The Battalion
Volume 103 • Issue 131 • 12 Pages
The Batt Online: http:// bat-web.tamu.edu
Thursday, April 17, 1997
Childers begins term of student body president
a of
lac
By Rebecca Torrellas
The Battalion
Curtis Childers, a junior agri-
Itural development major, was
ivorn in as student body presi-
[ent last night at the Student
mate meeting, although he has
[ready begun some duties.
Childers has selected his ex-
utive council and has met
ith members of the adminis-
ation and Texas A&M Board
[Regents.
“It’s amazing how immedi-
elyyou become a source for
people,” Childers said. “You re
alize all your time belongs to
43,000 students.”
Childers said current student
body president Carl Baggett has
walked him through the respon
sibilities of the office and has
been a great help.
“Carl advised me to block
out two to three hours a week
for personal maintenance,”
Childers said.
Baggett said he told
Childers to remember he rep
resents the students.
“A student body president
is a representative,” he said, “a
resource and advocate for the
students.”
Baggett said he had a great
year with the help of several or
ganizations on campus.
“With the work of Chris
Williams, president of Memori
al Student Center, Stephen Fos
ter with the Corps Of Cadets, Ja
son Jordan with Interfraternity
Council, Eric Curley and the
Black Awareness Committee, as
well as other organizations on
campus, we were able to co
program and communicate on
issues in a more effective way
than in the past.” Baggett said.
Childers said individual
committee chairs should be se
lected during the summer to
begin ground work for the fall.
Jeremiah Williams, vice
president of student relations
and a junior agricultural eco
nomics major, said it is easier
to talk to the administration
during the summer when stu
dents are gone.
“This summer we’re going
after administration and start
pushing Curtis’ platform,”
Williams said. “When the
[Student] Senate meets in the
fall, all the research can al
ready be done.”
Kristen Paris, executive vice
president and junior biomed
ical science major, has worked
with both Childers and Baggett
and said their differing leader
ship styles are both effective.
“Both are very welcoming to
ideas,” she said.
Paris said she wants to ensure
her position is one of action.
See Childers, Page 6
Derek Demere, The Battalion
Student Body President Curtis Childers is sworn in
at the Student Senate meeting Wednesday night.
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Ryan Rogers, The Battalion
C(\f> f'pycx RirHc ( IWfarisol Salazar, a junior wildlife and fisheries sciences major, feeds Avery and Zea, two of the 39 ostriches
vvll VI U1I Via \ cared for at the WrtdYtfe and Exotic Animals Center.
/Vrtfest '97 showcases student work
By Graham Harvey
The Battalion
Artfest ‘97 began last night in the Visual Arts
iallery of the Memorial Student Center, inviting
be students and faculty ofTexas A&M to view and
Appreciate student art for the rest of the semester.
Clyde Brown, a senior environmental design
najor and former chair of the Visual Arts Com-
nittee, helped organize the event.
“The purpose of the Visual Arts Committee is
a increase awareness of art on campus,” Brown
aid. “Artfest is an effective way to do that be-
jause it profiles student art.”
Fight Night
By Rebecca Torrellas
The Battalion
Kappa Sigma is sponsoring Fight
fight, 10 boxing matches pitting fira-
arnity members against members of
fie Corps of Cadets, tonight at 8 at
akeview Dance Hall onTabor Road.
Danny Webber, a Kappa Sigma
Member and a senior agricultural
tgineering major, said the com-
'etitors have undergone basic box-
straining.
"They’ve been in mandatory
Artfest is a prize-oriented contest, Brown said,
with artwork separated into the categories of
painting, drawing, computer-generated art,
sculpture and photography. First, second and
third prizes are awarded for each category, as
well as honorable mentions. Artfest also pre
sents a best-of-show award, Brown said.
Students entered 105 works of art this year,
some with multiple entries. More than half of
the contestants, who paid a $5 entry fee, are ar
chitecture majors.
Three art professionals from fine arts
schools throughout the nation judged the con
test, and winners received gift certificates from
local art supply stores.
“Artfest is an opportunity to see first-hand that
students all over campus are participating in art,
even though there’s no fine arts college,” Brown said.
Colin Davis, a senior environmental design
major, submitted two oil paintings to the contest.
He said one of his photography professors en
couraged him to enter.
One of the works was completed while Davis
was studying in Italy. It metaphorically depicts
his observations of the city, including such struc
tures as rooftops and towers, he said.
See Artfest, Page 6
drps, fraternity host fight for charity
training for two months,” Webber
said. “They are also members of the
U.S.A. Amateur Boxing Association.”
Webber said the matches will
consist of three, one-minute rounds.
Each fighter will receive a trophy.
Advance tickets are available for
$6 at Rother’s or Marooned Records
and $8 at the door.
Webber said a portion of the
profits will go to the Make-A-Wish
Foundation.
“It is a charity that takes care of
terminally ill children,” Webber said.
“They help the cMdren do what they
wish to do before they go.”
Webber said the fraternity
promised the charity $1,000.
David Hakimi, a Kappa Sigma
member and a senior political sci
ence major, said getting together
with the Corps to set up the fights
was a good idea.
“There have been fights with fra
ternities against other fraternities,”
Hakimi said. “Now we have a twist
to it with the rivalry, which makes
things different.”
fxperts examine 'fuzzy' citizenship tests
i So, you ’d like to be an American..
Here are 10 of the 100 sample questions that Immigration and
Naturalization Service employees use to test would-be citizens’
knowledge of U.S. history and government. The answers follow.
jk How many stripes
v are on the flag?
2 Why do we celebrate
the Fourth of July?
. ^ Who elects the president
of the United States?
What is the Constitution?
. . What are the names of
5 each of the branches of
our government?
/: Who said “Give me liberty
u or give me death?"
y What is the basic belief
' of the Declaration of
Independence?
ft What is the national anthem
of the United States?
9 Who signs bills from
Congress into law?
10 Name one right guaranteed
■ by the First Amendment.
Answers
1.13. 2. To celebrate Americans’ anniversary of their independence. 3. The
electoral college. 4. The supreme, or highest law of the land. 5. Legislative,
executive, judicial. 6. Patrick Henry 7. That all men are created equal.
8. The Star-Spangled Banner. 9. The president. 10. The First Amendment
guarantees the freedom of speech, press, religion, peaceable assembly
and requesting (petitioning) for changes in the government.
WASHINGTON (AP) — To become an
American citizen, Yolanda Bolanos of
Maryland had to answer three questions
about the U.S. government and write the-
sentence, “How is the day today?”
An immigration officer in California
fired 10 questions at Juan Noguera, in
cluding fairly tough ones like: “How many
amendments are there to the Constitu
tion?” (Answer: 27.)
“It’s the luck of the draw,” says Blossom
Chen, a teacher who helps immigrants at
the E. Manfred Evans Community Adult
School in Los Angeles.
The government’s fuzzy test guidelines
are getting more attention at a time when
the number of citizenship applications is
increasing wildly in response to the new
welfare law and a crackdown on illegal im
migrants. An estimated 1.8 million people
will apply for citizenship this year, up from
300,000 in 1992.
Struggling to keep up, the Immigration
Council votes to
close busy street
Only northbound traffic will be
allowed through Munson Avenue
By Joey Jeanette Schlueter
The Battalion
Residents’ complaints of exces
sive traffic have prompted the par
tial closing of one end of College
Station’s Munson Av
enue in in two to
three weeks.
The College Sta
tion City Council vot
ed last Thursday to
temporarily close the
street allowing only
northbound traffic.
Munson Avenue
connects Harvey
Road and Lincoln Av
enue. The closure will
stop traffic entering
Munson from Lin
coln and redesign the intersection
to better accommodate traffic
around the neighborhood. Ash-
burn Avenue, which is parallel to
MuiisoivwLll be barricaded as well
to avoid traffic from making a de
tour through the residential area.
City transportation planner Ed
Hard said the road would be closed
to target southbound traffic.
“We have to get the necessary
equipment for the partial closing,”
he said, “and we have to buy addi-
“The road is
bumpy and not
well lit. I have
kids, and I am
concerned/^
Cliff Lareson
College Station resident
tional special signs.”
About 7,000 cars travel through
the area each day. The closing and
redesigning of the avenue will re
duce that number by half.
Cliff Lareson, a College Station
resident whose house
is located on Mun
son, attended the city
council meeting. He
said the traffic along
Munson is a major
problem for the
neighborhood.
“The road is
bumpy and not well
lit,” Lareson said. “I
have kids, and I am
concerned. I think
the city should do
something to keep
all the traffic from making a short
cut through town.”
Angela Perry, a resident of the
University Oaks duplexes and a
business graduate student, said she
uses Munson to drive to and from
campus each day.
“I go down Munson because it is
easier and quicker than going down
Texas to Harvey Road,” she said.
“You may have to stop at a couple of
stop signs, but at least it is not a lot
of traffic and red lights.”
Survivors observe
50th anniversary of
Texas City disaster
Chad Hatfield, a Kappa Sigma
member and a junior wildlife and
fisheries sciences major, said the
event was inspired by a similar
event at Southwest Texas State
University.
“It’s a unique system here at A&M
since we have the Corps,” Hatfield
said. “Makes it more interesting.”
Hatfield said this is the first
year Kappa Sigma has sponsored
the fight.
“We hope to make it a tradition,”
Hatfield said.
and Naturalization Service has hired a con
sulting firm to do a $4.3 million review of the
naturalization process from application to
oath — the third such study in three years.
Immigrant advocates and experts say
qualified applicants sometimes fail be
cause their accents are too heavy for the
examiner to understand, an examiner
simply has had a bad day or because they
can not answer obscure questions such as
“What is the Ninth Amendment?” (An
swer: It states that Americans may enjoy
rights not mentioned in the Constitution.)
Yin-Man Che recently sat down with an
immigration officer in Los Angeles who
quizzed him about matters on his appli
cation such as the Constitution, polygamy,
allegiance, drugs and the armed forces.
“I replied, but the examiner just stared
at me,” recalled the 68-year-old retired
Chinese cook. “The examiner looked at me
in a blank way and said ‘goodbye.’ So I said
‘goodbye’ back and left.”
TEXAS CITY, Texas (AP) — It was
sunny just like that Wednesday in
1947. This time, though, it was
peaceful.
Fifty years to the minute after a
French freighter exploded in the
Texas City harbor, gray-haired sur
vivors bowed their heads in a mo
ment of silence, remembering the
576 people who died in the nation’s
worst industrial disaster.
“If it was just a little bit cooler, it
would be an exact replica of the day
50 years ago,” said Jeanne Mc
Cauley, nodding at the blue sky
streaked with white, wispy clouds.
“It was just like this, and within an
hour, it was just like midnight.”
An explosion at 9:12 a.m. aboard
the S.S. Grandcamp, loaded with
2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate
fertilizer, shattered windows up to
25 miles away and blew two small
planes out of the sky.
The blast caused other explo
sions and fires in the huge petro
chemical complex of the Galveston
Bay city. A 15-foot tidal wave tossed
a 150-foot-long barge 200 feet away
onto land. It took nearly a week to
put out all the fires.
The disaster injured about 5,000
people. Nearly a third ofTexas City’s
residents were either killed or hurt.
“It was really like the war had
started all over again,” said Mc
Cauley, describing the horror of see
ing injured people being taken to
hospitals. “Some of their arms were
dangling. I saw one man whose face
was split down the center and hang
ing open.”
Mattie Lou Higgs was one of the
many survivors among the 4,000
people attending the memorial ser
vice. Her 31-year-old husband and
26 other firefighters died when the
Grandcamp exploded.
“When he was leaving the house,
there was just a feeling that came
over me that I would never see him
again,” she recalled, wiping her eyes.
“He was backing the car out of the
driveway, and I ran out and called to
him, ‘Please, be careful,’ but I don’t
know whether he heard me.”
Higgs’ granddaughter sat be
side her on a wooden bench in the
high school football stadium.
A 9-year-old great-grand
daughter joined other children to
sing “Each of us is a flower” for
the crowd.
“It always helps,” said Higgs,
who has attended other commem
orations over the years, “to know
that other people care.”
The city’s fire chief rang a sin
gle bell 50 times to toll the years
gone by. Sixty-three wreaths of
red and white flowers — one for
each of the graves of unknown
victims — later were taken to
Memorial Park cemetery.
The Battalion
INSIDETODAY
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