The Battalion
|Vol. 90 No. 100 GSFS 045360 8 Pages
College Station, Texas
Friday, February 22,1991
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HUY THANH NGUYEN/The Battalion
Dr. Rodney Zent
□ College off Agriculture uses
satellite system/Page 3
graphics or illustrations to
viewers at other campuses, he says.
A&M has three units, two at
KAMU and one at the A&M Systems
Building. Zent says there are other
points on campus the unit can be
Bickering threatens bills
SalUte KEVIN IVY/TheBattalion
Freshman Mark Ybarra lowers the flags in front of the Academic
Building Thursday afternoon as senior Rob Wilkenson salutes.
Network links campuses
By Julie
Hedderman
The Battalion
The Texas
A&M University
System leads the
nation in inter
university system
communications
with the Interac
tive Services Net
work, says the di-
rector of
Educational
Broadcast Serv
ices at A&M.
Dr. Rodney
Zent, also general
manager at KAMU-TV FM, says the moved to, including Rudder and the
two-way video conferencing network Board of Regents’ office,
connects A&M with its 14 branches Zent says the University was given
and makes it possible for a professor one year, beginning in September,
at one university to lecture and an- to install the service at all sites. The
swer questions face to face with stu- project is 70 percent complete and
dents at another university. ahead of schedule, he says.
“The compressed video network A&M is the central connector be-
is a major effort on the part of A&M tween the other universities, making
to link all of these campuses together it possible for a person at Laredo
so we can share ideas, information, State University to see and speak di
research, classes and administrative rectly to someone at Corpus Christi
duties,” he says. State University.
Technology using table micro
phones and audio-switching auto
matically projects the speaker on the
screens.
Zent says A&M is like a telephone
company because all the signals go
through the University.
The network uses T1 telephone
lines, which carry computer data
among universities. The compressed
video is converted to computer data
Each campus has a unit, costing
$65,000 each, which includes two
television screens, a video camera,
VCR, slide projector and overhead
projector.
Slides can be stored on the unit’s
computer disc so professors can and sent over the lines.
id graphics or illustrations to As a result, movement has a slow
motion appearance, he says.
“It’s not broadcast-quality tele-
:d to be,’
not
vision; it’s not intended to be,” he
says. “This isn’t a production tool;
it’s a communications device.”
By MIKE LUMAN
The Battalion
State representatives and
statewide student lobbies are endan
gering two bills in the Texas House
that would create a student regent
position in Texas university systems
by disagreeing over fine print.
Texas A&M Student Government
members support a bill introduced
by Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Hous-
ton, which calls for a non-voting stu
dent regent position.
University of Texas student gov
ernment members want a voting stu
dent regent position, as called for in
a bill introduced by Rep. Sherri
Greenberg, D-Austin.
Rep. Wdhelmina Delco, D-Austin,
said Wednesday student govern
ments around the state should agree
on amendments to the bills before
they reach the House, because the
bills affect all Texas universities.
Delco, a long-time supporter of a
student regent position, said rep
resentatives who favor a student re
gent might vote against the bills be-
cause of various student
amendments to the proposals.
“Student disagreements should be
ironed out before the bill gets up to
this level,” Delco said. “If it’s a bill
with statewide implications, the stu
dents need to get together on it.”
Some student governments favor
student regent advisory committees
instead of student regents, she said.
She said some students and rep
resentatives also disagree on term
length of a student regent.
Rep. Greenberg said the two bills
are different approaches to the stu
dent regent question and are not in
tended to compete in the House.
“I think everyone will pull to
gether on whichever bill has the
greatest likelihood of passing,”
Greenberg said.
Ty Clevenger, A&M’s student
body president, is proposing two
amendments to the non-voting stu
dent regent bill introduced by Rep.
Turner.
Two students instead of one
should be appointed to the Texas
A&M University System Board of
Regents and should serve a stag
gered two-year term, he said.
Clevenger said the present bill,
which calls for one student ap
pointed to a one-year term, would
not give the student regent time to
adjust to the Board.
Clevenger’s other amendment in
volves prohibiting students from the
same school within a system from
serving back-to-back terms.
For example, two students from
Texas A&I University, part of the
A&M System, could not serve on the
A&M Board consecutively, he said.
Rep. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said
he supports the creation of a student
regent position, but the present bills
might be too complex to pass.
“It’s getting awfully complicated,”
Ogden said. “We’re going to see if
we can come up with something sim
pler. We need a properly structured
Board of Regents bill, but I haven’t
seen one yet.”
State Sen. Jim Turner, D-Crock-
ett, said he believes the Senate will
pass a student regent bill but will
wait until the bill passes in the
House.
He said A&M’s non-voting stu
dent regent proposal is more “realis
tic” than UT’s voting student regent
amendment.
Clevenger, who said he has
pushed for a student regent position
for three years, said a student regent
will serve as an input mechanism
from the community to the Board.
“Everyone realizes it’s important
to have input from people who are
on campus day to day,” Clevenger
said.
“Another thing is that most re
gents are well-off financially, and it’s
important they have input from tax
payers when considering tuition or
fee increases,” he said.
Gov. Ann Richards will appoint
student regents from “nominating
pools” provided by student govern
ments, he said.
Richards has said on several occa
sions she supports the idea of a non
voting student regent.
Chuck McDonald, Richards’ dep
uty press secretary, said the gover
nor would “be glad to sign” a bill that
created a non-voting student regent
in state university systems.
Richards remains undecided on
the issue of a voting student regent,
he said.
Sen. Turner said student rep
resentation through a student re
gent is important to A&M.
“I think there needs to be some
mechanism for student input in the
decision-making process,” Turner
said.
A&M officials were unavailable
for comment because they were out
of town.
Tempers spin over bike race in park
By Timm Doolen
The Battalion
What began simply as an idea for
a mountain bike race has turned into
a battle between environmentalists
and race sponsors over the use of
Lick Creek Park in College Station.
John Haber, forest committee
chairman for the Texas Environ
mental Action Coalition, said Lick
Creek Park was created to help pre
serve an endangered species of or
chid, the Navasota Ladies’-Tresses.
Mountain bike racing goes against
the ideals upon which the park was
founded, he said.
“Recently, people have started
mountain biking, which has eroded
parts of the park,” he said. “I under
stand there’s not many areas to
mountain bike, but that’s not what
the park is for.”
He said park officials should not
set a precedent for racing in the
park because such an event would
endanger the condition of the park
and the flower.
The original proposal for the race
was passed Jan. 8 at the Parks and
Recreation Advisory Board’s regular
meeting.
Several protesters of the race, as
well as some promoters of the race,
spoke at the Board’s next meeting
on Feb. 12. The board took no ac
tion other than to permit the race to
continue.
Since then, the course has been
modified to avoid a major patch of
the flowers under study by A&M’s
biology department.
Ken Thurlow, manager of Aggie-
land Cycling and Fitness and creator
of the race, said he intended the race
to be for the community, not for
personal gain or to threaten the
park’s environment.
Thurlow said as of Thursday
more than 30 people had signed up
for the race, although he expects
100 to 200 people to actually partici
pate.
Dr. Hugh Wilson, an A&M bi
ology professor, said the mountain
bike race might threaten the flower’s
habitat.
Wilson said the orchid in question
is a flower of “highly constrained
distribution,” which means it is
found only in one or a few counties.
He said the flower has only two
known populations — one in the
park and the other in a neighboring
county, also under the threat of ex
tinction because of nearby lignite
mining.
He said the orchid is “teetering on
the edge of extinction because of de
velopment south of College Station.”
Paul Koenigsamen, owner of
Thundercloud Subs and another
sponsor of the race, said participants
and spectators will be warned to stay
away from certain areas of the park.
“We’re going to try to organize
and educate the bikers and specta
tors,” he said.
Thurlow said the race will have a
E ositive impact on the park because
e is donating $100. He also has
signed a contract to clean the park
for one year.
“We’re not going to do any dama
ge,” Thurlow said. “You won’t know
the bikes have been there, especially
if it’s a dry day.”
He said the race has received so
much support that the organizing
group had to stop taking sponsors.
The race will bring much-needed
revenue into the community, Thur
low said.
“We have to view this as a positive
thing,” he said.
Wayne Bryan, owner of Aggie-
land Cycling, said racers will not
ruin the area around the track be
cause damage would hinder chances
for future races.
Bryan said the racing group has
received full cooperation from the
city. A&M’s parks and recreations
department also has cleared parts of
the track for the organizers.
Dr. Wilson, however, said even
with these precautions he still sees
the bike race endangering the
flower.
See Park/Page 4
Iraq accepts Soviet peace plan calling
for withdrawal; Bush studies proposal
MOSCOW (AP) — Iraq accepted a Soviet peace plan
that calls for an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait and an
end to the Persian Gulf War, a Kremlin spokesman said
early Friday.
The United States said it was studying the proposal
but President Bush had “some concerns” about it, a
White House spokesman said.
The agreement contained no mention of the Pales
tinian problem or the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The Soviet spokeman, Vitaly Ignatenko, announced
the agreement following more than two hours of talks
between President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Iraq’s for
eign minister, Tariq Aziz, on the terms of a Soviet peace
plan proposed earlier this week.
“The response is positive,” Ignatenko told reporters
immediately after the meeting, which began shortly af
ter midnight. “The two parties came to the conclusion
that it is possible to find a way out of the military con
flict in the gulf.”
In Washington, presidential spokesman Marlin Fitz-
water said Bush had no immediate response arid would
be studying the plan. However, Fitzwater said the
United States had concerns about aspects of the
agreement.
“The war itself continues,” Fitzwater added. “There’s
no change at this point in our prosecution of the war.”
Ignatenko said the two sides agreed on eight points,
starting with Iraqi agreement to a full and unconditio
nal withdrawal from Kuwait.
The pullout would begin two days after a cease-fire
and would be monitored under U.N. auspices by coun
tries not directly involved in the month-old Gulf War,
Ignatenko said.
Iraq also agreed to release all prisoners of war imme-'
diately after the cease-fire, the spokesman added. He
said details of the plan would be worked out and pre
sented to the U.N. Security Council later Friday.
Gorbachev spoke to Bush by telephone shortly after
the meeting with Aziz. Bush had previously said the So
viet plan was not acceptable, although he said he was
encouraged by the possibility of talks about withdrawal.
Inside
2 Truesdale - ^ Student
column i government
Editorial ^conference
Cartoons^ What’s Up
Focus
Tough Teams.
Aggie teams face highly
ranked foes this weekend.
pageS
Specialist: Recycling fights pollution, disease
By Elizabeth Tisch
The Battalion
Disease and pollution will escalate
i, by the year 2000 if Americans fail to
I make stronger efforts to recycle, says
I a Texas A&M waste management
I specialist.
“We are running out of landfill
1 space,” Dr. Roy Hartman says. “The
I way we landfill now causes both air
| and water pollution.”
Paper and yard waste make up 65
I percent of the waste deposited in
1 landfills and easily could be disposed
I of without burying, he says.
One cause of the enormous
I amount of unrecycled waste is that
I landfills are cheaper than recycling
| programs and alternative waste-to-
| energy technologies.
Hartman says there is no single
1 solution, but people should begin by
I changing “our throwaway society
I and identify new markets for waste.”
Every person in the United States
I discards one ton of trash a year, he
1 says.
In fact, Americans throw away
I enough glass bottles and jars every
' two weeks to fill both 1,350-foot twin
I towers of New York’s World Trade
R
ecycling
a three-part series
Cl Recycling at A&M
[U Recycling in B/CS
SB Why we recycle
Q
Center.
Every Sunday, more than 500,000
trees are used to produce 88 percent
of newspapers that are never re
cycled.
Society’s lack of education about
recycling remains the No. 1 factor
why so much waste is needlessly de
posited every day.
A&M student Mark Cervenka,
with the help of Texas Environmen
tal Action Coalition, drafted a cam
pus-wide recycling proposal last se
mester to stop students from
throwing away recyclable products.
Cervenka says his plan could
profit the University about $1,600 a
week.
Hartman says A&M has greatly
improved its recycling efforts. He
credits most of the University’s suc
cess to TEAC.
However, if some major miscon
ceptions are not cleared up, further
recycling efforts will be hindered or
even prevented.
Studies report that biodegradable
items actually do not decompose like
people believe.
Hartman says less than 30 percent
of biodegradable items actually de
compose, even in the best landfills.
“According to studies done by the
University of Arizona, newspapers
have been found in landfills that are
20 years old,” he says. “They have
even reported finding corn on the
cob that was 15 years old.”
For the items to decompose, mi
cro-organisms essential for the de
composition process need moisture
and light, he says.
In addition, people tend to believe
paper cups are better for the envi
ronment than foam cups. However,
unless they are recycled, paper cups
take up as much landfill space as
foam cups.
Hartman says society must get in
volved with recycling by becoming
aware of the other options to throw
ing trash away.
A few options are:
• Take your name off advertis
ers’ mailing lists. About 11 million
pounds of junk mail will be mailed to
American homes every day.
• Unwanted clothes should be
given to charity organizations in
stead of being thrown away.
• Re-use envelopes with new ad
dress stickers.
• Borrow or rent items that are
infrequently used.
• Mend and repair rather than
discard and replace.
• Buy rechargeable batteries.
• Use coffee mugs instead of pa
per cups.
• Use rags instead of paper tow
els.
• Keep water in the refrigerator
instead of running the tap for cold
water.
• Use organic waste for garden
compost.
• Keep tires properly inflated to
increase the tires’ lives and get better
gas mileage.
• Don’t use paper or plastic bags
when running errands. Bring your
own cloth, reuseable bag.
FREDRICK D. JOE/The Battalion
Texas Commercial Waste employee Walter Causey collects glass
bottles at the recycling collection site behind Cafe Eccel. This site
is used for collection of all types of recyclable material.