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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 12, 1995)
Thursday* October 12, 1995 Page 9 • The Battalion WBC, Roadhouse sponsor Bonfire benefit □ Proceeds from the benefit will go toward concessions for those who work on Bonfire. By Lisa Johnson The Battalion The Women’s Bonfire Com mittee and the owners of the King of the Roadhouse bar are sponsoring a Bonfire benefit at 7 p.m. tonight. Rebecca Fields, a WBC coordi nator and a junior environmental design major, said the bar owners are former students who pledge their support for Bonfire. “We’re really lucky to get a place like the Roadhouse to hold the benefit,” Fields said. “The owners are old Ags and are kind enough to volunteer their place of business to help us raise money for Bonfire.” Tickets are $2, and proceeds will be used by WBC to pay for fuel for water trucks at cut site and provide food for the redpots and coordinators. The money will be used to buy the concessions that the WBC provides to those partic ipating in Bonfire activities on the polo field. Laura Wheelis, a WBC coor dinator and a junior animal sci ence major, said she expects a good turnout based on the at tendance of previous benefits. “Last spring, it was packed,” Wheelis said. “We had at least 250 to 300 people there, and I’m hoping that at least as many peo ple will attend this benefit.” The Roadhouse hosted the last WBC Bonfire Benefit in the spring. Hans Betten, a brownpot and a junior agriculture and life sci ence major, and his band will provide music for the benefit. “I couldn’t really tell you what kind of music they play,” Fields said. “Mainly, everyone just gets up there and has a good time. It’s all in fun and really gives the ben efit a good party atmosphere. We’re really looking forward to seeing how many people come out to the Roadhouse.” In addition to the benefit, the WBC is making plans to hold a Thanksgiving dinner for students who are staying over the break to work on Bonfire. Report shows many hate crimes remain unreported o Crimes aren't being adequately reported or prosecuted and are increasing against homosexuals in Texas, according to a report released Wednesday by the Texas Civil Rights Project. AUSTIN (AP) — Despite a report that shows hate crimes are decreasing in Texas, the legal director for the Texas Civil Rights Project said Wednesday the crimes aren’t be ing adequately reported or prosecuted. James Harrington, legal director for the TCRP, released a report examining hate crimes in Texas from 1992 to 1994. He said if not for substantial progress be ing made in Dallas and Fort Worth, hate crime statistics would be up across the state- “We cannot take much comfort from tfie report for two reasons,” Harrington said. “In the first place, the total numbers are still unacceptably high. “Secondly, the reason that raw numbers of hate crimes have tended to level out is be cause of very aggressive anti-hate crime ac tivity by law enforcement in the Dallas and Fort Worth areas.” Harrington said prominent hate crime cases in the Metroplex, including a black man’s shooting death by a group of skin heads in Arlington in 1991, have prompted authorities to step up efforts against such crimes. The efforts have resulted in a 41 percent decrease in hate crimes in the Dal- las-Fort Worth area, Harrington said.“This shows that good law enforcement tech niques and effective prosecutions can, and do, lessen hate crime in a community,” Harrington said. “This, in turn, should pro vide the model for law enforcement agen cies in Texas.” According to the Texas Department of Pub lic Safety, there were 389 reported hate crimes in 1994, down from 436 in 1993 and 484 in 1992. Overall, there was a 19.6 percent decrease in hate crimes from 1992 to 1994. But Harrington said the report only deals with a fraction of the hate crimes being com mitted. He said poor reporting of the crimes by both police and victims have left many hate crimes undetected. “There is no uniform training for police of ficers who investigate crimes to determine if it could have been motivated by hate,” Har rington said. He also added that many victims are afraid to come forward out of fear that they will be stigmatized. “Hate crimes continue to be a very perva sive problem in Texas,” Harrington said. He said reforms in the state’s hate crime law approved by the 1995 Legislature should prevent prosecutors from refusing to take a case to court out fear that convictions would n’t hold up on appeal. “There is still a reluctance by district at torneys to do enhanced sentencing under the hate crimes law,” Harrington said. The report recommends several ways to help reduce hate crimes, including new police guidelines for addressing and deterring such crimes and amending public school curricu- lums to address prejudice and hate violence. According to the report, blacks are most often the victims of hate crimes in Texas. Department of Public Safety data shows that 41.7 percent of the hate crimes reported be tween 1992 and 1994 resulted in bias against blacks. Anti-white crimes (22.2 percent) are fol lowed by anti-gay crimes (12.6 percent), anti-Hispanic (7.5 percent), anti-Jewish (6.5 percent) and anti-Asian (3 percent). According to the report, crimes against ho mosexuals continue to rise while hate crimes against whites have decreased dramatically. There were 64 crimes against homosexu als in 1994 compared to 51 in 1993 and 59 in 1992, according to DPS records. Crimes against whites totaled 73 in 1994, a drop from 103 in 1993 and 129 in 1992, ac cording to DPS records. Amy Browning, The Battalion Massage therapy Nikki Willis, a junior kinesiology major, gets a free massage from massage therapist Dan Arnold as part of the Health Fair that was held in the MSC on Wednesday. Hurricane Roxanne roughs up Mexico’s Yucatan resorts □ The storm had 110 mph winds which ripped through Cozumel, but there were no immediate reports of injuries. TULUM, Mexico (AP) — Up rooting trees, toppling streetlights and leveling a concrete stadium. Hurricane Roxanne swept through a southern Mexican provincial capital Wednesday during a daylong march across the Yucatan. Roxanne’s 75-mph winds tore through Campeche, a state capi tal of 175,000 people. There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries in the city or anywhere else in the hurricane’s path. Three thousand residents sought shelter from the storm, and television footage showed people wading through waist- high water. The storm drifted westward late Wednesday, sending shrimpers and oil workers fleeing to shore before it hit the city of Campeche, on the western Gulf coast of the peninsula, flinging tin roofs into the air. The U.S. National Weather Service said Roxanne would prob ably gain strength as it heads west over the Gulf of Mexico and menaces a broad swath of coast line. It said flashfloods and mud slides in areas already soaked by Hurricane Opal last week could occur without warning. The oil-rich lowlands of Mexi co’s southern Gulf Coast are still recovering from floods caused by Opal, which killed at least 11 peo ple in Mexico before veering north to hit the Florida Panhandle. The National Weather Service posted a hurricane watch the Gulf on Mexico’s eastern coast as far north as Tuxpan, about 350 miles south of the Texas border. Before the hurricane hit, Campeche state Gov. Jorge Sa lomon said about 150 shelters were ready to receive 15,000 peo ple, offshore shrimpers had head ed to port and rail and highway traffic were disrupted by ap proaching winds and rains. “We are taking all the precau tions necessary,” he said. The Weather Service said that by 1 a.m. Thursday (2 a.m. EDT), Roxanne’s center was about 70 miles northeast of Ciudad del Carmen. The hurricane has lost force since it hit Tulum on the Yu catan’s Caribbean side late Tues day with 110-mph winds. Tele phone links with the island resort of Cozumel remained cut Wednes day, and plane and ferry services were still suspended, leaving hun dreds of tourists as well as some 35,000 local residents isolated. CSQFTUURR€ OCCHfiNGC^) KW COUTGf: MAIN @ NOBTHGfiTC IN CS TX 846-1763 UU€ BUV, S€ll Si “R^NT" N6ULJ & US€D HRRDUJRR6 & SOfTLJL)RR€ SPECIAL: 486DX4-1 20 UUITH 8 megs RAM, I meg VID€0 CARD, 850 meg HARD DRIV6, 14" SVGA MONITOR, 2X CD-ROM, SOUND CARD, MODCM, SPCAK6RS, DOS, WIN '95, KCVBOARD, MOUSC, €TC ^faster than a P-75* $ 1 365.00 YOG CAN LOOK FOR IT IN SHINER, OR YOG CAN FIND IT IN COLLEGE STATION. QUALITY BEER BREWED BY BRAZOS BREWING COMPANY 201 DOMINIK 693-4148 SOUTHWESTERN BLACK STUDENT LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE AWARENESS WEEK Monday, October 9 - Friday, October 13 in the Commons Lobby and the MSC also . First Host and Hostess Meeting For All Interested Students on October 15th at 5 p.m. in MSC 212 CQF fright-day the I3ttv ...the guitgrror begins at 8:00 lostmortem Rudder Fbunfai l art 0rA Persons with disabilities please call 845-1515 to inform us of your special needs. We request notification three (3) working days prior » to the event to enable us to assist you to the best of our abilmes. THEY CODLDNT BELIEVE THEIR EYES! THEY COULDNT ESCAPE ^ THE CHEESE! /SP Y0U! In CINemaEjcoPE: and TERROR-COLOR by DE LUXE