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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 22, 1989)
Tl^xasA&MlQ ■■ I • lie Battalion V \ \ \ I j / /// WEATHER TOMORROW’S FORECAST: jr/j 1 j \\\\\. Sunny, cool HIGH: 69 LOW: 46 Vol.89 No.59 USPS 045360 6 Pages College Station, Texas Wednesday, November 22,1989 El Salvodoran rebels capture 8 Green Berets SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Armed guer rillas raided a luxury hotel before dawn Tuesday, trap ping dozens of foreigners, including eight U.S. Green Berets. Both NBC and CBS television reported Tuesday night that all the Americans, including military person nel, were freed unharmed. The reports were attributed to the U.S. Embassy but the reports were refuted late Tuesday by the Red Cross and sources from the scene. Red Cross spokesman Marie Aude Lude said 17 peo ple had been evacuated safely in the early evening but that it appeared no U.S. military personnel or guerrillas were among those evacuated. “All the people are over 30, and none of them looks like an American soldier,” she said. Knowledgeable diplomatic sources, who insisted on anonymity for security reasons, said the American sol diers barricaded inside the hotel will spend the night there. The eight are described as heavily armed Green Berets from Fort Bragg, N.C. Instead, it appeared a standoff was continuing—and would continue through the night — inside the El Sal vador Sheraton Hotel’s VIP Tower more than 17 hours after rebels surprised the government with their assault in an upper-class neighborhood of this capital. Lude said none of the evacuees — who were French- speakers, Spanish-speakers and English-speakers — ap peared to be guerrillas. Earlier Tuesday the guerrillas claimed they had cap tured four U.S. military advisors. But the AP reached the occupied sector of the tower and were told the heav ily armed Americans were barricaded in one or two rooms and controlled the fourth floor hallway, only about 20 yards from where the guerrillas were on the third and Fifth floors. One of the barricaded Americans told reporters they had been talking with the rebels at one point early in the standoff. The Americans said they had fired no shots and would not fire unless Fired upon. “We’re here, because we don’t feel we can leave safely,” said one of the soldiers, who declined to pro vide his name. One source said it was unclear whether the guerrillas had slipped out of the hotel, or were still inside. The re bels may have left behind mines or booby-traps, he said. “Before daylight it would be difficult to be sure they’d be safe and secure coming out,” said the source. Col. Carlos Aviles of the Salvadoran army also said the American soldiers remained inside the hotel. He said it was unclear whether any rebels remained on the hotel grounds. The hotel manager told the AP by telephone there was still sporadic firing around the building. State Department sources said Tuesday night that many of the guests trapped in the Sheraton Hotel, in cluding several Americans, had been allowed to leave the building in the custody of the Red Cross. The sources, who declined to be identified, did not say whether American military personnel were among those who were freed. Faculty get ‘fresh start’ in stop-smoking program By Pam Mooman Of The Battalion Staff Texas A&M faculty are getting a “FreshStart” with classes that teach them how to give up cigarettes. A&M’s FreshStart program tea ches faculty how to quit smoking, tells them of difficulties they may face after quitting and helps them manage these problems in four one- hour sessions. “Fortunately, people are realizing cigarettes are dangerous,” said Gib Sawtelle, training specialist in A&M’s human resources department. “We developed this course to help those employees who want to try to quit.” Sawtelle said FreshStart classes help employees comply with A&M’s smoking policy that was passed by the Board of Regents Sept. 1. The American Cancer Society trained Sawtelle to teach the FreshS tart courses. “If I can get one person to quit smoking and prevent them from getting cancer, then it’s a success,” Sawtelle said. The American Cancer Society views smoking from three aspects: chemical dependency, psychological dependency, and habit. “The chemical dependency is really the nicotine,” Sawtelle said. “It’s stressful to the heact: Smoking one pack a day is equivalent to 50 to 75 (extra) pounds.” Sawtelle said the habit aspect of smoking occurs when smokers auto matically light up when doing cer tain things like talking on the tele phone. Psychological dependency occurs when smokers view cigarettes as a friend, Sawtelle said. “(But) it’s a friend that’ll kill you,” he said. Each of the four sessions deals with specific topics that concern smokers who are trying to quit. The First session helps smokers under stand how and why they smoke. Session two helps smokers man age their First few days without ciga rettes and includes stress manage ment techniques. The third session helps smokers deal with obstacles in their attempts to quit smoking, such as weight gain. Session four gives smokers support to stay off cigarettes for good. “It may take someone more than one time to quit,” Sawtelle said. “We want to make this a permanent thing for them.” People are encouraged to sign up for a second FreshStart class if they fail to quit during the First one, he said. Sawtelle himself was a smoker for 10 years and quit cold turkey. “The damage is not irreversible, unless you get to the stage of can cer,” he said. “That’s a strong incen tive for a lot of people.” Sawtelle said FreshStart classes, which are offered every month, try to educate A&M faculty and staff that they can be the best they can be by giving up smoking. ndustry, school partnerships improve education 15 H Eto kndrea Warrenburq iy tki 1 ' anc i' Of The Battalion Staff vs' jr-tt 7h e development of partnerships between on ^ public schools and private industry may be the answer to improving the teaching of sci- ex r ence and mathematics in Texas schools, said °' the director of the Texas Alliance for Science, ea ®‘ Technology and Mathematics Education, G an! J headquartered at Texas A&M. a " 1 “Science and mathematics education 101 ' Texas is too in textbook-bound,” said Bob pames, A&M professor of science education and director of the Center for Mathematics and Science Education. “There’s not enough ’ ands-on learning or enough application to the real world.” TASTM was formed in 1987 with the pur pose of reforming math and science educa tion in kindergarten through twelfth grades. TASTM is guided by a statewide board of di rectors but is centered at A&M in the College of Education. The more than 16 active TASTM programs create partnerships using local business volunteers to help students get more involved in their science and math stud ies. The Bryan School District is one of Five in the state testing the Math Science Volunteer Project. Teams of teachers and community volunteers design local projects, such as a computer literacy program for fourth grad ers, and TASTM assigns a member to each team. The TASTM member goes out into the community and Finds volunteers in the pri vate sector who can help the teams with their project area. Local businesses, such as Star-Tel, major corporations such as GTE and Westinghouse and A&M have been active in the program, James said. The Rural Elementary Science Im provement Project seeks to improve science education in rural areas and STARS, Science Teaching After Regular School, is for stu dents interested in science activities after school. The STARS program was active at College Hills Elementary School in College Station last year. In conjunction with the University, TASTM sponsors the Science and Technol- ogy Symposium every spring. Students and teachers from all across Texas come to A&M for a day symposium featuring scientists speaking about their current research. James said TASTM also seeks to attract more women and minorities to science and math Fields. “Too many students have a negative atti tude about science and math,” James said. “We want the curriculum the student experi ences in science to be more directed to science that occurs in their community — more prac tical when applied so the student becomes more highly motivated and sees the relevance of it.” A&M offices will close for holidays Most of Texas A&M’s offices and departments will be closed Thursday and Friday in obser vance of the Thanksgiving holi day. The Sterling C. Evans Library and the Medical Sciences Library will keep abbreviated hours throughout the holiday weekend. Both libraries will close at 5 p.m. Wednesday, be closed Thursday, be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fri day and Saturday and regular hours Sunday. Several university food services cash facilities will reopen briefly Friday to accommodate football fans prior to the 1:30 p.m. game against Arkansas and will then close for the remainder of the weekend. These include the MSC Basement Snack Bar, Rumours Snack Bar, MSC Cafeteria/Snack Bar, the Common Denominator and the Golf Course Snack Bar. Leaning into the wind White House reporter encourages students to research candidates By Melissa Naumann Of The Battalion Staff The American public doesn’t know enough about the characters, judgments or souls of the candidates they elect, a Washington Post corre spondent to the White House said Tuesday. David Hoffman, a guest of President Reagan’s former deputy press secretary Peter Roussel, said coverage of candidates for public office focuses too much on voting patterns and what the candi dates ate for breakfast instead of the vital issue of who the candidate actually is. “The Making of the President,” a book by Theodore White published in 1960, used the kind of journalism that made readers feel like they were actually there when John F. Kennedy arrived at his hotel at 3 a.m., Hoffman said, and 30,000 fans were waiting for him, demanding to see the exhausted president. “We do such a good job sometimes of reFining White’s technique that some of the books that come out after the campaigns seem dry,” he said. This kind of see-it, feel-it, touch-it journalism is pervasive but doesn’t do thejob, he said. “We have yet to do our best in telling America who are the men we elect president,” Hoffman said. “We’re hopefully on the verge of a new era and a new time.” For example, in the year since Reagan left of fice, at least two books have been written that portray him as being violently opposed to build ing up nuclear weapons. “I remember how Reagan was parodied as a gun-slinging cowboy,” he said. Voters chose Reagan without knowing about his opposition to nuclear weapons, Hoffman said, and it is the fault of journalists as well as the people surrounding Reagan. Journalists should have remembered when Reagan conceded the Republican nomination to Gerald Ford in 1976, he talked candidly about his opposition to nuclear weapons, Hoffman said. But, Reagan’s immediate staff didn’t want to show this side of Reagan to the public, fearing that he would contradict himself. “All of us hold views that are contradictory but such behavior doesn’t fit into the black and white world of journalism,” Hoffman said. More stories like last year’s six-part series in the Post on George Bush and Michael Dukakis need to be written to expose the candidates to the public, he said. Five reporters spent six to seven months studying the candidates but this kind of effort is usually unheard of, he said. Journalists frequently are manipulated by poli ticians, Hoffman said, and actually glamorized Bush and Dukakis when the candidates refused to answer questions from the press. Instead, jour nalists should tell the truth, like Hoffman did when Bush went out of his way to avoid the press. Hoffman persuaded his editors to run a box list ing all of Bush’s efforts in a single day to steer clear of the press. Before reporters can write about the values of other candidates, they need to know their own values, he said. “If you’re going to write about a candidate having a short attention span, what’s yours?” Hoffman said. Hoffman said David Broden, a colleague of his at the Post, said all journalists should lean against the wind. “We need more hard-headed biographical journalists,” Hoffman said. “Instead of leaning against the wind, they’re sort-of flapping around in it.” Brady asks for stricter gun control WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time since he was shot with President Reagan eight years ago, former White House Press Secretary James Brady personally asked Congress on Tuesday to re quire a seven-day wait before buy ing handguns and said lawmakers “have been gutless” on gun con trol. “They have closed their eyes to tragedies like mine,” Brady said of Congress. “They ignore the statistics. Well, this statistic has decided to break his silence.” “I understand,” Brady said, “that many of you are intimidated by the gun lobby. But you’ve got to look squarely at the facts.” Brady, who was almost killed when he was shot in the head during John Hinckley’s attack on Reagan in 1981, appeared in a wheelchair and with his wife, Sa rah, at a hearing on the so-called Brady Bill by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Constitution sub committee. The bill, defeated a year ago in the House, would establish a na tional seven-day waiting period for the purchase of handguns. In addition to providing a cooling- off period for buyers, it would re quire that gun dealers obtain identifying information from handgun buyers and send it to police, who would check to see if the purchaser was a convicted felon barred by law from pur chasing a weapon. The bill has been pushed by Sarah Brady, who heads Hand gun Control Inc., a lobbying and citizens’ action group. She said this was the first time her hus band had appeared with her be fore Congress.