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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 30, 1988)
EFEEh np m Texas A&M m m V# The Battalion 87 Mo. 167 USPS 045360 8 Pages College Station, Texas Thursday, June 30, 1988 Reserch center gets torn down Photos by Derrick Grubbs and Brad Apostolo Students watch as the Highway Research Center gets torn down Wednesday. The building, located on Ross Street, will be re placed by the Joe C. Richardson Petroleum Engineering Building, a 10-story building, named after a former member of Texas A&M’s Board of Regents. The new build ing should be built by June of 1990. By Mercedes Salinas Reporter The Highway Research Center was demolished Wednesday to make way for the construction of the Joe C. Richardson Petroleum Engineering Building. The 10-story building, named after a former member of Texas A&M’s Board of Regents, is ex pected to be completed in June 1990, said Charles Caffee, assis tant manager of the A&M Facili ties Planning Division. The First floor will be for gen eral campus use and will have one 150-seat classroom and two 100- seat classrooms. The second through the eighth floors will be for Petroleum Engineering of fices, laboratories and research facilities. The ninth and 10th floors will be used by the Chemi cal Engineering department be cause many of its projects are conducted simultaneously with the Petroleum Engineering de partment. The old Highway Research Center is located on a valuable section of property and the de mand for space requires better use of the ground than a two- story building, Caffee said. With the rising enrollment of the Petroleum Engineering de partment, the current facilities are not able to serve the students properly, said Dr. Douglas Von Goten, professor and head of the department. “We have about 350 students in Petroleum Engineering: of Engineering which about 100 are graduate students conducting research,” he said. “We need the space badly because we keep growing. This new building is going to make a big difference in our operation.” The pink granite from the ex terior of the Highway Research Center has been retained and will be used inside the lobby of the new building to “carry some of the old building into the new,” Caffee said. Court upholds law allowing investigations (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the power of in dependent counsels to prosecute il legal acts by high-ranking govern ment officials, a momentous constitutional decision and a defeat for a handful of former White House aides such as Oliver L. North and Michael K. Deaver. By a 7-1 vote, the justices said a 1978 law inspired by the Watergate scandal does not violate the Consti tution’s command that the powers of the executive, legislative and judicial branches be separate and balanced. The ruling clears away a potential stumbling block in the prosecution of North, the former National Secu rity Council aide; John M. Poin dexter, President Reagan’s former national security adviser; and two arms dealers indicted in the Iran- Contra arms and money affair. It also dispels important doubts about the convictions of Deaver,who formerly was Reagan’s deputy chief of staff, and another onetime Rea gan aide, Lyn C. Nofziger. It also permits a special prosecu tor to wrap up a lengthy inquiry into the financial activities of Attorney General Edwin Meese III. No crimi nal charges are expected in that case. The court announced the ruling moments before ending its 1987-88 term. In an extraordinarily busy day, the justices issued nine deci sions totaling 433 pages. In the special prosecutor case, the court overturned a 2-1 federal ap peals court ruling last Jan. 22 that declared the law unconstitutional. Chief Justice William H. Rehnqu- ist, writing for the court Wednesday, said the law does not transfer presi dential powers improperly to Con gress and the courts. “This case does not involve an at tempt by Congress to increase its own powers at the expense of the ex ecutive branch,” he said. “Similarly, we do not think that the act works any judicial usurpation of properly executive functions. Finally, we do not think that the act impermissibly undermines the powers of the exec utive branch or disrupts the proper balance between the coordinate- branches.” Rehnquist said the special pros ecutor law is distinct from the so- called Gramm-Rudman budget-bal ancing law the court struck down in 1986 as a violation of separation of powers. That law was invalidated for empowering a quasi-legislative offi cer, the comptroller general, to es tablish budget cuts. The chief justice, in a 38-page opinion, said since special prosecu tors may be removed by the attorney general for “good cause,” the exec utive branch maintains important control over the independent coun sels. Justice Antonin Scalia, the lone dissenter in his own 38-page opin ion, said the checks and balances of the Constitution are what make it a unique and enduring document and guarantee the freedom of the Amer ican people. “In dictatorships of the modern world, bills of rights are a dime a dozen,” he said. The law opens the way to prosecu torial abuses by those, unlike the president, who are not accountable to the voters, Scalia said. “I fear the court has permanently encumbered the Republic with an institution that will do it great harm,” Scalia said. ‘ “The independent counsel stat ute provides a workable solution to a difficult problem,” the Iran-Contra prosecutor, Lawrence E. Walsh, said in a statement. teagan calls Dukakis liberal bent on taxing here an videola ?chniquei!| uise ol il> r arraas'i .■eting li re ■ Michael Dukakis screened vice id theS 01 'presidential running mates on videoiapfiBednesday while President Reagan whencoun tore into the likely Democratic presi- viretapp®f»ntial nominee as a “true liberal” tool in^ ■nt on more taxing and spending. ■ Vice President George Bush, cer- ■red fronBin to be the Republican presi- t nieetia»ntial nominee this fall, said the ice alMJiexi administration must be pre- red to “seize the opportunity of ange” in the Soviet Union. He said fte Reagan administration’s military ildup had helped nudge the So- Jet Union toward openness but he iiiiug 11 f added, “The cold war is not over.” Ipine » lay. Jot" 1 issassina- ecade a* Roman ope I- ■ Bush made his way from Califor nia to Wisconsin as a new poll, taken fast weekend, showed him trailing Dukakis by a margin of 46 percent to 41 percent — less than half the gap Kported in other nationwide polls. In another development, New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean an nounced that he will deliver the key note address at the GOP National Convention in New Orleans in Au gust. Kean, who was overwhelmingly re-elected governor in 1985 with support from blacks and union members, said he would use his prime time speech to “show there is a tremendous difference between the two parties.” The Republican developments came as Dukakis was spending the better part of his day in the Capitol in Washington. Sen. Sam Nunn, favored by many in Congress for his Southern base and his conservative political beliefs, said he was never offered the vice presidency during a hour-long pri vate talk with Dukakis. it funeral service to be oday for Cardenas vice A*" vice By Loyd Brumfield Senior Staff Writer Funeral services w ill be held to day for Audrey Lynn Cardenas, 24, at 1 p.m. at Texas A&M’s All Faiths Chapel. Cardenas, a May journalism graduate from A&M, was found dead early Sunday morning in Belleville, Ill. after being missing from her job as a newspaper in tern for about a week. Belleville Police Chief Robert Hurst said there was still not an official cause of death filed by the county medical examiner, but murder is still suspected. “The status of the case hasn’t changed since Monday,” Hurst said. Burial will be in the College Station City Cemetery, and there will be no visitation at the funeral home. Cardenas had been working 10 days as a newspaper intern at the Belleville News-Democrat before she disappeared Sunday, June Cardenas was born in Bryan in 1964 and lived there eight years before moving to Houston with her family. Survivors include her mother, Billie Fowler of Houston; a brother, Craig Cardenas of Col lege Station; a sister, Yvette Car denas of Bryan; her paternal grandmother, Jo Dunn of Bryan; her paternal grandfather, Willie Ihlenfeldt of Caldwell; an uncle, Paul Ihlenfeldt of Caldwell; and an aunt, Patsy Perry of Bryan. The A&M department of jour nalism has established a schol arship fund in her name, and an other scholarship fund has been established in Missouri City. Memorials may be made to the Audrey Cardenas/Texas A&M Scholarship fund, Box 925, Mis souri City, Texas, 77459. Communists divided over openness MOSCOW (AP) — Delegates to a national Communist Party conference split openly Wednesday over the pace of economic change and the media’s new independence under Mik hail S. Gorbachev. They also ordered an investigation into a re- ort that some of the delegates in attendance ave taken bribes. Gorbachev broke in at one point to denounce attempts by any “one group of people” to mo nopolize the nation’s press, as other delegates lashed out at publications including Ogonyok magazine, which has been one of the most daring advocates of the Kremlin’s campaign for “glas- nost,” or openness. The 5,000 delegates to the party’s first na tional conference in 47 years watched a rare spectacle in this long-closed society: speakers at an official gathering daring to disagree. Although closed to all hut the official media, Soviet television viewers and newspaper readers got a taste of the proceedings from various pub lished and broadcast reports on the second day of the open-ended forum. Gorbachev opened the conference in the Kremlin on Tuesday proposing to revamp the Soviet political system by indirect election of a more powerful president, convening of a full time legislature, and shifting authority from local Communist Party bureaucracies to local govern ment councils. He also pressed for a quick return to family farming to spur food production and end chronic shortages. Delegates themselves and published or broad cast reports Wednesday indicated the confer ence’s second day was marked by contradictory assessments of the fruits of Gorbachev’s drive for “perestroika” or social and economic restructur ing. “I can’t really make a resume yet about what’s for real and what’s not,” said Daniel Granin, a So viet author and conference delegate from Lenin grad. “So far, it’s a real muddle . . . it’s a complete mess.” The press became a target, with critics suggest ing there has been too much openness. Gorbachev, who was sitting on the dais in the Kremlin hall, interrupted Mikhail Ulyanov to add his thoughts to those of the head of the Rus sian federation’s theater workers union, who ob served the Soviet media are no longer servile, but a force to be reckoned with. In the past, Gorbachev said, “there was a mo nopoly on the mass media by one group of peo ple, and we know what this has brought about. Now we see another group, acting very grad ually, wants to use the press as a national ros trum. We want the pluralism of views . . . there fore, it is necessary to create conditions for the expression of various viewpoints.” His comments drew stormy applause in the gi ant hall, and Yuri A. Sklyarov of the party’s Cen tral Committee Propaganda Department said other delegates had criticized Ogonyok and its editor, conference delegate Vitaly Korotich, as well as other contemorary Soviet journals explor ing the frontiers of glasnost. F.V. Popov, party chief in the Siberian Altai region, called his fellow delegates’ attention to the latest issue of Ogonyok, which accused some Uzbek delegates of involvement in corruption. In an article detailing an investigation of wide spread corruption in the Asian republic, Ogo nyok said several “bribetakers” had been elected to represent Uzbekhistan at the conference. “There’s nothing about it in the report of the credentials committee, but it’s in Korotich’s Ogo nyok,” Popov said of the corruption reports. The credentials committee certified all the delegates elected to the conference. Popov’s remarks were televised during the evening news program “Vremya.” Popov demanded an investigation into the ac cusation, and Korotich said Gorbachev directed that a inquiry begin Thursday. Uzbek party boss Rafik N. Nishanov, who spoke at a news confer ence, said a decision from the credentials com mission was expected by Thursday. Vladimir Karpov, head of the Writers Union, complained that some writers are depicting So viet history “totally in black,” an apparent refer ence to recent publication of a barrage of exposes criticizing the late dictator Josef Stalin and other former Soviet leaders. Karpov’s deputy, Yuri Bondarev, charged that nihilistic criticism was becoming a commanding force in the press. “The immorality of the press cannot teach morality,” he said. Delegate Grigory Baklanov, chief editor of the literary magazine Znamya, told a late evening news conference he regarded the comments by the two Writers Union leaders a disgrace. Food services add options to meal plan Meal Plan Purchase M&al Plan 4 Payment Rian Fee 5-Day $ 818.92 $ 727.70 7-Day 195.11 780.45 5-Day Plus 215.53 862.15 7-Day Plus 221 .98 887.95 Flex-12 208.82 835.28 Lucky-7 160.98 376.27 Aggie Express 94.06 643.93 Gold Card 285.95 1,143.80 Graphic by Taani Baier By Victoria Larroca Reporter Surveys have shown that students want more flexibility when they dine on campus and the Food Services Department is changing to meet these demands, Jim Moore, assistant director of the department, said. This fall, Texas A&M students will have eight meal plan options to choose from instead of the three they have had in the past. “We are just giving the students what they want — more convenience and flexibility in choosing the meal plan that’s right for them,” Moore said. In addition to the current five-day plan, seven-day plan and Aggie Ex press (point plan), a five-day Plus, seven-day Plus, Flex-12, Lucky-7 and Gold Card plan will be imple mented this fall. The Plus plans offer the regular 15 or 20 meals per week plus a speci fied amount of Aggie Bucks. Like the old point plan system, Aggie Bucks are a declining balance account that allows the student to dine in any of the facilities on cam pus—not just the main cafeterias. The Flex-12 plan offers any 12 of the 20 meals per week plus Aggie Bucks, and the Lucky-7 offers any seven of 20 meals, also with Aggie Bucks. “The Lucky-7 plan is designed with the off-campus student in mind,” Moore said. “We want them to have a chance to eat at least one well-balanced meal a day if they so choose.” The Aggie Gold Card will allow students up to four on-campus meals a day, 28 meals a week, any time, anyplace, as long as the meal does not exceed $6.50 at a cash fa cility. Meal prices will increase 10 cents in the fall, making the average meal price $3.08, and there will be no carry-over from semester to semes ter. The plans were not offered as meal plan options when students pre-registered in the spring but stu dents may change plans in the fall if they wish. The five new options are being of fered to incoming freshman attend ing freshman conferences. The plans also will be ottered on a full payment or a four-payment instal lment plan. A Food Services Convenience Store will open in the fall in the base ment of Sbisa and will have food as well as sundry items such as school supplies, groceries and T-shirts, all of which can be paid for with Aggie Bucks.