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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 7, 1990)
Texas A&M W 1 "^ ma g| W # e Battalion WEATHER TOMORROW’S FORECAST: Partly cloudy and mild with a chance of rain HIGH: 72 LOW: 54 Vol.89 No.89 USPS 045360 12 Pages College Station, Texas Wednesday, February 7,1990 its ty. and the i family, ;dit. Ad- ide, con- fees and vailable Meeting / 7,1990 )0 • 2:00 all West 'oad pro- avideda I Clap clout A&M President William H. Mobley shouts words of en couragement to the Lady Aggies basketball team Tues- Photo by Phelan M. Ebenhack day night at G. Rollie White Coliseum. Mobley was the honorary head coach for the game. See game/Page 7. X-rated foreign film prompts petition By SUZANNE CALDERON Of The Battalion Staff Controversy continues to surround the showing of an X-rated movie two weeks ago as part of Aggie Cinema’s International Film Series. The showing of the Italian-French movie “The Last Woman” has prompted two A&M students to start a petition calling for a boycott of Aggie Cinema for showing what the students call pornography. Jennifer Wolling and Matt DeWoody, who are distributing the petition, didn’t see the movie. They said it was unnecessary for them to see it to know that it contained ob jectionable material. “Clearly it was offensive with all the warnings — the X rating and the preview in The Battalion were enough,” Wolling, a sophomore political science major, said. DeWoody, a senior marketing major, also had objections to the movie. “We don’t want to be associated with an institution that in any way supports any form of pornography,” he said. “We don’t want to financially support, through our tu ition and taxes, an institution that shows pornography.” Lance Parr, a senior engineering tech nology major and chairman of Aggie Cin ema, said the complaints he has received concerning the movie have dealt with the is sue of pornography. Parr said he doesn’t consider the movie to be pornographic. He said he’s talked to several people who saw the movie, and they don’t consider it pornographic either. “This was not a pornographic movie,” Parr said. “It did carry an X rating, but that in itself does not mean the movie was por nographic. An X rating can be obtained by violence, male-frontal nudity (no matter how' brief), or excessive nudity. The movie did not showcase the nudity, nor did it showcase the sexual scenes that would have been typical of a pornographic movie.” The movie would not have been brought to the Texas A&M campus if anyone thought it was pornographic, Parr said. But Wolling and DeWoody believe other wise. The petition they are circulating states: “I am 100 percent against the advance ment and promotion of pornography of any kind and resolve to boycott the Aggie Cinema the remainder of the semester for their decision to feature a rated X movie on January 23, 1990.” DeWoody said the goal is to get 1,000 or more signatures by March 1. At that time the petition will be presented to Parr. The petition is working like a chain, mainly being distributed among friends. See Movie/Page 4 n ommunists debate Gorbachev’s plans to revamp party powers MOSCOW (AP) — Communist Party leaders added n unexpected third day to their pivotal meeting Tues- ay and sent Mikhail S. Gorbachev back to the drawing ioard to fill in holes in his blueprint for ending the arty’s monopoly on power. The extension of the party session, which was sup- osed to end Tuesday, was a clear sign of the contro versy generated by Gorbachev’s proposals to revamp ■he country’s political structure. I Central Committee sources said most speakers greed with Gorbachev’s proposal that the party’s mo- lopolyon power, enshrined in the Soviet Constitution, lust end. “All unanimously think it has become obsolete. It as no meaning,” Central Committee member Vladi- lir P. Anishchev told reporters who gathered outside he Kremlin’s Spasky Gate to await news. The session ras closed to journalists. However, partial transcripts of two days of the ses sion, in which 51 speakers took the floor, indicated hat neither radical reformers nor hard-liners were atisfied with Gorbachev’s proposal. Delegates said Tuesday night’s Central Committee ession was suspended so a commission, headed by iorbachev, could complete changes to his nearly 20- age platform. A Central Committee source quoted }orbachev as saying that the 60-member commission was only half-finished, even though it met all night Monday. He said the meeting would resume Wednesday morning. Delegates interviewed Monday and Tuesday as they filed out onto Red Square indicated a common objec tion: the platform contains few specifics. “A lot of its points, and this is what has been said by many speakers, need major changes and reinforce ment, especially in the direction of stepping up deci sive action,” Leonid A. Bibin, a non-voting Central Committee member, said in a Soviet TV interview Tuesday. * Bibin said he and others want the platform to stress that the party must remain united. Gorbachev has placed himself in the middle, trying to forge compromises. Still, the Soviet leader’s platform has yielded to the demands of political reformers — including the thou sands of people who gathered near the Kremlin wall Sunday — by removing the party’s monopoly and ad vancing to this summer a Party congress that will be empowered to clear out conservatives on the Central Committee. Formally, the Central Committee has the power to replace the party leader. Indrek Toome, premier of the Baltic republic of Es tonia and a guest at the party meeting, emphasized the threat from hard-liners. “I am worried about the wish of a fairly large pro portion of the people in this hall to reverse things, so as to clamp down on things and return to the old or der,” Toome told Soviet TV. Other speakers worried out loud about Gorbachev’s political standing. Y.A. Gankovsky, a Siberian party secretary, suggested Gorbachev’s position was weak ened because he had taken on too many jobs. “While you, Mikhail Sergeyevich, were only the (party) general secretary — absolutely without flattery I will say -— we felt that new ideas were born in the party, that some kind of reformation work was under way to break up the outlived and outdated,” Gan kovsky said.“Now you have four posts. One gets the impression that someone wants the general not to be successful at any of them, scattering powers.” In addition to being party general secretary, Gorba chev is the Soviet president, chairman of the Defense Council and a Politburo member. Politburo member Yegor K. Ligachev, widely identi fied as its leading conservative, received warm ap plause for a speech criticizing failings in perestroika, Gorbachev’s reform program, the Central Committee source said. “After somewhat of an enlivening in the first two years of perestroika, the economy began to decline, in ter-ethnic feuds reached bloodshed, people began to experience fear, and in some places there is practically dual power,” Ligachev said in remarks reported by the Soviet news agency, Tass. He said the Politburo, led by Gorbachev, and the government committed “serious oversights and mis takes.” He cited monetary problems that worsened consumer goods shortages, a lack of supervision of new economic forms and a “weakness of governent discipline.” “The gap between the word and deed is intolera ble,” he continued. On political reform, Ligachev demanded the plat form include a clause emphasizing the sacredness of party unity, and he said he firmly opposes allowing private property, a demand of radical reformers. Ligachev, 69, has generally taken a cautious ap proach to reforming the country and last week came under attack in a Soviet newspaper for his conservative views. But in his speech Tuesday, he said he wants re form quickly, denied he was a conservative, and said- people who call him one are trying to divert the peo ple’s attention. iO $100 5100 ' $100 $100 . $100 $100 $100 0 $100 I f $^o $300 $300 $300 $300 $300 ) $200 $200 $200 $200 $200 $200 $200 l $200 ienate elects new speaker )ro-tempore Creates committee to work with Food Services By PAM MOOMAN Of The Battalion Staff I The Student Senate elected Leanne Rog- its, a student senator for three years, as the new speaker pro-tempore Tuesday. | In other business, the Senate accepted a Student Information Center bill and cre ated the Food Services Ad-Hoc Committee to work with Texas A&M Food Services. E Ty Clevenger, speaker of the Senate, said that the Student Senate has been trying to gei a copy of the Food Services budget for a couple of months, and finally succeeded. I The new Food Services Committee will look into the cost of food on campus, MSC catering, policies that don’t allow student groups to bring food on campus, campus competition and the confiscation of funds, siprh as Aggie Bucks, at the end of the se mester. || In addition, Dick Britten, Republican candidate for Precinct Four County Com missioner, spoke at the meeting, saying that loday’s Aggies are important because they are stepping stones for future Aggies. 1 He said A&M students have a big impact on the Bryan-College Station economy and should get involved in Brazos County poli tics. I “County government is big business,” Britten said. Brazos County will operate nth a budget over $21 million this year, he lid. J County commissioner is the most impor tant elected office in county government ftcause of the many duties this office in volves, he said. ■ Later, Jeff Starr, a student senator in- vOlved in Bryan’s Sister City Association with the Soviet Union, presented a slide snow of the Soviet Union taken when he ■as there over the Christmas holidays. B “They’re really anxious to send students t<| the United States,” Starr said. The best ambassadors for the United lee Senate/Page 6 ‘Permanent’ overassignments cramp on-campus student life By JILL BUTLER Of The Battalion Staff PART 1 OF A 3-PART SERIES Many people live on campus to enjoy the benefits of being centrally located and having everything nearby, including friends. But even the closest roommates can get a little too close when living quarters are cramped because of overassignments. The biggest on-campus housing problem at Texas A&M is the high demand for a limited number of rooms, Tom Murray, associate director of student affairs for residence life at A&M, said. “Students want to live on campus because they are afraid if they don’t, they will miss out on many of Texas A&M’s tradi tions and activities,” Murray said. To handle the high demand for on-campus housing, A&M opened five new residence halls in Fall 1989. Despite the extra rooms, almost 400 students, not including Corps of Cadets members, were overassigned in the fall. These residents lived in a study lounge or shared rooms with two other people. “We want to overassign at the beginning of the semester,” Murray said. “It’s not a mistake.” He said many students with on-campus rooms don’t show up to live in these rooms each semester. If there aren’t overas signed students to fill these unexpected vacancies, the rooms remain empty or half-full. “To operate at close to 100 percent occupancy, we go through the overassignment process,” Murray said. Every fall, 200 to 300 students begin the semester as overas signments and usually are assigned permanent rooms within the first three weeks of school, he said. But last semester the number of overassignments reached a record high because more students than expected accepted housing contracts, and there were fewer housing cancellations and no-shows. Seven hundred students began the semester as overassign ments and though some were reassigned to permanent rooms, 394 students remained overassigned the entire semester. Leah Capel, a freshman general studies major from Little Rock, Ark., was overassigned and lived with two other girls in Neeley Hall. “It wasn’t too bad at first,” Capel said. “But after a while it was too much for me. There were too many people in one room.” All overassignments were notified of their status before moving into their rooms and were given a partial refund of their housing fee. “I thought that since I was out of state and paying more money for tuition, the least they could’ve done was give me a room with just one other person,” Capel said. She bought her own desk because, although there were three roommates sharing a room, there was only enough furni ture for two people. The housing office tried to provide extra furniture for over- assigned students but was unable to offer the furniture until mid-November because of problems with organizing the pro ject. . This spring, no students have been overassigned. Now 126 spaces in women’s residence halls and 50 spaces in men’s halls, not including Corps dormitories, are available. Some residents live alone because there are not enough peo ple to completely fill all rooms on campus. Murray said a problem facing A&M four or five years from now is the possibility that there will not be enough students liv- “I It wasn’t too bad at first. But after a while it was too much for me. There were too many people in one room." — Leah Capel, freshman ing on-campus to fill existing residence halls during either se mester. Murray said more underclassmen than ever before are mov ing off campus. “We have begun to look at ways to make students want to live on-campus,” he said. One possible solution is additional co-ed housing, Murray said. There are 2,342 on-campus women’s rooms and 1,914 men’s rooms, not including Corps dormitories. Twenty-one residence halls are on north and central cam pus, while on the Southside of campus there are 10, excluding Corps dormitories. Southside and Northside residence halls offer different housing alternatives. Leah Hanselka, president of the student-operated Residence Hall Association, said some students find the advantages of liv ing on Northside include the convenience of restaurants and copying centers at Northgate. Hanselka also said there is more action and more people on Northside because more dorms are there. She said some students like living on Southside because mail delivery, on-campus dining facilities and games, such as pool and table tennis, are all in one place. The RHA governs A&M’s 31 residence halls and informs the Department of Student Affairs about the needs and wants of on-campus residents. Wood secures MSC Council presidency Win ends rigorous process for applicants, judges By SEAN FRERKING Of The Battalion Staff Mathew Wood, a junior political science major from College Station, was selected as MSC Council president last night. Wood, currently the chairman of the MSC Political Forum committee, was cho sen after a rigorous process during which candidates submitted applications stating their experience, goals, leadership qualities and reasons why they are running for the office. Following the initial application phase, potential applicants are screened through two 20-minute interviews by a panel of four or five people. People seeking office also are required to submit three performance appraisals. Anyone applying for office in the MSC Council must go through the same applica tion process, said Catherine Valenzuela, the MSC Council executive vice-president of marketing and personnel. Valenzuela said Wood will be the council representative to the student body and the community and will give the organization direction. She said Wood will take over the office of president from Jason Wilcox, a junior fi nance major, on April 8 during Parents’ Weekend. All selected officers serve the council for one year. Valenzuela said the MSC Council oper ates on a $3.5 million annual budget. Student service fees provide $1.6 million with the remaining money being raised through ticket sales and fund-raising events. The council directs 1,400 programs through its 27 committees. Wood will head the council’s corporate structure and delegate decisions through the council, Valenzuela said. Students having questions about the MSC council should contact Catherine Valen zuela at 845-0709.