Friday, September:
ions ii
[emeu
• Listen to KAMI)
90.9 FM at 1:57 p.m.
for for details on
school inspections.
• Check out The Bat
talion online at
battalion.tamu.edu.
Tech Marooned at
_ Kyle
_ Field
A&M defeated Texas Tech,
33-15, in a close close game in
front of 83, 000 plus spectators.
Page 7
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Weather:
Partly cloudy with a high
of 90 and a low of 68.
MONDAY
October 2, 2000
Volume 107 ~ Issue 27
12 Pages
t mmi * i MlVwxwi ii *
ulpepper Plaza hit by burglars
f an arrested in seven-business robbery strike Sunday morning
y Brady Creel and Marium Mohiuddin
he Battalion
A 32-year-old Plano man was arrested early Sun-
lay morning for burglarizing seven businesses in
lulpepper Plaza on Texas Avenue.
I Sgt. Chuck Fleeger of the College Station Police
Department (CSPD) said Kenneth Clayton Smith
iewc in Df!pf with one count of burglary of a build-
W5 in D "“» lg an£ ith at hj s jdemjfication was tentative pending
arrested in m* investigation.
1 Holze Music, Sew Vac City, Douglas Jewelers,
Ith care fray ttato Fashions, Radio Shack, The Bagel Station,
LAS (AP) - Feder: Muscle Tech and Rent/Buy were the stores bur-
s have issued arresti l|lari ze d> said CSPD Sgt. Greg Leeth.
)r six North Texas menl
to have run a twVyej
2 that bilked thousands:
from the state’s worl
isation fund,
irding to federal indi
the three chiropractc
ree health workers c
I the state by padding
? reimbursement recora
ast employees,
ials from the FBI, U.SJ
office and the Texa
Compensation Insui
nd had scheduled a new
ice related to the charge
sday afternoon.
Fleeger said CSPD officers responded to an
alarm at Cato Fashions, located at 1671 Texas Av
enue in Culpepper Plaza, about 2 a.m. Sunday.
“One officer was down by Holze Music,”
Fleeger said. “While we were waiting on a repre
sentative of Cato Fashions to show up, we saw some
suspicious activity in Holze Music where ceiling
tiles were falling down.”
Apparently, the suspect entered the store through
service ducts in the promenade of Holze Music,
three stores down from Cato Fashions, Fleeger said.
Once inside Holze Music, he knocked holes in walls
at floor level between each of the stores to get from
one to the other.
“We found holes in the wall ... going into Sew
Vac City,” Fleeger said. “We started calling repre
sentatives from all these shops along this stretch of
the shopping center.”
Fleeger said after the first suspect was found and
it became evident how he had entered the stores, the
CSPD SWAT team was called at 7:30 a.m. to
search the ducts above and around the buildings for
more suspects. None were found.
An employee of one of the burglarized stores
who wished to remain anonymous said the perpe
trator was apprehended as the owner of Holze Mu
sic was leaving the scene.
See Burglary on Page 5.
Right: Former Pres
ident George Bush
looks out at incom
ing Corps members
as they march onto iLry
Kyle Field Saturday. |Sp|
Bush was among i
A&M Board of Re- I
gents and Universi- I
ty Administation ;
members, including w
President Dr. Ray
M. Bowen and VP
of student affairs J.
Malon Souther
land. Also review
ing march-in was
Mexico's Secretary
of Defense, Gen.
Enrique Cervantes
Aguirre. Below:
Cervantes (left)
gave a speech in
front of the James
Earl Rudder statue.
He placed a wreath
at the statue before
taking a tour of the
Corps museum.
Culpepper Plaza was investigated by CSPD SWAT, Sunday
series of break-ins took place at its retail stores.
Waterline leak
Mexican general
visits A&M, Corps
PHOTOS BY ANDY HANCOCK/Thh Battalion
By Maureen Kane
The Battalion
Mexico Secretary of Defense Gen. Enrique
Cervantes Aguirre and Brig. Gen. Filipe Bonilla
Espinobarros, general director of education for
the armed forces of Mexico, led a delegation of
military officers and cadets to strengthen ties with
Texas A&M.
Cervantes laid a wreath at the statue of James
Earl Rudder Saturday morning and praised the
late general for his bravery and accomplishments
during WWII.
Afterward, Bonilla signed an interlibrary
agreement at the Memorial Student Center
Forsythe Gallery, which will allow information to
be shared between A&M and the universities of
the armed forces of Mexico. He spoke about the
relationship between the universities. A&M Pres
ident Dr. Ray M. Bowen and other A&M officials
were present at the signing.
Cervantes served as the reviewing officer for
the Corps of Cadets’ military formation as it
marched in before Saturday’s football game
against Texas Tech.
Accompanying the officers were 30 of the top
cadets from Mexico’s Heroic Military College,
who spent three days living with Corps members.
Mark Welsh, Corps commander and a senior
finance major, said the weekend visit went well
and the cadets were cordial and respectful.
“We were very impressed by these cadets and
See Cervantes on Page 2.
causes Verizon
phone outage
By Stephen Metcalf
The Battalion
Many College Station res
idents and businesses picked
up their phones Friday morn
ing and discovered they could
not get a dial tone. Around 8
p.m. Thursday night, a water
line in the basement of the
Verizon phone company sub
station on Holleman Drive
sprang a leak, flooding parts
of the building and cutting off
service for customers from
George Bush Drive to Rock
Prairie Road.
Although the pipe broke
early in the evening, the water
did not flood the cable vault
until after midnight, knocking
out service in the area. The ca
ble vault houses connections
among many of the area’s
telephone lines.
Ed Savage, a supervisor at
College Station Utilities, esti
mated that 1 million gallons of
water poured out of the
pipeline.
“When a big line like that
fails, it does not take long for
it to pump out a million gal
lons,” he said.
Savage said that, by the
time officials from College
Station Utilities and the Col
lege Station Fire Department
arrived on the scene, the base
ment was overflowing into
the first floor of the Verizon
building.
“The city assisted by
killing the [waterline] for
them and the fire department
pumped the water out of the
basement,” Savage said.
Daniel LaCook, a Verizon
employee at the substation,
said two waterlines enter the
Verizon complex from the
city’s water main. One of the
lines is the domestic line that
provides water for human
consumption, and the other
line supplies water for emer
gencies.
LaCook said the break was
on Verizon’s portion of the fire
line and that the valve to the
waterline was shut off Friday
morning with service being
restored in segments. Service
has been restored to some ar
eas, but some customers
“When a big
line like that
fails, it does
not take long
for it to pump
out a million
gallons/'
— Ed Savage
a College Station Utilities
supervisor
might have to wait until today
for their service to resume.
Due to the service outage,
many College Station busi
nesses had to cope without
credit card machines.
Tim Thornton, a supervi
sor at Freebirds World Burri-
to on Texas Avenue, said his
location was unable to process
credit cards or Aggie Bucks
until Friday afternoon.
“It was a little crazy,”
Thornton said.
Savage said he did not ex
pect the leak to affect water
service to any College Station
Utilities customers.
Petro engineering ranked #1
Engineering, business schools rank among nation’s best
TEXAS A&M DWIGHT LOOK
College of Engineering Undergraduate program
' 1 -ftL. - 0 ' ‘ ;
Ranked 1 /lljLoyeml®^ ’ RANK
: By Arati Bhattacharya
S of the Association The Battalion
signated.fol
remove yoif
e game, if
-king, plejl
t’amu.edu.i
The No. 1 petroleum engineering department in
\ the United States resides on the campus of Texas
; A&M, according to U.S. News and World Report.
U.S. News and World Report ranks A&M’s
; Lowry Mays College of Business 28th and the
A&M Dwight Look College of Engineering un-
! dergraduate program 17th in the nation.
Different departments within the business pro-
| gram fared high, as well. Marketing is ranked 19th,
[ accounting 22nd and management 23rd.
“This is the first’ time marketing has been
ranked in the top 20,” said Dr. R Rajan Varadara-
jan, head of the marketing department. “Our de
partment continuously strives for excellence in re
search and teaching. We regularly examine our
curriculum in search of what’s needed to enhance
the learning experience.”
Dr. James J. Benjamin, professor and head of
the accounting department, said the rankings are
well-deserved.
“Our accounting department has been steadily
improving over the recent years, and the rankings
are finally catching up to us,” Benjamin said,
adding that more than 25 percent of the students
registered for the May 1999 CPA exam in Texas
were from A&M. The passing rates from A&M
and the University of Texas-Austin were more than
42 percent, while the remainder of Texas and the
national average stood at 16 percent.
“It is clear that we are doing better than the oth
ers,” he said.
The new rankings are an encouragement to
both colleges, which have experienced a drop in
See Rankings on Page 5.
RUBEN DELUNA/The Battalion
Sydney waves bye
to the2000 Games
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — First came the Greek priestesses and the shiny ro
bots on stilts. Then the upended fish skeleton, the Frankenstein kangaroo and the
evil egg-laying chicken put in appearances, stalking along the same track where
Marion Jones won gold.
By the time the giant shrimp on bicycles pedaled by and the huge inflatable eye
ball soared through the stadium air, one thing was clear: The 2000 Summer
Olympics were over.
Sydney ended the “best Olympic Games ever” Sunday night with a gargantu
an burst of exuberance — a closing-ceremony party for 110,000 guests and billions
of TV viewers that offered a festive, often psychedelic tour through what it means
to be an Australian.
Fireworks rolled east across the sky, an 8.5-mile “fuse” that carried the Olympic
torch’s symbolic light from the stadium along barges in Homebush Bay to a hu
manity-crammed downtown. There, the majestic Harbor Bridge exploded like a
giant Roman candle in a fusillade of pyrotechnics.
“Seven years ago, I said, ‘And the winner is Sydney,”’ said Juan Antonio Sama-
See Olympics on Page 4.