larch’
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Texas A St M University
TODAY
m
TOMORROW
TH iYEAR • ISSUE 111 • 12 PAGES
COLLEGE STATION • TX
MONDAY • MARCH 23 • 1998
EWS
Briefs
at 11
N S I D E
See Page 3
1
orts
iie Baseball Team loses
rt-breaker to Sooners but
les away with series win.
See Page 7
ett: The University should
to more needs than child
a center for students.
See Page 11
online
tp://battalion.tamu.edu
Dk up with state and na-
ial news through The
! 'e, AP’s 24-hour online
/s service.
Clinton clips controversies with comedy
to ease
) hour cap crunch
5 state legislature has authorized
universities and colleges to
} students with 170 or more cred-
s out-of-state tuition, which iscur-
$248 per credit hour.
state legislature, in its most re-
session, enacted a 170 credit
. :aeffective Sept. 1, 1999, to
irage students at colleges and
i Boer: sities receiving state financial as-
3rove ice to graduate sooner.
I s | ese universities and colleges
leo j d longer receive state support
tudents exceeding the 170
,| si : hour cap.
<as ^&M University officials said
will Offer more courses than usu-
; summer to help students avoid
pending tuition increase,
e University plans to add more
v 75 courses and 4,000 seats be-
i now and Sept. 1, 1999, said
Executive Vice President and
st Ronald G. Douglas,
will i order to allow students to grad-
3arlierand progress through their
ik.ar e programs more easily,” Douglas
hev ‘additional courses will be offered
coming summer, fall and spring
sters at Texas A&M.”
>uglas said courses in high de-
I, in, which there is a backlog of
mtsl attempting to enroll, and
es needed for graduation will take
dent in the additional offerings,
s done on a smaller scale this
l when approximately 20 courses
added to the original schedule,
S ummer’s program will be greatly
ided,” Douglas said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Presi
dent Clinton navigated an awk
ward night by cracking wise on his
lawyers, bemoaning the “March
Madness” of scandal and promis
ing with a flourishing disco pose
that he will be “Staying Alive”
through it all.
The 113th annual Gridiron
Club Dinner was a white-tie roast
ing that briefly, gingerly turned the
Monica Lewinsky inquiry into a
laughing matter.
Setting the tone with the first
words of his monologue, Clinton
gazed over the crowd of journalis
tic and political elite Saturday
night and quipped: “So, how was
your week?”
The audience erupted into
laughter, knowing it was a rotten
week for Clinton. It began with
presidential accuser Kathleen Wil
ley appearing on CBS-TV's “60
Minutes” and ended here — at a
gathering of the fire-breathing
Fourth Estate.
“Please withhold subpoenas until
till the jokes are told,” Clinton said.
Just getting warmed up, he
compared the controversy to this
month’s NCAA basketball tourna
ment: “This is an unusual time in
Washington — sort of our version
of’March Madness.'”
For the next several minutes,
Clinton deftly made light of the
controversy without mentioning
Lewinsky, Willey, Paula Jones or
even Gennifer Flowers. The
laughs, it turned out, were on his
attorneys.
His jokes “were a whole lot fun
nier before the lawyers got ahold
of them,” Clinton said. That
launched him into a lighthearted
routine poking fun at his no-com
ment, no-details legal strategy.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich
preceded Clinton to the lectern, say
ing it is sobering to realize that “dur
ing this meal the president’s job ap
proval rating will go up six points.”
As usual, the staple of the night
was a rash of skits put on by re
porters roasting the officials they
cover.
“Please withhold
subpoenas until all
the jokes are told.”
President Clinton
But this year, many of the gibes,
jokes and sharp elbows were being
directed at the way they have cov
ered this year of shared sex-scan
dal stories. As one song said, in
love and in the selling of newspa
pers, “Anything Goes.”
The biggest laugh probably
went to Socks, the demoted presi
dential pet who got in some digs at
the expense of Buddy, the new first
dog. To the tune, “Memories,” the
feline whined, “Bud-dy! How’d he
think up that dumb name?”
Yet Clinton was the star. It would
have been bad form to back out of a
gala that has played out before al
most every president since Benjamin
Harrison attended in 1888, three
years after the club was founded and
started its annual dinners. It would
have been nearly impossible to ig
nore the controversy.
So the president joked about le
gal machinations that madden Re
publicans, prosecutors and re
porters — including ordering aides
to cite executive privilege and re
fusing himself to elaborate about
his relationship with the women.
According to a tongue-in-cheek
Clinton, his lawyers approved just
three jokes for the night:
—’’Why did the chicken cross
the road? Asked and answered.”
Dirty work
searchers survey
M racial climate
ivera! thousand undergraduate
mts recently received a survey
Ivill assist student affairs admin-
. ors in understanding the campus
■ climate and other issues regard-
livefsity'programs and services.
ie undergraduate survey is the
id phase of the project that was
)d in the fall. Dr. Ray Bowen, Texas
University president, authorized
ffice of the Vice President for Stu-
Wairs to initiate the assessment
neans of being proactive in meet-
:udent needs.
Sylvia Hurtado, an expert on
ssment of campus climate,
a team from the University of
igan Center for the Study of
ar Education are conducting the
long project.
ncKAt the fall, the research team was
Ijgj-impus conducting focus groups
ove[r students, holding interviews
^campus administrators and at-
v S af ing a variety of Aggie events.
e visits helped frame the ques-
1 2nit , for the series of surveys being
the 3d this spring.
ams amprehensive surveys also have
Oise designed for faculty, staff and
' firsuate students. Results from the
ipeepys will be formulated into recom-
1 l ie dations for consideration by A&M
nistration late spring.
the.l
t me
oiffi!
ma
lei if
I stars come a - , >
s w in droves to
fbrate the
id It . . *
rf j t cinematic
ks and the
t performances of ’97.
v v ,
■■
uni
■
W
*•
JAKE SCHRICKLING/The Battalion
Randall Jay, an assistant superintendent for Bartlett and Cocke Construction, oversees the demolition of part of the horseshoe of Kyle Field
Saturday afternoon.
Mexican gun laws halt U.S. hunters
FORT WORTH (AP) — Hundreds
of U.S. citizens wind up in hand
cuffs or prison each year for violat
ing strict Mexican gun-control
statutes, the Fort Worth Star-
Telegram reported Sunday.
Most Americans arrested for
Mexican gun violations are inno
cent tourists, say U.S. consular offi
cials in the six districts along the
1,933-mile U.S.-Mexico border.
Darrell Dowden, for example.
The landscaper from Carrollton, a
northeast Dallas suburb, was look
ing forward to a two-day Mexican
getaway Nov. 15 when he crossed
the border. Problem was, Dowden
had an unloaded .410-gauge shot
gun behind his front seat, where it
had been for the past five years.
Mexican border officials arrested
Dowden on suspicion of smuggling
a military weapon into Mexico, a
federal crime with a potential 30-
year prison sentence. It would cost
Dowden 103 days in a Mexican jail
and more than $17,000.
“I feel wronged,” Dowden said.
“Hell, I wasn’t running weapons
down to Chiapas or anything. They
know it was a little old rabbit-shoot
ing .410.1 don’t feel I did anything
wrong, and they’re going to take
three months of my life and all my
money?”
Darrell Dowden’s story is not
unique.
Mexico forbids the importation
or possession of any gun or ammu
nition without a permit. Its laws ban
dozens of types of guns that are le
gal in the border states of California,
Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, in
cluding the .357-caliber Magnum
pistol and any shotgun with a bar
rel shorter than 25 inches.
Dowden said he was unaware of
the law until he crossed the border.
In the frantic first days after her
son’s arrest, his mother, Janice
Dowden, called or wrote letters to
lawyers, diplomats, senators, con
gressmen, Mexican officials, even
Ross Perot.
Mexican officials acknowledge
that some tourists who bring guns
into the countiy are swept up acci
dentally in arrests aimed at crimi
nals involved in weapons smug
gling. Still, her son remained in jail.
Finally, at the suggestion of a pri
vate investigator she hired a pair of
Texas bounty hunters who negoti
ated her son’s release.
Clinton travels to Africa
ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Slowly,
the driver edges his car- into the busy
intersection, blasting his horn and
flashing his lights before speeding
past the darkened corner and mak
ing it safely to the other side.
The power is out, the traffic light
is dead and automotive pandemo
nium reigns. This is just a hint of the
electrical nightmare that has been
growing in Ghana since January.
Industry has been hobbled,
thousands of people have been
laid off and rationing programs
mean the electricity flips off in
nearly every Accra neighborhood
for 12 hours a day. Ghana, long one
of Africa’s stronger economies, is
struggling to get by on generators,
candles and oil lamps.
Water levels at the country’s
main hydroelectric dam, Ghana’s
prime source of electricity, have
dropped drastically because of
poor rainfall. Power output is down
more than 45 percent.
But with President Clinton arriv
ing today to begin a 12-day swing
through Africa, Ghanaian authori
ties are leaving little to chance.
Fearing an embarrassing elec
tricity outage — even though
most places the president will vis
it already have priority for power
— generators have been installed
nearly everywhere that he and
Hillary Rodham Clinton will visit,
according to a top Ghanaian offi
cial. Any sudden shutdown dur
ing their nine-hour stop will be
immediately corrected.
“We cannot afford to let down
our august visitor,” the official said
on condition his name not be used.
“This visit means a lot to Africa and
to Ghana in particular.”
Clinton’s six-nation tour,
which will focus on a plan to bol
ster trade and investment in
Africa, also includes stops in
Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa,
Botswana and Senegal.
Presidential trip
President Clinton’s trip to sub-
Saharan Africa is the most
extensive by any American
president. A look at his itinerary:
© Ghana: Visiting a Peace
Corps project in the first nation
where volunteers were sent.
01
3/23-3/25 p
© Uganda: Meeting regional
leaders to stress cooperation on conflict
resolution, human rights, democracy
and economic reforms.
©Rwanda: Airport stopover;
will condemn 1994 ethnic killings
and genocide worldwide.
3/29-3/31 |©
3/25-3/29 o
©South Africa: Visiting Robben Island prison —
with Nelson Mandela where he spent 18 years as a political prisoner.
• Visiting Cape Town and Johannesburg where Clinton will
celebrate the 1994 end of apartheid.
© Botswana: Going on two-night safari.
© Senegal: Visiting Goree Island, the shipping point for slaves to the
Americas, now a tourist destination.
AP/Wm. J. Gastello
—“A lawyer and a client walk
into a bar. The lawyer turns to his
client and says...” Clinton stopped
himself, telling the crowd, “No,
wait. It’s privileged...”
— “Knock, Knock: Don’t answer
that.”
The legal beagles also ordered
him not to include Whitewater pros
ecutor Kenneth Starr in his mono
logue. “People named Starr I can
mention: Brenda, Bart and Ringo.”
He talked about the new movie
Primary Colors, in which John Tra
volta portrays a philandering
Southern governor running for
president in 1992.
“This is not the first time John
Travolta has modeled a character
on me,” Clinton said, striking an
hilarious finger-pointing pose
straight out of Travolta’s 1970s film
Sa tu relay Nigh t Fever.
“Yep. That's my song,” said the
president, referring to the movie’s
disco hit, “Staying Alive.”
Court to
rule case
on appeal
LAGO VISTA, Texas (AP) — Five
years ago, a call from the cops
stunned school superintendent Vir
ginia Collier. One of the district’s
teachers, a 52-year-old retired Ma
rine, had been found naked in a se
cluded, wooded area with a 15-year-
old student.
The teacher, Frank Waldrop, was
eventually stripped of his teaching
certificate and pleaded no contest to
attempted sexual assault. The girl,
now 20, went on to college. Collier su
pervises a larger district 90 miles to
the east.
But the fallout continues with a
lawsuit filed by the young woman
and her mother against Lago Vista In
dependent School District. The U.S.
Supreme Court hears arguments
Wednesday in a case that may deter
mine whether a school district can be
held liable for teachers’ sexual mis
conduct-— even when it knows noth
ing about the misbehavior and it oc
curs off school property.
The lawsuit, rejected by lower
courts, contends Waldrop singled the
girl out in 1992 when tire 14-year-old
freshman took his social studies class.
Just before spring break, Waldrop
brought a book to her home. Finding
her alone, he kissed and fondled her,
according to legal briefs.
That was “the first absolutely bla
tant, no questions, no mistaking, sex
ual advance that he had made to
wards me,” the girl said in a
deposition.
But it was not the last: Waldrop en
ticed the gifted, young student into
further contact with advanced course
work. She said she did not go to
school officials about the developing
sexual relationship because “then I
wouldn’t be able to have this person
as a teacher anymore and that was
my main interest in any relationship
with him.”
The same year, the parents or
guardians of at least two other girls
complained to Collier about what
they called inappropriate remarks
Waldrop made to their daughters.
Waldrop met with the parents and
said he had meant no offense. The
principal admonished the teacher
and felt the matter was resolved, ac
cording to legal briefs in this case.
But the young woman’s lawyers
contend deeper investigation by the
district might have revealed his con
duct with the freshman student.
A federal judge in Austin dis
missed her suit against the district,
saying no school official knew of
the teacher’s misconduct. The 5th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
agreed last year, saying a district
cannot be liable unless a supervi
sory administrator knows about
misconduct and fails to act.
The young woman’s appeal says
that standard falls short.
“We characterize that as the ‘igno
rance is salvation’ approach,” said
Samuel Issacharoff, a University of
Texas law professor helping her.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1992
that students sexually harassed by
teachers may collect monetary dam
ages from their schools and school
officials under Title DC of the Educa
tion Amendments of 1972, which for
bids discrimination in education
programs receiving federal money.