Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 26, 2001)
1 SECTION • 12 PAGES WEDNESDAYSEPTEMBER 26, 2001 Texas A&M University — Celebrating 125 Years T V'' Y'V A A IxiJL riAI 1AL ! S E R V 1 N G THE TEXAS A & :V C O V K 1 It ! U N } j y ' ^ ; N C E 1 9 3 Volume 108 • Issue 24 College Station, Texas www.thebatt.com NEWS IN BRIEF Texas Task Force-1 will return from New York today Members of Texas Task Force-1 (TX-TF1), the search and rescue team coordinated by the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service, will return to College Station today after being deployed to New York to assist in the rescue effort of the Sept. 11 attacks. The 72-member task force will fly to Austin, where they will be reunited with their families. They will board buses and travel to the Brayton Fire School, where they will be addressed by A&M Chancellor Howard D. Graves. Afterward, they will go into a closed debriefing session and be released from active duty. Navasota Police Chief Lucas resigns Navasota Police Chief Bill Lucas delivered a letter of resignation to the Navasota City Council yesterday, according to Navasota Mayor Pat Gruner. Gruner said the council voted in open session to accept Lucas' resignation on Monday night. Lucas was recently investi gated for allegations of com mitting racial discrimination. He was cleared of wrongdo ing earlier this month. Gruner did not comment on whether or not these allegations had any bearing on his decision to resign. PUBLIC EYE 1F1I. Loud party, noise violations issued by the party task force last weekend 35 TODAY E3H321 Page 3 Absence makes the heart grow fonder? Students find ways to cope with long-distance Ags host bears No. 16 A&M squad returns home against Baylor OPINION Page 11 The media war Pro-Con: War tactics WEATHER today HIGH 82° F LOW 53° F tomorrow HIGH 85° F LOW 56° F FORECASTS COURTESY OF www.weathermanted.com Prof examines attack By Jonathan Kolmetz THE BATTALION To make sense of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., Americans must look into why it hap pened, and examine the mind of the per- petrators, said Dr. Anthony J. Black, pro fessor of political science and policy at the University of Dundee, Scotland. Approximately 100 people attended a forum Tuesday concerning modem Islamic fundamentalism given by Black at the George Bush Presidential Conference Center. “[Black] was originally brought in for a talk on his research in regard to Islamic political thought for just a small group of faculty and graduate students who are interested in political theory” said Dr. Cary Nederman, a political science profes sor at Texas A&M. “Due to the recent events in New York and Washington, D.C., I asked Dr. Black to talk to a larger group of mainly undergraduates to help frame what has gone on and to help inform them on the topic of Islam.” Black opened with an analysis on the possible military action to be taken against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, an Islamic-fundamentalist controlled country. “People, and especially Americans, want to make a rational strategic response to the terror of two weeks ago,” Black said. “To do this, one must first look into the causes of why it happened, and because this is a human action, we must look into the minds of those that commit ted these acts.” One modem school of thought dis cussed by BUick is the idea that Europe and America are now the leaders in con stitutional government, rule of law and respect of property. Many believe that See BLACK on page 6. guy Rogers Dr. Anthony J. Black, a professor at the University of Dundee, Scotland, spoke to about 100 people yes terday con cerning Islamic fun- the battalion damentalism. Compaq merger affects B-CS area By Sommer Bunce THE BATTALION When Compaq and Hewlett Packard (HP) merge in six to eight months, 10 percent of the resulting company’s work force — 15,000 jobs — could be cut, Compaq offi cials said. Though the company is global. Bryan-College Station’s small technology community could feel some effects, said Bryan Compaq Development Center’s Peggy Cruse. In the $25 billion merger announced earlier this month, the new company, presently called “the new HP,” will have operations in 160 countries and almost 150,000 employees. The Compaq name will be absorbed by HP, anci the new HP’s products will be cre ated through a combined labor force of both companies, said Compaq Corporation spokesman Arch Currid. Both companies will continue to operate independently until the federal government approves the merger, a move expected in the first half of 2002. For now, Currid said, the companies are “business as usual.” "We still compete in the mar ketplace and our separate sales departments still have quotas to meet,” Currid said. The Compaq Development Center at Texas A&M, located in Bryan, houses nine full-time employees and 58 year-round stu dent interns. The Center serves as a subcontractor for Houston- based Compaq Corp, said Cruse, the Bryan Center’s staffing and operations planning administra tor. Compaq out-sources testing and programming to the Center, Cruse said. “We retain most of our students — 77 percent,” she said. “I market them out to positions within Compaq [when they graduate].” Gared Chastain, a junior com puter science major, has been interning with Compaq since May. He said the status of his job after the merger has not been dis cussed, but he said that he is not worried about it. “You never really know where you stand in the job market. But See Compaq on page 2. Competitive climbing GUY ROGERS • THE BATTALION Paul Mccluskey, a senior computer engineering major, climbs one of 15 problems as a competitor at the Late Night Rec Rock Show Tuesday evening at the Texas A&M Recreation Center. Meningitis vaccines offered UNT student hospitalized, 80 people treated DENTON (AP) — The University of North Texas is offering vaccinations on campus after a student was hospitalized with an infectious strain of bac terial meningitis. The 19-year-old woman remained in critical condition Tuesday at a Dallas hospital, three days after being trans ferred there from a Denton hospital. School officials are trying to contact students in her classes and the 350 students at a soror ity event that she attended Friday. The disease is spread by direct contact with infected indi viduals or through coughing or sneezing. Health officials say the incubation time for the dis ease is usually three to five days but may be as long as 14 days. About 80 people who heard about the woman’s illness have been treated with antibi otics at Denton Regional Medical Center since Saturday, said Tricia Scott, hospital spokeswoman. UNT has scheduled a vacci nation session from 1 to 7 p.m. Thursday in the coliseum. The cost is $90, and financial help is available. The vaccination is not a treatment for the disease but provides protection for up to five years. Report: Transplanted ovaries functional CHICAGO (AP) — Sections of ovaries taken from two patients were implanted in their arms and continued to function there, raising hopes women can avoid the loss of fertility that often accompanies treatments for cancer and other diseases. In both cases, the tissue produced clear ly visible well-sized bumps — mini ovaries, really — on the forearm, just below the elbow. But more important, the tissue appears to be functioning normally and has produced mature eggs and regu lates the menstrual cycle. That offers hope that the women, both in their 30s, could become pregnant. “It’s very promising,” said Dr. Kutluk Oktay, a Cornell University reproductive endocrinologist who performed the trans plants at New York Methodist Hospital. Oktay and colleagues describe the proce dure in a report in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). See Ovaries on page 2. Saudi Arabia cuts off Taliban ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — All but sealing Afghanistan’s isolation, Saudi Arabia formally severed rela tions with the hard-line Taliban government on Tuesday. Stung, the Taliban denounced the Saudi move as intolerable to all Muslims and accused it of siding with “the infidel forces.” Fierce fighting was reported in northern Afghanistan, where an opposition alliance is trying to wrest strategic territory from Taliban fighters. Reports were sketchy, and the two sides made conflicting claims that could not be reconciled. From the organization of Osama bin Laden, the accused terrorist mastermind at the heart of the hardening confrontation between Afghanistan and a U.S.- led coalition, came a volley of new threats. “Wherever there are Americans and Jews, they will be targeted,” said a state ment issued in the name of Naseer Ahmed Mujahed, mili tary chief for bin Laden’s al- Qaida network. “The holy warriors are fully prepared,” added the statement. See Taliban on page 2. Last piece of wreckage will be removed NEW YORK (AP) — The last standing piece of the World Trade Center towers — a seven- story twisted metal ruin that has come to symbolize the terrorist attacks — will be carefully removed and saved for possible use in a memorial. “We’re going to preserve as much of that wall as possible,” Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Tuesday. The remnants of the south tower — the one struck by the second jetliner and the first to collapse — have been captured in scores of photos of ground zero since the Sept. 11 attack on the twin 110-story towers. Demolition began late Tuesday. Removal of the tower will also make cleanup efforts safer and easier, the mayor said. Earlier, as New Yorkers voted in primaries for his replacement, Giuliani encouraged residents to move beyond the World Trade Center terrorist attacks and get on with life. The mayor cited statistics showing that violent crime has plunged in the two weeks since the terrorist attack. New York is now the safest large city America, the mayor said. in