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Sports: Ags put new rankings on the line • Page 7
Forum: Aggie legacy • Page 10
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Volume 110 • Issue 69 • 12 pages
A Texas A&M Tradition Since 1893
www.thebattalion.net
Friday, December 5, 2003
jition Policy Advisory Committor
i public reb
le wbolwei]!
University President Robert M.
Gates announced Wednesday that
he has established a 15-member
committee that will advis* the
administration and the Board of
Regents on proposed tuition
increases. Committee members
include:
■ Chairman G.Dan Parker, associate
executive vice president
■ Five representatives from
administration and faculty
■ Seven representatives from the
student body
■ One parent
■ One former student
Gates forms tuition advisory board
ANDREW BURLESON •THE BATTALION
SOURCE : UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT ROBERT M. CATES
By Rhiannon Meyers
THE BATTALION
Texas A&M President Robert M.
Gates announced Wednesday the estab
lishment of a Tuition Policy Advisory
Committee responsible for advising the
administration and the Board of
Regents on proposed tuition increases.
The committee is comprised of six
representatives from administration
and faculty, six representatives from
the student body, a parent and a for
mer student.
“I think it's important to have a
structured way for students, faculty
and parents to have a chance for deci
sion making,” Gates said.
The committee will meet for the
first time in January to discuss pro
posed tuition increases for Fall 2004.
Gates said he hopes the group will act
as a liaison between students and par
ents and the Board of Regents. Gates
said he would like students to be able
to approach the committee with their
questions and concerns.
“I think that people feel better
about a process in which they've had
some say, rather than someone in
Rudder Tower just dictating tuition
increases;” Gates said.
Student Body President Matt
Josefy, who will serve on the commit
tee, said he is excited about the com
mittee’s purpose.
“It provides an avenue for students
to speak up in a coordinated way,”
Josefy said. “With this committee, it
will be obvious who to get your voic
es to because they will have direct
access to the officials.”
Josefy said the committee could
look at recommendations relating to
differential tuition, flat tuition and
special summer tuition.
Gates said he got the idea for a
tuition advisory committee from
University of Texas President Larry
Faulkner, who established a Campus
Tuition Advisory Committee in
August 2003.
Faulkner said the UT committee con
sisted of four student leaders, with repre
sentatives from student government, the
Senate of College Councils, the Graduate
Student Assembly and a student at large.
The committee also includes five officers
from administration.
The committee at UT is responsi
ble for reviewing the budget and pre
senting tuition proposals to the presi
dent. The committee, which recently
proposed an increase of $1,200 for
incoming out-of-state students,
reviewed the budget, held open
forums for the student body and then
submitted a proposal to the adminis
tration for the tuition increase,
Faulkner said.
“I think what we've done has
worked beautifully,” Faulkner said. “No
one has been enthusiastic about the
tuition increase, but under the circum-
See Tuition on page 6
Drive to aid Aggies
stationed in Iraq
By Sarah Szuminski
THE BATTALION
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s natiomi Two former Texas A&M stu-
u to Mikela ' ents stationed in Baghdad who
ost their belongings in a fire last
nonth need help from A&M
Itudents and members of the
ryan-College Station commu-
ity to make their holidays a lit-
e brighter.
Capt. Marshall Tway, Class of
1995, Lt. Jeremy Naylor, Class
Sign of an Aggie
of 2000, and fellow unit mem
bers lost all of their personal
property and most of the units’
flight equipment when a fire
broke out in a hangar at Baghdad
International Airport Nov. 20.
No one was injured and no
aircraft were damaged in the
fire, said Tway, who is the com
manding officer of Desperado
(Troop D), 1st Squadron, 1st
; snake
severe
lainland a-"|,
:ports dtifii
areak
ested the
was sp«
tern
See Drive on page 2
HELP AGGIES IN IRAQ
Donations benefiting Aggie soldiers and their units
stationed in Baghdad will be collected Friday, Monday
and Tuesday at the following locations to replace items
destroyed by a fire.
Rudder Fountain
Kirk's Cleaners at FM
2818 and Southwood
Kirk's Cleaners at
Rock Prairie and 29th
Street
Aldersgate Church
From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Regular business hours
Regular business hours
From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Bryan-College Station I From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Chamber of Commerce I
SHARON AESCHBACH •THE BATTALION
Plano Aggie Moms club members Kathy Foster, left, from Frisco, and
Janet Davis, right, Class of 1979 from Plano, buy signs from a booth at
the Winter in Aggieland Craft Fair. The fair is on the second floor of the
Memorial Student Center and will run until 5 p.m. Friday.
RUBEN DELUNA • THE BATTALION
SOURCE : PROJECT COORDINATOR LINDSEY HAFNER
Student senate seeks place
for Bonfire in master plan
Student Senate l.eyislation
The Student Senate passed the following
bills at its meeting Wednesday:
By Sarah Walch
THE BATTALION
am
I
The Student Senate passed a bill
'ednesday supporting the inclusion of a
site on Texas A&M’s main campus
specifically reserved for Aggie Bonfire in
the University’s Campus Master Plan, a
Iplan that will guide the changes to the
physical campus of Texas A&M over the
next 50 years.
Speaker of the Student Senate Matthew
Wilkins, a junior philosophy major,
organized a task force that met twice to
discuss what the effects of the changes
would be.
Included in the legislation as “essential
and absolutely non-negotiable elements of
any campus master plan” are the memorial
lawn at the Memorial Student Center, which
honors Aggies killed during World War II,
the 55 memorial trees surrounding the O.R.
Simpson Drill Field, and the memorial to
the residents of the Fowler-Hughes-
Keathley complex on Northside who died
when Aggie Bonfire fell in 1999.
The bill stressed the importance of the
preservation of the cohesive community on
Northside by building residence halls in
close proximity to one another if the current
residence halls are torn down.
The Senate also passed the Human
See Senate on page 6
•A bill supporting the inclusion of a site
on main campus reserved for Aggie
Bonfire in the University’s Campus
Master Plan.
•The Human Rights and Labor
Standards Investigation Bill, which will
allow the student body president to
form a committee to research labor
conditions in factories where A&M-
licensed clothing is manufactured.
• Recommendations for improvements
to sidewalk, lighting and water
drainage conditions on campus,
which will be submitted to the
Physical Plant.
Profs to develop strategies
to maintain aging aircraft
RUBEN DELUNA • THE BATTALION
SOURCE : TEXAS A&M STUDENT SENATE
A&M livestock judging team wins championship
By Natalie Younts
THE BATTALION
The Texas A&M Livestock Judging
Team can now boast an achievement that
few teams at the University can: back-to-
back championships.
The 2003 judging team took first place
in the 98th annual National Collegiate
Livestock Judging Contest Nov. 18 in
Louisville, Ky., by 40 points and set the all-
time record for highest team score with a
total of 4,742 points, said Ryan Rathmann,
a graduate beef cattle reproduction student
who coached the team.
“This shattered the old record that was
held by the 1961 Oklahoma State team,”
Rathmann said. u This was the ninth time
Texas A&M has won and the first time
A&M has ever won back-to-back national
championships.”
Tobin Pennington, a senior animal sci
ence major and team member, said the
biggest rewards of winning were prestige
for himself and A&M and the creation of
lifelong opportunities and contacts.
“It kind of means it’s the end of the road,
I guess, in our judging careers,” Pennington
said. “But other than that it’s something that
we can always look back on and say, ‘We
won that. We were the national champions. 1 ”
The students judged 12 classes of animals
in the competition. Each class consisted of
four animals of the same species: swine, cat
tle or sheep. The students ranked the animals
in each class from best to worst and then had
to justify their reasons for the rankings.
The order that the team ranked each
class was worth 50 points, and each set of
reasons was worth 50 points.
Kansas State’s team came in second
overall and a Kansas State student won the
top individual overall.
Pennington said the team has been
preparing for the contest for a year.
“Something we’ve worked for that long
finally came down to winning the national
championship,” he said, “It was just a great
feeling. It was awesome.”
Jeff Thayne, a senior animal science
major, won third place individual overall.
“It’s given me a better background in the
livestock industry and helped out with pub
lic speaking skills, provided a network of
people to reach out to later on and an oppor
tunity to meet a lot of friends,” he said.
Rathmann said the 2003 A&M team
would probably end up as one of the greatest
See Livestock on page 2
By Eric Ambrose
THE BATTALION
Professors from Texas A&M,
along with professors from the
Georgia Tech Research Institute
and the University of Dayton
Research Institute, will help the
U.S. Department of Defense
develop new strategies to main
tain aging aircraft.
The A&M-based Texas
Engineering Experiment Station
has received more than $4 million
for the research, which is expect
ed to begin in January. The
increased budget, donated by the
U.S. Air Force, will go toward
developing technologies that will
increase the lifespan of aircraft in
military aspects.
“Rather than having an issue
that is common to all three mili
tary services studied separately,
they are getting together to do it
all at one time,” said Skip Mills,
manager of the San Antonio
department of the Texas Center of
Applied Technology. “They are
getting more bang for their buck.”
Mills said most of the planes
and helicopters used by the mili
tary have been designed for a cer
tain number of flight hours. Small
fighter planes have a much short
er lifespan than larger planes. The
length of time the military can
use certain aircraft depends upon
the type of plane and the type of
flight that it is used for, Mills
said. Rather than build new air
craft, TEES is working to develop
ways to make the old ones last
longer. The research will focus on
areas that all aircraft are having
problems with, he said.
“The fleets are maintained
very well, but many components
are failing and we need to antici
pate how to replace them,” Mills
said. “The B-52, which was
developed in the 1950s, may still
be flying for the next 20 years.
These planes could be used when
they are 100 years old.”
Mills said the research done at
the three universities will be com
piled and tested at the Aircraft
Sustainability Laboratory located
at Brooks City-Base in San
Antonio. TEES will be bringing
the information to the professors
at A&M to conduct the research
in their labs, Mills said.
John Ayala, manager of the
Aircraft Sustainability Lab for the
Texas Center for Applied
Technology, said the research will
most likely be divided into thirds,
with A&M acting as the executive
agent among the other universi
ties. As the project is still in the
developing stage, TEES does not
know how many professors will
be involved or which will be par
ticipating in the project.
“We will probably find out
what specific kinds of aircraft we
will be looking at in January,”
Ayala said. “Right now we are
focused on the military, but we
would like to get into commercial
airliners as well.”
Ayala said the team will then
recruit professors from all three
universities to conduct the
research. The team will most like
ly be multi-industrial from each
See Aircraft on page 2