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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 18, 1999)
THURSDAY February 18, 1999 Volume 105 • Issue 95 • 14 Pages College Station, Texas • Brazos Valley Museum's ‘Backyard Monsters' gives visitors huge insight into the world of insects. PAGE 3 today’s issue Toons 2 Wellborn speed limit 12 Friday’s issue A&M should contribute funds toward the relocation of the railroad track near West Campus. • A&M's men's basketball team loses to Baylor shooting 18 percent in first half while women fall as Kera Alexander leads in points with 22. Child or Choice? ibbon cutting marks ening ceremony of nned Parenthood ElinicinB-CS BY MEREDITH HIGH! The Battalion \vo-hundred people attended Planned Parent hood’s open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new Bryan clinic, which also drew about 100 protesters outside the clinic. ■pusan Nenney, vice president of communica tions for Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas, said the new clinic, which will of fer abortion services, is an improvement over the previous clinic, which operated in Bryan for 24 years. ericne*' ;i The new clinic has been open since December. “This offers a more dignified atmosphere for . 1 , health care, and the addition of a resource center, mid Tuesdai i ie ip S us to better educate the community,” :ord to 5-2. sh esaid. • || Clinic director Dyann Santos said the event was runs mi b|g success. l||‘Thi s exceeded all our expectations,” she said, e], he said. “We are really looking forward to providing this and keep us in 'ggfV ieeFT6r co’ifffnunity.* teeded togetseitf p i H . R e v. Howard Moody, a Baptist minister at make a markar. j uc j son Memorial Church in Greenwich Village in shed. New York City, spoke about the right of a woman carcella settled: toihoose abortion. ip a runintheip; “7be right to choose is God-given,” he said, perfect innings. “Without choice, humans are robots.” just got in as Moody said one of the geniuses of the 1973 Roe s you get intoi v _ w/ade decision was that it recognized the con- said. tinuum of the existence of the fetus. 2hris can throw when we say a fetus is a person?” he said. Johnson said. “With each stage of development there’s more of ■e him start agar a moral question.” he Aggies wide“ “The deification of the fetus is a furious heresy,” half of thesa Moody said. “I’m preaching to the folks out there nd baseman Sea (protesters) now. The right to life is really a right he inning with to be born. Then our religion and traditions speak need to third f to that issue. te. Heaney then *‘Being born is never seen as anything but a gift, lice fly by juni a gift of God,” he said. “Rights begin with birth. 1 Scarborough. Rights are not indisputable, even after birth. There ed, scoring juijjs no freedom as fundamental as choosing the time my Clark andfi to have one’s children. There is no economic pol- n the sixth, icy as demeaning as that of poor women having to &M tacked on d have a child in the name of theology that declares e seventh, twoft the embryo has the constitutional rights of a hu- ley single and t# man being.” h. JrpMoody said he hopes there will be a time and arborough, th; place where every woman will have access to the ime this season,i knowledge and means of reproductive capacity. striking oiii lw‘We need to hear from the religious communi- ers CourtneyP ty,” he said. “Pontiffs, rabbis and teachers need to right also saw splak out.” wanted to see-' li a game, and.: SEE qren House on Page 12. u[bright out tw “He threw the' and Scarborouf king ball well." heschuk, Lindse had three hits,^ Lindsey’s prod:" the bottom oftM he bottom of: d,” Johnson said production do" : Wolunteer escorts provide support, offer counseling to clinic patients BY MEREDITH HIGHT planned to expand to offer ily afford to take c Woman recounts tale of making pro-life or pro-choice decision The Battalion [He straps on a blue vest guard in the iwer part haste and stands parking lot. | ihHe is a volunteer escort, and his job is to provide sup- - '-3 port for clients who arrive at ice the Bryan Planned Parent hood Clinic, which will offer abortion services, while pro testers are present. jyk^BHe is a clinic escort be- 4/|A U cause he believes in a •V V Wonicln ’ s right to choose. He believes fetuses do have a moral standing, but they do D GIFT ITEMS' not have the moral signifi- CilUC CTMI ! cance of humans. Fetuses, pflo olUKt* he said, and comatose hu- iidisiomt. ausiK mans are on th e same plane amcHAMBi as far as moral significance. ■ Gary Varner, an associate professor of philosophy at Texas A&M, volunteered his services to Planned Parent- . hood when he learned they 303 co# BY I# planned to expand abortion services. Varner said he anticipat ed that the community would not support the new service. “I thought in this com munity, there would be a lot of protesters,” he said. “It is important for pro-choice people to help out by being escorts. This is something I feel very strongly about.” Varner said there are is sues he writes about in phi losophy that he is unsure of, but he is certain of his pro- choice stance. “I feel quite confident in my opinion about this,” he said. “It’s very important that the new clinic will soon begin providing abortions locally, because we have a real apartheid system in the country at present. Middle- and upper-income women who have cars and can eas ily afford to take off work could get to Austin or Hous ton for an abortion, but low er-income women can’t. To me, it makes a lot more sense to provide abortions locally than to have women go through with unwanted pregnancies because they can’t get to the service.” In Varner’s two-hour es cort training session. Planned Parenthood repre sentatives described what escorting is like at clinics. “Sometimes I feel a little awkward because there are no protesters,” he said. “But given there will probably be more protesters in the future, it’s good to have a show of support in the parking lot.” Varner said the escorts are necessary because clinic staff cannot be present out side to help women entering the clinic. see Escort on Page 2. BY MEREDITH HIGHT The Battalion She left the day he broke a beer bottle across her face, leaving her with 11 stitches. That was two days after she confronted her husband about the bruises she discov ered on the back of her oldest son Julian’s legs. Julian, 10, and Juan, 9, share the same fa ther. It was Lance, 5, whose father she was married to for seven years and confronted one July night. She broke the door down, demanding to know if her husband had “whupped him.” He denied it. This is the same man who told her he had married her because she “was just a n r slave to him.” Ginger’s outlook on life does not mirror the difficulties of her past. She smiles often and laughs when she tells stories about her boys. Last March, Ginger had a miscarriage. Later that same month, she discovered she was pregnant. The father, Francisco, wanted her to have an abortion. She did not know what to do. When she was three months pregnant. she walked by the Brazos Valley Coalition for Life, across the street from her duplex, and met Lauren Donohue, executive direc tor. Donohue showed her pictures from a Life magazine insert illustrating pictures of a fe tus at early stages of development. She was fascinated by it. But she still did not know what she should do. A friend of Ginger’s, who recently had her third abortion, took her to Houston so she could have one. Somehow, they never end ed up at the abortion clinic. Her friend took her to the airport to watch the planes and out to eat lunch. When Ginger asked her friend where the clinic was, her friend said she could not find it. Ginger thinks that was her friend’s way of telling her that an abortion would not be right, knowing how it had hurt her (the friend). “She has bad dreams,” Ginger said. “She has black under her eyes. She’s sad. When I look at her, I think I could have been in the same position.” see Ginger on Page 2. PAGE 9 Enrollment figures show overall rise BY AMANDA SMITH The Battalion Overall enrollment is higher this Spring than it was the same time last year, according to the Of fice of Admissions and Records figures. This semester, 33,203 under graduates are enrolled at A&M compared to 32,099 in Spring 1998. Freshmen account for 6,851 of the population compared to 5,829 last Spring. Junior and sophomore enroll ments increased from last year, with 6,821 sophomores and 8,526 juniors enrolled. The number of seniors enrolled at A&M dropped from 10,981 in Spring 1998 to 10,754 in Spring 1999. The number of total graduate students increased from 6,347 to 6,410. Graduate students consti tute 16 percent of the student pop ulation. Karen Severn, an adviser in the Office of Professional School Ad vising (OPSA), said awareness of professional school programs has increased since the office was founded seven years ago. “Aggies have never had bad records,” Severn said. “We are big in helping students maximize their potential as undergraduates. It has always been the purpose of our office to see what life is real ly like as a professional.” Texas A&M University Medical School annually admits 64 new students to its program. Severn said 10 percent of A&M graduates going to medical school attend A&M, and 90 percent at tend other medical schools. Undergraduates at A&M apply ing to medical and dental schools have the highest acceptance rates nationally and the second highest in law school admissions. The enrollment of the Colleges of Agriculture, Business, Engi neering, General Studies and Sci ence increased from Spring 1998 to Spring 1999. The College of Medicine showed the largest increase from Spring 1998 to Spring 1999, in creasing enrollment from 300 to 335 students. In minority enrollment, the number of African-American and Hispanic freshman students en rolled at A&M decreased by 1 per cent, with 956 African Americans and 3,337 Hispanics. Felicia Scott, interim director of the Multicultural Services Depart ment, said A&M must remain committed to increasing diversity on campus. “By virtue of the mission of the institution as a land-grant univer sity, we must commit,” Scott said. “As an institution striving to be in the top rankings, we are gradual ly preparing students to work in a diverse work force. “As a department, we do not have an official function of re cruitment, but we have been col laborating with the Office of Ad missions and Records,” Scott said. White students make up 80 percent of the student body pop ulation, increasing from 25,678 students in Spring 1998 to 26,712 students in 1999. Females make up 38 percent of the population, an increase of 1 percent from Spring 1998. Enrollment of international stu dents increased from 1,985 in Spring 1998 to 2,052 in Spring 1999, making up 32 percent of the population. Texas residents make up 47 percent of the student pop ulation, and nonresidents com pose 21 percent.