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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (July 8, 2003)
STAT THE BATTALION r fire ita. ling of a blood sample[ free who now has tea es and a 2002 murder, ntana and West Virsi old testimony by fore® nto question, lit of the DNA rtrained staff, a leaky i have contaminated eii mishandling of evident are run by hi® aid James Alan Foi justice professor ;rn Universi ly, the management lot be as foolproof as I forensics.” tandards, better fundi lagement — all may Is to ensure lab resiili ugly convince juries d said, operate like the «ill aid Peter Neuft of the founders Benjamin N. 0 rk, a group behind mr at ions across the ,t of problems: Stand® by crime lab ollow the standards,® y of labs are too cW ments or prosecutors, run by people whoartt ed to people whoaresd I.S. attorney in easts Houston in their stall' del son. Ferrara and oil- xredited underasystir rs, so their practices® independent runner-up Stokes, Miss Lubht mer-up was Mej /liss Humble-Kingwo t runner-up was Kfisl ss Metrocrest. attended Arkansas-Lit n 1998 to 2002 at l with honors in IS! ks High School, Aggielife: Getting and staying fit for the summer • Page 3 Opinion: Prejudicial practices • Page 5 HTTTT7 ■ i rL 109 Years Serving Texas A&M University www.thebatt.com Volume 109 • Issue 165 • 6 pages Rules change for parking citations By Justin Smith THE BATTALION Starting this month. Transportation Services will implement a new set of policy changes affecting parking citations and fines. Rodney Weis, director of Transportation Services, said there will be no more late fees for students who pay their fines in a timely manner. Transportation Services will take $10 off cita tions that are paid within 14 days. For example, if a fine is $50, the violator only has to pay $40 through the 14th day. “Fourteen days is simpler than saying people have 10 business days to pay, and the discount encourages students to pay sooner. Also, other universities have tried it and it has been success ful,” he said. Weis said another change is in the appearance of citations. Tickets will no longer be left in the familiar yellow envelopes. Now, the citations themselves are weatherproof and will be placed alone under a windshield wiper. “We will save about $20,000 alone just with changing away from the yellow envelopes,” he said. Transportation Services has also consolidated the number of fines as well as changing the amounts of some of the fines, Weis said. Some fines will go up, some will go down and others will not change at all, he said. Weis said examples of fine changes are an increase in the fine for parking in fire lanes and a decrease in the fine for parking too long in timed spaces, such as the 30 minute parking spaces located around campus. Weis said the reason for the changes came because it had been a long time since the citations and fines had been reviewed as well as trying to simplify things and make things more compatible with their new business software. “We are trying to get everything ready for the Web by 2004,” he said. Some students believe these changes are a good thing, but some feel Transportation Services needs to go further. See Parking on page 2 Tuesday, July 8, 2003 PARKING CHANGES MM $10 off citation if paid within 14 days Tickets now weatherproof; no more yellow envelopes Increase in fines for parking in fire lanes and decrease in fines for timed parking, such as 30 minute ^ parking RUBEN DELUNA • THE BATTALION SOURCE: TRANSPORTATION SERVICES NASA: Insulation may be Columbia’s ‘smoking gun’ By Marcia Dunn THE ASSOCIATED PRESS down the arbiter. ffc ; L MIL k3-5923 SAN ANTONIO — A chunk of foam insulation fired at shuttle wing parts Monday blew open a gaping 16-inch hole, yielding what one member of the Columbia investigation team said was the “smoking that proves what brought down the spaceship. The crowd of about 100 watching the I test gasped and cried, “Wow!” when the foam hit — the impact so violent that it popped a lens off one of the cameras recording the event. The foam struck roughly the same spot where insulation that broke off Columbia’s external fuel tank smashed into the shuttle’s (eft wing during launch. Investigators had specu lated that the damage led to the shuttle’s destruc tion during re-entry over Texas in February, but Monday’s test offered the strongest proof yet. “We have found the smoking gun,” Columbia Accident Investigation Board member Scott Hubbard said of the panel’s | seventh and final foam-impact test. The 1.67-pound piece of fuel-tank foam | insulation shot out of a 35-foot nitrogen- i pressurized gun and slammed into a carbon- I reinforced panel removed from shuttle Atlantis. The countdown boomed through loud speakers, and the crack of the foam coming out at more than 530 mph reverberated in the field where the test was conducted. Sixteen high-speed cameras captured the impact, and hundreds of sensors regis tered movements, stresses and other con ditions. The impact was so strong — Easterwood opens new restaurant By Melissa Sullivan THE BATTALION Overlooking the George Bush ; Presidential Library Complex, a new restaurant and gift shop have opened at Easterwood Airport, making traveling a little easier and convenient for passengers. Sully’s Landing and Reveille’s News and Gifts, opened in March, have been long overdue and have gotten positive feedback from employees and passengers, said Kim Sutphen, assistant director for administration. “It has been five years since we had fresh beverages and food for our passengers,” she said. Sully’s Landing opens at 5 a.m. every day and closes at 6 p.m. The restaurant is open to the public and parking is free for the first hour. “With the great view, you can eat lunch and watch the planes,” Sutphen said. “We have great hamburgers and chicken plates, as well as a blue plate special everyday.” Sutphen said the restaurant is great for passengers who have a long delay or a diversion from a It is the kind of damage, type of damage, that must have occurred to bring to 19 packing a full ton of force — that it dam aged some of the gauges. “There’s a lot of collateral damage,” said Hubbard, a high-ranking NASA official. Hubbard said the test results showed it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, for Columbia’s astronauts to have repaired such a large hole in orbit. He stressed that the actual gap in Columbia’s wing may have been a bit smaller — or pos sibly a bit bigger. “We know that almost surely there was a breach on the order of 10 inches in diame ter,” he said. “Here we’ve got one 16, so that’s in the same ballpark in my book.” He added: “The board’s goal was to connect the dots between the foam-shedding event and the proximate or the direct cause of the acci dent, and that’s what this whole test program has been about. I think today we made that connection.” Monday’s test at the Southwest Research Institute — barely beating out an afternoon thunder storm — best replicated the blow from debris that occurred 82 seconds into Columbia’s liftoff in January. Nonetheless, Hubbard expressed sur prise at the results. “It was in here,” he said, smacking his fist into his belly. “It was like, ‘ah,’ like that. It was a visceral reaction. It was short ly followed by ‘Oh, my God.’... I felt sur prise at how it appeared, such a dramatic punch-through. But it is the kind of dam age, type of damage, that must have occurred to bring down the orbiter.” Two weeks ago, the investigation board identified the blow from the foam as the most probable cause of the accident that See Shuttle on page 6 — Scott Hubbard Columbia Accident Investigation Board Weird science Junior entomology major Kelly Felderhoff transplants flies from a petri dish into sponge-like vials in the Systematics Research Laboratory and Collection Room in the Heep JOSHUA HOBSON • THE BATTALION Center on Monday. Insects are moved to vials to absorb preserving liquid before being dehydrated, which leaves the insects in a more natural state before being displayed. Ag journalism program grows Can get a homestyle meal for less than $6 Open from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily SHARON AESCHBACH & RUBEN DELUNA • THE BATTALION SOURCE: ARTIST MOORE, GENERAL MANAGER places such as Houston. “Those people have been on a plane three or four hours with out anything to eat,” she said. “Now they have the option to get a hot cup of coffee.” Artist Moore, general man ager of the restaurant, said before the restaurant opened, the only option for any type of food was a vending machine. “I am happy to know the restaurant serves a hot full course meal,” he said. Moore said the restaurant has plans to open a bar, but needs the TABC to approve the bar for an alcohol license. When the bar opens, the restaurant will be open later, he said. Moore said Sully’s Landing is not expensive and a customer can get a hot home-style meal for less than $6. Sutphen said she is happy the restaurant has opened and that it gives the employees a chance to mingle with the passengers more. “I’m really excited,” she said. “This is another way the airport can provide service to our customers.” The grand opening will be held when the restaurant receives the alcohol license, Sutphen said. By Jodi Rogers THE BATTALION With 88 undergraduates, Texas A&M’s agricultural com munications and journalism pro gram was recognized as the third largest of its kind at the Agricultural Communicators in Educators in Education Academic Swap Meet in June. Oklahoma State University and Texas Tech University boast larger numbers, with more than 150 and 130 majors, respectively. “When I got here two years ago, there were 35 (majors),” said Gary Wingenbach, assistant professor of agricultural com munications and journalism. Wingenbach said administra tors plan to enroll 200 students within the next few years. “This is a manageable num ber, given our current number of faculty, classroom space, admin istrative support and job out look,” he said. Before 2001, the Department of Journalism housed agricultur al communications and journal ism, then called agricultural journalism. Students enrolled in the pro gram said the program is grow ing with the demand in the mar ket of agricultural journalism majors. “I wanted to mix my two passions, agriculture and writ ing,” said Lacey Love, a senior agricultural communications and journalism major. “The agricultural communications and journalism program is growing, and before long we will have just as many majors as journalism. Without agricultural communications and journalism majors, who would write for the breed magazines and work for the Beef Council?” Students enrolled in other majors have also been looking at agricultural journalism as a career option. “I was originally a zoology See Journalism on page 2 Teens arrested in alleged killing plot By Geoff Mulvihill THE ASSOCIATED PRESS OAKLYN, N.J. — Matthew Lovett was known as an angry young man: He dressed all in black, drew violent pictures and walked around town with a baseball bat. Acquaintances said he kept a list of people who had teased him as far back as grade school. Early Sunday, Lovett, 18, was arrested with two other teenagers on charges they plotted to kill three teens and open fire randomly on other peo ple with a cache of guns and ammunition they were carrying. Lovett was being held on $1 mil lion bail Monday. Authorities would not discuss a possible motive, but people who knew the teens believe Lovett was fed up with the teasing that he and his younger brother had endured. James Lovett was constantly tormented for a speech impediment caused by a cleft palate, according to schoolmates. “They’d all make fun of the way he talked,” said Joe Oldham, a 14-year-old who had a class with the younger boy. See Teens on page 6
