• April 1J,
Texas A & M University
eft by Pei
)4f H YEAR • ISSUE 126 • 10 PAGES
L ~J
COLLEGE STATION • TX
mm I
TODAY
TOMORROW
i«nt
touth
xas
es suit
affiliation
■tie moves on
■USTON (AP) — The
labble over the affiliation of
BA&M University and South
Bliollege of Law has moved
jtle legal arena.
iTie law school filed suit Mon-
' against the Texas Higher Ed
ition Coordinating Board,
king a declaratory judgment
Baher the affiliation is legal.
B school said the move was
impted by the coordinating
As decision to seek a legal
Bin on the affiliation from
omcy General Dan Morales.
fWc don’t believe an advisory
Bm is the solution,” said
fl T. Read, president and
Bof South Texas College of
fld said a declaratory judg-
nt would preferable because
jbinding.
Bas A&M announced plans
Biate with the Houston law
Bl in January, but the coor-
Bng board protested, saying
AUMAJiumu. nee d e d its permission to
Washingtons! jablish alaw school,
was considers University officials had con
i' the job until!: I e d they didn’t need permis-
Kelvin m because the law school
:>ut of consider juld continue charging pri-
:er interview tfe-school tuition.
IS officials, -The coordinating board has
aroiina assistfflBuled a May 5 hearing to ex-
also was inti ore the affiliation agreement,
rest’s Dave Oc Jp spokesman Ray Grasshoff
nterviewwith id. Grasshoff said he was not
relwhat impact the lawsuit
ould have on the hearing,
learly, if there’s some legal
\diment to us doing this, we
not do that,” he said,
hearing date has been set
lawsuit, filed in a Travis
ty state district court.
idents receive
lolarships
ro Texas A&M students
(been awarded the Barry M.
vater Scholarship. The
honors the academic
of U.S. students in the
lof mathematics, science
Engineering.
|omas Miller, a sophomore
ilstry and mathematics ma-
Ind Paula Shawva, a junior
jiemistry and genetics major,
vo of the 316 undergradu-
ophomores chosen as Gold-
1 Scholars.
lie scholars will receive one
|ra-year scholarships which
the cost of tuition, fees,
Is and room and board up to
Iximum of $7,500 per year.
Wall crawler
MIKE FUENTES/The Battalion
Lanny Dunham, a junior applied mathematics major, makes his way up the artificial cliff at the Student Recreation Center Mon
day afternoon as John Hensz, a sophomore electrical engineering major belays as Dunham climbs.
TUESDAY • APRIL 14 • 1998
Survey shows
parking woes
SGA committee surveys students
about PTTS and parking issues
D.C. gives Texas big slice of budget
m
WASHINGTON (AP) — The dollars
flow to Texas from Washington in the
form of Social Security and welfare pay
ments, salaries for military personnel,
dollars to build highways and repair
bridges or develop next-generation
weapons systems.
Ail told, Washington sent $88.9 billion
to Texas last year in direct federal expen
ditures, according to figures issued this
month by the Census Bureau.
The federal payout, while huge, is just
a small piece of the $1.4 trillion pie Wash
ington’s policymakers carved up and
doled out in fiscal 1997.
Texas, the nation’s second most popu
lous state, was third in receipts, behind
California’s $160 billion and New York’s
nearly $96 billion.
While third in overall dollar totals, the
Lone Star State ranks far from the top
when federal spending is broken down
per capita.
Texas received an average of $4,544 per
resident last year, according to the Census
Bureau’s Federal Expenditures by State re
port, compared to a national average of
$5,263. The top recipient among states
was Virginia, with $7,856 per resident.
Looked at another way, Texas ac
counted for 7.2 percent of the nation’s
population last year but received only 6.2
percent of federal expenditures.
A host of intangibles explain the fund
ing differences between states — every
thing from how many retirees draw Social
Security, to how successful politicians are
in nabbing dollars for pet projects, and
state and local governments’ willingness
to provide money of their own in ex
change for matching federal funds.
Funding inequities also arise from the
complex calculations used to divvy up
pots of federal dollars.
Lawmakers, for example, have been
grappling for months over the formula
used to parcel out dollars from the feder
al highway trust fund.
Texas and other so-called donor
states have been locked in battle to in
crease their share, claiming longstand
ing inequity.
Currently, Texas receives 76 cents from
Washington for every dollar paid into the
highway trust fund in the form of gaso
line taxes — while some states receive
two and three times that rate.
By Amanda Smith
Staff writer
A recent survey on park
ing conducted by students
suggests what most already
believe to be true — it is not
easy to find a place to park
on campus.
Texas Aggies Making
Changes, a committee of
Student Government
(TAMC), conducted a survey
of more than 1,100 students
to gather input concerning
Parking, Traffic and Trans
portation Services (PTTS).
A nonscientific sample of
students were surveyed in
the Commons, the MSC,
Wehner and Zachry in
March by the TAMC Re
search and Communica
tions subcommittee.
Of the 1,182 students
completing the surveys, ap
proximately 500 live on cam
pus and 700 live off campus.
The results show 84.1 per
cent of students, said they
have parked illegally at least
once knowing they could re
ceive a ticket.
A majority of the students
surveyed, said they never
pay to park, but 250 students
reported they pay to park
once a week.
Also, 64.3 percent of the
students surveyed said they
spend less than $50 on park
ing tickets during a semester;
24.2 percent said they spend
between $50 and $100 per
semester on parking tickets.
Approximately one-tenth
of students said they spend
between $100 and $250 per
semester on parking tickets.
Less than 2 percent of stu
dents surveyed reported
they spend more than $250
per semester on tickets.
When asked whether
parking had caused them to
miss a class, 72.8 percent of
studens reported they had
been late or missed a class
because they could not find
a place to park.
Liz Hagan, a TAMC
member and a freshman
agribusiness major, said the
survey was conducted to
determine students’ rela
tions with PTTS.
Hagan said the committee
found the large size of the stu
dent body a challenge in
making universal conclu
sions about the results.
“When you have a popula
tion of 43,000 students, it is
hard to conduct a survey and
make generalizations,” Hagan
said. “We tried to be random in
who we selected and in the lo
cation of our polling stations.”
Hagan said TAMC plans
to pass the results along to
the Student Senate and PTTS
for consideration.
UT installs Faulkner as president
m
AUSTIN (AP) — Making
University of Texas salaries
competitive — at a potential
cost of $30 million — and en
suring minority students
know they’re welcome are top
priorities for new UT-Austin
President Larry Faulkner.
Faulkner said Monday he
gained experience wrestling
with the salary issue in his
most recent post as provost
and vice chancellor for acad
emic affairs at the University
of Illinois.
“We had exactly the same
problems. We had weak staff
salaries. We had weak faculty
salaries. We had weak gradu
ate assistant stipends.
“We’ve been working on it
consistently for a long time,
and we have
made a lot of
progress,” Faulkner
said in an interview at
his UT office.
At UT, non-teaching staff
members have been pushing
for higher pay after a 1997
study showed 94 percent are
paid below average for the
Austin market.
Officials have said faculty
should be paid more, and
top graduate students have
been lost to universities that
offer more money and free
tuition.
“It takes a lot
of money to ad
dress those prob
lems, and that money
has to be recurring” from
year to year, Faulkner said.
“I would not be surprised if
we were talking about a prob
lem that had a size of $30 mil
lion, recurring.”
Faulkner emphasized the
need for an ongoing commit
ment.
“If we could solve this
problem by building a $10
million building, we could
scrape together $10 million
or we could borrow it and
pay it back.
Salary dollars have to be
there this year, next year, the
year after that,” he said.
A report is due April 30 on
staff salaries.
One estimate puts the cost
of bringing them up to the
market average at more than
$10 million, part of Faulkner's
$30 million estimate.
• Have you ever parked
illegally knowing you
could receive a ticket for
parking there?
• Have you ever been late
to a class or missed a
class because you
couldn’t find parking?
• On average, how much
do you spend a semester
on parking tickets?
Yes
82.7%
No
17.3%
Yes
72.6%
No
27.4%
<150
64.2%
$50-$100
24.2%
>$100
11.6%
Error: + or - 5%
Source: TAMC in Student Government
@1
: Ce#
aggicllfc
Free community
play tells a tale
of children and
how easily
violence can
ler their everyday lives.
See Page 3
eball team hosts
wdown with No. 12 Rice
^ersity Owls.
See Page 5
is: A look at a few courses
did not quite make it into
: course selection guide.
See Page 9
■eb. 9-Msy
Place ,
Messing 1
at 845-3076.
Ip: / / battalion.tamn.edu
ok up with state and na-
lal news through The
re, AP’s 24-hour online
ws service.
Conference looks at women's role
Staff & wire reports
Women have become a perma
nent part of the American work
force and now, thanks to a new en
dowment of more than $100,000,
“Women in the Workplace” will be
come a permanent conference at
Texas A&M University.
John Dinkel, associate dean for
master’s programs in the Universi
ty’s Lowry Mays College & Graduate
School of Business, announced the
gift during the second annual con
ference, held as part of Women’s
Week activities at Texas A&M.
The endowment will be used to
expand the conference to the uni
versity level and eventually to the
nation, Dinkel said.
Arthur Anderson, Schubert As
sociates of Boston and Shell Oil
Company joined forces to provide
financial support for the continua
tion of the conference, which fo
cuses on the challenges women
face in building successful careers
and strategies for meeting those
challenges. As part of the confer
ence, nationally recognized female
business leaders share insights with
young men and women on how to
create and work within a climate of
mutual respect and understanding.
“As the nation’s work force con
tinues to become more diverse, it
is increasingly important that we
train students to operate effective
ly within diverse workplaces,”
Dinkel said. “Programs like these
simply add value to the diploma.”
where our mouths were on this
one,” she said. “Diversity educa
tion is essential to the success of
anyone — male or female — in
business today.”
This year’s speakers included
‘We wanted to put our money where our
mouths were on this one.”
Lynda Bodman
President of Schubert Associates
The conference originated in
1996 as a result of efforts by mas
ter’s of business administration
and accounting students who ini
tiated plans for a conference. Few
er than 100 students, faculty and
business people were able to at
tend the conference held in the
spring of 1997. This year the con
ference numbers more than dou
bled with 220 participants.
Lynda Bodman, president of
Schubert Associates, led the ef
fort to secure funding for the one-
day conference.
"We wanted to put our money
Shell’s Susan Hodge, who previous
ly served as vice president on Enron
Capital Management, and Beth
Rivers of Coopers and Lybrand. As
marketing managing partner in
Fort Worth, Rivers is only the third
woman to head one of Cooper and
Lybrand’s 100 U. S. offices.
Past featured speakers have in
cluded Maryann Correnti, a part
ner with Arthur Anderson; Mau
reen Kitts, director of
communications for McDonald’s
Corp. of Canada; and Linda Pierce,
executive director of the leadership
council of Shell Oil.
Protestants route parade
away from Catholic areas
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP)
— Taking their cue from last week’s
sweeping peace accord for Northern
Ireland, Protestant marchers avoid
ed a hostile Catholic neighborhood
Monday that has frequently been a
sectarian battleground.
This symbolic start to Northern
Ireland’s always divisive “marching
season,” which runs from Easter
Monday to late August, demonstrat
ed the kind of retreats that will be re
quired for the peace agreement to
survive the coming months.
Police blocked the early morning
march by 20 Apprentice Boys, one
of Northern Ireland’s three pro-
British Protestant fraternal orders,
at a bridge a few hundred yards
from the Catholic Lower Ormeau
neighborhood of south Belfast.
The marchers handed the police
commander a letter of protest. But
rather than mounting the kind of
lengthy standoff that in past years
has ended in violence, they and an
accompanying band immediately
boarded a bus to join another pa
rade in a mostly Protestant town.
Later, speakers at Apprentice
Boys rallies condemned the com
promises contained in last Friday’s
accord — which Northern Ireland’s
largest Protestant party, David Trim
ble’s Ulster Unionists, supported.
“For Sale!” read one leaflet, pic
turing a silhouette of Northern Ire
land. It was handed out to some of
the more than 10,000 Apprentice
Boys rallying at Ballymena, north
west of Belfast. “Estate agent: Mr.
David Trimble and the Ulster
Unionist Party.”
Many Protestants oppose key
compromises in the agreement;
That several hundred Irish Republi
can Army prisoners will be released
within two years if the IRA’s July 1997
truce holds; that the IRA-allied Sinn
Fein party can take part in a new
Northern Ireland Assembly; and that
Assembly must pursue joint policy
making with the Irish Republic.
The agreement accepted by ne
gotiators from the Ulster Unionists,
Sinn Fein and six other parties has
to be passed in public referendums
May 22 in both Northern Ireland
and the Irish Republic.
The accord also has to be ap
proved Saturday by the Ulster
Unionists’ governing body, the 800-
member Ulster Unionist Council.
And Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams
says his party’s support depends on
approval by its grassroots members
at a Sinn Fein conference this week
end in Dublin.