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Vol. 88 No. 104 USPS 045360 14 pages
College Station, Texas
Monday, February 27,1989
There she is ...
Dr. John Koldusjsresents the Miss TAMU tro- auditorium. Hopkins is a sophomore elemen-
phy to Amy Hopkins Saturday night in Rudder tary education major from Hurst.
See related story/Page 3
A&M leads state rates
in minority retention
By Ashley A. Bailey
STAFF WRITER
This year marks the fourth that
Texas A&M’s minority retention
rates led those of other public insti
tutions in the state.
As reported by the University’s
Office of Public Information (OPI),
A&M had 86.4 percent of its under
graduate black students who en
rolled for fall classes in 1986 return
for Fall 1987 classes. The figure was
87.4 percent for Hispanic under
graduates.
Edwin Cooper, director of the
A&M office of school relations, said
in a July article in The Battalion that
A&M has been involved actively in
minority recruitment since 1979 and
has made great progress.
Recruiting is important as an ini
tial endeavor, Cooper said, but re
tention is actually the key to A&M’s
recruiting success.
Donald Carter, the University’s
registrar, said A&M, along with ev
ery other state school, just com
pleted a five-year Office of Civil
Rights desegregation plan with pub
lic higher education students in
Texas. The plan ran from 1983 to
1987.
“Required reports prepared for
the Coordinating Board compare
enrollment of blacks and Hispanics
against the enrollment of white stu
dents from one fall semester to the
next fall semester,” Carter said.
“Provided the information that’s
called for in those reports, A&M did
have one of the higher retention
rates of blacks and Hispanics as com
pared to other schools.”
Carter said, however, that the
plan and its results are not represen
tative of following the st udents from
enrollment through graduation.
“The way they’re doing it, in my
opinion, is not a true retention stu
dy,’ he said, l b me, a true reten
tion study is where you take a group
of students as they enter the pro
gram as freshmen and you follow
that group for five years to see how
many actually graduate.”
Enrollment is a relatively easy
step, he said. It’s graduation that
should be focused on — for all stu
dents.
“Our purpose is to get all students
out of the system with degrees,” he
said. “Graduation goes hand-in-
hand with retention of students. If
you have a higher retention rate,
then there’s a valid assumption that
if they (students) stay in the system
they are progressing and will grad
uate.”
Carter said the good base of mi
nority students at A&M is a positive
influence on getting other minority
group members to attend the Uni
versity.
A&M President William H. Mob
ley said in an OPI statement, “We
are obviously pleased to continue to
have the state’s best record for stu
dent retention — overall in both the
black and Hispanic student catego
ries.
“I attribute that success to our
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen.
Lloyd Bentsen says he is drafting
legislation to set up a pilot program
of “boot camps” within the federal
prison system in an attempt to ease
overcrowding without the high costs
of building standard prisons.
Bentsen said Saturday the pro
posed boot camp prisons would be
for young, first-offenders of non-vi
olent crimes, and would be modeled
after boot camps used by the mili
tary.
As mqny as 1,224 offenders ad
mitted to federal institutions in 1986
fit the criteria for boot camp eligibil
ity, he said.
“They would require long hours,
hard work, but the sentence would
ability to attract well-qualified and
serious students and high-quality,
caring faculty and support staff who
work closely with the students in at
tainment of their educational and
leadership-development goals,”
Mobley said.
Carter said that with the comple
tion of the fifth year of SIMS (Stu
dent Information Management Sys
tem), he will do a true retention
study — from enrollment to gradua
tion.
Black retention rates of state insti
tutions with the next-highest rates
are the University of Texas, 81.9
percent; East Texas State University,
76.3 percent; and the University of
North Texas, 67.2 percent. Hispanic
retention rates were UT, 81.1 per
cent; UNT, 76.8 percent; and ETSU
74.7 percent.
The statewide average for black
retention of undergraduate students
was 63.6 percent, while the average
for Hispanic student retention was
68.8 percent.
be somewhat shorter,” Bentsen, a
Texas Democrat, said. “Clearly our
federal prisons have inmates who
could benefit from the boot camp
approach.”
Bentsen said the federal prison
system is “severely overcroweded”
and the inmate population could
triple over the next eight years,
prompting him to seek low-cost solu
tions to provide additional prison
beds.
“The problem you’re running
into is you have about 50 percent
more prisoners than you really have
room for in federal institutions to
day,” Bentsen said. “So this would be
a means of trying to cut down on the
cost, try to provide some additional
facilities.”
Bentsen suggests plan
for prison ‘boot camps’
Mobley approves co-ed honors dormitory
By Sherri Roberts
STAFF WRITER
An honors coeducational dormitory will be
among the new residence halls opening to
students in Fall 1989 at Texas A&M.
A&M President William Mobley approved
a resolution to designate the newly con
structed modular hall near McFadden and
Haas halls as an honors residence hall.
Eighty percent of the hall’s 202 spaces will
be allocated to freshmen recipients of either
the President’s Endowed, Lechner or McFad
den scholarships, Dale Knobel, director of the
University Honors Program, said. The re
maining 20 percent of the spaces will be as
signed to upperclassmen recipients of these
scholarships.
The procedure for freshmen and upper
classmen to apply for residency in the hall will
be announced later this semester, he said.
The hall will be operated by the Residence
Hall Association and will differ from other
residence halls only in its programming,
which will be coordinated through the Hon
ors Program office, Knobel said.
Academic programs relating to expected
topics of interest to the honors students, such
as study skills, will be sponsored by the hall.
In addition, faculty members will advise resi
dents on an informal basis, he said.
“These students will not be coddled,” Kno
bel said. “They will be challenged by the activ
ities in the hall.”
Though the hall’s programming will be
geared primarily to its residents, it also will
sponsor programs which will be open to the
public, he said.
Representatives of the Honors Program
are planning to have the hall sponsor infor
mal meetings between students and various
speakers, dignitaries and artists visiting cam
pus, he said.
Minor modifications will be made to the
hall to accommodate its programming. At an
estimated cost of $7,500, the third floor study
lounge will be converted to a meeting/semi
nar room, and the first floor storage room
will be converted to the Honors Student
Council/Hall Council office.
Knobel said response to the hall has been
positive from honor students at A&M, as well
as from high school students who have been
extended scholarships to attend A&M.
It is expected that 165 of the 400 high
school students who have been offered
sholarships at A&M for 1989-90 will choose
to live in the hall, he said.
This number is based on 1987 figures,
which indicate 164 scholarship holders ac
cepted non-Corps of Cadets hall assignments,
while 28 chose to live off campus.
Scholarship recipients will not be required
to live in the honors hall. Some may opt to live
in a less expensive hall, Knobel said.
Like other modular halls, the cost of living
in the honors hall in Fall 1989 will be $909 a
semester per student.
Although scholarship recipients are guar
anteed on-campus housing for four years,
those choosing to live in the honors hall will
be guaranteed a space in that particular hall
for their freshman year only. After their
freshman year, they must apply for one of the
select spaces in the hall allotted to upperclass
men.
Knobel said the hall will be an effective tool
to recruit scholarship recipients to A&M. In
1988, 60 percent of those offered schol
arships to attend A&M accepted.
It is difficult to attract these students be
cause they usually receive numerous schol
arship offers, he said.
If the honors hall is successful in attracting
an increased number of high-achieving stu
dents to A&M, the entire University will ben
efit indirectly, Knobel said.
“It enhances Texas A&M’s reputation,” he
said.
This, in turn, will attract more recruiters
and faculty to campus, in addition to making
a degree from A&M more valuable in the job
market, he said.
Mobley approved the resolution to have a
co-ed honors hall at A&M based on a report
compiled by a 13-member Honors Program
committee, which he appointed in Fall 1988.
Committee members included various stu
dent and faculty members connected with the
honors program, representatives of RHA and
Dr. John Koldus, vice president for student
services.
Tower: If confirmed
I will not take a drink
Khomeini calls for ties
with Moscow to increase
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense
Secretary-designate John Tower
said Sunday he is not an alcoholic
and issued an extraordinary pledge
not to take a single drink if he is con
firmed by the Senate to head the
Pentagon.
As Tower defended his reputa
tion in nationally televised inter
views, Senate Armed Services Com
mittee Chairman Sam Nunn, D-Ga.,
accused the White House of leaking
information from the FBI report on
Tower and threatened to reopen the
hearings on the nomination and sub
poena anonymous witnesses quoted
in the agency review.
The committee voted 11-9 along
party lines last Thursday to recom
mend that the full Senate reject
Tower’s nomination, with Nunn cit
ing allegations of excessive drinking
by the nominee.
In his first interview since the
vote, Tower denied he was an alco
holic, and with his unusual promise
sought to allay fears among his for
mer colleagues and remove the
obstacles to his confirmation.
The full Senate is expected to take
up the nomination on Wedriesday.
“Noting the principal concern of
Senator Nunn and other members
of the Senate relative to my confir
mation as secretary of Defense,
namely the extent to which I may en
gage in excessive use of beverage al
cohol, let me state that I have never
been an alcoholic nor dependent on
alcohol,” Tower said in a statement
he read on ABC-TV’s “This Week
With David Brinkley.”
“I hearby swear and undertake
that if confirmed, during the course
of my tenure as Secretary of De
fense, I will not consume beverage
alcohol of any type or form, includ
ing wine, beer or spirits of any kind,”
he said.
Tower distributed copies of the
statement after reading it on the air.
It was signed by Tower and wit
nessed by his doctor at Baylor Uni
versity, Dr. Warren Lichliter, and
Department of Transportation Sec
retary Samuel K. Skinner.
Tower also vowed that if he broke
his pledge not to drink, he would
step down.
“I think I’d be obliged to resign if
I broke the pledge,” the former
Battalion file photo
John Tower
Texas senator said. “I’ve never bro
ken a pledge in my life.”
In the interview. Tower read a
portion of a letter from Lichliter that
said tests conducted prior to his sur
gery to remove a colon polyp found
normal liver functions and that
there was no evidence of alcohol
withdrawal following the operation.
“Based on this fact that can be stated
with relative certainty, Senator
Tower shows no evidence at all of al
coholic impairment or alcoholism,”
the letter said.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Aya
tollah Ruhollah Khomeini said Sun
day he wants strong ties with Mos
cow to help fight the “devilish” West,
and Iranian legislators reportedly
agreed to consider breaking ties with
Britain.
Khomeini’s overtures to the Soviet
Union, which he previously con
demned for its atheist ideology,
came during a one-and-a-half hour
meeting with Soviet Foreign Min
ister Eduard Shevardnadze.
It was believed to be the first pri
vate meeting between Iran’s 88-year-
old revolutionary patriarch and a
foreign minister, according to Iran’s
official Islamic Republic News
Agency.
IRNA said Shevardnadze did not
ask Khomeini to withdraw his order
for Moslem zealots to assassinate
British author Salman Rushdie be
cause of his book “The Satanic
Verses.” Britain reportedly asked
Shevardnadze to press Khomeini to
give a reprieve to Rushdie, whose
book has been denounced as insult
ing to Islam.
“There was no mention of the af
fair in Shevardnadze’s speech,” said
IRNA, monitored in Nicosia.
The meeting with Shevardnadze
came two days after Khomeini de
clared Iran does not need relations
with the West. This issue has divided
the Tehran hierarchy between so-
called pragmatists, who favor more
relations with the rest of the world,
and hardliners, who favor continued
isolation.
Rushdie has been in hiding since
Khomeini’s Feb. 14 execution order,
and Iranian religious leaders put a
$5.2 million bounty on his head.
In protest, Britain withdrew all its
diplomats from its embassy in Teh
ran, which had been reopened in
December after an earlier rift of
more than a year. It also asked Ira
nian diplomats to leave London.
The 11 other European Commu
nity countries as well as Norway,
Sweden and Canada, recalled their
top diplomats from Iran, and Teh
ran brought its ambassadors home.
No diplomatic ties have been for
mally broken. But religious leaders
in Tehran last week called for a
break with Britain.
The English-language Tehran
Times said Sunday hostile relations
with the West stemming from the
Rushdie novel opened “all doors” to
improving ties with Moscow.
FBI agents
protect research
in Houston
HOUSTON (AP) — FBI
agents are quietly fighting a large-
scale counterespionage battle in
Houston against spies for foreign
governments.
The agency has made the ef
fort its top priority, fearing these
spies are monitoring technologi
cal, medical and energy research
in Houston, said Andrew J. Duf-
fin, special agent in charge of the
Houston office.
Guarding against secret for
eign infiltration of the massive su
perconductor project at the Uni
versity of Houston has been one
of the agency’s efforts, the pro
ject’s director, Paul Chu, told the
Houston Post.
An FBI spokesman, Johnie
Joyce, called the foreign intelli
gence effort the “No. 1 priority”
of the local office.
“Our commitment in terms of
agents and other resources com
mitted to foreign counterintelli
gence is far and away greater
than what is committed to any
other single priority program,”
Joyce said.
He declined to say how many
of the bureau’s estimated 200
agents work on spy cases, but
Duffin said the number rep
resents less than 50 percent of the
force.
Duffin cited several of Hous
ton’s high-profile industries as
likely targets of foreign spies.
They include NASA, the Texas
Medical Center, the oil industry
and local universities. He also
pointed to the large number of
foreign consultants and the ex
change student population as po
tential sources of foreign agents.
“These make for fertile areas
for . . . representatives of foreign
governments not all that friendly
with the United States,” Duffin
said.
Duffin agreed a “spy vs. spy”
situation is being played out in
Houston. He said his agency is
fighting against known or sus
pected foreign agents, foreign
agents in Houston illegally and,
hypothetically, double agents
who could be working for both
sides.