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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
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