The Battalion
olume 103 • Issue 116 • 20 Pages (2 sections)
The Bait Online: http:// hat vveb.taimi.edu
Wednesday Marsh 26 199.
ompany restricts
se of trademark
By Benjamin Cheng
The Battalion
Selling a T-shirt with “Class of2000” on it may
hazardous to your legal bill.
Class of 2000 Inc., a company in San Diego,
■, has Uademarked the phrase “Class of2000”as
lescriptive mark for licensing and the selling of
arel such as T-shirts, caps and sweatshirts.
“Please don’t mess with our registered
demark, or you could end up behind bars
(yond the year 2000,” one of their advertise-
nts reads.
Rich Soergel, marketing director for Class of
0 Inc., said his company plans to prevent
ir trademark from appearing in products at
ail stores.
“No one will be in retail stores with a ‘Class
2000’ product,” Soergel said. “We’re going to
;vent that.”
Soergel companies already violating the
demark will receive cease and desist letters
rning them of the infringement.
"Our legal bills are going to be phenome-
1," he said.
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all right:a reserved
James Vineyard, The Battalion
Soergel said Class of 2000 Inc. does not plan
on preventing schools from selling apparel with
their trademark on it. Instead, he said his com
pany wants to work with schools in selling prod
ucts with “Class of 2000” on it.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted
the trademark to Class of2000 Inc. on Nov. 19,1996.
Class of 2000 Inc. is applying to expand the trade
marks to other consumer goods such as back
packs, candy bars and beverages and also has ap
plied for the trademark in Europe and Japan.
See Trademark, Page 12
Seminar focuses on diversity
Guest speakers led discussions on
gender, family issues and society
By Laura Oliveira
The Battalion
Through activities and guest speak
ers, professionals from Texas were invit
ed to break down barriers to communi
cation between culturally diverse groups
at the Cross-Cultural Communication
seminar Tuesday.
The seminar, hosted by Texas A&M
University’s Race and Ethnic Studies In
stitute, included sessions on gender,
family issues and on understanding bi
ases and assumptions made in society.
Dr. Woodrow Jones, Jr., dean of Lib
eral Arts, said the seminar focused on
the similarities that groups share.
“Anytime you have an ‘us’ and a
‘them,’ you are going to be frustrated
because you will not be able to com
municate effectively,” he said.
Christina Morse, a representative
from Triangle AIDS Network in Beau
mont, said the conference was effective.
“We are always working with dif
ferent cultures and we need to be
aware of them,” she said.
Dr. Sheila Ramsey, an intercultural
relations consultant and keynote
speaker, led the closing seminar.
Three activities involving perception,
fundamental assumptions and role
expectations were presented.
Ramsey demonstrated how cul
tures develop assumptions about sim
ple everyday activities by pretending
not to know how to put on a coat. The
participants were asked to explain the
process step by step.
Ramsey said people of other cul
tures may be completely clueless to is
sues other cultures take for granted.
She said cultures should be seen as
a whole, but individuals within the
culture also should be recognized.
“One of those ways is to drop the
stereotype, invite them into your
home, and get to know the person,”
Robert McKay, The Battauon
Myra Winters and Sambra Davis
take notes at a cultural workshop
hosted by Dr. Sheila Ramsey in Rudder
tower Tuesday.
she said.
The second activity involved illus
trating a pattern that participants
tried to identify.
See Seminar, Page 12
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Pat James, The Battalion
Natural Selection
Jessica Allin, a sophomore environmental
science major, picks snapdragons from the
garden in front of the horticulture greenhouse.
Nye aims for high-quality education
By Rebecca Torrellas
The Battalion
Erie A. Nye chairs the executive board
Texas Utility Electric, serves as president
► Part three in a four-part series.
of three majorTexas utility companies and
works on his Model A Ford in his free time.
He also will be joining the Texas A&M
University System Board of Regents today.
Born in 1940 in Fort Worth, Nye grad
uated from A&M in 1959 with a bachelor
of science in electrical engineering and
received a doctor of jurisprudence from
Southern Methodist University.
“I am pursuing excellence, accessibil
ity of the System, to continue to provide
high-quality education, and to celebrate
the quality of education and the staff,”
Nye said.
Nye said his connection to A&M is
Nye
emotional as well as
intellectual. His father
graduated from A&M
in 1939, his father-in-
law graduated in
1932, as a member of
the cavalry, and two of
his five children are
former students.
Jim Ashlock, execu
tive director of Univer
sity Relations, said
Nye, as president ofTexas Utilities Compa
ny and Texas Utility Fuel Company, is one
of the most prominent figures in the state.
“He is distinct by achievement and
dedicated to students and the System,”
Ashlock said.
Chancellor Barry Thompson said Nye
is an excellent addition to the Board of
Regents because he pursues problems
and solves them in an effective way.
“He is very analytical and intense
when it comes to solving a problem,”
Thompson said. “He has a good under
standing of how the world is changing.”
Janice Wallace, Nye’s senior executive
secretary, said although he is serious about
his work, working with him is enjoyable
because of his wonderful sense of humor.
Nye also serves as president ofTexas
Utility Mining Company, chairs the Col
lege Of Engineering External Advisory
and Development Council and is a
member of the Development Advisory
Committee of the Texas A&M Develop
ment Foundation.
His concern for students also extends
to his hometown of Dallas.
Nye serves as chair of the Superinten
dent’s Advisory Committee of Dallas
Public Schools and is on the boards of
The Dallas Foundation and the Boys’ and
Girls’ Clubs of America.
Cable company works to cut down
on theft with marketing campaign
By Kathleen Strickland
The Battalion
Beginning April 4, TCA Cable TV will
crack down on cable theft by leaving hang-
tags on the doors of Bryan and College Sta
tion residents who are stealing cable.
Jacqui Rapacki, marketing coordinator
for TCA Cable, said the main purpose of
the campaign is to inform residents that
cable theft is a misdemeanor.
“We have always had an ongoing au
diting campaign,” Rapacki said. “How
ever, what we want to do is inform peo
ple that cable theft is against the law
and give people the chance to become
paying customers.
“We are always trying to gain cus
tomers. We are doing this to help in
those efforts.”
Rapacki said several methods exist to
detect cable theft, but declined to com
ment on them.
Tom Way, assistant general manager of
TCA Cable, said in a press release that ca
ble thieves “have 10 days to become pay
ing customers or risk being prosecuted to
the fullest extent of the law.”
Texas Penal Code states that cable theft
is a Class B misdemeanor and illegally in
stalling cable for someone
else for money is a Class A
misdemeanor.
Phillip Prasifka, a de
tective with the College
Station Police Depart
ment, said cable theft is
not a crime that is usually
reported, but it is a fre
quent occurrence.
“For the Class B misde
meanor they can face up
to 180 days in jail and/or a $2,000 fine,”
Prasifka said. “For the Class A misde
meanor, they face up to a year in jail
and/or a $4,000 fine.”
Rapacki said TCA Cable will not pursue
prosecution immediately.
“We would like to give them a chance
to hook up to cable services,” Rapacki said.
“We have always
had an ongoing
auditing campaign.’
Jaqui Rapacki
Marketing coordinator,
TCA Cable
“We will leave a note or tag on their door
saying that we disconnected their service
and explaining some of our cable deals.”
“If it is hooked back up again, we will
attempt to find the person at home and
give them another
chance to hook up.
We also will request
that they sign a pa
per stating that TCA
Cable gave them no
tice that cable theft
is a crime.”
Way said, in the
press release, that
cable theft affects
everyone.
“The cable company sees losses
through decreased revenue,” he said. “The
cities see losses through the reduction of
franchise fees (tax dollars).”
“Theft also undermines the value of the
service in the mind of the paying cus
tomer and increases our costs, resulting in
higher prices for honest consumers.”
By Marissa Alanis
The Battalion
Inferior fire detectors are in-
alled in the majority of homes,
ie study says.
Research conducted by Dr. B.
'on Russell, associate dean of en-
ineering and deputy director of
ost homes suffer from faulty fire detectors, study says
The Battalion
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the Texas Engineering Experiment
Station, indicates that about 90
percent of smoke detectors in
homes sense fire and smoke by us
ing an ionization chamber that
may not detect certain types of
fires quickly enough.
“Ionization detectors are faster
than most other techniques on
flaming fires,” Russell said. “How
ever, they are not as timely in de
tecting flameless combustion like
smoldering fires caused by some
thing like electrical shorts or ciga
rettes in upholstery.”
Lt. Mike Ruesink, public educa
tion officer of the College Station
Fire Department, said smoke
causes more deaths than fire.
“Photoelectrics will work on a
smoldering fire, where you have
mass quantities of smoke,”
Ruesink said.
Two of the more dangerous fac
tors with smoke are density and
toxicity. Neither ionization cham
ber nor photoelectric smoke de
tectors sense toxic gasses carried
by smoke.
Russell said the ionization
chamber industry designed the
detector to recognize a fire based
on a minimum smoke level.
“They’re not concerned that a fire
could be burning for
30 or 40 minutes,”
Russell said. “They’re
only concerned
when it’s reached a
certain level of
smoke density.”
Russell said ion
ization chamber
detectors work bet
ter at preventing
death from fire, but
may not detect
slowly burning or smoldering fires
that give off toxic gasses.
Russell said a photoelectric
smoke detector works much faster
than an ionization chamber de
tector in wide-range types of
smoke and smoldering fires, such
as electrical shorts or cigarette
burns in upholstery.
“Sometimes, types of fire and
smoke in question would’ve been
“We'd rather have
people be fire
safe than rely on
a fire detector."
Lt. Mike Ruesink
Public education officer
detected with photoelectric detec
tors,” Russell said.
Ruesink said he does not advo
cate one or the other but empha
sizes fire safety first.
“We’d rather have
people be fire safe
than rely on a fire
detector,” Ruesink
said. “Prevent the
fires rather than
worrying about de
tecting them.”
Russell said
homes should be
equipped with both
types of detectors.
“On a given fire,
one may detect the fire more easi
ly and quickly than the other one,”
he said.
Ionization chamber smoke de
tectors house a tiny radiation ele
ment generating ions. Smoke in
vading the chamber attaches to
the ions, triggering the alarm.
Photoelectric smoke detectors
emit a^beam of light, which is scat
tered in the presence of smoke. Pho
tocells in the detector sense the re
flected light and sound the alarm.
Ionization chamber smoke de
tectors are relatively inexpensive,
which accounts for their high use
in homes. However, photoelectric
detectors cost between $20 to $30
and are not as widely used.
Russell said photoelectric de
tectors are produced in smaller
quantities, which results in the
higher cost.
“The question today is Are they
getting the best detector today for
their money?”’ he said.
“The answer is ‘no.’ The right an
swer would be to stop making inferi
or detectors.”
Ruesink said a newer, dual
smoke detector has been engi
neered which includes both the
ionization chamber and photo
electric sensors, but the final prod
uct will be double the cost.
“Instead of having one for $20,
you’ll have one for $40,” Ruesink
said. “You won’t have any better
protection than you have now.”
Russell said local, state and fed
James Vineyard, The Battalion
eral regulations should be re
designed to increase standards for
smoke detectors. Detectors are
tested by Underwriters Laborato
ries, a company that conducts per
formance tests on different types
of equipment.
“The Underwriters Laboratories
tests smoke detectors to a minimum
smoke detector capability,” Russell
said. “It’s an inadequate test. It doesn't
cover the broad range of smoke.”
See Fire Detectors, Page 12