Texas A&M
The Battalion
Friday, November 4, 1988
College Station, Texas
Vol. 88 No. 50 USPS 045360 12 Pages
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Sitting pretty
Sheryl Sutphen, a junior environmental design major sits
next to a chair by Rennie Mackintosh. “Furniture by Ar-
Photo by Fredrick D. Joe
chitects” opened Thursday at the Langford Architecture
Center Gallery. The exhibit is open until December 1.
Dukakis: Voters giving
underdogs a second look
Michael Dukakis asserted Thursday
that, voters by the millions are giving his
underdog campaign “a very strong sec
ond look” in the waning days of the race
for the White House.
George Bush said Democrats were
“grossly unfair” to say his advertising is
tinted with racism.
“You’re looking at a man who was
[out front for civil rights and I will be
[again,” the vice president said in a net-
jwork television interview. He defended
[running mate Dan Quayle on the same
[score and said any political wounds
[would heal quickly after the election.
Dukakis combined an attack on the
[Reagan-Bush administration’s record on
[drugs with ritual declarations that the po-
[litical tide was turning in his favor. “His
[administration has cut deals with foreign
[drug runners. I’m going to cut aid to
[their nations”, said the Democratic nomi-
[nee.
Democrats were expressing confi-
§ dence they would control both houses of
i the new Congress, although Republicans
B said they had a chance of picking up a
I seat or two in the Senate.
■
A dozen gubernatorial contests dotted
I ballots being printed for next Tuesday’s
I Election Day.
The public opinion polls in the White
House campaign continued to provide
encouragement for Bush.
Dukakis was trying desperately to re
verse poll deficits in several large Electo
ral College battlegrounds at once. He
ventured unexpectedly into New Jersey,
crooning a la Bruce Springsteen, ‘T was
bom to run and born to win.” But Bush,
Reagan, Quayle and Co. were pouring it
on in Ohio, where private polls contin
ued to show a solid Republican edge.
ABC said its survey of North Carolina
— once Dukakis’ strongest hope for a
Southern success — gave the vice presi-
Schools vote to become
part of University system
LAREDO (AP) — Directors of the
University System of South Texas voted
unanimously Thursday to make the sys
tem’s schools in Laredo, Corpus Christi
and Kingsville part of the Texas A&M
University System.
Schools that make up the South Texas
system are Laredo State, Corpus Christi
State and Kingsville-based Texas A&I
University.
“Now it’s up to the Texas A&M Uni
versity System board to say whether they
are interested in our becoming a part of
that system,” said B. Alan Sugg, chan
cellor of the South Texas system and
president of Corpus Christi State Univer
sity.
The USST board also voted Thursday
in support of establishing a law school at
Kingsville. It was not decided, however,
whether it favors starting a new law
school or moving the unaccredited Rey
naldo G. Garza Law School from Edin
burg.
A&M’s regents will vote whether they
want to take over the three USST schools
on Nov. 21, said A&M System Chan
cellor Perry Adkisson.
Adkisson said he thought the A&M re
gents would vote for the merger.
“I think our board probably would be
receptive to the wishes of South Texas,”
Adkisson said.
It then would be up to the state Legis
lature to decide whether to join the two
systems.
Adkisson said A&M would like a
greater presence in South Texas and in
urban areas, such as Laredo and Corpus
Christi. If approved, a merger could be
gin as early as next September, he
added.
Soviet’s preferred
presidential choice
can’t run for office
dent an 11-point edge. Dukakis held a
four-point margin in a New York survey.
Bush and Dukakis were spending mil
lions on campaign-closing television and
radio commercials, and both the Demo
cratic and Republican parties previewed
a spate of advertisements designed to
maximize party support.
Dukakis had an ad featuring one of the
most memorable television moments of
the campaign, with Democratic vice
presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen
turning to Quayle during their debate and
saying, “Senator, you’re no Jack Ken
nedy.”
MOSCOW (AP) — The Soviets have
a clear favorite in next week’s U.S. pres
idential election. Unfortunately for
them, his name is Ronald Reagan, and
the Constitution won’t let him run again.
As George Bush and Michael Dukakis
make their last campaign swings before
Tuesday’s election, Soviets are waxing
nostalgic about the outgoing eight-year
tenant in the White House who once
called their country an “evil empire”
and joked about bombing it into obliv
ion.
They are also looking ahead to a Bush
victory, although without apparent rel-
ish. ;
“To be quite frank, I can’t say I’ve
personally been carried away by the
statements of either Bush or Dukakis
when they spoke of Soviet-American re
lations,” Nikolai V. Shishlin, a spokes
man for the Communist Party Central
Committee, told a news briefing Thurs
day.
Reagan, once caricatured by the party
daily Pravda as a missile-toting cowboy,
now is portrayed as a reliable bargaining
partner who sat down with President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev and negotiated a
nuclear missile treaty and instigated ne
gotiations in Geneva for a 50 percent cut
in strategic arms.
But such expressions of respect don’t
mean Soviet officials have fallen whole
heartedly for Reagan. Shishlin made a
point of rejecting outright his most recent
pronouncement that the diplomatic
warming between Moscow and Wash
ington was due to the Reagan administra
tion policy of negotiating from a position
of strength.
Kremlin watchers have been hard-put
to find a preference in Soviet news ac
counts or official statements for either
the Republican vice president or the
Democratic Massachusetts governor.
“We prefer the winner,” Foreign
Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasi
mov said Thursday when asked which
candidate the Soviets wanted to see in
the White House.
Gerasimov said the Soviets would like
a prompt summit with the next president
of the United States, whoever he may be.
Officials acknowledge their cautious
non-partisanship is motivated by fears
that showing a preferance for one man
could brand him the Kremlin’s candidate
and doom his chances for election.
“Rival candidates will allegedly take
advantage of our kind words and try to
discredit the opponent who ‘merited the
praise’ of the Soviet press,” wrote com
mentator Melor Sturua. “Does anyone
seriously believe that the Soviet press
can make or break U.S. presidents? That
is, to put it mildly, nonsense.”
Sturua’s article, published in the
weekly Moscow News, blasted Soviet
media for overly cautious coverage of
the U.S. race, and included this unusual
endorsement: “Personally, I prefer Du
kakis, but I think Bush will win.”
In 1984, Tass condemned Reagan’s
decision to run for re-election, saying his
claim to have made the world safer was
“an obvious lie.”
The Soviets have just had their own
presidential elections.
With practically no warning, the Su
preme Soviet, or parliament, elected
Gorbachev president on Oct. 1, naming
him to replace the retiring chief of state,
Andrei A. Gromyko.
The vote was 1,500-0 in Gorbachev’s
favor, and the Communist Party chief
never had to wear a funny hat or eat a
blintz.
Texas inmate executed 13 years after crime
HUNTSVILLE (AP) —More than 13 years after a
San Antonio nurse was abducted and died of wounds
suffered in a stabbing attack that is considered one of
the most brutal in the city’s history, the man con
victed of her slaying was put to death early Thursday.
Donald Gene Franklin, 37, had no final words af
ter being strapped to the Texas death chamber gurney
and before the lethal drugs began flowing into his
arms.
He stared continuously at the ceiling, coughed sev
eral times and then died at 12:30 a.m. CST, six min
utes after his execution began.
Franklin, convicted of the July 1975 death of Mary
Margaret “Peggy” Moran, had three trials, five exe
cution dates and at least two U.S. Supreme Court re
views, including one review that virtually halted all
Texas executions for nearly a year.
His hopes for yet another reprieve were dashed late
Wednesday when the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to re
fuse to grant him a stay.
The same court earlier this year voted 6-3 against
Franklin in his challenge to the constitutionality of
the Texas death penalty statute.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Bill Zapalac,
an assistant attorney general who has argued the
state’s case against Franklin for three years. “It’s
gone through every possible stage.”
The case, he said, may be the most thoroughly ar
gued death penalty case in Texas since the state re
sumed executions in 1982.
The 12.5 years Franklin was on death row is the
longest time spent there by any of the 28 convicted
killers executed by the state.
Franklin was the second Texas inmate to be exe
cuted this year.
“It’s hard to feel bad about it,” Zapalac said of the
final outcome.
“But it’s not something you jump up and down
about,” he said. “The end result is pretty sobering.”
The disappearance of Moran, 27, from a San An
tonio hospital prompted a highly publicized city-wide
search.
She was found in a vacant lot five days after her
abduction, nude and bleeding from multiple stab
wounds and barely alive.
She died later in a hospital.
Study finds sharp rise in Hispanic poverty rate
WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s
economic recovery of the past five years
has shortchanged Hispanics, according
to a private study released Thursday that
shows poverty among Latinos has risen
at a faster rate than for either Anglos or
blacks.
The study by the Center on Budget
and Policy Priorites found particulary
sharp increases in the number of married
Hispanic families and children living in
poverty over the past decade, while it
tracked a decline in the income of Latino
workers from 1978 to 1987.
Robert Greenstein, the center’s direc
tor, said, “The current economic recov
ery appears to be benefiting Hispanics
much less than other groups. Hispanics
are the only racial or ethnic group whose
poverty rate remains at or close to reces
sion levels (of the early 1980s).”
The center, a non-partisan, non-profit
research organization that studies gov
ernment spending, programs and public
policy issues affecting low and moder
ate-income Americans, based its find
ings on data from the U.S. Census Bu
reau and Labor Department. It used 1978
as a comparison year with 1987 because
national economic conditions were
nearly the same in both years.
The percentage of Hispanics living in
poverty grew from 21.6 percent in 1978
to 28.2 percent in 1987, the study said,
while the poverty rate for Anglos grew
from 8.7 percent to 10.5 percent, and
from 30.6 percent to 33.1 percent for
blacks.
During the nine-year period, however,
the income of the typical Hispanic family
fell nearly $1,600, compared with an in
crease of $276 for a white family and a
decline of $854 for a black family, the
study said.
As a result of declines in Hispanic
earnings, the study said the median in
come for Hispanics equaled 62.9 percent
of median family income for Anglos last
year, the lowest percentage on record,
the study said.
Two in five Hispanic children were
living in poverty last year, or 39.6 per
cent, up from a rate of 27.2 percent in
1978, the study said.
The Census Bureau’s official poverty
level was $9,056 for a family of three in
1987.
Hurt hardest by the increase in poverty
and the earnings decline have been His
panic married families, the study said.
Their poverty rate grew by more than
half, with fewer than one in eight fami
lies below the poverty level in 1978 com
pared with nearly one in five in poverty
last year.
“It’s just an affirmation of what mi
norities have known throughout this ad
ministration,” said Elvira Valenzuela
Crocker, executive vice president of the
Mexican American Women’s National
Association. “We’ve known for a long
time that the feminization of poverty is
not a cute, Madison Avenue phrase. It’s
a reality and we have to start looking at
these issues with a little more urgency.”
Greenstein said reasons for the in
crease in the poverty rate and the decline
in earnings were tied to several factors,
including the sharp erosion in the value
of the minimum wage, which at $3.35
per hour has remain unchanged since
January 1981, while consumer prices
have risen 38 percent.
“Because Hispanic workers are more
likely to be paid low wages than non-
Hispanics, the lack of a minimum wage
in nearly eight years has affected Hispan
ics with greater severity than it has af
fected the general population,” the study
said.
Also, earnings losses have been great
in recent years among young workers
and those without a college education,
and Hispanics constitute the youngest
ethnic group as well as the group with
the lowest education levels, the study
said.
Cutbacks in state and federal budget
programs also have contributed to the in
crease in poor Hispanics, the study said.
Only one in every 14 poor Hispanic fam
ilies with children was raised from pov
erty with government assistance in 1987,
compared to one in eight in 1979.
Greenstein said programs that would
boost working Hispanics include raising
the minimum wage and adjusting the
earned income tax credit so that it in
creases based on the number of children.
He also supports programs to keep
Hispanics in school, scholarships to help
them afford college, and improvements
in the welfare safety net, particularly
policies that help the two-parent family.
College Station-based A&M operates
Texas A&M, Tarleton State University
at Stephenville, Prairie View A&M and
Texas A&M University at Galveston.
Sugg said A&M needed a vote of ap
proval from the South Texas schools be
fore deciding on the merger.
“From what Dr. Adkisson and the
staff at the Texas A&M University Sys
tem have indicated to us, we’re pretty far
along in terms of becoming a part of the
Texas A&M System, even though it still
would be up to that board and ultimately
up to the Legislature,” Sugg said.
According to a feasibilty study the
USST board approved Thursday, A&M
would encourage and support devel
opment of more graduate and profes
sional programs in South Texas.
“It’s probably the most important
thing that’s happened in this part of the
state of Texas, ever,” Corpus Christi
Mayor Betty Turner, said.
A lack of professional degree pro
grams and graduate studies has kept
South Texas behind the rest of the state
economically, she said.
Among other conclusions, the study
said Corpus Christi State University,
now an upper-level school, should be
come a four-year university.
As part of A&M, the South Texas
schools would have access to the Higher
Education Assistance Fund and the Per
manent University Fund.
The South Texas board would be dis
solved with a merger, and presidents of
the South Texas schools would report to
the A&M regents, according to the feasi
bility report.
Texas A&I President Steven Altman
and Laredo State President Leo Sayave-
dra also lauded the merger vote Thurs
day.
The merger proposal is among results
of a resolution from the state Legislature
last year ordering the Texas A&M and
University of Texas systems to study
higher education needs in South Texas.
As a result of that resolution, UT and
Edinburg-based Pan American Univer
sity also are discussing cooperative pro
grams and a possible merger.
10-year-old
shoots driver
of school bus
PORT ARTHUR (AP) — A 10-year-
old boy was taken into police custody
Thursday after he allegedly shot his
school bus driver in the head, authorities
said.
The driver, Russell Jean Hampton,
was listed in critical condition Thursday
afternoon in the intensive care unit of St.
Mary’s Hospital.
Police said witnesses saw the student
running from the bus before they discov
ered Hampton, 40, slumped over the
steering wheel.
She had been shot in the base of the
skull with a small-caliber handgun, po
lice said.
The shooting occurred after Hampton
had dropped off students at Dick Dowl
ing Elementary School and was returning
to the district’s bus storage barn, police
said.
“Apparently this boy had missed the
bus earlier in the day and she had seen
him riding his bicycle along the road on
her way back,” said Port Arthur police
Lt. J.W. Fontenot.
“We don’t know whether he was rid
ing his bike to school or playing hooky.”
The youth was taken into custody at
his grandparents house, near the site of
the shooting.
Police speculated that Hampton had
told the boy to get on the bus, with the
intention of returning him to school and
possibly reporting him for truancy.
Fontenot said the boy also may have
been afraid school officials would dis
cover the weapon he was carrying.
A .22-caliber handgun and the boy’s
bicycle were recovered from the bus,
Fontenot said.
“At this point, all we can do is specu
late what happened,” Fontenot said,
adding that the youth was being ques
tioned in custody at the Jefferson County
Detention Center in Beaumont.
Russell Coco, assistant superintendent
of Port Arthur schools, said district offi
cials did not yet know the name of the
student implicated in the shooting.
The shooting victim’s father, Russell
DeJohn of Port Arthur, said he was
shocked by the incident.
“She was a housewife and a mother
and she never bothered anybody,” De-
John said.
Coco said the shooting has had no ef
fect on operations at the elementary
school, about five miles from the site
where the Hampton’s bus was found in a
ditch.