Davis lashes out
Head basketball coach calls
report of firing ‘irresponsible’
By Richard
Tijerina
The Battalion
DALLAS —
Texas A&M
men’s basketball
coach Kermit Da
vis Jr. lashed out
at the media
Thursday night,
calling newspa
per reports tnat
ne was out as Ag
gie coach nothing
but “irresponsible
journalism.”
The Houston
Chronicle re
ported in its
Thursday edi
tions that Davis
would be fired by
next Tuesday at
the latest.
The newspa
per quoted “sources close to the situ
ation” as saying A&M athletic direc
tor John David Crow made the deci
sion to dismiss Davis after last week’s
72-55 loss to Rice.
Davis was informed of Crow’s de
cision to fire him last week, the news
paper reported.
But Davis denied the report and
was quick to point out Thursday that
he was still the Aggie coach.
“I know my situation here at
A&M,” Davis told a group of about
20 media representatives after the
game. “If I was out as basketball
coach, you guys would know. And if
“If John David Crow
says I’m still the
coach at A&M, then
I’m still the coach at
A&M. The story’s just
false.”
— Kermit Davis,
head basketball coach
1 knew right now, I would tell you
that I wouldn’t be the coach at A&M
next year. I don’t know that right
now.”
The University’s lengthy in-house
investigation into allegations that
Davis broke NCAA rules should be
completed soon, A&M officials said
Thursday.
Davis ran into trouble with the
NCAA when it was discovered he
might have committed rules viola
tions in his involvement with former
Syracuse forward Tony Scott’s trans
fer to A&M last year.
Davis allegedly became involved
with reported player broker Rob
Johnson of New York, who was in
strumental in Scott’s decision to
transfer to A&M.
Davis informed the team of the
newspaper report only moments af-
Kermit Davis Jr.
£
Aggies blow
aiders/Page 5
away
ter its 57-46 win over Texas Tech in
the first round of the Southwest
Conference Post-Season Basketball
Classic.
“(The newspaper report) is false,”
Davis said. “I am still the basketball
coach. 1 can’t believe a guy who
would write that story wouldn’t even
bother to call me and ask me about
it. He didn’t, and that’s the truth.
“Sources are close to anybody.
Maybe coaches should start spread
ing rumors about media people, say
ing a source close to them or that
says something.”
Davis came to College Station
from the University of Idaho, where
he left a successful basketball pro
gram that saw the Vandals reach the
NCAA tournament in consecutive
years.
He replaced popular coach Shelby
Metcalf, who has led the Aggies for
27 years.
‘T guess you get tired of people
saying sources ‘close to the situa
tion,’” Davis said. “There have been
other articles about those sources
‘close to the situation’ before. To me,
I think I would have been contacted
myself. If John David Crow says I’m
still the coach at A&M, then I’m still
the coach at A&M. The story’s just
false.” •
The Aggies play fifth-ranked Ar
kansas tonight, and Davis said it was
unfair to have his players worried
about their coach’s future while
they’re in the middle of the tourna
ment.
“‘To bring that story up on the
day of the tournament is poor jour
nalism unless it’s fact,” he said. “I
guess you become accustomed to ir
responsible journalism in the state of
Texas. That’s what has happened.
You want to report fact, not ‘quotes
from sources.’”
Gage: Administration re-emphasizes education
Programs reward teaching
By Julie Myers
The Battalion
Undergraduate programs do not
conflict or compete with other prio
rities at Texas A&M University,
A&M’s provost and vice president
for academic affairs said.
“Undergraduate education is at
the heart of everything we do,” Dr.
E. Dean Gage said.
Gage presented a report on un
dergraduate education to faculty
members Thursday.
Teaching and research comple
ment each other, Gage said. Stu
dents need to be taught by faculty
who continue to learn, he aaded.
Gage said the administration rec
ognized the need to re-emphasize
teaching and undergraduate educa
tion about a year ago.
“We’re not riding in a speedboat;
we’re in a big ship,” Gage said.
“Andthat ship is very slow to turn
around.”
“Perceptions often become reali
ty,” Gage said. “And the rumor is
that teaching is not being rewarded,
but we’re beginning to address that.
But, it takes time, and it takes action.
After today, I think you will see this
is more of a
perception
than reality.”
The presen
tation is the
first in a series
of reports that
will be brought
to the faculty.
Gage said
good teaching
entices students
to follow their goals. He said teach
ing will be improved, identified and
rewarded using the following pro
grams:
• The Classroom Communica
tion Enhancement Program, which
identifies teaching problems.
• The Center for Teaching Ex
cellence, which identifies and finan
cially rewards an exemplary teacher
in each college.
• The Council of Master Teach
ers, which brings nationally recog
nized teachers for one semester to
work with faculty.
Gage said he would like to see en
dowed chairs for teaching rewarded
on the same scale as those for re
search.
“You can be proud of what you
have done in the undergraduate
programs here,” Gage said.
Those programs, however, need
to be strengthened. Gage said. Effec
tive teaching will help A&M’s grad
uates function in a world that is
more complex than the one in which
faculty grew up, he said.
Gage said that new world includes
the following statistics:
• By the year 2006, there will be a
shortage of 700,000 scientists and
engineers.
• By the year 2025, Hispanics will
represent 37-40 percent of the pop
ulation in Texas.
“We are working to address the
changes in population in Texas,”
Gage said.
A&M’s six outreach centers have
become cornerstones in the effort to
increase the raw talent coming to
A&M in the future, Gage said. In the
coming years, this raw talent will re
place today’s professors, scientists
and engineers.
These centers target minority ju
nior high students for higher eauca-
tion by encouraging pursuit of a col
lege preparatory curriculum and
See Gage/Page 6
Gage
Board of Education to restructure life science course
By Mack Harrison
The Battalion
The Texas State Board of Education is ex
perimenting with a new science curriculum
and joining with California to find a new sci
ence textbook, an official with the Texas Edu
cation Agency said Thursday in Rudder
Tower.
Jim Collins, science coordinator for the
TEA, said the board recently approved mod
ification of junior high school science pro
grams.
“What has been given approval is com
pletely revamping, reorganizing and restruc
turing grades seven and eight, with sights on
grades nine and ten,” Collins said.
The Board has not yet approved the cur
riculum for grades nine and ten.
Collins said Texas and California will com
bine efforts in searching for a new textbook,
because Texas’ reiormeu science program is
similar to California’s.
The reforms in Texas schools will feature a
coordinated, thematic approach to science.
He said current seventh grade life science
courses have evolved into lesser versions of
upper-level biology classes.
“What we’re trying to do is push the con
cept back from a miniature biology course
into a life science course,” Collins said.
Under the new approach, life science tea
chers will incorporate other areas of science
into their lessons.
Collins said teachers will include physics,
chemistry and earth/space science, as well as
biology into the new life science.
Collins was one of 20 teachers — five bi
ology, five chemistry, five physics, and five
earth/space science — the TEA brought to
gether to find out what scientific themes tea
chers considered important for grades seven
to ten. Each group made a separate list of
ideas.
Collins said organizers wanted the teachers
to stress science as a topic relevant to stu
dents.
“We want to see it on a developmentally ap
propriate level for our students,” he said.
“We don’t want to teach physics concepts in
seventh grade that they can’t understand that
would be better fitted for the tenth grade.”
When the groups compared notes, they
found there was a terrific similarity among all
the lists, Collins said. The 20 teachers then
narrowed their lists down to four areas that
apply to all science courses.
The new curriculum will cover these four
main themes: changes over time (evolution),
energy and systems, environmental interac
tion and structures. Schoolchildren will study
the same themes in science classes from grade
seven to grade ten.
“As a child grows, his horizon tends to
broaden,” Collins said. “We’re building as we
go, using exactly the same themes we started
with in the seventh grade.”
Collins said he is not advocating the old
E eneral science program, where teachers
:aped from subject to subject.
He said with the new method, teachers use
one concept to illustrate different areas of sci
ence.
For example, teachers could use the circu
latory system to illustrate concepts in chemis
try, physics and earth science, m addition to
biology.
“We want seventh grade students to look at
it as science, not life science,” Collins said.
The Board of Education will implement
the restructured seventh-grade science pro
gram in 1994 and the eighth-grade program
in 1995. The board also can implement the
ninth- and tenth-grade programs in consec
utive years, if it approves restructuring of
those grade levels.
New racism
threatens
education,
scholar says
By Greg Mt.Joy
The Battalion
The so-called “new conservatism”
emerging on American campuses
could undo the progress in multicul-
turalism achieved in the ’70s, an emi
nent black scholar and literary critic
said.
Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Duke
University said he is disturbed to
hear what is perhaps justified talk of
a “new racism” emerging at the bas
tions of liberal education, college
campuses.
Gates spoke Thursday night in
the Richardson building as part of a
series of lectures sponsored by the
Interdiscipli
nary Group for
Historical Lit
erary Study. He
said the posi
tion of blacks
and other mi-
n o r i t i e s in
higher educa
tion in America
is precarious.
“We’re fond of saying ‘We want
our kids to be better tnan we are,’ ”
Gates said. “Well, that won’t be
hard.”
The phenomenon of the new rac
ism, he said, is not completely un
connected from larger political
trends.
“Today’s college freshmen were
approximately ten years old when
the Reagan era began,” he said.
“Presumably the public discourse of
the 1980s had something to do with
the forming of political sensibilities.”
Gates said the climate for blacks
on campuses has been declining. He
said one monitoring group counted
over 300 racial incidents on college
campuses, and at the same time
there has been a marked decline in
black enrollments since 1977.
Cuts in federal financial aid, as
well as a slipping economy, have
caused the decrease, he said.
“When it comes to watching eco
nomic trends, black people are like
canaries in coal mines, the first to go
when things get bad,” he said.
Gates said keeping black students
in universities has become an even
bigger problem than getting them
there.
“The attrition rate is astonishing,”
he said. “At Berkeley, only one in
four black students graduates.”
Of freshman blacks in the country
in 1980, only 31 percent had grad
uated by 1986, he said.
Gates said approximately 4 per
cent of the nation’s full-time profes
sors are black, and in 1986 only 820
of 32,000 Ph.D.s awarded went to
blacks.
“Less than half that number
planned a career in education,” he
said. “That is only 0.015 percent.
That is pathetic.”
Gates said the situation is not the
result of a conspiracy, and people
are genuinely concerned about oth
er’s cultural backgrounds.
“It is a reflection of public consen
sus that one of the few bipartisan is-
See Gates/Page 4
Gates
Notice
The Battalion is suspending
publication next week because of
spring break. The newspaper will
resume publication Monday,
March 18 at its regular time.
The staff of The Battalion
wishes all students, faculty and
staff a relaxing and safe vacation.
Watch for a new look with the
campus newspaper when you re
turn.
Ambassador advocates trilateral agreement
By Timm
Doolen
The Battalion
The p r o-
posed trade
agreement be-
tween the
North Ameri
can countries
will make the
continent more
competitive in the world market, the
Canadian ambassador to the United
States said Thursday.
Speaking to a Texas A&M socio
logy class, Ambassador Derek Bur
ney said the agreement would draw
on the strengths of the three coun
tries to face the challenges of pro
ducers and workers.
Burney
Canada - U.S. Trade in Southern States
State
Exports to Canada Imports from Canada
Texas
Oklaho
Louisia^l^
E
Arkansg:
New Mexico
$ 3,057,466,000
$ 20,219,000
$ 1,841,556,000
765,000
985,000
541,000
$.77,282^000
(in U.S. dollars)
source: Statistics Canada
“We face those challenges standardize rules among the three
whether we negotiate a trilateral countries to make the continent as a
agreement or not,” he said. whole more productive and compet-
He said it would be beneficial to itive.
Burney said Texas would benefit
directly from the new trade
agreement and A&M could contrib
ute to the analysis and support of the
resolution.
He said he saw the trade
agreement as both a necessary coun
terpart to the European Community
as well as a natural evolution of the
growing interdependency of trade
in North America.
The GNP of North America is $6
trillion and the combined popula
tion of the three countries is greater
than that of the EC.
Burney also explained Canada’s
role in the Persian Gulf conflict.
“It was not as patriotic an issue in
Canada as it was in the United
States,” he said. “It also didn’t affect
as many lives in Canada as in the
United States.”
Canada contributed three
warships, 26 F-18 Hornets, a fully
staffed hospital and hundreds of
troops to the allied effort. Canada
suffered no casualties during the
war.
He said Canada, which has been
accused of being the “lap dog” of the
United States, debated whether it
was in the gulf just to support the
United States, or for other reasons.
He said the majority of Canadians
believed their nation joined the con
flict on behalf of the United Nations,
in response to Iraq’s violation of in
ternational law.
“You have to be prepared to fight
for peace as well as talk for peace,”
he said.
The Canadian government saw 60
to 70 percent support for its actions
in the war, which Burney said he
found surprising.
Burney briefly answered a ques
tion concerning last year’s problem
with a French faction in Canada that
wanted to secede and become an in
dependent nation.
He said the problem has existed
since Canada’s beginning and will
probably continue for decades. Ev
ery 10 years the government exam
ines the issue and realizes the coun
try isn’t too bad off as it is, he said.
The ambassador was speaking as a
guest of the Center for International
Business Studies as part of a four-
day visit to Texas.