The Battalion
Vol.89 No.49 USPS 045360 10 Pages
College Station, Texas
WEATHER
TOMORROW’S FORECAST:
Partly sunny, cooler
HIGH: 78 LOW: 46
Wednesday, November 8,1989
ake a trio back in time
Photo by Scott D. Weaver
Proud drivers (from left) Melvin Foster, Darla Long, Dana Carr and Interurban Trolley System, the first public transportation system in
Joe Minard stand in front of a “trolley” car used by the new Bryan the area since the turn of the century. See story on Page 4.
exans vote against legislators’ pay hike
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$22 AUSTIN (AP) — Texas voters
S2$ Tuesday gave a resounding “no” to
tnt; the Legislature’s request for a 224
_ percent pay raise, and at least one
5*™ lawmaker said he wasn’t surprised.
“It’s a good thing there wasn’t a
Hot alternative that said legislators’
ay should be lowered," Sen. Chet
dwards, D-Duncanville, said.
Edwards, a candidate for lieuten
ant governor, said lobbyists spend
ing fl.86 million on lawmakers this
year and tricky wording about “lim
iting” legislative pay combined to
doom the proposal.
I Proposition 1 on the constitu
tional amendment ballot would have
tripled lawmakers’ pay, from $7,200
a year to $23,300.
Jf With 72 percent of the state’s pre-
Wncts reporting, the amendment
Iwas defeated by a 2-to-l margin.
—' Those results showed 524,439 votes,
or 65.7 percent against, to 273,955
votes, 34.3 percent, in favor.
1 Proposition 11, w hich would boost
lawmakers’ daily expense allowance
^ from $30 to $81, also was defeated.
The returns showed 54 percent
Against and 46 percent in favor.
^Legislative leaders, including
fe House Speaker Gib Lewis, D-Fort
Candidates face runoff for Leland seat
HOUSTON (AP) — State Sen. Craig Washington
and City Councilman Anthony Hall will face a runoff
election in the race to fill the unexpired term of the late
Congressman Mickey Leland- - - .
Neither candidate garnered a majority of the vote,
sending them to a special election to be called by the
governor.
With 92.4 percent of precincts reporting, Washing
ton had a 7.2 point lead with 41.5 percent of the vote,
or 24,813. Hall had 34.3 percent, or 20,513.
Hall and Washington, both black Democrats,
emerged as front-runners early in the campaign to rep
resent one of Texas’ most Democratic and racially
mixed districts until the regular election is held in 1990.
They were followed by state Reps. Ron W’ilson and
A1 Edwards.
A year femains on Leland’s unexpired .term. Leland
was killed Aug. 7 in a plane crash in a remote jungle of
Ethiopia while he was on a famine relief trip.
Of the remaining nine candidates, Wilson, D-Hous-
ton, was the closest with 4,462 votes, or 7.5 percent of
the balloting.
Other Democrats and their vote totals were Edwards,
2,827 or 4.7 percent; attorney Shirley Fobbs, 1,189 or 2
percent; businessman Timothy John Hattenbach,
1,196, or 2 percent; and Lee Arthur Demas Jr., 328 or
.55 percent.
Worth, campaigned hard for the pay
hike. Lewis has said the low pay of
$600 a month was forcing many
qualified House and Senate mem
bers to quit the part-time jobs.
But opponents of the pay hike
noted that lawmakers meet only 140
days every other year, plus in the oc
casional special session. Opponents
also pointed to the actual language
of the amendment, which would
strip voters of the ability to approve
future pay raises by tying lawmakers’
salaries to the governor’s pay, which
the Legislature sets.
In addition, the pay raise issue
went to voters following months of
news reports about lobbyists spend
ing more than $1.86 million during
the 1989 legislative session to wine
and dine lawmakers and take them
on trips to Europe, Mexico and seve
ral ski resorts.
“The message is clear,” Edwards
said. “Voters won’t get serious about
a pay raise until legislators get se
rious about lobby reform. The good
news is maybe now we can make
some progress in cleaning up the
lobby mess.”
“Also, it never should have been
tied to the governor’s salary. That
See Results/Page 5
Whitmire wins
Mayor eases past Hofheinz
for 5th straight mayoral term
HOUSTON
(AP) — Kathy
Whitmire won a
record-tying fifth
consecutive term
as mayor of the
nation’s fourth-
largest city,
trouncing former
Mayor Fred
Hofheinz by a
nearly 2-1 margin
in balloting Tues- Whitmire
day.
Whitmire and Hofheinz, who
held the top city job in the mid
1970s, were the most prominent
contenders in the non-partisan elec
tion that included four others on the
ballot.
•Westmoreland loses seat over racial
slur / Page 5
With 82.7 percent of the vote
counted, Whitmire had 138,156, or
61.9 percent, to 74,196 or 33.3 per
cent for Hofheinz.
The other candidates shared the
remaining less than 5 percent.
“Tonight the campaign is over.
Tonight we have a victory,” Whit
mire said. “We need to move Hous
ton into a great new decade that is
only two months away.”
“I don’t leave unhappy,” Hofh
einz said. “We have accomplished
something. This is not the end.”
Also running for the two-year
mayoral post were Rosie Walker, 48,
a businesswoman; Greg Rosenberg,
23, a machinist running with the So
cialist Party, Ted G. Walker, 54, an
attorney; and Shelby Oringderff, 71,
a retired pastor and teacher.
Polls taken in the final week be
fore the election showed Whitmire
ulling away from Hofheinz and
olding a comfortable 59 percent to
15 percent lead with about 20 per
cent of the voters undecided.
The election marked the second
time W’hitmire, 43, faced a former
mayor. In 1985, she trounced Louie
Welch, whose mayoral longevity she
is trying to match.
In her most recent election two
years ago, Whitmire — an accoun
tant by trade and the first woman
elected in a citywide race when she
won the controller’s job in 1978 —
won her fourth two-year term
against token opposition.
Hofheinz’s father was colorful
Harris County Judge Roy Hofheinz,
the prime mover behind building of
the Houston Astrodome.
Whitmire and attorney Hofheinz,
51, engaged in numerous debates
throughout the campaign, with
Hofheinz trying to show the incum
bent had become complacent in of
fice, lost track of federal money, re
warded supporters with city
contracts and lost the support of the
police department.
A&M student’s
attacker may get
death penalty
By Kelly S. Brown
Of The Battalion Staff
A man serving a 99-year sen
tence in Huntsville for the 1988
attempted murder of a Texas
A&M student is facing the death
penalty after being charged with
the serial slayings of three Cen
tral Texas women.
Montgomery County District
Attorney Peter Speers said he will
seek the death penalty for Daniel
Lee Corwin, who confessed to in
vestigators earlier this year to the
1987 kidnapping, rapes and mur
ders of the three women.
The confessions are the subject
of hearings in the 359th District
Court in Conroe, where it’s being
decided if the confessions will be
admissible as evidence. Speers ex
pects jury selection for the trial to
begin by mid-January.
Corwin’s criminal record goes
back to 1976 when, as a juvenile,
he was charged with a 1975 ag
gravated rape of a Bell County
woman. He was released on pa
role in 1985 after serving nearly
10 years of a 40-year term for the
crime.
Three years after being set free
from the Texas Department of
Corrections in Huntsville, Corwin
kidnapped an A&M student from
a parking lot near Olsen Field at
mid-day on Oct. 20, 1988. He
then forced her to drive south of
College Station to Lick Creek
Park, where he tied her to a tree,
raped her and cut her throat.
Somehow, the young woman
See Corwin/Page 5
andals leave mark on SAA shanty
y Mia B. Moody
The Battalion Staff
Vandals of the Students Against Apartheid shanty,
ehind the Texas A&M Academic Building wrote,
|jp“KKK,” “White supremacy” and “Long live racism” on
the walls of the small, unstable structure.
' Members of SAA said they will not remove the
shanty, which was built Sunday by five SAA members.
They want to show that racism is not only in South Af-
irica, but also at A&M, Irwin Tang, president of the
group said.
5 Tang, a sophomore political science major, said the
attack on the shanty is only a shadow compared to at
tacks on blacks in South Africa.
| “The people of color in South Airica have no rights,”
Tang said. “They have been in a state of emergency
since 1986, which means the government can do any
thing it pleases to them.”
Irwin said that although the shanty, built of materials
taken from trash bins and vacant lots and junk yards,
looks unsturdy and unsightly to students, it may be bet
ter than the actual houses of black South Africans be
cause it is built out of stronger wood.
This is not the first year the shanty has been vandal
ized. Last year someone put dead white doves in it and
wrote, “There will be no peace until all niggers are
dead.”
“These sort of actions hurt me and others deeply, but
the pain we feel is only one 100 millionth of the pain
people feel in South Africa as a result of private and
public racism,” Tang said.
Photo by Jay Janner
This racist grafitti appeared on the SAA shanty. The group said
they have no plans to dismantle the structure.
A&M profs receive rewards for superior teaching
fy Mia B. Moody
The Battalion Staff
Twenty-nine Texas A&M faculty members
^received 1989 college-level Teaching Excel
lence Awards from the Association of Former
students based on nominations by Student
Councils and Faculty Advisory Committees of
colleges.
Recipients, chosen for their superior teach
ing techniques, preparation skills and com-
' litment to the learning process, received
checks for $2,000 and framed certificates,
lun Pittman, assistant to the dean of faculties
lid.
“This program is not designed to be a pop-
ilarity contest,” Pittman said. “Rather, it is
ised to give recognition to those teachers who
ftinaintain the high expectations of their stu-
itrients and who add academic rigor to their
llcourses.”
Winners of the 1989 Teaching Excellence
Award are:
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences:
• Ronald J. Newton — associate professor
of life sciences
• James O. Sanders — associate professor
of animal sciences
• Joe D. Townsend — associate professor
of agriculture education
College of Architecture:
• Donald B. Austin — professor of land
scape architecture
• John O. Greer — professor of architec
ture
College of Business Administration:
• Jeffrey S. Conant — assistant professor
of marketing
• John C. Groth — professor of finance
• Asghar Zardkoohi — associate professor
of management
College of Education:
• Paulette T. Beatty — associate professor
of interdisciplinary education
• Robert S. Hurley — professor of health
and physical education
College of Engineering
• Kai Chang — professor of engineering
• John L. Junkins — professor of aero
space engineering
• Thomas U. McElmurry — visiting pro
fessor of aerospace engineering
• Dan L. Taylor — senior lecturer in
chemical engineering
College of Geosciences
• J. Richard Giardino — associate profes
sor and head of geography
• F. Dale Morgan — associate professor of
geophysics
College of Liberal Arts:
• James C. Bradford — associate profes
sor of history
• Robert A. Calvert — associate professor
of history
• Sylvia A. Grider — associate professor of
history and anthropology
• Robert D. Newman — associate profes
sor of English
Library:
• Hal Hall — associate professor of library
science. Sterling C. Evans Library
College of Medicine:
• Hung Che — assistant professor of in
ternal medicine
• Jerome P. Trzeciakowski — associate
professor of medical pharmacology
College of Science:
• Karl J. Aufderheide — associate profes
sor of biology
• Duncan S. McKenzie — assistant profes
sor of biology
• Richard P. Schmitt — associate professor
of chemistry
• Roger A. Smith — professor of physics
College of Veterinary Medicine:
• Thomas N. Craig — professor of veteri
nary microbiology
• William C. McMullan — professor of
veterinary large animal medicine
East German
gov’t resigns
amid unrest
BERLIN (AP) — East Germany’s
government resigned Tuesday amid
growing nationwide unrest, a contin
uing exodus of thousands of its peo
ple and pleas from within the Com
munist Party for a sweeping top-
level shakeup.
Also on Tuesday — one day after
the government introduced a pro
posed law promising up to 30 days
of travel to the West — a parliamen
tary committee rejected the measure
and urged a new law allowing unre
stricted stays abroad.
The 44-member Council of Min
isters resigned jointly, government
spokesman Wolfgang Meyer said.
The cabinet, led by 75-year-old Pre
mier Willi Stoph, has little power
and implements policy made by the
Communist Party’s ruling Politburo.
Stoph and several other ministers
also are Politburo members.
“We appeal to the citizens who in
tend to leave our republic to recon
sider their step once more,” said a
statement issued by the outgoing
cabinet. “Our socialist fatherland
needs everyone.”
Since early Saturday, more than
28,000 East Germans have fled to
the West through neighboring
Czechoslovakia. They arrived in
West Germany on Tuesday at the
rate of 120 an hour.
The government will remain in
office until Parliament elects a new
Council of Ministers, Meyer said. He
did not say when such an election
would occur.