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The Battalion
Vol. 92 No. 51 (8 pages) “Serving Texas A&M Since 1893” Monday, November 9, 1992
DARRIN HILlVThe Battalion
Carlos Pereira, a sophomore civil engineering major from
Paraguay, takes a picture of (from left to right) Claudia ScavOne,
from Paraguay; Sonja Rojas, from Paraguay; Ana Sequeira,
from Nicaragua; and Rosana Sanchez, from Paraguay, while they
stand in front of the Miss Budweiser racing boat at the Budweiser
race car display in the Kroger shopping center parking lot on Sun
day. The boat is owned by Budweiser. It has a 3000 horsepower
engine and a top speed of 200 mph. The boat is piloted by Chip
Hanauer, and won seven out of 12 races in 1986. Budweiser
builds a new boat and retires the old one every year.
Baptists to decide future Baylor funding
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CORPUS CHRISTI - A faceoff between
moderate and conservative factions begins this
week as the Baptist General Convention of
Texas meets here to decide the future of fund
ing Baylor University.
At stake is the $4 million the Baptist school
receives annually from the BGCT. A vote will
be held Monday on the matter.
About 8,000 delegates, known as messen
gers, are expected to attend the convention's
annual meeting Monday and Tuesday.
They also will choose the convention's presi
dent and adopt a nearly $70 million budget.
The clash over Baylor stems from the differ
ing views Baptists have about the interpreta
tion of the Bible.
Conservatives oppose what they consider
liberal influences at Baylor. Last year the con
vention relinquished threfc-fourths of its con
trol of the university's governing board, an is
sue that upset conservatives further.
Moderates, meanwhile, see Baylor as a uni
versity that promotes a free exchange of ideas
while maintaining a Baptist focus.
The meeting will include ministers and
members of the state's 5,500 Baptist churches.
This is the first meeting since the convention
approved the controversial Baylor plan. The
plan allows the convention to elect only 25
percent of the Baptist-run school's governing
board.
The university's Board of Regents elects the
remaining 75 percent.
"The fundamentalists said for many years
that they wanted to take over Baylor, and now
that they see they can't do that, they want to
divorce Baylor from the convention," said
Mike Bishop, a Baylor spokesman.
Some Baptists had considered suing Baylor
over the change in the 147-year-old institu
tion's charter. They were opposed to the re
lease of nearly $6 million in convention funds
that had been frozen following the charter
change and not dispersed until after the con
vention vote.
Crime in city
higher than
on campus
Survey: less violence at Texas schools
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DALLAS — A spot survey of
crime reports at 19 Texas colleges
shows the campus remains a safer
place than the cities in which most
people live.
Violent crimes — including
murder and rape — occur less fre
quently on the campuses than in
the outside world, the reports
show.
Federal law requires colleges
and universities starting this
school year to release crime statis
tics to stu-
"It's safe enough to walk
at night, but you know
you're putting yourself in
danger anywhere in
America if you're walking
alone at night."
- Nibal Petro, SMU senior
dents and em
ployees.
Eighteen
schools gave
their crime
figures to The
Dallas Morn
ing News
upon request.
Figures for
Paul Quinn
College in
east Oak Cliff were compiled from
Dallas police reports.
The survey showed no murders
taking place at any of the 19
schools during their latest annual
reporting period. Those schools
had a combined student popula
tion of 272,458.
But in Texas last year, there
were 15.3 murders per 100,000 res
idents, according to the FBI's Uni
form Crime Reports.
Nibal Petro, a senior at South
ern Methodist University, consid
ers SMU one of the safest places in
Dallas County partly because of
the school's security escort ser
vice.
"It's safe enough to walk at
night, but you know you're
putting yourself i,n danger any
where in America if you're walk
ing alone at night," said Petro, 24.
One rape and two robberies
were reported on the suburban
University Park campus during
the past school year.
On a per capita basis, the
chances of being raped in Dallas
are more than 10 times greater
than the risk of rape on any cam
pus surveyed.
No rapes were reported at Texas
Christian University in Fort
Worth, where campus Police Chief
Oscar H. Stewart attributes a very
low rate of violent offenses to ag
gressive, concerned officers and a
measure of
good luck.
Still, TCU
recorded 53
burglaries
and 14 auto
thefts.
' ' N o
place is go
ing to be to
tally safe,"
he said.
But TCU remains much safer
than the cities of Fort Worth and
Dallas because, Stewart said, the
school has more officers per
square mile of territory.
Ten aggravated assaults were
reported during the 1991-92
school term at both El Centro Col
lege in Dallas and the University
of North Texas in Denton.
Paul Quinn led the schools in
projected rates for burglary —
1,715 per 100,000 residents — and
motor vehicle theft — 214 per
100,000. But burglaries occurred in
Dallas at nearly twice Paul
Quinn's rate, and the city's rate
for auto thefts was 11 times
greater than the school's.
The best of the low rates was re
ported at the University of Dallas
in Irving.
Tax dollars still
back campaign
despite reform
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - Big money
was bigger than ever in the 1992
election.
An estimated $100 million
poured into the presidential
election from corporations and
fat-cat donors — exactly the
kind of donations that post-Wa
tergate reforms sought to elimi
nate by financing White House
campaigns with tax dollars.
In the congressional races, big
spending equaled winning, as
all but a few incumbents sur
vived the
anti-Wash
ington mood
of the elec
torate. As
usual, their
warchests
got plenty of
help from
political ac
tion commit
tees.
' ' M o r e
than in any
other election, in 1992 you saw
the failure of existing campaign-
finance laws and rules," lament
ed Ellen Miller, executive direc
tor of the watchdog Center for
Responsive Politics.
"I think we're worse off today
than before Watergate, because
there is more big money than
ever," she said.
The same types of fat-cat do
nations to presidential candi
dates during the Watergate era
led Congress to change the
rules. They limited individual
contributions to $1,000 per can
didate per election, refined the
prohibition against corporate
donations, and ended presiden
tial candidates' reliance on pri
vate money by fully financing
their campaigns and conven
tions with tax dollars.
But the "soft-money" loop
hole in those rules allowed the
huge private contributions to
continue, as general-purpose
gifts to the political parties.
And while more than $170
million in tax money was given
to the presidential campaigns,
the two major parties collected
more than $70 million in soft
money to pay for get-out-the-
vote drives and other activities.
Tellingly, more than a half
dozen of the
GOP's most
faithful
donors de
fected with
large dona
tions to De
mocrats in
early October
when Clin
ton's victory
appeared
likely.
A series of
AP reviews over the course of
the campaign also revealed that
corporate donors had other av
enues to inject money into the
election beyond the soft-money
route, including:
•Paying about $11 million of
the expenses for the two nomi
nating conventions and an un
determined amount more to
host posh receptions where cor
porate bigwigs and government
leaders rubbed elbows.
•Donating to state parties
which in turn spent $35 million
trying to influence the presiden
tial election.
•Picking up the $2 million-
plus tab for the four debates, for
which they got a tax break.
"I think we're worse off
today than before Water
gate, because there is
more big money than
ever."
-Ellen Miller, executive
director, Center for
Responsive Politics
Dole vs. Iran-Contra scandal
Senate official criticizes
investigation, prosecutor
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader
Robert Dole on Sunday called for an investiga
tion of Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh
and said President Bush should consider par
doning all defendants in the scandal.
Dole called Walsh's office "a Democratic
hotbed of Democratic activist lawyers." A spe
cial prosecutor from the Justice Department
should be brought in to determine "whether or
not politics played any part" in a new indict
ment of ex-defense secretary Caspar Weinberg
er, Dole said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
Walsh, a Republican, was deputy attorney
general in the Eisenhower administration.
Walsh denied there was any political moti
vation in the second indictment of Weinberger,
handed up four days before the election. It dis
closed Bush's role in a Jan. 7, 1986, meeting
about the Reagan White House's arms-for-
hostages deals with Iran. The president spent
the final days of the campaign fending off
questions about the scandal.
Dole said the Oct. 30 grand jury charge
against Weinberger was ob
tained by a newly hired
Wa’sh aide, James Brosna-
han, who contributed $500
to Bill Clinton's campaign
and whose law firm con
tributed $20,000 to the Clin
ton campaign.
Dole suggested Clinton's
campaign got advance no
tice from Walsh's office
about the new Weinberger
charges, because a Clinton-
Gore press release reacting to the indictment
and focusing on Bush was dated Oct. 29 — the
day before the indictment.
Clinton aides have said the date was a mis
print and that they obtained information for
their press release from wire service accounts
after the indictment was handed up.
Walsh, in an interview Sunday with The As
sociated Press, denied that there had been any
communication on the new Weinberger charge
between "me or my office with anyone" in ad
vance of the indictment, except for an intera
gency group of intelligence experts from the
Bush administration. That group reviews all
pending indictments in Walsh's Iran-Contra
investigation ahead of time for possible classi
fied information.
"That's the only group that had any advance
information about the indictment," Walsh said.
Walsh added that political contributions by
Brosnahan before Walsh's office hired him are
"it seems to me, irrelevant."
The new indictment — based on Weinberg
er's own notes — disclosed that then-Vice
President Bush participated in a Jan. 7, 1986,
discussion of trading 4,000 TOW anti-tank mis
siles for five American hostages. Bush has al
ways maintained that he didn't realize until
mid-December 1986 that the Reagan adminis
tration was swapping arms for U.S. hostages
held in Lebanon.
Dole said Bush should consider pardons for
all Iran-Contra defendants, not just Weinberg
er, because "if you're going to do one, you do
them all."
Senate Republican Whip Alan Simpson cau
tioned against presidential pardons for figures
in the Iran-Contra affair in the remaining 11
weeks of the Bush administration.
"I'd be very careful of that," Simpson said
on NBC's "Meet the Press." He didn't elabo
rate on his view, and when asked whether that
meant he thought a pardon would be a mis
take he said, "I'm not saying that. I think he
ought to be very, very careful."
Amnesty International
Human rights organization elects SMU professor as chairman
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DALLAS — Forty-two-year-old
history professor Rick Halperin
now heads Amnesty Internation
al, one of the world's largest hu
man rights organizations.
A member of Amnesty Interna
tional since 1971, Halperin was
elected last month for a one-year
term as chairman of Amnesty In
ternational USA, the American
branch of the London-based orga
nization.
"At first, I was stunned to be
elected," he said. "It is a great
honor for me."
Amnesty's 1.2 million members
worldwide includes 350,000 U.S.
members. Of those, 8,000 are in
Texas and 2,400 in the Dallas area.
"Human rights were not new to
me," Halperin said. "My mother
raised me with a strong sense of
ethical quality for people. And
now my mind is constantly deal
ing with human rights."
He described himself as "a very
outspoken fanatic about the death
penalty" and has worked to abol
ish it.
And although he said he loves
Texas and working at SMU, he
says the state is one of the worst
offenders of human rights.
"We have the largest death row
in the United States: 371, includ
ing four women. Since December
1982, 52 people have been execut
ed in this state," said Halperin. "I
am not excusing what these peo
ple have done; they should be
punished but not executed."
Amnesty International says it
helped free 1,609 people last year
by pressuring governments
through letter campaigns and oth
er methods.
"Rick represents the heart and
soul of our grassroots organiza
tion," said Curt Goering, deputy
executive director of Amnesty In
ternational USA. "He has the best
of our volunteer spirit and is total
ly committed."
SMU has allowed Halperin to
loosen his schedule to keep up
with his new duties.
For a year at least, Halperin will
travel the world to meet govern
ment representatives and attend
conferences. He already has re
ceived an invitation from the Aus
tralian Parliament to deliver a
speech in the spring on human
rights in the United States.
Inside
BILLY MORAN/Tlw Battalion
A&M’s Reggie Brown (46)
forces Louisville’s Aaron Baily
(38) to fumble on a punt return
during the Aggies' 40-18 win
Saturday. A&M’s Billy Mitchell
(left, 22) recovered the fumble
at the 20 yard line and set up
the Aggies’ first touchdown.
□ See related stories/Page 5