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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 6, 1989)
l^xasA&MQ _ 4.4__ IS tie tsattalion WEATHER TOMORROW’S FORECAST: Hot and humid. HIGH: 9 LOW: 74 >1.89 No.4 USPS 045360 12 Pages College Station, Texas Wednesday, September 6,1989 ecent figures show &M ’ s enrollment lurpassing 40,000 ' By Holly Becka Of The Battalion Staff J Texas A&M, the University with a reputation of “the largest school of in in the nation,” has an even rger freshman class and more Borps of Cadets members enrolled is fall compared to last, with total ekrollment figures at A&M surpas sing 40,000 for the first time. I Figures from Friday’s last drop- andday show 8,739 freshmen, 6,485 Bphomores, 8,318 juniors and 9(437 seniors enrolled, to total ,979 undergraduate students. r graduate and professional students account for an additional 7,372 of r. He University’s total enrollment of .4),351. ■ Associate Provost Dr. Jerry Gas- tin said these numbers may change Hghtly by Tuesday, when fall enroll- lN0 §ent figures will be reported as “of- to the Texas Higher Educa- ■'y ticai Coordinating Board, • ■ ■ T ocf Toll ell bered 39,163, with 8,136 freshmen, 6,822 sophomores, 7,660 juniors and 9,200 seniors. Fall 1988 had 31,843 undergraduate and 7,320 graduate and professional students enrolled. Cadet enrollment increased slightly this fall, with 2,186 regis tered at the end of last week, com pared to 2,169 at the same time last year. With the addition of 47 transfer students and 769 incoming fresh men, new Corps students totalled 816. Female cadets number 102, an increase of two from last year, and minorities account for 17 percent of total enrollment, about the same as last fall. Women students at A&M account for 44 percent of the total enroll ment, wnile men account for 56 per cent. Gaston said the totals are about the same as last year at this time. Mi nority students make up 3,920 of the University’s enrollment, 1,113 Last fall, total enrollment num- See enrolIment/Page 7 4 B hite elections anger outh African blacks 35* Si JOHANNESBURG, South Africa P) — Hundreds of thousands of teks angered at being shut out of Jjktional elections walked off their lbs Tuesday. It was the biggest show of defiance in a month-long mpaign to discredit the balloting. The National Party, despite gains tde by white leftist and rightist tees, expects to retain power in ednesday’s parliamentary voting, t it probably will suffer its biggest sses since coming to power 41 ars ago. Hundreds rallied at universities ahd barricaded streets with flaming tires around the country to protest the elections, and police arrested 350 people. I Witnesses said police used tear s, whips, rubber bullets and rdshot to break up demonstra- The protests were the latest in a mass campaign launched a month ago to defy apartheid laws that seg regate the society and to protest the elections that exclude the country’s 28 million blacks. “The elections are addressing ir- relevancies,” said Titus Mafolo, a leader of the defiance campaign. “Once more the ruling bloc is going to elections, and . . . the main con cern is the protection of white afflu ence and privilege.” Some black leaders have called for boycotts of the mixed-race and In dian voting because their respective houses have no power to overrule the white chamber of Parliament. For the first time since 1953, polit ical analysts predict the Nationalists could receive less than half the white vote. Theft leaves woman hospitalized; assailants flee from scene of crime Gunmen fire on Texas Coin Exchange with automatic weapon By Cindy McMillian Of The Battalion Staff -yea was listed in critical condition at Humana Hospital Tuesday night after an armed robber shot her in the back of the head with an auto matic weapon at Texas Coin Ex change Tuesday morning. Eyewitnesses reported that two Hispanic men entered the store, located at 404 University Drive, shortly after 10 a.m. and ap peared to browse. The store owner was helping another cus- tomer and Dorothy McNew, an Sketches of suspects/Page 7 employee of Texas Coin Ex change, was in an office at the back of the store. McNew came out of the office briefly, and when she turned to go back into the office, one of the men shot her in the back of the head with what was described as an automatic weapon, possibly an Uzi or Mac 10 type. Witnesses said the other man carried a semi automatic, chrome-plated or sil ver gun. It is not known whether McNew saw that the men were armed, but it is possible that the men thought she was returning to the office to telephone for help or sound an alarm. The witnesses said the man gave her no warning and only fired one shot. The two customers and two other employees in the store were ordered to lay down on the floor behind the jewelry counter while the suspects emptied trays of gold chains and loose and mounted di amonds from the display cases. The suspects left through the front door and fled through a field to the east of the store. Police received calls from two people who said they saw the men escape across the field on foot, but could not determine whether the suspects reached a car or con tinued to flee on foot. Police alerted nearby residents to watch for the suspects and be gan in late morning an extensive A College Station police officer links up with a Department of Public Safety heli copter flown in from Austin. The helicopter was used to aid in the search for the Texas search of the neighboring area which extended into the early af ternoon. College Station’s Special Operations Response Team, a specially-trained group equiva lent to a SWAT team, was on hand along with a helicopter from the Department of Public Safety and an airplane from Eas- terwood Airport. Tracking dogs were brought in from the Texas Department of Corrections Pack Unit south of Navasota shortly before noon. The dogs were released in front of the store and led officials to the nearby Lines Park area, where police said it is possible the sus pects had a vehicle waiting to exit the area immediately after the crime. No escape vehicle has been Photo by Mike C. Mulvey Coin Exchange robbery and shooting sus pects. The shooting occurred at the Univer sity Drive store at approximately 10 a.m. Tuesday. See Robbery/Page 7 Photo by Mike C. A College Station police car sits outside of Texas Coin change, where the robbery took place, Tuesday. "Bush wants harsher drug penalties A E « I WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush, call ing drugs “the gravest domestic threat facing our Ration,” Tuesday night proposed a $7.9 billion fiar on narcotics emphasizing harsher penalties ■or users and more money for prisons, treatment programs and education. I Bush warned Latin American drug lords that lithe rules have changed” and for the first time pledged U.S. military help to any government that requests it. I “Drugs are sapping our strength as a nation,” the president said in his first nationally televised addressed from the Oval Office. He punctuated s address by displaying a plastic bag of crack co- ine seized across the street from the White lafl To attack cocaine at its source, Bush proposed a four-fold increase in the amount of military ■ft ^id law enforcement aid for Colombia, Bolivia ind Peru, to $261.2 million in 1990. He called it pie downpayment on a $2 billion, five-year pro gram for the Andean region, with allocations earmarked on the basis of progress in eradicating drugs. To help offset the cost of his program, Bush proposed diverting $751 million from other areas, including juvenile justice, housing, immi gration and economic development programs. “We can pay for this fight against drugs with out raising taxes or adding to the budget deficit,” he said. He singled out for praise President Virgilio Barco of Colombia, where drug barons have de clared war on the government. “We have a responsibility not to leave our brave friends in Colombia to fight alone,” Bush said. With cocaine and crack dealing creating vio lence and record homicide rates across the coun try, Americans appear ready for a new assault against drugs. A Gallp Poll released at the White House last month said a record 27 percent of Americans consider drugs the most important problem fac ing the nation, above poverty, the economy, the environment and fear of war. “All of us agree that the gravest domestic threat facing our nation today is drugs,” Bush said. Bush held up the bag of cocaine, and said it was as “innocent looking as candy.” But the president added, “If we fight this war as a divided nation, then the war is lost. But if we face this evil as a nation united, this will be noth ing but a handful of useless chemicals.” Even before the speech. Bush’s program was praised by the head of the International Associa tion of Chiefs of Police, Charles D. Reynolds, who said in a statement that “the criminal justice recommendations of this report are responsive to critical needs.” U.S. delivers Hueys to assist crackdown on Colombian drugs nterviews for sale! 'lacement center offers help for job-hungry Aggies By Christina De Leon IBpecial to The Battalion I Going once, twice and sold! The I rGeneralDynamicsjob interview goes II to the student who bid 250 points. 11 While not quite that dramatic, ■ pi ore than 3,000 Texas A&M stu- Bents bid for job interviews each se- I ttiester in a free job placement serv- |Be offered by the Career Planning j ai d Placement Center. About 400 Himpanies from all fields participate Hch vear. ell practice a _ P 1 KWashington football game wi : held at 7 tonight at The Grove. ie practice will be held one day lady due to travel schedules of ie football team and yell leaders Bor the out-of-town game. A bidding system is used to give students a fair chance at a limited number of interviews for both sum mer and permanent jobs. Jay Wheeler, an assistant director at the center, said. Students begin by registering at the center and are allotted a certain number of points, depending on when they expect to graauate. May or August graduates receive 200 points per semester for their last three semesters, including the sum mer term. Fall graduates receive 150 points in their last spring and sum mer terms, and 250 points in the fall. All unused points are erased at the end of each semester. Students then submit bids for in terviews chosen from data sheets posted throughout the semester in each academic department and in the placement center. The data sheets describe the jobs and which majors qualify. The high est bidders win interviews and are notified one week before the inter view time. Wheeler said the entire f irocess takes about three weeks, rom the time a student registers to the time he knows if he won an inter view. “It’s basically an auction, a blind auction, where you look at the data sheets of the companies that are coming and decide how many points you want to bid,” Wheeler said. A good bid, he said, can be any amount of points, depending on the demand for the interview. Students who don’t succeed keep their points and are put on waiting lists. Many times, students can get in terviews without losing any points when a cancellation occurs or when not enough students bid for an in terview, allowing students to sign up to fill the slots. The most common way, Wheeler said, is when companies aon’t notify the center about interviews in time for bidding. Those interviews are open to students on a first-come, first-served basis. Even if the interview doesn’t cost any points, students must register with the placement center to inter view. Wheeler recommended that students register within the first week of the semester, since most companies recruit during the first few weeks of classes. “Recruiting starts early, and those folks who wait until three or four weeks into the semester to get regis tered would have missed out on quite a few weeks of recruiting,” he said. To register, students need to buy a placement packet, which contains a floppy disk and information about the center. The packet is sold only at the MSC Bookstore for S3.50, in cluding tax. The floppy disk, which can be used on IBM-compatible computers, contains a career questionnaire that the student completes and returns to the center, on the 10th floor of Rud der Tower. The student then re ceives a computer number enabling See Placement/Page 7 BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Two gunmen killed an army colonel’s wife at a supermarket Tuesday, and Washington delivered five helicopt ers to help the government break the drug lords’ violent grip on the country. A police source said the govern ment’s 2-week-old crackdown on tra ffickers has virtually paralyzed the nation’s cocaine-producing laborato ries. A newspaper predicted the price of cocaine would rise and a shortage of the coveted drug in the United States. A man suspected of being the fi nancial wizard for Colombia’s co caine cartel faced a deadline Wednesday for appealing his extra dition to the Unitea States. The United States delivered five UH-1H “Huey” transport helicopt ers, modified versions of the combat choppers that gained prominence during the Vietnam war. They arrived in a huge C-5 trans port plane at Bogota’s El Dorado air port, the last of the big-ticket items in President Bush’s $65 million package to help the government fight its drug war. In recent days, the United States has sent Colombia five C-130 trans port planes and eight A37 recon naissance and attackjets. The aid also includes machine guns, bulletproof vests, grenades, boats and trucks. Drug lords have waged a cam paign of bombings, assassinations and threats, largely to intimidate the government into refusing to extra dite drug traffickers wanted in the United States. Colombia’s powerful cartels are believed to supply the United States with 80 percent of its cocaine. The drug war began in earnest Aug. 18. On that day, an assassination squad believed hired by drug czars killed leading presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan. Shortly after the helicopters were unloaded, an apparent bomb threat caused airport security agents to re move passengers and luggage from a jet of Colombia’s Avianca Airlines about to take off for Miami. Soldiers cleared the airport and brought in bomb-sniffing dogs. A suspicious suitcase, shown on local TV newscasts, turned out to be full of rocks. Police said they had no official motive for the death of Angela de Guerrero, wife of Army Col. Carlos Guerrerro. She was gunned down by two men in a passsing car as she stood in a su permarket entrance in a northern suburb. Police have blamed previous in stances of random violence on drug traffickers retaliating for the crack down. The National Police said Tuesday that since the crackdown began, co caine production in Colombia has practically stopped and that prices should go up as a result. “Cocaine-processing plants in Magdalena Medio, Vichaaa and the eastern plains are inactive,” a police official, who insisted his name not be used, said. So far this year, Colombian au thorities say they have destroyed 252 cocaine labs, mostly in those three remote regions. The Bogota newspaper El Tiempo, Colombia’s largest, citing unnamed police sources, on Tues day forecast a cocaine shortage in the United States “within 30 days at most.” It also said that based on police in formation, a kilogram of cocaine, or 2.2 pounds, which now costs $1,500 in Colombia and $10,000 at its wholesale distribution point in Mi ami, will go up in price “consider ably” in coming months.