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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 2, 1998)
■laryj r I I ,ial Texas A & M University indite hinthei etwee hi aw |ight. i polio atpos Iwandt: Mm'W% flil: JStSBSm \ ^'W v '’ '4 0^ Wm a - i'''": I m »*x M' \ 66 46 65 TODAY TOMORROW 04 th YEAR • ISSUE 81 • 12 PAGES COLLEGE STATION • TX MONDAY • FEBRUARY 2 • 1998 and: and rat .nine fask force to crack down on party guidelines By Robert Smith City editor i mor Texas A&M student leaders and advisers | Stall med a task force Friday to review Uni- i the -sity open-party policies and agreed cur- lindirit open-party guidelines must be en- |e par ced, a week after fights broke out at a nee in Sbisa Dining Hall. I nv,: Michael Stewart, president of the A&M n-Hcllenic Council and a senior me lon,hanical engineering major, said the 10- |souiK:;mber task force may lead to new open- ■ won vhatotj— h M arked for life party guidelines. “The task force will be developed to see how other schools handle open parties,” Stewart said. The fighting in Sbisa started around 11 p.m. at a dance sponsored by the Pan-Hel lenic Council, the board that governs black sororities and fraternities. Stewart closed down the dance after the fighting began just before the Univer sity Police Department (UPD) arrived at about 12 a.m. Stewart estimated that 1,100 to 1,500 people were at Sbisa at the time of the fight. Bob Wiatt, director of UPD, said no one knows why the fighting started. “There was a large crowd in Sbisa, and most of them were dancing,” he said. “I think people just got jostled around, and then the fights started.” The Pan-Hellenic Council requested 10 UPD officers be at the party, but only two officers were at the party. Curtis Childers, student body presi dent and a senior agricultural develop ment major, said police security at the party was insufficient. “We’ve got to get UPD to provide more security,” he said. “They requested 10 last April, but there were only two there.” Stewart agreed that more police securi ty was needed, but said the fight was “blown out of proportion.” “I’ve seen a lot worse things happen on this campus,” he said. “There are fights that happen at almost every foot ball game; every bar probably has a fight once a month.” Stewart said he will recommend to Stu dent Activities contacting the College Sta tion and Bryan Police Department for po lice security to avoid similar problems in the future. Lanita Hanson, assistant director of Stu dent Activities, said the task force will rec ommend changes in the current open-par ty policy or will make “reinforcements” to the policy. “We need to be prepared and have the kinds of plans that identify the areas that need help,” she said. JAKE SCHRICKLING/The Battalion Nlhael C. Bridges, Class of ’85, tattoos Brian Knipling, a freshman finance major, at a tattoo shop in Bryan. Parole board set to announce clemency verdict in Tucker case HUNTSVILLE (AP) — Con demned killer Karla Faye Tucker learns Monday if Texas parole offi cials believe she is a woman of God who should be spared a trip to the death chamber this week. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles said it would announce its decision Monday morning in Austin, about 32 hours before Tuck er was to be belted to a gurney in side the Huntsville Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and have inserted into her arms two needles carrying poison to kill her. She would be the first woman ex ecuted in Texas since 1863 and only the second in the United States since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed capital punishment to resume. The 38-year-old former teen-age prostitute, drug user and rock band groupie is awaiting the lethal injec tion for her part in a pickax attack that left two people dead at a Hous ton apartment in 1983. Tucker asked the 18-memb,er pa role board to recommend clemen cy to Gov. George W. Bush, con tending she is a changed woman who has found God and can serve as a resource for others if she is al lowed a life sentence. “To recognize now that she has changed would totally undo the jury’s belief that she was indeed a danger to society at that time,” James Marquart, a criminal justice professor at Sam Flouston State University and now a visiting pro fessor at Queen Mary and Westfield College in London, said. Marquart, who has written a book about the Texas death penalty, noted that male inmates also have claimed religious conversions like Tucker’s. “To commute Karla would open the doors for a multitude of like claims from the boys,” he said. Ten board members must agree with her before the governor has the option of sparing her life. Texas law gives governors little independent authority in such cases, with the power to issue only a one-time, 30- day reprieve. Even a single vote from a board member favorable to Tucker would be unusual. Sixteen of the record 37 men executed in Texas in 1997 sought clemency from the board. Each lost on unanimous votes. KjJprah beef trial remains hot topic among Amarillo residents i bit: AMARILLO (AP) — Roadhouse waitress istorfetchen Cotter’s smile rivaled the glitter of r epi/e neon lights and her drawl competed with .p like box, a pinball machine and three tele- ERA ^ipn sets. mse “Hamburger, cheeseburger or ribeye ' Tak?” she asked, reciting the entire menu of e Lone Star Bar & Grill. j7p ! “And,” she purred, “we serve only mad ws — REALLY mad cows.” While lawyers haggle over whether Oprah can libel a hamburger, the folks out- ie the courthouse are abuzz about the talk ow host’s legal plight and her Texas-flavored pings of the “Oprah Winfrey Show.” 1/0$Hi Tw() weeks into her trial, she is the hottest :ket and often the hottest topic in town as 'e defends herself against claims that she 'St the beef business millions in a 1996 show on mad cow disease. “The only mad cow in Texas is Oprah,” read inscriptions on flashy caps and T-shirts Gretchen and her pals are peddling at the Lone Star. Not quite as clever but decidedly more popular are bumper stickers, buttons, ban ners, caps and T-shirts proclaiming that “Amarillo Loves Oprah.” Believe it. Chamber of Commerce President Gary Mol- berg misspoke early on about Oprah and since has spent two embarrassing weeks backtracking. “Amarillo's been very receptive to her,” said lawyer Dee Miller. “Generally speaking, even people in the cattle industry have been very positive toward her.” If nothing else, the trial has for once muz zled the Panhandle Mouth that Roared. JCE‘ Millionaire Stanley Marsh 3, the prince of pranks, is a limited partner in one of the cattle companies suing Oprah and therefore silenced by U.S. Judge Mary Lou Robinson’s gag order. “I don’t know a hereford from a heifer,” said Marsh, 59, who put Amarillo on the map years ago by burying a fleet of antique Cadillacs nose down and fins up along old Route 66, now Interstate 40. “This is awful. Just terrible,” he said of the gag order. He appeared almost as upset as when his old wine-drinking buddy, a pet pig named Minnesota Fats, overdosed on chocolate East er eggs one year and wound up in that great pigsty in the sky. “I’ve never experienced a muzzle like this before,” he said. “No conversation is complete without my 51 percent.” Defamation suit enters third week AMARILLO (AP) — A vegetarian ac tivist being sued along with Oprah Win frey for slandering U.S. beef in an April 1996 talk show about mad cow disease was still to be on the witness stand when the defamation trial resumed Monday. Howard Lyman endured difficult questioning on Friday by attorneys for Texas cattlemen who are suing him, Winfrey and her production company for $10.3 million, contending that an “Oprah” show on mad cow disease on April 16, 1996, pushed already slump ing beef prices to 10-year lows. Lyman, who has yet to face ques tioning by his own attorneys, appeared to hurt Winfrey’s case when he said re assuring pro-beef comments that were edited out of the show would have been relevant to viewers as long as the state ments were true. The former cattle rancher turned vegetarian seemed to hurt his own case when he was asked what facts he had to back up a claim he had made that mad cow disease could make AIDS seem like the common cold. Lyman said he was relying on his own experience in an 18-year cattle ranching career that ended in 1983 and added, “I believe there are a lot of ways of educating other than facts.” I El ees crisis waning, ! Canton enduring ;h WASHINGTON (AP) — Monica k ewinsky’s attorney predicted Sun- ay that the controversy over /hether the former White House i item had an affair with President ’-lint on will “go away,” and the pres- ien t will survive unscathed. “It’ll pass,” William Ginsburg said ,1 a round of TV talk-show appear- |es. “The president will remain in e, he’ll do a good job ... and I everything’s going to be fine.” The White House, apparently greeing, maintained a confident si- tnce about the matter. That stood i marked contrast to a week earli- £ r, when Clinton allies were out in urce on the Sunday shows in de- C6 Elnie of an embattled president, i lndependent counsel Kenneth tan who is investigating the ewi nsky matter, was back at his of- fce Sunday. But with immunity ilks between Ginsburg and Starr at n impasse, Lewinsky was making : Ians to return to California in the snl ext three days, her lawyer said. That underscored the impor tance to investigators of finding oth er evidence if they are to prove alle gations of a presidential affair and coverup. The Wliite House al ready has turned over some docu ments in re sponse to sub poenas from Starr, and sever al administra tion officials have appeared before the grand jury. A source said presiden tial adviser Bruce Lindsey is one of the latest to be subpoenaed. But there were signs that ad ministration officials may resist complying with portions of Starr’s subpoenas that one White House source said they consider “overly broad, burdensome and ambiguous.” utk. Clinton GOP criticizes spending in proposed budget INSIDE WASHINGTON (AP) — Republi cans attacked the $1.73 trillion budget President Clinton will send Congress on Monday as a “magnif icent contradiction” that violates the spirit of last year’s balanced budget agreement by proposing bil lions of dollars in tax increases and new government programs. The White House rejected that charge Sunday as both sides pre pared for a fight over budget sur pluses certain to be as contentious as the deficit brawls of past decades. The battle will be joined when Clinton sends Congress his spend ing blueprint for the budget year that begins next Oct. 1. His plan en visions achieving a $9.5 billion sur plus, the first time revenues would exceed spending in 30 years. While the surplus would be achieved three years earlier than the 2002 deadline set in last year’s balanced budget agreement, Re publicans were not impressed. They said Clinton’s budget con tains massive amounts of new government spending paid for by $90 billion in new taxes on busi nesses and smokers. “It is a magnificent contradic tion. The president has been promising ... the American people certain things and this budget does exactly the opposite,” Senate Bud get Committee Chair Pete Domeni- ci, R-N.M., said Sunday. “It creates dozens of new government pro grams run in Washington and it chooses bigger government instead of smaller government.” Clinton’s budget Monday will put dollar figures on the new ini tiatives the president discussed in his State of the Union address last week. “It is a magnificent contradiction.” Pete Domenici Senate Budget Committee These include a sizable expan sion in federal support for child care, setting a goal of hiring 100,000 new teachers as a way of reducing class sizes in the early grades and allowing people below the age of 65 to buy into Medicare, the government’s health care pro gram for the elderly. The president began unveiling these proposals early last month to counter accusations his second term was adrift without a firm agen da. That effort has intensified in the past two weeks as the White House sought to depict a president en gaged in the public’s business rather than engulfed by accusations he had sex with an intern. To pay for the new programs while still producing budget sur pluses, Clinton is proposing rais ing $24 billion over five years in “loophole” closers, mainly taxes on corporate activities, and $65.5 billion — the equivalent of a $ 1.50 per pack cigarette tax—from a to bacco settlement that Congress has yet to approve. Domenici called it highly “spec ulative” for Clinton to count on the tobacco money given the opposi tion in Congress. He said all of Clin ton’s budget legerdemain “violates the budget agreement in spirit, if not in technical terms.” But White House Budget Direc tor Franklin Raines, appearing with Domenici on “Fox News Sun day,” rejected that charge, con tending that Clinton’s program stayed within the spending caps set by the agreement. “The president’s proposals are all paid for and he balances the budget three years early,” said Raines. The strong economy is allowing Clinton to put forward a balanced budget ahead of schedule. The deficit for 1997 fell to $22 billion, the first time it has been below $ 100 bil lion in 15 years. Local comic book stores offer students a chance to escape real life. See Page 3 sports Aggies face Texas tonight on ESPN’s “Big Monday” triple header basketball showcase. See Page 9 opinion Parekh: Women’s magazines offer a distorted view of real life. See Page 11 online http://battalion.tamu.edu Hook up with state and national news through The Wire, AP’s 24-hour online news service.