Page 8 ♦ Wednesday, March 24, 1999
News
Clinton, Congress prepare
for NATO airstrikes on Serbia
WASHINGTON (AP) —
President Clinton pre
pared the American peo
ple on Tuesday for an im
minent attack on Serb
targets, acknowledging
U.S. forces would be put
at risk. Congress fell in
behind him, shelving a
move to keep the Ameri
can troops away from
Yugoslavia.
As NATO airstrikes appeared all but in
evitable, Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny
Primakov registered his opposition by
canceling a White House visit while en
route to Washington. The Russian leader’s
plane turned around and headed back to
Moscow.
“I want to level with you,” Clinton said
in a speech to a union group and the
American public at large. ‘This is like any
other military action. There are risks in it.”
But he said that patient American
diplomacy had reached a dead end and
that Serb troops were terrorizing and mur
dering civilians in Kosovo. ‘‘We have to
take a stand now,” Clinton said. “If we
don’t do it now, we will have to do it lat
er.”
The Senate had been scheduled to take
a key procedural vote Tuesday on legisla
tion by Republican leaders designed to
keep Clinton from using U.S. military
power in the Balkans crisis without sup
port from Congress first.
But after Clinton called senior mem
bers of the Senate and House to the White
House to receive a report on envoy
Richard Holbrooke’s failure to budge Yu
goslav President Slobodan Milosevic on
Kosovo, Senate leaders shifted gears.
“That is a debate for another time. We
are at a critical hour,” Sen. John McCain,
R-Ariz. and a potential presidential can
didate in 2000 told the Senate after the
meeting. He said with a bombing cam
paign imminent, it was no time to under-
CLINTON
mine Clinton’s role as commander in
chief.
At the White House meeting and later
at a Democratic Senate meeting with
members of Clinton’s national security
team, lawmakers were told to expect the
strikes as early as Thesday evening, ac
cording to participants who spoke on con
dition of anonymity.
They said the attack could be put off
until Wednesday, however. The final go-
ahead depended on weather conditions
and certain other tactical factors, partici
pants at the briefings were told.
Primakov dramatically dissociated
himself from a NATO assault on the Serbs,
with whom Russia has historic cultural
and religious ties. The prime minister’s
jetliner turned back over the Atlantic as
he was flying to Washington for a long-
scheduled meeting with Vice President A1
Gore designed to strengthen U.S. eco
nomic and scientific cooperation with
Russia.
According to White House accounts.
Gore called Primakov to inform him of the
“worsening situation” in the Balkans and
the prime minister had the plane turn
AP
Committee determines little
should change in UT sports
AUSTIN (AP) — While a survey finds
nearly two-thirds of faculty members
perceive an overemphasis on athletics at
the University of Texas, a faculty com
mittee has concluded little should be
done to change UT sports.
But members of the UT Faculty Coun
cil, debating the committee’s report for
the first time this week, put off formally
endorsing it. They said they needed more
time to discuss options that reflect their
concerns.
“I’m very disappointed,” council
member Alan Cline, a computer science
professor, said earlier. “I don’t think they
looked at the issues hard enough. I see
athletics heading in the direction of
greater and greater dominance . . . over
the academic enterprise.”
The committee, he said, “had an op
portunity. They took a swing, and they
missed.”
The debate on the report, which took
more than a year to produce, highlighted
concerns some faculty have about the
role of athletics at UT — from spending
on stadium construction projects to the
$1 million salary paid to football coach
Mack Brown.
The report says that because UT plays
in the big leagues of college sports, turn
ing back the clock and dropping out of
Division I-A competition is not a viable
option.
Instead, the report recommends such
tinkering as changing advisory commit
tee appointments and informing the fac
ulty of athletics construction projects
that cost at least $10 million.
“There were those who hoped we
would recommend drastic reforms,” said
the report submitted by committee chair
man Charles Alan Wright, a UT law pro
fessor.
“We did not do so because, given the
assumption that we will continue to com
pete at the level we presently do, we
found no need for drastic reforms.
“We are fortunate here that we have
an athletics program that is self-support
ing and that has an enviable tradition of
integrity and competing within the
rules.”
The debate is expected to continue at
the April 19 council meeting. The coun
cil could amend the report before adopt
ing it and sending it to UT president Lar
ry Faulkner.
ie Batlal ioi
Eye in the sky
MIKE PUENTESTh
Don Holder, an electrician for Gray Electronics, repairs a security camera in the parking lot of the George Bush
Presidential Library Tuesday. Lightning is suspected to have been the cause of the security camera malfunctions
Rape victim sues police departmei
Sfi
»
■ ■ £
Student claims officers laughed, accused her of lying following incii
SPARKS, Nev. (AP) — After
calling 911 in November to re
port that she had been raped,
Jennifer W. says, police laughed
at her, called her a liar and
warned her she would have to
pay for the lab tests if the results
came back negative.
Finally, last week, the man
she accused pleaded guilty to
raping her. And he also admit
ted raping a teen-age girl more
recently.
Now Jennifer, a 24-year-old
junior at the University of Neva
da at Reno, is suing the Sparks
Police Department, its chief and
three other members of the
force for more than $200,000.
“There wouldn’t be a second
victim if the Sparks police did
their jobs instead of calling me
‘a g-d d—ned liar,’” she says.
The officers accused in the
case and City Attorney Chet
Adams say they cannot com
ment while the lawsuit is pend
ing.
Timothy Mobly pleaded
guilty to attacking Jennifer, who
asked that her last name not be
used. Mobly and his roommate,
Aaron Cross, also pleaded
guilty to charges they lured a
17-year-old girl to their apart
ment on Jan. 2 and raped her
before she escaped the next
morning.
Prosecutors are asking for 30
years in prison for Mobly and
20 for Cross.
Jennifer, like the 17-year-old
girl, met the men through the
Internet. Jennifer dated Mobly
briefly, then tried to break it off
via e-mail. Mobly wanted to
meet, and she told him he could
come to her parents’ house,
where she lived.
Jennifer said Mobly showed
up with Cross and immediately
attacked her, handcuffing her
hands and feet, stuffing a sock
in her mouth and putting her in
a suitcase in the trunk of his car.
Mobly later cut off her clothes
and raped her. Then they drove
her home.
“They thanked her for help
ing them live out their fantasy,”
says her attorney, Marc Picker.
Jennifer says she told them
she would call the police, but
they told her that nobody
would believe that someone
had raped her and then taken
her home. “Little did Jenn
know he was right and she was
wrong,” Picker says.
She did call police, and spent
three hours being interviewed.
At the end, officers told her they
thought she was lying and
threatened to prosecute her un
less she immediately withdrew
her complaint, Picker says.
When Jennifer was taken to
a hospital for an examination.
Detective David Adams al
legedly told her she would be
charged for the test if it came
back negative for signs of rape.
She was billed, but Picker says
he thinks it came back positive
and police lied.
Jennifer, a biology and psy
chology major, says she urged
investigators to search Mobly’s
trunk for DNA evidence and
her room for fingerprints. She
says the police laughed.
“My father keeps the garage
as clean as the White House. He
told them there were tire marks
in the garage that he would nev
er leave there and they blew
him off,” she says.
Later, Mobly even sent her a
taunting e-mail: “I got away
“He told me, 'You're a G-d d—ned lair.
Nobody in town believes you'... and
he slammed the phone down on me."
—Jennifer
Rape victim
with rape.” Jennifers*
called police to tell them
it and got a call the nlj
from Sgt. Robert Schmip
“He told me, ‘You’reu
d—ned liar. Nobody inp
believes you. Yourparentsl
believe you. You accused!
nocent man of r<ipe,’ iii
slammed the phone dowm
me,” she says.
'[Wo months later, po\
contacted her, saying her
was going to the district al
11 ey ’ s o ffi ce because of nev
idence: A 17-year-o\dsti!
who had been lured thi
another Internet liaise
Mobly and Cross’ apar
had escaped an assault,
naked.
Jennifer says policed
even apologize. “1 knew
going to be rough, tha
would ask me a lot o
questions,” she says.'
never imagined 1 wois
called a liar.”
Picker says four
women have come fo:
with stories about beia
cused by the Sparks poS
making up rape com|
over the past 20 years.
Jennifer has left scho
is in counseling to dealw
taunts she says she hear |jp
don’t know why theydi™
lieve me,” she says
what I went through
things better for otherw
&& .fi
The Texas A&M University Student Publications Board is accepting applications for
The Battauon
ap ® m
Hi till II ll wt-JP If "
The Battauon
- Including radio and online editions -
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Summer 1999
(The summer editor will serve from May 24 through Aug. 6, T 999.|
Fall 1999
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— OR —
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-OR-
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equivalent.
Aggieland
1999
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30U(
(unless fewer credits are required to graduate) during the term of office;
Have at least a 2.00 cumulative grade point ratio and at least a 2.00 grade point ratio in the
semester immediately prior to the appointment, the semester of appointment and semester(s) (oil
summer course work is considered summer semester) during the term of office. In order for sunw
school grades to qualify as previous semester grades, a minimum of six hours must be taken durirc
the course of either the full or two summer session(s);
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equivalent;
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yearbook.
ItF
Application forms should be picked up and returned to Francia Cagle in the Student Publications office, room 012 Reed McDonald Building. Deadline for submitting application: 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 31,
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