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WEATHER
TOMORROW’S FORECAST:
Partly sunny, chance of t-storm
HIGH: 85
LOW: 60
ol. 89 No.16 USPS 045360 10 Pages
College Station, Texas
Friday, September 22,1989
*ry Areals
Here I come!
Photo by Mike C. Mulvey
[Sheila McDaniel, a sophomore animal science major from Corsicana, practices her turning
exercises on skis Thursday on Mt. Aggie. Mt. Aggie, located near G. Rollie White Coliseum and
Rudder Tower, is used for skiing instructional classes throughout the semester.
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'roposal raises uproar from civil rights lawyers
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A com-
iktee appointed by Chief Justice
r illiam H. Rehnquist called Thurs-
lay for streamlining death penalty
ippeals to assure swifter executions,
mt only after condemned mur-
lerers get more legal help.
The proposal promptly was de-
lounced by civil liberties lawyers
vho accused Rehnquist of stacking
[he committee.
They want to be able to kill more
>eople faster,” said Mary Broderick
if the National Legal Aid and De
fender Association.
Retired Supreme Court Justice
-ewis F. Powell, who heads the com-
littee, said, “The hard fact is that
the (capital punishment) laws of 37
itates are not being enforced by the
tourts.”
“I respect those who argue for
mtright abolition of death punish
ment but it seems irrational to retain
the penalty and frustrate its fair im
plementation,” Powell said.
Ironically, Powell said he would
vote to abolish capital punishment if
he were a state legislator, contend
ing, “It has not deterred murder.”
The United States has the highest
murder rate of any nation and is the
only democracy that has the death
penalty, he noted.
Powell said the aim of his commit
tee’s report is to reform a system that
encourages endless legal maneuver
ing, years of delay and frenzied, last-
minute moves to stave off execution.
The committee report was sub
mitted to the U.S. Judicial Confer
ence, the policy-making arm of the
federal courts. The conference post
poned any action on the report —
and any recommendation to Con-
Alton school bus collides
with semi; 19 students die
ALTON (AP) — A school bus
crowded with teen-agers collided
with a truck and plunged more than
40 feet into a water-filled pit Thurs
day, killing 19 students and injuring
64, five critically.
It is the worst school bus accident
in Texas history, state officials said.
Survivors said the driver of the
Firefighter saves 10/Page 3
soft drink delivery truck ran a stop
sign and struck the bus, sending it
off course and into the pit.
Truck driver Ruben Perez, 25, of
Mission, said his brakes failed,
according to Texas Department of
Public Safety Sgt. Israel Pacheco.
The truck passed a Texas state in
spection last month, Coca-Cola offi
cials said.
Pacheco said investigators had not
determined how fast the truck was
going, but a witness said the bus was
going about 25 mph.
“I thought I was going to die,”
Alex De Leon, 18, said as he stood in
front of Mission General Hospital in
muddy pants and hospital slippers,
with cuts on his face and bruised
hands. “It just filled up with water
real quick.
“I opened up a window, took out
my sister, took out a couple of
friends and it was already full of wa
ter, and you could smell the diesel,”
said De Leon, a 10th grader.
Pacheco said 81 people were on
the bus, including driver Gilberto
Pena. Pena was in critical condition
in intensive care at Mission General.
The bus was designed to carry 83
people, said Herman Light, quality
assurance director for the manufac
turer, Blue Bird Body Co. of Fort
Valley, Ga.
Pena had picked up his last stu
dent en route to nearby Mission
when the Dr Pepper semitrailer
truck struck the left side of the bus
about 7:40 a.m. at an intersection
just east of Alton, which is located
just north of the U.S.-Mexico bor
der, authorities said.
The bus tumbled into the pit,
which is about 20 feet from the road,
said DPS Sgt. David Baker. The
truck remained at the side of the
road.
Rescuers dove in 12 feet of water
to pull both the living and dead from
the submerged and overturned bus.
Some students scrambled out and
stood on the bus, screaming for
help. Notebooks, school papers and
backpacks floated away.
Frantic parents rushed to the
scene. One woman was carried away
in an ambulance, hysterical after see
ing the bodies of her two daughters
pulled from the water, the Monitor
in McAllen reported.
Another wept as she was told
about the death of her child, the
Monitor said. “How can she be
dead? She had just gotten on the bus
five minutes before,” the woman
said.
“They were just trapped. We had
to break the glass of the windows to
get in,” said A1 Nye, a diver who
pulled seven bodies from the bus.
All the dead were between 12 and
18, said Mike Cox, DPS spokesman
in Austin. The bus accident is the
worst in Texas history, he said.
Caliche pits left by contractors
plague South Texas roadways
ALTON (AP) — Thousands of
caliche pits like the one involved
in Thursday’s tragic school bus
accident line roads throughout
South Texas, a little regulated le
gacy of contractors and others
who dig up the gravel-like
material for road base and then
move on.
Nineteen students were killed
when the bus plunged into the pit
following a collision with a soft-
drink truck, becoming sub
merged in about 12 feet of water
at the bottom of the 40-foot-deep
chasm.
No guard rail separated the pit
from the roadway 20 feet away,
nor were there any road signs
warning of its presence. Texas
Department of Public Safety Sgt.
Israel Pacheco said there was no
fence around the pit, though
there may have been one prior to
some recent road construction
nearby.
There are no state regulations
governing the pits, according to
officials at the Railroad Commis
sion of Texas, which governs sur
face mining, and the General
Land Office, which oversees the
state’s geology.
While being mined, operation
of the pits is governed by federal
mining regulations, according to
Bill Driscoll, executive director of
a state contractors’ association.
Those regulations do not apply to
inactive pits, he said.
Officials were unsure who had
excavated the pit involved in
Thursday’s accident just outside
Alton or who owned the land on
which it is located.
Caliche, a Spanish word, is de
fined as gravel, sand and desert
debris cemented by a porous cal
cium carbonate, state geologist
Bill Farr said.
The material occurs naturally
through the Southwest and Mex
ico, and “is used quite a lot in
making road base material,” Farr
said.
‘You’ll see caliche pits lining
the highways all throughout the
Southwest,” he said.
Such a pit is “not unusual in
the (Rio Grande) Valley,” Torres
said. “We see that a lot down
here. ... I used to go swimming
in them as a kid.”
UT fraternity receives probation
for alleged theft during hazing
gress — until its 28 judges reconvene
in March.
The committee recommended
that states enact laws to limit death
row inmates to two rounds of ap
peals in state and federal courts.
One round would challenge a ver
dict directly; a second would be
based on alleged violations of the
condemned individual’s rights.
The current system permits suc
cessive rounds of appeals in the fed
eral courts.
States that choose to adopt the
new system — which also would re
quire congressional approval —
would be required to assure legal
help to death row inmates at tax
payer expense throughout the ap
peals process. That is not the case
AUSTIN (AP) — A University of Texas fraternity
has been put on probation because pledges allegedly
were required to steal lumber from a construction site
in a hazing incident, a UT official said.
The fraternity, Sigma Nu, will keep its campus priv
ileges during the one-year probation, said Glenn Malo-
“I
It’s not unusual to get complaints about
the theft of lumber that someone feels is
being used by fraternities for their party
set ®' — Glenn Maloney,
assistant UT dean
ney, assistant dean of students. But he said a subsequent
violation of UT policy could bring an increased penalty.
“It’s not unusual to get complaints about the theft of
lumber that someone feels is being used by fraternities
for their party sets,” Maloney said Wednesday.
He said this is apparently the first time UT has gath
ered enough evidence to discipline a group for such a
theft under hazing policies.
The Texas Legislature in 1987 redefined the offense
of hazing and created harsher penalties. Hazing is de
fined in part as “any activity that induces, causes or re
quires the student to perform a duty or task which in
volves a violation of the penal code.”
Maloney said officers of the fraternity have cooper
ated with the UT investigation and have told him they
do not plan to appeal his decision.
A man who answered the telephone at the Sigma Nu
fraternity house Thursday said, “Sorry, no one here has
any comment,” and hung up.
The terms of probation for Sigma Nu include per
forming a community service project, submitting a writ
ten pledge program and having fraternity officers and
pledges attend a conference at UT this weekend for
fraternities and sororities, Maloney said.
The officers also must take part in a Greek lead
ership conference next spring, and fraternity members
must give UT permission to discuss their grades with
the officers, Maloney said.
Four pledges were caught by Travis County sheriffs
officers in November while loading lumber onto a tra
iler at a South Austin construction site, Maloney said.
He did not know the outcome of the case.
The incident was not identified as being related to
hazing until January, when a Dallas resident gave uni
versity officials a tip, he said.
Gathering information on the incident took several
months, he said. A decision about discipline was de
layed because Sigma Nu officers were not in Austin
during the summer, Maloney said.
A&M scientists plan
physics research center
By Selina Gonzalez
Of The Battalion Staff
Texas A&M scientists will join
forces with a Nobel Prize winner
and other scientists from univer
sities across the nation and from
Latin America to plan a Western
Hemisphere physics research
center Friday.
Dr. Abdus Salam, 1979 Nobel
recepient in physics and director
of the internationally known In
ternational Center for Theoreti
cal Physics (ICTP) in Trieste,
Italy, will be at the meeting in the
Clayton Williams Alumni Center.
“We want to try to bring to
Texas A&M what is called the In
ternational Institute for Theoret
ical Physics,” A&M physicist Dr.
David Ernst said.
Friday’s meeting is the first
step toward forming the IITP,
which will be patterned after the
ICTP.
Ernst said A&M plans for the
three-year old idea to get started
September 1990.
Public relations and fund rais
ing will head Friday’s agenda,
Ernst said. He said federal, state
and private donations all will be
used to finance the project.
Those attending the confer
ence include Latin American sci
entists Dr. Fernando del Rio of
the Universidad Autonoma Met-
ropolitana-Iztapalapa, president
of Mexico’s National Academy of
Science, and Dr. Gil da Costa
Marques of the Universidad del
Sao Paulo, president of the Asso
ciation of Latin American Physi
cal Societies.
Dr. Alex Dalgarno of Harvard
University, Dr. David J. Gross of
Princeton University and Profes
sor Joseph Macek of the Univer
sity of Tennessee will all partici
pate in the conference.
Hugo collides with South Carolina coast
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Hurricane
Hugo struck the coast of South Carolina with re
newed fury Thursday after thousands of coastal
residents in southeastern states grabbed what
they could carry and fled inland on jammed
highways.
“I’m sure the shoreline is getting hurricane-
force winds,” Bob Sheets, director of the Na
tional Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Fla.,
said at 9:15 p.m. EDT.
“We don’t have observation set up on every
point of the coast,” he said, but Myrtle Beach had
reported the highest sustained winds so far of 65
mph.
Hugo’s muscle reached winds of 135 mph, up
from 125 mph earlier in the day and 105 mph
the day before. North and South Carolina can
expect tornadoes linked to Hugo for the next two
days, according to the hurricane center.
The resort city of Myrtle Beach was a ghost
towm as the powerful winds of Hugo approached
and tens of thousands of people sought higher
ground.
Earlier, the center reported that hurricane
force winds were expected to hit the coast be
tween Savannah, Ga., and Charleston near mid
night, and the eye of the storm was to pass over 3
hours later.
At 8:15 p.m. EDT, sustained wands were mea
sured at 70 mph in Georgetown and 50 mph in
Myrtle Beach. Winds are termed hurricane force
when they reach 74 mph, forecasters said.
The coastal area- could expect hurricane-force
winds for 10 to 12 hours once the eye comes
ashore, officials said.
The leading edge of Hugo was most likely to
hit between Savannah, Ga., and Charleston any
time after 8 p.m. EDT. A hurricane warning was
in effect between Fernandina Beach, Fla., and
Oregon Inlet, N.C.
At 6 p.m., Hugo was 180 miles south of Myrtle
Beach, S.C., near latitude 31.2 degrees north and
longitude 78.2 degrees west and moving north
west at 20 mph. It was expected to turn gradually
to the north, the National Weather Service said.
The timing of the landfall was critical because
of the storm’s tidal surge, a dome of water 10 to
15 feet high that would feed a normal 5-foot high
tide that peaks after 2 a.m.
“On top of that will be waves, and so (on) . . .
barrier islands (in) many places the buildings will
be swept clean off of those islands,” Bob Sheets,
director of the National Hurricane Center, said
from Coral Gables, Fla.
Evacuees queued up at gas stations and
stripped store shelves of bottled water, bread and
batteries. Officials warned coastal dwellers not to
linger because gale force winds and flash floods
could block escape routes. Five to 10 inches of
rain is expected to fall.
The Navy moved ships out of coastal harbors
to ride out the storm at sea. Army bases in coastal
states moved helicopters inland or into shelters.
Officials at Pope Air Force Base in Fayetteville,
N.C., ordered 12 to 14 C-130 transport planes to
Arkansas to wait out the storm.
South Carolina Gov. Carroll Campbell de
clared a state of emergency and dispatched 400
National Guardsmen to assist a mandatory evac
uation of coastal barrier islands and shorefront.
About one-fifth of the state’s 3.1 million resi
dents live in eight coastal counties.
The Georgia Emergency Management Agency
opened shelters and advised about 142,000 peo
ple — more than 95,000 of them in Chatham
County — to leave their homes. Gov. Joe Frank
Harris declared a state of emergency in six coun
ties.