Texas A & M University
"WWW-
TODAY
TOMORROW
COLLEGE STATION • TX
[ H YEAR • ISSUE 133 • 12 PAGES
ew class examines
obal effects of NAFTA
urology allows teleconferencing with students in Canada and Mexico
WEDNESDAY • APRIL 23 • 1998
By Jennifer Wilson
Staff writer
(uflents now have the opportunity to
Bands-onand see new perspectives
liek ffects of the North American Free
■agreement (NAFTA) in a new class
|liju;raclively links them with other
pits in Canada and Mexico,
lie dass, offered by the Lowry Mays
je® and Graduate School of Business
jthi George Bush School of Govern-
j||tiKl Public Service, uses the tech-
■ of video teleconferencing.
Haine Eden, faculty coordinator of
lernational Affairs in the Americas
ush School and an associate pro-
)f management, coordinates and
is the class that connects A&M to
on University in Ottawa, Canada,
! Instit u to Technologico Autonomo
ico in Mexico City, Mexico,
jn said the class helps students
bout Mexican and Canadian per-
es on NAFTA and touches on diffi-
rics in international management,
e class enabled us to take students
ally expose them to the culture
and economics of Mexico and Canada,”
she said.
The class organizes students into
teams with members from each country.
The students work on projects with their
members through the use of the Internet
“The class enabled us to
take students and really
expose them to the culture
and economics of
Mexico and Canada.”
Lorraine Eden
Faculty coordinator of t he
International Affairs in the Americas
and e-mail. They present their projects
during class when all three countries are
linked by the video teleconference.
Eden said the class met with the two
countries 10 times during the semester to
share and discuss assignments. She said
the class is very beneficial to students be
cause it provides them skills they could
not get any other way.
“It brings the world into the classroom
instead of taking them to Mexico or Cana
da,” she said.
Eden said the class is assigned three
projects. The international teams work on
all three together which explore the im
pacts of NAFTA on countries, industries
and firms.
She said for the analysis of NAFTA on
firms, the teams analyzed different auto
mobile companies and used new software
that was donated to them that simulated
software actually used by automobile
companies.
Eden said many students had the op
portunity to personally work with advi
sors at Chrysler and GM.
“In the workplace, most people will
end up working in cross-country and
cross-cultural teams, and this class is a
way to give students those skills to prepare
them for international business,” she said.
Please see NAFTA on Page 6.
Students trek across
the world with study
abroad program
By Kelly Hackworth
Staff writer
While many students are planning to take
classes in their hometowns, others are stay
ing in College Station this summer and some
have chosen to study abroad.
Mona Rizk-Finne, director
of Study Abroad programs,
said about 700 Aggies studied
abroad last year.
“It’s a wonderful experience
and opportunity for students
to learn about other cultures
and make wonderful friend
ships,” she said.
Dr. Howard Marchitello,
associate professor of English,
has taken groups of Aggies to
Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy in
the summers of 1994 and J it q
1997 and is taking another
group in the summer of 1999. Marchitello
encourages students to consider studying
abroad for the experience.
“It’s actually living, rather than visiting, a
COSTA RICA ITALY FRANC! MIXICO CITY
culture,” he said. “Students actually live and
learn the culture from within as compared to
the tourist model.”
Kim Bailey, a senior civil engineering ma
jor who studied in Italy, said the study abroad
experience made her more marketable.
“It helps with job inter
viewing because a lot of em
ployers see it as a positive ex
perience,” she said.
Cathy Frysinger, a secre-
taiy with the Study Abroad of
fice, said option packages in
clude 5-6 week summer
programs in Ital;, Normandy,
France; and Mexico City.
Prices start at $2,300 for the
Mexico City package.
Interested students can ap
ply for financial aid, grants and
scholarships, Frysinger said.
' A 12-week orientation
class is required the semester before the stu
dents are to study abroad.
Please see Abroad on Page 6.
arion takes charge
Big 12 commissioner
may leave position
MIKE FUENTES/The Battalion
role Grafe, a member of the archery team and freshman general studies major, practices Wednesday afternoon for an upcoming tourna-
nt this weekend.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Steve
Hatchell, who helped form the Big 12
Conference and became its first commis
sioner, may soon be leaving under pres
sure, sources told The Associated Press.
Hatchell has recently interviewed for
a top position with the Salt Lake Orga
nizing Committee which will oversee
the Winter Olympics in 2002.
“I would not be surprised if we are
interviewing candidates to be com
missioner when we hold our spring
meetings (May 18-21),” a source close
to the situation told The AP. “There
may be a vacancy.”
Dr. Ray Bowen, president of Texas
A&M University, has been appointed
spokesperson for Big 12 presidents on
the matter and could not immediately
be reached. Bowen was quoted by the
Fox affiliate in Kansas City Wednesday
night as saying that Hatchell was “in
terested in change. We’ve got some
management problems there and
there might be some people glad to see
him go. He’s very demanding.”
Bush supports Clinton
with Secret Service letter
WASHINGTON — Former President
George Bush jumped
unexpectedly be
hind Secret Service
efforts to keep agents
from testifying about
what they saw while
protecting President WSSMM
Clinton. The nation’s
largest women’s
group, however,
stayed out of the fray
and decided not to Bush
support Paula Jones’ lawsuit.
Just days after toying with the idea, the
National Organization for Women an
nounced it would not file a court brief in
support of Jones’ effort to reinstate her sex
ual harassment civil suit against Clinton.
NOW President Patricia Ireland said
the group’s national board and local
chapters were overwhelmingly against
filing a friend-of-the-court brief be
cause the “highly charged political”
lawsuit should not be used as a test case
on sexual harassment.
“The disreputable right-wing orga
nizations and individuals advancing
her cause...have a long-standing polit
ical interest in undermining our
movement to strengthen women’s
rights and weakening the laws that
protect those rights,” Ireland said at a
news conference.
idge dismisses appeal
ve
STIN (AP) — A federal judge took a slap
Drney General Dan Morales’ representa-
f the University of Texas in an affirmative
i case but dismissed a bid by Hispanic
lack groups to intervene.
. District Judge Sam Sparks, in an order
edWednesday, said the groups should in
seek to intervene in the case at the ap-
court level because proceedings in his
are concluded.
arks recently issued an injunction against
sing racial preferences in law school ad-
ons while considering attorney fees and
iges in the so-called Hopwood case. It was
named after one of four students who sued af
ter being denied admission to the law school.
The case, decided in 1996 by the 5th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, has
left Texas universities unable to consider race
in admissions or financial aid.
UT has requested that Morales use Sparks’
injunction to mount a fresh appeal of the case.
But Morales, citing his opposition to racial
preferences, said he hasn’t decided whether to
pursue an appeal.
Please see Hopwood on Page 6.
Six million remembered
Holocaust Remembrance Day prompts reflection
HOLOCAUST
harity donates $50 million
leli
W ANTONIO (AP) — A
atefoundationwentto one
ie poorest parts of San An-
o Wednesday to launch a
million school voucher
tam for low-income stu-
sto attend private schools,
he Children’s Educational
ortunity Foundation said
ill provide $5 million annu-
for 10 years for students in
Edgewood School District
a to a school of their choice,
t is the first time in the
ted States school vouchers
e been offered to students
a entire district.
“We are doing it now be
cause the time is right, the
funding is secured and, more
importantly, because the need
is great,” said Robert Aguirre,
managing director of the non
profit CEO Foundation.
Nearly all of the 14,000 stu
dents in the Edgewood district
would qualify for the program.
Critics immediately cried
foul, claiming the program will
not help all the district’s poor
children and that it is merely a
gimmick to pressure Texas law
makers into passing a state-
funded school voucher plan.
“This is, I think, a huge
public relations stunt. But
frankly, I think the people of
Texas are smarter than this,”
said John O’Sullivan, secre
tary-treasurer of the Texas
Federation of Teachers, which
opposes publicly funded
voucher programs.
Voucher opponents also
questioned why the CEO
Foundation chose Edgewood,
a predominantly Hispanic
district where the landmark
legal fight for equalizing pub
lic school financing in Texas
was begun.
SPRINGFIELD, N.J. (AP) — Norman Sal-
sitz met his wife-to-be in early 1945. He had
come to kill her.
Amalie Petranker, a Polish Jew mas
querading as a Christian to stay alive, was
working for a German business that had
planted mines throughout Krakow, Poland.
The Germans planned to blow up the city
before Soviet forces arrived.
Salsitz, also a Polish Jew passing as a
Christian, was a member of a Soviet-con-
trolled Polish resistance group. He had
been ordered to obtain the plans for the
mines and then kill the person who sup
plied them.
Petranker looked at Salsitz and thought
he might be Jewish. She tried to prove that
she was, too, by reciting the prayer Kol
Nidre in Hebrew. Suspicious that she might
be a German who had learned Hebrew, Sal
sitz asked her when Jews observe Kol Nidre
— the eve ofYom Kippur.
She answered correctly. And then, eyes
filling with tears, she pointed a finger at him.
“She said, “You? You? You too?,”’ Salsitz
recalled. “I said, ‘Yes. I too.’”
“I tell and I tell and I write and I
speak,” says Salsitz, 77. “We shouldn’t let
people forget.”
His latest project is the collection of six
million pennies — one for each Jew killed
by the Nazis. He began the collection in Jan
uary and had hoped to raise the $60,000 by
Thursday, Holocaust Remembrance Day,
AP/ Wm. J. Castell
but so far has come up with only $11,000.
He plans to give the money to the New
York-based Jewish Foundation for the
Righteous, which pays 1,400 monthly
stipends to Christians or Muslims in 26
countries who rescued Jews from death.
By posing as a non-Jew during the war,
Salsitz was able to rise through the ranks of
the Polish resistance. The Poles, he says, al
ways thought that Jews had dark, sad eyes.
His eyes are light blue.
“I survived because I did not have a sad
face,” he says.
Twenty-one members of Salsitz’s imme
diate family were shot in raids or died in
concentration camps. His wife was the only
member of her family to survive in Poland.
She lost her parents, her sister, cousins,
nieces and nephews.
“God wanted me to live,” she says, “to
bear witness and to tell the world what
happened to my brothers and sisters.”
Salsitz can still hear his father’s
screams the day the older man was shot
in front of an outhouse in his village of
Kolbuszowa, Poland.
INSIDE
aggie life ——
Game of bridge offers players
chance to relax and challenge
eachother in competition.
See Page 3
sports
Senior Larry Wade tries to
end his career on a high note
at USA Championships.
See Page 7
opinion
:■» A I
Voss: Mother
hood is a
viable
profession, not
an easy way
out for women.
See Page 11
online
http://battalion.tamu.edu
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