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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 22, 1994)
Opinion split icealed EDITORIAL: A constitutional amendment allowing school prayer would not only conflict with separation of church and state, but would also cause problems too great for schools to handle. Page 9 ‘student' (AP) — Tex- evenly split ve proposal mt the right iled weapons, a poll pub- in The Hous- y of 501 peo- is, 51 percent se legislation ow residents r convictions of mental ill- / concealed ,y-eight per- y supported One percent ose the mea- men, and mi- it more than ig to the poll. percent of gainst allow- d weapons, nt supported l, 55 percent >ort while 45 1 it. rsed the pro- ercent to 46 bout 60 per- ick and His- ons opposed inducted for ost by Hous- tation KHOU ersey survey- t Poll, has a rgin of error, alts a virtual i now own ceep them in , but the ot be carried ic except un- imstances. Ron Wil son, emocrat who sored unsuc- led weapons led a similar :t legislative 3 wasn’t sur- ooll’s overall LIMIT o Aggielife Area cops tell funniest excuses used by students for speeding. Page 3 TUESDAY November 22, 1994 Vol. 101, No. 62 (10 pages) “Serving Texas A dr Ad since 1893" NEWS RIFTS .0 gunmen fire upon luslim extremists GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — 10 gunmen fired into the air and jdfcnounced Muslim extremists bnday as 10,000 people rallied in nat Yasser Arafat billed as a show support for peace with Israel. Militant Islamic leaders called the lly a provocation likely to damage 6 truce worked out by Israeli Arab ediators. “We support democracy, but we fid security and stability to build our te,” Arafat told cheering supporters city square. “We will not allow anybody to sow arder and we will not allow anyone destroy what we have built,” the jalestine Liberation Organization der said. Arafat is seeking broader public eking following bloody clashes iday outside a Gaza City mosque tween his police and Islamic activists posed to negotiating with Israel. Span asks GOP for lore TV access WASHINGTON (AP) — If jepublicans really want Congress to tie more accessible to the public, ey should <op*?n mnre» prnnfifiriinQR TV coverage, the head of C-Span id Monday. The cable network shows all Senate find House floor debate, but the meras are controlled by Congress id restricted to tight shots of whoever talking. The footage is then fed to C- pan and other TV networks. C-Span wants to show viewers hat else is happening in the |hamber by installing and operating its own cameras. I "We’ll present a full, honest and t Accurate picture of each day’s events, and make our telecasts available to ■hers in the news media,” said Brian flamb, C-Span executive director, in letters to Bob Dole of Kansas, in line to be Senate majority leader, and Mewl Gingrich of Georgia, expected dbe speaker of the House. Urban traffic getting worse, study says COLLEGE STATION (AP) — The exas Transportation Institute’s annual udy on traffic reports what commuters ready know: roadway congestion is nly getting worse in most of the ation’s large urban areas. In the 86-page study released onday, Texas A&M University ansportation engineer Tim Lomax uts together traffic data from 50 rban areas around the country. The ala were from 1991, the most recent 'ear available. For the sixth consecutive year, omax determined Los Angeles is the nost backed-up urban area in imerica with a roadway congestion ndex of 1.56. An index of 1.00 indicates a desired amount of traffic. Anything ;over that indicates what Lomax calls undesirable congestion” and is neasured by percentages. Los ingeles’ index, for example, ndicates traffic is 56 percent more ongested than engineers think hould be on the roads. P.A. system blamed for flight noise CHICAGO (AP) — A strange whooshing sound” aboard a USAir jetliner before the Sept. 8 crash that killed all 132 aboard apparently was nothing more than an open public address system, industry sources said Monday. The report appeared to end speculation over the weekend that the mysterious sound could be a clue to the crash of Flight 427 near Pittsburgh, the fifth fatal crash of a USAir jetliner in five years. Airline industry sources said the so-called whooshing noise had been traced to an open public address system. They said the pilot had made an announcement and did not turn off the sound system immediately. They said the noise was confirmed by an off-duty pilot who was riding in the cockpit en route from Charlotte and got off the plane in Chicago. NATO retaliates, bombs Serbian airfield Raid expected to knock Serb airfield out for thirty days SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — In its biggest airstrike ever, NATO retaliat ed Monday for repeated Serb attacks on a U.N. safe haven by bombing an airfield in a Serb-controlled section of Croatia. NATO commanders said the raid knocked the Udbina airfield out of commis sion for 30 days. The airfield and its ar tillery batteries have been used by Serbs in recent weeks to terrorize residents of gov ernment-held areas of northwest Bosnia. A Croatian commander tweaked his nose at the NATO raid, saying only two runways were damaged by the midday airstrike and could be repaired as early as Wednesday. About 30 F-15s, F-l6s, Jaguar and Mirage jets from the United States, Britain, France and the Netherlands crossed the Adriatic for the airstrike, NATO’s seventh since the Bosnian war started in April 1992 and the al liance’s first in neighboring Croatia. The bombers struck the airfield 22 miles southwest of the U.N.-designated safe area of Bihac and reportedly took out its anti aircraft guns and one surface-to-air missile site, said Adm. Leighton W. Smith, NATO commander for southern Europe. “Initial reports are that the strike was successful,” Smith said. Serb surface-to-air missiles were fired at the NATO planes, but he said all warplanes and 20 support air craft returned safely to their bases in Italy. The U.N. commander for former Yu goslavia, Gen. Bertrand de Lapresle, re quested the NATO warplanes target run ways and taxiways — not destroy aircraft, Smith told reporters in Naples, Italy. “Our intention was to try to limit collat eral damage,” Smith said. “We did not want to go outside of that airfield area, and we wanted to limit the number of people on the ground who might be casualties as a result of the strike.” Slobodan Jarcevic, an aide to Croatian Serb leader Milan Martic, asserted that two villages north of the airfield were destroyed, “and it is assumed that all civilians that were in those houses were killed.” There was no independent confirmation. The United Nations said some Czech peacekeepers, who were posted near Udbi na, were taken hostage after the raid. Jarcevic said two peacekeepers were being held by Serb troops who are “threatening to kill them.” Smith said the raid wasn’t meant “to put the airfield out of commission for an awfully long time. If we had wanted to we would have taken out all the aircraft, the ammunition.” Croatia’s air force commander said the damage to two runways “could be repaired in 48-72 hours.” The commander. Col. Imra Agotic, also said about 20 fixed-wing air craft and 10 helicopters were “destroyed or considerably damaged.” The air strikes actually may play into the hands of Bosnian and Croatian Serbs. Since they have been attacking Bosnian government lands jointly in recent weeks, an escalating cross-border conflict might pressure Serbian President Slobodan Milo sevic to help the Serbs. The Serbian leader cut off most aid to Bosnia’s Serbs in August in exchange for eased international sanctions on Serb-domi nated Yugoslavia. He continues to wield in fluence in Serb-held parts of Croatia. Senior U.N. envoy Yashushi Akashi said Monday that he and Milosevic would meet Wednesday with Martic, head of Croatia’s breakaway Serbs. Martic condemned the bombing as “an insolent and vandal attack ... which we haven’t provoked at all.” Akashi, the top U.N. official in former Yugoslavia, insisted the NATO air strike was a “necessary and proportionate re sponse.” And President Clinton said: “It was a strong and entirely appropriate response. That airfield has been used to conduct the air attacks against the Bihac region. It was the right thing to do.” NATO bombs Serb airbase in Croatia In the biggest NATO attack ever. 39 warplanes from the United States and three other nations bombed the Udbina airbase in Serb-held Croatia and a nearby surface-to-air missile site. NATO aircraft 1 i rmmirfrfl CHSE013B3 Hungary Wfimm' >1 I .ifrnmrnfeiai ^ ^j 7* CioaM ' T v mraiMirffli jQnf* iSpil: \ Italy K -tpMtSft •• *T s s •> s •. | f Macedonia ^ .-■< IATO facilities - ' - \ pi ylthln the region »' ■fej jgj »patvi% ■ Source NATO m&S 1 S'\j Amy Browning/THE Battalion Run that by me one more time... Andrea White, a speech communications major, prac- Lipinski, a senior management major, in front of All- tices sign language by teaching it to her friend, David Faiths Chapel Monday afternoon. A&M, UH to manage TEX SHARE library resource sharing program By Stephanie Dube The Battalion Texas A&M and the University of Houston were recently awarded a joint contract to man age a library resource sharing program, TEX- SHARE, for all public universities in Texas. Mary Lou Goodyear, associate director of Sterling C. Evans Library, said the contract was awarded by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and is funded by the Texas Legislature. “The contract is meant to promote coopera tion between the 52 academic libraries in Texas,” Goodyear said. The main facets of the contract include in stalling a system to aid document transmission between libraries, allowing all libraries elec tronic access to the Federal Register and devel oping a library card and standard procedures among the libraries. The contract will last until Aug. 31, 1995. After the contract ends, the coordinating board will re quest further funding from the Texas Legislature. Tom Putnam, coordinator of strategic pro jects, said access to the Federal Register, which provides information on all the activities and publications of the federal government, has al ready been established. Goodyear said the contract will also involve working to make electronic database services such as the Wilson Indexes shared statewide. By sharing the services among all 52 public uni versities, the universities may be able to obtain a better deal with the companies. Fkitnam said sharing the databases across See TEXSHARE/Page 6 Task force seeks approval to conduct Honor Code survey Today’s K All Classified 8 Coupons 10 Opinion 9 Sports 7 Toons 2 What's Up 6 By Melissa Jacobs The Battalion Texas A&M students may be asked to complete a survey next semester about academic dishon esty and the honor code. The Student Government Honor and Integrity Task Force is working on a proposal that, if approved, would allow them to conduct such a survey. The Honor and Integrity Task Force was created to look at changes that have taken place in the academic honor and integrity of Aggies over the years and to discover options for improvement. Jeff Wilson, Student Govern ment Association executive vice president of administration, said the task force wants to work from the students’ perspective. “We want to do this to get some awareness out there of what the problem is,” he said. Dr. Bill Kibler, assistant vice president for student affairs, conducted an academic dishon esty study in 1991 of 200 univer sities. He said a study of acade mic dishonesty has never been conducted on A&M’s campus. “I don’t think the reason it’s never been done before is fear of the results,” he said. “It’s just no one has ever taken the time to do it.” Wilson said he wants to devel op the task force and its objec tives by the end of the academic year. Objectives the task force has already developed are conti nuity, the mission of the organi zation, a survey to assess the current status of A&M’s honor code and a long-term plan. “What we thought was most important is making sure this continues on,” he said. Wilson said they have considered hav ing a student government orga nization and a university com mittee dedicated to the issue. “There are drawbacks and ben efits to each of them,” he said. Kibler said long ago there was an honor council, or honor court, at A&M, and it was analogous to that which the Corps of Cadets now has. “I got curious about it and started looking it up,” he said, “and from year to year it disap peared.” David Hall, vice chair of the honor and integrity team, said there are different aspects the task force wants to assess. “What is academic dishon esty? When are some situations See Honor Code/Page 2 Busy lifestyle normal for AdrM’s Parents of the Year By Usa Messer The Battalion John and Donna Van Duyn didn’t suspect they were about to he named 1994-95 A&M Par ents of the Year as they sat at the Parents’ Weekend award ceremony last spring. They thought they were part of a secret plan to get their daughter Renee to the ceremony so that file committee could surprise her with the John J. Koldus Award, an award invented by the Parents’ Weekend Committee specifically for the occasion. Donna Van Duyn, who is assistant manager of Cain Dining Hall, said they did not think any thing suspicious about the Parents’ Weekend Committee’s request. “We went through this before with our oldest daughter when she received the Buck Weirus Award,” Van Duyn said, “so when they an nounced Parents of the Year, it was complete to tal disbelief.” Renee Appleton, the Van Duyn’s daughter and a member of the Class of ’QS, said the commit tee’s plan worked perfectly. “They went through all the other awards at the assembly first,” Appleton said. "Parents of the Year was the last award. My parents were waiting for my award to come up so they were so shocked when their names were announced. “My mom started crying, and my dad just sat there. Finally, my grandmother said ‘John, that’s you. You have to go up there.”’ Donna Van Duyn said neither she nor her husband ever thought of winning the award while they participated in A&M activities. “The things we won the award for are things you’re just supposed to do,” Donna Van Duyn said. “This is nothing you ever dream of. It’s an honor to even be spoken of in the same breath Tim MoogfrHEBattalion Donna and John Van Duyn will serve as Par ent’s of the Year until April 1995. with the parents who have won in the past.” Appleton and her sister Michelle Brechbuhl, See Parents/Page 5