thebattalion ● wednesday,
october 31, 2012
● serving
texas a&m since 1893
● first paper free – additional copies $1 ● © 2012 student media
UPD releases A&M bomb threat details Jake Walker The Battalion Texas A&M University Police Department released further details Tuesday that led to the arrest of a primary suspect in the A&M bomb threat case. A UPD investigator said he has good reason to believe that Dereon Kelley of Bryan sent an email to Texas A&M stating, “Campus will be bombed at twelve this afternoon.” The email was received by A&M Computing Services Center at about 11 a.m. on Oct. 19. Students and staff evacuated the campus. According to a probable cause statement, an investigator retrieved the IP address from the email regarding the threat and found that the address was linked to Verizon. The investigator requested information from Verizon and found the address was linked to a Yahoo account. Information was requested from Yahoo and showed that the account belonged to Brittany Henderson. Henderson was charged with terroristic threat after allegedly emailing a bomb threat to Texas State University on Oct. 18. After further investigation, records showed that the Yahoo account was accessed by a cellphone belonging to Dereon Kelley at 10:47 a.m. the day A&M received a bomb threat. Kelley’s phone number made contact with Texas A&M University Help Desk at 11 a.m. through Yahoo. Kelley told investigators he was in possession of the cellphone at the time the email was sent and admitted to the FBI that he had access to Henderson’s Yahoo account. After a search warrant was issued, police recovered text messages from Henderson’s cellphone between the two suspects both before and immediately after the bomb threat at A&M. “And I logged into your email”, Kelley texted the night before the A&M bomb threat. “Ima go ahead and leave brit I will not be hurt any longer dont [c]all or text me for anything goodbye you ruined my love life”, Kelley texted the day of the A&M bomb threat. The connection between Kelley and Henderson, as it pertains to the bomb threat, remains under investigation.
inside
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column | 2 Scantily clad
Lately you might have been noticing a trend of sexy Halloween costumes for women. Is this socially acceptable?
lifestyles | 3 Battle of the bad guys Ever wonder who is the scariest villain from a horror movie? Check out page 3 where the classic villains of popular horror movies duke it out to see who is the scariest.
David Cohen — THE BATTALION
The haunted house attraction “Fright Nights” takes place in the basement of the LaSalle Hotel, which some say is haunted because of mysterious deaths at the hotel.
Bump in the night Bryan residents cultivate hotel’s haunted past Camryn Ford The Battalion
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rapped under almost a century of ghoulish history, winding black trails of surprising horrors lash out at unsuspecting community members at the historic LaSalle Hotel in downtown Bryan.
The haunted house attraction, “Fright Nights,” captures the imagination of vistors in the basement of LaSalle — full of haunted stories. The building opened in 1928 and was converted to a nursing home in 1959. Some locals, such as front desk agent Bobby Chambers, said the hotel was even an insane asylum for some time. After it was shut down for several years, the
See LaSalle on page 4
election 2012
Candidate’s polarized positions culminate on health care Annabelle Hutchinson The Battalion President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney both agree the health care system has problems, but each candidate has his own ideas on how to improve the system. Health care reform is a complicated issue and a high-priority topic in the presidential election. Laura Dague, a professor at the Bush School who specializes in health care policy, said Americans need to understand the problems of the health care system to evaluate the candidates’ plans. “There are really two big issues that the U.S. faces with respect to health care policy,” Dague said. “One of them is that we have a lot of people who do not have access to the health care system. The second problem is that costs of health care are increasing at a high rate.” Dague said customers who want insurance the most are also those who need it the most, so they will be the most expensive to insure. This problem is called “adverse selection” and is one contributing factor to why it is expensive to buy insurance on the individual market. “Economic policy says we can make it cheaper, require it or give it away,” Dague said. “Unfortunately, the cost problem is really hard to fix.” Dague said part of the problem with the high cost of health care comes from uninsured people who can’t pay hospital bills and the hospital having to cover the cost. “The idea is that somebody has to pay for people who get sick when they are uninsured,” Dague said. Public emergency rooms have to treat anyone who walks in the door. When uninsured people cannot pay for care, the hospital or a charity organization gets
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building reopened as a hotel. Squeaking doors and the rustling of thin black tarps against the basement walls would be enough for some people to second-guess their entry into the haunted house, but some dare to enter anyway. “When you walk in it’s really dark,” Chambers said. “You can’t see anything. There are lots of little turns, so you have no idea when
something is going to happen, but you know that it is. Everywhere you go, you have to wonder if something is coming out at you. It’s nerve-wrenching.” The event is organized by a group of volunteers from around the Bryan area. One of the volunteers, Jeff Sparks, said he and a friend used to put on a haunted house in his yard. But they found out in 2011 that the hotel put on a haunted house and asked if they could be a part of it. After putting countless hours of work into it, they were invited back this year to help again.
Elyse Wudeck and Evan Andrews — THE BATTALION
stuck with the bill, Dague said. The Affordable Care Act, referred to as Obamacare, is the Obama administration’s health care plan that has been initiated. According to Obama’s campaign website, Obamacare is “making health care work better for all of us, even if you already have insurance. It puts the health of your family first — ensuring access to free preventive care and protecting consumers from insurance company abuses.” Dague said the Affordable Care Act can be broken down into four main points: increased coverage, state-based exchanges, insurance offered by employers and an insurance mandate. “Its main goal is increasing coverage,” Dague said. “One way it does that is it takes the program for poor
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Americans, Medicaid, and it extends Medicaid from current requirements to 133 percent of the federal poverty line, which is around $22,000 for a family of four.” The act also creates provisions for state-based insurance exchanges, which Dague said could be implemented as an online system where individuals can browse private insurance plans that meet federal requirements. “This [exchange] is definitely not intended to be owned by the government,” Dague said. “It is supposed to be administered by the state governments.” She said the Act also requires employers with more than 50 employees to offer insurance or pay a penalty, See Health Care on page 4
TEXAS AVE
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