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news for you campus Blackout The University’s main campus experienced a partial power outage at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday due to a breaker operation conducted by the University’s power transmission service provider, Bryan Texas Utilities. “The brief loss of power occurred because of regular circuit testing at a new BTU substation off of Dowling Road,” said Karen Bigley, communications manager for the University’s division of operations. Utilities and Energy Management located the problem and restored power within approximately 10 minutes. Katie White, staff writer
Regents to meet today and Friday
● thursday,
september 23, 2010
● Serving
Texas A&M since 1893
EDITORIAL
Meal plans mandatory in 2012
Students should oppose Dining Services decision Texas A&M’s Dining Services has students. The increased price is more than made a requirement, effective in 2012, for some students can afford, especially those students living on campus to purchase the living in the ramp-style dorm who will minimum meal plan. This new requiresee an increase of 87 percent to the cost ment is not in the best interest of of living by the $1,200 required the students, especially with the minimum option. It seems Dining high cost of the minimum Dining Services bit off more Services meal plan. The reason is than it could chew with the to “provide Texas A&M expansions. Now they are should not University Dining with the asking students to digest the force students volume it needs to sustain costs. Students should speak to buy meals. its current level of service up and protest this failing while making much-needed University auxiliary’s infringeupgrades and improvements to ment on their pocketbooks. It is the department’s infrastructure, and overunthinkable that such sweeping changes all quality, and to enhance the residential should simply be imposed, rather than experience.” Dining Services should not allowed by a campuswide vote. We call pass the burden of ineffecient performance upon President R. Bowen Loftin for a on to the students by forcing them to referendum, so that we can decide on the pay for services, especially services that issues that will affect Aggies for generaare unaffordable or unwanted by some tions to come.
Katie White The Battalion Goodbye Maroon Plate Special, here come the Dining Dollars. On Sept. 9, University Dining Services adopted a plan to phase in a requirement that all campus residents buy a meal plan — a meal plan without meal units and featuring 100 percent Dining Dollars. The plan will not be implemented until Fall 2012, to coincide with the re-opening of the Memorial Student Center, which will add 800 more seats for dining on campus. Students currently attending A&M will not be ‘grandfathered’ into the program and freshmen from the class of 2016 will be the first to use the plan. The program will be gradually phased in over a period of four years. “It is important that current students understand they will not be affected by
EDITORIALBOARD The Battalion’s editorial opinion is determined by its Board of Opinion, with the editor in chief having final responsibility.
Editor in Chief Matt Woolbright editor@thebatt.com
Managing Editor Megan Ryan battcopy@thebatt.com
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this,” said David Riddle, executive director of University Dining Services. The program will be Dining Dollars. The option to buy a certain number of meals per week will not be provided. Freshman biomedical sciences major Melanie Prenger said she would rather have the option of buying meals. “If I have Dining Dollars I spend them really fast,” Prenger said. Riddle said using Dining Dollars will reduce the number of missed meals on campus. Students will have the freedom to spend meal plan money on food without paying for the required items they may not like in the Maroon Plate Special. “Students won’t have to worry about rolling over meals at the end of the semester if they haven’t used them,” Riddle said. Students with special dietary needs See Dining on page 7
The Board of Regents of The Texas A&M University System will meet today and today in the H.D. Smith Operations Complex (Building 25) at the Brayton Fire Training Field. Included on the agenda is a vote to establish the Nuclear Solutions Institute.
nation &world President heckled for AIDS program funding President Barack Obama was heckled at a fundraiser by protesters pushing for more funding for AIDS programs and quicker action to allow gays to serve openly in the military. Obama responded by insisting he’s increased AIDS funding and was working to overturn the military’s so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. He told the protesters to go shout at Republicans, noting that a vote on “don’t ask, don’t tell” failed this week in the Senate, with Republicans united in opposition.
Children lose health insurance Several health insurers say they will stop selling new childonly individual insurance policies as they face a health care reform provision that will prevent them from excluding children with potentially costly pre-existing conditions.
Keyed up over
Hobby Hall Stephen Olmon — THE BATTALION
Master keys missing from residence halls unlock questions Katy Ralston The Battalion Imagine not knowing who could have access to your home and belongings at any given moment. This scenario has been a too close for comfort for some on-campus students. Within the past two months, three of the Texas A&M Northside residence halls’ master keys have been reported missing. Upon the discoveries Residence Life put into place extra security measures until the situations were resolved. Two were found within two days while the third remains lost but no longer a match for the rekeyed dorm. But the question remains, how did this happen and will it happen again? About the master keys The master key to opens any of the student rooms within the dorm. Each residence hall has master keys unique to that specific dorm. According to the residence adviser manual, master keys are in a locked security cabinet called a Chit Vault. There is a predetermined amount of master keys kept in the vault for use on a need basis by hall staff, such as fire drill evacuations and in rare cases when emergency access into a
Q&A
room is warranted, the manual states. Policy requires the loss of a master key to be reported immediately. The master key does not provide access into the building. The user must still have a valid ID card to be granted entrance through the access card readers stationed at each door before having access to the rooms, excluding the first floor of the balcony style residence halls where no outside door is present. The number of master keys per residence hall varies based on the size of the building. Typically, said Maggie Guzman, program coordinator for Residence Life Risk Management, the hall staff can access four, and there are others stored in different locations where the custodial and maintenance staff has access. Custodial staff members require the use of master keys during weekly cleaning of the rooms, and maintenance staff requires the use when making requested room repairs. Hall staff with access to the master key includes the residence hall director and resident advisers, commonly known as RAs, who are permitted use of the master key in cases of emergency response.
While master keys have gone missing before, until the past two months there was not an incident of a missing key in the last six years. Guzman said keys are a big part of what they do and they take them very seriously. “We do training on keys, but occasionally people are human and mistakes are made and we have a situation like we recently had,” Guzman said. What happened in Hobby Hobby Hall was the first residence hall to report one of master keys as missing. The key was discovered to be missing the week before students could start moving in, although the exact time it went missing cannot be determined, said Residence Life Associate Director of Residence Education Kathy Collins. Collins said the key was accounted for at the end of May when the residence halls closed for the semester and not checked again until the start of fall, when it was nowhere to be found. Collins said this is a special situation and that in the case of another missing master key it wouldn’t be a possible three months before it was realized. “When our buildings are occupied we
do a key inventory once a week, with all thousands of our keys. It is a requirement of our staff when the buildings are occupied,” Collins said. “This happened in the summer when no staff was there so no inventories were being done.” Since the key was discovered missing so close to scheduled move-in, the building could not be rekeyed before the residents began to arrive, Collins said. The rekeying was completed Aug. 27, five days after students moved in. Each resident was notified of the situation via their Neo e-mail account prior to move-in and informed by the residence hall director upon check-in. Hobby Hall resident Kelsie Brunson said checking in on Sunday was the first time she heard of it. “I got the e-mail after I moved in to the dorm,” said Brunson, a freshman communication major. The e-mail stated the master key was “misplaced” and gave students the option to choose a later day to move in, temporarily relocate to another hall until the building had been rekeyed or move in as planned. In the latter case, the e-mail enSee Keys on page 7
Sylvie Ragucci gives academic advice Rebecca Hutchinson Special to The Battalion Sylvie Ragucci has been a faculty adviser in the department of European and classical languages and cultures for three years. Ragucci gives tips to students looking into changing their major, minor or even studying abroad. Q: What problems do you see most freshmen face? A: Not claiming AP credits. They don’t automatically transfer, you have to call Mea-
surement and Research Services and have them post it. Take placement tests for language levels. You can’t just say, “I think I’m at this level.” It’s a little more scientific than that. Plan ahead because you have to make an appointment and some students don’t find out until a week before classes that they need a placement test, and that’s when the center is busiest. Q: What advice would you give them? A: Take classes that can count for every
degree, to get your feet wet. Don’t take too many classes in your major because it ends up hurting your GPR. Talk to other people with similar majors, faculty and advisers – join groups, preferably ones that have to do with the major. It might not decide what you want to do, but it helps to reassure you. Don’t overload. Get an idea for how things work. Universities are full of people from different backgrounds and all walks of life – you’re trying to find where you fit in. See Q&A on page 4
Associated Press
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