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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 21, 1989)
s WEATHER ■ ^xasA&M^J - - ne Dattauon g TOMORROW’S FORECAST: Partly sunny HIGH: 90 LOW: 68 ol. 89 No. 15 USPS 045360 14 Pages College Station, Texas Thursday, September 21,1989 35! Blank Stair Photo by Mike C.Mulvey ^ Eric Trekell, an educational administration to view the art displays at the new Forsythe 32( graduate student, walks up the spiral staircase Gallery in the MSC. »County agencies fight alcohol, 2 drugs during awareness month By Pam Mooman pp in Of The Battalion Staff >r Brazos County drug prevention agencies and treat ment centers are teaming up to educate the community about substance abuse during Natonal Drug and Alco hol Treatment Awareness Month. The Brazos Valley Mental Health and Mental Retar dation Authority kicked off the month with an open house on Sept. 14 at its rehabilitation facility on Marylake Drive. MHMR also plans additional activities with local treatment centers to raise awareness about the dangers of drugs. Tom Gray, substance abuse unit director for the Bra zos Valley MHMR, said that two workshops will be held Thursday at the College Station Community Center. “Anybody and their dog can come,’’ Gray said. The first workshop, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., will dis cuss “Professional Enabling.” This term refers to the ways people can help maintain someone’s addiction, Gray said. “You fail to confront the fact that a person is abusing chemical, or you keep a person from feeling the con sequences of use,” Gray said. A second workshop, from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., deals with the “Recognition of Substance Abuse Problems in Families.” Gray and Dr. Mike Wilbourn, with the Student Counseling Service, will conduct the first workshop. The second workshop will be conducted by Dr. Dennis Reardon, coordinator for the Center for Drug Preven tion and Education, and Sharon Sandifer, clinical coor dinator of outpatient programs at Parkside Lodges. Reardon said the center, located on the second floor of the A.P. Beutel Health Center, does not deal with ac tual treatment of substance abuse. “What we do through this office is primarily preven tion, education and intervention,” he said. Sandifer is pleased to be participating in the workshop, but she said that fighting drugs requires con stant activity. “We do have an ongoing series of lectures on drug abuse,” she said. HCA Greenleaf Hospital is sponsoring a program of its own this month. HCA, in conjunction with Alpha Phi Omega, a Texas A&M service fraternity, will hold an See Awareness/Page 10 French airliner crash in Niger takes 171 lives Moslem terrorists claim responsibility Crash claims lives of 5 Texans PARIS (AP) — A Moslem extrem ist group claimed responsibility Wednesday for the downing of a French DC-10 jetliner in southern Niger that killed all 171 people on board. U.S., French and UTA airline au thorities said they believe the plane, bound Tuesday from Chad to Paris, was blown out of the sky by a bomb. A U.S. team of investigators was to leave later Wednesday for Niger. Two callers who claimed to rep resent Islamic Jihad but did not give their own names made their claims of responsibility in separate tele phone calls to the airline and to a Western news agency. Islamic Jihad is among several radical fundamentalist groups in Lebanon believed to be part of Hez bollah, or Party of God, the umbrella group thought to hold 16 Western ers hostage in Lebanon, including eight Americans. Among the passengers on the French jetliner were seven Ameri cans, including Bonnie Pugh, wife of the U.S. ambassador to Chad, Rob ert L. Pugh. UTA Flight 772 was on a flight from Brazzaville, Congo, to Paris when it crashed Tuesday shortly af ter making a stop in N’Djamena, ASSOCIATED PRESS Four Texas-based oil workers and a Peace Corps volunteer returning to the United States were aboard the French airliner that crashed in Niger, family members and officials said Wednesday. The five were among 171 passen gers killed on a UTA flight from the Congo and Chad to Paris that crashed after an explosion ove 1 ' Chad. Debris was scattered over a 16-mile expanse of desert about 400 miles northwest of N’Djamena. The French army, whose troops stationed in neighboring Chad were the first to reach the scene, said the 15 crew and 156 passengers died, in cluding eight children. Authorities said indications are that a bomb was the cause of the crash. “It exploded at high altitude leav ing every reason to believe it was a bomb,” UTA spokesman Michel Friesse said. He said it was possible, but less likely, the explosion was due to technical failure. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, central African country Tuesday. In separate telephone calls to the airline and to a Western news agency, a caller claiming to rep resent the Moslem extremist group Islamic Jihad asserted responsibility for downing the plane. Of the seven Americans on board the flight, four were from Texas. In addition, a Canadian national who See Texans/Page 10 speaking on condition of anonymity, echoed that sentiment: “The pieces are widely scattered, so it didn’t crash on impact.” “The obvious wide-spread nature of the debris suggested it blew up in the sky and not on the ground,” presidential press secretary Marlin Fitzw'ater said, adding that President Bush had been briefed on the mis hap. Representives of the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration and builders of the plane and en See Airliner/Page 10 Jet splashes into East River, splits into pieces, killing 2 NEW YORK (AP) — A USAir 737 carrying 62 people skidded off a runway on takeoff from LaGuardia Airport late Wednesday, landing in the East River near the city jail at Rikers Island, authorities said. At least two people were killed, said Fire Department Dispatcher Adam Krause. The Port Authority also said it had reports of fatalities. Officials had no figures on possi ble injuries. One passenger reported that the aircraft split into two or three pieces. Some people were trapped in the plane’s tail section and were being removed, said Coast Guard Lt. Com mander Paul Milligan. Milligan said the plane skidded off the runway during takeoff and landed in the water, about 2,000 feet from the end of the runway, at 11: 35 p.m. EDT. The Coast Guard said the plane remained afloat and was in relatively shallow water, 25 to 40 feet deep. “They’ve got people in water in life rafts, some people in tail sec tion,” said Petty Officer Gary Rives. “The plane is sitting at a 60-degree angle in the water with the cockpit down.” A USAir spokesman in Pitts burgh, Susan Young, said Flight 5050, a Boeing 737-400, was bound for Charlotte, N.C. “We do have an airplane that ap pears to have gone into the water at LaGuardia,” said Young. “On take off it went off the end of the runway and is now partially submerged in the water.” The pilot tried to abort the take off for an unknown reason, said “X I hey’ve got people in water in life rafts, some people in tail section.” — Petty Officer Gary Rives, U.S. Coast Guard. Kathleen Bergen, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in New York. - The plane was carrying 55 passen gers and seven crew members and was being evacuated, said a Fire De partment spokesman, John Mulli gan. Mulligan said survivors were be ing transported to the Pan Am Shut tle terminal at LaGuardia. Coast Guard small boats and planes were on the scene, as well as police vehicles. Lobbyists to interview faculty regarding wages Although faculty salaries in creased over the past year, many fac ulty members have not seen a real increase in pay, Dr. Claudine Hunt ing, area Texas Faculty Association president, said. Members of the TFA will be on campus Sept. 25-29 conducting in formal interviews with faculty to get input on salary and academic issues. The TFA works with the National Education Association and other or ganizations to present faculty con cerns to the state and national legis latures. Hunting, an associate professor in modern and classical languages, ex plained that the TFA has vigorously lobbied the Texas Legislature over the past three years on behalf of the faculty’s professional and personal concerns. The TFA successfully lobbied for the elimination of a mandatory re tirement age, and is currently lobby ing to establish a standard wage for beginning teachers and to achieve parity in pay raises, Hunting said. “This University has many, many faculty that earn less than $20,000 a year — full time, some with a Ph.D, some without a Ph.D,” Hunting said. Hunting said the TFA also is con cerned with the problems experi enced by graduate teaching assis tants and is working to put a faculty representative on the A&M Board of Regents. For further information regard ing the interviews or the association, contact Hunting at 845-2130 or 774- 7250. Representative says session By Holly Becka Of The Battalion Staff State Rep. Richard Smith, R-College Station, on Wednesday night said November’s special 30- day session of the Texas State Legislature will help determine the economic vitality of the state’s future. Smith. Class of ’60, spoke at a meeting of the Buster’ Brown focuses on drug war/See Page 4 19 Republican Women of Brazos Valley. The special session will cover workman’s compensation — House Bill 1. “The next session will be a difficult session,” he said. “I don’t think we’re out of the woods on the economic front yet. If we don’t get workman’s comp, settlement. . . and this will be the only thing I’ll say about it, it is a jobs issue, it’s not an insurance issue, it’s not an issue about safety or about medical health care.” He said he knew of a clothing company that was deciding whether to move to North Carolina or Texas, and it was found that the insurance rate for apparrel workers in Texas was $8.11 per SlOOof payroll, while in North Carolina it was 94 cents. “When businesses look at those figures and find the difference in workers’ compensation in surance premiums are enough to make business -lose money in Texas, and make money some where else, it’s very simple folks, they’re going to go somewhere else,” Smith said. “Until we get control of the benefit delivery system in Texas, we’re going to have serious problems. I consider that to be the biggest threat for the economic wel fare and vitality of the state.” During Wednesday’s meeting, Smith, who has been a state representative since 1984, also re layed to his constituents the highlights of the 71st State Legislature, which came to a close in the spring. Smith said that among the topics of the legis lature, state prisons were one of the greatest con cern to the legislators and himself, and that the legislature approved a motion to add 15,800 prison beds across the state. The amendment to provide the funding for these additional beds will be on the ballot in a November election for numerous constitutional amendments. “If I had to state a fundamental purpose of government on the state and local level w r hen you get away from the question of national defense, it’s really the defense of the honest citizenry against attacks by hoodlums, thugs and criminals of all stripes,” he said. “If we don’t have safety in our own homes and streets, it really doesn’t mat- deals with state’s economic future ter what our parks look like or w'hat kind of li braries we have if we have to lock ourselves in our houses.” Smith, chairman of the house public safety committee, said Texas has a tremendous drug problem that has created a backlog of prisoners. “It’s a plague upon our state and our land,” he said. “I believe in a combination of (education and incarceration), and I don’t subscribe to the belief rehabilitation is the purpose of prison. People need to be put into prison because they’re bad people and they need to be taken out of so ciety. “We need to provide the beds (to do that),” he said. “I’m proud to tell you during this past ses sion the legislature did approve a mechanism by which we can add 15,800 new prison beds, con trary to what the (Bryan-College Station) Eagle said in an editorial recently (that) the legislature had done nothing to solve the prison overcrowd ing situation.” “I called Dennis Thomas, the publisher, and we had a discussion about that and I pointed out what had been done. I didn’t read the correction, but I assume it will appear some point in time,” he said. Smith also said legislators discussed the AIDS problem in Texas, rural health care, education and the Texas budget. Photo b y Kath y Haveman (From left) Dick Birdwell, Rep. Richard Smith and Rep. J.E. “Buster” Brown