The Battalion
)lume 103 • Issue 124 • 12 Pages
The Batt Online: http:// bat-web.tamu.edu
Tuesday, April 8, 1997
alogen lamp causes blaze
Four apartment units were destroyed in yesterday's blaze
' ■ ^ ;
.
H
Pat James, The Battalion
^College Station firefighter goes into a burning unit
Travis House Apartments.
By Joey Jeanette Schlueter
The Battalion
When James Westbrook came home from work yester
day, he had to wade through water and ashes to get to his
apartment, which was spared by the fire that engulfed 12
apartments in the Travis House apartment complex.
At 10:18 a.m., the College Station Fire Department
received a call to extinguish a fire at the complex on
505 Harvey Road. Four apartments were destroyed by
the blaze, and eight others sustained smoke and wa
ter damage.
Westbrook, a junior management major, said he was
shocked after coming home to the fire.
“I feel angry it happened,” he said. “But there’s noth
ing you can do about it.”
The Travis House Apartments' fire is the second fire
in the area this year. Kensington Place Apartments had
a similar fire which resulted in the death of a Texas A&M
student in January.
Two residents were injured in the Travis House fire
and taken to Columbia Medical Hospital. They were re
leased with minor injuries related to smoke inhalation
and minor burns.
Fire Marshall Raymond Olsen said the fire was
caused by a halogen lamp which fell onto a couch in
apartment No. 97.
“Halogen lamps get extremely hot,” Olsen said. “If you
put a piece of paper near one, it will bum up immediately.”
Black smoke and soot poured out of vents along the top
of the apartment building from the back. In the apartment
where dre fire began, the exterior kitchen wall is gone, and
the stove and refrigerator are charred.
Olsen said the apartments were equipped with
smoke detectors which all functioned properly.
David Anspach, head of maintenance for Travis
House, said the fire spread quickly.
“All I heard was a bunch of smoke alarms going off,”
he said, “and then I saw the blaze.”
Anspach said his first reaction was to get the people
out of the burning building.
“I had to kick in the door to see if anyone was inside
one of the units,” he said. “One guy jumped off the back
balcony, and the others were forced to go down a ladder.
In five minutes the fire engulfed the apartments.”
Jason Rolf, a freshman microbiology major, lives at
the end of the building that caught fire. He said he was
sleeping and was awakened around 10 a.m.
“I woke up to someone yelling ‘fire,’” he said.
The fire burned for approximately two hours. Resi-
Pat James, The Battalion
A College Station firefighter sprays water on yesterday's
fire at Travis House Apartments on Harvey Road.
dents of Travis House stood near the pool and watched
as firefighters attempted to control the fire.
Nicole Merritt, a resident of Kensington Place, said
she could see the fire from her apartment.
See Fire, Page 5
Teaching T(tier a nee
peaker focuses
jn stereotypes
By Melissa Nunnery
The Battalion
“A battle is going on over whose
merica this is,” Morris Dees, a known
vil rights activist, said last night in
tidder Theatre.
Dees, founder of the Southern Pover
ty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., ad
dressed racial, social, economic and
\ sexual stereotypes and divisions in his
achingTolerance Program sponsored
MSC Great Issues. About 400 people
ended the event which was followed
yaquestion-and-answer session.
Rebecca Skomal, chair of the MSC
teat Issues committee and a junior ge-
etic biochemistry major, said she was
kd to see so many different people at-
tid the program.
I “(When I heard about Dees] I
eught ‘what an incredible program,’
ipecially in conjunction with Whoop-
:ock because this is Unity Week,”
komal said. “[It is] an incredible op-
brtunity to hear someone like Morris
fees, to hear the progress that’s been
lade and the things that still need to
I done.”
Dees has won precedent-setting law
suits against the Ku Klux Klan, skin
heads and other racist groups. His life
has been threatened and his offices
have been burned by his opponents.
He said the deepest divide in the
United States today is along racial lines.
The riots resulting from the Rodney
King verdict will pale in comparison to
the consequences of Americans not
learning tolerance, he said.
"As our country moves into the next
millennium ... unless we learn to get
along with each other, unless we learn
to live together, those riots will look like
a Sunday picnic,” he said.
Dees told the audience that Ameri
ca is great because of its diversity, not
in spite of it.
Americans of all backgrounds are an
gry and frustrated with the division in
the country, he said.
“ [Whites say] the civil rights move
ment is over and ‘they’ have had plenty
of time to catch up,” Dees said. “What I
have found out... is we have much more
in common than separates us.”
See Dees, Page 5
Pastor: Homosexuality is
enetic, uncontrollable
mv. Piazza equated
homophobia to racism.
By Beniamin Cheng
The Battalion
The homosexuality of God and the
ight of gays and lesbians in society
re discussed by Rev. Michael S. Pi-
za at Friends Congregational
urch yesterday as Gay Awareness
feek continued.
Piazza is the senior pastor at the
ithedral of Hope Metropolitan Corn-
Unity Church in Dallas, which is the
rgest gay and lesbian church in the na-
>n. He is the author of the book Holy
omosexuals: The Truth About Being
ty or Lesbian and Christian.
Piazza said fundamental Christians
quently misuse text in the Bible that
indemns homosexuality. He said re
arch has shown that homosexuality
genetic.
“We cannot control who we love,”
Jsaid.
Piazza said Jesus had both hetero-
xual and homosexual feelings and
at he struggled with ways to live
th his sexuality. He said Christians
Quid embrace God as both a man
da woman.
“Humans aren’t comfortable living
ambiguity,” Piazza said. “We want
gid roles.”
Piazza said homophobia is compa
re to racism in that people tend to
eate an image of God in relation to the
•Hge of the people in power.
“Pat Robertson prays to a God that
)0 ks amazingly like Pat,” he said.
C ^
Tim Moog, The Battalion
Rev. Michael S. Piazza speaks at the
Friends Congregational Church in Col
lege Station Monday night.
Rev. Charles Stark, pastor of Friends
Congregational Church, said sexual ori
entation is not a choice and Jesus never
condemned homosexuality.
“God doesn’t close the door on the
people he created,” Stark said.
Phyllis Frederiksen, a member of the
church, said homosexuality is not a sin.
"We accept people the way they are,”
she said, “the way God made them.”
See Piazza, Page 5
Computer Wiz
Rogge Heflin, The Battalion
Greg Hubenak, a senior engineering technology major, updates software in the control
computers in a College Station ALERT vehicle.
Plains residents expect more flooding
► Crews continue to
stack sandbags in
the wake of spring
blizzard.
GRANITE FALLS, Minn. (AP)
—Volunteers raced to stack more
sandbags Monday, afraid that the
meltdown from a spring blizzard
could worsen what is already
some of the most severe flooding
on the northern Plains in years.
Across the Plains, fields were
sheets .of white stretching to the
horizon after a storm over the
weekend left more than 2 feet of
snow in places.
In northwestern Minnesota,
along the Red River that forms
the state line with North Dakota,
bright sunshine melted a little
snow, but the real thaw is ex
pected Thursday or Friday, said
Mark Seeley, climatologist with
the University of Minnesota Ex
tension Service.
“Everything predicted for the
Red is a flood of historic propor
tions,” he said.
The National Weather Service
issued a flood warning extending
for the next two weeks along parts
of three rivers in other parts of
Minnesota — the Minnesota,
Mississippi and St. Croix.
There is no quick way to gauge
how bad the flooding might be
come once the snow melts, but 4
to 5 inches of heavy, late-season
snow could be equal to 1 inch of
rain, Seeley said.
In Granite Falls, wind-blown
snow stung the faces of work
ers stacking sandbags on the
levees as they worked to pro
tect about 40 homes along the
Minnesota River.
Flood victims and weary out-
of-town volunteers trapped by the
snowstorm stuck it out in a shel
ter at a high school gym.
Residents were told to drink
bottled water after sewage
backed up into the Granite Falls
water supply.
See Floods, Page 5
Flooding in the northern plains
A weekend blizzard compounded weather woes in the
Plains states. A look at flooding and blizzard conditions:
NORTH DAKOTA
' ra ^
Missouri Red River of
CANADA
MM
aetiiir
River
\
© Bismarck
i
JL / /
4
/
Pierre
SOUTH DAKOTA
• Halstad
« Fargo [jZ'JBS&lS
Wahpeton [jOjfcfcJ!
MINNESOTA ^
Montevideo
Mankato
mm
NEBRASKA
IOWA
50 miles
50 km
Source: Accu-Weather
AP/Wm. J. Gastello
Drill instructor pleads guilty to sexual acts
ABERDEEN PROVING
GROUND, Md. (AP) — A former
drill instructor pleaded guilty
Monday to having sex with 11
trainees in violation of Army rules
but denied charges he raped eight
women under his command.
Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson,
32, said he had sex with subordi
nates in his office, his home and
at a hotel on another military
base. In most cases, he said, the
sex was initiated either by the
woman or by both partners.
“She would come to my of
fice and we would engage in
conversation and one thing
would just lead to another, sir,”
he told a military judge, de
scribing one encounter.
The 13-year enlisted man
pleaded guilty to a total of 16
counts alleging he had sex or oth
erwise engaged in improper con
duct toward a subordinate at the
Ordinance Center and School at
Aberdeen Proving Ground.
Each of the charges carries up
to two years in prison and dis
honorable discharge.
He pleaded innocent to 21
counts of rape and to 57 other
counts, including forcible
sodomy, robbery and extortion.
He could get life in prison if con
victed of a single count of rape.
His trial could begin this week.
See Instructor, Page 5
The Battalion
Insidetoday
rolling, ROLLING: The
A&M Women’s Tennis
Team is on a Big 12 roll.
Sports, Page 7
Aggie life
Opinion
Page3
Page11