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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 29, 1988)
in Thoma ... ROBIN...THANKS TANOING BEHIND HROUGH THI5... Tuesday, November 29,1988 The Battalion Pages Latchkey kid’ problem spurs reject Home Safe programs CH GOT BOTH OF HOSTILS. ILETO THEM HERE... By Sandy Hastings Reporter ^ children H»jio care lor themselves while their rents work — are not a new phe- menon. Millions of American chil- en return to empty homes after ool. These children, ranging in |e from 6 to 13, may be alone or y have the responsibility of caring for younger brothers and sisters. | Dr. Sarah Anderson of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service said THAT OUT/ PO/VT MVE ^ FOR all it EKPlAM! that many of these children will take responsibility for their own care, sometimes cooking, cleaning and op erating major appliances on their own. “We don’t have any real solid data on the situation in Bryan-College Station yet, but there are significant numbers and they’re still growing,” Anderson said. “A survey was taken in schools in the area, and 75 per cent said they were latchkey chil dren.” Crime awareness cey to prevention )f illegal activities By Laurie Tomasini Reporter Awareness is a key to preventing C I ® ut particularly on the Texas 1 BcM campus, there is a lack of areness that anyone is a potential tim of criminal acts, including _ _*ual assault, said Bob Wiatt, direc- | Brof security and University Police. j "A&M is a part of the planet , / irth,” Wiatt said. “This is the real ZZZ arid. Students should quit acting ;s than requned jp. Alice in Wonderland and believ- |gin the tooth fairy. ‘People think once they enter the liege environment they are pro- ted by a cocoon of academics state monev anil f, ere everyone recites poetry and ns around with roses between |eir teeth,” he said. “This is a congested area with Dout 50,000 residents plus thou- nds of visitors on campus every eek. With that many people in a so- ety there are going to be offenders ho will victimize students,” Wiatt lid. Linda Castoria, director of the razos County Rape Crisis Center, lid that students often seem not to lalize that a society exists outside le A&M campus. “The majority of students do not ad the local newspaper,” she said, o they have no sense of what is ing on in Bryan-College Station yond the campus. Therefore, stu- [ents relate the occurrence of crime the whole area to what they know private, for-profi es for the retarded when federal la vo sources of fundi ;x>se. gency contracts fo es to a number oi mployees, and in a a man still workiw ;es that Little's her right to milk- ately communicait elected officials re- artment’s progra® s guaranteed by (lit lowers Act and tk in’s guarantees uses on * % % & it don't l©t your business . bomb. coil 845-2611 to advertise at ease aware that you Mark Perlmutter Little, said she t performanceeval l happening on campus. | evious job. He said “Students hear about the theft of the let ackpacks or bikes and think that is within 2.5 monihilpe extent of crime in the area,” she Hid. As a result, she said, many stu- lents have a false sense of security. Incidents such as the sexual as- kult and attempted murder of an l&M student on Oct. 20 may make tudents more cautious — but often • J I nly until the offender is caught or a jp* I length of time elapses, she said. L JLdi National statistics show that only me in 10 rapists is apprehended. “It is probably more like one in and Adams wertBV Castoria said. “So for every one n a stolen car. iv claims that Ada® he car when the fa ?d. i has essentially ad ast month that kf capital murder icer Robert Wood i his application fa :orpus, which would ) court again, “(j ' ncarcerated fora! >r an offense whic> it.’ king Baraka to ret' rial and Adams’re- trial. who is caught, there are nine or 14 who are still committing the crime. “Who’s to say those criminals who are still out there won’t walk onto campus or into a citizen’s home?” Castoria said. “Students must be aware that a crime may occur any time, anywhere, to anyone. “No one should walk around ab solutely paranoid that they could be come a victim any minute,” she said. “But they should realize that as often as sexual assault occurs on the na tional level, it has to affect our local community.” Wiatt, also president of the rape crisis center, said he wants students to be aware that they are part of the real world. “Awareness is the best preven tion,” he said. “Be aware th; could be victimized. Students have complained that they cannot be aware of something that officials and administrators are trying to hide. “It seems the police and the ad ministrators try to keep incidents of rape hush-hush,” Wendy Layer, a senior elementary education major, said. Wiatt said the University Police Department writes daily, monthly and annual records of all the crimes reported. The reports are available for anyone to read. “That is where the information for the police beat comes from,” he said.“If anything serious occurs it usually gets headlines in the paper.” However, not all sexual assaults are reported, so the police reports and newspaper stories are not actual representations of how often they occur. Wiatt said sexual assault is one of the least reported offenses to a law enforcement agency. People are more likely to report a robbery, bur glary or vandalism, they said. Four sexual assaults were re ported to the University Police be tween September 1987 and August 1988. The difficulty in obtaining accu rate statistics is directly related to the emotionally sensitive nature of the situation. For many families, leaving the children at home alone while the parents are working is a secretive ar rangement, she said. “Parents don’t reveal their chil dren are latchkey for two reasons,” she said. “One, fear of child abuse and neglect charges and two, fear for the child — possibly setting the child up in a dangerous situation.” “Because of parental feelings of guilt and fear, the children are taught to maintain a low profile, and their presence may not even be no ticed by friends and neighbors.” Because of these factors, commu nities are frequently unaware pf the extent and impact of the latchkey sit uation in their population, she said. While children in self-care are not solely products of the 1980s, the magnitude of the situation is, An derson said. Unsupervised children must be considered at risk, she said. For example, 6,000 children die each year as a result of in-home alcci- dents and fires, and in nearly every case no adult had been present. Recognizing the challenges faced by latchkey children, the American Home Economics Association, with funding from the Whirlpool Foun dation, established Project Home Safe in an effort to find both imme diate and long-term solutions to the latchkey situation. The three-year project includes research, training, materials devel opment and start-up or strengthen ing of community school-age child care programs throughout the United States. In addition to training home economists and providing material for use by trainers, parents and chil dren, Project Home Safe offers a na tionwide toll-free hotline and a na tional Resource Center that makes available research, books and other resources on child care. “I will be going to Washington, D.C. for Home Safe Trainer’s train ing,” Anderson said. “The four-day, 28-hour training program will train us to teach volunteers at our training sessions to provide a life-skills train ing for children in self-care where the community offers no alternative to the latchkey arrangement. “For example, we will pretend there is a fire and practice for emer gency. We don’t advocate leaving children alone, but the program is to help parents be sure the child is re ady to care for himself if there is no other option available.” Texas has been chosen as one of the six training sites for the pro gram. Several criteria were used in the selection process: a large popula tion of school-age children with working parents, a strong state home economics association sup porting the project, and a pool of qualified home economists working in the child development or educa tion fields, Anderson said. “Our training will target about 33 counties this side of San Antonio, from Austin to Houston,” Anderson said. “We won’t target the entire state but the program is open to oth ers in the state. Texas dieters taken by health plan f rauds FORT WORTH (AP) — More and more dieters are telling Texas consumer fraud investigators that they are being bilked by quick- weight-loss plans that seem too good to be true — and are. Robert Kaman, director of pro grams for Preventive Health-Pre ventive Medicine at the Texas Col lege of Osteopathic Medicine, said dieters often want a quick fix to lose weight. i ii “But there ain’t no free lunch,” he said. “You don’t eat, you don’t gain. The trick is to keep the weight off. Statistics suggest that within a year, 80 percent of all dieters gain their weight back. If the diet does not pro vide an education program to help you change your lifestyle, then you face a lifetime of what we call the yo yo diet.” Kaman suggests dieters be leery of any weight-loss plans involving food supplements or diets devised by laymen without a doctor’s appro val. Consumers should be sure they are not buying a marketing scheme, but a legitimate program, he said. Kaman said would-be dieters should avoid substances that suppos edly increase metabolism, ampheta mines, and hormones that many claim will lead to weight loss. Another recent weight-loss fad is a patch soaked with chemicals and placed on the skin to allow slow ab sorption. “The so-called patch technology has been recognized as safe and ef fective utilizing some drugs,” said Jim McDonald, compliance officer for the Federal Drug Administration district office in Dallas. But for weight loss, the technique has not been proven, and the Texas Attorney General’s Office is battling advertisements and sale of the prod ucts in the state. Some plans are fraudulent, one state official said. “We are just covered up with health frauds right now,” said Den nis Baker, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Health’s Food and Drug Division. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” The Dallas-Fort Worth Council Against Health Fraud received 160 calls between July 14, 1987, and July 14, 1988. Of those calls, 46 percent were on weight-loss programs. PLUS presents. . . Lowest Price in Town 4.77/10 MHz XT 512K Memory Hercules/Color Adaptor Monochrome Monitor AT Style Keyboard 360K Disk Drive 150 Watt UL Power Supply Parallel. 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