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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 2001)
UESDAYOCTOBER 30, 2001 1 SECTION • 12 PAGES ?TS IN BRIE golf wraps I season as A&M men's :lose its fall seas; iry Griffets/! il Monday t Ridgewood Co-v": Lake Waco, Texas ore Stephen k Rand Arbucklea itt, and seniors^ id Sean Gillilani the Aggies in fa ament. on to A&M, k includes teamsfm ouisiana Lafaysia Southwest Tea Illinois, Iowa ia s State, schedule has bees experience for i A&M head cm s. We’d like to ha,; nament in Waccs le momentum ja ring." mament consist; on Monday and jesday. PI Iversity •ulty, staff, students low pages. /ou ordered s and requested I be made within ou did not order ou may charga 15 Reed Mction- y. Please bring a iequest. 30 p.m. Mon- NEWS IN BRIEF Perry expresses optimistic outlook on Texas budget AUSTIN (AP) - Gov. Rick Perry said Monday he is not overly worried about the Texas budget despite the comptroller’s prediction September figures will show a $90-million “body to sales tax receipts after the terrorist attacks. He made the remarks to reporters before casting his in early voting for the Nov. 6 constitutional amend ments election. The state and its $114 billion budget are still in sound fiscal shape, Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander said. She is expected to release precise data Thursday on the state's September sales tax collections. FDA approves additional drug in fight against AIDS WASHINGTON (AP) - A new anti-viral drug is being added to the arsenal of anti- DS medications. The Food and Drug Administration said Monday has approved Viread for use in combination with other drugs in fighting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The drug blocks reproduc tion of the virus, the agency said. Its technical name is tenofovir disoproxil fumarate. AIDS survival rates have vcreased in recent years as combinations of drugs are to battle the virus. PUBLIC EYE Number of student workers employed by Bus Operations 350 TODAY Page 4 Rollin’ On mm3 • Rolling Stone magazine brings ‘Rolling Stone Unleashed’ to Texas A&M campus Tyler pipeline paying off for Aggies in 2001 Misleading and unfair • Pro-life advertisement a disservice to its cause WEATHER TODAY ) TOMORROW HIGH 77° F LOW 48° F HIGH 79° F LOW 52° F FORECASTS COURTESY OF www.weathermanted.com Texas A&M University — Celebrating 125 Years SERVING THE TEXAS A&M COMMUNITY SINCE 1893 Volume 108 • Issue 48 College Station, Texas www.thebatt.com Bus Ops rule agitates drivers By Amanda Smith THE BATTALION As Parking, Traffic and Transportation Services (PTTS) begins its search for a new director and vows to take a renewed interest in customer service, student bus drivers are asking Bus Operations to take care of its employees. Bus Operations management recently invoked a rule requir ing drivers to work a minimum of 12 hours per week. A&M bus driver Matt Rooney, a junior management information sys tems major, said mismanage ment has led him to be unfairly reprimanded for the number of hours he has worked. FTTS officials say the proce dures for hours have been made clear to student workers and other employees in Bus Operations. Kathie Mathis, asso ciate director of PTTS, said driv ers were given advance notice to take care of scheduling changes. “There are some drivers that are signed up for less than 12 hours driving time each week,” Mathis said. “This is acceptable. However, they are required to do something to work their required 12 hours. We gave all drivers a three-week period to get their shifts adjusted. Since that time, if they have not driven their 12 hours, they have received letters and will contin ue to do so because they are not meeting their minimum. “Do not confuse this situa tion with drivers whose sched uled hours dropped below 12 hours because of the resched uling,” she said. Rooney, who started driv ing buses last year, said he loves the work, but cannot tol erate the unfair reprimands he has received for falling short of the 12-hour minimum on two of the recent paychecks he has received. “I love driving the bus, but there are some problems that See Grievances on page 9. Ridership increases since last year By Amanda Smith THE BATTALION Expanded on- and off-campus bus services, the result of a $50 transportation fee this fall, may have contributed to an increase in ridership and heightened demand for student driv ers at Parking, Traffic and Transportation Services’ (PTTS) Bus Operations, department officials said. Passenger counts taken several weeks ago for Monday- through-Thursday ridership averaged 29,118 riders daily, compared to just more than 23,000 riders per day during the 2000-2001 school year. Ridership increased last year from the 1999-2000 school year, when averages reflected an average of 17,000 to 18,000 riders per day. See Ridership on page 2. Jury searches for memorial site Nine-member group looking for ‘blended’ memorial design By C.E. Walters THE BATTALION The nine-member Bonfire Memorial Design Competition jury toured proposed sites and began nar rowing down possible designs as it met for the first time Monday. The jury, led by professor Jaan Holt of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, will examine 194 proposals and choose four for to the second stage of the competition. The four winners of stage one will each receive $20,000 — $10,000 as a prize and $10,000 to use to prepare a model of their idea. Other jurors include student body president Schuyler Houser, former A&M students, professors from around the country, and Richard West, whose son Nathan was injured in the collapse. The jury is looking for a “blended” design. Holt said. “We’re looking at the memorial aspect and the tradition of Bonfire itself,” Holt said. Competitors were given free rein on their designs, with no restrictions on height or cost. The four proposed sites include an area east of Houston Street, a spot north east of the Jack K. Williams Administration Building, Cain Park and the Polo Fields. However, applicants were not restricted to these sites in their proposals. CODY WAGES • THE BATTALION Top: The Bonfire memorial jury surveys the Bonfire site as one of the possible memorial sites. Above: Jaan Holt, jury foreman for the Bonfire memorial design competition, addresses the media about the selection of the Bonfire memorial site. The final four designs will be announced pub licly Nov. 18, two years after the 1999 Aggie Bonfire collapse. Ashcroft issues new terrorism warning No specific target, method mentioned WASHINGTON (AP) — For the second time this month, the FBI warned Americans on Monday that terrorists could strike here or abroad, possibly this week. The new alert was based on intelligence reports that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network may strike, officials said. The information was deemed credible, said Attorney General John Ashcroft, but “unfortunately it does not contain specific information as to the type of attack or specific targets.” The FBI issued a terrorist alert on Oct. 11, saying an attack could come over a peri od of several days. The new warning specified a strike could come this week. FBI Director Robert Mueller said the Oct. 11 warn ing may have helped avert an attack. Ashcroft said the absence of an attack should not lull people “into a false sense of indifference.” “It’s important for the American people to under stand that these (alerts) are to be taken seriously,” said Ashcroft. He urged Americans to “go about their lives.” But the warning led him to cancel plans to travel Monday to Toronto to address a confer ence of police chiefs. Officials said the warning was based in part on intelli gence that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network may be agi tating to strike again in the aftermath of the U.S.-led bombings on Afghanistan. See Attacks on page 2. $3 million grant furthers bilingual education TAMU BILINGUAL E DUCAT I t,,. DISTRICTS REACHED IA DISTANCE A. R Nl N G 2. TEMPLE 3. BELTON 4. BRYAN 5. COLLEGE STATION 6. JACKSONVILLE 7. GALVESTON 8. HOUSTON 9. CYPRESS-FAIRBANKS 10. ALDINE I 1 • WALLER ADRIAN CALCANEO • THE BATTALION By NONI SRIDHARA THE BATTALION A $3-million grant from the U.S. Department of Education is helping fund a program initiated by Texas A&M’s College of Education to increase the number of bilingual teachers in Texas. The non traditional field-based bilingual teacher master’s degree program is the first fully distance education master’s program for bilingual education in the nation. The program was created to meet the state’s need for bilingual and Ehglish-as-a-second language (ESL) teachers, said Dr. Rafael Lara- Alecio, director of bilingual education programs in the Department of Educational Psychology at A&M. “The state population is going to demand these education services,” Lara-Alecio said. “We want to ensure that students have their native language and culture in the classroom, and make successful acquisition of English as a second language in both the academic and social arenas.” The program aims to certify 1 10 bilingual teachers over the next three to five years, Lara- Alecio said. This semester, 106 students are enrolled to be certified at the graduate level in Jacksonville, Central Texas, Houston, Galveston and Bryan-College Station areas. The teachers take courses in their home districts See Bilingual on page 9.