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,
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in The Hous-
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se legislation
ow residents
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LIMIT
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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
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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