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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (July 6, 1990)
he Battalion NATO opens doors Leaders accept President Bush’s proposal to invite Warsaw Pact members to visit a meeting of the military alliance. See Page 6 ol.89 N0.I68USPS 045360 6 Pages College Station, Texas Friday, July 6,1990 in a j, &M officials agree, finalize plans o use Points Plus cards on campus By KATHY COX 2 mjfi 0* The Battalion Staff Texas A&M finalized plans I Thursday to accept Points Plus cards I on campus. Robert Smith, vice president of fi- j nance and administration, made a verbal agreement with Points Plus J President Jody Read to enact the | debit card system on campus later I this month. Points Plus cardholders use their I card, instead of cash, to make pur chases. Cardholders start an account by buying “points.” Points are then I deducted from cardholders’ ac- I counts for each purchase. “ Points Plus operates like the Uni versity’s Aggie Bucks program, but Read said his company will install its own equipment, keeping it separate from A&M’s food services program. Read said cardholders first will be able to use their Points Plus cards at Pie Are Square, the Ag Cafe, the MSC, the Copy Center, the Under ground Market and the golf course and golf course snack shop. Read expects to have the system in operation sometime after July 16. After the system is “up and run ning” in these places, Read said the agreement will allow them to expand across campus. “It’s our anticipation to have vir tually all the places on campus (on the system) going into the spring se mester,” he said. “Any place a stu dent can spend money, I’d like to have it so they can use their Points Plus card.” Read said he does not believe Points Plus is in direct competition with Aggie Bucks. “If a student is going to live on campus and eat almost all their meals on campus, then getting a meal plan or getting Aggie Bucks is a good deal,” he said. But he said Points Plus offers more flexibility and value for off- campus students because they can use it both on and off campus. Also, students can use the card to pay bills and get cash. Read said that from a business standpoint the Points Plus system will benefit the University as well as the students. “Tests show that you’ll have be tween 40 and 70 percent more trans action dollars spent through a plastic card than you will through cash or check,” he said. “So the vendors should see an increase in business.” The University can increase sales while providing a service for stu dents, Read said. j Barton supports amendment l (! | for partial funding of bomber Congressman makes speech in local church 3inu he So rodu:' * 1 ucl«: rfau rgo:!; sen? at tfe LeRti • fa< COllli wclei W -tsult cotltf attfei ill k | ;hi. wte Photo by Eric Roalson Congressman Joe Barton By JULIE MYERS Of The Battalion Staff A local advisory committee to Congressman Joe Barton strongly recommended only partial funding of the B-2 Stealth bomber Thursday in a meeting at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Bryan. The meeting is probably the last one before Barton, R-Ennis, casts his vote in August. If he were to base his vote only on the committee’s opinion, Barton said he would have to support an alterna tive ammendment to full funding. The bill would terminate production of new B-2’s but permit completion of the 15 aircraft already authorized. The bill would allow for comple tion of the B-2 test program includ ing flight testing and B-2 technology maintenance in case the future na tional security situation warranted a reversal. The alternative proposal an nounced by Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in April proposes 75 B- 2’s at an estimated cost of $61.1 bil lion. The alternative amendment would be $31 billion cheaper than the Cheney proposal. The Stealth bomber is capable of penetrating enemy territory unde tected and attacking targets at close range during a nuclear war. Because of its design and the materials used to build the bombers, B-2’s are very difficult for Soviet air defenses to detect. They absorb most of the radar frequencies used by So viet radar stations. Barton estimated the Soviets Organizations schedule rallies, demonstrations for Economic Summit HOUSTON (AP) — The Interna tional Economic Summit is attracting more than delegations from the ! world’s seven most industrialized 1 countries and thousands of journal ists. ! Organizations ranging from the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP to the Ku Klux Klan have scheduled rallies, parades and demonstrations in the Bayou City preceding and throughout the three-day summit that starts Monday. At least five organizations have obtained parade permits — only one is allowed per day, according to city ! ordinance — while at least 17 groups have registered to have rallies in Houston parks. “We know there’ll be others that refuse to get permits, like the anti abortion people who intend to get arrested,” said Lou Garza, special events coordinator for the city parks and recreation department. “We deal with it quite often, with every group imaginable — political, religious, social — and they want to use the parks for a public forum,” Garza said. “I think of the parks as a place for the public to seek the quiet and have a chance to relax and not have someone shove a Hare Krishna pamphlet at you or hear the boom ing voice from a loudspeaker that if you don’t repent, you’ll go to hell.” Houston police have enlisted the help of the Harris County Sheriffs office and the Department of Public Safety to handle the crowds at the events and demonstrations, police spokesman Dan Turner said. “This will be one of the largest events we’ve ever had to handle in Houston,” he said. Officers will be working 12-hour shifts. Several organizations have set up their own version of the summit to coincide with the event at Rice Uni versity. The Other Economic Summit, or TOES, set up a similar three-day event preceding the official summit that features leaders representing “the seven poorest peoples” in the world and the “populist leaders sum mit” for the seventh year. Former Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson will join other unsuccessful presidential can didates and “populist leaders” from Brazil, Mexico and Columbia in ac tivities scheduled for Friday through Sunday. Representatives from Bangla desh, Columbia, Guatemala, Haiti, Nigeria, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Native Americans from the United States also will attend TOES, which includes discussions of envi ronmental concerns and workshops on economic self-reliance. Environmental groups plan the Envirosummit starting Saturday with guided tours of Houston’s envi ronmental sites. Clean Water Action, one of the groups, plans a “Bush’s Boston Harbor” tour of the Houston Ship Channel on Sunday, featuring the environmental hazards posed by refineries and other industrialists fronting the channel. The Human RACE — Racial Ac ceptance Class Equality — planned its first annual “Human Summit” Saturday on the steps of the City Hall as a counter-demonstration to the KKK rally and parade. The KKK plans to organize be tween 200 and 300 members, the skinheads and Carry A. Nation. The group will be bused Saturday from the suburb of Humble by the city of Houston for security reasons for the march and rally that culminates at a statue of Sam Houston in Hermann Park. would have to spend $300-400 mil lion to readjust existing radar fre quencies to detect the B-2. One bomber carries 100 times the destructive capacity of the bomb which leveled Hiroshima. Barton said he voted against B-2 funding last year because he couldn’t justify spending so much money for one weapons system. This year, however, Barton said it is a different story and economics are playing a larger role in his deci sion. The jobs of 1100 workers in an LTV Aerospace and Defense plant in Dallas (also in Barton’s district) and the resulting economic impact to the area are at stake. Committee members expressed concerns over the bomber’s cost and necessity in light of a $3 trillion na tional debt and highly advanced mis sile systems which, Barton said, could target and destroy the church in which they were meeting. Barton said the B-2 could actually save money since the long range of the B-2 could make overseas bases obsolete at a time when some coun tries are no longer friendly to the idea of U.S. installations on their soil. Barton said committee members are chosen based on their positions in the community. Exam schedule The following is, the final exami nation schedule for Summer I five- week classes. Friday: • 6 to 8 p.m. — Classes meeting 8 to 9:35 a.m. Saturday: • 8 to 10 a.m. — Classes meeting 10 to 11:35 a.m. • 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. — Classes meeting noon to 1:35 p.m. • 2 to 4 p.m. — Classes meeting 2 to 3:35 p.m. Finals for classes meeting after these times are up to the instructor’s discretion. “One of the largest obstacles they (students) have to their education here is financial management,” he said. Read said although Points Plus caters to students, anyone can get a card. He said 5 to 6 percent of the company’s cardholders are not stu dents. t Points Plus service is free to card holders. The company, which took its first cardholders July 2, 1989, earns money by charging vendors a 3 percent transaction fee and collect ing interest earned by cardholders’ money. “We’ve got an integrated system that is certainly ahead of its time,” Read said. “It’s an arrangement where everybody wins.” Robert Smith did not return phone calls to The Battalion Thurs day regarding the matter. Cause of crash at Easterwood still unknown Plane engine falls By CHRIS VAUGHN Of The Battalion Staff No cause has been determined yet in the crash of a twin-engine Cessna plane at Easterwood Airport Tues day night. Federal Aviation Administration officials visited the site of the plane crash Wednesday to investigate why the right engine on the 1970 Cessna 310 apparently failed as the pilot ap proached Runway 16 at Easterwood at approximately 9 p.m. Tuesday. The pilot, Ronnie Lynn Huddles ton, 40, from The Woodlands, and Susan Kern Crouch, 36, from Con roe, suffered minor injuries in the crash. Huddleston and Crouch were treated and released Tuesday from Humana Hospital. Harry Raisor, director of aviation at Texas A&M, said it could be a week to a month before the FAA or the National Safety Transportation Board releases an official cause of the accident. Huddleston attempted to land the plane with just the left engine, but crashed almost 1,200 feet north of the runway, the Department of Pub lic Safety reported. The nose landing gear broke off during the crash, and the plane came to rest on its nose. Huddleston and Crouch lease space at Easterwood and also oper ate the Aviation Flight Center, a flight training school. Raisor said Huddleston’s experi ence probably saved them from se rious injuries and kept the plane from being totaled. “He did a good job as far as I’m concerned, not knowing the cause of the accident,” Raisor said. “He cleared all the obstacles, probably at a great risk to themselves.” It was the first major accident at Easterwood since a GTE Lear jet crashed in December 1986, killing two people. Rolling along Photo by Sondra N. Robbins James Saxon, a graduate student in computer science from Van Nuys, CA., skates down Bizzell Street early Monday afternoon. NAB J at A&M publishes Unity to recognize blacks By ELIZABETH TISCH Of The Battalion Staff Citing the need for a newspaper in touch with the local African- American community, the National Association of Black Journalists at Texas A&M is publishing Unity. The newspaper is scheduled for its first publication today. Tante Bluiett, A&M senior and organizer of the newspaper, said Unity was designed to bring the Af rican-American community in touch with itself through positive media recognition. “I think the local media does not cover the black community adequa tely — period,” Bluiett said. She said the media frequently cov ers the African-American commu nity only when someone has com mitted a crime. “It is rare when you see a black person in the newspapers who has done something good,” Bluiett said. “I want to show the black community as well as the white community that black people are good,” she said. “ All of us are not stereotypically thieves or dope dealers.” The students of NABJ are not try ing to segregate thmselves from other races, she said. The association wants to recognize blacks who have made great accomplishments not covered in the local media. NABJ also wants to entice the black community to read. “If blacks start reading more about themselves, they’re going to get interested in reading about other people too,” she said. Bluiett also said if readers see other black people making a positive difference, they might be motivated to do the same. The weekly Bryan Press is allow ing the all-student association to use its facilities and distribution services for the first issue of Unity. In the fu ture, the newspaper will be pub lished once a semester. The students are responsible for the complete production of the non profit paper. The six-member orga nization writes, edits and publishes Unity on their own, Bluiett said. The first issue will feature a re port on the local volunteer Adult Literacy Program and a “drug page” which recognizes African-American individuals’ efforts in the fight against the local drug problem. Those who are interested in NABJ and/or Unity can call 823- 2088 Experiment tests turtle theory Species may depend on sense of smell Photo by Eric H. Roalson A Kemp’s Ridley turtle swims in its home in the Biological Sci ences Building. Researchers study its nesting habits. By ISSELLE MCALLISTER Of The Battalion Staff Texas A&M doctoral candidate Heather Kalb is working on an experiment to test the chemical imprinting hypothesis on the world’s most endangered sea tur tle. The hypothesis asks, “Do Kemp’s Ridley turtles smell their way back home?” The experiment basically seeks to test if the turtles smell their way back to the beach where they were born when they are ready to lay their eggs, Kalb said. The only nesting beach for the Kemp’s Ridley turtles in the en tire world is Rancho Nuevo in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas in the Gulf of Mexico, Kalb said, and all the females nest at the same time. Since all the eggs are in one place at the same time, a large portion of the turtle population can be threatened or destroyed si multaneously. For instance, if a hurricane hits the beach during the nesting sea son, or there is an oil spill, all the eggs can be affected. Also, the turtles nest in Mexico where they are not well protected from poachers or fishermen. For this reason, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Mexican government coordi nated efforts in 1978 to export 2,000 turtle eggs each year to the United States, she said. The eggs immediately are placed in South Padre Island sand before they ever touch Ran cho Nuevo. She said the hatchlings are kept for about one year. It is hoped that upon reaching matu rity, which takes anywhere from 10 to 30 years, the turtles will find their way back to South Padre Is land to lay their eggs. Kalb is experimenting with 12 Ridleys born in South Padre Is land around 1982. Half are from a group kept at See Turtles/Page 6