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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 21, 1988)
Texas A&M The Battalion Friday, Oct. 21, 1988 College Station, Texas USPS 045360 Pages &M student stabbed. eft in Lick Creek Park By Kelly S. Brown Staff Writer JA Texas A&M student is listed in sta- i;bk condition in Humana Hospital’s in- pensive care unit this morning after being pbbed in the neck Thursday afternoon. /endy Gauntt, a junior accounting Major from Austin, was found lying on the grass at the south entrance to Lick Ereck Park around 1:15 p.m. Thursday. Pieces of rope were found near a wooded |re.: in the rear portion of the park where Jice say the assault apparently took Ice tollege Station police officer Corkey Hde! said the victim may have been |ind, but was able to free herself after |assailant left. She then made her way ft. to the entrance of the park where I collapsed, he said. Sandel said she could not have been lying there longer than eight to ten min utes because a deputy had driven by the entrance ten minutes before she was found. Due to blood test results, police think she could have been assaulted at least an hour prior to being found. “She lost a lot of blood, and because of her condition we were unable to get much information from her,” Sandel said. “After she got out of surgery she was able to write down enough informa tion for us to locate her parents in Aus tin. Some time today we hope that she’s in good enough condition to ask her questions. ” Sandel said Gauntt did not know the suspect, who is described as a white male in his mid-20s, of medium build with light brown hair. Police think the assailant fled the scene in Gauntt’s Chev- -FW control tower fire interrupts flight service w Grapevine (A?) — Flights at Dai- Iport Worth International Airport je suspended for an hour Thursday tn a technician, trying to contain an ifttrical fire at the base of the control low :r, flipped the wrong switch and cut the circuit that feeds the entire commu- Ktions network. ■'he fire forced temporary evacuation of the Federal Aviation Administration tower at the nation’s fourth-busiest air- Jor and affected takeoffs or landings of fbo;: 120 Hights. FAA spokesmen said about 15 flights were diverted to other airports in the area. The technician suffered minor burns. Airline service was backed up for two to three hours, and airline officials said it would be late Thursday before they were back on schedule. “Am I upset?” asked Jim King of Houston, who was making connections for a flight to Boston. “Sure I’m upset. But what are you going to do about it? That’s why Tm sitting here drinking beer.” allot to include vesting proposal ■o 05 (/)53c •o If 8° a «s < 15 * DO®#: >2 J?! 7 St!'" OgSCi °4i & i s r By Stephen Masters Senior Staff Writer constitutional amendment on the Nov 8 ballot would allow trustees of 4jonv of the state’s investment funds to partuipate in a new investment strategy. If passed. Proposition 3 would allow the Permanent University Fund, Perma- T School Fund, Teachers’ Retirement lem and Employee Retirement Sys tem to redirect up to 1 percent of their .frook values in the Texas Growth Fund, said Michael Patrick, executive vice president for asset management of the Unil/ersity of Texas System. Jphe four funds have a book value of 528L5 billion, which means that up to $285 million could be invested in the IGF. Hfatrick said that the establishment of the IGF has been proposed because the current investment possibilities for the fund are too restrictive. Of the more than IjPOO securities on the exchange, he said, the PUF is allowed to invest in only 11)0. I Patrick estimated that the TGF could creai. up to $75 million more per year than possible in current investment schemes. “We’re not talking about unknown companies,” he said. “We’re talking about companies like Compaq Comput ers — companies that people have heard of and are successful, but aren’t avail able for investment under the current system. I don’t think we’re talking about a greater risk, just greater profit poten tial. Interest in the TGF has been high, pri marily because participation is volun tary, Patrick said. The TRS Board of Trustees said they “concur in principle” with the amend ment as long as the TRS’s investments are voluntary, trustees in the TGF are held responsible for investments made and the fund complies with federal laws. Gov. Bill Clements, Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby and House Speaker Gib Lewis all have endorsed the amendment. David El ler, chairman of the A&M Board of Re gents has also come out in favor of the proposal. The proposal would create the TGF for 10 years, he said. After that, a two- thirds vote in the Legislature could create Texas Growth Fund II, but money from the first TGF could not be mixed with TGF II, Patrick said. rolet Suburban. The vehicle was later found on Jersey Avenue, and Gauntt’s purse was inside. The vehicle is being processed by police for prints and any other clues. The police report states a white me dium-size vehicle with blue trim, possi bly a Suburban, a Blazer or a pick-up truck with a camper, was seen leaving the scene traveling north on Rock Prairie Road. Sandel said helicopters and police tra cking dogs were used in an attempt to lo cate the suspect. The incident is currently under investi gation by the criminal investigations di vision of the College Station Police De partment. Any one with information about the incident is asked to contact the College Station police at 764-3600. ulani stresses need for loss by Dukakis Norm Scroggins, FAA tower manager at the airport, said service was disrupted for about 30 minutes before controllers were able to implement a backup com munications network. He added that con trollers, with assistance from an auxil iary FAA tower near the airport, lost contact with pilots for less than five sec onds. Scroggins said one plane attempting to land was forced to circle the airport, but that it was a routine maneuver. “In so far as passenger and airline safety, that was not compromised,” Scroggins said. “We had emergency transmitter-receiver capability to talk to those crews and minimize the impact and certainly not affect the safety of the sys tem at all. ” Service to Love Field in Dallas and the U.S. Naval Base in Grand Prairie, both served by the control tower, also was disrupted. The technician, who was working for a contractor, was listed in stable condi tion with minor burns at Harris Method ist HEB Hospital in Hurst, Jane McKin ney, assistant head nurse at HEB, said. Airport officials said the fire alarm in the control tower sounded at 11:27 a.m. CDT, and the tower gave the order to stop traffic at 11:29 a.m. John Clark, an FAA spokesman, said the technician was working near the elec trical panel when he noticed smoke bil lowing from it. The technician reached to turn off a transformer unit that was ad jacent to the electrical panel, thinking it was feeding the fire. Instead, he was cut ting off power to the main communica tions network and its backup. Clark, who estimated damage at $1,500, said he was still trying to deter mine how the fire in electrical panel started. He said the panel serviced mon itoring equipment that was not critical to the tower’s operations. Scroggins said that by noon the con trol tower was operating at about 25 per cent of its capability, adding that as a precaution controllers used a 15-mile trail between planes instead of the usual three-mile spacing. He said that opera tions in the tower returned to normal about one hour after the outage. Musical Minute Sara Wall, a senior speech communication major from Amarillo, performs a piece by Mozart during a Photo by Jay Janner SPEX, spontaneous exposure, sponsored by OPAS. The program was in front of the fountain Thursday. Board lets KAMU finish Aggievision production By Stephen Masters Senior Staff Writer The Texas A&M Student Publications Board unanimously voted Wednesday to ask KAMU-TV to finish production of the troubled 1987-88 video yearbook, Aggievision. The video yearbook, under student producer Greg Keith, was plagued by problems with its budget and staff from the start of the project, and no final copy has been produced after more than 14 months of work. Current problems, according to the Board, involve the excessive length of the 113-minute video and Keith’s use of unreleased copyrighted music on the tape. The Board voted to ask KAMU per sonnel to dub out the unreleased music, and cut the tape to 90 minutes or less. Keith, who presented the current ver sion of the tape to the Board earlier, was told at the Sept. 20 Board meeting to get copyrights for the music and to shorten the video. He was given an Oct. 11 dead line, and a spending limit on that work of $2,400. Bob Rogers, chairman of the Board, said Keith is now at his home in Beau mont and no longer is working on the vi deo. Rogers said that much of the trouble exists in editing out the music, but he felt the cost of the editing would be “mini mal.” “Cutting 20 minutes out of this (the tape) is no problem,” he said. “But some of the parts that need the most editing are the parts that have released music on them. “Of a list of 30 released songs, (which Greg had received during the tape’s propduction) Greg chose two and then randomly chose (copyrighted) popular music (for the rest).” Keith told the Board for the first time at its Sept. 20 meeting that he had not obtained permission to use several songs included in the video, although he said he had written several letters to copyright owners asking such permission. Keith said he had asked for the rights free of charge. An official of a firm in volved in obtaining copyright permission for just such projects said he talked with Keith some months ago and told him that few if any currently popular music copy rights are made available regardless of price. Rogers said problems may occur in i by Eric H. Roalson r. Lenora Fulani, Progressive Independent Party candidate. By Richard Tijerina Staff Writer Independent presidential candidate Lenora Fulani brought her campaign to Texas A&M Thursday night, stres sing the need for both a third political party in America and a Michael Du kakis loss on Nov. 8. Fulani, who is running as a New Alliance Party candidate, is the first black woman to run for president and the first Independent candidate to be placed on the ballot in all 50 states for the first time in history. Fulani spoke of the pressing need America has for another political party to represent its needs. Under the present system, she said, the Republi can and Democratic parties are run mainly by millionaires who no longer care for mainstream America. “I am deeply disturbed about how the present two-party political system works,” she said. “The Republicans and Democrats have lost touch with us. There is a strong and growing in terest in the United States to build more than two parties. There is noth- 'g special about a two-party political system, especially when they’re both controlled by millionaires.” Fulani said she is a realist and har bors no serious allusions of winning the presidency. She is hoping to gar ner enough votes on election day from blacks, environmentalists, gays, lesbians and other minorities to help defeat Dukakis. “One of the things I want to do on November 8 is to beat the Democratic Party, to dump ‘The Duke,’ ” Fulani said. “The black vote on November 8 is the pivotal vote for the Democratic Party. It is the vote that can put Duka kis in the White House or keep him out. Millions of black Americans are outraged at how he’s treated Jesse Jackson and how he has tried to dis- enfranchize him.” Fulani said she resents Dukakis for his treatment of both Jackson and black America, and that his campaign is heading downhill even as her own campaign picks up speed. “One of the things that Dukakis represents is one of two rich white parties in America,” she said. “One of the things Dukakis counted on was the Reagan Democrats’ vote, which has totally backfired on him. And I think this is great because he deserves exactly what he’s getting. Now he’s trying to embrace the black vote. He’s very afraid of the impact that this (Fulani’s) campaign has on Black America.” Another of Fulani’s primary goals on election day is to gather enough support across the country to set the foundation for a third political party in the future that can survive against the Republicans and Democrats. “I think and pray we will have a third party candidate that will se riously challenge in 1992,” she said. “We have to challenge the smugness, the elitism that is so prevalent in this country’s two-party system. There are too many abuses of power.” Fulani said she was encouraged by the momentum her campaign has generated toward reaching her goal to form another party. “I think we as people are far more decent than the people we end up electing to political offices,” she said. “It’s been very exciting for me to have intercepted a line in this country that is ready for a third party. I think we are finally ready to go for it.” trying to separate the unreleased music from “ambiance sounds” that are desira ble in the video. KAMU is working to determine the level of the mixing. “This is not an editing job anymore — it’s a sort of rescue mission,” Rogers said. Once Aggievision is completed it will be delivered to those who already have paid for the video, said Donald Johnson, student publications coordinator. Tape delivery originally had been planned si multaneously with Aggieland, but John son said the books are due to arrive on campus Monday so other arrangements will have to be made for the tapes . The Board in its motion to complete the project also urged that further sales efforts be carried out, a job which Rog ers said would fall to Johnson. The video yearbook has been discontinued for 1988-89. Plan will give graduates real diplomas By Kelly S. Brown Staff Writer Texas A&M President William Mob ley is reviewing a new final exam sched ule that would take away a reading day and have exams begin Dec. 9 — one school day earlier than planned. Dr. Jerry Gaston, the associate provost, said. “It will take effect this semester if the proposal passes as it is, and graduation will be like it was in the past — grad uates, who are obviously academically clear, will have their official diplomas in their tubes at graduation,” Gaston said. An Ad Hoc Committee on Com mencement Ceremonies issued the pro posal to Mobley on Oct. 13. Mobley formed this committee, made up of students, faculty and staff, to re view the commencement and other cere monies that surround graduation in the context of the current final exam sched ule, in hopes of achieving the best possi ble graduation events for everyone in volved. Mobley could not be reached Thurs day for comment. His office referred The Battalion to Gaston. “Mobley has not made a desicion. but he’s close to reaching a solution that he hopes will please a lot of people,” Gas ton said. “He is waiting for a recommen dation from the Vandiver Ad Hoc Com mittee.” Gaston said he thinks Mobley will move quickly in making up his mind be cause he doesn’t want to keep anyone in limbo on the issue.