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Aggielife: Meeting that special someone • Page 3
Opinion: Saving Private Lynch • Page 5
THE BATTALION
Volume 109 • Issue 169 • 6 pages
109 Years Serving Texas A&M University
www.thebatt.com
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Officials: Students still have options
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Journalism Student
By Justin Smith
THE BATTALION
Incoming freshmen and current
students enrolled in the journalism
department at Texas A&M will
receive a quality education despite a
recommendation to close the pro
gram, said Dr. Edward Walraven,
senior lecturer and undergraduate
adviser.
“A&M has made a commitment to
these students and they will honor
that commitment,” he said.
Even though incoming freshmen
and transfer students from other
schools will be the last students to
enter the program, there will be a
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Tion.
window of opportunity for current
students in other majors to transfer
into journalism, Walraven said.
He said that even if students take
longer than expected to graduate,
they will still be guaranteed a journal
ism degree.
According to the College of
Liberal Arts Web site, the college will
be available to aid any current jour
nalism students who might choose to
pursue a degree outside of journal
ism, even if it is not within the
College of Liberal Arts.
The Web site says no new grad
uate assistantships will be award
ed, but that as long as a graduate
student’s performance has been
satisfactory, their assistantships
will still be honored.
No current journalism faculty or
staff member will lose his job and if
he chooses to leave the department
he will still be employed by the
University, although he will be in a
different department, Walraven said.
Walraven said he was surprised
and disappointed by the decision.
“Journalism is my first love after
my family,” he said. “I was surprised
because I expected (the College of
Liberal Arts) to just merge us into
another department.”
Michael Ho-Lung, a senior
journalism major, said if the jour
nalism program has too many stu
dents, there should be a more strict
method of screening students who
want to get in.
“If they don’t have the money to
hire faculty, then make journalism
more selective and require students to
get higher grades in their classes or
on the (Grammar, Spelling,
Punctuation Test),” he said.
Walraven said regardless of the
decision, there will not be a degrada
tion in the quality of the classes.
“As long as journalism is still
being taught, we will do the best we
can,” he said.
For more information, log on to
the College of Liberal Arts Web site
at http://clla.tamu.edu/joumalism.
Students not wishing to remain
in journalism will be able to
explore other majors
Students have varied options if
they wish to continue to pursue a
journalism-style degree, such
as English or history
College of Liberal Arts will work
with students who want to transfer
to other majors, regardless of the
number of credit hours
RUBEN DELUNA • THE BATTALION
SOURCE: COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS
Claudette closer
to reaching land
Position: 27.5 N, 93.1 W
Sustained winds: 65 mph
Movement: NNW 7 mph
As of 5 p.m. EOT Monday
■i Potential area of landfall
Okla.
concern over
Claudette shifts
o mid-Texas
By Mark Rabineck
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEADRIFT, Texas — Texans along a 200-
mile stretch of coastline braced for hurricane-
force winds, torrential rain and pounding tides as
Tropical Storm Claudette plodded toward land,
heading north of where forecasters initially
anticipated.
The National Hurricane Center issued a hurri
cane warning from the sparsely populated area
around Baffin Bay, 30
miles south of Corpus
Christi, to High Island,
east of Galveston
some 75 miles
i of Houston.
Forecasters believed
Claudette could
become a hurricane late
Monday and expected
to turn to the west
before arriving under
the cover of darkness
Wednesday morning.
Coastal residents in
low lying areas along
Texas’ coast under the
hurricane warning were
being asked to evacuate
Monday evening, emer
gency management
officials said.
“All the way from
: Galveston/High
and area south everybody is asking people in
low-lying areas to leave,” said Rick Perry,
Brazoria County’s emergency management coor
dinator. “This is a minimal storm but you need to
move inland to high ground.”
Galveston County emergency management
officials asked residents of the west end of the
Bolivar Peninsula to consider leaving in anticipa
tion of the storm, since anything above 4-foot tides
would cut off evacuation routes.
“We are a little bit more under the gun,”
Galveston Mayor Roger “Bo” Quiroga said.
Tropical storm warnings stretched east to
Intracostal City, La., anticipating complications
the so-called “dirty” side of the storm. The
lower Rio Grande Valley, considered the most
See Claudette on page 2
Splash into summer
Texas
Ark.
La.
Tenn.
I Miss j Ala.
Houston '%~ wu '$<!h
'‘Pol
Gulf of
Mexico
Brownsville Potential
! area of
MEX. i movement
0(150 mi
0 fSOkm f~
100” \ 95” /90'
25°
SOURCE: AccuWeather
AP
SHARON AESCHBACH • THE
Senior accounting major John Hawley shoots down a slide at the Bryan Aquatic Center Monday
The aquatic center is open for general swimming from 1 to 7 p.m. daily.
Bush says Liberia aid
will be limited in size
By Scott Lindlaw
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — President
George W. Bush said Monday that
any deployment of American
troops to Liberia would be limited
in size and duration and would
depend on Liberian President
Charles Taylor stepping down and
leaving the country.
Bush gave no indication he
was close to a decision, and aides
they didn’t expect one this
week. He offered no hint of
whether any U.S. contingent
would comprise military advisers,
humanitarian experts or soldiers.
Bush commented after meeting
the White House with U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan,
who appealed for help in bringing
Peace to Liberia.
The president said he was
awaiting reports from two teams
he sent to assess the situation in
Liberia, one reviewing the
humanitarian needs there, the
other the military situation.
“I think everybody under
stands, any commitment we have
would be limited in size and lim
ited in tenure,” Bush said.
“It may require troops. We don’t
know how many yet,” Bush said
after meeting with Annan.
“Therefore, it’s hard for me to
make a determination until I see all
the facts.”
Bush said he had pressed
advisers in a meeting of the
National Security Council on
when the assessment teams would
report back.
:The Pentagon, meanwhile, said
it had sent aircraft to neighboring
countries in case members of the
Liberia assessment team need to
Ewing: Domestic
security tops
research agenda
By Megan Orton
THE BATTALION
Texas A&M will make homeland security
a priority in research, said Dr. Richard Ewing,
A&M’s vice president for research, at
Monday’s Faculty Senate meeting.
The main idea of the Integrated Center for
Homeland Security is to bring together the
city’s emergency centers and coordinate them
to work toward a better and safer society,
Ewing said.
The agencies A&M employs in homeland
security, such as Texas Engineering Extension
Service, give A&M a breadth that other uni
versities don’t have, Ewing said.
Ewing said a memorandum was part of the
Homeland Security Act of 2002, which moved
to establish one university-based center to tar
get 14 areas of homeland security, including
the training of first responders, animal and
plant health and diagnostics, food safety and
engineering.
The memorandum was signed in 2002 to
develop a cooperative plan among the
University systems in Texas, including
University of Texas at Austin, University of
Houston, Texas Tech University, University of
North Texas and A&M.
Ewing said this goal will be achieved in the
integrated center by combining research
expertise across the campus.
As far as immediate threats in this area,
Ewing said the center is interfacing extreme
ly well with civil defense and the state. The
main concerns will be cyber security and
cyber threats, which the center is working on
securing.
“We also have the nuclear center here at
A&M which we have to be particularly careful
about,” he said.
Dean of the College of Liberal Arts Charles
Johnson spoke about his recommendation to
cut the journalism department during the
meeting.
Before concluding the meeting. Speaker of
the Senate Martha Loudder presented a new
Academic Integrity program that the Task
Force on Academic Integrity hopes to imple
ment by January 2004.
In other business, the Senate approved
graduate and undergraduate course changes,
See Research on page 2
Chipotle set to open
CHUCK KENNEDY • KRT CAMPUS
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan meets with President George W. Bush in
the White House Oval Office Monday. Annan has been pushing for American
intervention in Liberia.
be evacuated. Three helicopters
were sent to Sierra Leone and one
MC-130 special operations trans
port plane was sent to Senegal,
according to Navy Lt. Dan
Hetlage, a Pentagon spokesman.
There are about 100 U.S. troops
with the four aircraft, he said.
The Pentagon had previously
arranged for commercial aircraft
to stand by in case an evacuation
was required, but they became
unavailable this week, so the mil
itary planes were sent, Hetlage
See Liberia on page 2
By Lindsay Broomes
THE BATTALION
College Station will soon
be dishing out a new twist
on burritos and tacos with a
Chipotle Mexican Grill
opening in September.
Karen Henry, spokes
woman for Chipotle, said
she hopes that the fact
College Station is a college
town will help attract
customers.
“We have done well in
Boulder (Colo.) and Austin
among other college towns,
and feel confident we will
have the same success in
College Station,” she said.
Although some students
eagerly await the kickoff of
a new restaurant, some are
not quite as overjoyed.
“Freebirds (World
Burrittos) is enough for this
town,” said senior biochem
istry major Nick Mimms.
“Something different would
be better.”
Freebirds currently has
three locations in the Bryan-
College Station area and its
management welcomes the
competition.
“We not only compete
with Chipotle, but all other
markets,” said Alan Hixon,
Freebirds’ manager.
Hixon said there are sim
ilarities and differences
between the two restaurants,
and Freebirds plans to con
tinue focusing on executing
its line of business.
Some Texas A&M stu
dents welcome the arrival of
the new restaurant and a new
dining option.
“Chipotle will add a little
more variety to the town and
give Freebirds a good run
for their money,” said
Michelle Byrne, a senior
See Chipotle on page 2