway, but this idea was rebuffed. “Technically, we could have grad uation the first week of the semes ter,” Deputy Speaker B. Don Russell said. “This was just an attempt to consolidate all the activities that go along with graduation (Boot Dance and Final Review). It is an option that remains open to the president.” One of the main concerns against graduation weekend before finals was expressed by Senator Walter Buenger. “We seem to take the risk here of increasing the number of students who fail,” Buenger said. “I think there should be some concern here for increasing the failure rate of se niors (because they celebrated grad uation before taking finals).” Speaker C. Richard Shumway in troduced an amendment to delete the word “graduation” from the en tire proposal, a move that would ef fectively kill the proposal, but it was defeated. Publications Board chooses producer for ’89 Aqqievision By Janet Goode Seni&r Staff Writer Cheryl Ann Pratt was nominated by the Student Publications Board Monday as producer for the 1988-89 video yearbook, Aggievision. The nomination is pending ap proval by Texas A&M Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Donald McDonald. The nomination was made on the condition that the video yearbook will be continued after this year. Dr. Doug Starr, chairman of the Student Publications Board, said when the video yearbook was cre ated, the Board planned to set aside funds for two years and to conduct an evaluation after each year. Starr said this is actually the first year the video yearbook has been in existence. It folded in 1986 and the entire staff resigned when it was re alized that President Frank Van diver had authorized the production of two video yearbooks — one to stu dent publications and one to the Ed ucational Broadcasting Services. As part of a compromise, the video yearbook agreed to rent the needed equipment from EBS to produce the yearbook. Starr said the Board plans to re view the video yearbook made for the 1987-88 school year and then de cide whether to continue the project. Starr said the Board hasn’t seen the video yearbook and doesn’t know if it is “perfect” or “terrible.” Video aside, Starr said there have been some dissatisfactions with the overall structure of Aggievision, in cluding the fact that they are renting their equipment from KAMU-TV. Starr said this has caused prob lems in the past because Aggievision has had to work around KAMU’s schedule. Starr said a request has also been made for Aggievision to buy its own equipment this year. Pratt, 21, and a senior journalism major from Katy, said she has seen problems with the lack of technical knowledge and with apathy among the video’s staff. As producer, Pratt said she hopes to choose her staff carefully and instill enthusiasm for the video yearbook. Pratt has worked for KAMU-TV for over a year directing program segments and live pledge breaks. She has had experience in computer graphics and the use of cameras in television production. “I plan on making it (the video yearbook staff) a lot more organi zed,” Pratt said. “ I want the staff to be very enthusiastic. If you have a staff that is very enthusiastic, it will show through in the final product. ” Also waiting on appointment by McDonald are the editors nomi nated for The Battalion and the Ag- gieland. If approved, Richard Wil liams will be editor of The Battalion for the summer, and Lydia Berzse- nyi will be the editor for the fall se mester, 1988. Cindy Milton will be editor of the Aggieland for the 1988 -89 school year if the nominations are approved by McDonald. Tee’d off Coach j.P. Irving helps 7-year-old Ray Molina with his swing during his team’s batting practice at Oak- Photo by Jay Janner wood Central School in College Station. The A’s are a member of the American Tee-ball League. Polish workers end strike in shipyard without settlement GDANSK, Poland (AP) — Hun dreds of workers Tuesday night car ried a cross and a Polish flag from the Lenin shipyard, ending their strike without a settlement but de fending their right to fight the “ar rogance” of the state. Leading them out was Lech Wa lesa, the electrician who founded the Solidarity union in August 1980. He joined strike when it began May 2 and had told the men he would be the last to leave. The men filed out of the Lenin shipyard, birthplace of the first inde pendent trade union in the Soviet bloc, soon after 8 p.m. Many carried luggage and boxes. Police stood back in silence and bystanders applauded the workers as they passed. Some people in the crowd joined the workers, many of whom had been in the shipyard since the strike for higher pay and union rights be gan. Strikers in Poland occupy their plants rather than leave them. Police followed at a distance as the men marched away from the yard. A statement from the strikers was read at nearby St. Brygida’s Roman Catholic Church shortly before the strikers marched out. “We decided to make a sovereign decision to leave the shipyard with out an agreement with the authori ties,” it said.“We are convinced that we were right in the protest against relations in Poland, against treating us in a way that violates human dig nity, against the arrogance of the au thorities who are responsible for the crisis.” Judge: State state needs uniform policy for juveniles AUSTIN (AP) — The state should adopt a uniform juvenile jus tice philosophy that addresses the needs of the community while help ing rehabilitate young offenders, an Austin judge told a special Senate committee Tuesday. The “balanced approach” philoso phy is “beautiful in its simplicity,” State District Judge Paul Davis told the Senate Select Committee on the Juvenile Justice System. Davis, who hears juvenile cases, said the Travis County juvenile court has adopted the philosophy and it has worked well. The restoration of self-esteem is a necessary part of the solution to ju venile crime, Davis said, because young offenders generally have en countered problems at home and school. so must <|f to pr eve Jj new con® 11 on- .ossible 1*1 ter res ide® ookat" Ip niak e /e in nc xl nP 118 uating 5 . w will i residue to remaijL esday 2 ers ofi • ■st p rlorl '' ng tact the® theif Committee presents report on women’s status at A&M By Stephen Masters Staff Writer Faculty Senate elects speaker for 1988-89 The Texas A&M Faculty Senate Monday elected Fac ulty Senator Gary Hart Speaker of the Senate for 1988- 89. He will be the sixth to hold the office since the Sen ate was created in 1983. A professor of genetics in the College of Agriculture, Hart defeated B. Don Russell, the deputy Speaker for 1987-88, by a 40-35 vote. Although the loser in the race for Speaker is eligible for deputy Speaker, Russell declined to run a second time for the office. Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., an A&M philosophy professor, ran unopposed for the position. For the Secretary-Treasurer position, David R. An derson, an associate professor of English, defeated El- enor Cox, a professor of biology, by a 45-28 vote. Members of the Executive Committee for 1988-89 are Russell from the College of Engineering, Michael Stecher from the College of Science, B^bara Thomas from the College of Medicine, Samuel Gillespie from the College of Business Administration, Efeptor Cox from the College of Science and Bill Stout from tlie Col lege of Agriculture. A report by the Faculty Senate’s Committee on the Status of Women in the University was presented to the Senate Monday, but no resolu tion was drawn. The report, presented by commit tee chairman Walter Buenger, stated that women are paid an average of $117 per month less than male coun terparts with equivalent experience. A deficiency was found to exist in all colleges except the College of Ge osciences, which was $46 per month higher for women than men. The report also suggested partic ular scrutiny for the College of Busi ness Administration, Liberal Arts and Science, which had deficiencies of $107, $122 and $433 per month respectively. A series of memos from the five Senators from the CBA claimed that the study was in error and there is no salary discrimination in the CBA. One of the memos stressed the need for a case-by-case analysis rather than over the entire college. Buenger said the experience of being a male in charge of a commit tee on women’s salaries has been an interesting one. “It’s been kind of like painting yourself black and wandering through the South in the 1940s,” he said. “I have discovered that discrim ination itself is subtle, but very per vasive. With bonfire, I was told that women didn’t want to be treated as equals — they just wanted to bake cookies. With salaries, I was told that their nurturing impulse made them want to be teachers, so they focused more into teaching and that made them be subject to lower salaries.” The study concluded that a “mea surable gap” exits between men’s and women’s salaries and requested that the Senate should “look at the problem again.” The Colleges of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine and the Li brary were excluded from the study because it was felt that such data would bias the study and because it is difficult to define “faculty” in the College of Medicine, Buenger said. In other business, outgoing Speaker C. Richard Shumway, in his State of the Faculty Senate address, urged Senators to “remove all sex ism and subtle discrimination” from their vocabularies. Shumway also asked Senators to be more vigorous in addressing minority issues, to maintain the quality of the core cur riculum established this year and to help continue to improve relations with the Student Senate. The Senate passed a resolution from the Academic Affairs Commit tee making it more difficult for the Provost to grant academic rank to A&M faculty. Peter Hugill, chairman of the committee, explained the reasoning behind the resolution. “We are not trying to stop the spe cial T ranting of tenure, we just want to se that there is appropriate fac ulty in ">ut in the decision,” he said. . Undt" the proposal, the Faculty Senate w mid serve as the Tenure and Promo tion committee in cases where no appropriate college or fac ulty exists to make recommenda tions on tenure and academic rank. Such decisions are usually recom mended to the Provost by Deans of Colleges after peer review by faculty. In addition, the Senate: • Approved the creation of His tory 327; withdrew Science 101, 201, 302, 401; changed Economics 204 to Economics 202 and changed the course description and removed the prerequisite; withdrew the science option from the poultry science ma jor and approved a change in the curriculum of the B.S. in genetics. • Approved 32 new graduate level courses. • Approved four bylaw changes. • Approved 41 members of the Reporting Committee. • Approved the iccommenda- tions of the subcommittee on tea cher/course evaluations to adopt a new evaluation form and program. • Approved an addition to the Core Curriculum that allows for sci ence courses not previously listed. • Approved a resolution to allow charitable organizations to apply for permits to solicit on campus. Pre viously none were allowed. • Approved the creation of the office of University Ombudsperson to “resolve grievances and provide justice for all members of the Uni versity.” • Approved a resolution setting up requirements for requesting em ployment outside the University for faculty and staff. • Adopted a new finals plan re turning to the traditional “dead week-finals week” format. • Installed newly elected Sen ators. All resolutions adopted are sub ject to the approval of the University president.