1
March 24,
surrounded |
klifts andhoi
een arrested;
which, in;
ig the six bars
ith and a sdi®
illed 172 head;
id Monday ft
n established
Cloudy
High in 70s
Low in 50s
Women’s History Month
deserves a moment of
reflection
-Battalion Editorial Board
Page 9
Busted in Padre
Police chief reports 383
arrests over spring break
Page 2
Aggies rout
Bearkats
12-0
Page 7
The Battalion
Vol. 91 No. 116
College Station, Texas
‘Serving Texas A&M since 1893”
10 Pages Wednesday, March 25, 1992
ial
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Transplanting Tradition
Polo fields
become site
for bonfire
By Melody Dunne
The Battalion
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The tradition is the same, only
the location has been changed.
Bonfire 1992 has been moved to
what is commonly known as the
polo fields on the northeast side of
campus from Duncan Field on the
southside of campus, said Dr. Bill
Kibler, associate director of student
affairs.
After an extensive study involv
ing local community members and
University representatives, officials
chose the polo fields as the new lo
cation in order to make bonfire a
safer and more accessible tradition
for students, alumni and visitors,
Kibler said.
The new 9.2 acre location is more
than 400 yards from the nearest
building, compared to 100 yards at
Duncan Field.
Jim McTasney, one of last year's
redpots, said with the right plan
ning and the cooperation of stu
dents and University officials, the
polo fields will be a much better lo
cation for bonfire.
McTasney said the site is farther
away from university buildings and
neighborhoods and also has parking
advantages.
"Bonfire safety was never a prob
lem in the past, but why push it
now," he said.
Students can still walk to bonfire,
McTasney said, and the new site is
close to parking areas 50 and 51,
near Zachry Engineering Center.
Choosing a site that wouldn't
change from year to year was very
important, McTasney said. Bonfire
has burned on Duncan Field for the
past 37 years and on Simpson Drill
Field for 46 years prior to that.
One reason bonfire was not relo
cated to west campus was the fact
that most of the land would be un
der construction within the next five
years, he said.
Another advantage to the new
site is that vehicles and equipment
used to build bonfire are also easily
accessible to the polo field, Kibler
said.
A&M officials finalized plans Tuesday to relocate the bonfire site to the northeast part of campus.
Brown clinches
victory in primary,
surprises Clinton
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -
Challenger Jerry Brown scored a
startling upset over Bill Clinton in
the Connecticut presidential pri
mary Tuesday night to slow the
front-runner's march toward the
Democratic nomination.
President Bush swept to Re
publican victory over dormant ri
val Patrick Buchanan and the nag
ging protest vote. He said the vic
tory added to his optimism in “a
screwy year."
The Democratic verdict, a 1-
point victory for Brown, surpris
ingly stalled the Clinton campaign
despite the Arkansas governor's
claim that he had expected a tight
contest.
Turnout was low in the three-
man count: Brown, 37 percent,
Clinton 36 percent and former
Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas,
who quit the campaign, 20 per
cent.
The Connecticut upset instantly
raised the stakes in the New York
primary, the next major contest,
two weeks away. Clinton cannot
afford more trouble there.
Clinton called Connecticut "a
small setback." Brown described it
as "a shocking upset" that would
propel his anti-establishment
Jerry Brown
campaign. He said Clinton does
not own the Democratic nomina
tion, the people do.
Brown said he had won Con
necticut because "people want
change. I'm a vehicle for that.. . ."
"This thing is now coming to
New York and this will be the bat
tle of where the party's going,"
See Brown/Page 3
Society views medicine
as magic, surgeon says
By Julie Polston
The Battalion
Society tends to view doctors
and medicine as magical, a chief
surgeon said Tuesday night at
Texas A&M.
Dr. Kenneth Mattox, a profes
sor of surgery at the Baylor Col
lege of Medicine and Chief of Staff
and Chief of Surgery at the Ben
Taub Trauma Center/General
Hospital in Houston, said medical
technology only extends life two
years on the average.
"Medicine is not magic and
doctors aren't magicians," Mattox
said. "Death and taxes are in
evitable."
Mattox, who spoke at the MSC
Great Issues lecture on ethics in
modern medicine, said medical
trauma has been neglected from a
political, economic and social
standpoint.
Trauma predominates in this
country because violence sur
rounds us, he said. This is evi
dent in everything from sports
and cartoons to movies like "JFK"
and "Terminator 2."
"Prevention becomes the goal,"
he said.
Mattox said this includes wear
ing helmets, seat belts, installing
air bags, and more gun and alco
hol control.
See U.S./Page 3
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Reactor leaks gas
into atmosphere
Amount poses no threat, Russians say
MOSCOW (AP) - A Cher-
nobyl-style nuclear power reactor
near St. Petersburg leaked radioac
tive gas Tuesday, but Russian
atomic energy officials said the
small amount that escaped into
the atmosphere posed no threat to
the public.
Despite the official assurances,
some St. Petersburg residents took
precautions, including keeping
children indoors.
Swedish experts who visited
the Leningradskaya plant last year
had urged it be closed immediate
ly because of safety concerns. U.S.
officials said Tuesday they re
mained worried about the safety
of all Soviet-built nuclear plants.
Since the Chernobyl disaster
spewed radioactivity across Eu
rope in 1986, serious questions
have been raised about aging and
poorly designed reactors, poor
maintenance and operator errors
at nuclear plants in the former So
viet Union.
Despite those concerns, Russia
must rely heavily on its nine nu
clear power plants because of per
sistent energy shortages. Three of
the plants — with 11 reactors —
share the same design as the Cher
nobyl station.
Russian officials said filters ren
dered the radioactive gas and io
dine harmless Tuesday as they es
caped from the reactor building.
Soviet nuclear plants do not have
sealed structures designed to con
tain leaks from reactors, which are
mandatory in the United States
and other nations.
More serious leaks occurred at
two other Soviet plants last year,
but neither caused contamination
outside the plants, said Yuri Ro-
gozhin of the State Atomic Securi
ty Commission.
Neighboring Finland appealed
for international action to improve
the safety of Russian nuclear
plants. But the Finnish govern
ment said only one its monitoring
stations detected a "minute" rise
in radiation at high altitudes Tues
day, while others registered no in
creases.
Foreign experts agreed with
Russian officials that it appeared
the incident was not too serious.
"There is no danger at all," said
Larisa Khudiokova, a mayoral
spokeswoman in St. Petersburg, a
city of 4.5 million people 50 miles
east of the plant in Sosnovy Bor.
Magazine ranks A&M graduate
engineering program in top 20
Top 20 graduate
engineering programs
1. M.I.T.
2. Stanford University
3. University of lliinois at
Urbana-Champaign
4. University of California-Berkeley
5. Purdue University
6. California Insitute of Technology
7. University of Michigan
8. University of Texas at Austin
9. Cornell University
10. Georgia Tech
11. Ohio State University
12. University of Wisconsin at Madison
13. Texas A&M University
14. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
15. Pennsylvania State University
16. Carnegie Meifon University
17. University of Southern California
18. University of Florida
19. Northwestern University
20. University of California - Los Angeles
Source: U.S. News & Watid Report
By Julie Polston
The Battalion
A national news magazine
ranked a Texas A&M graduate
program as one of the top 20 in the
country in a survey of graduate
schools.
U.S. News & World Report
ranked the A&M graduate engi
neering program 13th, while the
A&M graduate business program
scored among the top 50 in the an
nual survey. The magazine an
nounced the ratings in their March
23 issue headlined "America's
Best Graduate Schools."
Dr. Kenneth L. Peddicord, in
terim dean of administration at
the College of Engineering, said
the department is very pleased
with the ranking.
"I feel it is a reflection of the ef
forts of the faculty and students to
improve our standing at TAMU,"
he said. "I'm pleased that the en
gineering program at Texas A&M
University is thought of as highly
as other prominent schools such
as Wisconsin and RPI."
For the past three years, the
Massachusetts Institute of Tech
nology has been the top-ranking
engineering school in the nation.
MIT ranked first among 193 ac
credited engineering schools offer
ing master of science and doctoral
degrees.
Schools with fewer than 20 stu
dents were not included in the
survey. After MIT, the engineer
ing list includes Stanford Univer
sity, University of Illinois at Ur
bana-Champaign, University of
California at Berkeley, and Purdue
University.
U.S. News also ranked the top
business, medical and law schools.
See Survey/Page 3
Bentsen: Disaster relief Turning into a sad joke'
WASHINGTON (AP) -
Struggling farmers may get only
pennies on the dollar when the
government parcels out disaster
payments for crops destroyed by
two years of record floods,
drought and violent storms from
the orchards of Michigan to the
fields of the Mississippi Delta.
The Agriculture Department
has just $995 million to divide
among producers with losses in
1990 or 1991. That means USD A
will have to prorate payments
among eligible producers.
Estimates of what farmers can
expect range from 10 cents to 50
cents for every dollar lost. Many
observers believe the checks,
which should be mailed in
mid-April, will be close to 30
cents on the dollar.
"Agricultural producers are
rightly complaining that 'the
disaster program is a disaster,' "
said Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D.
USDA will begin tallying up
the losses after farmers submit the
last of their paperwork, which is
due Friday.
California, the top farm state,
experienced a fifth straight year of
drought by 1991. Citrus orchards
and winter vegetable crops were
damaged by a winter freeze in late
1990.
Record floods last year in East
Texas and the Mississippi Delta
washed catfish right out of their
ponds and damaged wheat crops
across the region.
Hot, dry weather withered the
peanut crop in the Southeast in
1990, as it did to corn, soybeans
and wheat from the mid-Atlantic
to Illinois a year later. Frost, hail
and thunderstorms battered
Michigan's fruit orchards.
"Farmers tell me the program
is too little, too late, and it may be
turning into a sad joke," said Sen.
Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas. "Clearly
more than $995 million is going to
be needed to meet the needs of all
farmers across the country."
Bentsen said he's worried that
farmers may see only a dime's
worth of relief for every dollar of
damages. In Texas, farmers lost
$618 million on just three crops —
cotton, corn and sorghum.
He called on President Bush to
release $775 million more that was
authorized by Congress last year.