Department of Student Activities
Programming Resources Guide
The Programming Resources Guide can help your
organization find speakers and presenters for your
next meeting. There is a wide variety of programs to
chose from and most speakers are quite flexible. Add
some spice to the your next meeting.
faculty meetings • club and organization meetings
department programs • professional organizations
committee programming • retreats • conferences
hltp://stuorg-resource.tamu.edu/
Theatre Arts Program of Texas A&M University presents
Allan R. Kenward’s
CRY
HAVOC
FFJtlUJAUY 25,2<;,27
MAUOI 3,4,5,6
6P.M.
KIJDDFK FORUM
Tickets at the MSC Box Office
(409) 845-1234
Students and Seniors $5
General Public $8
! That's right Keystone, The Nature of the Rockies'™
just ;? / o *
<f) -L per person
Save up to 35% on lodging with the Midweek Break Offer. Stay in a beautiful 2 bedroom
i condominium right in Keystone Resort, Sunday through Thursday, from just $312/person*.
Includes four nights' lodging and a 3-day Colorado Ticket.
Call for details 1 . 888.754.8722
or visit our website at www.keystone.snow.com
Keystone Resort, Colorado
Just opened!
The Windows.
Keystone’s new
expert gladed
terrain !
*Offer valid 2/1 1 - 4/3/99. Price quoted is for a Forest 2 bedroom and is based upon quad occupancy. Limited
availability/inventory. Rates may not be available on all dates, all days of the week or for all lengths of stay.
Not applicable to group/conference stays. Surcharge and taxes additional. Other restrictions may apply.
Other discounted rates available after 4/3/99. Copyright 1999 Keystone Resort.
Page 6 • Tuesday, February 23, 1999
TATE
Pathologist testifies Byrd
alive while being dragged
Prosecutors wrap up case against accused white supremacist
JASPER(AP) — James Byrd Jr., chained at the an
kles and desperately trying to ease the excruciating
pain as he was dragged behind a pickup truck along
a bumpy road, was alive until his head slammed into
a culvert, decapitating him, a pathologist testified
Monday at the trial of one of the men accused in his
slaying.
Prosecutors, who wrapped up their case against
murder defendant John William King after 43 wit
nesses, need to prove Byrd was alive at the time of his
dragging in order to ask a jury to send the suspected
white supremacist to death row.
“He was being dragged behind a vehicle, and he
would try to probably relieve the severe pain that was
being inflicted on him by being dragged on his back
or elbows,” Dr. Tommy Brown, a pathologist from
nearby Beaumont, said, explaining how Byrd’s heels
had been ground to the bone. “These would indicate
he is trying to get some pressure off other areas.”
Also Monday, a Jasper County jail administrator
said authorities intercepted a letter written by King
and intended to be smuggled to one of his co-defen
dants, Lawrence Brewer, in which he expresses pride
in the crime and said he realized he might have to die
for it.
“Regardless of the outcome of this, we have made
history,” King said in the note, which he signed with
a Ku Klux Klan symbol and Nazi salute.
Before defense attorneys began their side of the
case, jurors Monday also watched an 11-minute video
made by authorities the day after Byrd’s body was
found, retracing the nearly three-mile dragging route.
But the jury of 11 whites and one black studied
most intently the 14 crime-scene photographs, deliv
ered to them individually in black folders.
Some were tight-lipped, one tried to suppress a fa
cial twitch, alternating his glance between the photos
and King, who sat emotionless, his elbow on the table
and his chin in his hand.
King’s father and a female relative of Byrd left the
courtroom even before Brown appeared. Some of the
other family members who stayed cried.
“It’s my opinion, while being dragged, Mr. Byrd
was conscious and was attempting to relieve the pain
and injuries he was receiving,” Brown said. “I think
we all know how much brush burn abrasions, like if
you fall and slide on a surface with your hands —
that’s very painful — and this would have been very
painful to him.
“He would probably swap one portion of his body
for the other, trying to get relief as he was being
dragged,” he said.
Prosecutors need to show a second crime was be
ing committed, specifically the kidnapping of Byrd, in
order to ask jurors to give King the death penalty. Con
viction on the capital murder charge gives jurors, who
could get the case as early as Tliesday, two punish
ment options: life in prison or death by injection.
The fatal wound would have occurred about two-
thirds of the way through the grisly journey in the ear
ly-morning hours of June 7.
Asked if Byrd was conscious for a portion of the
dragging along Huff Creek Road before his head was
torn off, Brown replied: “That’s correct.”
In other prosecution testimony Monday, a police
detective said King wrote racist graffiti on the door of
his jail cell. He also inscribed on the door: “Shawn
Berry is a snitch-ass traitor.”
Berry, who also faces trial on the charges, gave an
affidavit when he was arrested that led to the arrests
of King and Brewer, who were prison mates at the Beto
1 Unit near Palestine. Their trials have not yet been set.
King scratched into the door his prison name. “Pos
sum’’ with a double-Nazi lightning bolt “SS“ as pan of
the signature, Clifton Orr, a police detective, testified.
Prosecutors have said King, covered in racist tat
toos, intended to start his own racist gang in
Jasper.and King’s murder was meant to draw atten
tion to it and be part of a gang initiation rite.
Forensic evidence ties King and his two friends,
Brewer, 31, and Berry, 24, to a scuffle with Byrd along
a logging road, where authorities say Byrd was taken
in the back of Berry’s pickup truck after given a ride
while he walked home from a party.
Cigarette butts found at the scene where Byrd is
thought to have been beaten and chained to Berry’s
truck match the DNA of all three. A lighter engraved
with King’s prison nickname — Possum — and three
interlocking K’s was found at the scene along with
Byrd’s wallet.
The name “Possum” and the three-K Klan symbol
also were signed by King on the letter he delivered to
Brewer in the Jasper County Jail.
In a conversation with King after his release from
prison for a burglary conviction. King told a girlfriend
he was “going to make himself well-known from do
ing something,” Brandy Viator Eagleson testified, “but
he didn’t mention what.”
Two Texas Grammy nominees
prove stardom can be learned
LEVELLAND (AP) — Big-city
record producers have often said
that star quality and stage savvy
can’t be taught in school.
Folks in Levelland hope to prove
that notion wrong when two alum
ni of South Plains College’s (SPC)
commercial music program — Na
talie Maines of the Dixie Chicks and
Lee Ann Womack — compete at the
41st annual Grammy Awards
Wednesday night.
Womack is nominated for best
female country vocal performance
while the Dixie Chicks, long known
around Texas for their contempo
rary -country sound, are nominated
for three awards, including best new
artist and best country album.
“Lee Ann is a very energetic, en
thusiastic performer who gave 100
percent every performance at SPC,”
recalled her instructor, John Hartin,
chairman of the creative arts depart
ment and creator of the commercial
music program. “Natalie has in
credible musical energy and takes
command of any material she is per
forming. I certainly hope they both
win a Grammy. I feel that they are
the ones who ought to win.”
The program teaches students
the skills they need to walk out and
become professional musicians,
from song-writing and performing,
to navigating the industry, to writing
music for instruments they do not
know how to play.
Womack graduated in 1985 while
Maines finished in 1994.
Hartin, who traveled the country
with his band “The Classics” in the
late ’60s, took a position at South
Plains College in 1975 because he
wanted to escape the sleepless nights.
AGGIE BASKETBALL
(Women)
vs.
The Colorado Buffaloes
Reed Arena
Saturday at 2 p.m.
Students draw your tickets early in the ticket office at G. Rollie White
or Reed Arena
——
■ • • &&
MBUT. WMmSc
t.
Battalion-
>shman Blal
iner at secc
AUSTIN (AP
eral Land
discounted elect)
lie entitiesundei
state officialses
raise another 5>:
year for schools3
si ties.
“This ametii
win-win for the
then of Texas i
payers of Tex: I
send moremor
education and!
tion and bydefi
the pressureic
property taxes
missioner Dav:
said.
Dewhurst
day before thei
Committee on i-
Restructuring.
The conn: The 13th-i\
ering a bill t 11 travel toe
tion in the :e the Sum I
business Huntsville.
Sen. Teel B: The Aggies
illo, asked th; nversity of
amended to ?ekend.
Office to sella: kl
gas producedt Jrn ^ as to ,(
to state and estai1 (,t '’’J
ments, indepeni
districts andunivi
The gas wool
verted intoelen
sold at a “
cent discount,
said.
That
“Tm intere
mesl” he sa
at look to pb
Johnson sa
team s cone
“Once we g
mes, these
ethe ones y
aheac
tween 30 percent Plgiyeis als
1 , ' i " 111 Jddit imHouston
$50 million toL
year — for the|
School Fund
generates mono
schools.
It also vv
Permanent
(PUT), which hr
University of Te i,
A&M University? lf y oure -
said. ma y be th
The school ® some "ins
universities conk some of t
uy bv getting the' fashion ar
at a discounted^
The proposal
get additional re'
the PUF andPSf
said.
"Having beeitt
for many, mam already in
two ways toeffect f: un ? -i
llne: i,lcr “« interest y,
crease costs, Dev (
“This ament; Same! 1 l<
both,” he said °f Amen
The state can most usel
money by convert some que
^
HAT
Not the v
first caree
places to
lira I gas intow to music
selling the po# check oll
taking cash royalf ,
or selling thena'-
se lf devoted r
The Land Oij company,
would make surf
exert a competiti ^ irr
the utility market! v.rsUV
itself to providing
to just 2.5 peri=
power public entt;
any geographic ‘
said.
The proposal'
public schools
stepping on the
toes of any utility
or municipal f
around the state
said.
The committee
vote on the atq
which Bivins isak
ed to be introduce
arate bill.
Ibooh
eric
elnt
\Www.i
: through
• Www.l
jcomprel
./
pening
TEXA//KI*
SPRAYl
if
'.i
Mean-
i!
ANY TRUCK"’
$298
IwwwA
•possible
1806-C W
College Sts'
Same Location as Hf’
. 694-2401
letailed
•and inte