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
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Truesdale
column
'the itch'
What's
3
up 8
Co-ed
dorms
Ags
finally
win
Weather Outlook
Sunny Sunny
Sun
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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