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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 7, 1991)
Ags sign Thomas, Adams, Preston Page 7 Trie D3tt3iion Vol. 90 No. 89 GSPS 045360 12 Pages College Station, Texas Thursday, February 7, 1991 Fire engulfs dorm room Officials name overturned lamp as cause of blaze An investigator surveys the heat and smoke Wednesday. The fire resulted from an overturned damage caused by a fire in Haas Hall room 134 study lamp and was under control in 20 minutes. Bush administration warns of hardships By Jayme Blaschke Of The Battalion Staff Fire erupted in a first floor room in Texas A&M’s Haas Hall Wednes day after an overturned lamp ig nited clothes in a closet. Bob Wiatt, director of security and University Police Department, said Room 134’s residents were at class when a study lamp fell off a desk and into an open closet. Wiatt said no one was in the room and no injuries were reported, but the room suffered extensive dam age. The fire was reported at 12:40 p.m., and the College Station Fire Department extinguished the blaze within 20 minutes. Capt. Tim Fickey of the College Station Fire Department said fire alarms were working properly and the building was evacuated with no problems. Residents of the second, third and fourth floors were allowed to return to their rooms shortly after 2 p.m. Wiatt said despite the rapid re sponse, there was little that could be done to save the room. “The closet and one wall suffered severe fire damage, and the entire room suffered extensive smoke and water damage,” he said. “Everything in the room is lost,” Wiatt said. “The VCR, telephone — anything plastic is gone.” Fickey said Haas Hall’s construc tion helped prevent the fire’s spread. “The dorms are constructed spe cifically to contain a fire within a sin gle room,” Fickey said. “If a fire does start, it’s not leaving the room.” Wiatt said although the fire was completely contained within the one room, some smoke damage occurred outside it. Investigators have not de termined the full extent of smoke damage to the rest of the building. Ventilation fans were brought in by the fire department to clear the dense smoke, he said. The room’s two residents have been relocated to alternate housing. None of the hall’s other residents will have to move. WASHINGTON (AP) — Sec retary of State James A. Baker III warned Wednesday of “many cas ualties, great hardships” ahead in the war against Iraq as the Bush administration said ground war fare was almost a certainty. “The military actions now un der way necessarily involve many casualties, great hardships and growing fears for the future,” Baker said. “Tough times lie ahead.” At a White House briefing, presidential press secretary Mar lin Fitzwater said there probably will be a ground war, inching be yond President Bush’s statement Tuesday that he was “skeptical” the war could be won solely through the bombing campaign. Bush declined to say a full- scale ground offensive would be required. But Fitzwater said, “It’s no secret that at some point it probably will require ground forces to reach our final conclu sion of getting Iraq out of Ku wait.” Rep. Dave McCurdy, D-Okla., new chairman of the House Intel ligence Committee, said Wednes day, “I don’t think it has gone on long enough to convince anyone it is time to commence the ground phase.” House Minority Leader Robert Michel, R-II1., said, after a brief ing for lawmakers by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell, that members of Con gress “feel good that there seems to be no rush” to a ground war. He added, “I’m just confident that General Powell feels the same way.” At the private briefing, Cheney and Powell showed lawmakers sa tellite photos of damage to Iraqi buildings, bridges and military in stallations. Sources said one photo showed gaping holes made by Tomahawk cruise missiles in the center and at the ends of Sad dam Hussein’s presidential palace in Baghdad. At a bill-signing ceremony. Bush gave an upbeat assessment of the allied coalition’s progress in the three-week-old effort to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. “Things are going darned well over there,” the president said. “I feel very confident that this matter is going to resolve itself and it’s not going to take that long and it is going to be total and complete.” The president’s audience was composed of lawmakers and seve ral disabled veterans, on-hand to see Bush sign a measure to com pensate veterans suffering from certain diseases suspected to have been caused by exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange in Viet nam. His comment came as Cheney and Powell prepared to leave Thursday night for a visit to the gulf to assess the readiness of U.S. forces for assaulting the en trenched Iraqi army. They are to return late Sunday and brief Bush early next week. Baker used the occasion of an appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to stress that the costs of the war against Saddam Hussein’s forces will mount. “The task is formidable,” he said, “and no one should under estimate Saddam’s military capa bilities.” Baker said the United States See War/Page 11 Arena plans postponed due to design evaluation By Troy Hall Of The Battalion Staff Plans for Texas A&M’s special events center have been delayed one month to give construction con sultants more time to evaluate designs of the 14,000-seat fa cility. Maj. Gen. Wes ley Peel, vice chancellor for fa cilities planning and construction, says design for the special events center is complete, but bid advertising was moved back for several reasons. “This is such a complicated pro ject that we want to make sure we’ve ot everything checked out and dou- le checked,” Peel says. State-required advertising for bids alerts contractors the project is on the bid table. Advertising for the center origi nally was scheduled to begin in May, but now is scheduled for June 5. The opening of bids begins July 16. The contract will be awarded dur ing the regent’s July meeting. About 20 consultants from around the country are working on several different stages of the pro ject, Peel says. “We think by slipping the project from May to July, we can give them a little more time to make sure the project is ready for construction,” he says. The Texas A&M University Sys tem Board of Regents also decided to delay the process to allow the two new regents time to become familiar with the project, Peel says. Alison Leland, an investment banker from Houston, and Mary Nan West of the A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Devel opment Council were confirmed Monday by the Texas Senate. Funding for the $36 million spe cial events center already is ap proved, and Peel says he does not See SEC/Page 11 Student Senate bill restructures representation The Texas A&M Student Sen ate’s size will be reduced by al most half and senatorial wards will be restructured next year af ter a bill was passed by the Senate Wednesday night. Senator Brad Hampton, who introduced the bill, said the pre sent Student Senate is too large and unwieldy, causing it to be in effective. After two hours of heated de bate, the Senate voted 23 to 9 for Bill 91-10B, which will decrease the number of positions from 109 to61. On-campus senators won’t rep resent individual residence halls beginning in the fall. Instead, seven seats will rep resent northside students from Cain, Clements, Crocker, Davis- Gary, Haas, Hobby, Hotard, Hughes, Fowler, Keathley, Law, Lechner, Legett, McFadden, Mc- Innis, Moore, Moses, Puryear, Schuhmacher or Walton halls. Four southside senators will represent students from Appelt, Aston, Corps dorms 1 to 12, Dunn, Eppright, Hart, Wells, Krueger, Mosher, Rudder and Underwood halls. See Senate/Page 11 Speaker encourages global understanding A speech by an expert on Euro pean politics that began with a light hearted “Howdy” Wednesday night turned into a plea for young people to think internationally, to put them selves in the shoes of people in for eign societies. Dr. J. Bryan Collester, giving the keynote address during the MSC Student Conference on National Af fairs program, “European Commu nity: Piecing the Puzzle Together,” said young people are the world’s “shopkeepers of the future.” Collester, a scholar at several Eu ropean universities and presently di rector of Principia College’s School of Government, said Americans must understand foreign perspec tives on world events. “I urge you to think outside your self, not just as an American,” Col lester said. “Put yourself in an Iraqi’s position, or a German’s or French man’s. Would you see things the same way?” He said such thinking will help people understand the situation in “post-containment Europe,” mean ing Europe after the fall of commu nism and the German reunification. Holding up a piece of the Berlin Wall, Collester said, “I was able to chunk this out myself last February.” Collester, who was in Berlin in 1961 when the wall was built, said Dr. J. Bryan Collester the sight of students climbing on the wall in 1989 was a symbol to him that all bad situations change. The door now is open to Europe to change from a growing economic community to a political community, he said. The political community model might become reality in Europe as part of what President Bush calls the “new world order,” he said. He said European countries could be treated as political parties in a Eu ropean Community legislature, which does not as yet exist. Common interests of the region See SCONA/Page 11 2 5 Truesdale column 'the itch' What's 3 up 8 Co-ed dorms Ags finally win Weather Outlook Sunny Sunny Sun Partly Cloudy A Celebration of Heritage Community remembers sacrifices, triumphs of black history. Egyptian professor offers perspective on war Editors Note: The Battalion, with this story, is trying to give an Arab perspective on the Persian Gulf war. The Battalion will focus on the Is raeli position Friday. By Julie Myers Of The Battalion Staff A solution to the Persian Gulf conflict still can be found before Op eration Desert Storm becomes a full- scale ground war, says a Texas A&M professor of urban planning from Egypt. Dr. Nabil Safwat says Iraqi and Western armed forces in the Persian Gulf should withdraw simulta neously from Kuwait and Saudi Ara bia and be replaced by an Islamic peacekeeping force. Safwat was born in Egypt and re ceived his master’s degree from Ohio State University and his Ph.D. a two-part series ■ The Arab perspective □ The Israeli perspective from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He travels frequently to the Middle East. Presently, Safwat says many Arabs do not support Saddam Hussein be cause they agree with his actions, but rather because they dislike Ameri can intervention in Middle Eastern affairs. Safwat says he does not support American intervention or Saddam Hussein’s actions. “If the United States would like to get the Iraqis out of Kuwait, the Bush administration would also ask the Israelis to end the occupation of Palestine,” Safwat says. Palestinians support Hussein be cause he paid attention to their cause, he says. “They would support anyone who would say, ‘I am going to solve the Palestinian problem and establish a state for them,”’ Safwat says. “If Bush said that, the Palestinians would support him; if (Israeli Prime Minister) Yitzak Shamir would say that, they would support him.” However, Safwat says Hussein’s concern for the future of a Palestin ian homeland is not genuine. “He hasn’t supported it by action; he’s just supporting it by words,” Safwat says. “The Palestinians were looking for anyone who would sup port their cause even by words — sometimes words help somehow. Linking the issues is to his advan tage, even if he doesn’t mean it.” Because they have become emo tionally involved in the issue, many Palestinians do not think logically about the consequences of support ing Hussein, Safwat says. But they support him because he apparently is standing against Amer- ican-Israeli intervention in the area and the humiliation of Arabs. “In general, Palestinians are among the most educated people in the Muslim and Arab world and they are treated reasonably well, even in the Western world,” Safwat says. “But, since this invasion started, peo ple in the Gulf will probably begin to treat them harshly for siding with Hussein.” Safwat is careful to distinguish be tween President George Bush’s ad ministration and the American pub lic. “Arabs and Muslims are not against Americans,” Safwat says. But Americans and many West erners do not understand Arab cul tures, Safwat says. “There is misinformation about Arabs and their culture because Americans do not get their informa tion from the sources respected by Muslims themselves,” Safwat says. Westerners also do not under stand the reasoning behind terrorist activities conducted by Arabs. Safwat said there is a difference between terrorist acts committed by Israelis and Palestinians. “Israeli terrorist acts were done by people who were about to get the power and now it is done by some factions of the Palestinian Liberation Organization who are totally help less,” Safwat says. However, Safwat says terrorism does not follow Islamic teachings. “The Islamic perspective says this is not approved, but at the same time, the media is biased toward ex posing the terrorist actions of some factions of the Palestinians, but it does not expose those of the Israe lis,” Safwat says. Prior to the creation of Israel, for mer Israeli Prime Minister Menac- hem Begin and Jewish terrorists murdered the men, women and chil dren of Der Yaseen in 1948. Safwat contends Islam is the most misunderstood religion in the West. The word, Islam, means peace through submission to God al- See Arab/Page 10