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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (July 21, 1997)
Texas ASeM University vM Today Tomorrow See extended forecast, Page 2. jme 103 • Issue 167 • 6 Pages College Station, TX Monday, July 21, 1997 Iews I at EX sponsors fire hool at Brayton tore than 3,000 firefighters from jssthe state will attend the 68th ual Texas Municipal Fire Training ool that begins today, he Texas Engineering Extension /ice(TEEX) is sponsoring the six-day tat the Brayton Fire Training Field. t8 p.m. Wednesday, a public ronstration on the fire field will leld. lick Perry, agriculture commission- nd candidate for lieutenant gover- tour the facilities on Wednes- and attend a dinner at the Brazos iter with State Sen. Steve Ogden State Rep. Dan Kubiak. IS I!'! It..:..: Briefs Ags voice concerns on grave site relocation tent of active researchers in- nationally in their field. rofessor recognized ireconomics research l Jhe: W Itf ie National Youth Sports ogram wrapped up at xas A&M this weekend. See Page 3. ano: Television medium erloads American public th extremist news coverage. See Page 5. SPORTS OPINION ONLINE %;//bat-webTamo.edu e e links the FBI Lepage. ien feM honors civil gineering head Dr. Ignacio Rodriguez-lturbe, head he Texas A&M Department of Civ- ngineering, was named a distin- tied professor at A&M. Ihe title is effective Sept. 1. Rodriguez-lturbe is the author of rbooks and more than 150 acad- 'fj lie articles. He has received Pjards in Latin America, Europe and United States. Candidates for this title must be ^inated and ranked in the top five Photograph: Tim Moog Some Aggies are protesting the possible relocation of Reveilles’ grave site. (AP) — Talk to students at Texas A&M about what makes the nation’s third largest university special and they’ll tell you, one after the other— tradition. In the new student handbook, several pages detail the school’s folklore, including the five- story-high bonfire before football games against rival Texas, the Aggie yells and how stu dents symbolize the “12th man” by standing through football games. But none is more important than A&M’s purebred American collie mascot, Reveille. Reveilles I through IV—there have been six dating back to 1931 — were buried with their paws and faces pointed so they could look through the north tunnel at Kyle Field and see the stadium scoreboard. It’s understandable then, that when the ad ministration announced the grave site was be ing moved to accommodate a $30 million ex pansion of Kyle Field, a number of devoted Aggies didn’t take it lightly. Before proceeding with stadium expansion plans, officials in the athletic department gained approval from a committee of students representing the school’s Traditions Council, Student Senate and E-2, the company of cadets responsible for Reveille. But after outraged faxes, letters and e-mails started coming into E-2 cadets, Jeff King, who will be E-2 commander in the fall, began having second thoughts about moving the grave site. ^ ^ ... We underestimated the amount of alums who were opposed to the idea. Jeff King E-2 Commander “At the time, we underestimated the amount of alums who were opposed to the idea,” King said. The grave site is supposed to be moved in the near future to a garden area across the Svetozar Pejovich, a Texas A&M onomics professor, won the Tem- ton Award for Excellence in Higher for his work in the area of opertyrights and the “new institu- mal economics.” teilutional economics examines ie relationship between economics tyi(ithepoMca\ and legal systems. Mbe award is sponsored by the raiTempleton Foundation. Pejovich's name will be placed on Templeton Honor Rolls as part iie award. it j eteran pilot dies »fiile testing plane era 8R0WNSVILLE (AP) — A veteran loyflwho designed aircraft as long as the 1940s died Sunday onienhis self-built experimental lani fie crashed during a test, jntli fllis V. Eichman, 84, had just taken iihis plane, Aerobat Three, on Sun- morning when it went down at itifwisville Air Center. ‘The plane did not even get 6 feet off toifffound before it just flipped over,” oi URalph Mark, manager of the aircen- 1 can’t imagine what went wrong.” alMark said Eichman had been flying planes for a couple of years at the wnsville Air Center. Residents evacuate Alabama Hurricane Danny caused flooding in coastal areas GULF SHORES, Ala. (AP) — Flooding caused by Hurricane Danny’s torrential rain forced scores of people to evacuate Sunday as rushing water washed out roads and poured through homes. The storm, downgraded to a tropical depression as it weakened and drifted into the Florida Pan handle, left thousands without power, boats wrecked and homes damaged in southern Alaba ma. One death was blamed on the storm. More than 30 inches of rain had fallen on the Alabama coast over three days, with even more concentrated on Mobile Bay, where Danny stalled for most of Saturday, the National Weath er Service said. By comparison, the total rainfall for all of last year at Mobile’s airport was j ust over 66 inches. Rescue teams using boats and Humvees evacuated scores of people from coastal com munities Sunday. At Fish River, authorities said 125 people were evacuated, many by boat from half-submerged homes. At one point the water became so rough that one boat capsized and forced a brief suspen sion of rescue efforts. Some evacuees said only the water was so high along Fish River that only the tops of some roofs were visible. However, the evacuation was not mandatory, and a couple of dozen people apparently decided to stay, said Jim Sabell, chief of the fire department for Fish River and a rescue team leader. National Guard officials said they were in no im mediate danger. The storm was downgraded from a tropical storm to a tropical depression during the morning when its maximum sustained wind eased to less than 39 mph. By 10 a.m., that top wind speed was down to 35 mph. The storm was moving toward the north-north- east and was expected to continue weakening as it moved inland, the National Weather Service said. sil u I street from the stadium until the expansion is completed in 1999. Then they are to be moved to a new, larger, tree-lined plaza with lights, just outside the north end of the stadium. But the tunnel that opened to the grave site would be filled in with an elevator shaft leading to luxury sky boxes. “I respect the leadership at Texas A&M for their forthrightfulness in planning for a modern, first-class facility,” said Robert Keathley, a retired school teacher in Corsicana who graduated from A&M in 1961 and comes from a prominent fam ily of Aggie alums. “But the case of the Reveille grave site and tunnel view being traded for a large elevator shaft to provide access to private apartment sky boxes, is just too much of a violation of the spirit of Aggieland.” Keathley said he plans to form a group called “Friends of Reveille” to keep the grave site from being moved. Said A&M Athletic Director Wally Groff: “Nobody liked the idea of having to do it, but it wasn’t practical to build around them so we proceeded with the plan. fill*: Jfil i :| w&i . i. ’l’•$ •&•#■>& JrtL • wAi.v.'': ■ f- . i*V 1 r - ■’ Photograph: Rony Angkriwan Scott Frandsen. a sales representative, demonstrates the retractable ladder of a fire truck Oil U if f or John Kiracofe, assistant fire chief from Jollyville, in the Kyle Field parking lot Saturday. GOP dissidents swayed by DeLay . WASHINGTON (AP) — Going public with their story, young Republicans dis enchanted with Newt Gingrich said they would not have tried to oust the House speaker without a solid push from Rep. Tom DeLay and other party leaders. Despite the disaster that befell the at tempt, however, the rebels appeared still in an insurgent mood. They agreed Sun day that Rep. Bill Paxon, who lost his leadership position in the commotion’s aftermath, would make a fine speaker. Reps. Matt Salmon of Arizona and Joe Scarborough of Llorida, conservatives from the activist GOP class of 1994, told ABC’s “This Week” that they both attended a pivotal meeting July 10 where the move to remove Gingrich was discussed. Salmon said they were swayed by a clear-cut message from DeLay of Texas, as party whip the no. 3 Republican in the House leadership, that he would join them in voting Gingrich out of office. “I can tell you unequivocally that the 17 members that were in that room with Tom Delay had that impression,” Salmon said. Gingrich Scarborough said on ABC and later on CNN’s “Late Edition” that DeLay appeared to have the backing of others in the GOP leadership. He said, “The entire leadership team was on board.” The two lawmakers insisted that an immediate uprising against Gingrich was never their intention. “I think most of us were in a wait-and-see mode” as Republican leaders negotiated with the White House on tax cuts and balancing the budget, Salmon said. “We wanted to see the speaker go in with full strength,” he said. Please see GOP on Page 2. FBI finds new traces of Cunanan Fugitive is prime suspect in Versace murder case MIAMI BEACH, Lla. (AP) — Andrew Cuna nan, already a most wanted fugitive by the LBI now being sought in Gianni Versace’s killing, used his real name and willingly left a thumbprint at a pawnshop eight days before the designer was gunned down. The clerk at the pawnshop, Vivian Olivia, said she followed Llorida law requiring her to mail a receipt to Miami Beach Police for the gold coin Cunanan pawned. The coin is believed to be stolen from one of Cunanan’s prior victims. It’s not clear whether police whether police re ceived that receipt or what they did with it. “There are four copies of (the sales receipt),” Olivia told The Associated Press on Saturday. “One I give to the customer, one I put in with the coin, and the one with the fingerprint I give to police.” Cunanan also left a record of the name of the hotel where he was staying and a room number where he continued to live until the day before the killing. Olivia said records show the transaction took place at 4:42 the afternoon of July 7. She told the Sun-Sentinel of Port Lauderdale that she mailed the receipt to police the next day. She didn’t talk to police until the day after Versace’s killing, when she called to tell them about the receipt she still had. They came and confiscated the fingerprint card and the coin, which investigators said was stolen from Lee Miglin, a Chicago developer Cunanan is charged with killing. Calls to the Miami Beach Police Department and the LBI by the AP were not returned Sunday. Cunanan, accused of shooting Versace on Tuesday, is also the prime suspect of an an ex lover and a former friend in Minnesota, Miglin and a cemetery caretaker in New Jersey. Even before the Versace slaying, the LBI was al ready receiving reports of Cunanan sightings from all corners of the country. Boarding air planes. At a laundry in Oklahoma City. In the au dience on the Geraldo Rivera show. Now that his face is plastered on virtually every storefront in south Llorida, the supposed Cuna nan sightings are pouring in. “There are just literally hundreds and hun dreds and hundreds of sightings and bits of in formation,” Miami Beach Police Chief Richard Barreto told CBS’s Pace the Nation Sunday morn ing. “So this is a daunting task.” Episcopal bishop will resist mandate for women clergy PORT WORTH (AP) —The head of the Episcopal Diocese of Port Worth said he will resist compliance with a newly ap proved canon requiring acceptance of women as priests. Bishop Jack Iker said he believes that “radical feminists” influenced a vote at the Episcopal General Convention in Philadel phia on Saturday to make it mandatory for him to accept female clergy. “In the heart of radical feminism, there is a lot of internal anger. I think we saw that here,” Iker said after the 140-44vote in the convention’s House of Bishops. The church voted 21 years ago to or dain women, but Iker and bishops in Quincy, Ill.; San Joaquin, Calif., and Eau Claire, Wis., have refused to do so. The new policy will not force the four to perform the ceremonies. How ever, they must arrange for someone else to ordain women and allow female priests to serve in the diocese. About 10 percent of the church’s 15,000 priests are women. “History teaches us the oppressed be come the oppressors,” Iker said. “Women felt they were oppressed in the church. Now they are getting the upper hand and want to turn the tables.” Advocates of women as priests in the Lort Worth diocese say the oppression continues under those such as Iker. “We’ve had a tyranny going on in the Diocese of Lort Worth for a long time,” said Brenda Seaver of Lort Worth, president of the Council of the Laity, an independent group that sup ports women as priests. Iker, a conservative in the House of Bishops, said he will send women to the neighboring Dallas diocese for ordina.- tion. Lort Worth parishes that ask for a female priest would come under the Dallas diocese’s oversight, he said. That won’t be good enough, said Katie Sherrod of Lort Worth, a board member of the national Women’s Cau cus of the Episcopal Church. “It is unworkable, and it still relegates women priests to second-class status in the Diocese of Lort Worth,” she said last week. Iker said he has no intentions of splitting from the Episcopal Church and will continue to work within a 2.1 million-member denomination.