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Volume 109 • Issue 108 • 10 pages
Texas A&M University
www.thebatt.com
Tuesday, March 4, 2003
Candidates jockey in SBP contest
By Rolando Garcia
THE BATTALION
When students return to classes March 17,
the campus will be plastered with campaign
flyers, and volunteers will be camped out in
Rudder Plaza peddling their candidates’ cam
paign literature and trinkets.
With crowded fields in both the student
body president and yell leader contests, stu
dents will get more than their fill of campus
politicking. Six candidates are vying for stu
dent body president, seven are running for
three senior yell positions and 14 students are
running for two junior yell positions.
The student body president candidates
include Ed Brown, Appelt Hall secretary;
Stoney Burke, a former'Student Government
Association vice president for campus rela
tions; Luke Carlton, who led Unity Project’s
off-campus bonfire last fall; Kyle Cheatham,
chair of the Student Senate external affairs
committee; Matt Josefy, current SGA vice
president for campus relations; Karl Pfluger,
SGA director of risk management.
Voting will be held March 26-27, and if no
candidate in a race captures a majority, a runoff
will be held April 2-3. Election results will be
announced at midnight, and not at 10:30 p.m.
as in the past, said SGA election commission
er Erin Eckhart. The change was prompted by
the freshman elections in the fall when election
officials failed to notice a computer glitch in
the vote counting and announced incorrect
results.
“We need more time to review the numbers
See Candidates on page 2
Student Body President Candida!
4att Josef
Stone's Burke
JUNIOR FINANCE MAJOR
JUNIOR ACCOUNTING MAJOR
SENIOR CIVIL ENGINEERING MAJOR
SENIOR ECONOMICS MAJOR
SENIOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES MAJOR
SENIOR POLITICAL SCIENCE MAJOR
Graphic by: Travis Swenson • THE BATTALION
SOURCE: TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
Fat Tuesday
JP Beato III • THE BATTALION
Masked riders from the Krewe of Thoth parade throw beads and other in New Orleans, Louisiana on Monday. Mardi Gras ends today, Fat
trinkets to the crowds lining Canal Street at the Mardi Gras Celebration Tuesday, before Lent begins.
Student
services faces
budget cuts
By Rolando Garcia
THE BATTALION
Proponents of the proposed fee hikes voted
down last week are predicting dire budget cut
backs for student services.
Students overwhelmingly rejected increases in
the Recreation Sports fee (69 percent against),
Student Service fee (79 percent against) and the
computer service fee (51 percent against) in a Feb.
26-27 referendum.
Gabby Oroza, chair of the Student Fee
Advisory Board, said despite the referendum, the
fee would still be raised by a small amount. The
fee, which stands at $142 a semester, requires stu
dent approval to exceed the $150 threshold, but
University officials can raise it to less than that
-amount without student approval. Oroza said Vice
President for Student Affairs J. Malon Southerland
would likely raise the fee.
Oroza also blamed student ignorance and a
general revolt against fee increases for the rejec
tion of the student service fee hike.
“I don’t think students even bothered to read
the ballot before voting no,” said Oroza, a senior
psychology major. “Its a complicated issue, and
students were just misinfonned.”
Dennis Corrington, director of the recreation
sports department, blamed the defeat on what he
See Budget on page 2
Supreme Court debates limits of forced drugging
By Gina Holland
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The Supreme
Court wrangled Monday over the gov
ernment’s authority to force nonviolent
criminal defendants —- and potentially
other people not charged with crimes
— to take drugs against their will.
The court is considering whether a
dentist, now locked up in a psychiatric
unit, can be forced to take anti-psy-
chotic drugs to make him well enough
to stand trial for health care fraud. But
the justices did not limit their discus
sions to the drugging of people facing
charges.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor asked
if the government can require children
to be vaccinated against smallpox.
Justice Anthony Kennedy evoked an
image of defendants and witnesses
being injected before a trial with drugs
that control their behavior. If the gov
ernment can medicate the dentist, why
not a person charged with a traffic vio
lation, Justice Stephen Breyer asked.
The case asks the court to balance
the government’s interest in punishing
nonviolent crime with a person’s con
stitutional right to control his or her
body.
Some justices indicated they may
throw out the case without ever
answering that question because of
concern that it was improperly
appealed, since the case hasn’t yet
come to trial.
Government attorney Michael
Dreeben said the court needs to resolve
uncertainty about forced medications.
Each year hundreds of federal
defendants are put on medication to
make them competent to stand trial.
Most take the drugs willingly. In a
recent 12-month period, 59 people
were medicated against their wishes
and about three-fourths were restored
to competency, according to govern
ment.
In a series of decisions more than a
decade ago, the Supreme Court ruled
that inmates considered dangerous
could be forced to take medication and
that defendants in criminal trials could
be required to take drugs if it was med
ically appropriate.
Charles Sell, 53, of St. Louis, has
spent more than four years in a prison
hospital as his lawyers fought over his
drugging, more jail time than he would
receive if convicted of the fraud
crimes.
He has been diagnosed with a delu
sional disorder. Court records show
that Sell has seen imaginary leopards,
believes the FBI is trying to kill him
and wants to go into combat.
Deficits to exceed $300 billion, U.S. expects U.N. vote to
first for yearly federal budget authorize war in Iraq
By Alan Fram
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The government is on track to
amass annual federal deficits this year and next exceeding
$300 billion for the first time. Republicans insist the red ink
would not be a record, a contention Democrats reject in a
linguistic duel less about economics than politics.
“They’re not always engaged in an academic search for
truth,” Indiana University economics professor Willard
Witte said of both parties.
Economists agree the most meaningful way to compare
historic budget figures is to factor in changes in the dollar’s
value or the size of the economy. Republicans say that
when inflation is considered, there have been nine short
falls since World War II worse than the projected deficits
for 2003 and 2004.
Even so, that argument is part of a weeks-long GOP
campaign to downplay their deficit forecasts in hopes of
aiding congressional passage of President Bush’s proposed
$1.46 trillion in fresh tax cuts over the next decade.
“They’re engaged in trying to carry the day in some pol
icy argument, “ Witte said of the two parties, “so they’re
bound to interpret the truth in the light that makes their case
most strongly.”
Vying to set the deficit record straight
T>ie $304 billion budget deficit prelected by the Bush adntfnisaadon
a'-UH bo the largest ever But Republican* arc quick to
. ■ vu: defait J not be a record when adjusted ter inflation
or represented as a cocer,;agc- of -ne gross domestic product
Federal budget surpluses and deficits
In real dollars
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bers that help them define
an issue most favorably.
Republicans eager to
abolish the tax on large
estates call it the “death”
tax, while Democrats try
ing to taint Bush’s pro
posed new tax cuts label
them the “leave-no-mil-
lionaire-behind” plan, a
play on his “no-child-left-
behind” education initiative.
In the budget Bush sent
Congress last month, he
projected shortfalls of
$304 billion this year and
$307 billion next — numbers that war and other factors are
expected to make worse.
Until now, the $290 billion deficit of 1992 under the first
President Bush has never been surpassed.
“How can they say it’s not a record? You don’t need a
Ph.D. in economics to know $304 billion is more than $290
billion,” said Tom Kahn, Democratic staff director of the
House Budget Committee.
.■is,.
SOUHCE: Office &.
By Edith M. Lederer
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
UNITED NATIONS — Signaling
that the United States intends to bring
the Iraq debate to a final showdown,
U.S. officials said Monday a vote on a
new U.N. resolution authorizing force
against Iraq will likely come next week.
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte
said the United States expects a vote in
on its resolution “quite soon” after top
weapons inspectors Hans Blix and
Mohamed ElBaradei update the deeply
divided Security Council Friday on
Iraq’s cooperation in eliminating its
nuclear, chemical, biological and long-
range missile programs.
“Our view is that we don’t need to
debate this very simple and straightfor
ward resolution,” the U.S. envoy said
after discussing the date for the inspec
tors’ briefing with Guinea’s U.N.
ambassador, the council president for
March. “We would expect a vote quite
soon thereafter.”
A U.S. official said “there is no cur
rent plan to vote” immediately after
Friday’s report. “All indications are that
the vote would be next week,” the offi
cial said, speaking on condition of
anonymity.
Some council diplomats didn’t rule
out an earlier snap vote, but the most
talked about date was March 13, which
currently has no Security Council meet
ing scheduled.
The sponsors of the resolution — the
United States, Britain and Spain — are
allowed to call for a vote at any time.
The resolution declares that Saddam
Hussein has missed “the final opportu
nity” to disarm peacefully and indicates
he must now face the consequences —
an assessment that France, Russia,
China and Germany reject.
Those four council nations — all but
See U.N. on page 2