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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 2, 1990)
Texas A&MW 11 ^ 0 as ’W ® e Battalion WEATHER TOMORROW’S FORECAST: Cloudy with a high chance of thunderstorms HIGH: 64 LOW: 48 Vol.89 No.86 USPS 045360 10 Pages College Station, Texas Friday, February 2,1990 Storm tears off section of Rudder Auditorium The severe thunderstorm with 60 to 80 mph winds that rolled through Bryan-College Station Thursday night did extensive damage to the Texas A&M cam pus. A 30 ft. by 50 ft. section of Rudder Auditorium was blown off between 6:03 P-m. and 6:15 p.m., Bob Wiatt, director of the university police department, said. At the time, people were in side the auditorium waiting for the Wayne Watson piano concert scheduled for 7:30 p.m., but there were no injuries, Wiatt said. As the roof section fell, it crumbled into chunks and dam aged an Oldsmobile Regency parked on the street in front of the auditorium, he said. The auditorium suffered mini mal water damage inside, but nothing that could not be cleaned up, Tom Baxter, technical direc tor of Rudder Complex, said. University maintenance crews were called in to begin clean-ups immediately after the damage oc curred, Wiatt said. On other parts of the campus, Wiatt said exterior doors of Wise- nbaker Engineering Research Building and Rudder Tower were blown off. Tree limbs were reported down and streets were flooded, he said. Near the north- gate post office, the wind broke one tree at its base. While the storm system caused car accidents in College Station, no car accidents were reported on campus, Wiatt said. The Bryan Police Department said no one in the city reported accident calls caused by the storm. Weather wrath Photos by Phelan M. Ebenhack and Jay Janner (Clockwise from top)Thursday night’s storm damaged an Old smobile Regency hit by a sec tion of Rudder Auditorium’s roof, blew a door off the second floor of Rudder Tower, and broke a tree in half near the MSC post office. Professor: Panama invasion inevitable By JILL BUTLER Of The Battalion Staff The United States’ invasion of Panama in December 1989 contin ues to be controversial. Dr. Jonathan Brown, associate di rector of the Institute of Latin American Affairs at the University of Texas, spoke last night at MSC Political Forum about the United States’justifications for the invasion. “The invasion was more or less in evitable,” Brown said. He said the United States’ interest in Panama, because of the Panama Canal and the presence of U.S. citi zens in Panama, added to the inevi tability of the invasion. Brown said the canal was not in physical danger before or during the invasion. “The danger was that Noreiga wanted to gain control of the Pan ama Canal Company,” he said. The Panama Canal Company con trols the locks and gates of the canal. If Noreiga had gained control of the canal, Panama would have had power over the United States in ma naging the canal. Brown, an associate professor of history at the University of Texas, served as an officer in the U.S. Army in Panama from 1968 to 1971. “I’m not certain I’m in favor of the invasion,” he said. “It was done to salvage very bad U.S. policy in Panama.” He asked, “If the policy is bad, how can the invasion be exactly right?” Brown said the United States’ “bad policy” included ignoring Gen eral Manuel Noriega’s alleged illegal activities for years before the inva sion. “The United States ignored No- reiga’s drug-trafficking and money laundering because Noreiga was very useful to the United States,” Brown said. “Noreiga told the CIA about Castro’s activites and Sanda- nista activities.” President Bush gave Panama $1 billion and promised Wednesday night to withdraw troops from Pan ama at the end of February. However, damage in Panama is estimated at $2.2 billion. Regents consider new arena By TODD L. CONNELLEY Of The Battalion Staff Basketball and graduation at G. Rollie White Coliseum might soon become a thing of the past. A new special events arena will be considered soon by the Texas A&M Board of Regents. “President Mobley asked me to get this project moving, so a pre liminary study should be ready for the Board within 60 days,” Dr. Perry Adkisson, Texas A&M University System Chancellor, said. A preliminary study will in clude elements such as architectu ral planning, cost estimates and size. “Ordinarily if there’s an agreement in funding, it would take about a year to get construc tion off the ground,” Adkisson added. “Right now everything is really just in the preliminary stages, we haven’t even picked an architect yet.” Regents Chairman William H. McKenzie said construction of the arena will be planned care fully. “We badly need a new arena, but we are not going to proceed with this matter in a haphazard way,” McKenzie said. Although the project is still in its infant stage, a site has been chosen at the West Campus near the new track facility. “That location has been in con sideration for the new facility for at least seven years,” McKenzie said. Adkisson said the Board would visit different facilities across the country to get a feel for a new arena. “The University of North Car- olinia and the University of Mi ami have recently gotten new are nas,” Adkisson said. “Members of the Board will travel there some time after the preliminary study is submitted and investigate.” Like arenas at the other uni versities, A&M’s new arena will not be limited to basketball. McKenzie said construction of the new arena will proceed differ ently from the expansion of the University Center. “I can tell you one thing for su re,” McKenzie said. “W’e won’t be cutting down any trees.” Rats play games for research By BILL HETHCOCK Of The Battalion Staff Everyone expects to find rats running mazes in psy chology experiments and science labs, but in the Texas A&M economics department, rats play slot machines. Dr. Raymond Battalio, a Texas A&M economics pro fessor, is putting fundamentareconomic theories to the test, using both rats and humans as research subjects. Battalio’s research is in the area of experimental eco nomics, in which economic theories are tested under controlled conditions to see if they will work in the over all economy. Experimental economics is still a new idea, but its popularity is growing, Battalio said. “Give me a theory,” Battalio said. “If it doesn’t work well in my very simple, controlled, abstract world, then why do you think it should work well in that one?” Some of Battalio’s experiments are conducted using laboratory rats as subjects. “To the economist, there are some things that are al most impossible financially or ethically to answer with human subjects,” Battalio said. “We use the animals for two things. One is parallel studies. The other is to do things that are ethically, le gally or financially difficult to do with humans.” Battalio said he has done a series of research on choices when the world is uncertain, using both rats and humans. These studies can be related to gambling games, Battalio said. He found that the risk-taking ten dencies of rats closely parallel those of humans. “The animals sit in a cage with two levers,” he said. “On the left lever, they may get six pellets every time. On the right lever, half the time they get twelve pellets and half the time they get zero. Clearly, this is the ani mal’s real world. “What we find is almost the same results as with hu mans. They’re risk-averse. Where humans contradict the theory, the rats contradict the theory.” In his experiments Battalio has also tested ideas such as Adam Smith’s theory on free markets. This basic eco nomic theory says that people exchange goods and services to maximize their individual profits. By doing this, the traders arrive at the price that brings the sup ply and demand for the product into balance. Accord ing to the theory, trading at this price will maximize benefits for society. Battalio uses students to test theories like these. He creates a market situation and pays students different amounts of money based on how well they trade units of an unnamed commmodity. Dr. Raymond Battalio “These are real markets,” Battalio said. “It’s not a simulation. Students take it seriously. Once you recog nize that we can build a real market, then there are tons of questions you can answer.” Battalio’s research supports basic economic theory in most cases, he said. “By and large, the kinds of theories you get in 204 (a beginning economics course) work very well,” he said. Part of Battalio’s research is funded by a new professorship in the College of Liberal Arts. He is the first holder of the Mary Tucker Currie Professorship in Liberal Arts, endowed by Dorothy and Jack Currie. Dr. Thomas Saving, head of the economics depart ment, said this professorship will give Battalio a certain amount of freedom in doing his research. “You don’t have anyone looking over your shoulder on a professorship, seeing whether you’re doing what they gave you the grant to do,” Saving said. “Dr. Batta lio has the professorship to do what he thinks is best.” Battalio said he appreciates the financial support that the professorship provides. “Having this professorship, to me, means I don’t have to worry about losing funding and dropping the research,” Battalio said. “We will always have money to do our research.” Battalio said A&M’s support of his research and good quality faculty are the main reasons he has stayed at A&M for 20 years. “A&M has been very good to me. They’ve supported my research when almost no one else would,” Battalio said. “There probably aren’t three schools in the country where I could have done animal research in economics.”
