Texas A & M University
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L|™ YEAR • ISSUE 88 • 12 PAGES
TOMORROW
COLLEGE STATION • TX
WEDNESDAY • FEBRUARY 11 • 1998
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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.
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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-
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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.”