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Vol.89 No.133 USPS 045360 10 Pages
College Station, Texas
Tuesday, April 17,1990
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Labor of love
by Tim Byre
ilights is
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aphsarebyHet
John Haislet, a member of A&M United Method
ist Church,volunteers his time to refurbish some
of the church’s windows Monday afternoon. He
has removed the panes from this window and
sand and paint it before replacing the glass.
Photo by Fredrick D. Joe
Haislet has been a member of the church since
1960 when he came to A&M with the Texas For
est Service. He retired two years ago as the As
sistant to the Director of the Texas Forest Serv
ice.
Program trains faculty
System offers communication
options for professors, students
By NADJA SABAWALA
Of The Battalion Staff
Problems stemming from poor
communication between students
and faculty soon may be resolved
easily, said Dr. E. Dean Gage, acting
provost and vice president of aca
demic affairs.
In a presentation to the Texas
A&M Board of Regents Monday af
ternoon, Gage said the Classroom
Communications Enhancement Pro
gram has already received statewide
recognition and is “a model program
that others will want to talk to us
about.”
The program will be imple
mented for the fall 1990 setnester in
hopes of improving the communica
tion skills of faculty members.
Gage said educational commu
nication relies on delivery of the
message as well as the curricular
content, but most student com
plaints have stemmed from the de
livery process.
“Any student can file a com
plaint,” Gage said. “But our action
will depend on the number of com
plaints.”
With the new system, a student
has the option to air his views not
only to the faculty member with
which he is having the problem, but
the student can go to the depart
ment head or associate dean as well.
Gage said these options leave
channels open for the student to fol
low on his own. If the student is hav
ing a problem with a professor, it
may go unreported because the stu
dent may feel he could not approach
the instructor, Gage said. By giving
the students other channels, more
complaints that may have gone un
reported have a better chance of get
ting reported.
Dr. John C. Calhoun Jr., a distin
guished professor in the Depart
ment of Petroleum Engineering,
said he believed that the fault of
lacking communication is not always
dependent on one side.
“Communication is a two-way
street,” Calhoun said. “The trans
mitter and receiver must both work.
“My belief is that most of the time
it’s the receiver that’s not working.”
Student Government President
Kevin Buchman said the program
will have its weaknesses but that it is
a good start to addressing the prob
lem.
“At least the students will know
that the administration is sincere in
looking at these problems,” Buch
man said.
Not only is the University con
cerned about its faculty, but its tea
ching assistants as well. Gage re
ported that many assistants feel
unready to teach a course.
The Committee on Teaching As
sistant Training and Evaluation is
concerned with the fact that some as
sistants have not received proper
training to teach college courses,
Gage said. They are not aware of the
responsibility that stems from taking
on the teaching role.
“We owe it to them to properly
See Campus/Page 6
Committee begins hearings
on campus discrimination
By CHRIS VAUGHN
Of The Battalion Staff
The Texas A&M Committee for a Discrimination-
Free Campus begins a series of open hearings today to
gather information about campus discrimination.
Information obtained for a report will be delivered
to University President William H. Mobley.
The first hearing is scheduled at 4 to 5:30 p.m. today
in 502 Rudder A second hearing is scheduled for 11:30
a.m. Thursday and a third hearing is set for 2 p.m.
April 25 in the same room.
Sheran Riley, chairwoman of the committee, said the
open hearings will be used primarily as information
gathering tools.
“We want to find out what the concerns and the
problems are of people on campus,” Riley, an assistant
to Mobley, said. “It will just basically be a forum.”
Any student, faculty or staff member wishing to tes
tify before Riley and the other committee members pre
sent, however, will only have three minutes to voice
their concerns.
The committee, established in June by Mobley, is re
viewing current mechanisms to cope with racial, ethnic,
religious, age and gender discrimination, and will make
recommendations to the president about how they
could be improved.
Representatives from the Committee for the Aware
ness of Mexican-American Culture, Black Awareness
Committee, student government, Multicultural Services
Department, athletic department, international pro
grams, and from various colleges are on the 16-person
committee.
Riley said the three hearings also will serve to alert
people to the current procedures available to deal with
discriminatory practices.
“We wanted to make ourselves known on campus,”
she said. “We want to let people know that we do have
mechanisms on campus for people to go to if they do
have problems.”
The Student Affairs office of Student Services han
dles student complaints, while the dean of faculty deals
with any problems professors might have. The Human
Resources Department handles staff discriminatory
problems.
“As of right now, I would recommend those places to
people,” Riley said. “From what we understand, they
are all working okay.”
But Riley said any committee recommendations to
change the current procedures depends on the prob
lems heard during the open hearings.
The committee had planned originally to report its
findings to Mobley in March, but Riley said it will more
likely be May or June now.
It was formed last year with student race discrimina
tion as its focus, but it gradually broadened to include
religidus and ethnic discrimination on a university-wide
basis.
After studying the problems in its first few meetings
in November, Riley said, the committee again increased
its focus to include age and gender discrimination.
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pril 22
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I
Horticulturists domesticate unusual pink, white bluebonnets
by TiniM
(SUZANNE CALDERON
flhe Battalion Staff
Don’t let the name of the Texas bluebon
net deceive you — it’s not just blue any-
nore. The Texas state flower now comes in
white and pink.
Horticulturists from the Texas Agricul-
Itural Extension Service have domesticated
[the bluebonnet and developed these two
new colors, Dr. Doug Welsh, a TAES horti-
jculturist who participated in the project,
paid.
With the leadership of Jerry Parsons, an
jextension vegetable specialist for the TAES
in San Antonio, Welsh said, they isolated
the naturally occurring, but very rare white
and pink bluebonnets.
Welsh said the white and pink colors are
[very recessive; the odds of whites occuring
naturally are one in a million and pink, one
in a billion.
To increase the odds of these colors oc
curring naturally, Welsh said they started
looking for white and pink bluebonnets in
the wild from which they could harvest
seeds.
“We put it out in the media (in San Anto
nio) ... we put out a call to tell people ‘if you
see white bluebonnets, let us know,’ ” Welsh
said.
He said they told people not to pick the
flowers, but to tell them where they were lo
cated, so the seeds could be harvested.
To give an example of how rare the flow
ers are, in 1985, the first year of the project,
Welsh said they only had a pound of white
seed.
“A pound of seed was all we could collect
in all of San Antonio,” Welsh said. “You are
talking these plants are rare, rare.”
Then the white and pink bluebonnet
seeds were sown and grown in fields in
Wintergarden to increase the seed source,
he said. The fields usually would have pink
or white flowers, but quite a few blue flow
ers also would appear, he said.
To keep the white or pink seed pure, he
said, the blues immediately were pulled
from the fields.
He said the first year the seed from the
white plants came back 90 percent pure.
Because the pink bluebonnet is more re
cessive and rare than the white, only 8 per
cent of the pink bluebonnets came back
true pink the first year. During the second
year, however, 98 percent of the plants
were true pink.
The key to the process is selecting the
color variants of the flowers and letting
them grow alone, he said.
“By having the plants together, they
cross-pollinate only recessive genes,” he
said.
Through the isolation of specific colors,
Welsh said, different shades of colors are
emerging.
In some of the pink flowers, a maroon
throat is emerging, showing the possibility
of a maroon bluebonnet. The maroon
flower will be called the Aggiebonnet, he
said.
“If there is a maroon throat, that means
we can get a maroon flower — so now we
are after the maroon,” he said.
There is no physical manipulation in
volved in getting these various colors,
Welsh said.
“We are just helping out Mother Natu
re,” he said.
The idea for isolating different colors of
bluebonnets was started by Carroll Abbott,
a seed company owner in Kerrville, who
loved wildflowers.
“He was just in love with wildflowers,
bluebonnets specifically,” Welsh said. “His
dream was to have a red, white and blue
bluebonnet Texas flag for the (Texas) ses-
quicentennial (1986).”
But before Abbott could make his dream
a reality, he lost his life to cancer.
After his death, Parsons, a friend of Ab
bott’s, tqok up a mission to continue Ab
bott’s dream to find a way to come up with
red, white and blue bluebonnets.
“The germanics are out there — Mother
Nature has given us the pink, white and
blue,” Welsh said. “A mixture of pink and
blue will give you red — the question is can
we get it to happen naturally.”
The domesticated blue, white and pink
bluebonnets are now commercially avail
able as annual bedding plants.
UT campus activists battle against racism
AUSTIN (AP) — The new student body presi
dent at the University of Texas said Monday that
[campus activists have just started their battle
gainst discrimination, after last week’s protest at
a fraternity house whose members were accused
of racist acts.
Days after that peaceful protest, UT-Austin
President William Cunningham was interrupted
when he tried to deal with the racial incidents
through a prepared speech.
“We have been taking it to the street,” Toni
Luckett, new president of the university’s Stu
dent Association said. “I think that we have been
bringing it to the administration’s attention in a
way that shows they cannot placate us.”
“This is definitely a form of protest that we’re
going to use, among others, and that’s why I was
elected,” said Luckett, who is black.
But Larry Dubinski, president of the Interfra
ternity Council, said the protesters have been
“showboating.”
"The w hites are being very alienated this week,
think,” he said. “It’s got to stop being a black
Columnist addresses issue- Page 2
thing. It’s got to be a university thing, because it’s
got to be best for all the university.”
For at least the second time in recent months, a
crowd of about 1,000 students on Friday dis
rupted a statement by Cunningham on recent fa
cial incidents at the school.
Cunningham also was interrupted by student
shouts — including “UT divest” — on Jan. 15,
while giving a speech on the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr.’s birthday.
Several hundred students marched last
Wednesday in a protest organized by the Black
Student Alliance to protest two incidents asso
ciated with a spring fraternity-sorority cele
bration called Round-Up.
A Phi Gamma Delta member sold T-shirts with
a “Sambo” caricature head depicted on top of
basketball star Michael Jordan’s body. And a car
was painted with racial slurs and destroyed at the
Delta Tan Delta house.
After the march, the students gathered at the
Phi Gamma Delta, or Fiji, house to protest.
The administration temporarily has sus
pended the two fraternities, pending an investi
gation. Black student leaders have called for a
one-year suspension.
While students are concerned with the recent
incidents, Luckett said, they want to eliminate in
stitutional racism at the university.
“We think the way to attack the ignorance on
our campus is to diversify the curriculum,” she
said.
Students have called on the administration to
adopt a Black Student Alliance program advocat
ing diversification of the UT curriculum and
more intensive recruitment and retention pro
grams for minority students and faculty.
Dubinski said the Interfraternity Council sup
ports those proposals.
Census Bureau ’ s added
phone lines assist callers
The Census Bureau an
nounced that toll-free phone
lines for those needing help com
pleting their census forms will be
available until Sunday.
In response to an overwhelm
ing number of calls to the Spanish
assistance number, the Census
Bureau has added lines in its
phone banks in San Diego, Austin
and Jacksonville, where the bulk
of the calls will be handled.
Persons who have not yet re
ceived a census questionnaire
should call the appropriate
phone number and report their
address so that they will receive a
census form or so they can be
contacted for non-response fol
low-up.
All numbers are staffed from 9
a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week.
The numbers are as follows:
• English — 1-800-999-1990
• Spanish — 1-800-283-6826
• Cambodian — 1-800-289-
1960
• Chinese (Mandarin and
Cantonese)— 1-800-365-2101
• Korean— 1-800-444-6205
• Laotion— 1-800-888-3208
• Vietnamese — 1-800-937-
1953
• Thai — 1-800-288-1984
• Assistance for hearing im
paired — 1-800-777-0978
There is still time to complete
and return census forms, but
starting in late April, census-tak
ers will visit households that
haven’t returned the question
naires.