i
iy • Marc
Texas A & M University
KSBrnUBBSOUttL
I th YEAR • ISSUE 105 • 10 PACES
COLLEGE STATION • TX
58
TODAY TOMORROW
FRIDAY • MARCH 6 • 1998
tudent Senate creates Governance Council
luetta
By Stacey Becks
I Staff writer
s e Student Senate Wednesday
hf created a Governance Coun-
it gives the executive board of
tudent Government Associa-
nfluence over the implemen-
'i ofc tnstitulional hills.
^yan Atkinson, a senator and a
>r computer science major,
he bill will increase communi-
itwastn between the Student Senate
heBxecutive council.
?mbero:.ight now if the Student Senate
nd poo:
:ueefforj p
porter I 1-j v ^
that 50'
,andic
Briefs
m
'^.rtoonist to paint
•ncystrjral at Post Oak
dies in:
cartoon artist and literacy advo-
willpaint a mural today and Sat-
/ at Post Oak Mall to promote lit-
efforts in the Bryan-College
on community.
nil Yeh, the founder of Cartoon-
Across America and the World,
provide comedy entertainment
paint a 60-foot mural in conjunc-
with a community book drive in
^ost Oak Mall Food Court,
ommunity members can donate
ok or watch Yeh paint and enter-
today from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and
i 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Activi-
will continue Saturday from 10
. to 4 p.m.
.‘creation Center
™ host symposium
gl'he third South-Central Regional
dent Sport and Exercise Psy-
logy Symposium will be held Fri-
and Saturday.
he,two-day event is sponsored by
Wf Psychology Department and will be
I at the Student Recreation Center.
\rnold LeUnes, a Texas A&M psy-
logy professor said the focus is in-
ation sharing among students.
The purpose of the symposium is
elp students in the field of exercise
:hologygain experience making pre-
stations while sharing research ideas
St, interacting with other students and
essionals in their area,” he said.
TX.
eteorologists find
ays to cut costs
^ plan developed by Texas A&M
teorologists could save Texas
ver companies upward of $40
lion a year and help farmers cut
s of millions of dollars from their
d costs.
en ^ f; 3ruce Gammon and Gary Sickler’s
as MesoNet plan would place at
st one weather recording station
etter ; ac h Texas county, allowing power
ipliers to better match the chang-
energy needs of customers and
ng farmers more accurate weath-
nformation as they plant, irrigate
1 harvest crops.
INSIDE
bdent organizatipn leaders
*3eak out on the importance
'international Week.
See Page 3
I
sports
seball team faces Big 12
> Missouri in a three-game
ries this weekend.
See Page 7
opinion
mston: MSC cookbook
idraiser should reflect
mplexity, diversity of
^anization
See Page 9
ttp://battalion.tamu.edu
>ok up with state and na-
•nal news through The
ire, AP’s 24-hour online
.‘ws service.
passes something, it immediately
goes into effect and the executive
board can’t say if they like it or not,”
he said. “Executive branch and leg
islative branch are two independent
bodies, but we are one Student Gov
ernment Association. We would
have a better SGA if we brought all
of these together.”
The Governance Council will be
made up of the six senate officers,
the student body president, five ex
ecutive vice presidents, and the ju
dicial board chair, who will not have
voting privileges.
Reality check
Kristen Paris, executive vice pres
ident and a senior biomedical sci
ence major, said the Governance
Council will allow the executive
board to give its opinion on bills be
fore they go to the floor of the Senate.
“A lot of communication needs
to take place before an issue goes
before the Senate or executive
branch,” she said. “Differences can
be hammered out together before
hand.”
The bill states that after the Stu
dent Senate passes a bill by one over
a majority vote, the Governance
Council must pass the bill by one
over a majority vote for it to go into
effect. If the council does not ap
prove the bill, the Senate can put
the bill into effect with a three-
fourths vote.
The Governance Council can
initiate bills by a two-thirds vote,
but the Senate can override the bill
by a two-thirds vote.
Aaron Bigbee, a senator and a
sophomore speech communica
tion major, said there is already
enough communication between
the Senate and Executive Board.
“There is no need to create a
committee to have communication
because there’s already interaction,”
he said. “In no way has communi
cation been impeded under the
current system.”
In other business, the Student
Senate:
•Passed a bill that made the
Speaker of the Senate first in line to
fill the office of student body presi
dent if the president is unable to ful
fill his or her duties. The Speaker
Pro-Tempore of the Senate then
rules and Regulations Chair is next
in line.
•Passed a bill that says the fresh
men senators are to represent fresh
men even though there is no fresh
man caucus.
•Passed a resolution that asks the
Director of Open Access Comput
ing Labs Search Committee to give
extra consideration to candidates
for the position of Director that will
incorporate student input for deci
sion making.
•Passed a bill that makes the stu
dent body president chair of Senate
meetings until the Speaker of the
ran
4. >8 to
;
m
V,
M*
ivv
:r
if
*
BRANDON BOLLOM/The Battalion
Tina Bright, EMT-I, Sharon Jones, EMT-B/EMD and Seth DeCamp, EMT-P work on Ryan Carney, a freshman business administra
tion major in a simulation Thursday afternoon. Hart Hall hosted a tailgate barbeque and open recreation party. The alcohol poisoning
simulation was used to discourage drinking alcohol over Spring Break. Texas A&M’s Spring Break begins March 16.
Students to
participate in
eighth Replant
By Katy Lineberger
Staffwriter
Nearly 3,000 Aggies and community members will
descend upon Lake Somerville tomorrow, shovels in
hand. By die end of the day, they will have planted
10,000 seedlings and 3,000 trees as part of Aggie Re
plant ’98.
Replant, now in its eighth year, is quickly taking root
as a Texas A&M tradition. Organizers say it is one of the
largest single-day, student-run environmental pro
jects in the country.
“It’s a really special tradition because it allows us to
go out in one day and actively make a big difference
and impact die environment,” said Dana Arriens, Re
plant publicity and advertising chair and a sophomore
civil engineering major.
Dr. Carolyn Adair, Director of Student Activities,
said Replant is an important project. “It’s really grown
and grown through the years,” she said. “It’s a very
healthy activity.”
Arriens said that although Replant began in re
sponse to Bonfire’s consumption of trees, the two pro
jects are now independent of each other. The trees
-planted are not used for Bonfireriior are they planted
at cut site, she said.
“The cut site was cleared by request of the land’s
owner,” she said. “Replant plants trees for reforesta
tion and beautification.”
More than 100 campus organizations will partic
ipate in Replant this year.
For the first time tiiis year, organizers invited mem
bers of the community to participate. Arriens said
more than 100 individuals representing A&M moth
ers’ clubs, local student councils, Boy Scout troops and
the Bryan High School National Honor Society will
help with the planting.
Please see Replant on Page 6.
Whoopin ’ Weekend
High school students get taste of Aggieland this weekend
By Amanda Smith
Staff ivriter
High school students arrived
at Texas A&M University yester
day to catch a glimpse of campus
life in the second annual
Whoopin’ Weekend, an event
sponsored by the Student Senate
Aggie Recruitment Committee
(ARC).
About 250 sophomores, ju
niors and seniors from high
schools across Texas will stay
with on-campus residents
through Saturday morning, go to
class and attend events to learn
more about Aggieland.
Melissa Batig, an ARC co-chair
and a senior chemical engineer
ing major, said students can ex
perience a part of the campus life
in a single weekend.
“We want these students to
spend as much time on campus
as they can,” Batig said. “For
some students, this may be their
only trip to Aggieland. We are try
ing to encourage students to
come to Texas A&M.”
Students will attend 9:10
classes today. Batig said students
will attend freshman-level class
es, including Chemistry 101 and
Math 166.
ARC sent out applications to
students from Texas and across
the U.S recruited during the
Christmas holidays, Batig said.
About 100 A&M students liv
ing on-campus will host
Whoopin’Weekend participants,
40 of which will stay in Corps
dorms for the weekend.
Beth Abelson, a Whoopin’
Weekend registration director
and a sophomore education ma
jor, said the weekend could en
courage high school students to
r -
■W
Hi
^rrsER-
RYAN ROGERS/The Battalion
Libby Edwards, a senior elementary education major, leads high school
students on a tour of campus Thursday afternoon.
attend A&M.
“They can see the size of the
dorms and what it is like to live
there,” Abelson said. “A big pay
off for me is to see the students
come to Texas A&M.”
Whoopin’ Weekend partici
pants will break up into 25 discus
sion groups of 10 students each.
Students will gain information on
financial aid and campus life, in ad
dition to experiencing the campus.
Participants will tour the
George Bush Presidential Library
and Museum, watch Freudian
Slip perform and attend a yell
practice at the Grove.
Weekend recruiting was initi
ated in 1995 by the Student Sen
ate committee, which gained the
name ARC in 1997. Batig said
only 21 students attended in
1995 and were accompanied by
parents and sponsors.
The following year, Howdy
Weekend ‘96 brought in 150 high
school students to see the A&M
campus. Batig said ARC spon
sored the first Whoopin’ Week
end last year with 225 partici
pants.
ARC selects applicants on a
first-received basis, Batig said.
She said ARC sent out 500 appli
cations this year and accepted
the first 250 applicants to attend
Whoopin’ Weekend.
“It was a small program ini
tially and now we are growing,”
Batig said.
Moon holds water
NASA scientists find moisture in soil
< WASHINGTON (AP) — Enough
water is frozen in the loose soil of
the moon to support a lunar base
and perhaps to one day build a hu
man colony there, NASA scientists
said Thursday.
“We are certain there is water
there,” said Alan Binder, a lead sci
entist for the Lunar Prospector
spacecraft, which made the dis
covery. “We think we are seeing
between 10 million and 100 mil
lion tons of water.”
Although the water is frozen
and mixed with shaded soil deep
in scattered craters near the north
and south lunar poles, Binder said
that it would be easy to convert to
liquid water that could be used to
make rocket propellant and
breathing oxygen.
Preliminary estimates indicate
that the moon holds enough wa
ter, in widely separated deposits,
to fill a lake 2 miles square and 35
feet deep, Binder said.
The discovery of water, he said,
means that it would be easier to
establish a base where people
could live for extended periods
and to use extraterrestrial re
sources — moon water converted
to rocket fuel — to explore deeper
into the solar system.
“For the first time, we may be
able to go to another space body
and fuel up,” said Binder.
The Lunar Prospector, a $65 mil
lion robot craft, was launched in
January and has spent the last seven
weeks orbiting the moon and taking
readings of the moon’s surface with
radar and other instruments.
Water was discovered by an in
strument that measures the speed
at which neutrons, a type of sub
atomic particle, bounce off mate
rials on and near the lunar surface.
The neutrons come from natural
cosmic rays that constantly bathe
the moon and are slowed when
they strike atoms of hydrogen, the
chemical that combines with oxy
gen to make water.
Slowing of the neutrons leaves
a “water signature” in the neutron
measuring instrument.
William Feldman, an Energy
Department scientist who ana
lyzed the neutron data, said con
clusions about water are based on
a month’s worth of data and
should be called “preliminary.”
But he said it is quite clear there
are dense deposits of hydrogen
atoms at the lunar poles. From
this, he believes “the evidence of
water ice is quite strong.”
“There are a bunch of craters
filled up with water ice,” said Feld
man. “This is a significant resource
that will allow a modest amount of
colonization” for many years.
Scientists will get a better idea
of how much water is on the moon
and where it is deposited as the
Lunar Prospector continues its or
bital exploration. The spacecraft
will collect data for at least anoth
er year. Toward the end of its mis
sion, it will be lowered from its
current 60-mile Orbit to about six
miles, giving scientists a close-up
of possible water deposits.
But scientists will not be able to
confirm that the hydrogen atoms
detected by the spacecraft are ac
tually locked in water, and not in
some exotic ice or rock deposit,
until a sample of the material is
scooped up and analyzed.
“The presence of water is a log
ical conclusion, but it is a leap of
faith,” Binder said. “We will have
to sample it before we really know
for sure.”
Feldman said “water is the most
stable form of hydrogen” and the
most likely form to be on the
moon.