-
F^ni Texas ASM m m m •
The Battalion
'ei
VdI. 88 No. 13 CJSPS 045360 14 Pages
College Station, Texas
Wednesday, September 14, 1988
ew legislation
elps enforce
ousing laws
irs
WASHINGTON (AP) — Presi
dent Reagan signed legislation Tues-
putting new enforcement teeth
in the open-housing law Congress
^Bscd in the wake of Martin Luther
King Jr.’s 19(iS assassination.
■Standing with members of Con
gress in the White House Rose Gar
den, Reagan hailed the newly en
acted bill as “the most important civil
rights legislation in 20 years.”
^Bingling out Rep. John Lewis, D-
GaL who had accompanied King to
Washington for the civil rights lead-
eC “1 Have a Dream” speech in
1963, the president said the legis
lation “has brought us one step
closer to realizing Martin Luther
King’s dream.”
■The measure, which was passed
^Krwhelmingly by the House and
Senate, extends anti-discrimination
protections to the handicapped and
■families with c hildren. It also em-
Iwers the federal government —
J - the first time — to seek fines "l
up to SI00.()()() against individuals
or organizations found to have en
gaged in a pattern of housing dis-
cfimination.
■Under the open-housing provi
sion of the Civil Rights Act of 1968,
the government was given only a
Adiating role in housing discrimi
nation disputes.
■“Discrimination is particularly tra
gic when it means a family is ref used
Busing near good schools, a good
job or simply in a better neighbor-
■od to raise children,” Reagan said.
“This bill is the product of years of
bipartisan work, and repairs a signif
icant . . . defect in civil rights law.”
■He said that while the 1968 law
was well-intentioned, “it lacked
teeth. Its concilation provisions were
ineffective when used.”
Reagan said that he and Housing
Secretary Samuel Pierce had “de
voted eight years” to seeking im
provements in the 1968 law', “to re
dress the absence of penalties and
the inability of the government to
initiate actions except when a pat
tern of discrimination could be pro
ven.”
Under the bill he signed Tuesday,
the Department of Housing and Ur
ban Development will have authority
to initiate enforcement actions and
to seek penalties against individuals,
businesses or organizations that dis
criminate on the basis of race, color,
sex or national origin in the sale,
rental or financing of housing.
It authorizes civil penalties, which
could be recommended following an
agency administrative enforcement
process, of up to $10,000 or a first
offense, $25,000 for a second and
up to $50,000 for a third.
In instances where a pattern of
discrimination has been alleged, the
government could seek up to
$50,000 for a first offense and as
much as $ 100,000 for subsequent of
fenses.
Besides strengthening existing
provisions in law dealing with racial
discrimination, the measure protects
the handicapped against housing
bias. For instance, a landlord could
be considered to be in violation if he
refused to make reasonable modifi
cations in premises to accommodate
the handicapped.
Under the section protecting fam
ilies with children from discrimina
tion in the sale, rental or financing
of housing, buildings that are now
“adult only” could exclude children
only if the managers or owners of
these structures adopted a policy to
rent or sell to the elderly only.
Gilbert storms across Caribbean
Gulf Coast residents brace
Hurricane Gilbert, one of the
strongest storms in history,
roared toward Mexico’s Yucatan
Peninsula on Tuesday with 160
mph winds and torrential rains
after lashing the tiny, low-lying
Cayman Islands.
The hurricane, traveling west
ward across the Caribbean Sea,
was upgraded Tuesday to Cat
egory 5, the strongest and most
deadly type of hurricane. Such
storms have winds greater than
155 mph and cause catastrophic
damage.
Gilbert, which devastated Ja
maica and the Dominican Repub
lic with flash floods and
mudslides, has killed at least five
people.
Bob Sheets, director of the Na
tional Hurrican Center in Coral
Gables, Fla., described Gilbert as
a great hurricane that is in the top
10 percent (historically) as far as
intensity, size and destructive po
tential.
See related stories
pages 5,6 and 14
Only two Category 5 hurri
canes have hit the United States
— a 1935 storm that killed 600
people in Florida, and Hurricane
Camille, which devastated the
Mississippi coast in 1969 and
killed 256 people.
“The people who need to be
concerned now are those people
over on the Yucatan Peninsula —
Cancun, Cozumel, that whole
area,” Sheets said.
“There is very serious Hooding
in the Cayman Islands,” Erina
Nichols, a tourism official in Mi
ami, said Tuesday after speaking
Associated Press
Residents all along the Texas
Gulf Coast on Tuesdav began
bracing for the possible onslaught
of Hurricane Gilbert, which is
taking aim at the Gulf of Mexico.
“Oh man, business is really
booming,” said George Shannon,
an assistant manager at a Wal-
Mart store in Galveston. “We’ve
got people all over the place right
now buying flashlights, batteries.
with residents of the islands.
“The Run Point (community) is
taking a real beating,” she said.
The storm later knocked out
lamp oil — everything.
“It’s very steady and they're
not just coming in getting a hand
ful of stuff — it’s cartloads of
stuff.”
Ricky Burge, an assistant man
ager at McCoy’s Building Center
said,“Everyone’s buying plywood.
It’s escalating at this time and it
doesn’t look like it’s going to slow
down. Our business easily has
doubled since yesterday.”
citizens.”
all telephone service to the Cay
man Islands, a British depen
dency of 23,000 people that was
expecting 12-foot tides.
absentee polling site
CS receives
By Susan B. Erb
Staff Writer
The Brazos County Commissioners Court, re
scinding its decision of last week to move absen
tee voting from the county courthouse to the
Brazos Center, voted Tuesday to designate the
College Station Community Center as a tempo
rary absentee polling site in addition to the court
house site.
The decision is the result of debate concerning
site accessiblity, fairness to minorites and cost of
polling sites.
GOP Party Chairman Rodger Lewis, who
strongly suggested an absentee voting site on the
Texas A&M campus, said the College Station
Community Center site was a step in the right di
rection, but he was disappointed in the decision
not to locate an absentee site on campus.
“I think that the notion of having a branch at
the Community Center was a very good one,” Le
wis said, “but I do think that you also need one
where most of the people who vote would find it
convenient, and that is on the Texas A&M Cam
pus.
“ I here w'ere students here who were upset
about the decision because they know that the
University of Texas has an absentee poll on its
campus. This is just one more instance where
Brazos County is dragging its feet into the 20th
century.”
Minorities as well as students are concerned
about fairness in placement of absentee voting
sites.
Robert Orozco, a Bryan attorney, suggested ei
ther equal convenience, in the form of a site in
every precinct, or equal inconvience, one site at
the county courthouse.
“Traditionally, the Hispanic-minority commu
nity of this county resides in the west and north
west parts of the county,” Orozco said. “Putting a
ballot box in a neighborhood that is predomina
tely Anglo and without a significant number of
Hispanics or blacks would tend to dilute the mi
nority participation.
“The obvious, although possibly not conve
nient or economically feasible, solution would be
to place an absentee polling place in each pre
cinct in addition to the courthouse.
County Judge Dick Holmgreen, chairman of
the commissioners court, said the attitude some
have taken is that the absentee sites are the only
places people can vote.
“The fact is there w’ill be 40 boxes all over the
county on election day, including one at the Me
morial Student Center,” Holmgreen said. “We
feel students have the same rights as anyone else
— that’s the reason we put a box on campus.”
Holmgreen said he believes the Legislature
has gone too far in its extension of absentee vot
ing regulations.
“The election is not to be held 20 days before
election day. It’s to be held on election day.”
Originally established for voters who had to be
out of their precinct on election day, absentee
voting, through the Texas Legislature’s response
to low voter turnout, has evolved into a system
that allows anyone to vote absentee.
Absentee voters may cast their ballots Monday
through Friday, Oct. 19 to Nov. 4, from 8 a.m. to
5 p.m.
'ail
_ A sticky situation
Senior civil engineering majors Trace Hill, of Oahu, Hawaii, and Jose
Sosa, of Fort Worth, wait in line Monday at the G. Rollie White Col-
Photo by Sam B. Myers
iseum ticketbooth to purchase guest stickers for tickets to this week
end’s football game against Alabama.
U.S. trade deficit declines sharply
■WASHINGTON (AP) — The deficit, in the
buoadest measure of U.S. trade, narrowed
sharply from April through June as overseas
sak s of American merchandise surged to a re
cord high, the government reported Tuesday.
■However, the good news was tempered by the
fact that America suffered its first deficit in three
■cades in the trade category which includes in
vestment earnings.
■The Commerce Department said the deficit in
the current account shrank to $33.3 billion in the
second quarter, a 9,8 percent improvement from
a First quarter imbalance of $36.9 billion. It w-as
let. the biggest quarterly improvement since a 20.1
pet cent drop in the final three months of last
year.
■The current account is the most important of
all the government’s trade statistics because it
cqvers not only trade in merchandise but also
trade in services, which primarily reflect the flow
of investment earnings between countries.
■ The improvement in the second quarter cur
rent account deficit occurred because the deficit
in merchandise trade fell to $29.9 billion, down
onaS
from $35.2 billion in the first quarter, as exports
rose to a record level and imports posted the first
quarterly decline in three years.
This improvement was offset by a $492 million
imbalance in services, which meant that foreign
ers earned more on their investments during the
quarter than Americans earned on overseas in
vestments.
Also adding to the current account deficit was
$2.9 billion in U.S. payments for foreign aid and
pensions to Americans living overseas.
For the first six months of this year, the cur
rent account deficit has been running at an an
nual rate of $140.5 billion, a substantial im
provement from a record deficit of $154 billion
in 1987.
The improvement has come about because of
a boom in U.S. exports, reflecting declines in the
value of the dollar since 1985 which have made
American goods competitive once again on over
seas markets.
The export rebound has translated into hefty
job gains in American manufacturing which the
Reagan administration hopes will benefit Repub
lican George Bush’s presidential chances.
However, Democrat Michael Dukakis has
charged that the surge in trade deficits this de
cade and the resulting growth in foreign debt is
one of the major failures of the Reagan economic
program.
The current account was last in surplus in
1981, a year in which Americans’ earnings on
overseas investments were enough to offset a
deficit in merchandise trade.
Since that time., Americans have handed over
billions of dollars to foreigners in exchange for
imported goods, transforming the country from
the world’s largest creditor nation to the world’s
largest debtor country.
That means that foreigners now own more in
U.S. investments than Americans hold in foreign
investments.
This transfer of wealth was reflected in the
second quarter deficit in the services category
the first deficit in this category since 1958.
South African activists
take refuge in embassy
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
(AP) — Three prominent anti-apart
heid activists, detained for more
than a year without charge, escaped
from a hospital Tuesday arid took
refuge at the U.S. Consulate in a
high-rise office building.
The U.S. Embassy said it had
“high regard” for the men and
would not force them to leave
against their will.
Two of the three are senior offi
cials of the now-banned United
Democratic Front — acting publicity
secretary Murphy Morobe, a black,
and acting general secretary Mo
hammed Valli Moosa, an Indian.
The other is Vusi Khanyile, a black
who was chairman of the banned
National Education Crisis Commit
tee.
The U.S. Embassy statement con
firmed that the three had taken ref
uge at the consulate, on the 11th
floor of an office building in down
town Johannesburg. The building is
two miles from the hospital where
they were being treated.
The main U.S. embassy is in Pre
toria.
The men have asked to meet with
their relatives and with leaders of
the anti-apartheid movement, but
they have not disclosed any other re
quests.
“We were in f requent contact with
these three men prior to their deten
tion without charge, and hold them
in high regard,” the U.S. statement
said. “We will not press them to leave
against their will.”
The statement said the United
States does not offer asylum at its
diplomatic offices. But it said these
premises are inviolable under inter
national law and may not be entered
by the host government without con
sent. The embassy said it was dis
cussing the situation with the activ
ists and the South African
government.
A colleague of the three, union ac
tivist Jay Naidoo, said he was Seeking
a meeting with U.S. Ambassador Ed
ward Perkins to discuss the situation.
Perkins is the first black to hold the
post.
Brig. Leon Mellet, a spokesman
for the Law and Order Ministry, said
the men had escaped from Johan
nesburg Hospital, where they had
been receiving physiotherapy. No
details of the escape were disclosed.
Previously, the three had been at
Johannesburg’s Diepkloof Prison.
At the consulate, there was no visi
ble sign of security force deploy
ments. A private guard stood at the
entrance while about two dozen
journalists waited in the hall for sev
eral hours before dispersing.
Morobe, 32, and Valli Moosa, 31,
were detained in July 1987 after
going into hiding when a state of
emergency was declared June 12,
1986.'
Guerrillas takeover bus
destined for papal visit
MASERU, Lesotho (AP) — Guer
rillas hijacked a bus Tuesday carry
ing 60 nuns, schoolgirls and other
people traveling to see Pope John
Paul 11, who was expected in this
tiny mountain kingdom, diplomats
and sources said.
Jervis Chavase, deputy high com
missioner at the British Embassy,
said he learned of the hijacking
when the bus drove up and stopped
in front of the diplomatic com
pound.
“A bus is parked outside the com
mission (embassy) and I believe the
police have the situation in control,”
Chavase said Tuesday evening. He
said the hijackers have asked to
come into the compound and were
refused.
Diplomatic sources, speaking on
condition of anonymity, said the
guerrillas are believed to be mem
bers of the Lesotho Liberation
Army, which that had been fighting
the left-wing regime of Prime Min
ister Leabtia Jonathan.
The guerrillas left the country af
ter a January 1986 military coup de
posed Jonathan, and had been holed
up in South Africa.
A nun at the Papal Visit Of fice,
Sister Rita Brassard, said that the
bus had come from the t own of Qua-
cha's Nek, which is in a remote area
in the south of Lesotho, a mountain
nation completely surrounded by
South Africa.
He said tin bus arrived about 6
p.m. Tuesday.
She said nuns, teen-age school
girls and teachers were in the bus.