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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 11, 1998)
Texas A & M University Wk r a* l j f' - ’ a: : M L|™ YEAR • ISSUE 88 • 12 PAGES TOMORROW COLLEGE STATION • TX WEDNESDAY • FEBRUARY 11 • 1998 pe si- Changes planned for two Northside halls By Robert Smith City Editor is A&M University students will have 3W housing options in the Fall 1998 — Hall will be rewired and equipped rinpow air-conditioning units, and ; in Hai t Hall, an all-male, non-air con- jed facility, may be offered to women. Iden(s Ii vingiii the two residence halls Informed of the planned changes via : and at a meeting Monday with Resi- Life directors. reny Rydl, an associate director of Res idence Life, said she believes both halls will respond favorably to the pending changes. “I am firmly convinced that our resi dents will respond in the most positive way and that both halls will continue to be a strong voice in our residence hall commu nity,” she said. However, not all A&M students support the changes. Paul Link, a Walton resident and a junior management major, said he does not think Walton should be converted to an air-con ditioned hall. “Our residents are strongly opposed to it,” he said. “One of our arguments is that it (Walton) will be come overpriced.” The transformation of Walton Hall to an air-conditioned facility will be a gradual one. A number of rooms, based on the num ber of residents who return to the hall, will remain without air conditioning in the 1998-99 academic year. These rooms will be reserved for return ing students who want to live in the cheap er, non-air conditioned rooms. Students liv ing in the air-conditioned rooms in Walton will pay $956 per semester, and those in non-air conditioned rooms will pay $525 per semester. All of the rooms in Walton will be air-con ditioned by Fall 1999, leaving Hart as the only non-air conditioned dorm on campus. Rydl said the decision to add air condi tioning was made to accommodate an in creasing number of students wanting air- conditioned rooms and to allow the hall to be used for summer school and summer conference housing. She said the decision to allow women to live in Hart Hall was made so that women would have a low-cost housing option. She said women will be assigned to Hart Hall for the fall semester if there is a suffi cient demand. The conversion of Walton to an air- conditioned facility will mark the third non-air conditioned dorm that has been eliminated in the past two years. Puryear and Law, which were located next to the O. R. Simpson Drill Field, were demol ished in the 1996. University officials said the halls were destroyed because the cost to renovate and repair the buildings exceeded the cost of replacement or recovery of in vestment expenditures. a dog’s life mm n? : y .- ’ r' ‘ : H^St Y . HPIMP; ; JAMES FRANCIS/The Battalion U ave Pilkington, a fourth-year veterinary medicine student, draws blood from Jake, a 2-year-old golden jg|triever, during an annual checkup at the Texas Veterinary Medical Center while veterinary technician Nini inkley keeps the dog calm. A&M makes record impact on B-CS economy in 1997 By Amanda Smith Staff writer The Texas A&M University sys tem contributed more than $630 million to the Bryan-College Sta tion community in 1997, according to a Finance Department report, marking the largest economic im pact the University has had on the community in its history. The estimated economic im pact exceeded last year’s figures by $8.6 million. Tom Taylor, the assistant vice pres ident of the Finance Department, said the almost $4 million increase in salary for A&M employees contributed to the increased economic impact delivered to the community. The number of full-time and part-time employees of Texas A&M increased to exceed 20,100 employ ees. Payroll increased by nearly $4 million over last year. “One of the bigger drives has to do with salary increases for per sonnel,” Taylor said. “Employees live in the community and spend their paychecks.” Taylor said each dollar in the Bryan-College Station community is spent about 2.5 times before it leaves the community. “What that means is that a dollar that an individual receives from a pay- check will be spent an average of 2.5 times before it leaves the communi ty,” Taylor said. “When A&M releases a paycheck, it is spent about 2.5 times here in Bryan-College Station.” The estimated local economic impact of students increased by an estimated $2.5 million, with 431 few er students in the fall 1997 semester. Taylor said that the community depends on Texas A&M students. “We often talk about how the University impacts the community and it’s obvious that the community depends on the students,” Taylor said. “The students are involved in the community.” The report attributed the in crease in part to the increase of $100 that students spend on aver age in the Bryan-College Station area in a year. The report estimates that students spend an average of $4,200 per year in the Bryan-Col lege Station community. Please see Economy on Page 2. UPD urges students to take action in cases of harassment By Colleen Kavanagh Staff writer Valentine’s Day brings out flow ers, candy and poems from secret admirers, but it can also bring un wanted attention. When frequent, unwelcomed attention makes the receiver feel uncomfortable, it may be consid ered harassment. University Police Department De tective William Scott said many times phone calls or e-mails come from friends who want to scare someone, but to be on the safe side, students should still report any harassment. “UPD reviews one to two cases of phone, mail or e-mail harass ment every week,” he said. “Ten years ago, the most popular ways to harass people were by phone or letter. Over the last five years, In ternet usage has become more prevalent. With that has come more Internet harassment. “Nowadays it’s so quick and easy to use e-mail,” he said. “It seems to be the way of choice because we have such a good e-mail system, and everybody seems to be using it.” Harassment is a Class B misde- “ A lot of people think they can sit at a terminal, send disturbing messages and get away with it.” Tom Putnam Director, CIS meanor with a fine not to exceed two thousand dollars and jail time not to exceed 190 days or both. Tom Putnam, director of Com puter Information Systems (CIS), said e-mail seems to encourage peo ple to send things on e-mail that they would not say in person, but if the harassment is reported immedi ately, the sender can be tracked. “A lot of people think they can sit in a terminal, send disturbing mes sages and get away with it,” he said. “But we have capabilities to track the message if we find out about it within two days.” Putnam said CIS tracks where and when messages were sent from, and if the harassment sounds illegal and involves a student, it will be referred to Student Conflict Res olution Services. If it involves fac ulty, it will be sent to the appropri ate faculty committee. Shaun Travers of Student Conflict Resolution Services said there have been six cases of harassment report ed to Student Conflict Resolution Services since September 1997. Please see Harassment on Page 2. N S I D E Local coffee houses attract students with the taste of brewed beans. y A kiss is still a kiss... Professor offers a look into the history of one romantic tradition Bill. See Page 3 ■ I \SSSa ’as A&M Men's Basketball |m looks to get back on ling track versus Huskers. See Page 7 opinion ett: Presidential election in provides opportunity for sr Dole, Clinton to face off. tp: / /battalion.tamu.edu >k up with state and ional news through The ®/e, AP’s 24-hour online vs service. By Susan E. Atchison Staff writer Dr. Vaughn Bryant, professor and head of the Department of Anthropology, traced the origin of the kiss from its beginnings in In dia to its current popularity in Western culture, as part of the MSC Great Issues se ries Tuesday night. An Indian custom of pressing noses together is the first sign of “kiss ing,” Bryant said. An cient texts record this practice as a sign of re spect and a sign of affec tion, Bryant said. The Indian Kama Su tra, a collection of erotic and religious poems published around 500 (D, B.C., includes over 250 poems about kissing as we know it today. “At this point we see that they’ve moved to the lips,” Bryant said. Greeks adopted the practice of kissing from Indian culture, and were the first Europeans to help popularize kissing. Kisses among the Greeks, though, were more common between men on the battlefield than between men and women. “Depending on how [the officers] kissed, you could tell who was in charge,” Bryant said. Romans get the most credit, however, for popularizing the kiss. They are “the most kiss-oriented culture I’ve ever encountered,” Bryant said. Ro- 'ILQLH mans had three levels of kissing: the friendship kiss, the “osculum”; the kiss between lovers, the “basium”; and the ultimate kiss, the “savio- lum.” The saviolum is what Ameri cans today call the “French kiss.” Roman culture also included a betrothal ceremony for couples to honor their engagement. At the end of several days of partying, the couple’s passionate and pub lic kiss would seal their engage ment. In the eyes of society, this kiss signified their marriage. As Christianity began, much emphasis was taken away from kissing. A “holy kiss,” a kiss that sig nified dominance of one person over another, was most pop ular. Kissing on the hand or the feet, Bryant said, was a sign of submission and respect. During the Middle Ages, kissing “got a little out of con trol,” Bryant said. In an effort to control Chris tians who were too enthu siastic about the holy kiss, two laws were passed in 1311-12 A.D. One of these laws made it a mor tal sin for Christians to kiss one an other while thinking about fornica tion. The second law made it a venial sin (a lesser offense) to kiss just for its pleasure. Please see Kiss on Page 2. New weaponry makes military more effective WASHINGTON (AP) — Tita nium-tipped cruise missiles, big bombs that break up into scores of little bombs, weapons that can find targets through clouds and expanded comput er power are among the war fighting tools the U.S. military could use against Iraq. A smaller but, the generals insist, more effective force is carrying new weaponry — some of it still experimental — to the Persian Gulf region as the possibility of airstrikes against Iraq increases. In addition to the B-l and B-2 bombers and some new bunker-penetrating bombs, the military has ac quired greatly expanded com puter power since 1991. “We certainly have made some improvements in the accuracy of the weapons,” said retired Air Force Gen. Buster Glosson, one of the senior air war commanders in the Gulf War. “The deep-pene trating weapons and their accu racy is a second improvement.” Not all the military’s techno logical advances in the past sev en years have been translated into weapons in the field. Top military commanders and weapons planners describe an intensive Pentagon effort since the 1991 Gulf War to exploit and develop precision weaponry but say many of the fruits of that effort are still in the plan ning stages. Yet, new bunker-penetrating bombs, satellite-guided bombs and missiles that retain accura cy in bad weather, titanium- tipped cruise missiles and so phisticated sensor fuses are gradually emerging from weapons labs. The ability to destroy a target while reducing the risk of unin tended damage, and the ability to reduce pilot losses by using fewer planes for each target, are the two key advantages. “Since the war, I think we’ve made some gigantic strides in im proving accuracy or precision with which we can hit targets,” said Ken Koval, an Air Force weapons plan ner. “We don’t target buildings; we target specific features on build ings, and we’re able to hit them very accurately.”