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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 30, 2003)
NEM HE BATTALIO Sports* A&M faces off with Longhorns in Texas Cup • Page 1 B Accieufe: Addicted to reality • Page 4A THE BATTALIO Volume 109 • Issue 85 • 18 pages Texas A&M University www.thebatt.com Thursday, January 30, 2003 retuses to release records By Lauren Smith THE BATTALION Texas A&M officials responded swiftly to inquiries about security cameras, even as the other flagship university in Texas has become embroiled in a legal battle with the state attor ney general about whether such information should be available to the public. In October 2002, a Daily Texan reporter requested open records on the geography, times of operation, technicalities and costs associated with surveillance cameras located on the University of Texas campus. UT officials denied the request, citing “protec tion of national security.” When a Texas institution denies an open records request, the state attorney general must issue an opinion about whether the institution’s reasons for with holding information are valid. After UT officials refused to answer the reporter’s questions in October, they turned over that same information to the attorney general “in an effort to influence his decision” on the case, according to The Daily Texan. On Jan. 6, newly elected Attorney General Greg Abbott rejected UT’s claims that disclo sure of the information was an issue of national security and that there was an alleged proce dural error in the request. On Jan. 15, the UT System filed a lawsuit against Abbott to dispute his ruling, citing the USA Patriot Act, a law passed in October 2001 in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. UT general counsel Patricia Ohlendorf consulted UT President Larry Faulkner before hiring an Austin firm to file the suit on the university’s behalf, according to The Daily Texan. UT officials continue to assert that disclosing information about surveillance cameras would leave the school vulnera ble to terrorists and terrorist attacks, according to the Austin American-Statesman. toy© See Lawsuit on page 2A Source: The Daily Texan TRAVIS SWENSON • THE BATTALION ) • THE BATTALION e taking a Tun is a veteran of Aye, aye captain! unemplopen nemployment rates dw; » of 6.0 percent accodfi I Tuesday. ates for December^; —1 1 t to 3.5% to 3.4% a % 4.4% less rising from )urism and low erf najor factors for I K)1 energy crisis i dustries have take es. Oregon’s ercent after droppi Washington pos percent, up fromk > 6.6 percent best rates wfl and the District nsistently posted i the country. Ni •ates of 3 percent li >ercent. 1 from large ep their econoi ;ers laid off by c(' farming and are 22-DAVE 764-DAVE 268-DAK 36-DAVE Internet hoax sweeps A&M G EM? ijoy botli: isday RANDAL FORD • THE BATTALION Three-year-old Grace Bible Church Pre-school student, Isaac Womack, looks through a pair of binoculars while playing at the Children's Museum of the Brazos Valley on Wednesday afternoon. The Museum, located in downtown Bryan, is open to all children and allows them to paint, play, and pretend to be whatever they like. It is open Monday through Saturday and admission is four dollars per person. A&M athlete drug policy explained By Hedish Connor THE BATTALION On the heels of the suspension of a Texas A&M athlete for alleged possession of steroids, the Athletic Department is reiterating its drug pol icy, saying A&M student athletes are educated on drug use and tested within the first week of their arrival to campus. From the moment a student enters the pro gram, all student athletes are required to partici pate in an educational seminar on the use of drugs and give a sample for a drug test, said Alan Cannon, A&M assistant athletic director. The A&M Athletic Department has a three- offense-consequence system for students who test positive for drug use. The department does not condone use of illegal or performance-enhancing drugs, Cannon said. “We are trying to educate young people to these problems and we will not put up with the use of illegal substances,” Cannon said. Senior center Andy Slocum was arrested this past week for possession of a controlled substance and was suspended from the team by Melvin Watkins, A&M men’s head basketball coach. Slocum, a junior agriculture development major, has been charged with two counts of pos sessing a controlled substance. In addition to the Athletic Department’s educa tional seminar and drug test, students are asked to sign a release form allowing the department to con tact their parents if an offense occurs, Cannon said. If students choose not to sign the release form, See Policy on page 5A By Melissa Fowler OlseU twIttS HOt attending THE BATTALION » ^ An article circulating brough e-mail since Monday claiming the Olsen twins have announced plans to attend Texas A&M is a hoax, said a spokes woman for Dualstar Entertainment Group, the girls’ production company. “The girls are juniors and tak ing their SATs now, but still have an entire year of high school left,” the spokeswoman said. The forwarded article appears to be a post on the CNN Web site (CNN.com). It is formatted like other articles on the site and is complete with a picture of the twins and menu bars that link to the official CNN.com site. The article, which claims Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen want to live on the Northside of campus in Fall 2003, cannot be found on CNN.com even by searching through archives. A representative from CNN could not be reached for com ment Wednesday. Junior education major Melissa Zulinski said she read the e-mail and believed it was real until a co-worker searched CNN.com and discovered the article was fake. Ben Zurbrugg, a junior chemical engineering major and Student Computing Center employee, said creating such an e-mail would not be diffi cult. Circulating an e-mail such as this is easier for stu dents because neo e-mail addresses are accessible through a public domain, Zurbrugg said. Addresses are set up this way to enable pro fessors and teaching assistants to reach all students. The origin of the e-mail remains unknown. Zurbrugg said the University could track the e-mail and see where it began if it started within the University e-mail system. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are among the wealthiest teenagers in America. They start ed their acting career when they A&M Health Science Center accredited MARY-KATE AND ASHLEY OLSEN Source: www.angelfire.com were 9 months old playing the role of Michelle Tanner on eight seasons of the sitcom “Full House.” Today the twins have their own clothing line, video games and a Mattel doll that is second in sales only to Barbie. Their straight-to-video movies including “Our Lips Are Sealed,” “Holiday in the Sun” and “When in Rome” have sold more than 27 million copies. The 16-year-old Olsen girls attend private school in Los Angeles and have not declared any college plans. Firms settle charges of violating privacy By Siobhan McDonough THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — Two companies that distributed questionnaires to millions of students, promising to use the data for educational purposes, have agreed to settle federal charges that they broke privacy laws by selling the information to credit card, insurance and other companies, the government said Wednesday. Educational Research Center of America of Pittsburgh and Student Marketing Group of Lynbrook, N.Y., were ordered by the Federal Trade Commission to destroy any information they acquired from children under 13. Since at least 1999, the companies have surveyed millions of high school students and more than 300,000 middle and junior high school students, the FTC said. Under the agreement, the companies are also barred from using previously col lected student information for noneduca- tional marketing and from using any data gained in the future for similar marketing unless they specify before distributing questionnaires how the data will be used. The settlement contained no financial penalty. “The lesson in this case for marketers is that it’s deceptive to promote a student sur vey as purely educational, then use it for commercial marketing,” said Howard Beales, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. The FTC charged that the companies shared survey data with commercial mar keters including banks and retail stores. By settling, the companies did not admit breaking any law. Jan Stumacher, president of Student Marketing Group, said, “We believe that the settlement reflects our view that there was no attempt to mislead students, but simply a disagreement over the level of detail that should be provided in connec tion with the collection of information.” See Charges on page 2A By Allyson Bandy THE BATTALION The Texas A&M University System Health Science Center received full accreditation for 10 years from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The SACS is a federally rec ognized agency that accredits universities, said Dr. Elvin Smith, executive vice president of the Health Science Center. “This (accreditation) is so important in order to maintain the standards of excellence,” said Nancy W. Dickey, M.D., president of the Health Science Center and vice chancellor for Health Affairs. “This is in the students’ best interest, considering most schol arships and federally funded loans only apply to accredited schools,” Dickey said. The SACS evaluates apply ing institutions on several crite ria, including student services, curriculum, technology and per formance, Dickey said. The SACS accredits more than 12,000 public and private educational institutions, from prekindergarten through univer sity level, in 11 states of the Southeastern United States and in Latin America. Smith said the accreditation from the SACS is important because “it is peers around the country evaluating the quality of your institution.” In 1999, the Health Science Center made itself a separate body no longer affiliated with A&M. It shares the same Board of Regents and the same chan cellor with A&M but has a sep arate student body and separate facilities, Dickey said. Currently, the only building See Center on page 2A +lHealtli Science CenterAccreditationl - Scholarships, federally funded loans now apply - Includes College of Medicine and five other schools - The center awards 300 degrees per year TRAVIS SWENSON • THE BATTALION SOURCE: TEXAS A&M UNIVERSTIY HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER