H
'IT—I—^ Wednesday, August 4, 2004
u he Battalion
)lumc 110 • Issue IK1 • 6 pages
A l exas A&M I nulition Since 1893
OPINION:
Admiring
Armstrong
Page 5
Yvww. thebatt.com
PAGE DESIGN BY: RACHEL SMITH
&M to close Commons dining facility
By Natalie Younts
THE BATTALION
The Commons Dining Center, the cafeteria
the Commons basement serving residents of
T^xas A&M’s Southside donnitories, will per-
.nently close at the end of August.
A temporary establishment, the Commons
Ftjod Court, will open on the first floor of the
Cpmons building Aug. 22.
A committee of five students and three facul-
members will brainstorm ideas for long-term
pljins for Southside dining in September, said
Sjident Body President Jack Hildebrand.
“We can have a very impressive facility that
have all Southside students dining there,”
ty
Hildebrand said.
Rick Floyd, executive associate vice presi
dent for finance, said an acceptable long-term
solution for Southside dining has not been de
veloped yet.
“We’ve tried to come up with a good in
terim solution that will allow us to reduce our
losses and that will give us an opportunity
to see how the students accept the new con
cepts,” Floyd said.
Hildebrand said the temporary food court is
not a good long-term solution because it cannot
accommodate enough students.
The Commons Food Court, which cost
$50,000 to create, will be on the first floor of the
Commons building.
Commons Xpress will offer the food formerly
served in Commons Dining Center, including
hot entrees, side dishes, salads and cookies.
A coffee bar, Common Grounds, will be open
7 a.m. to midnight.
“(Common Grounds is) a really super cof
fee kiosk-type operation, kind of a miniature of
what you might see at Poor Yorick’s (Coffee
House),” said Ron Beard, executive director of
food services.
Mexican food will be served from Olla Roja,
which also operates at the MSC 12th Man Inter
national cafeteria.
The current establishments on the first floor,
See Commons on page 2
COMMONS CLOSING!
The Commons Dining Center will permanently
close at the end of August.
The new Commons Food
Court will replace the Center
Dining Center rennovations
would have cost $ 16 million 1
Students'eating at the
Dining Center has declined
in recent years
The new food court wi
offer "grab-and-go"food
rather than a full-service
Will Lloyd •THE
Photo by: DAVE MORRIS
Source: RON BEARD, EXEC. DIRECTOR OF FOOD SERVICES
Try these genes on for size
thatl'
iren Harris, a third-year graduate student in biochemistry, resuspends the RNA enhance crops. Harris uses sorghum, because of its high drought resistance, to test
im a sorghum plant she previously isolated for use in research that can be used to the changes in gene expression due to abiotic, or non-living, stress.
H
ord to be in engineering symposium
ding!®
spac«;
By Chelsea Sledge
THE BATTALION
David Ford, associate professor, holder of
Kenneth R. Hall Professorship in Chemical
gineering at Texas A&M and recipient of the
.C.A.S.E. (President’s Early Career Award for
ience and Engineering) award, has been select-
to attend the National Academy of Engineer-
|g’s(NAE) 10th annual Frontiers of Engineering
posium on Sept. 9-11,2004, along with 85 of
brightest young engineers in the nation.
“It’s an honor to be chosen and a recognition
which I’m grateful for,” Ford
said. “I’m really hoping to
bring back some motivating
examples that I could use in
the classroom.”
The three-day symposium
will be held in Irvine, Cali
fornia. Chosen out of more
than 170 applicants, the 86
engineers come from varying
backgrounds including government, industry
and academia. They are pioneers in their field,
performing cutting-edge engineering research
FORD
and technical work, and are between ages 30 and
45. The engineers will meet together at the sym
posium to explore topics in multiscale modeling,
designer materials, engineering for extreme en
vironments and engineering for entertainment.
“Today’s engineers and their work are very di
verse,” said William A. Wulf, president of NAE.
“At the same time, many of our most signifi
cant recent advances involve contributions from
more than one field. (The symposium) exposes
engineers to ideas outside of their specialties to
See Ford on page 2
'emocrats knocked off balance by terror alerts
By Ron Fournier
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The politics of terrorism has Democrats tied in knots.
Each time President Bush raises fears of a possible attack, the po-
ical debate shifts from his most troublesome issue (Iraq) to one of his
jrongest (the war on terrorism) while Democrats fight their impulse to
liestion the president’s motives.
I The advantages of incumbency were in full display Sunday, when
lomeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned of possible al-Qaida
Irrorist attacks to financial institutions in New York City, Washington
lid Newark, N.J.
I The information was obtained in the past 36 to 72 hours, officials said
1 inday, increasing anxieties about a potential strike. The Bush adminis
tration let a 24-hour news cycle pass before acknowledging that most of
the intelligence, while recently obtained, was three or four years old.
“I am concerned that every time something happens that’s not good
for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism,” former
Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said Sunday.
Similar doubts were raised privately by John Kerry’s senior advisers,
top Democrats in Congress and even some senior Republicans who pri
vately questioned Ridge’s timing. The announcement came three days
after the close of the Democratic National Convention, which helped
increase Kerry’s terrorism-fighting poll ratings and less than two weeks
after a scathing report by the Sept. 11 Commission.
The administration on Tuesday issued a blanket condemnation of anybody
See Democrats on page 2
A&M-Galveston
hosts academy
training ship
By Shawn C. Millender
THE BATTALION
Texas A&M at Galveston is hosting the Texas Maritime
Academy’s training ship, the Texas Clipper II, Tuesday through
Thursday as part of a recruiting effort by the Academy.
The visit will culminate Wednesday from 10:00 a.m. to
2:00 p.m. as the ship will be open to the public for tours and
presentations by the academy and several marine/maritime
entities like Texas A&M-Galveston, Sea World San Anto
nio and the U.S. Navy.
A&M-Galveston Director of Institutional Advancement
Teri Fowle said recruiting students to the school and acad
emy is traditionally a challenge.
“When people think of Texas, they usually think of cow
boys and cattle,” Fowle said. “We want to get the word out
that there is a maritime academy here.”
Fowle said the event is targeted mostly toward area high
school students. She said the 40-year-old maritime program
sends a lot of graduates to places like Sea World.
The Texas Maritime Academy is one of six state mari
time academies in the country and the only one on the Gulf
Coast. Much like the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M, mili
tary service is optional for cadets, who can go into either
the Coast Guard or the Navy.
According to its Web site, the Academy’s mission is to
provide its cadets “with an exceptional education along with
hands-on training resulting in the cadets being recognized as
the future leaders of the United States Merchant Marine.”
Jeremy Sinclair, a third-year cadet from New Orleans,
Louisiana, said he would like to work with the Military
Sealift Command upon graduation from the Academy,
though he does not count himself as one of the roughly 10
percent of the 200 cadets with military aspirations.
Sinclair said the Academy is not looking for normal col
lege-bound high school seniors.
“Life in the Academy is different. It’s not going to be normal
college life in a normal college environment,” Sinclair said. “It
will place hardships on them they wouldn’t get normally.”
Sinclair said while there are similarities to the Corps, life
in the Academy is very different.
“It’s a lot more laid-back. These are some of the greatest
guys I’ve ever met in my life. We have a lot of fun here,”
Sinclair said.
Career opportunities in the maritime industry are the big
gest draw for potential cadets, Sinclair said.
“People are usually pretty shocked when we tell them
we can make $60,000-$70,000 a year out of the Academy,”
Sinclair said. “It’s a very unconventional lifestyle. Not your
normal 9 to 5 desk job.”
Photo Courtesy of: TERI FOWLE
The Texas Clipper II is used for training future merchant ship officers
and engineers.
l.M
OK LA. ARK.
Small plane
crash, killing six
TEXAS
Lakeway
LA.
★Austin
MEXICO
0 200 mi
0 200 km
Gulf of
Mexico
Four adults, two children dead in crash near Austin
XJRCE: ESR1
AP
By Jim Vertuno
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAKEWAY — A small plane crashed Tuesday
into a luxury home bordering a golf course just out
side Austin, causing an explosion and killing the six
people aboard.
Four adults and two children were killed; their
identities were not immediately known, Texas De
partment of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange
said. Three adults inside the two-story home escaped
unharmed, she said.
The house, which backs up to the Hills of Lake
way golf course, is less than two miles away from
Lakeway Airpark, a privately owned airport created
by residents of the Austin suburb.
There were conflicting reports on whether the
plane crashed while trying to land at the airport or af
ter having trouble gaining altitude following takeoff.
Mange said she understood the plane refueled about
15 minutes before the noon crash and was headed
to Oklahoma City. Federal Aviation Administration
spokesman John Clabes said the TF60 Smith Aero-
star, a twin-engine prop plane, crashed as it made its
second approach to land at the airport.
Bert Brown, a pilot with American Airlines for 34
years, was playing golf with a friend about 300 yards
from the house when he saw the plane go down. He said
the plane didn’t make an unusual noise before crash
ing, but appeared to be struggling to stay airborne.
“We just looked up and saw the aircraft and it was
going slow, wings level,” said Brown, who retired in
1993. “I saw him try to either make a left hand turn
or stalling out. ... With that, he lost lift and crashed
right into the ground.”
He said he’d seen crashes in training films, but
never personally.
See Crash on page 2