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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.