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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 9, 1995)
T A M U Texas A JV1 University 1 r p ontl* the use s’ landise- itheylsi i Exprs telept::: ■ sapjl ;he ole eagueri rm Lubbock letdown The Texas A&M Football Team loses its second straight game r for the first time since 1988. Sports, Page 7 Satisfying all Stidvent: Broadening the list of multiculturalism classes would end the great debate.' American Quilt Opinion, Page 11 Uptmor: Newest 'chick flick' has the makings a classic film. Aggielife, Page Battali Vol. 102, No. 31 (12 pages) Established in 1893 Monday • October 9, 1993 Aggie Bucks Advisory Council formed □ The group will suggest which businesses can use the system and which products can be purchased using the debit card. By Wes Swift The Battalion Texas A&M students are get ting a chance to put in their two cents worth about how the Aggie Bucks debit card system will be expanded to off-campus businesses. The Division of Student Af fairs has formed the Aggie Buck Advisory Council, a 12-member panel of students, business own ers, administrators and other University-related interests. The Council will help formulate Uni versity policy on how Aggie Buck expansion will be handled. Ryan Shopp, Student Govern ment University Committee coor dinator, said the Council was formed to explore the possibilities for expansion and which busi nesses may use Aggie Bucks. “The goal of this committee is to look into off-campus expan sion and further on-campus ex pansion,” Shopp said. The Texas Legislature gave the University until Aug. 15, 1996 to expand the Aggie Bucks system to off-campus businesses. The Legislature mandated that any service or merchandise that could be purchased by Aggie Bucks on campus must be made available off-campus. College Station bookstores began ac cepting the debit cards in last August. The expansion has several gray areas that pose problems to the University. For in stance, the administra tion has made it clear in the past that it did not want Aggie Bucks available to purchase alcohol or tobacco. Casey Underwood, a Council member, said the alco hol question has caused some confusion for many students, in cluding herself. “I thought I would go off-cam pus and buy groceries and it would be convenient,” Under wood said. “But I’m not sure what we should be able to buy with them.” Underwood said that during the first meeting last week, the president of the Aggie Mom’s Federation was concerned that students would use Aggie Bucks to purchase alcohol. “She was concerned because, first of all, the kids might buy al cohol, and she would not want them to buy say, a stereo,” she said. “A lot of parents feel this way, and they don’t trust their kids not to buy alcohol. A lot of parents would not get Aggie Bucks, and that would take that market away.” Shopp said he has been im pressed with the Division of Students Affairs’ speed at form ing this committee, which Shopp proposed. “It wasn’t even a week before [debit card administrator] Dale Witenhafer called me and said, ‘Ryan, let’s go with this,’” he said. “I’m impressed that the University is being so proactive. “They’ve gone after these is sues; they’re not waiting for these things to come to them.” Toby Boenig, student body president, said the committee should provide an excellent platform to help students learn more about how Aggie Bucks can be used. “Hopefully, the committee can not just offer input, but offer in formation to students as well,” Boenig said. “So much is not known to the students right now.” Tnentto: nguisk ustoim ;hree sei ived, a:: years, the pla; at, finis; Central; ng forts n the w is care 3 (33,® npletior. (196). •y poptlll ” saidO; who vs isive coa fore Mo: ot of gro uccessf. s to tho n that’s n >ture IS™ Stew Milne, The Battalion Batt bet gone bad Rob Clark, editor in chief of The Battalion, "shows his guns" as a result of his bet with Megan Clark (no relation), editor in chief of the Texas Tech student newspaper, The University Daily. When the A&M football team lost 14-7 in Lubbock on Saturday, Clark had to buy a Tech T-shirt and pose for this photograph. The photo will be published in The University Daily later this week. "I'm not real happy about it," Clark said, "but I want to be a good sport and uphold my end of the bet. The game was quite disappointing, but the bet was all in good fun." AIESEC to receive first foreign intern □ The four-year-old A&M chapter sent its first student intern abroad last year. By Tara Wilkinson The Battalion The Texas A&M AIESEC chapter, a student-run international business organization respected throughout Europe for its power and prestige, is giving students the chance to broaden their business perspectives. AIESEC, a French acronym, trans lates into English as the International Association of Students in Business Economics. An international work exchange program established in 1948 in Brus sels, Belgium, AIESEC is the world’s third-largest non-profit organization, outranked only by the Red Cross and the United Nations. Chris Nelms, A&M AIESEC chap ter vice president for sales, said that although 55 U.S. colleges have AIESEC chapters, the organization is not nearly as well-known in the Unit ed States as it is in other parts of the world. “If you go to Europe, you can say you’re in AIESEC, and everyone un derstands,” Nelms said. “In the Unit ed States, it just hasn’t caught on yet. But we’re working on it.” The four-year-old A&M AIESEC chapter, sent its first student intern abroad last year and will be receiving a foreign intern for the first time in November. Freddy Puentes, A&M AIESEC chapter president, said chapter mem bers are finally gaining the expertise and knowledge necessary to partic ipate successfully in the program. “AIESEC is set up to be a recipro cal exchange program,” Puentes said. “For every person we bring from abroad, we can send one Aggie abroad.” Operated as a small corporation, each chapter of AIESEC has a human resources, exchange and reception, fi nance and sales committee. The organization’s activities are funded by student initiative. Sources of revenue include sponsorship by pri vate companies and student dues. AIESEC salespeople target compa nies interested in hiring interns from foreign countries, convincing these companies to sign contracts for in terns recruited from the AIESEC net work. “We’ll go into companies, as sales people basically, and try to sell our program,” Fuentes said. AIESEC members are responsible for finding students from AIESEC chapters in different parts of the world specified by contracting compa nies. They take care of all details, such as paperwork and lodging, for the students arriving from abroad. “We basically deliver them to their front door, walk them into their first day of work,” Fuentes said. For each contract between an AIESEC chapter and a company for bringing an intern to the United States, the chapter receives a “credit” to send one of its U.S. members abroad. Members have internship op tions in 84 countries with AIESEC chapters. AIESEC chapters can be found See AIESEC, Page 6 TEES lab plays energy □ A&M's department will be recognized for its monitoring analysis of the LoanSTAR program, which has saved Texans more than $25 million. By Kasie Byers The Battalion :he The U. S. Department of Energy will recognize the Energy Systems Lab of the Texas Engineering Experiment Sta tion later this month for the lab’s role in energy efficiency and savings. The lab will be honored Oct. 31 in Arlington, Va., for its monitoring analysis program for Texas Loans to Save Texas and Resources (LoanSTAR). The State Energy Conservation Of fice, which sponsors the LoanSTAR program, nominated A&M’s laboratory for the award. LoanSTAR, which began in 1988 is a $98 million revolving-loan fund that pro vides government entities with money to upgrade and perform retrofits to build ings’ heating and air conditioning sys tems to promote energy conservation. The revolving loan is the refund Texas received from the oil overcharges during the 1980s. The TEES Energy Systems Lab mon itors the buildings’ energy usage before and after the retrofits. Each building is measured once a week. The data from these measure ments is then compiled into reports that are sent to each agency on the amount of electricity, gas and money that was saved. Dr. Dan Turner, Energy Systems Lab director, said all the software, en ergy analysis methodologies and re porting techniques were developed by the lab. “We are responsible for the monitor ing of over 200 buildings throughout the state of Texas,” Turner said, “and this is all done from our College Station loca tion. It is a very sophisticated system.” The Energy Systems Laboratory is involved with other projects involving saving role air conditioning and heat pump re search. LoanSTAR, however, is its largest project, which the lab has been a part of since the program’s beginning. In a TEES news release, the moni toring efforts of the laboratory were called “pioneering” by the DOE. Turner said the DOE description was accurate because of the uniqueness of the program. “There are programs in other states that are similar to LoanSTAR,” he said. “But there are no other major public programs in the U.S. where metering and monitoring of this energy conserva tion is a required part.” Turner, as well as Dr. Dennis O’Neal, Dr. Dave Claridge and Dr. Jeff Harberl, representatives from the lab, will attend the ceremony and accept the award on behalf of TEES laboratory. The LoanSTAR program has saved Texans more than $25 million in energy costs and is projected to save taxpayers $700 million over the next 20 years. The program was recognized in April by the Environmental Protection Agency for its role in energy conservation. Clinton recalls stepfather | firing gun at his mother I □ The president remembers | having to stop violence in I his own home. WASHINGTON (AP) — President i Clinton’s memories of his alcoholic I stepfather remain vivid, continuing | to shape his life “as a peacemaker, i always trying to minimize the dis- I ruption” around him. One scene haunts him still. He was barely 5 years old when his j stepfather, Roger Clinton, fired a gun at his mother, Virginia Kelley. | The bullet smashed into a wall next i to where Kelley was seated. “I remember that incident vividly, like it was yesterday,” Clinton said in an interview in November’s Good j Housekeeping magazine — perhaps the most personal, frank interview Clinton has given as president, his aides say. “That bullet could have ricocheted and done anything,” Clinton re- • called. “It could have killed me. If anything had happened, Roger would never have gotten over it. “Roger wasn’t a bad man, and he didn’t want to hurt anybody. He was just an alcoholic, full of self-loathing and anxiety, with no way to deal with it. He had problems before we ever came into his life.” Roger was Virginia’s second hus band. Her first husband, William Blythe, was killed in a car accident before Bill Clinton was bom. As he grew older, Clinton began to intercede when trouble started with his stepfather. Twice, the president remembered. See Clinton, Page 6 : a* i BO tifS m; m H! .