Texas A St M University
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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.