b
EfiTHER
Today
IGH
Tomorrow
INSIDE Sports ••• see Pa ^ e 3
* I ■ ^ I ^ Opinion ... see Page 5
TOMORROW
Opinion:
Students become like robots
when they study core
curriculum, but do not
soak up knowledge.
YEAR • ISSUE 152 • 6 PAGES
K-'"
TEXAS ASM CINIVERSITY ■ COLLEGE STATION. TEXAS
MONDAY • JUNE IS • 1998
ITS proposes bus fee
By Rod Machen
Asst. City Editor
lee being proposed by the Department
’arking. Traffic and Transportation Ser
es would enable Bus Operations to more
^Bively serve campus, PTTS Director
^BVilliams said.
Will iams said he will propose the trans
lation fee this summer to fund a re-
^fturing of Bus Operations. The pro-
$50 per semester fee would go into
eel Fall 2000.
t fe must have a long-term funding
anism to get the system we need,"
lli.Hns said. "The bus system is one of the
>st vital functions we have."
^■rrently, on-campus bus operation's
Hon of the student service fee is ap-
jxiimately $20.
"For another $30 we could make a full
rBce system," Williams said. "Then the
00,000 student services gives us could be
ed for whatever they wanted."
In the meantime. Bus Operations runs
ia budget of $2.6 million. This consists
of money from the student service fee,
bus charters, subsidies from PTTS and
bus pass sales.
iLnan a in ijjujj
■ i
Proposal
"Bus pass sales have slowly but surely
declined," Gary Jackson, manager of Bus
Operations said. "They're not going to
hack it."
The cost of a bus pass has increased $10
in the last 16 years to $110.
Jackson said, to break even, a bus pass
would have to cost $185. The new system
would eliminate the bus pass.
The system would allow students un
limited access both on and off campus.
It also would expand the service area by go
ing to apartments that are currently unserved,
and by possibly running on weekends.
The new system also would have routes
running by shopping centers, allowing on-
campus residents to avoid using their cars.
Speaker of the Student Senate Amy
Magee said the Senate previously had
been presented with another bus-funding
measure.
"The universal fee was something we
questioned," Magee said. "It was not
that we didn't see a need. We are more
than happy to work with Bus Ops to help
improve service."
Jackson said improved service would re
quire an increase in funding for Bus Oper
ations, which will soon start cannibalizing
unrepairable buses for spare parts.
"Our buses are so old that parts aren't
available anymore," Jackson said. "If we
don't do something soon, these buses are
going to die."
Ross Street closed
for future construction
By Rod Machen
Asst. City Editor
Ross Street, which has been
closed over a year, will be
turned into a pedestrian mall
between Ireland and Spence
streets, Tom Williams, director
of the Department of Parking,
Traffic and Transportation Ser
vices, said.
The change will coincide
with other building projects
planned for the area.
A new Chemical Engineer
ing building is planned for the
corner of Bizzell and Ross
streets, next to Wisenbaker En
gineering Research Center.
In order to run utilities to the
new building, Ross St. will
have to be torn up.
Williams said this will be a
perfect time to make the
changes to Ross St.
After the Ross St. project is
completed, Williams said PTTS
also is considering reversing
the directions of Ireland and
Asbury streets, which run by
the Northside Parking Garage,
to aid the flow of traffic.
PTTS is going to close Lub
bock St. to automobile traffic,
creating another pedestrian
mall in front of the Commons.
During peak times, such as
residence hall move-in, the
street will be temporarily re
opened .
Other changes under con
sideration for the southside
area include replacing the
greenhouses with a park and
making Mosher Lane and the
Commons loading dock into
another primary entrance,
Williams said-
: : '■ . -
; ' u'iMm
w
JAKE SCHRICKLING/The Battalion
Eric Cook, a member of the Brazos Valley Modular Railroad Society and an eighth grader at College Station Junior High, fixes his
train at the society’s exhibition set up at the mall in College Station Sunday.
News Briefs
Closure of Munson Avenue
at Dominik Drive starts today
Full closure of College Station's Munson Avenue at Dominik Dri
ve will begin today at 7:30 a.m. The closure will prohibit entry
and exit onto and from Munson Avenue just north of the Dominik
Drive intersection.
On May 28, College Station City Council voted to test a total
closure of Munson Avenue north of the Dominik Drive intersec
tion. The total closure is a trial measure to determine the impact
on traffic in this area.
Victim of attempted sexual
assault escapes uninjured
College Station Police officers responded to an attempted sexual
assault Sunday at 12:30 a.m. in the 900 block of Colgate Drive.
The initial investigation revealed that the victim was at a par
ty at another location when a suspect attempted to sexually as
sault her. The victim was able to fend off the attacker and escape
uninjured.
The alleged attacker is described as a white male, about 6 feet
tall and 1 70 pounds with brown hair.
University Physical Plant accepts
applications for apprenticeships
The Texas A&M University Physical Plant is accepting applica
tions through June 30 for its apprenticeship programs. The pro
grams provide training in air-conditioning and refrigeration, car
pentry, electronics, plumbing, electrical, sheet-metal or power
plant-related trades.
The program, which began in 1974, is one of the Physical
Plant's principal methods of attracting new employees and train
ing them. Participants receive three to four years of on-the-job
training and are offered the same benefits extended to full-time
university employees.
Interested individuals are encouraged to contact a Physical Plant
training branch representative.
iate crime leaves small town fearful more may follow
IKSPER (AP) — R.C. Horn still re-
fembers eating turnip greens and
irfbread with little Raymond Dur-
p He remembers all those muggy
Bmer afternoons dunking each oth-
■n the swimming hole — the
■can-American sharecropper's son
■ the white farmer's boy.
■hey were best friends, and skin col-
jmade no difference to them. Neither
■erstood why Horn had to sit in the
Icony when they went to the movies,
■why Horn could not join Durdin at
■drug store counter for a Coke,
orn is 66 now, a graying man with
jft voice, and he's become the mayor
is little town of 8,000 people.
It's a town where African-Americans
whites get along just fine nowadays,
as Horn and Durdin did those many
S r s ago. It's a town that has banished
overt racism of their childhoods,
so Horn believed until last Sunday,
he heard the news: The body of
os Byrd Jr., an African-American man
Wn for singing as he walked along
or streets, was found mangled and
a pitated out on Huff Creek Road,
’oe whites in a pickup truck were ac
cused. Byrd's funeral was Saturday.
"I didn't know we had people like this
in Jasper," said Horn, the first African-
American mayor of the town, which is 55
percent white. But the three young men
did live in Jasper — two were raised here.
Horn knew that racism lingered in
the piney woods of East Texas. He had
seen it in glances not met, in hellos not
returned. But sickening violence?
An African-American man chained
by the ankles to a pickup truck and
dragged like a tin can in a ghastly game
of crack the whip?
What does a mayor tell his town
about this?
Even Kerry Cartright, a 32-year-old
African-American man who lives in
the apartment next door to the sus
pects — John William (Bill) King,
Lawrence Russell Brewer and Shawn
Allen Berry — could never have imag
ined anything like this.
"I'm not used to people hating like
that," he said. "If they felt that way, it
could easily have been me."
He knew his neighbors didn't much
like him. They would never smile, or
even look directly at him, when they
passed on the stairs. He just thought
they were folks "who didn't like black
people," Cartwright said. "When you've
been taught you're superior, how else
are you supposed to act? I knew not to
speak to them. It's a small East Texas
town, you know how that is."
He didn't know King and Brewer
were ex-cons who claimed to be mem
bers of the Aryan Brotherhood, or that
the tattoos on King's arms were symbols
of white supremacy.
Byrd's murder has ripped the scab off
old wounds. Fear is spreading that the
three suspects now charged with mur
der might have friends around town
who will pick up where they left off.
"It scared my family more than any
thing because my wife is white," said
Arlandus Chimney, an African-Ameri
can insurance agent whose wife is preg
nant with their second child. "My
mother-in-law worried that like the old
days, they'll hang you by a tree."
Alton Booker, a 20-year-old
African-American college student
home for the summer, says he won't
go out after midnight.
"During the day I look at all of them
the same, but after 12 o'clock at night,
there's not too many good things out
there," Booker said. "Many innocent
white folks are going to be looked at dif
ferent. It's not that we're prejudiced,
but when something like this happens,
you don't know who to trust. Black
people are scared."
Horn's childhood friend, Durdin, is
70 now, still living on the family farm.
The murder shocked Durdin, shocked
him most of all because he believed,
wanted to believe, those days were
gone for good.
He remembers a time in the 1950s
when a young African-American man
accused of flirting with a white woman
was severely beaten by police.
He remembers a Little League game
in the 1960s, when an African-Ameri
can family was "asked politely" to
leave. He still feels bad that he didn't
speak up about that.
Just five years ago, in the nearby
town of Vidor, a white supremacist
threatened the first African-American
residents of a housing project.
But that was Vidor, not Jasper, where
African-Americans and whites work to
gether, share the same neighborhoods,
linger over coffee in the cafes; Jasper,
where Horn beat four white candidates
in the mayor's race last year; Jasper,
where the school superintendent and
the president of the Chamber of Com
merce are African-American.
"I really don't think that this is going
to tear everything apart," Durdin said.
"I think we got too many citizens black
and white that can reach above that
kind of thing."
What is a mayor to do?
Hope that Durdin is right; assure his
town, the world, and himself that what
happened here last week says nothing
about the people of Jasper.
"I know," Horn said, "that we will
come together and console each other
and continue to do what we need to do
and look to the Lord to continue to lead
us. I am doing my best to keep the city
together and not let the hate spread."
Horn and Durdin don't see each oth
er much anymore but say they are still
good friends. The last time Horn came
out to the Durdin farm, he was sent
home with a bag of squash, tomatoes
and peas.