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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 6, 1996)
February 5, uatro ENDANGERED SPECIES I he lexasA&M Basketball leam gains revenge on the Baylor Bears. Sports, Page 7 RACISM LINGERS AT A&M Clark: tveryday encounters prove that racism at A&M is alive and well. Opinion, Page 9 WORDS OF WISDOM Donovan Wheatfall inspires others with powerful speech. Aggielife, Page 3 The Battalion Vol. 102, N0T86 CTO pages) “ Serving Texas A&M University Since 1893 Tuesday • February 671996 Committee gives Senate okay to pass fee bill CHfiEL XT (-MS ATTE^TIO'J • xs , Id THIS dT V 00 TO THEKe OF People ll ,those fj THE -RliLES, WHO DIE. 1 > GThe GSC will decide today whether to support a bill that would cut MSC and Battalion funding. ByGretchen Perrenot The Batt alion The Texas A&M Student Sen ate’s Internal Affairs Committee recommended Monday night that the Senate pass a bill call ing for a $6 increase in the stu dent services fee for 1997 and al locating the fee’s $8 million rev enue to campus organizations. After debate about whether the suggested allocation for the Memorial Student Center and The Battalion should be re-ex amined, the internal affairs com mittee moved the bill forward to be voted on by the Graduate Stu dent Council tonight and the full Senate Wednesday. After the GSC and the Sen ate have stated their official opinions on the proposed fee in crease and allocation, Dr. J. Malon Southerland, vice presi dent for student affairs, will draft the final bill that will be presented to the Texas A&M System Board of Regents. The Student Services Fee Al location Committee (SSFAC), which allocates the fee revenue, set The Battalion’s 1997 budget at $4,050, a 94-percent decrease from fiscal year 1996, and the MSC’s budget at $1,603,321, al most a 6-percent decrease from fiscal year 1996. Jimmy Charney, MSC execu tive vice president for finance and administration, said the MSC is concerned about the rec ommended allocation because $55,000 of the decrease is the re sult of a SSFAC mistake. The Student Finance Center was removed from the MSC be tween fiscal years 1995 and 1996 and placed under the stu dent activities department. In fiscal year 1996, the $55,000 that funded the finance center was taken out of the MSC’s budget, Charney said, but was not included in student activi ties’ budget. Therefore, the MSC paid for the finance center from its re serves. This year, the SSFAC has proposed cutting another $55,000 from the MSC’s fiscal year 1997 budget, which Char ney said will result in a total MSC loss of more than $100,000. “In 1997, we are not willing to cover their mistake,” he said. “We are very disappointed, be cause again a very huge mistake was pointed out, but Internal Af fairs passed it on to the Senate. “We hope that the Senate sees the big mistakes.” Sterling Hayman, Battalion editor-in-chief, said The Battal ion should continue to be sup ported through student fees. “If the administration wants the students of Texas A&M to continue to receive a quality, award-winning newspaper, then it needs to prove it through its actions,” Hayman said. “The Battalion is a tradition on cam pus that should not be ignored.” Possible ways the newspaper could compensate for the loss are increasing advertising rates to both on- and off-campus organi zations, charging for What’s Up announcements and decreasing See Budget, Page 6 Dave House, The Battalion I'M GONNA KNOCK YOU OUT Jack Perry, a freshman Spanish major, and Ryan Blair, a freshman mechanical engineering major, duke it out Monday in the "bouncy boxing challenge," one of five events at Rudder Fountain. Aggies least likely to turn out for elections □ A&M students make up a large percentage of registered voters, but few actually vote. This story is the first of a two- part series. By Pamela Benson The Battalion Government officials shape everyday life in many ways, de ciding how fast people can drive, how many police officers patrol community streets and whether to protect the environment. See related EDITORIAL, Page 9 However, many people do not vote in the local, state or nation al elections in which these offi cials are chosen. Elections in Bryan-College Station have never had more than a 10-percent voter turnout. But all U.S. citizens who are at least 18 years of age and have never been convicted of a felony or been declared mental ly incompetent in court are eli gible to vote. In order to vote, students must register with the county registrar where they live at least 30 days prior to an election, either by going to the voter registration office or by mailing in an application card. Summer Bass, a Brazos County Voter Registration Office employee, said that though the process is not complicated, many people do not take the time to fill out an application. Students can register to vote either in the county where they attend school or in the county where their parents live. “It’s totally up to the student where they want to vote,” Bass said. “Some students who are in volved in their communities and want to help out their home towns would rather vote at home. Otherwise, they vote here because it’s easier.” Bass said students consti tute the largest percentage of the population in Col lege Station that is reg istered to vote, but that they are the least likely to actually vote. Dr. Norman Luttbeg, an A&M political sci ence professor, said stu dents do not vote be cause they lack interest and are not involved in their communities. But apathy is a prob lem in the entire com munity as well, he said, and many people claim they do not have time to go to a polling place and cast a vote. He said age and education are determinants of voter participa tion, and that people with higher educations are more likely to See Voting, Page 5 City, A&M residents A&M student homebuilders honored & uses iuntry ch urns, spins, Die turns. II be taught, couple. lo Dr. Steve ,0 for 27 fall victim of con artist l) UPD officials said students should file reports immediately if a stranger asks to borrow possessions from them. By Michelle Lyons The Battalion j University Police Department : officials said some Texas A&M i students have recently become ; victims of an unidentified con artist who has scammed College Station residents since 1992. The male con artist, who j Poses as a suicidal or mentally i handicapped person, tele- t phones students and tries to gain their sympathy. UPD officials said the con artist often tells students he re ceived their names from church listings, manipulating them with appeals to their religious morals. After lengthy telephone con versations, the con artist usually asks to meet students at a local business establishment, where he asks for money, jewelry, cred it cards or a place to stay. Lt. Bert Kretzschmar, UPD Crime Prevention Unit supervi sor, said that to avoid being scammed, students should im mediately alert professionals to any cases in which a stranger begins making emotional pleas. “If someone receives such a call from a total stranger, we re quest that they don’t try to per sonally solve his or her problems on their own,” Kretzschmar See Con Artist, Page 5 □ The A&M chapter of NAHB won its sixth national award in Janu ary for community ser vice projects. By Danielle Pontiff The Battalion The Texas A&M chapter of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) received the Outstanding Student Chap ter Award Jan. 26 at the nation al NAHB conference in Houston. NAHB student chapters par ticipate in community service projects related to the construc tion science field. The Outstanding Student Chapter Award was given to the A&M chapter based on its 1995 projects, which included a fire- safety house built for the College Station Fire Department and two life-size playhouses that were raffled as a fund-raiser for Bra zos Valley children’s charities. Dr. Larry Crosse, head of A&M’s construction science de partment who started the the student chapter at A&M in 1982, said the chapter wins awards because the projects it completes each year are unique and challenging. “Other schools watch us to see what we do,” Crosse said. “In the last 10 years, we have won the award six times and plan on winning it again next year.” More than 65 student chap ters nationwide compete for the award each year, which is given based on documentation of their activities in the previous year. “We put together a book full of photos, announcements and brochures documenting everything we do each year,” Crosse said. See Homebuilders, Page 5 Dave House, The Battalion Dr. Larry Crosse, head of the Department of Construction Science and faculty adviser of A&M’s chapter of the National Association of Home builders, displays the first place trophy taken home by the NAHB. Be hind him are the previous awards. A&M’s NAHB has placed in the top three every year for the past 10 years, five of which are first place. !•; rs four and A&M cemetery marks early 20th century graves Stew Milne, The Battalion Former A&M president Col. L.L. Foster lies beneath this tombstone on A&M property. □ A small cemetery in a far corner of campus contains the remains of several A&M employees, including a former president. By Wes Swift The Battalion A line of aging grave markers stands silently snuggled behind a row of live oaks on Marion Pugh Road and Luther Street. The names on the tombstones bear bits of Texas A&M history. John Riggs, a janitor at the A&M Experimental Station Building who died in the 1900s; Allison Smoot, head milkman at the A&M dairy barn during the early 1900s; and C.O. Watkins, a long-time A&M em ployee who passed away in 1940, are among those buried in a small patch of A&M property adjacent to Tree- house Village Apartments. There are eight tombstones in the cemetery, including those of two infants. The biggest stone marks the rest ing place of Col. L.L. Foster, presi dent of the A&M College of Texas from 1898 to 1901. His tomb lies under a huge live oak, where a small stone marker tells who sleeps beneath it. A&M administrators established the graveyard in 1939 and moved the remains of former employees and their families from a graveyard on the current site of Duncan Din ing Center. The cemetery on Marion Pugh Road went virtually unnoticed until 1954, when D.B. Gofer, an A&M Col lege archivist, found it in disarray. Gofer’s discovered that some A&M employees had been transported from several cemeteries before reach ing their final destination. “Graveyard: neglected; 10 graves marked now with stones; no record shown of the grave of Dr. Pond, buried ... in the First College Station Cemetery, (then buried) in the Old Sheep Pasture, and (then buried) on the present site of Duncan Mess Hall,” Gofer wrote in 1954. Records in the Sterling C. Evans Library archives indicate that after Gofer submitted his report, A&M of ficials attempted to find the surviv ing members of Foster’s family and ask permission to move the former president’s remains to a more “appro priate” site. While administrators searched, Hal Moseley, a friend of the Foster family, initiated a proposal to move Foster’s remains. In a letter written in 1955 to George Smith, chairman of an A&M committee, Moseley complained about the cemetery. “It is a crime the way President Foster’s remains have been treated,” Moseley wrote. “Maybe with the help of Professor Leland’s committee (the cemetery committee) and alumni See Cemetery, Page 5