Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 17, 1989)
Texas A&M ___ The Battalion Vol. 88 No. 134 USPS 045360 12 pages College Station, Texas WEATHER FORECAST for TUESDAY: Partly cloudy and warm. HIGH:85 LOW: 63 Monday, April 17,1989 Photo by Ronnie Montgomery Spirit of Aggieiand Junior Elementary Education major Curt Roberts and 10-year-old College Hills Elementary student Ben Dudycha show their spirit during Youth Fun Day Saturday. See related story/Page 3. Private universities in Texas witness influx of applications HOUSTON (AP) — Texas pri vate universities credit intensified recruiting and bargain prices for prompting a burgeoning interest from potential freshmen, school of ficials report. “We’re considered one of the best buys,” John Lind, vice president for admission at Southwestern Univer sity in Georgetown, told the Hous ton Chronicle. Officials from Southwestern, Southern Methodist University and Rice University report applications for 1989’s fall freshman class arrived in unprecedented numbers. “We thought we would have some increase, but this far exceeded our expectations,” said Andrew Bryant, dean of admissions at SMU, which recorded a 24.1 percent increase in applications this year. Freshman applicants at Southwes tern rose by lv.2 percent by March 31 and by 17.6 percent at Rice. Applications to Trinity University and Texas Christian University dropped by 5 percent and 7.5 per cent, respectively, but officials say the amounts are not significant. The Texas application count — even the decreases — contrasts with sharp drops at Ivy League schools. At Dartmouth, for example, 18 per cent fewer applications were filed than last year — 8,300, compared with 10,000 for Fall 1988. And the University of Pennsylvania received 13.7 percent fewer applications — 11,300, down from 13,100 last year. At Southwestern, 637 of the 1,004 freshmen who applied for the 1989 fall semester have been admitted, boosting admissions by 7.6 percent. The increase marks the eighth con secutive increase at Southwestern, which recorded an all-time high of 1,171 students last fall. “The percentage rise this year is certainly more than we anticipated. It’s a pretty big jump, especially in view of demographics (which project fewer 18-year-olds in the population than earlier in the decade),” Lind said. “We compete against very good schools.” SML1 received 4,429 applications by April 1, compared with 3,569 at the same time last year. Rice re ceived 5,180 applications, up from 4,406 applications last year, marking the university’s fifth consecutive re cord-breaking year, said dean of ad missions Ron Moss. Beirut violence Kins at leasi Spain’s ambassador among BFIRIJT: Lebanon tAPl — Strain’s ambassador to damthfer. Alexandra esraned nnhnr dea BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Spain’s ambassador to Lebanon and at least 17 other people were killed Sun day in fierce artillery exchanges between Christians and an alliance of Syrian and Moslem gunners, police said. Ambassador Pedro Manuel de Aristegui, 61, died while undergoing surgery to remove shrapnel frag ments that hit his head when an artillery shell blasted his villa in the Christian suburb of Hadath east of Bei rut, police reported. Police said the ambassador’s Lebanese father-in-law, poet Tewfic Youssef Awwad; and Awwad’s daughter, Sarnia, were killed when the shell exploded. The envoy’s Lebanese wife, Jomana Awwad, was se riously wounded and his 2-year-old son Diego suffered unspecified injuries, police reported. Earlier reports said Mrs. Awwad was killed. De Aristegui’s 1-year-old daughter, Alexandra, escaped unhurt. De Aristegui had served in Lebanon since June 1984. Police said the shell that killed him was fired from a Syr ian-controlled area in west Beirut. They did not specify who fired it. But the Christian-run radio stations said it was a Syrian artillery unit on a hill above the capital. Police said at least 17 people died in the ferocious 18- hour blitz that raged from dusk Saturday to mid-af ternoon Sunday. They said at least 90 people were wounded. That raised the casualty toll from 40 days of fighting to at least 234 killed and 847 wounded. A police spokesman said the artillery and rocket duels were among the most intense in Lebanon’s 14- year-old civil war. Professor asked to join oil-spill committee By Melissa Naumann REPORTER A Texas A&M professor ha^ been asked by Exxrtii'to serve on a committee to evaluate the effectiveness of the cleanup of the March 24 oil spill in Valdez, Alaska. Dr. Roy Harm, a professor in the environ mental engineering program in the civil engi neering department, has worked with Exxon in five other major oil spills and in developing an oil spill response manual. Harm also was consulted about the 1978 Amoco oil spill in France and the 1974 oil spill in the Straits of Magellan involving a Shell Oil Co. tanker car rying oil for a Chilean oil company. The Houston Chronicle reported Saturday that 9 percent of the spill had been recovered, but Hann said that was probably an optimistic figure. “Having been on a number of the biggest spills in the world, you find that the sheer mass of the material overwhelms the minds of the people who are not used to dealing with it,” Hann said. “It’s like sending somebody out with some shovels to move the Rocky Mountains. I’d frankly be amazed if they’d really gotten 9 percent of it.” Exxon was unprepared for something of this magnitude, Hann said. “I knew from the nature and type of equip ment they had in Valdez that this was some thing they just were not prepared for,” he said. Hann said Exxon also was unprepared in terms of their initial response plan. “Exxon has announced that their response plan for that area was heavily based on dis persants (chemicals used to break up oil) and yet later word came out that their contin gency plan said they needed half a million gallons. of dispersants and they probably needed even more than that,” he said. “They only had 4,000 gallons up there.” Hann said, considering this and the loca tion of the spill, he is not surprised the oil spill has worsened. If weather conditions had been different, the spill would not have spread so much, Hann said. “The more it spreads, the more complex the job is,” he said. Hann said, although the government usually tries to avoid getting involved, private industry should work with the government to minimize the damage. “I happen to believe that a person initially on the site of a spill ought to make a quicker decision and they ought to let the industry do what the industry can do well and let the gov ernment do what the government can do well,” he said. “That would be my biggest crit icism of this spill. They didn’t work in part nership from the beginning with each one de termining what it could do best.” Military support would have been partic ularly useful in Valdez from the first day of the spill, Hann said. “Exxon doesn’t have a fleet of landing craft,” he said. “Exxon doesn’t have military field hospitals and field kitchens to feed masses of people in remote environments. The military has these capabilities.” France employed the military in the 1978 Amoco oil spill, sending in 10,000 soldiers to help clean up the spill, Hann said. With this intervention, the situation was under control sooner than if Amoco had attempted to clean it up alone. “In France, they determined that the pubr lie works and army would be responsible for the coastline and the navy would be responsi ble for the sea,” he said. Hann said two methods usually are used in cleaning up oil: a high-pressure water spray for the beaches and dispersants for the water. He compared cleaning up the oil spill to cleaning axle grease off something at home. “One way is you take it over to the sink and blast it with hot water and then you’ll add some soap to get the rest off,” he said. “But when you do that in a big environmental sys tem and the same materials are going to drain right down to where the marine life is living, it does raise some issues.” Hann said the best method in this situation is to stop the damage as soon as possible and then let nature do the rest. English demand stadium changes after soccer riot SHEFFIELD, England (AP) — Lawmakers Sunday demanded changes in stadium designs, in cluding a ban on anti-riot fences, after a mad rush at a soccer match trapped thousands of fans behind one of the steel barriers. At least 94 people died. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited Hillsborough stadium and promised a public inquiry into Saturday’s disaster, which turned a soccfer cup semifi nal between Liverpool and Not tingham Forest into a nightmare. The investigation was expected to focus on why so many fans were still outside as the match be gan and on allegations that many entered stadium without tickets or with forged tickets. Soviet defector finds freedom as entrepreneur Photo by Fredrick D. Joe Officials watch over Valdez cleanup effort VALDEZ, Alaska (AP) — State and federal officials dissected Ex xon’s cleanup plan for hundreds of miles of shoreline Sunday as an environmentally risky steam- deaning method was tested on rocks blackened by America’s worst oil spill. Oil from the 10.1 million-gal lon spill, mostly in the form of tar balls and mousse-like foam, threatened Homer and other ports on fish-rich Cook Inlet. In Kodiak, the nation’s No. 1 fishing port, herring from a closed fish ery were examined for contami nation. Homer residents complained of delays in placing log booms they have built to protect their town. Exxon officials say the booms are being stockpiled at nearby Port Graham to make them easier to deploy when the oil strikes. “People here in Homer are be- ingjerked around,” Lee McCabe, a resident who was building booms, said. “If the fishermen in this town fished like Exxon de ploys booms, you’d never see a fish on the dock.” Exxon workers on Sunday tested cleanup methods on black ened rocks at Block Island, in cluding high-pressure, hot-water sprayers. The company has about 200 of the sprayers, but they have not been used previously with salt water. Cold-water techniques, even those using high pressure, have little impact on microorganisms and small marine life. But the jets of high-pressure steam strip away sand and gravel and kill beach life. Scientists say it takes up to two years for life to return to the sterilized shore. ________ By Kelly S. Brown STAFF WRITER At 21, Luba Diangar would let nothing stop her from defecting from the Soviet Union, not even fear of the KGB, the Soviet secret police. The sole fear Diangar experi enced was one that made her life restless and anxious — the horror of never being able to live up to her true potential because she had to re main in the U.S.S.R. When Diangar came to the United States with her husband eight years ago on a tourist visa she knew she wasn’t going back. It took one year to receive political asylum. Once the red tape was cut, Diangar grasped the freedoms of America and en tered the life of entrepreneurship. Diangar’s latest conquest is a na tionwide book tour she planned for Soviet cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev. His third stop will be Texas A&M Friday, where he will speak about being the first person ever to write a book in space. Not only is Diangar a publisher, but she is founder of an American magazine about Soviet life, and as a translator for A&M’s Mosher Insti tute for Defense Studies. Diangar came to College Station seven years ago because her hus band, who is from Senegal, Africa, was a student at Texas A&M. Al though Diangar has a master’s de gree in genetic engineering from Kuban University in south Russia, she found it difficult to find work in that field. The difficulty arose because Di angar had minimal understanding of the English language at the time. However, after taking English classes at A&M, she gained com mand of the language. “I didn’t really communicate with Americans at first, because I wasn’t confident with the language,” Di angar said. “What I did observe was that Americans were just normal people — nothing like what many Soviets perceive them to be. “The mentality of Soviets and Americans is widely different. “My neighbors all knew I wasn’t coming back from my visit to the U.S., and they hated me for that.” But, Diangar said, her life in the U.S.S.R was not as terrible as some would believe. “It wasn’t bad in my younger years,” she said. “But that’s because I was under my parents care and pro tection. As I grew older, I began to see that there was so much more to life. “After I realized this, I knew I had to have a part of it.” Diangar’s parents were engineers, a prestigious career in the Soviet Union, but “you’d never be able to tell from their income.” Diangar did not want to get trapped in the same life that her par ents were living. “My mother worked hard every day for 33 years and has little to show for it,” Diangar said. “She has many regrets. I had to try something — anything.” Diangar said she had no problems saying goodbye to her homeland, government is unconcerned when it’s extremely young or extremely old people defect, she said. “I just wanted to go anywhere — it didn’t matter where or how,” she said. “The Soviet Union didn’t care much about me as an individual. I wasn’t important to them, so they let me go relatively easily. It was the same situation for my mother.” Diangar’s mother defected one year after her daughter left the So viet Union and now lives with her daughter and 9-year-old grand- aughter in College Station. Diangar is divorced to the man that brought her to America. She was prepared for and willing to do anything to stay in America. And anything it was. With a de gree in engineering, Diangar took her first job in America at a McDon ald’s restaurant. “I was appreciative of what 1 had,” she said. “I was always amazed at the quantity of foods Americans con sume, and was shocked at how cheap everything was.” Diangar also worked as a com puter operator for a hospital and did research for the A&M College of Medicine in her specialized field of genetic engineering. “I’m going to keep trying new things — new adventures,” she said. Diangar is rarely reminded of her past, except when she speaks with other Soviets. When Diangar served as a transla tor at the Mosher arms control sym posium in Houston earlier this year, she said the visiting Soviets were oblivious that she was a defector. She said she didn’t know if that was good or bad, but it showed that she was forgotten in the Soviet gov ernment’s eyes. One person far from forgotten in the Soviet Union is the visiting cos monaut Valentin Lebedev. Diangar had read exerts from Le bedev’s diary that were printed in a Soviet magazine. She decided it might make a good book, so she con tacted people who work for Lebedev and made a deal. Diangar said Lebedev is in hot wa ter with the Soviet Union because the government is responding neg atively to his book. Luba Diangar “His book is an open and honest account of the Soviet space program and I suppose the government didn’t like what they read,” Diangar said.“For awhile we weren’t sure if Lebedev would be permitted to come.” Diangar finally sent a telegram to Mikhail Gorbachev asking for a con- irmation of Lebedev’s visit. Imagi ne going to Western Union,” she said, “and asking them to wire a message to Gorbachev. It was amusing. “Of course Gorbachev probably never saw it, but someone in his of fice did and that got the ball rolling.” She has spoken to Lebedev once on the phone, but has never met him.Dealing with Lebedev reminds Diangar of why she left the country. She said she’s relieved that she doesn’t have to live under such re pression any longer. “My neighbors all knew I wasn’t coming back from my visit to the U.S., and they hated me for that.” — Luba Diangar Soviet defector