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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 31, 1998)
Texas A St M University r MI i I r%# 'mmmi TODAY TOMORROW YEAR • ISSUE 117*12 PAGES COLLEGE STATION • TX TUESDAY • MARCH 31 • 1998 itness observes sign dumpings UPD says By Robert Smith City editor Jriversity Police Department (UPD) cials said Monday they received a re- t that two “college-aged” men are re- naible for stealing about 15 student ijtibn campaign signs early Saturday aping on campus. Job Wiatt, director of UPD, said Mark ^Hs, a freshman industrial distribution jon filed a report Saturday saying he saw ^■lite males driving a truck make two 3s tto drop off the signs at the Parsons ■ted Cavalry Barns on FM 2818. Wiatt said Dennis described the truck as a black and brown older model half-ton Chevrolet truck. In the report, Dennis said the men un loaded several signs at the Parsons’ hay barn at about 5:15 a.m. Saturday and re turned about 20 minutes later and un loaded more signs. Dennis said in the report he was at the barn to feed the horses. Wiatt said if the perpetrators are found, they may be charged with a Class B misde meanor and subject to a $2,000 fine and/or six months in jail. The “sandwich-board” signs, which are four foot wooden signs, belong to stu dents who are running for yell leader po sitions. The signs have since been re turned to the candidates. One student body president candidate filed a separate report that said his signs were stolen Saturday morning, Wiatt said. The candidate’s 8-by-2-foot white plas tic signs remain missing, Wiatt said. In a related story, the Student Elections Commission (SEC) met with yell leader and student body president candidates late last night to address the stolen-sign issue. Murray Van Eman, the student elections commissioner, released a report early Mon day morning saying, “After conducting a thorough investigation, I find there is no ev idence to support that any campus organi zation or candidate had any involvement, organized or individually, in this incident, including the Parsons Mounted Cavalry.” All of the yell leader candidates who had campaign signs stolen Saturday were stu dents not in the Corps of Cadets. Only five of the 18 yell leader candidates are students in the Corps of Cadets. Corps Commander Danny Feather, a se nior economics major, said evidence from the police report shows that no Corps of Cadets students were involved in stealing the signs. “When you take a look at the facts, it is obvious that no one in the Corps would do this,” he said. “You would have to be pretty dumb to drop the signs off at the (Parsons) barn and then call and report that you found them there.” Feather said he is disappointed that the signs were stolen. “The one shining ray of light is the class exhibited by the yell leader candidates, both Corps and non-Corps,” he said. Feather said some of the candidates whose signs were not stolen agreed to remove their signs to help maintain a fair election. G wins praise tival’s success sparks talk of annual event By Amanda Smith Staff writer initial success of North by North- |lusic Festival this past weekend has d talk of making the musical festival lual event. han McFall, the event coordinator senior environmental science ma id the large num- of people in the gate area did not problems, ouldn’t have asked better weekend,” |ll said. “Everybody out and had a good Irhe staff of the fes- illdid an incredible |ased on the prelim- figures, I would say here is no doubt e will continue.” Mc Fall developed the aior the North by Northgate festival tyrar after attending South by South- st in Austin. McFall said he approached Northgate sMess owners with the idea and they ■nded positively. ®|\ r erybody was real excited about It North by Northgate could bring,” north by northgate w A McFall said. North by Northgate brought about 1,500 people to the Northgate area on both Friday and Saturday nights. Don Anz, the owner of the Crooked Path Ale House and Cafe Eccell, said $10,000 of North by Northgate proceeds will go to two local charities. About $6,000 will be given to the Brazos Food Bank and the remaining $4,000 will go to Junction 505. “Even after all the ex penses, the majority of the proceeds will go to these charities,” Anz said. “I hope that they will both be very happy with the donation.” All of the 72 scheduled acts performed at the fes tival. Fifty-one bands and 21 singer-songwriters per formed. About half of the bands were from the Bryan-College Station area. Other acts came from Austin, Dallas, Houston and outside of Texas. McFall said he hopes North by North- gate can be expanded to include daytime activities. Please see NXNG on Page 2. music | festival Come closer John, Deere MIKE FUENTES/The Battalion Ricky Garcia, a farm foreman, levels an old peach orchard on far West Campus Monday for this year's crops. resist HIV 1'WYORK (AP) — Four- ill hemophiliacs who re dly got HlV-contami- infusions resisted tion because they had I levels of certain im- [e system proteins, a suggests. e proteins are called okines. Prior studies ve shown they can block infection in the test tube, cientists have been hop- o use them to develop DS drugs or a vaccine, le Associated Press re- the study of hemo- ■acs in September when it I presented at a meeting, e work now appears in Tuesday’s issue of the Pro ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was presented by Daniel Zagury of the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, Alessandro Gringeri of the University of Milan in Italy, Dr. Robert Gallo of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, and others. The hemophiliacs, from Italy, were exposed to the AIDS virus through contam inated infusions of blood products. Blood cells taken from them were found to produce about twice as much of three kinds of chemokines as did cells from healthy blood donors, or from hemophiliacs unex posed to HIV. The study involved 128 he mophiliacs who had repeat edly been exposed to HIV from blood products between 1980 to 1985, before a test to screen blood for the virus be came available. Only three were infected by the first infu sions. The total number of those infected rose to 59 in 1982, 84 in 1983, 103 in 1984 and 114 in 1985. The pattern shows most he mophiliacs had a natural but temporary resistance to HIV infection, the researchers said. Supreme Court hears arguments on HIV as a physical disability INSIDE iase is the Word: Grease icfes off against Grease 2 to who rules Rydell High. See Page 3 SM hired new basketball )ach Melvin Watkins from |c-Charlotte. See Page 7 raHHHHEB Huffines: Smell seeping from manholes permeates A&M campus. See Page 11 Itp: / / battalion.tamu.edu ook up with state and na- onal news through The /ire, AP’s 24-hour online ews service. Hormone presents surgery alternative ATLANTA (AP) — For the first time, doctors have shown that injec tions of a genetically en gineered hormone can help people with bad hearts grow their own by passes — an approach that could someday offer an alternative to surgery and angioplasty. The hormone, which occurs naturally in the body, triggers the heart to sprout tiny vessels to carry blood around blockages that cause angina pain. The results of the first ex perimental use, released Monday, showed that the treatment eased angina in 13 of the 15 people treated. The results are consid ered very preliminary, and the doctors caution that much more testing will be needed to know precisely how well it works. Nevertheless, Dr. Tim othy D. Henry of the Uni versity of Minnesota, who directed the study, said, “We are excited by this. It is a unique ap proach to treating coro nary artery disease.” About 1 million Ameri cans a year undergo either bypass or angioplasty. A bypass involves grafting tiny pieces of blood vessel onto the heart to shuttle blood around blocked sec tions of artery. Angioplas ty uses a tiny balloon, threaded into the heart, to squeeze open narrowed passages temporarily. If all goes as the re searchers hope, natural proteins called growth factors could offer a new alternative, especially for those who have already failed the standard ap proaches or cannot be helped by them. In this experiment, doctors injected geneti cally engineered vascular endothelial growth fac tor, or VEGF (pro nounced vedge-EFF). The protein is made by Genentech Inc., which paid for the experiment. WASHINGTON (AP) — In a major test of disability rights, Supreme Court jus tices sparred Monday over whether HIV- infected people should be considered dis abled because of dangers involved in sex and childbearing. The lawyer for Maine dentist Randon Bragdon argued that Bragdon did not ille gally discriminate against an HIV-infected woman by refusing to treat her at his office. The patient, Sidney Abbott, suffers no AIDS symptoms and therefore is not pro tected by the Americans With Disabilities Act, said attorney John McCarthy. But Abbott’s lawyer said lower courts correctly found that Bragdon violated the law, which bars discrimination against the disabled in jobs, housing and public accommodations. The law— responsible for such aids as wheelchair ramps at countless public places — says people are disabled if they have a physical or mental impairment that “substantially limits one or more ma jor life activities.” HIV-infected people should always be considered disabled because the conta gious and fatal nature of acquired immune deficiency syndrome severely limits their ability to have sex and bear children, said Abbott’s attorney, Bennett H. Klein. Some justices disputed whether HIV in fection really creates such a limit. Justices David H. Souter and Antonin Scalia suggested an HIV-infected per son faces a “moral choice” rather than an actual physical limit on his ability to have children. “How can we say here that your client exercised reasonable medical judgement?” Stephen G. Breyer Supreme Court Justice However, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said that if a person with highly infectious tuberculosis stays away from other people, “we don’t just call it a moral choice.” Someone with bubonic plague would be considered disabled, added Justice Stephen G. Breyer. Bragdon’s lawyer said the disability law aims to protect people whose disabilities affect their “day-to-day independent living and economic self-sufficiency,” not HIV-in fected people who suffer no symptoms. The disability-rights law says disabled people can be treated differently if they pose a “direct threat to the health or safety of others.” “Dr. Bragdon believes that when he pro vides a service in the face of the risk of death he should be allowed to take additional precautions” such as insisting on filling Ab bott’s cavity at a hospital, McCarthy said. However, Breyer said that “after 15 years and hundreds of thousands of deaths” from AIDS there appeared to be no docu mented cases in which a dentist caught the virus from a patient. “How can we say here that your client exercised reasonable medical judgment?” Breyer asked. McCarthy replied that there were seven possible cases of HIV transmis sion in dental procedures. Klein said that unless HIV-infected people have clear protections under the law, many will hide the fact that they car ry the virus. A decision is expected by July. The jus tices’ ruling could provide clues as to whether the law covers other kinds of dis abilities, such as cases of epilepsy or dia betes that are controlled by medication. MTV show focuses on death of Plano youth PLANO, Texas (AP) — Bar bara Shaunfield had a feeling her son Matt’s life wasn’t going to have a happy ending. Her fears were realized early on the second morning of 1996 when Matt’s college friends found the 220-pound, 6-foot-2 student slumped over in his bathroom, blue from lack of oxygen and about to die fro’fn a heroin overdose. “They put a pillow under his head and covered him with a blanket and thought he would sleep it off,” Mrs. Shaunfield said. But Matt, 22, never woke up. Nor did a dozen other heroin users over the next 18 months in his hometown of Plano, a community of 188,000 about 10 miles north of Dallas. The deaths of so many youths in a leafy suburb better known for corporate campus-: es than shooting galleries set off: a shockwave that resonated all tire way to the New York offices of MTV the youth-oriented cq|f ble channel. “Somehow there has been a gap in the education of this.: drug,” said Laura Lazin, vice president of MTV News and Specials. “It seems like so many people in this generation don’t understand how dangerous this drug is.” To hammer home that hero in’s growing danger to young Americans, the network has produced a documentary that features Plano’s ongoing battle against the drug. “Fatal Dose” is the first in a new series called “True Life” that will tackle subjects from drugs to personal finances and women in sports. MTV plans to air a new documentary each Tuesday night at 10 p.m. begin ning this week. Lazin said the idea is to tell young adults’ stories in their own words, from their own points of view. “Fatal Dose” shows 19-year- old addicts Allen and Eric shooting up heroin in a gas sta tion bathroom as MTV reporter Serena Altschul looks on.