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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 30, 1988)
} The Battalion 188 Page State/Local Wednesday, Nov. 30, 1988 Page 3 'T THAT \7 you'Rt D FOR? ipler e is to be Jason on i the end. Thauj e of the profitsfe Idy. The original Street” becameat io! Freddy is ing since Jason tur: fhili Clhuckie in “i ie must be prei lood on the com nder how much ; the actual Delta pilot admits possible detours 3efore take off IRVING (AP) — The pilot of a Delta Air Lines jetliner that crashed Aug. 31, killing 14 peo ple, testified Tuesday that some rules might have been bent in re adying the Boeing 727 for takeoff but that preparations were ad equate. Larry Davis admitted seeming deviations from the rules under questioning by aerospace engi neer Jeff Gorney as the National Transportation Safety Board opened an inquiry into the crash on takeoff at Dallas International Airport. Ninety-four people sur vived. For instance, the Delta veteran of 23 years said he had used hand signals instead of calling out com- S letion of each item on the pre- ight checklist and had made a takeoff briefing at the gate in stead of on the runway. “I like to get as much done as possible before we get into the position of getting rushed,” Davis said. Gorney also said a flight atten dant was allowed into the cockpit when the jet was waiting to take off, despite a Federal Aviation Administration rule requiring a "sterile” cockpit once the plane has left the gate. But he said the plane was “waiting in a line of traffic” and added: “I don’t believe it was a critical phase of flight, but techni cally it was (in violation).” The FA A requires pilots to go through a checklist but does not specifically require a verbal a “challenge and response” be tween pilots. The agency, how ever, has made clear on many oc casions that such an exchange is preferable. According to NTSB docu ments, Delta procedures Aug. 31 only suggested a verbal exchange during some phases of the check list. FAA recently chastised Delta for inadequate cockpit discipline and poor coordination and com munications among pilots, and Delta has said that it will formal ize the checklist process with in creased emphasis on verbal chal lenges. Delta procedures say the pre flight briefing should take place “before takeoff’ but also says it could begin during the “before start check,” which normally oc curs about five minutes before the plane pushes back from the gate. Davis testified that he went to full power as soon as he felt en gine “compressor stalls” unlike any he had ever felt before. “It was like driving a car 60 mph down the highway and driv ing into a water puddle. It was pronounced deceleration,” Davis he said under questioning from a representative of Pratt & Whit ney, manufacturer of the air plane’s engines. Investigators have ruled out mechanical failure as a cause of the stalls, and have focused in stead on the position of the wing flaps, which the NTSB said were found retracted instead of ex tended for takeoff in the wreck age. The wing flap lever in the cockpit was in the wrong position after the crash, the board said. But in the cockpit recording, the co-pilot can be heard saying “15, 15, green light” before takeoff to verify the flaps’ proper deploy ment. Davis said Tuesday he did not know if the other crew members might have touched the flap han dle as the plane was in trouble. A pilots union contends a “split flap configuration” may have oc curred, placing one flap up and one down. The union contends that in that case, the takeoff warning system of the 727 would not necessarily alert the crew of the danger. GSS president: Organization hopes to ‘blend into’ A8c M By Richard Tijerina Staff Writer Not much has been heard of the Gay Student Services lately, but the organization’s president said the group is still around, and trying to “blend into the woodwork” at A&M. The president, who asked not to be named, said that although the group is not very large, it maintains a steady group of 15 to 30 members. The group’s main function, he said, is to provide services to help both members and nonmembers live more easily in the local gay commu nity. Among the services GSS provides are roommate referral services for gay people who want to live with other gays, guest speakers at GSS meetings and Texas A&M classes to talk about gay relationships, AIDS and dealing with homosexuality. GSS is a support group, the presi dent said. Its primary goal is to make the lives of gays in the local gay commu nity a bit easier, he said. “We try to help those individuals new to the area become part of the gay community,” he said. “This is a way for people who cannot go to bars, who are not 21 or older, to come and meet people who have something in common with them. We are basically a support group.” He said the GSS also holds peri odic “rap sessions,” which serve as a way for group members to talk in formally about a variety of topics, ranging from the latest gay movies, first homosexual experiences and the ways of talking to their parents about homosexuality. Discrimination and harrassment are not problems to gays on campus, the president said, although Larry Hickman, the group’s faculty ad viser, is trying to push an anti-dis- criminatory bill through the A&M’s Regulations and Rules committee. “That (discrimination) has pretty much stopped around here,” the president said. “It has really died down since some of the older people in the organization, who were here when A&M was trying to kick the GSS off campus, have graduated. But we have blended into the wood work and are now a part of the Uni versity.” Attempts to make the organiza tion blend in on campus met with many hardships in the late 1970s and early 1980s. GSS was denied recognition in 1976 on the grounds that homosex ual conduct was illegal in Texas. University officials said they be lieved it was wrong to recognize an organization that was likely to “in cite, promote and result” in homo sexual activity. However, a federal judge in Dal las later struck down the section of the Texas Penal Code forbidding sexual acts between adults of the same sex. After the judge’s decision, the University argued that GSS was a so cial organization, and A&M does not recognize social groups. The Texas Court of Appeals later stated that A&M’s refusal to give benefits which are available to other campus organizations to GSS denied the group its First Amendment rights. However, in 1982, U.S. District Judge Ross Sterling ruled that the University had not violated any pro tected constitutional right by deny ing the group official recognition. That decision was reversed on Aug. 3, 1984, when the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that A&M would have to recognize the group as an on-campus organiza tion. The case wound up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in April 1985. The Supreme Court ruled in fa vor of the August ruling stating that A&M must recognize the group. Military expertise gives Tower potential for defense secretary WASHINGTON (AP) — John Tower has been talked about as a po tential defense secretary for the bet ter part of a decade, so it’s no sur prise that he’s now considered the front-runner for that post in the new Bush administration. But it isn’t coming easily, with al most daily reports of negotiations over conditions President-elect George Bush wants to set before possibly appointing his fellow Texan. No one doubts the military exper tise of the 63-year-old Tower. He was chairman of the Armed Services Committee when he retired from the Senate in 1985 after 24 years. And he served as an arms negotiator for President Reagan after that. By all accounts, despite apparent opposition from some Bush aides, Tower is the leading choice to head the Pentagon for the new president. However, he was mentioned as a possible defense secretary for Presi dent Reagan — a development that never occurred. A source close to the Bush tran sition office said Tuesday that a deci sion on Tower could come by Wednesday. The source, who spoke only on condition he not be named, said Bush likes Tower and thinks he would do a good job at the Penta gon. But some Bush advisers have raised objections, partly because they do not have a high regard for a number of people who have worked for Tower and might have an inside track for top Pentagon jobs should he be named. The negotiations sup posedly concern who would control which appointments on Tower’s Pentagon team. Tower himself has said little in public in recent days. His aides say each day, when asked: No call from the White House yet. Tower has worked for Bush be fore. In fact, he was one of Bush’s key emissaries to the platform com mittee at the Republican National Convention last summer — essen tially speaking for Bush in the nego tiations. In the Senate, Tower championed Reagan’s military buildup and in crease in defense spending, but if he gets the Pentagon job he’ll become Bush’s point man. And Bush, in publicly describing the role of his Defense secretary, said last week that his nominee must be willing to take a fresh, tough look in these times of budgetary crunch at the Defense Department. Also, the president-elect’s choice for national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, suggested cuts of at least $300 billion from the Reagan ad ministration’s military spending plans for 1990 to 1994. The sugges-_ tions were included in a report pre sented to Bush by former Presidents Ford and Carter. creative and dr« me DIGITAL MASTERY FROM ible) horror mow THE MUSICAL MASTERS . 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