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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 19, 2001)
EDNESDAYSEPTEMBER 19, 2001 Texas A&M University — Celebrating 125 Years 2 SECTIONS • 14 PAGES ay OPTICAL NEWS IN BRIEF yf j] |Baylor athlete ! (arrested, cut from on glasses! ibaseball team ^wACO (AP) — Baylor junior pitcher Derek Brehm, who was accused earlier this year 1 1 of killing, skinning and decap- ^■ing a stray cat, has been dismissed from the team fol low nig a DWI arrest. Hi a release from the Hiool, Baylor coach Steve Hith said only that Brehm Hd been dismissed after Hng involved in another off- ^H-field incident. ^■Vaco police said Brehm was arrested Saturday. Hlrehm is scheduled to appear in court Nov. 7. Brehm and outfielder Clint Bowers were arrested March 9|after the cat was killed. Both players were scheduled to appear in court on the plea docket Aug. 30, but the dale was rescheduled for pretrial Jan. 9. Waco police arrested the two players after receiving a report that someone shot a cat near the Baylor campus and fled in a sport utility vehicle. - Police stopped Bowers’ Chevrolet Tahoe nearby and noticed blood on the door and steering wheel, accord ing to police reports. While searching the truck, police found a severed, skinned cat’s head in the back. . They also found a pellet gun, a knife and a golf club that appeared to have cat hair on it. mm FF rcut UCKS! PUBLIC EYE (EACH e., Suite D Ashbangers) atlon L-1103 jests only, pon @ I “ visit Aggie Bucks. V02/0I i<c- If.y.i.; Texas population for 2000 according to the state comptroller 20,851,820 msm Page 3A Studying abroad * Students get opportunities to learn from studies and cultures Page 5A receive st *14.75. Big 12 reschedules eight games, set to open conference play OPINION Page 5B The Bevo Battle Fort Worth’s Molly is no threat to Bevo WEATHER TODAY cy Available Health }898 | xpires IO/2.V01 J fOMORROW ' ✓ ) _ j HIGH 93° F LOW 72° F HIGH 93° F LOW 72° F FORECASTS COURTESY OF www.weathermanted.com SERVING THE TEXAS A&M COMMUNITY SINCE 1893 Volume 108 • Issue 19 College Station, Texas www.thebatt.com Aggie network An Exxon-Mobil recruiter admires senior computer engineering major Kenny Harms' Aggie ring at the Engineering Career Fair yesterday. The BRETT MARETH • THE BATTALION career fair was held in Reed Arena and offered corporate booths for students seeking jobs in engineering. Bureau warns of Campaign to raise $50 million, improve existing sports facilities By' NONI SRIDHARA THE BATTALION As students head to the Oklahoma State game this Saturday wearing red, white and blue, many will be entering through the newest addition to Kyle Field, the Bernard C. Richardson Zone. The addition is part of the Championship Vision, an athletic capital campaign that seeks to raise $50 million to build several new facilities, including an academic center, and make improve ments to existing sports facilities. “The campaign is funded strictly from alumni and private donations,” said Miles Marks, executive director and CEO of the 12th Man Foundation. Marks said the first $6 million will be going toward building training room facilities and locker rooms for women’s softball, soccer and track and field teams. “Our first priority was to give to sports that do not generate any revenue other than their own ticket sales,” Marks said. Marks said the major objective of the campaign is to build an academic complex behind the south end zone of Kyle Field. Three million dollars will be allotted for the academic center, $500,000 for a career counseling center and placement center and $125,000 for computer labs that will be housed in the academic center. “Because athletes have such a tight schedule and set practice times, they don’t have the flexibility in their sched ule like other students to go to the com puter labs when they are not as packed,” Marks said. He said the career center was to get the athletes ready for life after college. “Most of these athletes are not going to go on to be professionals, so we need to get them prepared for the real world,” Marks said. Marks said very few of the donors are former athletes. He said if someone does plan to put their whole donation into the campaign, they are encouraged to do otherwise. “Athletics is a very valuable auxiliary effort,” Marks said. “It is the front porch to the University. You can have a promi nent speaker for the business school or the engineering school come on a week end, but you’re not going to get anywhere near the attendance if you hosted this on a game-day weekend.” See Vision on page 7A. COURTESY OF THE 12TH MAN FOUNDATION Perry combats price increases By Eric Ambroso THE BATTALION The Brazos County Better Business Bureau is receiving reports of price gouging in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. Larry Lightfoot, president of the Better Business Bureau, defines price gouging as sudden, unusual price increases that are significantly out of line with the competition in the geographic area. The disruption in the air line industry is forcing many Americans to find alternate means of transportation, shelter and other related services, impacting industries across the country. If retailers determine there might be a public concern about a product, they may try to take advantage of consumers by unfairly increasing the price of the product, Lightfoot said. “Attacks on the East Coast have created fear in all con sumers nationwide. People are overreacting to the attacks and retailers are taking advantage of this hysteria,” said Mike Viesca, spokesman for the Texas attor ney general’s office. “Ninety- five percent of the complaints in Texas have been concerned with gasoline. Other products have included rental cars, groceries and hotels.” Texans should be aware of retail gasoline stations, motels, hotels and other businesses across the state that provide transportation services, shelter and related necessities, Viesca said. However, he said, not all increases in prices constitute price gouging. Prices on prod ucts such as gasoline and pro duce vary throughout the year. Viesca is urging people to use common sense to deter mine when prices are unreason able and report the instance as soon as possible. According to Viesca, if a consumer buys a product at a certain location for an extended period of time, and the price suddenly increases or if the competitors’ prices are significantly lower, the con sumer should contact the state attorney general’s office. “The vast majority of busi nesses adhere to honorable, responsible business practices in See PRICES on page 2A. Police link suspect to assaults in Philadelphia FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — Police have linked a suspect in sexual assaults near the Colorado State University campus to five rapes and a murder in Philadelphia, police said. DNA left at the scene of two rapes in Fort Collins matched that of a man suspected of assaulting three female college students in Philadelphia and killing a University of Pennsylvania student between 1997 and 1999. “This is the same person,” said Fort Collins spokeswoman Rita Davis. All six attacks in Fort Collins since May targeted women in their 20s. In each case, the intruder climbed through a window or balcony doors during the early morning hours, blindfolded the women and forced them to perform a sex act. “He’s certainly a shrewd individual because he’s able to do this as long as he has and get away.” said Philadelphia Police CpI. Jim Pauley. “He’s not a dummy.” Fort Collins police have received 848 tips and interviewed almost 200 suspects. The main suspect’s car has been described as a faded-blue, late 1980s, four-door sedan. Baylor professor refutes much of Darwin’s theory By Eric Ambroso THE BATTALION The complexity of life on Earth points to the existence of a “creator” and refutes much of Darwin’s theory of evolution, said William Dembski, a Baylor University professor who spoke Tuesday at Rudder Theater. Dembski is the nation’s leading proponent of the “intelligent design” theory, which uses mathemat ics and philosophy to prove that biological devel opment is not a random product of evolution, but the intended result of an intelligent designer. Titled “Darwin’s Unpaid Debt,” Dembski’s lecture was hosted by the Christian Faculty Network at A&M. “Natural selection and random variation are in principle incapable of accounting for certain types of biological information,” Dembski said. “The issue at hand is what is responsible for evo lution. The transition requires intelligence and cannot happen by random, natural forces. The notion of specified complexity is correlated with the effects of intelligence. A designer and speci fied complexity need to be brought together in order to explain biology.” The Darwinian theory of evolution is the belief that organisms have evolved over time to repro duce. It claims that organisms evolve to adopt certain characteristics in order to survive. Dembski argues that Darwin’s theory cannot account for more interesting, complex organisms. According to Dembski, specified complexity is needed in order to explain biological systems. Specified complexity is the idea that organ isms have a certain biological blueprint. He said that there are extremely complex organisms in life that require several closely matched parts in order to function. Therefore, removal of one of these parts would cause the organism to stop functioning. Evolution, in these cases, cannot explain the complexity of certain organisms. See Dembski on page 2A.