lr “%Febi^
THE
MONDAY
February 21,2000
Volume 106- Issue 95
10 pages
ommittee to review early registration
BY ANN LOISEL
The Battalion
Students expecting a tew days head start on registering be
cause of student worker or honors status may be disappointed
he next time they try to phone in their class choices.
A subcommittee to the Academic Operations Committee
(AOC) will review the current system of early registration,
said Donald D. Carter, chairperson of the new subcommittee
smdA&M’s registrar.
The current registration system allows honors-eligible stu
dents to register for classes before normal registration begins
and allows student workers who can prove their w ork status to
register a few days earlier than their classmates.
I By registering early, these students have more flexibility in
choosing their class schedules so they can allow time for work
and honors classes.
Carter said the subcommittee will not necessarily change the
current policy, but they will review the current system to see if
any changes are needed.
“We will review the practice of early registration... | but] we
have no design or agenda one way or another,” Carter said.
“We’re going to look at all the issues.”
Amanda Brondy, a junior speech communications and in
ternational studies major, is both a student worker and an hon
ors student. She is also working toward the University and
Foundation honors distinctions, which require her to take a cer
tain amount of honors course credit hours.
“I always try and get big blocks of time open (in my sched
ule],” she said, ‘if I weren’t able to do that, it'd be difficult [to
work].” She said she would be upset if early registration privi
leges were taken away.
Dr. Edward A. Funkhouser, interim executive director of the
Office of Honors Programs and Academic Scholarships, said
he hopes there will not be any changes in the registration process
for honors-eligible students.
“We would have a precipitous drop in [the number of]
students participating in honors,” Funkhouser said. “It
would be a bit more difficult for students to schedule the lim
ited courses that are in honors into their schedule as they
work toward completing the requirements for Foundation
and University honors.”
I lonors students who want to register early must register for
an honors class and stay in it. 1 lowever, Funkhouser added some
people are just using honors as a vehicle to get pre-registration.
Funkhouser said early registration for honors students is im
portant, though, for A&M’s status as a university.
“A strong honors department contributes to the overall rep
utation of a university ... and also helps in recruiting high-
achieving students,” he said. “Lots of institutions do honors pre
registration to help students build their schedule around an
honors class... if they are delayed, they have less of a chance to
get the honors class to fit in their schedule.”
Carter said several meetings would take place before any
recommendations are made to the AOC. If any changes were
proposed, the earliest change would not be made until the spring
semester of 2001.
“Nothing has been done — only the committee has been
named,” Carter said. “This is a very sensitive issue.”
The subcommittee will meet in March.
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BY ROLANDO GARCIA
The Battalion
Recently released enrollment
figures for the spring semester re
flect the continuing decline in the
number of minority students at
Texas A&M.
According to numbers released
by the Office of Institutional Stud
ies and Planning, there are 40,626
students attending the University.
The number of Hispanic and
! African-American students total
4,466, compared to 4,831 in the
spring 011999.
Afsd, A&M lags behind the
University of Texas-Austin in re
cruiting minority students.
Since the 1996 llopwood court
decision that ended affirmative ac
tion in Texas higher education, UT
has regained its pre-Hopwood mi
nority enrollment figures while
A&M continues to lag behind its
former status.
The number of new African-
American students enrolled at
A&M shrunk from 197 in the fall of
1998 to 181 in the fall of 1999.
The number of new Hispanic
students declined from 669 to 572.
At UT, African-Americans
andHispanics totaled 1 8 percent
of the 1999 freshman class,
while those two groups com
prise only 1 1 percent of the
Class of ’03 at A&M.
A&M officials expressed con
cern over the gap, and say the Uni
versity is stepping up efforts to re
cruit minority students and to
dispel the perception that A&M
does not welcome diversity.
“If we can get students from
uhient
Total
40,626
40,390
Spring'00 MU1.6H4) F(IH,942)
Spring '99 M(21,H96) F(18,494>
RACE
Spring '99 Spring '00
Whit* » 0,9 H 1 31,313
Hi*p• nic — 3,698 3,408
Black 1 , t 3 J 1,05 8
Aslan I , 3 5 3 1 ,26 3
American—-IbS ■*•' 17 4
RUBEN DELUNA/1 in Battalion
those target areas to come to cam
pus, they’ll get a sense of the qual
ity of education and student life we
have to offer. It sells itself,” said
Jan Winniford, the associate vice
president for student affairs.
Winniford said programs like
Century Scholars, which provides
financial assistance to top students
from targeted high schools in
Houston, will help bring the best
minority students to Texas A&M,
Winniford added.
Felicia Scott, director of Multi
cultural Services at A&M, said an
aggressive recruiting presence in
large cities like Houston and San
Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley
is key to dispelling the myth that
the environment at A&M is hostile
to minorities.
“The problem is a not-knowing
perception, and that can lead to a
negative perception,” Scott said.
“We need to get the word out
that we welcome and embrace dif
ferent cultures and ethnicities.”
Director Robert Rodriguez (The Faculty, From Dusk till Dawn) was a panelist for the “War Stories” discussion on Saturday at the 7th
annual Texas Film Festival. He also spoke in the evening session, took questions from the audience and showed his movie El Mari-
achi. See related article on page 3.
SIMS database to
BY SARA PROFFITT
The Battalion
The Student Information Manage
ment System (SIMS) is due for re
tirement according to university offi
cials, but a replacement system has
yet to be found.
“Technically we’re at a point at
which we continue to have numerous
problems that we’re going be confront
ed with in the future,” said Rick Floyd,
associate vice president for Finance.
SIMS, which has been around since
1986, contains any recorded information
about a student during his or her career
at Texas A&M.
A committee chaired by Dr. Mark
Weichold, associate provost for Under
graduate Programs^ is examining the
SIMS program and how to change it.
Weichold said the project is still at
a very early stage and it is impossible
to say exactly what the changes will be
or when they will occur, but the com
mittee is currently looking at other uni
receive upgrade
versities’ SIMS to get ideas for updat
ing A&M’s own.
“SIMS still does a very good job for
the bulk of our needs,” Weichold said.
“But there are some things that would
make student advising easier if we had a
more up-to-date SIMS system.”
Monique Snowden, senior systems
analyst, said SIMS is “the system that
takes you from the career of being an en
tering freshman all the way to the point
of seeing you out the door.”
But Weichold said it is SIMS’s abil
ity to hold this information which has
lead to a misconception that SIMS pro
duces a breach in the security of stu
dent records.
He said authorization to access SIMS
requires a lengthy procedure in which
various people authorize access.
“It’s very secure,” Weichold said.
Student workers in the Financial Aid
Office are given limited access to SIMS,
but are held to the same security stan
dards as regular faculty. They are also
unable to update any data.
could:
Prairie View van may have
ceeded posted speed limit
i Grilled
hicken
od Services
AUSTIN (AP) — Excessive
speed may have contributed to a
rollover accident that killed four
members of the Prairie View A&M
track team on a two-lane state high
way in East Texas, according to a
preliminary report of the Texas De
partment of Public Safety.
The van was en route to a track
meet in Pine Bluff, Ark., on Nov. 10
when it flipped three times on State
Highway 43 near Karnack, about 20
miles north of Marshall.
The DPS concluded that the van
was speeding when it came up on
another vehicle that was preparing
to make a left turn into a conve
nience store.
The DPS said the van veered to the
right onto the shoulder, then turned
over when it over-corrected to the left.
The posted limit on the two-lane
highway in 65 mph; the report did
not say how much over the speed
limit the vehicle is believed to have
been traveling.
Authorities have interviewed the
driver of the other vehicle, DPS
spokesperson Tom Vinger said.
“No other contributing factors in
cluding the vehicle ... have been de-
“No other con
tributing factors
including the ve
hicle ... have
been determined
at this point”
— Tom Vinger
DPS spokesperson
termined at this point,” Vinger said.
Five of the ten passengers were
thrown from the van before it landed
upside down in a private driveway.
Only two of the passengers were wear
ing seat belts.
Killed in the crash on Texas 43
were track team members Houston
Watson, 21, of Greenville; Jerome
Jackson, 22, of Dallas; Samuel Stums,
21 of Jasper; and Vernon James II, 18,
of Vallejo, Calif. Jackson was buried
Friday and Watson, Slums and James
were buried Saturday, all in their
hometowns.
Injured were coach Hoover
Wright, 71, and students Lamar
Adams, 35, of Vallejo; David Arter-
bery, 19, of Waskom; Lewis Edmon
son, 20, of Caldwell; Trenton Harris,
20, of Bloomburg; and Rashad Shel
ton, 19, of Raymond. None remains
hospitalized.
Watson, the driver of the Ford 350
15-passenger van, was pinned inside
the vehicle and died at the scene along
with Stums and James.
Jackson died while being taken to
Louisiana State University Health Sci
ences Center in Shreveport, La.
A final report on the accident is ex
pected to completed in 30 to 60 days,
Vinger said.
Police use drinking raid to
find Seaton fire witnesses
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Frustrated
by an investigation grown cold, author
ities used a raid on underage drinking at
a popular bar to round up potential wit
nesses to a deadly dorm fire at Seton
Hall University, The Star-Ledger of
Newark reported Sunday.
Nearly a dozen of
the students arrested
during the raid at the
New Hall Tavern just
before 1:30 a.m. Fri
day were given sub
poenas to testify Tues
day before a grand
jury looking into the
fire, the newspaper
said. Investigators had
expected the group to
be at the bar.
The Jan. 19 blaze
killed three freshmen
and injured 62 people. Law enforcement
sources, whom the newspaper did not
identity, said their investigation has been
hampered because some students have
been withholding information.
According to the newspaper, investi
gators believe the fire was deliberately
set and they are focusing on three fresh
men. All three were in the bar early Fri
day, and at least one was given a sub
poena, the paper said.
“I’m not going to confirm or deny
anything regarding grand jury sub
poenas,” Charlotte Smith, executive
assistant prosecutor for Essex County,
said Sunday.
She refused to
“discuss or make any
comment on the fire
investigation.”
The three fresh
men have been inter
viewed once but have
since retained lawyers
and have refused to
give investigators fur
ther interviews, the
paper said.
Grand jury wit
nesses must answer
questions without
their lawyers present, although they can
decline to make statements incriminat
ing themselves.
Officers charged 37 people in the tav
ern with underage drinking. The bar’s
owner, John Holland, 56, of Cedar
Grove was charged with serving minors,
possessing an unregistered handgun and
other offenses.
“I'm not going to
confirm or deny
anything regard
ing grand jury
subpoenas.”
— Charlotte Smith
Executive assistant
prosecutor for Essex Coun-
INSIDE
Too racy for the rack
Kroger sets good example
by concealing sexual topics.
Page 9
All the World is
a stage
Shakespeare
festival starts
up third year.
Page 3
• Tune into 90.9-FM at
1:57 p.m. for details on
A&M's mock trial team.
• Check out The Battalion
online at
battalion.tamu.edu.