Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 17, 2002)
Mm talioJ Sports: Steroids in baseball • Page 3 Opinion: Cybersquatting is immoral • Page 5 Volume 108 • Issue 151 • 6 pages 108 Years Serving Texas A&M University www.thebatt.com Monday, June 17, 2002 ION nal reduc:: ?vel. Ite -of-pode ordere: , D-Nft top® s over pr: Rep. Bij acme I ■ Father’s Day fishing Bryan resident Mike Olsen looks on as his 10- year-old son Peter reels in a cast at Central Park BRIAN RUFF • THE BATTALION in College Station Sunday afternoon. Father's Day brought many father-son duos to the park. Library provides online service By Diane Xavier THE BATTALION Students and faculty needing to locate academic articles for research will now have access directly from home or a personal desktop. The Texas A&M University Libraries is offering a new service to expedite informa tion requests online through InterLibrary Services. The new program, deliverEdocs, will begin today sending journal articles and chapters of books, up to 50 pages, electronically in PDF for mat to library users. Customers first register with the system at deliverEdocs.tamu.edu and then request their information online. With deliverEdocs, users can check the status of their requests, renew loans or cancel requests through their web browser. They can request up to 10 items per day through the new system. Lan Yang, director of direct serv ices, said the library wants to provide better service to students and faculty. “This system is faster, easier, and more convenient for the cus tomer,” Yang said. “It saves them a trip to the library, and now they can find and receive all their material right from their home.” Electronic delivery of photo copied items is free and all arti- Arthur Andersen convicted of obstruction of justice HOUSTON (AP) — The testi mony of former Enron auditor David Duncan helped a jury con vict Arthur Andersen of obstruc tion of justice, but the same jury said it didn’t believe in Duncan’s guilt, even though he entered a guilty plea earlier this year. On the witness stand, Duncan denied any overt efforts to destroy documents related to now-bank rupt energy-trader Enron, shed lit tle light on Enron’s accounting, and defended his maligned work checking Enron’s books. “We couldn’t have paid him to be a better witness,” said lead Andersen attorney Rusty Hardin said after Duncan finished testify ing last month. Yet a small segment of Duncan’s testimony, which had little to do with his own actions, swayed the jury toward a verdict of guilty Saturday. The conviction means Andersen — which must soon cease auditing public companies — faces probation and tines ot at least $500,000 when the sentence The rise and fall of an accounting giant Arthur Andersen’s recent troubles have tarnished a mostly proud heritage dating back to 1913, when the company was founded by two accountants. 1913 - The firm was founded in Chicago as Andersen, DeLany & Co. by Arthur Andersen, and fellow accountant Clarence DeLany. 1947 — Andersen dies. 1989 - Accounting and consulting practices separated. I ’10s ’20S 2002 — After it acknowledged having destroyed Enron records, many clients left as a result of the federal obstruction-of-justice charge that led to trial in Houston. The jury convicts firm on June 15. i i 1 90s L 1918 — DeLany left; company was renamed Arthur Andersen & Co. 1979 - It became the world's largest professional services firm. 1990s to 2002 -The company Is involved in a series ot accounting scandals involving clients Waste Management, Sunbeam and Enron. SOURCE: Associated Ptess is delivered Oct. 11. According to j.urors, the knockout blow came May 14 when Duncan testified that in- house attorney Nancy Temple told him to remove a sentence and her name from a memo regarding Andersen’s take on Enron’s Oct. 16 earnings release, which was rife with bad news. “I believed it was misleading from a personal standpoint,” Duncan said. The same day, the first of four full days he spent on the witness stand during the six-week trial, Duncan recounted how he ordered employees on Oct. 23 to comply with the firm’s document reten tion policy, which calls for organ ization of important documents and destruction of extraneous material. Duncan said he knew compli ance would mean items that might be of interest to a budding Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into Enron Corp. would be eliminated. He pleaded guilty to obstruc tion of justice April 9 and agreed to cooperate with the government in exchange for immunity for other possible crimes and the rec- Student charged with manslaughter, assault By Jessi Watkins THE BATTALION Stuart Clinton Thompson, a 21-year-old sophomore construction science major, has been charged with intoxi cated manslaughter and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Thompson was driving a red 2002 Ford pickup north bound on Earl Rudder Freeway early June 9 when his truck left the road near the University Drive exit and rolled at least two times, said Lt. Rodney Sigler, the public information officer of the College Station Police Department. Thompson turned himself in at the College Station Police Department late last Friday morning. Police have not yet deter mined what caused the vehi cle to flip or if the passengers were wearing seat belts, Sigler said. Investigators of the acci dent estimate the speed at the time of the accident was in excess of 90 mph. In addition, tests conduct ed on Thompson’s blood indi cated a blood alcohol content of 0.268, more than three times the legal limit of 0.08. There were two passen gers in the pickup with Thompson at the time of the accident. All three people were found outside the vehi cle when the police arrived. Sigler did not know how all three passengers were found outside of the car or if they were thrown from the car during the accident. Thompson and one of the passengers, Elijah Garza, a biomedical sci- were treated for the scene by Station Fire personnel and hospitals and sophomore ences major, injuries at College Department later at local then released. The other passenger, Laina Bagby, was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. See Charged on page 2 Professor receives honor BASS cles, chapters or excerpts can be printed at home or from an office printer. If customers do not have access to a printer, they can print items at all libraries on campus for 10 cents a page. Printed copies of requested arti cles or chapters are available for five dollars from the library servic es desk from all University libraries on campus. The program cost $6,000 to start up and was funded through student fees. “Even though the money came out of students’ pockets, the money will go right back tcKhem with this See Library on page 2 By Sarah Walch THE BATTALION George F. Bass, distin guished professor emeritus at Texas A&M, received the 2001 National Medal of Science from President George W. Bush at the White House last week. This award comes in the midst of a career unlike many other professors. Bass is credited as being the father of nautical archaeology and is one of the main reasons the nautical archaeol ogy department at A&M, a sector of the Department of Anthropology, is the biggest in the country. In 1959, Bass was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania where he had the rare opportunity to work on a 3,200-year-old shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea. Peter Throckmorton, a world-renowned diver, called the site to the attention of Bass’s department head, who personally asked Bass if he was interested in joining the excavation, Bass said. “I never dreamed I would dive myself,” Bass said. Bass’s longtime colleague Dr. Frederick Van Doorninck said Bass did learn to scuba dive and became the first site archaeologist to participate in underwater excavation. The ship became the first ancient wreck ever excavated in its entirety at the bottom of sea. National Geographic magazine ran an arti cle soon after the summer of 1960, which accorded Bass immediate international atten tion, beginning his international career. His next project was a site on a 1 7th centu ry Byzantine shipwreck. He categorized over 1900 amphora bottfes, or ancient Greek vases. Dr. Van Doorninck, professor emeritus at A&M, joined Bass at this site, and the tech niques they developed to categorize the numer ous artifacts and develop stereophotography on-site have been widely used ever since. In 1973, Bass founded the Institute of See Honor on page 2 BRIAN RUFF • THE BATTALION The Rec Center pool remains open after initial plans to close it were scrapped. Rec Center offers students more summer activities By Lauren Bauml THE BATTALION For many students, sum mer in College Station is filled with classes, working and an increased amount of free time. Many choose to spend this newly found free time at the Student Recreation Center involving themselves in one of the vari ous activities of the summer. “Less students are enrolled, but there is a greater percentage of those remaining students using the Rec Center compared to the year,” said Associate Director Rick Hall. Exact statistical data is not available at this time, but there is a definite new peak time when students and facul ty use the Rec center com pared to the fall and spring semesters. Hall said. Throughout the year, average peak times are 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. “(During the summer) many of the students classes fall earlier in the morning,” Hall said. Therefore many students use the Rec facilities earlier in the day, from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. daily, he said. Many of the same student programs are offered during the summer as throughout the year, even though there is a decreased amount of students available to participate in each amenity. For this reason, each program is adjusted for size, but students still have the option to participate in intramural softball, basket ball, half-court indoor sdecer, aerobics, and rock climbing. TAMU Outdoors is also planning numerous outdoor trips for students, and the aquatics programs are geared more toward profes sors and students than throughout the regular aca demic year, Hall said. Beginning swim, baby swim, lifeguarding. and scuba lessons are just a few of the programs offered throughout the summer through the aquatics department. “Parents that are students, professors, and undergradu ate students alike will find a greater shift to meet their interests and needs during the summer,” Hall said. Due to the sun and sum mer heat, there is also an increased amount ^>f students utilizing the facilities at out door Rec Center Backyard. The outdoor lap and lazy See Rec on page 2