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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (July 16, 2001)
: >t govemmenrjl i ml regulate a cm .lustry. Fori i o r [ o /\. r July 16, 2001 ume 107 ~ Issue 171 6 pages 9 -ch ie level than .‘xplicitly for its v not to support oversee—stem mid be another allow the rese egulated again. ;OrAews in Brief - , a private fertilirB” Campus isibk ^mkkeeper admits ,y. The findingIteahng $200,000 ednesday intl!;Ha r y /\ nn Ruether faces up ility and Sten 2< years in prison and a m of the Amen 0,000 fine after admitting eproducrive.Mc t luesday to stealing nearly miety said it 00,000 while performing rchers are thi 'Okfoeeping duties for the d States to hav ; xa A&M Faculty Club. Rt ether, who has worked ■the Faculty Club since admitted to the theft af- I^Mscovering that A&M was using W*j uct j n g an investigation society spot^ 0 missing funds, ton said. ThenB&fvl officials said Thursday as to what you-jat such theft is usually pre- with these ei rnt< d by employing two inde- ing to the indn frlient bookkeepers for each ’ ' rf Hersity account, and that this | Han isolated incident. |»e Faculty Club is a 4 Rurant on the 11 th floor of | Clflllder Tower open only to I. X X VI J e-paying A&M faculty, staff XHalumni. tens and two c M State >st wereableto * , , rs or otherwise Rename charged jl officer's death identified thee ,fEllen s b«r.®BBOCK (AP) - An un- >f Yakim; fcf***? aut ° mechanic has ,, t dfl n charged with capital i.am (.ss.i nufder'in the death of police H Kevin Cox, who was shot n the head in an exchange of ise stands ol Afire at the man's home. 5,700 feetelergRond for Richard Robinson, be in handr: 47, was set at $1 million. Assis erating wind: tant Chief Randy McGuire said h a ruggedar Robinson, who was wounded, orestmnoitl wou Id remain hospitalized for several days. £Cox was the second Lub bock officer to die in five days. —- todney Kendricks, 33, died July fpf injuries suffered in a mo- Kcyde accident during a fu- teral procession. ■Dfficer Jonny Hutson was r eated and released after a Jucar, a / the son indo De la nprofit groups u || et q raze d his head during sed $250,000 » a y-5 shootout, omputerstob :;|) 0 |j ce were conducting a .cess to everyp J r0U gp 1 investigation at the in Argentina. ome Saturday Walker said it s speaking fee )av ^^g en tj re weekend >e ° the crime scene ivestigation. panatee spotted H orpus christi ( Ap ) — A lanatee, the endangered larnmal thought to have in- )ir< I mermaid folklore Hng sailors, is paying a rare sit to the Texas coast. Xlarine watchers have re- orted seeing the walrus-like tanatee three times, said JhyAmos, a research associ- :e with the University of ?xas Marine Science Institute i Rort Aransas. Rnda May, area coordinator •r the Texas Marine Mammal rranding Network, said the lanatee sightings have been Raters off Galveston, Port ransas and Rockport. Dry j i I INSIDE Mb s P 0fts • A Lone St.ir .A ■ • > i flavor to A A % AM St,„. RounH B.vrt 0 All Stars; Round Rock pi a vs host to gamei svith Tevasl • Until death us do part: PropostHl amendment: is closemindesl uni awful! Bj ' '■«»' Jttalien News Radio: 57 p.m. KAMI) 90.9 ww.thebatt.com Professor fired Stuart Hutson The Battalion Tenured agricultural economics pro fessor Mary Zey was officially fired, ef fective July 2002, by Texas A&M Provost Ronald Douglas last Friday for plagiarizing the work of two of her for mer colleagues. T he move comes after the recom mendation to fire Zey by a University committee that initially was charged with investigating charges made by Zey that Harland Prechel and John Boies had plagiarized a 1999 paper. 'The committee instead found that Zey had included falsified work as well as unattributed information that was provided by Prechel and Boies. In her response to the committee’s findings, which were issued in June, Zey produced more than 100 pieces of evi dence that she claimed proved that Boies was only a paid employee and not a co author to the material. In an addendum, the committee noted that two photo copied sets of checks made out in Boies’ name were falsified. Zey’s attorney, Andrew S. Golub of Houston, said in an interview with The Biyan-College Station Eagle that the checks were merely annotated to clarify to the committee that Boies was an employee. Douglas has declined to comment on the matter, and Zey only has responded for plagiarism through an issued statement in which she maintains her innocence. “I have been convicted of an offense I did not commit,” Zey said. “I have been wronged at the hands of vindictive ac cusers, an uninformed and biased com mittee and an irresponsible TAMU ad ministration.” This investigation was one of many internal inquires performed on behalf of Prechel, Boies and Zey over the last six years in which Prechel and Boies have maintained that Zey plagiarized them — and in which Zey stated that Prechel and Boies have plagiarized her. All previous investigations concluded no plagiarism, as defined by either the University or the National Science Foundation, had taken place. However, Boies maintains that Zey and her husband Steve Murdock, head of A&M’s Department of Rural Sociol ogy, improperly exerted political influ ence during Boies’ application for tenure two years ago to ensure that he was not granted tenure — effectively dismissing him from the University. A faculty senate committee agreed, but Boies’ tenure was still denied by Douglas. Boies now works for the US. Depart ment of Census in Washington, D.C. “It came as a bit of a shock that [the See Zey on Page 2. The mummy STUART VILLANUEVA/7h£ Battalion Teenagers Ryan Keim and Kyle Tilton wrap Blake was part of "Hands On" Summer at the EXIT Teen Maddox from head to toe in toilet paper during an Center, a program to provide recreational activities obstacle race at Southwood Park Thursday. The race for teens in College Station. Bush administration may grant Mexicans residency WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration is considering granting legal res idency to mil lions of un documented Mexican im migrants liv ing in the United States. Such amnesty would give a perma nent reprieve to certain Mexi cans living undercover in this country, largely in the border states. It also could be a polit ical boon to the Republican president as he seeks Hispanic support. There are 3 million Mexican- born people living illegally in the United States, according to a report last week by Mexico’s National Population Council. An immigration task force of top Justice and State Depart ment officials planned to send President Bush a report Mon day on the broad outlines of U.S.-Mexico border issues. It will recommend that the Unit ed States take action to address illegal immigration, but will stop short of offering concrete proposals, a Justice Department official said Sunday. The task force is considering several options, including a pro posal to give the illegal Mexican immigrants pennanent residen cy, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. That is what Mexican President Vicente Fox has been pressing Bush for. Major questions remain unanswered about how the ad ministration would administer such a program. The official said issues under consideration include how quickly the immi grants could earn legal status, and whether they would gain such status based on date of entry into the United States, or by occupation, such as farm worker. The working group was formed after Bush and Fox met in February. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of State Colin Powell head the See Mexicans on Page 2. Houston recovering from flood HOUSTON (AP) — Kathy Vossler has no illusions about returning to life as it was before Tropical Storm Allison blew into her world. For now, she would settle for more than one pair of shoes. “It’s just depressing,” said the self-em ployed attorney of a life still in limbo more than four weeks after the storm destroyed her home and everything in it. “I’ve got my practice here. I’ve got kids to raise,” she says. “I lost all my clothes. All my suits came back from the dry cleaners with a little tag on them that said, ‘Sorry, this is the best we can do.’ ” Ruined suits may seem like a small com plaint from a storm that left 22 dead and nearly $5 billion in damage in the Houston area. But for Vossler, it is just one more hur dle among what seems like hundreds as she tries to regain some sense of normalcy. “There’s nothing you can just reach for and it’s there,” she said. It also will be a long time before she can sleep comfortably through a thunderstorm —- and there she has plenty of company. The 2001 hurricane season’s first named storm so saturated the nation’s fourth- largest city that four days after it first came ashore on June 5, the water had nowhere to go but up. Allison damaged 48,000 homes — de stroying 4,500 — and so swamped the downtown area that Harris County’s court system and theater district remain in sham bles a month later. Nine hospitals at the world-famous Texas Medical Center either partially or fully closed. Two medical schools lost near ly 3 5,000 mice, rats, rabbits, dogs and mon keys and countless tissue and cell samples used in medical research that had, in some cases, stretched on for decades. The 47 rhesus monkeys that were among the thousands of animals drowned in the basement of University of Texas Medical School were more than living tools for research into autism, memory and in fantile amnesia for Dr. Jocelyn Bachevalier, the neurobiology and anatomy professor who worked with them. She calls the ani mals “my babies.” “It’s like having a little kid with you,” said Bachevalier, a former National Institutes of Health researcher who has been at the Houston facility for 10 years. “They are not human beings, but they’re close.” Bachevalier rushed to the medical school See Allison on Page 2. Special Services building closed Stuart Hutson The Battalion Underneath the "Texas A&M campus lies the most datnaging enemy to A&M’s buildings — an 8-foot-deep layer of unstable clay soil. According to the Physical Plant, the shifting of this soil is responsible tor the sinking oi a major portion of Ross Street, the water main burst near Agrono my Road in June, and now has made the Special Services Build ing near Lechner Hall suscepti ble to sudden collapse. Workers spent this past week end moving supplies and equip ment out of the building, which housed the Texas Agricultural Extension Services’ information ii The risk of sudden collapse of a major portion of the building is extremely remote, but not zero." — Richard Robertson head of Robertson Consulting Engineers technology office, the Depart ment of Rural Sociology and the Department of Residence Life custodial staff. The 80 staff members who occupied the building will be moved to temporary offices. The 84-year-old building, which displays gaping cracks in its walls and flaking plaster, was found to have sunk as much as one inch in some places over a five-month survey by the Col lege Station-based Robertson Consulting Engineers. “The risk of sudden collapse of a major portion of the build ing is extremely remote, but not zero,” said Richard Robertson, head of the consulting company, in a Physical Plant report. “Based upon solely what is visi ble and measurable today, I would say zero. Taking into ac count the age, type of construc tion and possible hidden dam ages raises the risk above zero.” Vice President for Adminis tration Charles A. Sippial said the building was closed down as soon as the danger was reported, and plans to dismantle the struc ture will soon be finalized. “We thought it the prudent thing to do to close the building immediately if there were any indication that the safety of fac ulty and staff housed there could be in question,” Sippial said. “So we immediately took action.” Sippial also said that other buildings are being investigated for stability, most notably the See Building on Page 2.