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Texas A & M University
Today Tomorrow
See extended forecast page 2.
IC . olume 103 • Issue 171 • 6 Pages
College Station, TX
Millie
{, July 28, 1997
'5 Jews
Briefs
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irly voting begins
>r state election
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Early voting for the Aug. 9 state
ction will last through Aug. 5.
Texans will vote on a proposed
endment to the state constitution
t would increase the residence
j^jjjnestead exemption from school dis-
ttaxes from $5,000 to $15,000 of
home’s market value.
The amendment would also allow
Texas Legislature to approve a
isfer of all or part of the tax freeze
the residence homestead of a per-
older than 65 years of age.
k Early voting polling places are:
- Brazos County Courthouse at
OE. 26th Street, Bryan
-Arena Hall at Tabor Road and
Bypass, Bryan
Galilee Baptist Church at 804
rth Logan, Bryan
MSC at Texas A&M University
- College Station Independent
jjlhool District Building at 1812
, College Station
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at to
Icard
Islam:
l/orkers accept CM
.ontract to end strike
1)5 mi
jay I MADISON HEIGHTS, Mich. (AP)
iksfc lited Auto Workers approved a deal
lintaifnday to end a six-day strike at a
neral Motors parts plant that
reed four assembly plant shut-
iwns and threatened GM’s entire
lit)-oi irthAmerican production.
About 2,800 union employees
fit on strike Tuesday at the GM
Icharlwertrain Group plant in Warren,
^nm lich makes front-drive transmis-
ons,wheels and suspension parts
manyGM cars and trucks.
Two days after a tentative contract
fereement was reached, the pact was
f ippro\iedby 89.4 percent of the 1,082
U workers who voted, the UAW said.
Production at the Warren plant
0s to resume Sunday night.
boding continues
i Germany, Poland
FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Ger-
any(AP) — Floodwaters that broke
raugh a dike and submerged vil-
|es last week poured back into the
follen Oder River on Sunday, raising
?i tels downstream to record highs
id forcing evacuations.
Officials ordered the 17,000 people
the Polish border city of Slubice —
tacross the water from Frankfurt an
tflrOder — to evacuate again for fear
riv r would break through the dike.
To the north, about 15,000 people
iff the German side were told to be
sdyto leave at a moment’s notice,
indreds of sandbaggers worked fu-
wslyto prevent a new tear in the
akening dike from worsening.
The north-flowing Oder, which forms
latural border between Poland and
fmany, started flooding about three
eks ago after heavy rains in Poland
•>i dthe Czech Republic.
Pol?
I
I
di ie first German since 1903
ins the famous cycling
ice, the Tour de France.
See Page 3.
ie
l[V-
SPORTS
OPINION
smons: Bill Cosby, other
0 merican role models seem
fade from the public eye.
See Page 5.
>sei
ONLINE
>1 Av •VV
lt tp://bat-web.tamu.edu
sit The
tl ^e, AP’s
aii 4-hour
iline news
:, J rvice.
Regents OK budget, new scholarships
By Jenara Kocks
The Battalion
Texas A&M Board of Regents approved a
$1.5 billion budget for the 1998 fiscal year
and authorized $2.5 million for need-based
scholarships for Texas A&M University Sys
tem students Friday.
The budget is 10.6 percent higher than
the 1997 fiscal year budget.
The regents also allocated over $675 mil
lion of the System's funds for the University,
including Texas A&M at Galveston and the
Texas A&M Health Science Center.
Earlier this year, the Texas Legislature allo
cated $2.5 million to the A&M System for
need-based scholarships. Texas A&M stu
dents who qualify will be eligible for $867,298
of these funds.
Don Engelage, executive director of stu
dent financial aid, said the new scholarships
will be very helpful to some A&M students.
“We’re very happy,” Engelage said. “We
have more kids that need financial aid than
we have scholarships and grants.”
Engelage said the scholarships will help
students who have financial need and were
not able to get grants and scholarships before.
According to a press release, each uni
versity’s president will make guidelines to
award the scholarships beginning in the Fall
1997 semester.
The regents approved a bid by Acklam
Construction Company Inc. of College Sta
tion for the new tennis complex, which will
replace the tennis courts near Kyle Field.
Marine geologist Dr. David B. Prior was
approved by the Board as the new dean of
A&M’s College of Geosciences and Mar
itime Studies.
Prior is Texas A&M’s deputy dean of geo
sciences and maritime studies, and he will re
place Dr. Robert A. Duce, dean since 1991,
starting Aug. 1.
Prior said he was looking forward to acting
as the College of Geosciences and Maritime
Studies’s dean.
“I’m very excited and honored to be giv
en this appointment,” Prior said in a press
release. “The college has many strengths, in
cluding the most interesting collection of
different disciplines and research and edu
cational activities of any geoscience organi
zation in the country. It’s a pleasure to join
that in a service role.”
The regents also authorized A&M offi
cials to revise admission requirements for
Fall 1998 and to hold public meetings to dis
cuss tuition increases.
The new admissions requirements give
automatic admission to high school stu
dents who graduate in the top 10 percent
of their high school classes, in accor
dance with House Bill 588 passed by the
75th Legislature.
A public hearing will be held from 9 to
10:30 a.m. on Aug. 1 in MSC Rm. 292 to an
nounce a previously approved increase in
the University Authorized Tuition, formerly
known as the General Use Fee. Dr. William
B. Krumm, vice president for finance and
controller, will preside over the hearing.
Budget bargainers near
tax credit compromise
Clinton wants proposed cuts to help lower-paid families
WASHINGTON (AP) — With bargainers at
the brink of a budget pact, Republican leaders
and others said Sunday they were near com
promise over who would qualify for the pro
posed $500-per-child tax credit, one of their
thorniest and highest-profile standoffs.
Details were still being finalized, said par
ticipants who spoke on condition of
anonymity. But the emerging solution was
aimed at satisfying President Clinton’s de
mand that the credit help lower-paid families
who owe little or no in
come tax, plus Republi
cans’ insistence that it ap
ply to families earning
more than $60,000, where
Clinton wanted to begin
phasing it out.
That possible compro
mise was just one detail of
the still-evolving package
discussed by eight con
gressional leaders and
White House officials who blitzed the Sunday
television news shows. Negotiations were
ready to resume Sunday evening, and some
participants speculated that a deal might be
announced as early as Monday.
They also pointed toward a likely cigarette tax
increase, a victory for Clinton and many sena
tors of both parties. And while Republicans will
win a cut in the capital gains tax rate, a GOP
leader conceded they might have to jettison the
House-approved plan to exempt property val
ues due to inflation from that levy — which has
drawn an explicit White House veto threat.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” House
Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said the
Clinton
two sides were nearing agreement on the chil
dren’s tax credit and “trying to fit the president’s
details into our principles and it’s a very diffi
cult fit to be made but I think we can get there.”
And Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-
Miss., said Republicans were for the first time
considering applying the credit to people who
only owe the payroll tax.
“But they’ve got to be willing to help us,
too,” he added on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Aides who spoke on condition of anonymi
ty verified that an agreement on the children’s
credit was evolving but provided little detail.
Exactly who should receive the credit has
been one of the fiercest disputes in the long-
running negotiations. Clinton has cast Repub
licans as favoring the rich over low-income
people, and the GOP has accused the president
of thirsting to expand welfare.
Clinton wants the $500 credit to apply to
families earning as little as $18,000 annually
who owe no income tax but still owe the pay
roll tax deducted for Social Security and
Medicare. He would phase it out for families
making $60,000 to $75,000 through 2000. Af
ter that, the phase-out range would be
$80,000 to $100,000.
Republicans would deny the credit to low-
paid people who earn no income tax, but save
it for their use if they owe tax over the follow
ing three years. They also would begin phasing
it out at a higher, $75,000 level.
First, however, they have to finish negotia
tions. Republicans want a speedy deal so they
can get bills cutting taxes and extracting sav
ings from Medicare, Medicaid and other pro
grams to Clinton by Friday, the scheduled start
of Congress’ August break.
Western powers rely on Asian
nations to police Cambodia
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Call it
deferential diplomacy.
In seeking a political settlement of the gov
ernment mess in Cambodia, the United States
and other Western nations are deferring to
Southeast Asians to find it.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright con
fronted Burma on human rights Sunday but
noted it is the job of the Association of South
east Asian Nations to get that country’s military
rulers to change their ways.
Welcome to Southeast Asia, where the Unit
ed States, Russia, the European Union and oth
ers are outsiders looking in, trying to influence
change without leaving themselves open to
charges of interference. At stake is security in
all of East Asia, where the United States has
fought three wars this century.
“We need to be true to our principles in de
scribing how we believe various societies
should operate for the benefit of their people,”
said Albright, in Malaysia to attend the ASEAN
Regional Forum. “But there are different ways
of making those points in terms of tone and
how one addresses people.
“I believe that the best role for the United States
is as a partner and as somebody who respects the
operating procedures of various countries.”
An often-confrontational Albright chooses
reason in dealing with ASEAN, an economic
bloc that is gradually becoming a regional po
litical arbitrator.
Deferring to her conference host, Malaysian
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Albright
is even asking permission to hold a news con
ference — with or without him — on her way
out of town Tuesday.
“You have to be good guests. You can’t always
be the elephant that tramples on the grass,” her
spokesman, Nicholas Burns, explained.
America is not the only elephant-sized na
tion stepping carefully.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander
Downer, for example, complained, “The
process of change in Myanmar (Burma) has
been moving at a pace similar to that of glue
moving uphill.” But asked whether Southeast
Asian nations hurt the campaign by accepting
Burma into ASEAN this year, Downer de
murred: “It was an ASEAN decision.”
Tom Carothers, a democracy expert with
the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, said the rising economic power of
Southeast Asian’s 450 million people means
they can take care of their own more than ever.
“Of all the regions of the world, Asia is least
^ ^ ... the best role for the
United States is as a partner
and as somebody who respects
the operating procedures of
various countries.”
Madeline Albright
Secretary of State
susceptible to a sort of Western acceptance
with an international community telling it
what to do,” Carothers said. “These are ancient
civilizations, with long traditions of their own.
They’re developing, and they’re solving their
own problems.”
Richard Fisher, a policy analyst with the
conservative Heritage Foundation, said all that
Southeast Asia wants from the West is capital
and security guarantees. One of the region’s
largest investors, the United States has 100,000
troops setting a shield for Asia, thousands
aboard Japan-based ships.
“The thing they don’t want is lectures from
us,” Fisher said.
Flying
High
Photograph: Tim Moog
Alexander Straltsov practices an aerial ballet for Cirque Angenue
at the indoor soccer court in the Student Recreation Center.
The 27-member troupe employs contortionists, acrobats and
vocalists to tell the story of a young, aspiring trapeze artist.
See story, Page 6.
Priest to face trial for assault charges
Altar boy claims he was drugged, sodomized while sleeping
SINTON, Texas (AP) — Four days after the
Catholic Diocese of Dallas was slammed with
a record judgment in a priest molestation
case, a trial was set to begin for a South Texas
priest charged with sodomizing an altar boy.
The Rev. Jesus Garcia, 39, is accused of as
saulting the boy in 1992 during an overnight
stay at the rectory of Sacred Heart Catholic
Church in Mathis, a town 30 miles north
west of Corpus Christ!.
See Related Story, Page 4.
The boy, who was 15 at the time, con
tends Garcia slipped drugs into a glass of
milk, then sodomized him when he was in
a sleep state. He says the priest asked him to
spend the night because he was scheduled
to assist at Mass the following day.
“That was the night that killed our fami
ly. That was the night he stole our lives from
us,” the teen’s mother said in an interview
before a gag order was issued against all par
ties in the case.
The priest maintains his innocence, and
the Catholic Diocese of Corpus Christi is
standing by him.
“We follow the great American principle
that an individual is innocent until proven
guilty,” said Marty Wind, a spokesman for
the diocese. “It’s very important that Father
Jesus gets his day in court. I’m just sorry it
took this long to come to trial.”
Jury selection was scheduled to begin
Monday morning.
The case comes just days after a civil
jury ordered the Catholic Diocese of Dal
las and a suspended priest to pay $119.6
million to 10 men the priest is accused of
molesting and the family of another who
committed suicide. The award was the
largest ever rendered in a priest molesta
tion case, attorneys said.
A civil lawsuit also is pending against
Garcia by his accuser and three other men
who say he assaulted them in a similar man
ner. A fifth plaintiff, who is a former deacon
and the father of the accuser in the criminal
case, contends Garcia fondled him during a
1994 pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
A grand jury declined to indict Garcia in
connection with the other allegations.
The lawsuit also names the Catholic
Church, the Corpus Christi Diocese and its
former bishop, Rene Gracida, accusing
them of conspiring to cover up Garcia’s acts
and of attempting to coerce the plaintiffs
into keeping quiet.
The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount
of damages. Wind said he could not comment
on the lawsuit because it is pending litigation.