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
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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
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ch
urns, spins,
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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