Texas A&M
The Battalion
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Vol.89 No.79 USPS 045360 10 Pages
College Station, Texas
Wednesday, January 24,1990
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CIA: Red threat
eases as Europe
greets freedom
WASHINGTON (AP) — The di
rector of the Central Intelligence
Agency told Congress Tuesday that
Eastern Europe’s tumultuous push
for democracy has cut the Soviet
threat to the West and that “we can
probably expect a continued dimi
nution.”
William Webster, in an unusual
public appearance before the Senate
Armed Services Committee, said
that as unchallenged communist
control comes to an end in the East
ern bloc, those nations’ links to Mos
cow have been radically changed.
The result, he said, is a severe
blow to the Soviet Union’s certainty
that Eastern Europe will respond to
Moscow’s military directives.
The armed services committee is
beginning work on writing a defense
budget for fiscal 1991 with an assess
ment of the Soviet threat to the
West.
“Overall, the conventional threat
to the United States and our alliance
partners in Europe has decreased as
a result of changes in Eastern Eu
rope and Soviet force reductions,”
Webster told the panel.
The CIA director cautioned, how
ever, that the Soviet Union is vigor
ously upgrading its strategic forces.
Webster cited the Soviets’ deploy
ment last year of two new, silo-based,
nuclear missiles; the continued de
ployment of SS-25 and SS-24 rail-
mobile missiles; and the launching
of new Typhoon and Delta-IV ballis
tic missile submarines.
The Soviets also have made con
siderable gains in the anti-submarine
effort, but they still “will be unable,
at least in this decade, to threaten
U.S. subs in the open ocean,”
Webster said.
In what appeared to be a plea to
head off budget cuts for the CIA
and other intelligence agencies,
Webster said the United States must
maintain its intelligence capability.
He pointed to the continued Soviet
strategic modernization and to ter
rorism, illegal drugs, uncertainty in
Latin America, Asia and the Middle
East, and weapons proliferation.
Intelligence operations are hid
den in the Defense Department bud
get, which faces significant cuts on
Capitol Hill this year.
In through the out door
SHI
Photo by Phelan M. Ebenhack
A&M basketball coach John Thornton takes his first steps in G. Rollie White after being named interim head coach,
succeeding Shelby Metcalf. The basketball team will play tonight for the first time under Thornton’s leadership. Game
previews on page 7.
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Fee increase
subject to
student vote
The Student Senate unani
mously passed a resolution to
place a health center fee increase
proposal on the ballot of the next
student general election. The
proposed increase would raise
the health center fee $10, from
$15 to $25.
According tea Texas law, stu
dents must approve any health
center fee increase at a state-sup-
ported university. The Senate’s
resolution to place the issue up
for referendum is only the first
step in a long process to raise the
fee.
Senate Finance Committee
Chair David Wieland, who intro
duced the bill, said A&M cur
rently has one of the lowest
health fees in the nation. The in
crease in the health center fee,
should it eventually pass, would
be partially offset by a decrease in
student services fee allocations to
the A.P. Beutel Health Center.
According to Wieland, the stu
dent services fee allocation would
be decreased by approximately
$4.50 making the net increase in
fees to students about $5.50.
In other Senate business, Ke
vin Buchman, student body presi
dent, assured the senate that the
rumors about the George Bush
Presidential Library being located
in Houston were false, and to his
knowledge there has been no
word as to where it will be placed.
Also, Mark Werner resigned as
speaker pro-tempore of the sen
ate, citing personal reasons.
A&M’s research funding
exceeds $250 billion mark
Expenditures put University in top 10
By ANDY KEHOE
Of The Battalion Staff
For the first time ever, Texas A&M’s annual research
expenditures have topped the quarter-billion dollar
mark, placing it among the top 10 research universities
in the nation.
According to the expenditure report recently sub
mitted to the National Science Foundation, officials at
A&M show funding for fiscal year 1989 totaling
$250,706,000.
This is an increase of more than $19.5 million over
1988’s $231,200,000. That number helped A&M
achieve its ranking as eighth in NSF’s annual survey for
that year.
Most of the funds were the result of grants and con
tracts from federal and state agencies, with some com
ing from the private sector and research consortiums.
The expenditures were used for hundreds of new
and continuing research programs at A&M. Among the
new programs is the Offshore Technical Research Cen
ter and the Computer Visualization Center in the Col
lege of Architecture.
Texas A&M was the fastest-growing research univer
sity in the country throughout the last decade. For ex
ample, the 1980 expenditure total of $72.2 million is
less than one-third of the present amount.
“It is important to continue to grow in our research
volume,” Dr. Duwayne M. Anderson, A&M’s associate
provost for research and graduate studies, said. “Our
osition near the top shows that A&M is dedicated to
eeping its place among research universities.”
If the 1989 expenditures were applied to the NSF
amounts for 1988, Texas A&M would advance one
place to seventh, just ahead of the University of Michi
gan and slightly behind the research volume of the Uni
versity of Minnesota, which presently ranks sixth in the
Illustration by Doug LaRue
nation.
The list is headed by Johns Hopkins University with
$557 million in expenditures. In second place is Stan
ford, with $277.5 million, followed by Cornell, with
$271.7 million. Next is University of Wisconsin, with
$271.4 million, and MIT, with $270.6 million.
The University of Texas at Austin ranked seven
teenth with expenditures of $ 172,608,000.
Anderson said it is too early to say what the figures
for 1990 will be.
“We are in the midst of some planning that will result
in comparable increases next year.”
Flu season fear
Physicians remain
alert for epidemic
By KEVIN HAMM
Of The Battalion Staff
Although many people are sick
with flu-like symptoms, physicians
won’t know for another week if they
are facing an influenza epidemic,
the acting associate director of the
A.P. Beutel Health Center said.
“It takes 10 days to two weeks for
enough (students) to come down
with (influenza) to really project
what you’re dealing with,” Dr. J.M.
Moore said.
He said it takes this long because
an epidemic works in a geometric
progression: students who already
have the virus spread it to other stu
dents, where it incubates for three to
five days before spreading to other
students. It takes about two weeks
before a significant number of cases
are registered, he said.
Moore said he is very careful
about declaring an influenza epide
mic.
“Yes, we’re seeing some flu cases,
but I don’t (believe) we’re seeing any
more than we saw at this time last
year,” he said.
Last week the health center re
ported 116 suspected flu cases, and
probably about half of those are in
fluenza, Moore said.
Though some have reported an
epidemic, it is still too early to tell, he
said. The discrepancy lies in the way
different physicians report in
fluenza. Moore said some doctors re
port any upper-respiratory problem
as the tlu, when it might be any
number of viruses.
“We don’t have any quick, accu
rate tests to differentiate them,” he
said. “It’s a clinical judgment.”
Symptoms that should prompt a
student to go to the health center in
clude:
• a harassing cough.
I es, we’re seeing
some flu cases, but I don’t
(believe) we’re seeing any
more than we saw at this
time last year.”
— J.M. Moore,
associate director of
A.P. Beutel Health Center
• a fever of 101° or above with
chills and sweats.
• muscle aches, especially in the
back.
• headaches.
• head-cold symptoms.
Moore said it’s probably too late to
escape the flu with an immunization
shot because that takes two to three
weeks to take effect. But if a student
is inoculated and contracts influenza
within that time, the vaccination
might lessen the severity of the ill
ness.
The health center is providing im
munization shots to students for $5
on a walk-in basis.
$
i
Student sees changes, ecstasy in German homeland
By CHUCK SQUATRIGLIA
Of The Battalion Staff
Going home for Christmas is usually pre
tty mundane - once you get there, you find
that things usually are exactly as you left
them. When Belinda Sloan went home for
Christmas, she found an entire country had
changed.
Sloan, a junior microbiology science ma
jor, was born and raised in Frankfurt, West
Germany. During the Christmas break she
went back to visit her mother and wit
nessed, first hand, some of the changes
sweeping East Germany.
Sloan had been following the events un
folding there with great interest, and was
surprised when, on November 9, the Berlin
Wall finally came tumbling down.
“I never even thought about it coming
down,” she said. “It was just there. It was
something so permanent, something no
body ever thought about changing.”
Most of her fellow Germans felt the same
way, she said.
“I think most people just accepted it,”
Sloan said. “They didn’t do anything about
it. They were upset about it, but they would
never go out and demonstrate. But in East
Germany, they just got fed up — they had
had enough. They didn’t like Hoeneker.
After that, everything changed. They be
gan to think, ‘Hey, we have a chance to
change things.’ ”
Sloan said that after the Wall came down,
things were much more cheerful in Berlin.
“Everbody was ecstatic,” she said. “A lot
of younger people were thinking, ‘Yeah,
we’re going to change the world.’ Older
people think it’s good, but they want to stay
in East Germany. They are happy because
they can now visit relatives in the West.”
New Year’s Eve was especially cheerful in
Berlin this year, she said.
“It was raining champagne,” Sloan said.
“It was very crowded. Everybody went
there. There were lots of tourists from all
over the world, and a lot of West Germans
who thought they had to see it. I think the
East Germans were kind of ticked off about
it, because it was so crowded.”
Indeed, all of Berlin has been crowded
lately, Sloan said. The city is full of tourists,
and many East Germans, for the first tirfie
in their lives, are going to visit their rela
tives in the West.
“The people from East Germany who
have relatives in West Germany can finally
travel,” she said.
The West German government even
provided a little spending money to the
East Germans. Because East German cur
rency is worthless in the West, the West
German government gave each East Ger
man $50 when they entered West Berlin,
Sloan said.
So, with 50 bucks in their pockets, what
was the first thing the East Germans bought
Photo by Jay Janner
Belinda Sloan shows a piece of
the Berlin Wall.
when allowed their first taste of capitalism?
Nintendo systems? Designer jeans? Walk
mans? French perfume?
Nope.
“We saw people with boxes of oranges
and bananas travelling over to East Ger
many because they don’t have those there,”
Sloan said.
Sloan even contributed to the destruction
of the Wall.
“I took a hammer and chisel to it,” she
said. “We had the hardest time getting any
thing off because it’s just solid cement. It’s
not suppossed to be broken up, it was made
to be there forever.”
Yet despite all of these changes in East
Germany, some things still haven’t
changed. Sloan said it is still difficult for
foreigners to reach Berlin because the city
is located within East Germany.
“If you want to get from West Germany
to Berlin, you have to go through East Ger
many,” she said. “There’s only one train
that goes to Berlin. They close all the doors
and won’t stop. They’ll just go through to
Berlin. If you’re a foreigner, you have to
buy a transit visa to get there. That hasn’t
changed yet. A lot of things are still going to
be the same.”
While getting into East Berlin is much
easier than ever before, it is still time con
suming if you are a foreigner, Sloan said.
“We went over to East Berlin,” she said.
“We had to take a street car to get there.
The border (between the two cities) is be
tween two stops. You get on at one stop in
West Berlin and get off at the stop in East
Berlin. They (officials) check you when you
get out. East Germans and West Germans
are allowed to pass, but we had to stand in
line and buy a visa to get into East Berlin.”
The visa cost Sloan five Deutsch Marks
— about two-and-a-half dollars.
Sloan said she found many of the East
Germans wary of capitalism. They like
some aspects of their s cialist system such
as socialized medicine ai d a hij. ii regc d for
education, and dislike others.
“Education is held in high regard,” she
said. The government supports education,
and other social programs through subsi
dies. Sloan said she bought eight textbooks
for 28 Deutsch Marks. — about $18 in
American currency.
Because the government controls com
merce, prices for goods are the same
throughout the country, Sloan said.
“That’s something the East Germans
don’t want to change,” she said. “They
don’t want these private institutions who
can do whatever they they want to do.”
Sloan said East Germany isn’t suffering
the drain of skilled laiborers that was origi
nally feared when the Wall came down.
West Germany currently has a great need
for skilled laborers, but very few are leaving
the East.
“There were many skilled laborers who
came over from East Germany, but not
nearly enough to cover the big hole we have
in that,” she said.
See Berlin/Page 6